Chapter 30 Hendrix
CHAPTER 30
HENDRIX
T his apartment has always been my haven, a place I can count on to retreat from the world when things get hard. But there’s no escaping the voice in my head calling me a fool. And no escaping the memory of last night in New York. The ghost of Maverick’s touch haunts me everywhere—kisses along my shoulders and tender brushes of his lips at the curve of my neck. His fingers threaded with mine while he made a mess of our kiss. Sloppy, greedy feasting; eating each other like a buffet.
As vivid as the memories of Maverick’s lovemaking are, they don’t eclipse the guilt I woke up with this morning.
Fucking a friend’s ex on her fortieth birthday? At her party?
But… are we really friends… per se? More like business associates. Acquaintances, even.
Didn’t she call you a friend last night? Are you saying that to rationalize your reckless, thot-ish actions in that coatroom?
I hate my inner voice sometimes. She’s such a bitch. Don’t let me get away with nothing.
But it is true that Zere and I are primarily business associates. It is true that I haven’t known her that long. And I have no doubt that Maverick was right and Zere and Charles probably screwed till the break of dawn.
Meanwhile, I’m here alone when there’s a magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime specimen of a man who wants me. A stunning billionaire motherfucker who donates millions to HBCUs, invests in Black businesses, and surfs.
Surfboard in my Beyoncé voice.
I flop back onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling. I caught an earlier flight out of New York. I hadn’t told Maverick where I was staying, but I didn’t think that information was beyond his reach. I didn’t put it past him to chase me down, so I got out of the city on the first thing smoking back to the A.
I roll onto my side and tug the waist of my silk pajama shorts down to expose the curve of my hip. Maverick left souvenirs, faint bruises where he held me so hard when he fucked me. I caress one smudge on my skin and moan, pulling my knees up to my chest.
I didn’t even tell Soledad and Yasmen I’m home a little early or that Mav and I smashed. They’re my best friends, but they will have questions, and of course advice—solicited and unsolicited. I just want a little time to process what happened.
What I did.
Is this a secret I’ll keep from my business partner forever? That I fucked her ex once?
Once? that inner bitch taunts. Like you wouldn’t do it again.
“Shut uuuuuuup,” I groan and squeeze my eyes closed tight.
My cell buzzes on the bed beside me with a call, and I glance over to see it’s the front desk downstairs.
“Yes, hello?” I sit up and push my hair back from my face. That wig is hanging in my closet and I washed my hair, which, after about fifty eleven products, blossomed into a big ol’ Afro.
“Delivery, Ms. Barry.”
“What is it?” I sigh and roll off the bed to check my reflection in the large mirror hanging on the wall. Pink silk lounge shorts and fuzzy slippers. I’m cocoa buttered and not planning to leave this place all day.
“Flowers again.”
“How many?” I ask, making my way down the steps and studying the empty surfaces in the living room and kitchen that were filled with Maverick’s flowers not long ago.
“Just one dozen this time, it seems.”
“Okay. Send them up.”
I hate that my heart is beating triple time at the thought that Maverick is still pursuing me, even though I told him to stop. Am I becoming that girl? The one who is coy with her refusal? Who says one thing and means another? Wants another?
I open the door to confront a bouquet of champagne roses so large it eclipses the delivery man.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll take them.”
He moves the flowers obscuring his face aside. Maverick staring back at me nearly pulls my heart through my chest. My shoulders go taut, and I steel myself against the way I melt a little inside at just the sight of him. Not speaking, I turn and head back into the loft.
“These are for you,” he says, placing the roses on my coffee table.
“I figured.” I sit on the couch and notice the bottle in his hands. “And what it that for?”
“Also for you.” He sets the bottle down beside the vase of roses. “One of my favorites. Macallan Anniversary Malt, 1928.”
My brows lift. I’m not an expert, but I do recognize it’s a very valuable bottle of whiskey.
“Trying to buy my affection?” I ask.
“I already have your affection.” He sits so close the rough denim of his jeans is mildly abrasive against my bare thigh. “We’re friends, right?”
“That was before we fucked.”
