Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Afew minutes later, Jamie sat on the couch. On the floor, Brinton rested between Jamie’s spread thighs. She held the hair oil like a treasured artifact.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Hmm. If you’re asking if I have ever let a white man touch my hair like this, the answer is no.”
They both laughed at the culturally inclusive elephant in the room.
“This isn’t weird for me, you know. I’ve done it before,” Jamie said, taking the bottle from her hands.
Brinton cast him a sidelong glance.
“Is this some kind of weird Black lady kink?” she asked, a sugared sarcasm in her tone. “Do you lure unsuspecting, tender-headed women into your home and grease away their pain?”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t call it a kink. It’s more like crushing on women hopelessly out of my league. But that wouldn’t surprise you, would it?”
“I didn’t think the Heartbreak Prince had to work that hard.” She laughed, settling back between his legs.
Jamie sighed. He was ready to shuck off that persona once and for all.
“Before you came to Iris, Kendall and I would hook up sometimes. I thought I owed it to her, for hurting her. But I’m done with that. And after my new album comes out, I’m done with this Heartbreak Prince thing too. I guess I wanted you to know, since now we’re…”
“A thing?” she asked, still facing away from him.
“A very good thing,” he answered. He kissed her forehead.
She angled her body toward his. The caramel-gold flecks in her eyes glowed in the dimmed overhead lights.
“Jamie, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be someone you’d want. I’m, like, a regular-ass girl with more neuroses than Larry David. And you’re like—”
He clasped her shoulders with both hands.
“Honey, you’re everything I want. You got courage, even when you’re scared. You care about kindness, even when carrying your own weight. You got sense enough to know right from wrong, and you don’t waver. I want all of that. Brinton, I want you.”
Tipping her chin upward, he softly leaned his lips against hers. Tingly flashes of anticipation warmed his entire body as her tongue slowly looped around his.
She was the best fucking kiss of his life, and each time, it only got better.
Eventually, Brinton passed him a claw hair clip. “It’ll be easier if you go in small sections, starting from the bottom up.”
“Don’t worry, Bee. I got this,” he said, sectioning her hair like she asked. He squirted a rivulet of oil in the partings along her nape, then gently massaged it with his index finger.
“You got a bonnet or a scarf so I can tie it up later?”
Brinton giggled. “We’ll see if you unlock that level of Black Girl Magic after you’re done. Now, stop stalling and tell me why I’m crazy enough to let you do this.”
He couldn’t see her face but almost felt her smile, warm and insistent in his chest. It made him smile.
Brinton letting him care for her in such an intimate way was a big deal. He wanted to take care of her because he recognized the signs: she was healing.
Hopefully, in the same way he was.
“Growing up, I had the biggest crush on Cory’s sister, Callie,” Jamie began, still diligently working.
“She’s a year older. Of course, she wanted nothing to do with her kid brother’s scrawny little friend.
I was always at their house because my dad recorded most nights in Nashville.
But one day, after football practice, I walked past her room while she did her hair.
It was like this choreographed dance. She parted it with a long, skinny comb.
She dipped her fingers into this little pot of stuff that smelled like herbs and flowers and coconuts, then quickly rubbed it in.
Callie asked me to help part the back so she could put that herb stuff in, so I did.
She had cut off her straight hair and had all these soft curls.
Every so often, when Cory was late getting home, and I was bored, she’d let me part her hair or massage everything in while we watched Love & Basketball or re-runs of Living Single.
It felt nice to do that for her. Anyway, one night, a few weeks before she left for undergrad at Stanford, she took pity on me. ”
As he worked, Jamie laughed, thinking back to that simpler time. All it took was a stiff breeze to get him going.
With Brinton’s shoulders nudging his groin, not much had changed.
Jamie cleared his throat for good measure.
“You can’t leave me hanging,” Brinton whined. “What happened next?”
“She…let me touch her boob.”
“Excuse me?” Brinton shrieked.
He rolled his eyes and smiled. How was she this cute while giving him shit?
“Now, don’t get carried away. I was sixteen. Her clothes were on, and it was five seconds, max. She had on one of those oversized T-shirts. But I could tell she wasn’t wearing anything but cheer shorts underneath.”
In a bit of déjà vu, from his vantage point, he could see right down Brinton’s top. Her velvety skin and how her chest bounced when she laughed, talked, or breathed.
