Chapter Seven. Ember #2
What? She cares about fake shit like this. I don’t. I’m here under duress. As a matter of fact …
“For real, Michelle,” I say, leaning a shoulder against the wall, “if you have an issue with my presence here, take it up with your son. He demanded I attend. Why, I have no clue. Ask him,” I add, throwing Asad under the bus.
I wish Asad would come get his mother. My patience level with her runs somewhere between none and sewing lips shut to keep her from talking to me. But I get why she’s asking me. Asad would quickly tell her to mind her business. Still …
When is this engagement announcement going to happen so I can get the fuck up out of here? The delicious aroma of whatever food is being prepared tickles the air, but I’ll stop and get an Animal Style cheeseburger from In-N-Out if it means escaping this hell sooner.
“Kareem invited you?” She frowns, voice dripping with disbelief. “He would never.”
“And didn’t.” I sip more Macallan. “You have another son.”
Her mouth slackens, lips parted. Then fury tightens her features, and I swear, if she pops off, she got the right one. I was with all the bullshit and have no one to impress up in this bitch.
“You a fucking lie.”
I slowly smile.
“Not the Leimert Park coming out.”
“Bitch—”
“Michelle.” Asad appears behind her, his low, midnight voice rumbling with a silken menace that even his mother isn’t safe from.
She stiffens, her mouth snapping shut around whatever else abusive shit she’d been about to spit at me.
“The caterer needs to speak with you about what time to start serving dinner. She’s in the hall outside the kitchen. ”
His tone, threaded with I-will-show-the-fuck-out, has her giving an abrupt nod and turning to leave us … but not before pinning me with another hate-filled glare. As if that shit bothers me.
“If you came over here to reprimand me about getting into it with your mother, save it. She came for me,” I say, preempting him.
His gray eyes narrow on me, probably not appreciating me speaking out of turn like a bad little handmaid.
“Don’t assume you know what I’m thinking or about to do. Fuck that making-an-ass-out-of-you-and-me shit—it’s just you. Now, let’s try this again before you opened that big-ass mouth and pissed me off. What did Michelle come over here for?”
Well, damn.
He read me down, and my dumb ass kind of likes it. At least my pussy does from the way she’s pulsing and wetting up.
Jesus.
I feel like I need to give her a sermon on being careful what you wish for, but she’d probably just turn around and do some bald-headed ho shit like pray for Asad to lay hands.
Clearing my throat, I straighten from the wall and imperceptibly squeeze my thighs together, to try and extinguish the heat between them. But I forgot this is Asad I’m standing in front of—he misses nothing.
His silver gaze fixes on my face, gliding over my cheekbones and mouth in a damn near physical caress before moving to my dark blond hair that I wore in its natural curls in a thick halo around my face and brushing my shoulders.
I’m frozen under that hypnotic … molten stare as it drags down over another one of my signature pantsuits, lingering on the deep, French-lace-adorned V-neck of the black blazer, searing the bare flesh between my breasts.
That scrutiny continues down over the asymmetric bottom of the jacket and loiters on my thighs and the pussy cradled between them.
There’s no way he can see through the material of my high-waisted, flared pants to notice the moisture soaking my panties but, God, the way he’s staring …
I don’t know. And—fuck. Did my body not receive the message from my brain not to fidget?
The gleam of satisfaction, of damn victory in his eyes after they travel back up my oversensitive body and land on my face again, has my fingers clenching tighter around my glass.
“What I tell you about that, ma?” he murmurs in a voice low enough for only us to hear. “Ball that hand up, you better be prepared to throw it. That’s my last warning. Next time we’ll be moving furniture in here, but know that it’s gon’ end up with you bent over it. So tread careful, li’l baby.”
Ma. Li’l baby.
Endearments that should be exclusive for intimate partners, for lovers.
His voice wrapped around them, especially as he threatens me with fighting and fucking, shouldn’t have my breath coming in shallow pants. Shouldn’t have my skin heating like a Bunsen burner is lit underneath it. Or have electrical currents crackling from the nape of my neck to the soles of my feet.
No, none of this should be happening since the woman he’s currently fucking is no less than five feet away from us, chatting within a circle of male and female admirers but still casting not-so-subtle pointed looks in our direction.
The reminder dries me right on up.
The anger that had been simmering flares into flickering flames, evaporating the lust that had just seconds ago invaded my veins. Disgust and rage replaces it now.
Bastard.
