Chapter Four #2
The evening after our run-in with Lee and Eddie, I was in
the sapphire blue velvet sectional Darius had bought us, on the lounge section,
with a glass of wine and a book, when the door opened.
Something else I didn’t know, and had never asked, was if he
had a key from the guy he knew who got me this pad, or if he picked the locks.
I was dying to know.
I was also dying to know, if he picked the locks, when he
learned how to do that.
I was further dying to know how his mom was, his sisters,
and if they knew about Liam.
They should know.
But if he wasn’t taking that step, I knew he wouldn’t want
me to.
Something else I wished I could talk to him about, because
Miss Dorothea was a lovely woman, she’d be a great grandma, and although my boy
already had one, it never hurt to have two.
In fact, it was impossible to enumerate all the things I was
dying to know about Darius Tucker.
But I was getting really good at burying how much I needed
to know them, and ignoring how not knowing them, or being able to ask, was
slowly killing me.
He showed in the living room, and he looked as good, and as
scary, as ever.
This time, he was holding a large manila envelope.
Yes. I knew he’d come.
Because I needed him.
In this instance, Lena needed him, but to him, it was the
same thing.
He took me in where I was stretched out on the lounge
section, his body held in a weird, still way that I understood, because I was
holding mine in the same way.
It’d been three years.
Three years since that kiss.
It felt like yesterday.
This happened every time he showed, both of us bracing, both
of us fighting it.
Fighting the need to jump each other like crazed fuck
bunnies and have at it until we couldn’t breathe.
He broke the stillness first by tossing the envelope on the
lounge at my bare feet.
I put my wineglass aside, the bookmark in my book, and set
it on the couch, pushed up and retrieved the envelope.
“She needs to dump him,” he said.
I pressed the metal tabs back and pulled out the pictures.
On viewing the top one, my face scrunched.
“Ew! You could have warned me,” I
said, shoving the photos back in, now having seen more of Michael, not to
mention his side piece, than I’d ever wanted to see.
“We made sure she didn’t have any questions.”
“You did that all right,” I muttered.
“You need to date.”
My stillness came back at his words. That was, it did after
my head snapped back to look at him.
“Why aren’t you dating?” he asked, his words gruff, forced.
I could hear the emotion. I could even feel it.
And it ticked me off.
“Oh, are we chatting now?” I asked back. “Are we buds? You
show with the means to save my sister a lot of heartache.” I waved the envelope
in the air then tossed it to the side. “We share about our lives, then you
vanish for a couple of months. Where are my manners? Would you like a glass of
wine?”
“Stop it,” he grunted.
I was lamenting sitting on the lounge section, because even
if it was comfy, it was a pain in the behind to get out of gracefully.
Even so, I was so mad, I scrambled out, took my feet and put
my hands on my hips, ignoring how Darius’s beautiful brown eyes watching me do
that made me feel, and asked, “Are you dating?”
He dropped his head but lifted a hand, palm out my way, and
said to his boots, “Fucked up. Apologize. Not my business.”
“It’s not?” I demanded. “How’s the couch look, Darius? It’s
nice, isn’t it? Liam is into plants. He makes me let him water them. I have to
follow him around—”
He lifted his head and dropped his hand.
“Stop it,” he bit off.
I didn’t stop it.
“And he begs me to take him to the nursery so we can buy
more, which I can afford, seeing as my baby daddy gives me three times more
than I make in a —”
I didn’t finish that time, because one second, he was four
feet away.
And the next, he was towering over me and right in my face.
“Don’t ever fuckin’ call me that.”
He was trying to intimidate me.
I was so done with this dance, I wasn’t about to be
intimidated.
“Why not? That’s what you are, aren’t you? You don’t even
ask to see him.”
“I don’t exist for him.”
“You’re standing right here.”
“I don’t exist for you either.”
“My couch and car and bank account says different.”
“You’re not gonna want, and neither is he.”
“Well, rest assured, you aren’t falling down on that job.
It’s just other jobs you aren’t up for.”
I saw the anger flare in his eyes. It was intense, burning.
But that didn’t intimidate me either.
“What jobs you want me to see to, Malia?”
“How long you got?” I asked. “Because I have a list and you
might want to take notes.”
His voice got warm, sexy…lewd. “Like you said,
baby, I’m right here. What you need?”
And now he was trying to be an a-hole.
I wasn’t buying that either.
But he wanted to play with fire, we’d see who’d get burned.
“I haven’t had a man touch me since I was sixteen, you could
take care of that.”
Another flare in his eyes, surprise.
And something else.
Something deep.
