Chapter 11
Big Bane
I couldn’t stop watching her mouth when she spoke. This woman had never once in her life said something she didn’t mean, and I was standing there losing my entire mind over it.
Lauren was articulate and poised in a way that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with just being exactly who she was, settled so completely into herself.
She knew her worth the way some people know their own address and that alone had my chest on fire before she even looked directly at me.
When she shifted her weight as she was trying to question me, I saw all of her. I had been keeping my mouth on a leash since the moment she walked in.
But the more she talked and looked into my eyes, I snapped clean in half.
This woman wasn’t playing fair and I don’t think she understood what she was doing to me. Baby was so thick, I ain’t understand how those pants were holding together. She had filled out everywhere over the years.
That belly. Lord have mercy that belly. She kept trying to stand in a way that minimized it like I wasn’t standing right here losing my mind because of it. She had been eating good and living well. Her body was showing every bit of that.
Her brown skin was glowing under these lights, and she needed to stop looking at me like that. She was just standing in that white coat, just looking so fucking fine. I wonder if I licked her face, would she be mad.
She knew she looked good as hell.
Yeah, I fucked up by staying away. Who told her to come to work lookin’ like this?
Lauren loved my eyes on her, even if she looked annoyed. She was a brat who loved the attention. I could tell by the little lift at the corner of her mouth when she caught me looking at her body.
Every instinct I had was telling me to drag her to her car and remind her she was a whole married woman.
This woman was everything to me. She had always been beautiful but she had grown into it in a way that was almost unreasonable. Every curve she carried she carried without apology, and that confidence sitting on top of all of it had me gone.
I could talk about Lauren Bankole-D’Amore all damn day.
I had been with women, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
But this woman had always existed in a completely separate category from anyone else, and standing here looking at her years later I understood that nothing had changed.
She was mine, she had always been mine, and I was running out of reasons to argue with it.
“You know you looking at me mighty hard,” she said, not quite meeting my eyes.
“I know,” I said. “I’m not planning to stop.”
In Nigeria, we say a woman like that is ?cha n’ime.
It means clean on the inside, a woman whose beauty runs all the way down to the soul.
The kind of woman your mother recognizes before you ever get the introduction out of your mouth.
If my mother was still alive, she would’ve looked at her, and went straight to the kitchen to start cooking. That would have been the whole answer.
I had no business being here, and I knew it. But you know what, fuck doing the right thing. No one was waiting for me at home, I ain’t have to explain myself to nobody.
But, standing in front of her, I felt like I owed the whole world an apology for how badly I wanted her. My desire for Lauren had no logic, I went stupid dumb about her.
She called me, and that did it for me.
I had been picturing her the way I remembered her — those soft, wild curls I used to press my face into like they were the only place in the world I could breathe right.
But she walked up in here with her hair sleek and laid against her shoulders, and somehow that was worse.
It meant she had made a choice, she had gotten dressed knowing I was coming, and she had decided to do that to me on purpose.
Watch her get fucked on purpose. Just watch.
She was built for me in ways I couldn’t explain out loud without sounding like a man who had lost his damn mind.
My mind kept drifting back to that night she sat her fine ass on my dick with her back turned to me, handling me without pulling away.
She had all fucking night, and she didn't rush a single stroke.
She took her sweet ass time, sliding up and down my rod until I was about to send her all the money I had.
Then she started talking crazy to me, whispering all kinds of sweet shit over her shoulder about how much she loved taking me, telling me how good it felt to feel me throbbing deep inside her pussy.
The way she was talking put a different kind of battery in my back, making my ego spike through the fucking roof.
She was fucking me so good, I didn't even try to hijack to take over.
I swallowed her groans, and held onto her frame while she worked that wet, tight grip, breaking me down on her own terms. When she finally collapsed, I didn't let her move.
I kept myself buried in her heat, wrapping my arms around all that soft body.
I stayed right there, breathing her in like a fucking addict, refusing to give my woman back to the world.
