Chapter Nine. Ember #9
“Nah, for once, shut the fuck up and listen.” His words are a slap in the mouth, and they sting.
I taste phantom blood on my tongue. Shameful blood, and I don’t even know why.
Asad takes a step forward, silver eyes dark, big body drawn tight, and for the very first time in thirteen long years, I see him as …
breakable. “I can tell you the details of how Kimberly Jacobs Cross died. The time, date, the cause. It’s all I’ve heard from you.
All I’ve heard from Michelle. You hate Michelle for coming in and trying to replace her with your father, and Michelle hates your mother for simply existing.
And because of that, she’s this presence that’s never really been gone.
Not even a ghost, because they at least pass on at some point, but your mother is as present, as …
as sentient as if she never left. And in all this fucking tug-of-war, no one has ever mentioned Khalil Amir Prince.
He’s been forgotten by everyone. Everyone but me. ”
I stare at him, speechless.
No, that’s not exactly true.
Too many words crowd into my head, scramble up the back of my throat. But they’re mired in the quicksand of guilt, slowly sucked down as useless and inadequate.
Because even though I’ve never heard the name of Khalil Amir Prince before, I still know who he is—Asad’s father.
Even if the last name didn’t give it away, the reverence wrapped around the syllables would’ve.
“No one seems to give a flying fuck about a man who grew up in the shithole of LA County’s foster care system but still put himself through college and an apprenticeship while working two jobs.
He built one of the most successful jewelry businesses and an unimpeachable reputation by hours, years, of hard work, perseverance, and integrity.
He was a good man, an honest man. A better father.
His only fault was falling in love with and marrying a faithless, greedy bitch who only saw him as a stepping stone for more and could never be satisfied with what she had.
My father’s downfall was refusing to see people—namely, his wife—for who they were and instead for who he wanted them to be.
And by the time he did, it was way too fucking late. ”
Something spasms across his face. That same something flickers in his storm-darkened eyes. My stomach hollows, the bottom plummeting into free fall.
No.
I don’t realize I must’ve said it aloud until his eyebrow arches and he slightly turns his head, narrowing his gaze. The look he pins on me is somewhere between sarcastic amusement and incredulity.
“No?” he asks. “You were the recipient of her”—his mouth quirks at the corners—“love often. You don’t think she’s capable of it?”
He still doesn’t come out and explicitly say Michelle’s sin—her crime—but he alludes to it, and my mind still can’t fully grasp that she … that she would …
“Your mother is a monster. I’ve never, nor will I ever, deny that. Still, abuse is one thing. But … but…” I can’t even say it. Can’t shove the word off my tongue.
“Murder. That’s what you seem to be having a hard time saying. Murder. And if you really believe Michelle isn’t capable of it to get what she wants, then you haven’t been paying attention. Or you’re as willfully blind as my father was.”
I shake my head, briefly closing my eyes. “It’s not—” Shit.
I don’t know what to say. How to say it.
I’m not stunned or desperate for it not to be true for Michelle’s sake, but for his.
I’ve had courtside season tickets to their relationship over the years.
How she dotes on Asad. How she reveres him.
How he protects her. For some inexplicable reason, I don’t want him to bear the soul-shattering agony of knowing his mother would steal his father from him.
“Think, Ember.” His deep, midnight voice is an irresistible lure as he nears me, that gaze still studying me like I’m this peculiar, exotic specimen he needs to figure out.
He desires to dissect and expose. And I feel like an experiment, like a frog cut open, splayed, my heart, organs, and soul on display.
“This is the woman who brought you a puppy, let you get attached, and fall in love with it. Then six months later, forced you to take it to the pound and get it euthanized. She’s the woman who locked you in a wooden chest in the attic for over fifteen hours because you spilled juice on a cloth napkin at lunch, not checking on you once.
Not caring if you suffocated. And those are just the highlights.
Michelle is sadistic as fuck. And you don’t think she’s capable of murder?
” He laughs, and he’s so close, I feel it before hearing it.
The puff of air caresses my forehead, and the caustic sound is one that will follow me into my dreams. My nightmares.
