Chapter 29
She could still feel him all over her body.
Every nip, lick, suck, throb while their bodies were connected transcended her to another level.
She hadn’t ever experienced anything like him.
Markus was a different beast, and what she’d stumbled into with him wasn’t something to be toyed with.
It was more than sex, more than her providing pleasure to someone else, and she got nothing in return but layers of pain and mental anguish. What she felt last night was freedom.
Freedom had her in the shower, standing under the hot water with nothing on her mind.
No weight on her body, no pain, no nightmares, no second-guessing herself, just peace.
When she woke up, Markus was still there.
Peacefully sleeping, his arm draped over her.
She eased out of his hold after minutes of staring at his face, softly tracing her fingers over his features.
Markus had her seeing sounds and hearing colors.
Sex before him was always violent and felt like a torturous chore.
He listened, paid attention, and, more importantly, granted her permission and space to be free. To come into herself.
Yeraya’s new album played softly in the background. Reign hummed along with the ballads of freedom, each note registering with her. So much so, a few tears slipped from her eyes as she pressed her hands against the stone slab of the shower.
“Please let this feeling last. Please let it be real,” Reign quietly sobbed into the stream of water. “Please, God, I’m begging you.”
“You supposed to be sleepin’,” Markus’ voice flooded her being over the music.
Reign popped her water-drenched face up from over the stream and found him in the door of the shower, the fog dancing around his body.
Reign pushed her wet hair out of her face and watched as he took off his pants and stepped into the steam with her.
Like clockwork, he wrapped his hands around her waist and welcomed the melt of her being against him. “Why you in here cryin’?”
“How long have you been in here?” Reign wiped her face and hummed. “Just watching me like a stalker.”
“Went downstairs to make your breakfast. You been in here for an hour. What’s going on?” he questioned.
She turned around to face him. “This feeling. I’m still reeling, and I didn’t know that was possible. And I’m trying not to psych myself out.”
“Psych yourself out? I just washed your laundry and changed the sheets. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“You say that, but I’m very aware of who you are when you leave me,” Reign spoke, attempting to turn around, but he held her still.
“Who am I?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“Markus…”
“Who am I? Not out there, but right in here, with you.”
“…Mine.”
“Then I ain’t fuckin’ leavin’ you. You understand what I’m telling you? You are free to feel that shit. I want you to. I want you free, baby. Who I am outside of these walls is who I need to be so I can ensure that whether you in here or out there, you’re good. So tell me again who I am.”
“You’re mine,” Reign spoke with confidence.
“And you mine. You know what that means?”
“That you’ll drop a body for me.”
“Every last one. Let me hear it.”
“I’m yours,” Reign said, her face leaning into the warmth of his palm on her cheek.
“What else, Speechless?”
She wrapped her arms around him tighter, letting her wet body press against his. “You’ll drop a body for me. And if I ever had to, I got you.”
“You trying to fill my head up? Activate that crazy shit in me?” he posed, his mouth lingering over hers.
“I don’t think I can further activate that,” Reign spoke with a soft giggle. “I’m just talking, you know, in case I decide to stop.”
“Nah, you can’t stop now, you were chanting my name,” he buzzed against her lips.
Reign draped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “You got to move so breakfast doesn’t get cold.”
“Says the woman trying to climb me,” Markus laughed against her lips, picking her up and moving her to the smoother wall of the shower. “You are breakfast. Food is on the nightstand, sheets are changed.”
Reign moaned and nipped her lip, his fingers slipping inside of her. So gentle and undoing, coaxing her to deepen their kiss.
“Can I feel you again?”
“Say please,” she mumbled.
“Please, baby? Got my big ass begging to be inside you. What type of shit is that?
“You like me. A lot.”
“I do. You do too. This shit wet.”
“I know, I can’t help it. Every time I think about you, this is what happens.”
“How long?”
“Since that kiss in the supply closet at the salon. You’ve woken something up inside of me that I didn’t know was there. Now, I can’t get enough of how good that feels,” she shared, nipping at his lips, breath hitching at the motion of his thumb massaging her bud.
“This is what safety feels like. You gon’ feel like this forever if I can help it.”
“I’d like that. Come inside,” she moaned.
Markus placed his fingers on her lips, letting her suck her juices from them as he inched inside of her. He shuddered. “Gahhdamnnn. This my shit.”