“Friends don’t fuck?”
I blow out a disbelieving breath. “You want to be my friend?”
“Always.” He looks at me unblinkingly, unsmilingly for a few seconds. “You bring a goddess offerings. The whiskey is a gift, an expression of worship.”
I roll my eyes. “If you’re saying that I’m a—”
“I am saying that.” His eyes roam the length of my body and I force myself not to squirm. “If you give me the chance, I’ll make you feel like the goddess I see you as.”
My belly is a bowlful of Jell-O. The longer I sit beside him, smell him, feel the heat of him pressed so close and see the tenderness in his eyes, the more my convictions wobble.
“What exactly do you want?” I ask. “A repeat of last night? You came here to have sex again? Because I’m in my right mind now and I won’t slip and fuck you in a closet.”
“I want you in your right mind.” His mouth kicks up into a one-sided grin. “So we can negotiate.”
“Negotiate?”
“I’m very good at it.”
“So am I.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“What exactly are we negotiating?”
“Our future.”
Those words are a one-two punch to my throat. The thought steals my breath for a second.
“We don’t have one,” I say, toying with the silk band on my pajama bottoms. “Not together. I don’t want what you want. We don’t want the same things.”
“Our encounter in the coatroom last night begs to differ. I think we both got what we wanted. You got it twice, if I counted correctly.”
Most women would probably at least wince or flinch or blush at the reminder of their freakishness, but I force myself to present an unwavering stare, unmoved and unashamed.
“You’ve wasted a trip, Mav. We had sex once. So what? Making me come is not an accomplishment. Plenty of people have.”
He frowns. “I don’t care how many people you’ve slept with, Hendrix. You’re not going to change my mind throwing that in my face. I said I’m here to negotiate our future, not to litigate your past. Or mine, for that matter.”
I hate him for being exactly the kind of man I would choose.
“I don’t have to ask if you care about me,” Maverick goes on. “I know you do. We’ve become friends, but I’ve always wanted you. If the situation with Zere weren’t a factor, I would have pursued you from the beginning.”
“Get to the point so you can go.” I try to sound testy, but the indulgent smile he sends me says I’m not doing a very good job of it.
“I’m not going. That’s the first thing you should know,” he says. “I want to build something lasting with you.”
His declaration steals my breath and robs me of speech, leaving me to stare at him a in lengthening silence.
“Let me ask you something,” he finally says. “When you’ve accomplished all your goals, have your TV show, got your unicorn business—whatever’s on your list—after you’ve gotten all of that, what then?”
I frown and grit my teeth. “Why does there have to be anything else?”
“Because there has to be more to life than the things we do, Hendrix.”
“I’m creating a legacy. I’m serving my community. I’m achieving…”
Before I can block it, Soledad’s voice echoes back to me. Actually my own words to her echo back to me.
There are parts of you that want to be held, want to be needed and loved. That is just as emotionally valid as the parts of you that crave independence.
“I’m chasing my dreams,” I finish with as much strength as I can muster.
“I’m chasing you .”
My eyes snap to his and neither of us look away.
“I am a chaser, Hendrix. I go after things. You won’t find a man more ambitious than me, but I’ve learned that it’s never enough,” he says, his stare burning with belief, blazing with conviction. “You can’t earn enough. You can’t achieve enough. Ambition for things and accolades is a bottomless pit. It’s all you can eat, but you never get full.”
He takes my hands between his and looks into my eyes—it feels like he looks into my soul. “My life won’t be measured just in what I did, but who I did it with. Who I chose to be in friendship with. In relationship with. I think that’s where real contentment is found, and I think I could find it with you.”
His words are a direct hit to my resistance, and I pull away from his touch, though my whole body begs me to lean into it.
“You know I want to get into television,” I tell him, my voice carrying a note of desperation. “You’re asking me to jeopardize my chance and Chapel’s chance to get this show made for you?”
“No, I’m saying I don’t believe it would jeopardize your chances, but if Zere trips, we find another way. And it wouldn’t be for me. It would be for us.”
