Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
~TAKIRA~
My head is buzzing, and I haven’t even had a drop of liquor. My brain is overloaded with names and connections and relationships. When Lotus invited me on this trip, she said it would be a few close friends, which is technically true. There are just so many powerful personalities in one room. Rarely do I feel intimidated. I move in some rarefied circles from time to time in my line of work and rub up against entertainment industry elite, but everyone here is at the top of their game somehow.
Banner and Jared, a power couple, two elite sports agents.
Kenan and Lotus, obviously. Her, one of the buzziest names in fashion; him, a basketball legend, guaranteed first-round Hall of Famer with business enterprises all over the world.
August and Iris. Him, a franchise player, one of the best in the League right now. Apparently Iris is becoming a force in her own right, handling huge accounts with their sports agency, Elevation.
Adding to the bad-assery, Lotus’s close friends and business partners Billie and Yari are here with their boyfriends. Kenan’s sister Kenya, a WNBA player, is here with her new wife, Jade, who apparently is a songwriter and producer and cousin to Grip, one of the greatest lyricists of our generation.
So, yeah. It’s a lot. They’re a lot.
The food was fantastic. The conversation—stimulating, intelligent, hilarious. The best time I’ve had over a meal in…maybe ever. Naz’s friends are incredible, and it’s obvious he cares about them as much as they care about him. They were accepting and kind, though extremely curious. I wouldn’t get this many questions on Jeopardy.
“I need a drink,” I tell Naz, glancing around the emptying dining room.
“Then let’s get you one.” He walks us over to the bar, and I ask the bartender to surprise me. I don’t particularly care what I drink right now, as long as it takes this edge off.
“Didn’t want to drink much during dinner,” I tell Naz. “I had to keep a clear head for the inquisition.”
“Ugh.” He groans but grins. “My friends are nosy.”
“They probably just want to make sure I’m not a ball bunny, or whatever you guys call those women who wait in the tunnel offering you ass after games.” I nudge him with my shoulder while the bartender prepares my drink.
“Ball bunnies?” He lifts both brows.
“Oh, please. A man fine as you? I’m sure you get your share.”
“You think I’m attractive?”
I tip up to whisper in his ear, “Would my panties be in your pocket if I didn’t?”
“Here you go,” the bartender says, offering me an amber-colored drink before Naz has the chance to respond with anything other than a heated stare.
“This is delicious,” I say after a sip. “What is it?”
“It’s a Genoa.” He offers Naz one, too. “Mediterranean drink in honor of our journey. Gin, grappa, sambuca, dry vermouth with an olive. Glad you like it.”
“You guys keeping all the good liquor to yourselves?” Kenya asks, rising from the dining room table.
She looks like a softer version of Kenan, tall and lean with locs hanging past her shoulders. She and Jade are newlyweds and have been stuck to each other’s sides all night. It’s sweet how they’re even now holding hands…with twined fingers!
“You’ve had enough,” Jade mumbles as they cross the room to us. “You know how your ass gets.”
“Once! You cry once after a bottle of tequila,” Kenya laughs. “And your wife never lets you live it down.”
“Nah.” Jade runs a hand over her neat cornrows. “It’s also that jet lag I’m worried about. Gin and jet lag—not a good look for you.”
“What we need is some fresh air,” Kenya says. “It’ll clear my head. Everybody’s up on deck. You guys coming?”
The look Naz rolls over me is molten, and even my fast tail feels self-conscious under it.
“I think they want to be alone,” Kenya says, her voice sing-song and teasing.
“No, we’ll come,” I say, quirking one brow in challenge. He thought he could edge me? See how he likes being put on hold.
“Sure,” Naz agrees instantly, mocking me with a toast of his Genoa.
When we get up to the deck, I’m glad we came. The whole group is up here, and the lights strung along the ship glow, casting a romantic spell over everyone. With the breeze whipping dresses and hair and cooling heated cheeks, we all line up at the rail and lean into the sea spray. Under moonlight, we sip our drinks, weaving in and out of conversations with each other and with our partners. It’s a perfect evening, but like Jada suggested, jet lag starts kicking in, and after an hour, I slump my back against Naz’s wide chest, barely able to stand.
“You’re tired,” he whispers, his lips brushing the sensitive skin at my throat.
“Maybe a little bit,” I sleep-slur, clutching the powerful forearms wrapped around my waist.
“Hey, guys,” he calls to his friends—some still at the rail, some lying on the lounge chairs together by now. "This one’s exhausted and jet lagged. I’mma take her to her room.”
“See you tomorrow,” Iris says, standing and crossing over to us. “We’re so glad you’re here.”