It’d be his undoing if he looked too long, so he forced his eyes back up and on the job. He cleared his throat again. A signal to his wild imagination to calm the fuck down.
They were taking it slow. It was his idea.
“It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Well, until now.” He bit his bottom lip, delighted to find her grinning up at him. “I think she caught me staring.”
“Oh my God—what did you do?”
“What do you think? I was wound up so tight that, right then and there, I busted in my shorts. Perfect timing for Cory to walk by. We were all mortified. He didn’t speak to me for a week.”
Brinton howled with laughter.
“Isn’t there an amendment to the bro code?” she asked once she regained her breath. “Something covering the consensual groping of a hot sibling’s titty?”
“Not in his book.” He laughed. “He still won’t let me sit near her at holiday parties. She’s a surgeon and married with three kids, by the way.”
Jamie spread his fingertips wide, then massaged the back of Brinton’s scalp in tight, slow circles.
“Oh,” Brinton breathed. When she swallowed a moan, the stifled sound sent a shot of molten heat straight to his crotch.
Not ideal, given her head was inches away.
“Good?” he asked, inching toward her crown.
“Mm-hmm,” she answered, practically hypnotized. “Shit…”
He circled her temples.
“Tell me what you want.” The urgency in his voice refused to be tamped down.
“Could you get my neck?” She tipped her head backward. When he hit the spot she liked, her eyes closed and lips parted on a gasp.
He moved down the buttery slopes of her shoulders, to her sculpted collarbone.
“Keep going,” she moaned.
“Shit, baby. You know I wanna, but—”
“I know. Just—please.”
Her boldness lured him into an intoxicating trance. Her shoulders dug into Jamie’s inner thighs. The friction felt so glorious, if not taunting him to release. His need was almost punishing as his erection throbbed. Another nudge and he’d go off like a shot gun, but he had to hold on.
He wanted to savor this.
Slowly, Jamie’s fingertips drifted down her chest, following the heavy curve of her breasts. Her back arched in invitation.
“Lemme hear you,” he rasped, shamelessly squeezing her breasts. “Show off for me.”
Brinton stopped trying to quiet those little noises that made him want to have her on the living room floor.
“There’s my sweet girl,” he murmured.
“I thought about you like this all day,” Brinton whispered. Her head lolled backward into his lap. He pressed her breasts together, fantasizing about how they’d feel if Brinton were bouncing in his lap instead.
“Me too, baby. And every day since you got here. Every damn night too. That’s why I came. I had to—”
His rumbling groan barreled through his chest.
“I had to touch you again. I want you in the worst fucking way.”
In a flash, Brinton turned her torso, then angled her head closer. Fingers wrapped around the back of his neck, she tugged Jamie down until their lips collided.
Her wet, supple tongue whipped around his, as if claiming him as hers. At the thought, tingles reverberated from Jamie’s scalp to his toes.
As they toppled onto the rug, Jamie’s broad body eclipsed hers.
Brinton was a panting mess. Much to her squealing delight, he pinned both wrists above her head.
Slinking down her throat, he sucked here and nipped there, until he reached those breasts he craved so intensely.
Brinton mewed each time his tongue flicked over her nipples.
He did it over and over again, until her flimsy camisole was soaked through.
He blew cool air over the twin splotches, enchanted as each tender peak pebbled beneath his lips.
Jamie sucked Brinton’s right nipple, long and hard. “You like when I worship you like this?”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yes or no, sweetheart? Tell me, or I’m gonna stop.”
“Yes, Jamie—I like it. I fucking like it.”
Her chest peeled from the floor. He latched one of his forearms across her ribs, grounding her.
“I wanna make you feel better than you ever have.” Gently, his teeth nipped her left nipple.
“More,” she said, practically vibrating.
He hissed, because he needed more too. His dick virtually screamed Fuck this glorious woman, you big idiot!
Jamie shifted to his knees, refocusing his efforts to her belly button, which poked out from her camisole’s lifted hem. His thumb dipped into the silken crevice. It looked perfectly ripe for his tongue. He made good on that calculation, fervently darting in and out in time with her feathery moans.
Legs clamped around his waist, Brinton writhed against Jamie’s aching erection. He watched their bodies notch perfectly into place, as if uniquely designed for each other. With every propulsive thrust, a heated jolt flared at the base of his spine. Fuck, it felt good.
“I love when you grind on me,” he whispered, eyes heavy with desire.