“Oh, but us is a trick men play on trusting women.” I stand and whirl on him, and the smell of roses, sweet mere moments ago, is suddenly cloying, choking. “When the rubber meets the road, it’s him , not them . You , not us .”
“I can’t blame you for feeling that way, for assuming that’s how I would be because most men are. Most women do sacrifice disproportionately in their relationships with men. We have to guard against that. I’ll look after you.”
“I don’t need you to buy me a career. I have one.” I make my point with a hand slicing through the air. “I have my own money and can take care of myself.”
“I’d like for us to take care of each other. If we’re together, we’re together. We help each other. We have each other’s backs. Don’t let the possibility that Zere wouldn’t approve keep us from even trying.”
“But I—”
“You don’t want a man holding your happiness hostage, putting his needs over yours, but isn’t that what Zere would be doing if she tried to stop you from seeing me if that’s what you want?”
He stands, reaches for me, cups my face; the look he gives me somehow searching and knowing at the same time.
“Is that what you want, Hen? Am I what you want? Because I want you and the only thing that will stop me from having you… is you. Not Zere or anyone else.”
“You said you’re here to negotiate our future.” I struggle to swallow whatever is rising in my throat. I suspect it might be hope. “What are you offering and what do you need? Where’s your list of demands?”
“I don’t have a list. I have one thing.”
“One thing?” I frown. “What is it?”
“Let’s be good to each other.”
“That’s it?” I ask, incredulity stretching my expression.
“That’s everything because that means I’m good to you and you’re good to me. Being good to you means wanting what’s best for you. If there is an upper hand, baby, I don’t want it. I know I’m asking you to take a big risk, but all I can do is promise that I’ll never try to hurt you and I’ll do everything to protect you. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you don’t regret choosing me and I’ll protect your dreams as fiercely as I chase my own.”
He says it like a vow, not like for a wedding, but sincerely. Like he means it. Like he understands what’s at stake. No man in the last two decades has tempted me to do this. Not that I haven’t dated and even had a few committed relationships over the years, but I always walked away before it felt like this. Hell, it’s never felt like this.
I revisit that rare loneliness at game night. The sense of everyone paired off and belonging somewhere and to someone. Am I fine on my own? I really am. I mostly always have been.
But would I like to share this amazing life I’ve created for myself with someone else? Someone truly worthy of my trust?
Damn right I would.
I’ve always known there is power in making your own way, but maybe when you find the right person, there is joy in sharing it. This man is right.
“Okay.”
After so much wrestling and denying and running, my word is an easy capitulation. It’s hard-won, though, this realization that I don’t want to defer my chance at joy for ambition, that my independence doesn’t have to mean isolation.
“Okay?” Surprise streaks across his face. “Did you say okay?”
“After all that, I agree and you don’t believe me?” I laugh and sit back down on the couch, tugging him to sit beside me.
“I believe you, but what made you change your mind? Or rather what made you choose me?”
“I’ve been wary of commitment because I’ve always seen women put their partners’ desires and goals before their own.” I shrug. “I even saw it with my own parents in some ways. I saw it with friends from college who had ambitions, but lost sight of that when they married. They compromised once they had a husband and a family.”
“Is that why you don’t want kids?”
“No, I don’t want kids because I don’t want kids.” I huff a laugh. “Amazing how no one ever believes it’s as simple as that. The closest thing I’ll come to a maternal instinct is maybe a dog someday.”
“That would be a lucky dog.” He smiles. “You should do what feels right to you. I’m just glad that this—us—feels right to you.”
“It’s starting to.” I sigh. “Maybe I was so determined not to miss out on the opportunity of a career goal, that I was willing to compromise a personal one.”
He takes my hand and pulls me to straddle his lap, one leg on either side of his. I rest my elbows on his solid chest and smile down at him.
“I feel like this conversation is about to get a lot less productive.” I chuckle, caressing his nape.
“Focus.” He grins up at me, but places both hands on my ass. “And what is that personal goal?”
The humor dims and I settle onto his lap, giving his question serious consideration.
