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She had no clue how she was supposed to be his wife if she couldn’t stomach the thought of him inside her. Guilt weighed on her because she knew he wasn’t the man she was supposed to marry.
“Morgan, my family’s name—” “Is not my name yet, Bash, and if you ever want it to be, I have to have freedom,” Morgan argued.
A stranger online makes me feel more excited than the man I’m about to marry.
“Fuck that nigga, Mo. Tonight’s about you. You’re a fucking star, love, and you shined. The twins too.” He snickered. He pulled out his phone and held it up for Mo to see. “You’re everywhere, love. Niggas is spreading love. Don’t let anybody dim that light.”
“I just don’t want to fight with him,” she whispered. “But I want to dance too. I want to dance with Stiletto Gang.” “So dance, Mo,” he said. “Medical school will be there if you choose to pursue it later. No offense, but I don’t want a doctor working on me that don’t love medicine. You’re supposed to be passionate about saving lives like you are about being onstage.”
“The real smile stops my heart, Morgan Atkins. Bring the fake shit back.”
“You’re going to make some girl very happy one day, Ahmeek. You’re a beautiful man.” Morgan sighed, shaking her head.
Ahmeek’s brows lifted, and amusement played in his eyes. “I’ve been called a lot of shit before, Mo. An ain’t-shit nigga, that nigga, Daddy, but never that … never beautiful.”
“Ahmeek, if we keep playing … if we keep pretending like this is just friendly just to make ourselves feel better, we’re going to go too far,” she whispered. He held the elevator door open. “Too far for who?” he asked. “For everyone!” She shouted that part.
You’re going to turn me into a whole hoe, and I don’t want to be a hoe! I’m already a little hoe-ish for the shit you did to me at your loft. I don’t want to be a whole hoe. Right now, I’m half a hoe, and I need to keep some self-respect.”
“So, you left my children unattended? They’re two years old! You left them because you were pissed that I chose to dance with Stiletto Gang? Nah, this is because I made a decision of my own for the first time in two years! I didn’t do what you or your mother wanted me to. I did what I wanted to, and you left me hanging! And now I’m a stripper? When you met me, I was dancing! You used to act real cool, real chill, Bash, like you was a good kid from around the way. Now I embarrass your family? Fuck you, and fuck your family!”
She took a special moment with Yara. “I love you, Yara Rae. You are always enough. You are loved. No more, no less than Ssari. You are equal, and I cherish you, Yolly Pop. Do you love Mommy too?” Morgan signed, tears accumulating in her eyes. It was all she had wanted to hear as a child, and she made sure that Yara heard it every day.
While Messiah and Isa ran around terrorizing the city, Meek was a strategist; he was a thinker. He plotted his moves from A to Z. He was the one the opposition never saw coming.
I’m not in love with him, Meek, and I’m about to marry him. I’m terrified.” “So do something about it,” Meek shot back.
Bash believed in her so much that it made her believe in herself. He was in a lot of ways her best friend. God, he’s the perfect friend. But her husband, he was never meant to be. How he had snuck out of the friend zone and trapped her in his world, she didn’t know, but Morgan felt like she were living behind the constraints of a glass wall.
“You love me, don’t you?” she said playfully. “No lies told there either,” he repeated.
“Everybody sees a pretty girl, Mo. That’s the obvious. They probably even see the weak girl. I see the strong girl. I see the bitch in you, Mo. The part you keep tucked, but the fire that’s trying to start that lives in the deepest part of you. It’s flickering, and it just can’t catch because you won’t let it, but I see it. Little Morgan got the power to burn the whole damn kingdom down. There’s a fire in you. You’re a fighter, Mo.”
“You were in my life every day, Mo. Couldn’t touch you, couldn’t have you, but you were there. You walked by me every day. I don’t even know if you noticed how you stopped a nigga heart. I saw you smile every day. Every fucking single day … the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. That’s hard on a nigga. Being in your presence but not being present. Putting all that in a box so I wouldn’t do no disrespectful shit. You weren’t mine. Any other nigga and I would have snatched you, but Messiah was my brother, and he needed you more. It just wasn’t shit to be done. No moves to be made. You were with
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You only feel that way because you don’t know the fucked-up shit about me. I’m spoiled and selfish. I’m a handful.”
“Handful or not, you’re love, Morgan Atkins. Just looking at you right fucking now is love. You and love … the same … it’s just who you are. I feel the shit every time you place those fucking eyes on me. You just drive a nigga crazy. Have a nigga ready to air shit out if your smile dip even a little bit. Your smile dips around him, Mo, and my trigger finger starts itching. So like I said, when you ready to step, you let me know.”
Her neck. She gasped, her collarbone … a kiss … her sternum … who the fuck kissed there? Ahmeek. Ahmeek kissed there before sliding a finger along the seam of her bikini top, peeling it back to reveal her taut nipple. Her breath caught as he tasted there, pulling it into his mouth, circling once with his tongue before dipping farther. He was unafraid of her depths, unafraid of her wet as he slid her bikini bottom to the side. Morgan’s mind went to the tattoo that used to be there.
“A nigga like to bless his meal.”
