Chapter 21
Two Months Later
The auction was held inside a converted mansion in Highland Park. Historic, tucked back from the main road, the kind of place built by old steel money and now used by new Black money with taste.
I wasn’t prepared for the atmosphere. This wasn’t a gallery. It wasn’t a fundraiser. It was a hush-toned playground for legacy building. Opulence behind closed doors. Every chandelier dripped, every wall spoke. Security was tight. Faces were familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
And Sanaa belonged there.
Simone, the woman who greeted us, wore her diamonds like they were grown on her collarbone. She kissed Sanaa’s cheeks and sized me up like I might break the furniture. “This your fiancé?” she asked.
“He’s dangerous,” Sanaa replied, tone flat, eyes gleaming.
Not wrong—not when it came to her.
Tonight, I played my part. Tailored black suit, shirt open at the throat, no tie. Beside her, I was the weapon to her precision.
And she wielded both.
We floated from room to room, bidders murmuring numbers that would’ve made my father cough. She raised her hand twice—once for a Yoruba abstract piece with deep red undertones, once for a mid-century Madonna reimagined in ebony and gold leaf.
“For Elijah,” she said. “He needs reverence close.”
Then a third—rough charcoal work on a canvas the color of smoke and bone. Fire scorched the edges. I didn’t ask who it was for. She didn’t offer.
We drifted to a quiet lounge off the mezzanine, all low light and velvet that swallowed sound.
She moved through it like a private song—glass catching the light, silhouette backlit by the windows—soaked in that soft money-and-art glow.
I slid behind her and watched the curve of her neck as she breathed.
Everything about her looked owned and owning.
“You own this,” I said.
She let the rim of the glass rest against her lip and looked over her shoulder, slow and endless. “Tonight, we own each other.”
Before we could leave, Smoke stepped out of shadow as if the room had been folded over him. Butch was a slab behind him, arms folded, eyes like cut stone.
“Tariq Hunt,” Smoke said, the air shifting with the words. “Sanaa. It’s done. The heat, the hit, the men who thought they could test me through you—gone. You’re clear.”
“And if it loops back?” I asked, not because I doubted him but because saying it aloud steadied something inside.
“It won’t.” He stepped close enough I could smell the expensive dark on him. “You’ve earned your peace, son. Don’t waste it.”
Then he was gone. Smoke didn’t exit a room like other men. He evaporated.
I looked around, spooked a bit by how he could come and go like some kind of vampire, but dealing with him, I knew digging into the answer would only disrupt the one thing we had now: peace.
Sanaa’s smile softened when the space settled again.
She pulled my hand and guided me down a hallway I hadn’t even noticed—carpet thick underfoot, doors half-shadowed.
She stopped in front of one slightly ajar, pushed it open, and we slipped inside.
The room was a half-curated vault: canvases stacked, sculptures propped, dust motes moving like little planets.
She locked the door with a soft click and turned to me.
“I want you,” she said, close enough that I felt the heat from her body.
“You have me,” I answered.
“No.” She stepped forward until our chests touched. “Now.”
The slit of her dress revealed the slick promise at her thigh. She pressed me to the wall—no hesitation—mouth finding mine hard and hungry. Her hands found the button of my trousers like she’d been rehearsing this assault in private, and then she dropped to her knees.
She didn’t look away. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine, “I need to taste you.”
Warm and wet and holy, she took me in. Her mouth was everything: slow at first, learning the exact pressure that pushed me over the edge of reason, then deliberate—circles, suction, a hollowing that made my knees want to buckle.
I braced my palm against the wall, one hand at the nape of her neck, holding and yielding at once.
“Fuck—Sanaa,” I breathed, and she answered me with a sound that vibrated straight into my bones.
When she stood, I didn’t waste a second.
I grabbed her hips, turned her so the settee was low behind her, and lifted one leg, settling her against the cushion.
I slid into her in one long, claiming thrust—slow enough to let the world rewrite itself around the sensation, hard enough to mark a line between then and now.
Her body folded over the settee, hands braced on the wall, and I found a rhythm that was half worship, half ownership.
My hips drove, steady and sure; her breath came ragged, punctuated by cries that carried like the clink of glass.
She met every stroke, driving her jiggling ass back, grinding into me when I pulled out, then pressing harder when I filled her again.
“You know how to make me come undone, woman,” I grunted between thrusts.
“It’s only fair,” she gasped, her voice hoarse and bright.
I changed the angle with a twist of my hips, fingers splayed across the small of her back to anchor her to me, and she screamed my name as I hit that place that made her eyes go white.
The velvet under her knees slid; the light caught the sweat at the nape of her neck.
When she clenched, I felt it through my core—hot, fierce, absolute—and it wrecked me.
“I can’t wait to marry you.”
“I’m already yours.”