“I haven’t been in a relationship in a really long time,” I say, which doesn’t exactly answer his question yet. “And I think I’ve been avoiding it to protect my dreams. I’ve never wanted to look back on my life and not have accomplished the things I wanted to do because I had to compromise for someone else’s sake. Maybe that sounds selfish—”
“Only because you’re a woman. Men do it all the time and we don’t think twice about it. Our wives stay home, keep our kids, hold down the house, and we’re not considered selfish. It’s expected.”
“Yes, and I expect something different from and for myself. I know the kind of woman I want to be and the kind of life I want and I’m not willing to forfeit it to have a man. His happiness for my misery is not an even trade.”
“I agree.”
“Some of the best advice my mother ever gave me was to take my time getting married.”
“Um, didn’t you tell me your parents met in the eighth grade?” He grins, brows lifted.
“And married by nineteen, yeah.” I blow out a laugh. “Not exactly taking her own advice, huh? She didn’t regret the sacrifices she made, though. My parents had a once-in-a-lifetime love, but she knows me. She recognized that I needed more than that. That if I made the same decisions she did, I would eventually regret and resent them. She urged me to take my twenties to figure out who I was and what I would and wouldn’t settle for.”
“And your thirties?”
“Well, once I figured out what I wanted and needed, I realized how few truly eligible men there were. I mean eligible for me . In my thirties I learned to be happy with myself and the life I was building. I learned to be whole.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m on the cusp of everything I’ve been working toward in my career, and I realize that acknowledging those parts of me that want care and companionship doesn’t make me less whole. It doesn’t mean I’m not happy, but that this is something else that can make me happy.”
“Thank you for trusting me, Gorgeous.” He leans up and whispers against my lips. “You won’t regret it.”
I can’t resist kissing him, and I take his bottom lip between mine, sucking and tugging, groaning when he returns the favor even more aggressively. Biting down and licking at the sting.
“I knew we needed to talk.” He tips my chin up and kisses the curve of my jawline, the slope of my neck. “But I’ve barely been able to focus on anything except how good it felt to be inside you last night. I want that again, Hen.”
I nod, leaning back on his lap, my fingers shaking and clumsy on the buttons of my pajama top. My breasts spill free and he’s on me like lightning, his mouth frantic and desperate and starving as he licks and sucks and laves. His dick is so hard pressing into my heat, and I need to feel him now. I wiggle to get the shorts and my underwear down and off my legs. Naked, I resettle on his lap and reach for his zipper.
“Hey.” He covers my hand. “Let’s go slow this time. Take me to bed, Hen.”
I bring him in for a kiss, a slow, sensual dance of lips and teeth and tongues. When I’ve waited one more second, I break the kiss and stand, completely naked. I extend my hand and pull him from the couch. He scoops up the bottle of whiskey and then grabs my hand. Everything is slowed down. Even our journey up the stairs is punctuated with stops every few steps; pauses for him to kiss my shoulders and caress my arms, test the weight of my breasts in his big, gentle hands. By the time we reach the bedroom, my legs are shaking and my heart feels like someone rang a gong in my chest.
With Maverick trailing me, he has an unrestricted view of my bare ass, all my cellulite and any extra flesh on my back. I search for self-consciousness, but can’t make room for it, not with him. Maverick steps close behind me and walks us to the bed, my fingers clutched in one of his hands and the bottle in the other.
“If I make a mess,” he says, greed in the look that sweeps over my body, “I promise to clean it up.”
“A mess?” I ask. “What do you mean? I—”
“This,” he says, holding up the bottle of Macallan, “is a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey.”
My jaw falls open. That’s more than my car. It’s more than my last commission. It’s a lot of damn money.
“And you want to get me drunk first?” My laugh is weak as I try to play off my shock.
“No.” He doesn’t smile or laugh. “I want to pour it as an offering before I worship you.”
I gasp as he lifts the bottle and pours chilled liquid down my body. It sluices over my breasts, down my belly and between my legs. Hands free, he leans to take one dripping nipple in his mouth. He greedily bobs his head between the right and left breast, sucking and licking and laving. Delving into my cleavage to sop the drops up before they dry. I’m standing, writhing beneath the heat of his mouth cleaning away all traces of the whiskey. Unable to bear it one more second, I grab his head and kiss him. We devour each other, and the intoxicating effect of the kiss has nothing to do with the whiskey.
