Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
niomi
The Candlewood Hotel is wall-to-wall over thirties.
Janelle is babysitting the hot girls at the concert, and we are in here doing the electric slide to Cameo’s “Candy.” How times have changed.
The crazy thing is this song is so old, the generation before me was dancing to it in this same hotel twenty years ago.
Celine will probably still be dancing to it when she’s here and a fresh crop of hot girls are at the concert.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This song is a classic, though. It gets the people moving and the blood flowing.
“So this is where all the old folks are,” Ron says, surveying the crowd soon after we arrive. “I wondered.”
“Let ‘Get Low’ come on,” I threaten. “You’ll see who’s old.”
“I need to holler at the DJ and make sure that’s not in the mix. No one wants that geriatric bump and grind.”
I punch his shoulder. “Boy, I got your geriatric. I guess you weren’t serious about Janelle then.”
“Oh, she can get it.” He brushes an imaginary moustache. “I do not discriminate and will smash on a case-by-case basis.”
“You should be so lucky. Janelle ain’t thinking about you.”
“After I serenade her with ‘All My Life,’ she’ll be begging for it. The ladies love K-Ci and JoJo.”
“I have second-hand embarrassment for you at the mere thought of a serenade. Please say you’re joking.”
“I know how to get the drawers.”
“Ew. That’s my friend you’re talking about and best believe you singing to her in public is an immediate red flag. I hope you have a back-up plan ‘cause that ain’t cutting it.”
We’re still laughing when Touré enters the ballroom. He hasn’t seen me yet, so it gives me the chance to study him.
Or eat him up with my eyes. To-may-to. To-mah-to.
That man seems to be getting better by the second.
He walks in alone, but that doesn’t last long.
He’s semi-swarmed four feet past the door.
I’ve heard him referred to as the Black Anderson Cooper; the reporter for whom no story is too far away or too dangerous.
The one you trust to tell the truth even when it hurts.
Especially when it hurts. That’s an unworthy comparison, though.
Touré is simply himself. A man whose intellectual curiosity took him to far-flung places.
I’m just glad he’s come home.
A ring of our classmates and other alum surround him.
They’re not asking for autographs exactly, but they’re obviously impressed and a little starstruck to have him at homecoming.
I’ve negotiated that some this weekend, too.
I’m arguably more of a household name than Touré.
I’m the one they wake up with each morning.
AM may not be hard-hitting journalism, for the most part, but the American public has come to trust me, too, in a different way.
If Touré delivers the hard truth, I’m a soft place for them to land.
He chooses that moment to glance away from the woman who I think was our class historian. Our eyes collide, and his gaze slides with slow deliberation down my body, over the dress clinging to every curve, caressing every line from my head to my Stuart-Weitzman peep toes.
I don’t look away, but return the slow regard, dragging my gaze from the tightly cropped waves of his hair, over the roughly-hewn landscape of his features, down his broad shoulders and long legs. That man is a feast, and I’m famished. Mouth watering. Stomach growling. Hungry.
He breaks away from the group he’s talking to and stalks toward me.
That’s the best way to describe the determined stride; the way he ignores his name being called or people trying to stop him.
He doesn’t stop, not until he’s standing in front of me.
He takes my hand, holding it loosely, but weaving a tight spell around us.
I surrender to the inevitable intimacy that has sprung up between us.
“Um, this is a lot,” Ron mumbles, flicking a glance between Touré and me. “I’m gonna go, Ni.”
“Good idea,” I answer without looking away from Touré.
“Good seeing you again, Touré.”
“Ron, go,” Touré replies, eyes still locked with mine.
“Right. Going.” Ron scurries off, leaving us alone.
Maxwell’s “Whenever Wherever Whatever” drifts down over us like stardust from the sound system. Each honeyed note settles softly on my lips, sweet to the taste, and sinking through flesh and bone until they soothe that thundering muscle in my chest.
“There were so many times I saw you dancing with someone else,” he says, the deep timbre of his voice coating my skin in shivers. “I’m thinking it’s my turn.”
I step into his arms and rest my hand on his shoulder.
The contrast of how hard and solid his body is to how gently he’s holding me, the tenderness in his eyes as he stares down at me— it all slips past the last of my defenses.
I know without a shadow of a doubt, whatever this man wants from me tonight he will have. I will give.
“It feels like every time we’ve been alone this weekend, we got interrupted.” He guides me away from the center of the floor to the periphery where there is less light and fewer dancers. “We haven’t had enough time to talk.”
“What’s there to talk about really? You liked me back then. I liked you. We didn’t tell each other. Life happened. Here’s our chance. That’s the nutshell version. What are we gonna do?” I shift my hand from his shoulder to cup his neck, caressing his nape. “Keep talking?”
He looks down at me, the dim light in the hotel ballroom carving shadows under his lean cheeks, illuminating the stubble hugging his jawline.
“So what are you saying, Ni?”
“That I’m done talking, if you are.” I stop dancing, halting the slight sway of our bodies together. “We can talk later. I want you now. After all these years, now, Touré.”
“Are you sure?” His brows lift and his words come out measured, but the flare of heat in his eyes tells me he’s as ready as I am.
“Am I sure I want to spend the night with the most fascinating man I’ve ever met who I’ve wanted for twenty years? Um . . . yeah. There’s little doubt.”
His hand slips from the small of my back to settle possessively at the curve of my hip. He leans down until his lips brush the sensitive lobe of my ear, sending a tiny shudder through my body.
“I have a room upstairs,” he whispers.
I tip up onto my toes to reach his ear. “So do I.”
“I’m on the fourth floor.”
“Eighth.
“We’d get to my room first.”
“The sooner the better.”