Possessive.
Hungry.
Okay, dang.
It was me about to be burned.
It would turn out I was right. I just had no idea how much I
would love dancing in that fire.
His arms closed around me, and his mouth slammed down on
mine, and I should have stopped it. If he was going to hang around, we had so
much more to talk about.
I didn’t stop it.
He kissed me, and more fool me, I kissed him back.
Three years since we kissed.
Even longer since we took it further, but he was in my life,
in my business, in my heart, I couldn’t stop it.
This time, I wasn’t going to tear myself away.
I needed it.
No.
I needed Darius.
I tried to pull him down on the couch.
He resisted, and fear took hold of my soul, because one
thing I’d learned these last few years, when Darius was done, he was gone.
But he said, “No, baby, not on the couch. Not this time, not
our first since…will he wake up?”
“He’s a sound sleeper.”
That was all I said, all he needed.
He let me go but took my hand and we were up the stairs
before I could blink.
We were in my dark bedroom before I could get my head
straight.
And then he was kissing me again, so I wasn’t thinking about
anything but that.
He might be hungry, but I was starving.
Starving for his warm skin and the touch of his hands.
Starving for his mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth,
dancing with mine. His lips on my neck. The crush of his arms around me.
Then my shirt was off. His shirt was off. He went after my
jeans. I went after his.
Both of us only in underwear, he leaned into me, and I fell
to my back on my bed, Darius on top of me.
Oh man, he felt good.
Even so, I rolled him to get more of him.
He rolled me to get more of me.
I squirmed under him to push down my panties.
He took over and whoosh! they were gone.
Nice.
I pushed at his boxers. “Now you.”
“Slow down, sweetheart,” he murmured, hand at my breast,
thumb and finger teasing my nipple, the sensations he created firing their way
all over my skin, his mouth was in my neck.
“Slow isn’t an option, Darius,” I told him.
His fingers stilled, his head came up, and he looked down at
me through the dark.
“You sure?” he asked, and I closed my eyes.
There he was.
That tender sweetness.
There was my Darius.
I knew it.
I knew he was in there.
I opened my eyes and put my hand to his cheek. “I’m sure,
honey.”
“I don’t have any condoms.”
I nearly started weeping.
I got an imagination.
A man who was getting some somewhere else, or open to it
should it happen, would carry condoms.
It was me for him.
And it was him for me.
I knew then, just like me, there was no one else.
“I love him with everything I am, and I’d never make another
choice, but I got pregnant at sixteen, baby,” I whispered, smiling so there’d
be no sting. “I’m on the pill even if I’m not active.”
He started to detach, murmuring, “This is a mistake.”
I grabbed on with everything at my disposal and held tight.
“This is meant to be,” I informed him of something I knew he
had to know. “I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Let me finish.”
He shut his mouth.
I smiled again. “You don’t buy a couch for a baby momma.”
“Sure you do,” he muttered.
“No, you didn’t hear me correctly. You don’t buy a
couch for a baby momma.”
Another eye flare, but after it happened, he said, “You’re
gonna regret this.”
“I can assure you, I…am…not.”
He hesitated a beat.
But he was Darius.
And I was me.
He didn’t leave.
He kissed me.
I pushed down his boxers.
Darius took over.
In everything.
Then he proved how vivid his imagination was.
And I was right.
I didn’t regret a damned thing.
I lay with my head on his chest.
Darius was on his back. He had his arm around me, his
fingers drawing random patterns on the small of my back.
We’d been silent after.
But now, when his fingers stopped and his muscles bunched, I
knew what he was doing.
“If you leave me, there are going to be problems,” I warned
the delightful bulge of his pec.
“Malia—”
I lifted my head and looked down at him. “Don’t leave.”
“Fuck,” he murmured, put his hand to my face, slid it back,
curled it around my head and pulled my forehead to his before he bit out, “Fuck.”
I wanted to jump off the bed and do a victory dance.
Because this meant he not only didn’t want to leave, he
wasn’t leaving.
We were so…totally…meant to be.
And seriously, he’d given me orgasms back in the day, but
usually with his mouth or fingers.
But the sync we just got into made the slow burn we’d
endured totally worth it.
And yeah, I knew what I was saying.
Six years’ wait.
Totally…
Worth it!
He relaxed his hand so I could pull back an inch, but just
an inch. He put enough pressure on I couldn’t get too far away.
“I don’t want him seeing me.”
And there was the splash of cold water at the end of my
victory lap.
“Why?” I whispered, not able to hide the hurt weighing down
that word.
He rolled us so I was on my back, he was pressed down my