Why invite me to this business dinner when you fully intended to parade your lover in the same space as your so-called fiancée?
It didn’t matter that the only two people who knew of the “engagement” were him and me; it was fucking humiliating.
And in this moment, I had a crystal clear vision of how any marriage to him would be.
From the time he left my apartment yesterday, I’ve actively avoided thinking about my imminent future. But I can’t avoid it anymore.
Side chicks out the ass while I would be expected to sit there like a good little Mafia wife and suck it up ’cause men would be men.
Fuck. That. Shit.
That had been my mother’s life. Michelle’s life. But fuck what Asad thought, it would never be mine.
“Answer me,” he demands. “What did Michelle want?”
“Same ol’, same ol’.” I wave off his question. Like he doesn’t know his mother. Shit, they cut from the same cloth. “I ain’t shit. I’m a lonely bitch. I’m not worthy of breathing the same rarefied air as everyone here. Blah blah blah.”
Raising my glass, I peer at him over the rim, and sipping my whiskey, I frown at the bolt of … something in his eyes. Couldn’t be anger; hell, he cosigned her bullshit from the time Marcus introduced him, his brother, and his mother to me.
“Funny thing though.” I pause, mimicking him and tilting my head.
“She wasn’t aware I was here at your invitation.
Not that I can blame her, considering you have your girlfriend and fiancée”—I damn near choke on that blasphemous word—“at the same dinner together. Still, I thought you two were besties. Don’t tell me you didn’t let your mother know of our intended nuptials.
” I hike an eyebrow. “Let me find out you’re ashamed of me already. ”
That something moves in his eyes again, and I stiffen, coils of disquiet and an unsettling … eagerness twisting low in my belly.
He chuckles, and the sound is raspy, and utterly absent of humor.
“We just had a conversation about assumptions and here you go. You claim you know me, and yet, it’s like you trying me on purpose, fully aware how I get down. Are you that desperate to see how much of a beating that pussy can take, ma?”
I mug him even though my heart beats between my legs. “You got me fu—”
“Hey, everything okay over here?” Kareem asks, standing next to me, his arm brushing my shoulder.
Asad and I had been so focused on each other, we hadn’t noticed his brother approaching us.
And while I was thankful for Kareem’s timely interruption, from the flattening of his full lips and flaring of his nostrils, Asad looks like he seconds from forgetting Kareem is his little brother.
His narrowed scrutiny lowers, momentarily fixing on where we touch before lifting to meet Kareem’s gaze.
“Does it look like it isn’t?” he asks, his voice calm. Too calm. Like the eye before a destructive, deadly storm.
Kareem’s either gloriously oblivious to the quiet warning his brother is issuing, or he’s just decided to ignore it. I can’t decide if that’s brave or foolish.
“It just seemed a little … intense. And some of our guests were beginning to notice.” Unlike the other men at the dinner party, Kareem opted for a beer, and he raises the dark brown bottle to his lips for a sip.
I admire that about him. He doesn’t give a fuck to be different, though he often gets the backside of his mother’s tongue for it.
Asad keeps his focus trained on his brother, but I surreptitiously glance around the room.
A couple of women brave enough to perch on those ornate, too-fragile-looking chairs.
Aryn and Michelle hovering in the doorway between the drawing and dining rooms. And sure enough, several pairs of eyes are focused on us—Naoki Sato, the Yakuza oyabun; Don Amato and his wife, Chelsea; Demarcus and Carter Williams; Michelle and Aryn.
The weight of their attention crawls across my skin like a battalion of ants in search of a picnic to ruin.
The fragrant scents I’d found so delicious just minutes earlier congeal in my stomach like a ball of old, greasy lard.
I barely keep the hand not clutching my glass restrained to my side and not rubbing over my arms. Exposed. I feel exposed.
Fuck.
I hate being the center of any attention.
Another reason to resent Asad.
Why couldn’t he leave me alone and bother his fuck buddy? She appears to love his attention. And dick. Can’t forget his dick.
“Like I give a fuck who’s noticing what. I didn’t invite them here to mind my business,” Asad coldly says.
“Oh.” Kareem glances between the two of us. “So you and Em have business?”
Shit. I rear back just a little. Questioning Asad? Is Kareem drunk?
I’m not God. I’m not protecting babies or drunks. If his brother goes for his throat, I’m not jumping in the way of a gotdamn thing. Kareem might be the lesser, kinder evil of his family but nothing I’m willing to sacrifice my body over.