Chapter 11 #2
She clamped her teeth together, desperately trying to keep herself quiet, but I wasn't letting her off that easy.
I adjusted my grip on her ass before pulling her back down against me, creating a slow, agonizing friction.
I could feel her fighting it. I wanted to fuck her so bad it was making my teeth grind, fighting everything in me to keep a shred of restraint while I teased the absolute shit out of both of us.
The wicked friction was running us both ragged, a sick game of chicken where nobody was winning.
Her hips started to twitch, her defenses fracturing as she stopped resisting, chasing the very pressure that was ruining her.
“Who am I?”
“Big Daddy,” she said finally, the words slipping out quietly.
My fingers dug deeper into her flesh as she bit her lip. “You still love Big Daddy?”
“Yesss.” It dragged out way longer than she had planned. We both knew she just told on herself.
“Then act like it,” I growled, my hand sliding up to grip the back of her neck, pinning her face close to the door. “Before I clear this office out and have you looking real unprofessional in front of your patients.”
She let out that desperate, broken sound I loved so much and defeatedly pressed her forehead flat against the cold surface of the door.
“Okay,” she breathed in defeat. “Okay.”
I kissed her ear, reached past her and unlocked the door. It swung open as I took a step back. She walked away, straightening her coat, recollecting every bit of the doctor she had been before I showed up. I leaned on the doorframe and watched her go.
“She know better,” I said quietly.
She called another Doctor over, but I didn’t stick around to hear the conversation. She was annoyed and trying not to show how much. I let her have that. I followed at my own pace, took the stairs while she waited on the elevator, and beat her to the parking lot.
I was leaning against the driver’s side when she came through the door.
She stopped when she saw me, shifted the tote on her shoulder. I held my hand out for her bags.
She handed them over. It was reluctant, but she handed them over.
I took them and walked around the car while she stood there. I ran my eyes along the body panel, checking the paint, the trim, the wheels. Hm. She kept her graduation gift clean after all this time. I didn’t see a scratch, a door ding, nothing.
“When was the last time you got an oil change?”
She shrugged, pulling her keys out.
I shook my head and loaded her bags into the trunk. We got in, she pulled out of the space, and I watched the city start moving past the window while she navigated toward the exit. It was quiet for a few minutes. She was coming down from being angry and didn’t want to admit it yet.
Then, she said, “Thank you… For the car, Bane.”
I nodded, eyes still on the window.
“Anything for my wife.”
She cut her eyes at me.
“Don’t start that shit.”
I let the corner of my mouth do what it wanted to do, and watched the city go by.
She gripped the steering wheel while the streets rolled past the windshield in a blur. Every few minutes, I caught her looking at me from the corner of her eye. She thought she was slick with it.
She wasn't.
I turned my head, letting my dark eyes lock onto hers. Our eyes met for a second before she immediately snapped her gaze back to the asphalt.
I smirked, leaning back in the leather seat. "There it is."
"There what is?"
"You staring."
"I was not staring."
"Mm."
"I wasn't."
“You sure you wanna get fucked with all that unresolved trauma?”
She almost stopped the car.
“I’m not fucking you.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever again.”
"You can pretend all you want in front of these people. I’ll fuck you right on this hood, doctor or not… Don't test my patience.”
“Bane, please. It’s not even like that… you just.. don’t look the same. It’s not bad, it's just shocking.”
“Oh… I’ve been trying to do better.”
“It looks like more than an attempt.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Truth was, I understood her confusion when she walked in. I didn’t blame her for the way her eyes moved over me, I did the same thing. Our chemistry was so dangerous, we couldn't look at each other for too long.
Last time she saw me I was pushing three hundred pounds easy. My shoulders alone looked like they had been designed to stop traffic on the highway. Back then that was the only thing I had going for me, everything else in my life was barely holding together at the seams.
When I got the chance to change, I changed the way I cared for myself.
I glanced around the neat interior, my eyes settling on the dashboard. Suddenly, the view faded, and I was somewhere else.
I found myself at a red light downtown. It was one of those intersections where the city stacked billboards high enough to compete with the skyline.
I looked up through my windshield and saw her face staring down at me.
