8. Talia
TALIA
“You’re so beautiful, Talia…so goddamned inspiring, intelligent, and fine as hell.”
I held my breath as he traced my lips one final time before he slowly moved closer to me. I leaned forward, and the moment our lips touched, I melted into him. For so many years, I had dreamed about this. For so many years, I wanted this kiss with the man of my dreams. And yet, for so many years, I told myself it would never happen.
Izael’s tongue was sweet like the ice cream and maple he ate and salty like the nuts. He licked the inside of my mouth and held my face in place as he deepened the kiss. My fingers were scared that if I touched him, I might break the spell or wake up from the dream and have to face reality.
“Zae…” I huffed when he pulled away just a little.
“My bad. I was wrong for that shit.”
“Don’t be. Kiss me again,” I pleaded.
“Are you serious?”
“Please.”
“Gladly, beautiful.” He pressed his lips against mine again.
The kiss was sensual and rich in flavor. It was everything that I dreamed of and more. Izael took his time kissing me and exploring my mouth. It was almost like he wouldn’t get the chance again. I boldly sucked on his tongue, letting him know how much I wanted him.
We had been sitting beside each other on the couch, but our bodies were turned sideways and into each other as we kissed. I pushed Izael back against the couch and straddled him. His hands went to my ass, and he rubbed and squeezed it as I deepened our kiss. When this was over, if he had any regrets, I wouldn’t. I wanted this moment to be memorable.
“I think you’d better get up before we do something you might regret,” Izael warned.
I noticed that he didn’t say that he would regret it.
“I could never regret you, Zae. Never,” I whispered.
Izael pulled back and stared into my eyes.
“I don’t think you know what you’re doing, li’l mama.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Nah, you’re in your feelings right now, Chè. Everything will look different in the morning.” Izael rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip.
It was the simple things that Izael did that meant so much to me. The way he listened about my night, prepared me a bowl of ice cream, considered my feelings about what was taking place between us, and even how he rubbed my lip. Those were all things that were so sweet and could be easily taken for granted until you no longer had them in your life.
“Do you know how long I have wanted this? Wanted you, Zae?”
“No. I have no idea,” he confessed and shook his head.
“All my life.” I chuckled as my eyes teared up.
“Quit crying, beautiful girl,” he chastised and wiped the tears from my eyes.
“I can’t help it. I mean, this moment is almost too good to be true.”
“Don’t play yourself down like that."
“That kiss… me sitting on you like this…that’s not all I want, Zae. I want so much more. I always have, and I always will. If you give me nothing else, please give me tonight.”
“You know what you’re saying?”
“I do. I want to feel you inside of me, Zae, and all over me. I want you to soak up every part of me until I can no longer think, feel, or breathe unless it’s you who I’m thinking about, feeling, and breathing in.”
“Gahdamn, girl. Why’re you making this so fucking hard for me?”
I squirmed in his lap and giggled. “Yeah, he is awfully hard right now.”
I bit my bottom lip and stared into his eyes.
“Chè, everything about this is so wrong. I’m your brother’s best friend, your parents are like my own, and I’ve spent the latter part of our friendship trying to convince myself that you’re just like a sister to me.”
“Stop lying to yourself, Izael.”
He brushed my lips with his. “This could go wrong in so many ways. If we do this, ain’t no coming back from it.”
“Who said I wanted to?” I asked breathlessly.
He covered my lips with his quickly and kissed me roughly. I moaned under his kiss as he bit my lip and sucked my tongue. I gyrated hard in his lap.
When he finished kissing me, he stood with me in his arms. I was surprised at how easily he carried me. It was as though I was weightless in his arms. Izael crossed over the living room to his bedroom and laid me on his bed.
He was attentive and careful as he removed my high-heeled Kurt Geiger sandals from my manicured feet. When he finished, he unzipped my jeans and slowly peeled them off my body, leaving me lying there trembling in my sky-blue thong. I watched as his fingers unbuttoned my blouse and then rubbed his hands over the lacy matching bra I wore. Not once had Izael moved his gaze away from mine.
He came back up and kissed my lips before moving to my ear and sucking the shell of it. Slowly, he trailed hot kisses to my neck and then my shoulders. By the time he made it to my breasts, I was ready to snatch my bra off. My body was hot and yearning for him, but he was taking his time. Izael watched me as he fingered my nipples.
“Your body is so beautiful, Cinnamon. You’re a treasure to behold, one that I want the pleasure of pleasing tonight if you say yes.”
