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I moan and reach my hand back to pull at one of my cheeks, widening the way for his cock. It feels like he goes where no dick has gone before, deeper, better.
After the urgent, feral coupling, it’s a cherishing hold.
Leaving a kiss on my shoulder, he pulls out, and I miss him immediately.
Our still unsteady breaths brush our chests together, the tips of my breasts kissing his hard torso. He rubs a thumb along my areola, and I wonder if I could come again just from that touch and the look in his eyes.
“You could be my new tradition.” The laughter dies on my lips, fades from his eyes, and we are trapped in a net of our own making.
“All this running around you doing. I can’t wait ’til we’re done so you can rest. Let me get this wig—” She cuts herself off. I look up to catch her wide eyes in the mirror. “What is it, T?” She gulps and holds out her palm to show me what took her by surprise. A handful of my hair. My heart hydroplanes in my chest, spinning with dread and fear.
I feel Canon’s stare on my back, and it’s the closest I’ve come to his touch since Sunday.
“Neevah, we can’t afford to lose you for good.” He chuckles, because it doesn’t even occur to him that could happen.
Once we’re tucked away, shadowed, he leans against the wall and tugs me to stand between his legs.
It comes from the real world just beyond our hiding place. Canon drops his forehead to mine and dusts kisses over my temple, my cheek, and finally, places one on my mouth. It’s a possessive kiss fraught with longing and promise and hunger. I lean into it, answer it, open under it, inviting him in, but there’s no time.
Neevah, baby, I’m so sorry.
This may not be the actual club, but sometimes when I enter, I can almost feel the reverberations of shock rippling through the crowd the night Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” for the first time anywhere ever; she shook up the world with a song.
“Or Canon will tear us a new one,” Livvie says, sliding a glance over to me. “Well, some of us. He may be nicer to others.”
Bitch
“Kenneth, got a sec?” His face lights up, his eyes kind. “For you, always. What’s up?”
If these people, my cast, look at me like that—like I didn’t earn this after seeing me bust my butt the last three months—what will people who don’t know me at all think? But on the heels of embarrassment comes indignation. They have seen me putting in work to do my best.
EXACTLY
“Well, you did practically drag me out of the production team meeting by the hair,” I say, allowing a teasing note into my voice. “I didn’t.” “I mean… it was a little growly, mine, claim-y.” “Do you want to be someone else’s?” he asks softly, drawing me to him in inches until the tips of our toes touch and I’m too close to see or smell or consider anyone but the man in front of me.
“Also, very aware of that fact and agreed. Now can we please talk through these line edits so I can check you off my list and maybe have half an hour to eat uninterrupted with my girlfriend?” The word lands between us like a rock for a moment before it starts to float. It’s the first time I’ve called Neevah that even to myself, much less aloud to someone I work with. I expect it to feel like a shirt that’s one size too small—tight, restrictive, choking at the collar. Instead, it’s the opposite. It feels the way she feels—tailor-made for me.
She reaches for the door handle. “I’m exhausted and starving. You coming in or you need to go?” “I have some stuff to sort through before we leave tomorrow, and I still have to pack.” “Okay.” Her smile looks a little forced, and like most of the emotions that cross her face, I can easily read the disappointment.
She walks ahead, but I catch her from behind by her waist, pulling her into me. “Hi,” I say, dusting kisses along the curve of her neck. She tilts her head, offering me more of her satiny skin like a cat who wants to be stroked. “Hi.”
“I told Verity you were my girlfriend.” Her eyes widen and her mouth pops open, shock projected onto her face. “You what?” “I think it’s kind of anticlimactic after Camille’s stunt.” “But you haven’t even asked me.” Well, ain’t this some shit? I don’t call a woman my girlfriend for… years, and when I do, she responds like this?
I could eat him up. I did. Canon’s pleasure fed mine. The taste of him, the blissful agony on his face when his control broke, the rough tug of his fingers in my hair.
I stare at the broad expanse of his back, tapering down to the narrow waist and tight ass.
Bites lip
I wish I was a painter and could skillfully commit him to canvas. Or a sculptor like Linh’s father, molding his muscles into clay or chiseled stone. Or even a musician like Monk and could set this feeling to music.
