Chapter 9 #4
No phones. Go home. It ain’t nothing to worry about. It’s just a quick trip. I’m back Monday.
I’ma call you in the morning.
Demi sensed her hesitation because she didn’t respond right away. He knew Lauren was choosing her words carefully.
LO
K. I love you.
DEMI
Love.
“Everything okay?” Charlie’s voice pulled him back, erasing his urge to leave, but his mind dwelled on Lauren.
She didn’t deserve this. He had never been this man to her.
She had never had to worry about another woman.
A part of him wished it had never happened, but as Charlie placed her hands to his back and he turned to stare in her eyes, he remembered why he was doing this.
“Yeah,” he said, putting his phone on DO NOT DISTURB, then tossing it to the chair.
He took a finger to her scars. “What happened here?” he asked.
She seemed to shrink some, recoiling as she turned and rushed to the closet, pulling out the hotel robe. Demi shook his head.
“You gon’ have to keep that off, Bird. They don’t wash them shits,” he said. “You don’t got to hide your body from me and you don’t got to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to,” she confirmed. “Maybe one day but not today.”
His nostrils flared at the sight of her eyes prickling with emotion. Whatever story those scars told was a painful one. Someone had hurt her badly. He could tell and it made him want to hurt everybody, anybody in her life that had ever brought her pain.
Charlie went to the bed and found solace under the duvet. “Come’re.”
The sight of her, under white sheets; sheets he had changed himself before she had come up, pulled him to the bed.
Her naked body was beautiful. Flawed. Marked up, but somehow, he had never seen anything quite as remarkable as Charlie.
It was like the scars were the source of emotion in her voice.
When she sang, whatever hurt had caused those scars floated from her mouth.
She lifted the cover for him, and he sank into the bed.
Under those white sheets, they built a home.
A little teepee of connection and passion as Charlie covered his head.
“Want to tell me what we doing under here?” he asked.
“Blocking everything out,” she whispered as she turned to him. Demi stared at her.
“You know all you got to do is say the word and anybody that ever hurt you can like not breathe no more. That’s the type of nigga I am.
That’s who you fucking with. I want you to know that.
I’m in this music shit, but that I ain’t who I always been.
I turn into a whole different nigga sometimes.
I’m violent, Bird. I lose my shit sometimes.
My mind don’t always stay with me. I’ve done shit. I’ve hurt people...”
Charlie was trembling and her eyes stung as she stared in his eyes.
It was like he wasn’t even speaking to her, like she wasn’t even there.
She wondered if his mind had left the room in this moment.
The way he described his temperament gave her chills.
Being here with Demi was like flirting with death, like walking the edge of a cliff and praying the wind didn’t blow too hard.
She wanted to touch him but was afraid to.
What if he snapped? Like he had in the bathroom.
.. No, Charlie would keep her hands to herself. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“Women?” she asked.
“Never women,” he said. “Never children, but anybody else...” he stopped talking like the acts were unspeakable and they truly were. He shouldn’t have even divulged this much to her, but this was his bird, his sweet Charlie. “I’ll squeeze life out of a nigga body over you, Bird,” he said.
Charlie’s stomach ached. She was both afraid and turned on. There was so much passion between them. It wasn’t even logical.
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
“You’re weird, Demi. You’re a lot. You’re mean. Your temper is unreasonable. You’re dangerous. Everything about you terrifies me,” she admitted.
“Burn me, Bird,” he said.
“Burn you?” The complexities of this man were so confusing.
“Your hands. When they are on my skin it feels like an iron. The shit hurts,” he whispered.
“So why would you want me to touch you? That’s horrible,” she exclaimed.
Suddenly, the teepee felt like a prison.
Were they running out of air? It felt like she was trying to breathe through a straw, like there wasn’t enough oxygen for the both of them.
Demi made her lightheaded, like her mind was a balloon that he was filling with hot air.
“Do it, Bird,” he said, closing his eyes.
Charlie sniffed away emotion and placed her hand on the side of his face. An instant grimace and she pulled back. It really does hurt, she thought, enamored by the complexities of a man so strange. She touched him again and pain wrote all over his face.
He put his hand over hers and then moved it to the center of his chest. His heart was racing so fast and beating so hard that her own heartbeat sped up in alarm. He made her feel so powerful.