“Feed it to me, Mo,” he whispered, pausing to kiss her inner thigh. Morgan had that pussy on a spoon for that nigga, and he was overindulging. He pressed a thumb to her clit and rotated clockwise. Morgan bucked as her legs opened wider.
With Meek, she didn’t feel unsure.
“I’m not curving you, Morgan. You’re just not ready,” Meek said.
“Let’s press Pause. Wait. If it’s supposed to happen, it’ll happen. If it ain’t, it won’t.”
What was right and wrong anyway? “Shoot first, ask questions later, remember?”
“Mo, I ain’t the nigga to hit something and give the shit back. You hear me?” he asked. “If it’s what I think it is, I’ma be possessive over that shit, and I’ma want it when I want it. That nigga can’t touch you if I’m touching you, because I’ma kill him. I get real ig’nant over mine.”
“Hold your ankles, love,”
“You okay?” So thoughtful. Kind. No voids in his ability to show emotion, but far from soft … only behaving this way because it was her. His dream girl.
“We take it one step at a time, love,” he said.
Meek didn’t love women. He fucked many, but loved none … until now … now he loved one and it wasn’t new.
“London is a wrap …
“Since London. He’s the reason I came home. I knew I couldn’t stay there. As soon as he left London, I wanted to leave too. I just wanted the possibility to run into him. My heart aches around him. And it was friendly at first. We talked, we chilled, but the time together feels natural. It feels good, and then last night…” Morgan’s eyes closed. “It felt like love, Aria. Every touch, the places he kissed, the things he said … my heart just craves him. Even right now, I just want to be around him. I want to be under him, watching Netflix. I want to go grocery shopping with him because he
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“First of all, you don’t owe Messiah anything. Yeah, it’s a little fucked up, but he’s dead, Mo, and before he was dead, he tore you apart. You tried to kill yourself behind that boy, Mo. He sucked the life out of you. If you think this thing with you and Meek is real, you deserve to see where it leads. You deserve to be happy, and that’s not with Bash.
You don’t have to feel guilty about it either, because it ain’t shit a ghost can do but haunt you. You shouldn’t feel bad about finding happiness with Meek. Messiah left you with a lot of pain. I say you’re entitled to heal what he broke any way you see fit as long as it’s healthy.”
“So, you finally doing what Messiah asked you to do?” Isa asked.
“She didn’t deserve it the first time. I don’t intend on fucking up,”
Morgan had put something on him last night that had left a stain. He would never confirm for Isa, but the type of pussy she was serving was the type to heal a nigga. It was the type with the potential to hurt a nigga too. From the moment she had walked out of his suite, he had been in his feelings. It had taken everything in him not to go to her room and pack up her and her twins and buck on her fiancé.
Ahmeek had fucked some courage into her,
“I just loved on you a little bit, that’s all. I know you’re not lacking for female attention, but all you get from women is physical. It’s all about sex. I gave you a little bit more. Nothing major,
“So, you loving on me, Mo? You loving a nigga?”
“You want me to love you, Ahmeek?” she shot back. “Very much so, Morgan Atkins, but let a nigga earn it first. I ain’t afraid to earn it,” he stated. “I can make some plans to do that.”
“Nah, love, in this equation, you the only one with the potential to break hearts around here. I’ma carry you proper, Morgan Atkins, but I got a feeling you gon’ drop a nigga shit on the floor, walk all over it, ding my shit up,” he stated. “Never.” She smiled. “I’m going to love you real good, Ahmeek. I want to be the one you remember.”
“I think this might be something.” She paused. She was afraid to say it. A bit ashamed to admit it because it was way too soon to be feeling like this … it was way too wrong to feel it at all … it had to be the dick. Morgan was still reeling from the way he’d handled her. Had to be. It couldn’t be emotional. “Something good.” “You think right,” he said.
She had seen Ahmeek a hundred times, but she was seeing him through new eyes, and she was smitten. She never wanted to come down from this high. Morgan didn’t care how risky it was, she was willing to jeopardize her entire world to keep Ahmeek in her life. Fuck a friend. She wanted him as her own, and now that he’d given her a sample, she wanted the whole thing.
He didn’t have much to his name, but the house he’d left with Bleu and the car he’d taken with him were paid in full.
Besides Morgan, Bleu had been the only other woman Messiah had ever loved, but their bond was different. Mo drove him mad, his emotions for her were so intense that he had a hard time staying sane when in her presence. He lived in a heightened reality with Morgan. Their love made him feel so raw that he hated it at the same time. The vulnerability. With Bleu, he was different. Bleu kept him sane … balanced … she grounded him, and he couldn’t wait to see her. If anyone could help piece together fragments of his old life, she could.
thought for sure she would leave like everyone else when she found out he was Mizan’s brother, but he had witnessed her love double after finding out. She had run to him, and he had turned her away because he was pissed that he was dying, and he could never, would never let her watch him fade to black.
This woman was his best damn friend. He owed her everything. She had let him use her in ways that he knew had stained her soul. She had stuck by him, giving him everything, setting no limits in ways that would have eased his transition. She had loved him, and in return, he would always love her. He would never love her the most, but on a list where only one other had ever gotten to his heart, Bleu had been added. Their friendship was potent, and he could never give her back all that she had given him.