“It is,” she whined in his ear.
“And it’s real, aight?” he huskily breathed, navigating to the spot he found the night before.
She whimpered. “Okay. Please don’t. Stop. Don’t stop, Emilliano.”
“I won’t,” he groaned.
From the shower, the couple ended up back in bed. Reign’s hair was thrown into a messy ponytail while it dried, another one of Markus’ tops on her body. Lazily, she ate the fruit, eggs, bacon, and toast. Her leg draped over his as he frowned at his phone screen.
“What’s that look for?” Reign asked, knowing that this moment between them could end earlier than she anticipated.
“The mayor is dead,” Markus said.
Reign’s eyes shot open, and her core tightened. “D-do they know who did it?”
“They’re reporting a murder-suicide. Apparently, his wife was sleeping with a dealer. The dealer killed her, then him, and then turned the gun on himself.”
Reign’s eyes squinted. “You knew him? The dealer?”
“Yeah, had beef with that nigga. Street shit. But ion think he killed himself,” Markus shared.
“He was too selfish for that. If anything, the mayor walked in on him balls deep in his wife and shot them. Luciano probably busted back, hitting the mayor. And then his team made it look like that. Mayor Norman was a muhfucka.”
“Hell of a theory,” Reign spoke, settling back into the pillows, trying to ease her mind. Markus felt her shift, dropped his phone, and moved closer to her.
“What’s that?”
She popped one eye open. “What’s what?”
“That. You pickin’ up weight again,” he replied. “Talk to me.”
Reign pulled in a deep breath.
“There’s nothing you can tell me that’s going to make me withdraw from you. Nothing.”
Her eyes fluttered. She nervously chewed the inside of her lip. Her fingers fidgeted with the bottom of the black tee she wore. “You sure?”
He turned her face to his. “I am sure.”
“You know the rumors of the mayor having girls. Like delivered to him?”
Markus slowly nodded.
Her lip trembled.
“What you sayin, baby?” Markus asked, his eyes going dark as if he could revive Mayor Norman and kill him again.
“KC was my handler. I was supposed to be delivered and used, thrown out. But I ran. That’s how I met Nia. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I just ran. Because I knew that if he caught me, I was as good as dead.”
She wanted to tell him more, tell him about Javier, but the tears detoured her from the full truth.
Not that she couldn’t trust him with it.
But if she just got a piece of something real, she couldn’t let Markus run out and start a war that he couldn’t survive.
There was enough happening in the city around him.
She wouldn’t be the one to add more to that.
“Hey, hey,” Markus spoke, wiping her face. “That shit is over.”
“Markus, I-”
“It’s over, Reign. Runnin’, hidin’, and livin’ in fear. That’s done, okay? When you ready, you’ll tell me everything. Until then, know the shit is over.” He held her close to him. Her sobs morphed into quiet cries and then whimpers as she slept.
He lay there with her for hours, in and out of sleep. In and out of business. His mind was processing all the information he took in while wondering about the pieces of Reign’s puzzle. When she pulled her puffy eyes open, Markus was standing at the window, phone pressed to his ear.
“Auntie really wants dinner, or is this going to be an ambush?” Markus questioned to who Reign could only assume was Nia. “And don’t lie to me. I know Cyn is your little friend, but this is family shit and she needs to keep her nose, hands, feet, and whatever else the fuck out of it.”
She was right, he was talking to Nia. It was his tone.
When he spoke to Nia, there was sternness and the softness of a father.
While Nia could handle the sternness, Markus gave her gentleness disguised in his tone and in his banter with her.
Reign was learning that the people he held in high regard, he spoke to in a cadence that told them where they stood with him.
“How Aunt G gon’ demand me somewhere and not want to cook?” he asked. “Nia…just order the shit, I’ll get it on our way over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you hop off dick for a minute, you could do somethin’. Tell that nigga I can hear his ass breathin’…uh, don’t worry about what I’m doing. I’m grown.”
A laugh left his lips. “Nia…go to hell.”
He hung up, blew out a breath, and turned to see if Reign was still sleeping. He found her eyes and smirked. “I wake you up?”
Reign swayed her head. “No. Everything okay?”
Markus laughed bitterly. “Yes and no. The no, you don’t have to worry about. Just the yes.”
She sat up. “What’s the yes?”