Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
He took over and whoosh! they were gone.
Nice.
I pushed at his boxers. “Now you.”
“Slow down, sweetheart,” he murmured, hand at my breast, thumb and finger teasing my nipple, the sensations he created firing their way all over my skin, his mouth was in my neck.
“Slow isn’t an option, Darius,” I told him.
His fingers stilled, his head came up, and he looked down at me through the dark.
“You sure?” he asked, and I closed my eyes.
There he was.
That tender sweetness.
There was my Darius.
I knew it.
I knew he was in there.
I opened my eyes and put my hand to his cheek. “I’m sure, honey.”
“I don’t have any condoms.”
I nearly started weeping.
I got an imagination.
A man who was getting some somewhere else, or open to it should it happen, would carry condoms.
It was me for him.
And it was him for me.
I knew then, just like me, there was no one else.
“I love him with everything I am, and I’d never make another choice, but I got pregnant at sixteen, baby,” I whispered, smiling so there’d be no sting. “I’m on the pill even if I’m not active.”
He started to detach, murmuring, “This is a mistake.”
I grabbed on with everything at my disposal and held tight.
“This is meant to be,” I informed him of something I knew he had to know. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Let me finish.”
He shut his mouth.
I smiled again. “You don’t buy a couch for a baby momma.”
“Sure you do,” he muttered.
“No, you didn’t hear me correctly. You don’t buy a couch for a baby momma.”
Another eye flare, but after it happened, he said, “You’re gonna regret this.”
“I can assure you, I…am…not.”
He hesitated a beat.
But he was Darius.
And I was me.
He didn’t leave.
He kissed me.
I pushed down his boxers.
Darius took over.
In everything.
Then he proved how vivid his imagination was.
And I was right.
I didn’t regret a damned thing.
* * * *
I lay with my head on his chest.
Darius was on his back. He had his arm around me, his fingers drawing random patterns on the small of my back.
We’d been silent after.
But now, when his fingers stopped and his muscles bunched, I knew what he was doing.
“If you leave me, there are going to be problems,” I warned the delightful bulge of his pec.
“Malia—”
I lifted my head and looked down at him. “Don’t leave.”
“Fuck,” he murmured, put his hand to my face, slid it back, curled it around my head and pulled my forehead to his before he bit out, “Fuck.”
I wanted to jump off the bed and do a victory dance.
Because this meant he not only didn’t want to leave, he wasn’t leaving.
We were so…totally…meant to be.
And seriously, he’d given me orgasms back in the day, but usually with his mouth or fingers.
But the sync we just got into made the slow burn we’d endured totally worth it.
And yeah, I knew what I was saying.
Six years’ wait.
Totally…
Worth it!
He relaxed his hand so I could pull back an inch, but just an inch. He put enough pressure on I couldn’t get too far away.
“I don’t want him seeing me.”
And there was the splash of cold water at the end of my victory lap.
“Why?” I whispered, not able to hide the hurt weighing down that word.
He rolled us so I was on my back, he was pressed down my side, but our faces were still close.
“It’s not safe,” he said.
I opened my mouth, but his finger rested on my lips.
“Hush,” he whispered. “Hear me out. Please.”
I closed my mouth.
“It’s…I can’t…” He drew in a deep breath. “I can’t explain how hard it is to be this close to him and not—”
I framed his face in my hands and whispered, “Honey.”
“The shit that I’ve made of my life—”
“We can—”
“Baby, let me get this out.”
I shut up again.
“If anybody knew about him. About you. They could hurt me. Through you. And I don’t give a fuck about hurting, except they’d hurt you.”
“Whatever you’re into, we’ll get you out,” I said.
I mean, he was this “bad dude,” but you could just stop being a bad dude. Other people had turned their lives around. I couldn’t imagine it was easy, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have support. He’d have me. My family. His family. Eddie and Lee.
“I’m in now—” he began.
“Okay, so—”
“And I can’t get out while she’s still in.”
She?
Who was she?
“She?”
“Aunt Shirleen.”
“Miss Shirleen?” I asked, shocked.
I couldn’t say I knew his aunt as well as I did his mom, but she’d been around. She was funny. She gave good hugs. Though, she seemed…removed. Like she was isolated, even when she was with people who loved her.
And I’d never quite understood, with how loving and sweet his family was, why she always seemed so sad.
“It’s him. He got me into it. He got her into it. And he isn’t…nice to her.”
My muscles got tight. “He isn’t nice? Who’s he?”