“Demi.” She gasped as her pussy bloomed, petals opening as she felt all the intensity that lived between them. Energy. Demi was pure energy.
“As long as my heart beating like this for you, you ain’t never got to worry about nothing. You ain’t got to be afraid of nobody. Just keep starting my fire, Bird. You make a nigga feel alive,” he said.
Whatever had been lacking before he had walked into that smoky club was abundant now.
She nodded and he swiped away the tear that fell from her eye. He pulled her closer. Body to body, and then pressed her head into his chest before turning on his back, forcing her on top. She straddled him and they just laid there, his eyes on the ceiling, her head searing his skin.
He was overthinking and she was trying to convince herself to get out of this now, but neither moved.
Demi couldn’t believe he had done so much with Charlie.
He had hit her without even reaching for the condoms he kept in his wallet.
His dick had played tricks on him for days after the first time.
He had never inspected his shit so much in his life.
Every time he went to pee, he anticipated a burn; not because he thought ill of Charlie, he just thought like that.
..of all the possibility of infection...
of germs... of the shit other people never considered.
It had never happened, but even still lying here with her so intimately after pouring out his soul and dismissing his child’s mother, he thought of the way he had explored her body. All trust, no rubber.
What the fuck this girl got me on?
He didn’t even know how old Charlie was.
Didn’t know her last name. Didn’t know if Charlie was her real name or a nickname.
Didn’t know her birthday. He didn’t know anything about her, and he had dipped in her raw.
Twice. The way his dick was rising, he was close to making it happen a third time and the thoughts that raced through his mind wouldn’t allow him to delay the inevitable much longer.
“Say, man,” he said.
She lifted her head and rested her chin to his chest and those eyes, those eyes fucking captured him.
“Say, man,” she repeated, a lazy smile on her lips as she climbed his body and planted lips to his.
“Mmmm,” he moaned as she put her sweet tongue down his throat.
Charlie took his tongue and sucked on it like she was sucking dick and his fucking dick begged him to go diving again.
He reached down. Stay wet, he thought, amazed as his fingers graced the silk between her thighs, rolling her clit between his fingers, making her bite down on his chin. “Wait, Bird, wait.”
“No, babe, whyyyyy?” she whined, going harder, kissing him deeper. Fuck! He had never been so ready to bust something down.
“Bird, wait,” he said, avoiding her kisses and gripping her chin.
She huffed her displeasure.
“I want to eat your pussy, Bird. I want to taste you, baby,” he moaned. Even the thought made his dick jump.
“Say less, nigga. Why we stopping?” she asked.
“I’ma need them papers,” he said.
She pulled back. “What?” She frowned because she knew he wasn’t talking about what she thought he was talking about.
“I need you to take a couple tests...”
Charlie grabbed a pillow and knocked him upside his big-ass head. “Fuck you, Demi,” she scoffed as she climbed from the bed.
“Shouldn’t be a problem unless it’s a problem,” he said, sitting up, and leaning lazily against the headboard. “Come lay down. I don’t want no smoke. It’s necessary, though.”
“Nigga, we’ve fucked already. Raw. Twice! And if we counting rounds, you already got whatever it is you think I have, asshole!”
“I ain’t accusing you, but can you blame me? You let niggas slide on the first night, Bird. I’m just being...”
“A jerk,” she finished for him, as she walked into the bathroom. Charlie snatched up her torn clothes. She couldn’t even storm out on him because he had destroyed her clothes and stolen her keys.
Charlie sat on the toilet, her leg bouncing as she tapped pretty, black-painted toes on the tile floor. The knock at the door pissed her off.
“Go away, Demitrius!” she said. He pulled the sliding barnyard door open anyway and Charlie sent the blow dryer flying at him.
He dodged it and then looked behind him in shock before turning his stare on her.
An extra roll of toilet paper hit him in the face and Demi closed his eyes, blowing out a sharp breath to stop himself from fucking her up.
“I said get out,” she said.
“How old am I, Bird?” he asked.
She crossed her arms and avoided his tense stare. She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer because she didn’t know.
“What I like to eat? Who I be with? Where did I go to school?” he asked.
Silence.