“Yes, Izael. God, yes,” I whimpered as he lifted my breast to his lips and sucked gently. My hand went to the back of his head and cupped it. His free hand cupped my other breast while he nibbled on the other nipple. He gave the right breast the same treatment before those kisses took him to my belly. He stuck his tongue inside of my navel and then proceeded to go lower.
Although I kept my regular wax appointments, I always kept a landing strip. For some reason, it was sexy to me, and I guess it was to Izael too. He licked the hair and went lower to suck my lower lips before he spread them.
With his gaze on me, Izael slid a finger inside of me and curled it up and down until I begged him, “Please, taste me, Zae.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
“I’m so damn sure that I need this more than I need my next breath.”
Izael moved back up to me and kissed my lips. He moved the hair back from my forehead and stared into my eyes.
“Talia.”
“Yes?”
“Like I said before, what we’re about to do… ain’t no going back. I need you to consider this carefully.”
“I want you, Zae.”
“Not just for the moment because you had a rough night. If that’s what you want, I can give you that.”
“No. I want more from you, Zae. I want all of you.”
“You know everyone won’t be happy about this, especially Tahj.”
“I don’t live my life for him. I want this. I want us. I don’t care if the world wants to fight me on it. As long as you want me, too, that’s all I care about.”
He lowered his gaze to where our skin met and then looked me in the eyes again. He kissed my forehead, my nose, and then my lips before he declared, “I’ll fight for you, Talia. You’re worth fighting for. I love you, girl.”
My heart damn near beat out of my chest. Before I could respond, Izael pushed my legs up onto the bed and spread them out flat.
“Tell me you want me to go downtown, baby.”
“Go downtown, Zae. Please don’t come back. Build a damn loft apartment down there and chill in that bitch if you have to,” I cried out as he sucked my pussy lips.
“Shiiiiddd!” I screamed and arched my back up from the bed.
He pulsed that tongue inside of my pussy, and I ripped the sheets from the bed. His brown, tattooed arms slid underneath my legs and lifted them until my ass was exposed as well. I watched in shock and awe as he went further south.
“Damn, Zae. I said downtown. You’re going straight to the hood,” I whimpered as he pressed his tongue into my ass.
He pulled back and spanked my ass. “Turn over onto your belly so I can eat it right.”
I flipped over so fast, like a fish out of water, pushed up onto my knees, and arched my ass. He slid underneath me and sucked my pussy a little longer before he came back up and pressed his tongue into my ass.
My heart exploded because all of this was too good to be true. I kept flexing my fingers to see if I would wake up, but the pleasure kept going and wouldn’t stop. Izael’s fingers pleasured my pussy, and with his tongue and lips, he indulged in my ass until I trembled all over.
With my face buried in the mattress, my head thrashed back and forth because the pleasure was so intense I could barely breathe. My arms and legs were tight with tension, but Izael refused to stop until I came. When I turned over onto my back, he had just removed his T-shirt and was removing his basketball shorts.
“You think you want me, ma?”
I bobbed my head and licked my lips. “Yes. I want to taste you too.”
“Not like that. Not yet, Cinnamon.”
Disappointment filled me. “Why not?”
“That’ll come in time,” he declared, reading my expression easily.
Happiness filled me with those words because that meant there would be more than just tonight. Izael had indents in the sides of his ass right where his hips and ass met. His powerful legs sported tattoos, and so did his inner thighs. Damn. I knew he was tatted up, but he was tatted almost from head to toe.
He grabbed a condom, covered himself, and pulled me back to the edge of the bed. He pushed one leg back as far as it would go and spread the other one out wide. Although I was flexible, I could not recall ever having one leg pushed back so far.
When Izael slid inside of me, tears fell again. This man was making all my dreams come true. I had dreamed of kissing him, dreamed of having sex with him, and even fantasized about him eating me out, but I had never dreamed about him eating my ass. Hell, I didn’t think any of those things would come true, let alone all of them.
All of that paled in comparison to him telling me that he loved me. Had he meant it? Or was he just overcome with the emotion of the moment? That had to be it. But then again, maybe he meant it the way he’d said it throughout the years because I was like family to him. Yet, nothing he did to my body was family-like—at all.
Maybe that’s what he said to a girl when he was having sex with her. Maybe he said the things he thought she wanted to hear. I had never second-guessed my place in his life until now. But until now, I had never considered being intimate with him. I knew my place, and now, everything had changed. What if we could never get our friendship back after this?