The real world was waiting outside that bedroom door, but right then, I was ready to let the whole world vanish before I let her go.
That was my baby, through and through.
She looked up at me over those glasses, and those dark green eyes found mine.
Was it pathetic that I had dropped everything the moment she called, that I had been on call for this woman like some lovesick boy?
Maybe.
Probably.
But I had made myself a promise the last time I saw her, if she ever found her way back, I wasn’t letting go. I had meant every word of it.
"Wrap up what you need to wrap up. Then we leaving."
"And if I say no?"
"You not gone say no."
I booked her flight home before she walked in the room. My woman was hurting so every other thing on this earth could wait its fucking turn.
Lauren finally pushed herself up and grabbed her folder up off the floor.
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
She put space between us, going near the counter. “I absolutely do. You can’t just — Bane, I have a life. I have patients, I have a whole system, you can’t just expect me to drop everything because you decided to try and come and save me when I told you not to bring your ass down—”
I lifted her on the counter and she shut right up. Then I leaned down, bringing my face level with hers.
“Who the fuck you getting loud with, huh?”
“Bane.”
“Don’t bring that brat shit out if you don’t wanna to be screaming in this room.” My voice was low because I ain’t need volume to make a point. “You know how I get down.”
Her jaw clenched.
“You don’t run nothing but your mouth,” she said.
I reached up and grabbed the back of her hair, tilting her face up toward mine so she had no choice but to look me dead in my eyes.
“Run that shit by me again,” I said.
Her mouth opened then closed. Those eyes were doing that thing where they couldn’t decide between frustration and something else. Her chest rose and a little faster than it had been sixty seconds ago. She could stay mad and turned on at the same damn time, but act like neither one was happening.
“I said,” she started, her voice lower now, trying to hold onto whatever ground she thought she still had, “that you can’t just —”
“Laurie,” I said. “I already did.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she let out a slow breath through her nose.
I kissed her before she could respond.
I felt the moment she stopped fighting it. I felt her lips press back against mine, her hand coming up and grabbing the front of my shirt. I let that last long enough for her to lean in, and then I pulled back and let her go.
I left her sitting on that counter with her lips parted.
I picked her things off the floor and held it out to her.
“Bring yo’ ass,” I said. “Big Bane don’t like saying things twice.”
She stared at me for a second. Then she snatched her folder and clipboard, slid off the counter, and smoothed her coat down.
“Who you fuckin’ talking to?”
“You don’t put no fear in me and you really trying it. If we being for real, you not even my man.” Then she whipped that hair in my face.
Yeah, I was done with the attitude. She must’ve forgot.
Before she could get her hand on that door handle I closed the distance between us and pinned her against the door with my body. She was not going anywhere until I was finished.
I brought my hand across her backside, hard enough to make the point. She gasped against the wood and tried to wiggle out of my grip, but it only made me tighten it.
I got close to her ear.
“Stop that shit.” My voice came out low. “You wanna keep talking slick or you want me to call your boss and tell her you’re leaving?”
She went still against the door.
“I’ll handle it myself,” I said.
“No, I’ll do it.”
“When?”
“Right now.” I pressed into her from behind and kept it there so she could feel exactly what she had done to me and exactly where this was headed if she didn’t get herself together. I put my lips right at her ear and stayed there because I wanted her to hear every word up close.
She pressed back into me like her body made the decision before her mind could object.
“I should tear you up right now,” I said into her ear, “but you can’t cum quiet to save your life so I’m doing you a favor today.”
She was shaking against the door trying to hold it together.
“Who am I to you?” I said.
She swallowed hard. “Big Bane.”
“Nah.” I pressed closer. “Say the other one.”
She whined. “Please don’t do this right now Bane —”
“Say it and I might let you walk out of here with your dignity.”
“I’m not doing this with you.”
I dug my fingers deep into the cheek of her ass before I yanked her back until her tailbone slammed right into my pelvis. She felt my dick throbbing against her.
“You ain't forgot how this shit go,” I growled.