“Yeah.” Lo walks up beside us, tugging Kenan behind her. “Next time, you come and leave Naz at home.”
“Whatever,” Naz says, shaking his head. “We out.”
We board the elevator to take us to the lower deck where our cabins are located. I lean against one wall, and he leans against the other, watching me, unsmiling. My heart picks up speed at the intensity of his stare. When the elevator dings, signaling we’ve reached our floor, he pulls my panties out of his pocket and holds them up. “You have to answer for these.”
“What?”
“You think you can keep me hard all night without some form of retribution?”
“I don’t?—”
The elevator doors open, and he gently pushes me through them and into the small waiting area.
“Run,” he says, that predator’s glaze over his eyes.
It takes half a second for my flight instinct to kick in. I take off down the corridor, glad I’ve been wearing heels my whole life, and I run in them as easily as I do barefoot.
“Naz!” I screech, laughing, adrenaline pumping as his heavy footsteps gain on me. I know it’s a game, but the heat I just saw in his eyes, the erection tenting his pants—they send danger signals to my nervous system. Even if the only danger I’m in is of getting fucked all night.
I round the corner, my room in view, when one stone-hard arm encircles my waist and snatches me up. I’m five nine and thick with it. It’s not often I’m “snatched up” like I weigh nothing, but he literally carries me under his arm, and my legs dangle in the air.
“Got you,” he murmurs, slowly lowering me to the floor and pressing my front to the door. “Open it.”
His heat at my back, his dick pressing into me, his breath in my hair. It’s so much, I mis-enter the code for the door three times before it swings open. The bedside lamp casts a faint glow over the room. The bed has been turned down, and it invites me to lower my weary body onto the cool sheets.
Still behind me, Naz splays his hand over my stomach and drifts lower, pressing into the juncture of my thighs through my dress.
“Are you really not wearing underwear?” he asks, his voice gruff and maybe a little hopeful.
I turn to face him, walking backward until my knees hit the bed, and I lie down, allowing the dress’s feathery hem to spray around the tops of my thighs, barely hiding the truth between my legs. I spread just the tiniest bit for him but not enough for him to know for sure. With an impatient sound, he walks over, drags me to the edge of the bed so my legs hang over the side, and goes down on his knees. He eases the dress up the last few inches until the cool air hits my bare, wet pussy.
“Shit, Kira.” A frown wrinkles the thick line of his brows. “Is that a?—”
“Clit clamp,” I say, widening even more so the Swarovski crystal winks at him from the shadows between my thighs. “Yeah.”
He swallows audibly, his hand hovering over my naked flesh from the waist down. “You wore it for me?”
“I think I’m probably gonna get a lot more out of it than you are.” I laugh. “I’ve been wearing it all night, so when you take it off, all the blood will rush to my clit, and it’ll hurt like a motherfucker, but it will also feel incredible. So…it’s for both of us really.”
I’ve worn this before, and when men see it, they usually dive in right away, eager for something they see as illicit and novel. Not Naz. His stare locks on to the space between my legs for long moments before he runs his palms behind my knees and then up my thighs. He repeats this motion over and over again, kneading the muscles of my legs, skimming my calves, dragging his short nails over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, all the while getting maddeningly closer, but never close enough to where I want to feel him most. My body starts to move compulsively, in synch with the pressure, with the motion of his hands, rolling under his palms. One of his fingers skims the lips of my pussy, and I jerk. My nerves are drawn tight with anticipation now, and I’d take any touch right there .
He lowers his face between my legs, and I stretch open for him shamelessly, as wide as my legs will go.
“Naz, please.” I hate the begging in my voice, but I’m so wet and needy.
“Tell me,” he says, not looking away from my pussy. “What do you want?”
My hips are pumping, and I reach behind my neck to untie the halter. My breasts spill free, and I cup one of them. His eyes snap up, and his breathing harshens as I roll my nipple.
“I can do this for myself, you know,” I say, sliding one hand between my legs.
His big hand grasps my wrist with firm gentleness and presses it to my side on the bed. He watches my fingers tweaking my nipple, watches the tip harden and burgeon. I squeeze as much for the sensation as for his reaction, which is a tightening of his mouth. I drag my hand away from my breast and try again to reach between my legs.
“I wanna take this off.” I reach for the crystal clamp.
“Don’t you fucking touch it.” His voice is Brillo and velvet, and the command in it makes me shiver. “I’ll do it.”
And then, my god, he does.
He pulls back the lips, opening me like the petals of a flower, and lowers his mouth to me.
Barely.
His tongue traces the clamp, licking and sucking in little wisps of touch.
“Oh, god, Naz,” I moan. “I need you to?—”
“I know, baby,” he breathes over my wetness. “Let me take care of you.”