Izael stroked my insides, pushed himself into places where he didn’t naturally fit, carved out his name on my body, and tattooed it on my heart. With every plunge, he removed all my doubts, concerns, and thoughts. He moved from standing at the edge of the bed and pumping inside of me to onto the bed with me.
My legs wrapped around his strong back, my hands traced his tattoos, and my eyes enjoyed the vision of our bodies connected. He whispered sweet words of reassurance to me with every stroke and thrust he gave me.
“You’re so beautiful. How could you ever let anyone tell you differently?”
Thrust…stroke...pump…slide…
“It’s an honor for me to be inside of your body like this.”
Kiss…caress…lick…gyrate…
“You’re perfect, Chè…so tight…very wet…and deliciously warm. You’re the perfect fit.”
He pumped at the completion of each of those statements before he made the next comment.
Receive…inhale…hiss…exhale…
“You were made for me.”
And round and round we went in a pleasurable synchrony of ecstasy. Our sweat-slicked bodies slid against and over one another as we moaned and hummed through our licks, nips, and kisses. We repositioned ourselves several times, and I basked in the sound of our sweaty bodies slapping together.
No one could have prepared me for sex with Izael. There were no words to explain the way that my heart drummed a legato beat in my chest or the way my breaths released out of me whenever he thrust in a particularly deep way.
There was a peculiarity to the way the day had gone. It was almost as if we were both waiting for that perfect moment when things went to hell and back again before we found the courage to act on what had been brewing between us the last few weeks.
I had known it, and so had Izael. The moment that he and I agreed he would stay with me until he found a place, we both knew that it would only be a matter of time before things would erupt. For me, I thought I would make a complete fool of myself in front of him because of my feelings for him.
Apparently, he’d thought he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands or his dick to himself for long because, somehow, I found myself impaled by it in Izael’s bed. When we released, it couldn’t have been more perfect if we timed it.
The way his hands gripped my hips and he thrust down while I lifted to meet him as my hands smoothed over his chest was like a memo to our bodies. My mouth dropped open, and his jaw flexed while he scowled deeply.
My head lifted, and his lowered, and our mouths met. We kissed in a clash of teeth and tongues and tried to quell one another’s screams and roars. When we came, we did so noisily, violently almost, as he pinched my hips and I dug my nails into his back, and we bit each other’s lips. When it was over, he rolled off me and onto his back, pulling me onto my side to face him.
“Oh, my God. Did we just do that?” I whispered, closing my eyes.
“Cinnamon. Don’t,” he whispered back. His hand gently stroked the side of my face. “I told you before we started that there was no going back.”
“Did you mean it, Zae? Every word you said?”
“I meant everything.”
“I mean…you couldn’t have because you said…you said…”
“I love you, Talia. And not the way that Tahj does. I love you the way that a man loves a woman, and I’ve known it for a long while.”
“What do you mean?”
“That year…when you finished school and came home, I saw you differently. You were still my li’l nigga, but it was different. I saw you as a grown woman. Over the next six years, you grew closer to me. Watching you date and complain about that nigga Ricky and others through the years left my chest tight.”
“You never said anything.”
“I couldn’t,” he stated, stroking his finger down the curve of my cheek. “You were my boy’s sister, and therefore, you were off limits.”
“Why tonight? What changed?”
He chuckled in a low tone as he stared into my eyes. “Being here in your space these last three weeks has been hell. I’ve tried to stay away, worked longer nights, found shit to get into.”
“Like other females?” I asked teasingly.
“Nah. Taking care of my businesses, visiting the folks, my brother, whatever.”
“And tonight?” I prompted.
“Tonight, you were hurting. I couldn’t stand back and watch you in pain and not do something about it. I couldn’t stand back and listen to you talk about yourself the way you did when I knew better. I damn sure couldn’t let you go a minute longer believing that there wasn’t someone who wanted you, someone who always wanted you,” he whispered, tilting my chin and kissing my lips.
I reached between us and gripped his dick which was still covered in the condom. Izael gripped my wrist and squeezed.
“You better stop that shit before you get something else started, baby. I need to get rid of this.” He climbed out of the bed.
“I’m going to my room,” I murmured and pulled the covers back.
Izael grabbed the covers and pulled them back over me.
“Not tonight. You’re staying in my bed with me. I’ma get this shower together. Meet me in the bathroom.”
I watched him remove the condom and head into his bathroom. I buried my face into his pillow, inhaled his scent, and muffled my scream.
The man who I was already in love with loved me too!