That bright smile was surrounded by her bold school colors, larger than life and twice as beautiful.
She really graduated medical school. Every late night, every doubt she had ever whispered out loud when she thought no one was really listening, she had fought through all of it, and the whole city got to see it before I did.
She hadn’t called me, but after what I did I didn’t expect her to. Our silence by then was the kind that follows a blow up bad enough to leave no road back. But her parents made sure her face hung above traffic for every stranger in the city to look up at.
I sat at that light and looked at her for a long time, and the only thought that moved through me was that she deserved something worthy of her.
She had told me once that she never wanted anything loud, never wanted the kind of luxury that announced itself or invited strangers to stare.
She was a Daddy’s girl through and through, and that man had put some real things in her spirit. She used to tell me that anybody who needed to show off what they had was really just begging strangers to validate it, and she had never begged anybody for anything a day in her life.
A week later I bought this exact car. I had it dropped off at her apartment mailbox with a card that said nothing except what the keys already communicated.
The only reason she knew it was from me was because I texted her a week later asking if she received her gift and she said yes, and that was the end of the conversation.
I owed her more than just gratitude for what she did for me. She pulled into the underground parking deck of her high-rise. Neither one of us said a word on the elevator ride up to her floor.
The condo looked exactly how I expected it to look; perfect, immaculate, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. The kind of space that had been decorated to impress rather than to be lived in.
Lauren disappeared into the bedroom without looking back, and within seconds I could hear the drawers opening and closets sliding and heavy designer luggage hitting the floor. She was moving through something emotionally by staying physically busy.
I walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out over the harbor.
I let her have a few minutes before I followed her in.
She was pulling things off hangers when I found her. I watched her move around the room with that restless energy she got when she didn’t want to feel whatever she was feeling.
“Pack for a week or two,” I said. “We’ll get the rest handled after.”
She stopped moving. Then, she looked at me with squinted eyes, letting me know she was two seconds from saying something that was going to make this take longer than it needed to.
“Bane —”
“As your husband,” I said, “it’s my job to look out for you. And I think this city has done what it was supposed to do for you. It served its purpose. But you’ve been running, Lauren, and I think you know that.”
She set the blouse she was holding down on the bed. “Running from who exactly.”
“From me.”
She laughed then. “I don’t have any reason to run from you.”
“Then prove it.”
“What I’m not going to do,” she said, turning back toward the closet, “is move back to Atlanta just because. That’s not happening.”
I pushed off the doorframe. The way I moved made her turn back around to face me because she knew better than to have her back to me.
“Repeat it back to me,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
She held my gaze for a moment. Then she exhaled slowly through her nose.
“I’m packing a bag for a week,” she said, “and we’ll discuss everything else later.”
“That’s my babygirl.” I said it quietly.
She rolled her eyes but I caught the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.
“Are you pent up?” I asked.
She cut her eyes at me. “I just had sex a week ago so not really.”
“Aye, I don’t need to hear all that.”
Her smirk broke out when I frowned. I noticed the storm of emotion in her eyes before she looked away.
“You want to shut your mind off for a little while?” I asked.
She bit her lip and leaned into me. She considered it instead of deflecting, which told me more than her words were going to.
“Maybe later, yeah.”
I nodded. She would come to me when she was ready and I would be there when she did.
“You want to tell your boyfriend goodbye before we leave?”
She picked a pair of shoes up off the floor and set them in the suitcase. “I don’t want to talk to that nigga.”
“Okay,” I said.
I walked back to the window and let her pack in peace.
My phone buzzed against my thigh. I pulled it out just in time.
I answered immediately with a hushed tone.
“Hey, son.”
“Hey, Dad. What are you up to?”
“My business.”
He smacked his teeth.
"You settled in?"
"Yeah,"
"You got your whole room situated?"
"Already unpacked, Dad."
I nodded to the empty glass window. "Good."
"You eat yet?"
"Yes."
"You sure?"
"Dad."
"Did you eat?" I repeated, my tone tightening.
He let out a dramatic sigh. "Yes, I ate. I promise."
"Good… Made any friends yet?”
“They got a mixer for the engineer majors tonight so we’ll see.”