Chapter 9 #2
My stomach turned cold. “No, I don’t.” I lied. I had to lie because this crazy ass man knew all of this dude business and I had no doubt that he’d hurt him.
“Then forget him. Because I don’t play about mine and the second he becomes a problem, he becomes a problem I handle. You get me?”
I heard him. I heard every word of it and I hated that he could say something like that and sound completely reasonable. He called me his and basically said he didn’t play about me. What the hell did that piss me off and turn me on at the same time.
“ShaNyla and River can be there,” he said. Moving on like he hadn’t just threatened somebody’s life. “Your girls. They can be part of the day. Whatever you need to arrange, we’ll make it happen. I want your day to be everything you ever dreamed of it being and I won’t spare the expense.”
Now, this is what scared me more than anything he’d said about Savion.
That he knew my friends names. Nyla and River.
My two closest friends in the world, the people I kept most protected from everything happening in my life — and he said their names like he’d been reading a file on me for years. I was side eyeing this nigga.
Here he is was, telling me to plan a damn wedding that I was mentally trying to escape.
“Seems like you know everything about me,” I said quietly.
“Enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do my research. You’ll soon learn that I’m a very thorough nigga.”
I looked at him for a long moment. All the exhaustion from the day was sitting on me heavy and I was tired of performing, tired of fighting and tired of trying to figure out the angle of this man.
“I don’t want this,” I said. Just straight.
No attitude. Just the truth. “I need you to know that. Whatever this looks like going forward, I don’t want it.
As a man, I want you to think about that.
You shouldn’t want a woman who’s vocally telling you that she doesn’t want to be your wife. ”
He looked at me for a long moment. And then something shifted in him. Just enough. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and for the first time since he walked into this room he looked at me like I was a person and not an object that he controlled.
“Your father is indebted to my family,” he said.
Straight. No dressing it up. “To keep his name, his reputation, and his secrets buried, he promised my father your hand in marriage. That’s what this is.
That’s the whole truth of it.” He held my gaze.
“I’m not a weird ass nigga. I’m not gone make your life a living hell on purpose.
As much as neither one of us wants this — and I mean that, because I’m just as forced into this as you are.
I’m going to make the best of it.” He paused.
“I can promise you financial stability. Protection. Whatever life you want to build, you’ll have the resources to build it.
Everything your heart wants, it’s yours.
” His voice stayed even the whole time. Like he’d thought about this before he walked in here.
“All you gotta do is stay out of my business, stay out of my way, and let this thing run its course.”
I stared at him. “That’s your pitch? You not selling me. I have my own financial stability and I didn’t need no damn protection until you and your goons snatched me the fuck up off my own property.”
“I honestly don’t care to sell to smart mouth ass shit. I’m simply telling you what’s the deal.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
“Likewise,” he said, without missing a beat.
I looked back toward the window. Held everything in my chest that I didn’t have room to let out right now. Then I looked back at him. “What are you going to do about what happened outside today?”
He stood up from the chair. Slow. And he stepped toward me and leaned down and pressed his lips to my forehead. Warm. Brief. Completely unbothered. Like he did it all the time. Like we were something we absolutely were not.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” he said quietly. “That’s grown man business, and if you never learn anything else about me, you need to know that I’m a grown ass man. That’s as good as handled.”
Then he straightened up, walked out and pulled the door closed behind him. When he adjusted his clothes, I couldn’t help but to see his print, and even on soft, that nigga was packing. Damn, I couldn’t believe I was thinking like that while I was kidnapped.
I tried to shake my thoughts of him off, and sat there. Towel still wrapped around me. His cologne still in the air. My forehead still warm where his mouth had been.
And between my thighs, without my permission, without any warning, without a single thing I could do about it—
My body had already decided what it thought about Kaseem Carter. I was wet as hell and it damn sure wasn’t still from the shower.
My mind was going to have to catch up later.
Ain’t no way I was attracted to this mean ass nigga.
As I sat there plotting my next move, I thought to myself that I needed to do something to get my damn privileges back.
Every week, I had somewhere that I needed to be on Fridays.
This was something important to me and I didn’t want to make a habit of not showing up.
Just as I was about to give up, I thought about how much Kaseem needed me and didn’t even know it.
Not saying the nigga was green, but since he was clearly using me, I was about to use him too. If I was gone he held hostage, the least I could do was leave the prison sometime. I knew exactly how I was about to win him over.
I put on a silk robe, and prepared to head to his room.