With his tongue and teeth, he toys with the clamp until it pulls free of my clit. The blood flow that was suppressed all night rushes to that one point on my body in a flood of pain and pleasure. Both wash over me in waves, and I shudder as the sensations do battle in my nerve endings. Before I have the chance to decide if it hurts more than it feels good, he’s there, sucking me into his mouth. Soothing the nerves and stimulating them simultaneously. With one hand, he peels me back and opens his mouth wide over me, ravenous, burying his face between my legs and making grunting, growling, starving noises. The pleasure is so intense, I try to slide back on the bed, to get away, but he holds me in place by my hip, never letting up or letting go.
A coil low in my belly starts unwinding, surging pleasure down my legs and clenching the muscles in my stomach. I scream. Someone said these rooms are soundproof, but I don’t care. The whole group could be having tea outside my door, and there’s no way I could hold back the sounds his mouth is drawing from me.
Finally, I burst, my back bowing, neck arching, hot tears rolling into my hairline, release flowing from me. He pulls my legs over his shoulders, taking my ass into his hands and spreading me open even more.
“You have to stop,” I beg, pressing my heels into his back, sobs wracking my body. “It’s too much.”
He ignores me, his hands running up and down my thighs with reverence, and he keeps licking and sucking. My arms rest on the bed limply, and my head lolls back and forth. I’ve never felt this spent from oral alone. When he finally lifts his head, he smiles at me, the clit clamp held between his strong white teeth.
“You’re crazy.” I breathe out a chuckle, reaching up to run my hand across his hair. He’s so damn beautiful. The most beautiful boy I’d ever seen has grown into a man I can’t take my eyes off.
He gently rolls me onto my stomach and deals with the hidden zip at the base of my dress, then peels the silky material away from my body. He cups my ass, rubbing it, and then I feel his lips, still damp with my release, kiss one cheek and then the other. Slowly, he rolls me onto my back again and tugs me into a sitting position. Still dressed and with his dick at my eye level, he begins removing the pins from my hair. Braids spill around my shoulders. I touch his erection, and he draws a harsh breath.
“Naz, don’t you want?—”
“There’ll be time.”
“I want something for you, too, tonight.”
He bends to run his hand from my breast to the soaked juncture of my thighs, slipping the rough pad of his finger over my swollen clit.
“That was for me.” He smiles, but his eyes remain sober. “You’re for me. Do you wear a hair scarf to bed?”
“Um, yeah.” I nod to the bedside table where I stowed some of my things.
He brings it over and gives it to me. “Show me how you do it.”
I wrap the scarf around my braids like I do every night, my hands trembling under his intense scrutiny.
“Do you wash your face?”
“Yeah,” I say, standing, suddenly self-conscious that I’m naked and he’s not. I walk to the bathroom, feeling his eyes on my back and ass and legs. In the bathroom, he grabs a washcloth from the neat stack on the counter. After wetting it with warm water, he brings it to my pussy, gently cleaning me. My breath stutters, and my heart batters my chest from the inside at his tender touch, at the thorough way he uses the wipes on the counter to remove my makeup.
What is this?
Once he’s cleaned me up and removed my makeup, he leads me back to the bed, pulls the coverlet back, and gives me a gentle push into the coolness of the sheets.
Let me take care of you.
He said it when he was eating me out like a starved animal, but the way he’s actually doing it breaks something in me. Emotion swells inside. All the searching and settling over the years feel like a distant memory under his attention. All the times I wanted to feel special and got a dick pic instead, or got called a bitch by a strange man because I didn’t respond to his vulgar DM—those times fade because this was what I wanted all along.
To feel this special. This considered. This wanted and respected.
“Will you stay?” I ask, my voice low and a little shaky. The oral was fantastic, but this…this is something else.
“Do you want me to?”
Not trusting my voice with more words, I simply nod and watch as he removes his clothes, folding them neatly and placing them in a chair in the corner. His body is like a machine, but warm and gleaming and taut, his muscles seemingly rippling in places other men never even had muscles. He crawls in behind me, pulling me close. My back is pressed into his wide, smooth chest. And though I feel him semi-erect against my backside through his briefs, he makes no move. When he tucks his head into the crook of my neck and lays a kiss there, I reach behind me and cup the back of his head. There’s no way two weeks will be enough. Not with this man. So many thoughts swirl in my head, and despite the jet lag and exhaustion, I’m staring into the dark unblinkingly, wondering what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.
“Kira,” he says after a few minutes of easy silence, splaying his hand possessively over my belly. “Baby, go to sleep.”
And as if my body knows something I don’t, it obeys.