His mouth twists into a smile that, if a person’s delusional, might appear kind.
But I’m not as deluded as he likes to call me.
He lifts a hand, traces a finger over my temple, down my cheek, to the corner of my lips.
He gently taps it. “Baby girl, I didn’t think there was any more innocence left in you, but shit, you keep surprising me. ”
He’s taunting me, seeking to get a reaction out of me.
And since thirteen years have conditioned me to give him one, he almost succeeds.
But even as anger sparks to life deep in my chest, I peer into his eyes.
And it’s not the glitter of anticipation that smothers the flames; it’s the shadows of the foreign, nearly unrecognizable pain behind it.
A pain I’m so intimate with I’ve lain with it, cuddled up to it, cried out to it.
As if the most complicated hypotheses suddenly rearranged itself and became crystal clear, I can easily read him. Asad wants to fight, to release the roiling, twisting emotion inside him. And in this moment, I desire to give that to him. But not as a sparring partner.
Something altogether different.
I’m a creature of reason, of deduction and equations; they make sense in a world of chaos and disorder. But I shove all that I’ve relied on for so many years as my life raft to the side and sink into the madness of emotion.
Sink to my knees.
Asad goes unnaturally still and doesn’t make a move to stop or encourage me as I settle my palms on his powerful thighs.
Nerves riot in my stomach, battling against a burning insecurity.
Heat creeps up my neck and pours into my face, but it’s not from arousal.
No, its sole source is embarrassment, self-consciousness.
Just last night, I was a virgin—that includes my mouth.
Goddamn. This is what happens when I’m impulsive. When I allow emotion to run me. I should’ve thought this through. I don’t fucking know wha—
A calloused hand cups my chin in a hard but incongruently gentle grip, tipping my head back.
Just that simple, but so fucking complex, touch quiets the frenzy of thoughts ripping through my head.
It ignites another flurry of anxiety, but this isn’t steeped in uncertainty and self-doubt.
No, this originates from a wholly different, darker source.
His expression is neutral, damn near aloof.
But again … those eyes. The traces of pain remain, as does the predatory glitter.
But the latter has shifted from a cruel anticipation to a hungry one.
Without removing his unblinking, steady gaze from mine, he sweeps a thumb across both of my lips.
Once. Twice. A third time. I don’t need to see the skin on the pad to know it’s stained with my dark red lipstick or to look into a mirror to know he’s made a mess of me.
Both have my pussy seizing like she’s stroking out.
I don’t drop my head as I move my hands from his thighs to the thin leather belt encircling his waist. Fingers that have performed highly delicate experiments are suddenly clumsy and uncoordinated as they undo the buckle and the closure on his suit pants.
But I manage and pull down his zipper. Anticipation, nerves, and desire barrel through me, and though this dick has rearranged my insides, I’m still nervous as hell about sliding it in my mouth.
But this is for Asad, about him, not me.
Wrapping my fingers around his long, thick dick, I palm it, instantly thinking back to how it felt shoving deep within me, and I pant against his skin.
Wanting that again, but settling for this. A whimper nearly escapes me.
“You’re … beautiful,” I whisper, risking a glance up at him and feeling scorched by the heat staring back down at me. “I’m going to…”
Lowering my head, I drag my lips up his length, graze my lips over the precum-dampened tip, and roll my tongue over and around it, sucking at the small slit.
His taste, so musky, unfamiliar, and so him.
The singular flavor send my taste buds dancing, and I can’t contain my hum of pleasure.
He hisses above me, and when I glance up at him, a frown darkens his face as he glares down at me.
Embarrassment singes my throat and face because I obviously did something wrong. I start to withdraw, but he palms the back of my head and pushes me back down on his dick. The tip penetrates my lips and, reflexively, I suck on it.
He grunts then brushes the backs of his fingers over my cheek. The gentle caress and the swollen head in my mouth is a juxtaposition that sends heat and something … softer through me.
“You good, ma,” he murmurs. “The only thing you did wrong was almost drag this nut out of me too early.”