He grabs my hand and we make our way to the elevators, heads down, eyes averted, stopping for no one. The dim light helps, but I think our body language tells anyone who would try to approach us to fuck off.
When the elevator arrives, we are the only ones boarding.
As soon as the doors shut, Touré leans against the wall and pulls me to stand between his legs.
He bends to take my lips between his, hands tracing my sides and over my hips.
Standing this close, his erection is unavoidable, pressed into the juncture of my thighs.
I roll against him, drawing out a groan that rumbles from his throat.
“We only have four floors, Ni.” His chuckle reverberates through my clothes, my bones and into my heart. “Save that for the room.”
I giggle into our kiss, feeling lighter.
Feeling like we’re those impressionable kids freshman year leaving our friends behind at a party.
It didn’t happen that way, though. He didn’t approach me.
I was afraid to approach him. When I left that party, Tyrone and a group of upperclassmen were standing out on the sidewalk.
I wasted time with him and he broke my heart.
The arrogance of youth is assuming you’ll always have more time.
It makes you reckless or in our case too cautious.
Now as the elevator doors open and we practically run down the hall toward Touré’s room like the kids we once were, there is no caution.
There is chaos in my belly, a swirl of anticipation.
There is eagerness in the way he jerks the door open and pulls me in, closing it behind him and pressing me to the wall.
There is urgency in the way we tear at each other’s clothes.
Impatiently, he yanks the zipper at the back of my dress.
It slumps around my torso, slides down my arms, bares my skin to the cool air and the dark.
“I want to see you.” He leaves a trail of kisses across the naked slope of my shoulder.
I nod jerkily, letting him tug me through the suite and into the bedroom.
Standing in my strapless bra and thong, I’m glad I trimmed and waxed and buffed things to a shine.
I reach behind my back to unclasp my bra letting it fall forward.
He draws in a sharp breath, reaching to cup my breasts.
His thumbs rubbing, tugging make me gasp.
Make me hot. With trembling fingers, I pull at his buttons until his shirt is open and then on the floor.
His belt and pants and briefs follow, and with every inch of him revealed, I want more.
More kisses, more time, more of this man I’ve never had and always wanted.
Years in the field, chasing stories, climbing rough terrain—whatever in his life has kept his body hard and beautifully defined—I’m grateful.
He lays me down on the bed, takes my breast into his mouth, dusts kisses down my stomach, coaxes my legs wide and puts his mouth on me.
I reach over my head, sinking my nails into the softness of a pillow.
He licks and laves and loves between my legs until I explode.
I moan, a helpless sound for a voiceless feeling.
I cannot articulate how right it feels stretched out for him on the cool sheets as I come undone. Unspooled.
Quickly he reaches to the floor and grabs a condom from his pants, then wraps up.
When he climbs back over me, I grab his face and spread kisses all over his cheeks, opening my mouth over his, tasting myself and his passion.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this spent and free.
He hovers above me, naked and strong and ready.
“You okay?” he rasps, obviously forcing himself to go slow, to wait.
“Yes. I’m ready.” I lean up to kiss the strong column of his neck, my laugh short and raspy. “It feels like I’ve been ready twenty years.”
He cups my face, brushes my lips with his thumb, one arm propped above my head as he peers down at me. “It seems like this should have happened a long time ago, but I think our timing is perfect.”
He reaches between us, finding me hot and wet and slick for him.
He slips one, then two fingers inside, stretching and preparing me.
The rhythm he sets has me bucking against his hands, the fire stoking higher in me again.
I grip his shoulder to anchor myself because it feels like I could fly, I could soar, and this time I want him with me.
He eases between my legs, widening me and slowly, perfectly pushing inside.
We share a gasp; a breathy thing that wrestles between our lips.
A sense of rightness spreads through my body as he possesses it.
It’s a sweet invasion. I’m captive and willing and wanting.
“Oh.” That singular syllable is all I can manage as he fills me, thick and hot and insistent.
The tightness of the muscles in his back and shoulders speak of restraint, and I don’t want that.
I want him to feel what I do; out of control, winnowing, flapping like a kite that got away, taken by the wind.
I reach behind him grab his ass and push him in deeper.
“Shit, Ni,” he mutters, burying his face in the pillow beside my head. “That feels—”
I do it again and again, thrusting up to meet him, aggressive and seeking.
I repeat the action, feeding him my hungry desperation until he’s ravaging my mouth, his elbow hooked under my knee, pressing me open as wide as I can go.
Slamming into me with animal force. Rocking the bed ferociously.
The faster and harder he goes, the less civilized I am, reduced to grunts and gasps and clinging, clawing hands.
Protections, rules, and inhibitions fall away like a molting skin, leaving us raw and exposed and new.
He reaches between us and strokes me again before he comes, which sends me hurtling after him, tumbling together into this new ecstasy.
More than forty years on this earth, and I’ve never felt anything like this.
It brings tears to my eyes—not just that all this time I didn’t have this, but that all this time I didn’t have him.
And now I do.
He doesn’t leave me right away. Doesn’t roll off to the side and let in the cold. He stays with my legs wrapped around him, my arms hooking at his neck.
“I promise I’m not usually this clingy after sex,” I grin into the smooth muscled warmth of his shoulder. “I just can’t seem to let you go.”
“You don’t have to.” He dips his head, drops a quick kiss on my tingling lips before brushing wayward strands of hair away from my face, tenderness in his eyes when he looks down at me. “We’ve got all night.”
I nod, and the tears in my eyes slip over my cheeks. I don’t even bother wiping them away. I don’t hide. We wasted enough time because of things we didn’t say, didn’t share with each other. If we’ve got all night, he can have it all.