It’s us.
He nudges me toward the bed and lays me out, staring down for a few seconds before sinking to the floor between my knees. He presses my legs apart and leans forward and fixes his eyes there.
I tip my head back and laugh up at the ceiling. “Mav, don’t just stare at it.”
“But it’s so pretty.”
My breath catches and the muscles in my stomach clench, my whole body on high alert preparing to be touched and taken by him.
“I’m naked and you’re still fully clothed.”
“And that’s a problem?” His teasing grin between my knees makes my insides somersault.
“Do I get to see as much of you as you get to see of me?”
“You want to see me?” His brows lift and one corner of his sinfully full lips quirk.
“Show me the goods, Bell.”
With his eyes fixed on mine, he slowly undoes each button on the fine cotton of his collared shirt, revealing ridges of muscle in his torso and abs beneath. It’s as arresting a sight as when I saw him on Instagram in his wetsuit.
“You surf,” I say before I think to not say that.
His hand pauses on his belt. He tilts his head and studies me.
“I do.” He resumes undoing the belt, unbuttoning his pants, letting them drop to the floor. “I can teach you if you want.”
“I don’t think so,” I say absently, almost forgetting what we’re talking about when I see his erection so big and doing its damnedest to poke a hole in his boxers. I sit up and swat his hands away from his hips. I push the boxers down and gasp at my first sight of his dick. It’s right there, on level with my lips. How can I not lean forward and take him into my mouth? He makes this sound that’s something between a curse and a moan, and I’m throbbing between my legs. He steps closer between my spread knees and pushes his length deeper into my mouth. The tip of my tongue finds his slit, already wet and salty.
“Shit.” He cups my face, caressing my jaw as I lick and suck him.
I palm his balls and take him deeper. His indrawn breath and tightening hands on my head tell me he likes it.
“I want to fuck your mouth,” he says, his voice low and strained.
I nod my consent and he pushes in, snaps his hips forward again and again and again, the motion growing more frenetic. He hits the back of my throat and I choke, but don’t release him. He slows, gently opening my mouth with his thumb, caressing my wet, swollen lips.
“I’ll come if I don’t stop,” he pants. “And it feels like I’ll die if I don’t get inside you.”
It feels that way for me, too. My legs spread wider at the promise of him claiming me that way.
“There’s condoms and lube in the nightstand,” I tell him, nodding to the side of the bed. To his credit, Maverick doesn’t seem thrown at all by the ample supply of condoms in the top drawer, or by the fleet of vibrators he pushes aside to get to my lube. He slides the condom on and rubs lube all over himself.
And it makes me want him more.
It must be on my face because he pauses when he’s positioned over me and says, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing, just… most guys complain about me asking for lube because they think it means they didn’t get me wet enough or some shit.”
“The point is for us to both enjoy it, right?” He caresses my leg from knee to hip, and a shudder moves through me like he touched a nerve, not just bare skin. “So you tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
I reach up to stroke the dark slash of his brow through golden-brown skin.
“I want you to make love to me.”
He pushes in.
He used the word “worship,” and that’s exactly how it feels when he comes inside, like my body is a tabernacle and he’s awed by the privilege of entering. Pleasure explodes from a hidden part of me no one else has ever discovered. With his patience and care, Maverick tunnels through my defenses and excuses, clearing a passageway to my heart with every kiss and each touch. I’m not saying it’s love. It’s too soon for that, but it’s… something I didn’t think existed.
The rhythm of his breathing roughens the longer he fucks me. The erratic non-pattern of pants and moans every touch draws from me. He grabs my throat and holds my eyes, pounding into me. The bed rocks, knocking my nightstand, and the lamp rattles from the force of it. I swear the walls tremble when I come. And the boundary I’ve always maintained with every other lover begins to fissure, webbing and widening until it cracks. Until it collapses, surrenders to the tenderness in his eyes and the urgency of his hands.
It falls.
And, dammit to hell, so do I.