We need to sing some happy songs for the people tonight. We’re in France on a beach and got nothing to be sad about. Look at all these white folks. Back home, they wouldn’t be caught dead on the beach with us. I wish every Negro could come here. Could see how it feels to be treated like you a human being.
“Whereas you don’t bother with a smile?” He flashes an exaggerated caricature of a grin, which looks so odd on him, I snort.
Takira pulls me into a debate about some love at first sight or arranged marriage reality show.
Me
“Yeah.” I flip onto all fours on my bed, panties still ringing my knees, and pull up my sundress, offering him my bare ass.
He is suede and silk and leather, smooth and hard and rough, a decadence of textures between my sheets.
It’s like riding a rocket, the propulsive force of it beyond our control, and its destination a place our minds can’t even conceive.
When my body jerks beneath him, it triggers an answering response, a matching release. This is the moment I treasure most, when he comes apart in my arms. When all the rigid discipline fails him in the face of our passion, and he drops his head to the curve of my neck, his breaths coming harshly, holding on to me like we are indeed in outer space and I’m the only solid thing in his universe.
Before Dessi can respond, an air raid siren goes off, a mournful, eerie sound that rises and falls, signaling that bombs will be dropping soon.
“If you check your phone, you’ll see I tried calling you,” he says in that even tone I hate, like he’s reasoning with me when I’m being unreasonable.
“Where is she?” I ask, unable to summon manners. Takira’s smile slips, but a teasing glint enters her eye, like we have a secret. We do not have a secret. Everyone knows I’m sprung for Neevah. I’ve failed at concealing that fact.
Linh glances over her shoulder, seeing me for the first time, and rises gracefully. She carries herself with such dignity and a quiet strength. What is she doing married to a guy like Law Stone?
Whats going on here?
“We have to maintain some professional distance,” she says, looking down, lashes wispy against her cheeks. I grip her hips and pull her into me, aligning our bodies, shaping her curves to my hardness. I lay my forehead to hers. “This is all the distance you get.”
He meets my eyes, the muscle in his jaw clenched. You could easily mistake his fierce scowl and tight lips for anger, but I see it for what it really is. For once, he’s not opaque. I see right through him. I see his fear.
Bacterial pneumonia. In the end, that’s what took her—a complication of the disease she had fought so valiantly that snuck through the back door.
SMH
Guilt tightens a hand around my throat as I consider what the movie has demanded of her.
“No.” Neevah shakes her head, her wig going a little more askew.
Neevah stares at the bed with wide, unfocused eyes, like she’s looking at something none of us can see, and I guess she is.
I feel nervous because she’s here and has never been before, indicating a new bend in the road on my journey with this disease.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Neevah,” Dr. Okafor says. “Take in?” I shout, my voice loud and outraged and desperate.
My words splinter into the doctors’ practiced silence. That silence, that space they make for patients to accept the news.
“Um, thank you for the marching orders,” Dr. Okafor says dryly. “But I’ll take it from here, General.” Unbelievably, in the midst of the worst news I’ve ever received, I snort.
In the relatively brief time we’ve been together, we’ve made our own history. I don’t have the aerial view to see where and how it ends, but right now we are in the thick of it, and it feels good. Somehow, even in the muck of my life right now, having him still feels good.
I take in the contrasting hollows beneath his cheekbones. The fiery eyes that dare me to challenge him on this. The full lips pulled into a tight, level line. He is formidable, and right now, the doctor may like him, but I do not. But I think I love him.
“But did she lie to us?” he demands. “If we had known she had lupus, we could have—” “Discriminated against her?” I ask, the anger barely checked beneath my low tone. “Based on her medical condition?” “Uh, no.” He clears his throat, hearing what he didn’t say voiced out loud. “Of course not.”
“She’s talking to her family, because that’s her best…” I squeeze the bridge of my nose and clench my teeth, holding on to my composure. “… her best shot, but the medical team encouraged her to put the call out as far as possible.
“I have a question,” Livvie says. “Um, will we have notice before Neevah comes back?” “Like a day, probably,” I say. “Plenty of time to prepare to shoot.” “I wasn’t thinking about shooting,” she says. “I mean, of course that, but I thought it might be kinda cool to have a cake or something. Just to welcome her back and let her know we love her.”
“You sure you’re okay?” she asks. Shit. Don’t ask me that. This is one of those things where you’re fine until somebody asks how you’re doing.
