Chapter 19 #4
“You don’t need to know that.”
“Yes, I do. This is reciprocal, remember?”
He swallows. “A dude named Jay… from Gulfport.”
“The girl from your kitchen didn’t do it this time?”
He shakes his head, studying my pert nipple. “Nah. She too busy flashing me right now. Good thing my eyes ain’t swollen shut tonight, huh?”
“Right. If they were, I’d have to find Jay from Gulfport and beat him up for ruining your inaugural post-birthday gift.” I laugh, tilting my head and trying to picture Rich ducking a punch from Jay, but all I see are his heavy red eyes.
He chuckles then slurs, “Man, that nigga hit me so hard I saw—”
“Double?”
He smirks, nodding.
I smile grimly. “Yeah, the worst is when everything goes—”
“Black,” he finishes my sentence. “And you think you might be blind until you pinch your eyes shut for a good two seconds and open them back up—”
“And everything rushes back to you all at once, and you get dizzy.”
We laugh together.
We laugh so hard that I pinch my eyes shut and take the biggest deep breath I’ve taken since I came home.
When I open my eyes, his shoulders stop bouncing, and his laugh simmers into a quiet chuckle until the glimmer of amusement disappears from his eyes in a slow, hypnotizing way, and that russet color I love turns coal black.
“You know I’m gon’ kill him, right?” he asks, smiling.
Kill?
I belt out another laugh because good weed made me forget that Tony and AJ had turned that word into something else for me. It’s funny now—like one of those silly words you giggle at as soon as you say it. I wait for Rich to laugh at it too, but he doesn’t.
I snort. “Wha—Who’re you talking about? Kill? Kill who? Kill Jay?”
“AJ.”
Now I’m so high I think I’m hearing things that were never said—like AJ’s name coming out of Rich’s mouth.
“What did you say?” I ask.
He reaches out, gripping my neck again and pulling me toward him until my hot middle presses against his bare abdomen. “I said I’m gon’ kill AJ.”
“Wh…who told you his name?”
“You.” He tilts his head, finally reaching out and tugging my left bra strap down with his free hand.
My other breast pops out, but he keeps his eyes on mine.
“I…I never told you his name.”
“But you told me everything I needed to know to find it.”
“But…but you told me you wouldn’t do anything like that to anybody.”
He dips down, coming face to face with both nipples. He looks from them to me, and his eyebrows wrinkle.
“You said you wouldn’t do that—not in Beatrice’s backyard or at Lucky’s or anywhere.” I breathe out. “You said you would never kill anybody.”
I chase his hard, dark eyes, but they’re too preoccupied with my nipples.
“Rich…look at me.”
His eyes dart up and meet mine.
“You told me you wouldn’t do that… ever.”
“I won’t, baby. I’m just talkin shit. You know I wouldn’t do that. I know how you feel about that,” he coos out with an eerie saccharine smirk that makes me feel too good.
It’s the sexiest smirk I’ve ever seen on a man and that clusterfuck of emotions he usually helps me wade through gets all tangled up again.
“I don’t wanna argue,” he says. “What I tell you about arguing?”
“Tha…that you only like arguing over shit that matters.”
“And does AJ matter anymore?”
“No.”
My hands should be shaking as violently as they were the last time AJ told me what he’d do to me if I ever left him, but they’re not. So I scrape my broken fingernails against Rich’s wrist while I melt into the pressure he’s still putting on my throat.
Maybe it’s the weed that makes me lean forward into his hand? It’s the only reason I can justify still wanting a man who’s supposed to terrify me. Especially a man who’s like fire and ice existing as one.
My head lolls to the side, and he reaches behind me, pulling my bra’s band. “This for me?”
I nod with my mouth open. “Uh-huh.”
He smirks, stretching the band away from my back and leaning over me. “Wolford.”
He lets out a hum, then a chuckle that sounds as sexy as that smirk looked. “What that is, baby? Teach me.”
I close my eyes. “Lingerie.”
“That’s what you like?”
I nod. “I…I wore the ugliest bra the first time you saw me like this because I didn’t think you’d see it.”
“You didn’t think I would, or I wasn’t supposed to?”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
He laughs. “Why you care about silly stuff like lingerie, anyway? I liked that other bra too.”
I huff. “Because expensive lingerie makes me feel sexy…even with an ugly bruised rib that won’t heal.”
“Look at me.”
I peel one eye open, then the other until his chiseled face becomes clear.
“I can make you feel sexier than lingerie can. You know that?”
He pulls the band on the bra until it digs deep into my skin and rips. It falls to my waist like somebody took a bolt cutter to a pair of shackles that had been wrapped around my body and snipped them.
Right as I look down to survey what’s left of it, he leans forward and suckles my right nipple into his mouth.
“Ah…” I gasp. “Rich…wai…wait.”
An ugly mewl bursts from the back of my throat and makes him flick his tongue against my angry, puckered nipple.
“Oh my God…” I moan.
He leans over and does the same to the other neglected nipple. I feel the intricacies of every flick, suckle, and slurp, and I can’t do anything but squirm against his hand around my throat.
“Rich…” I whine, digging my nails into his skin.
He pulls away, letting his lips hover over my nipple, then eyeing my skirt, and his eyebrows dip in that way I’m obsessed with because there’s another question dancing at the seam of his lips.
“Just ask me whatever you’re thinking,” I whisper. “Do it.”
“What’d he do to make you feel sexy?”
“Nothing…absolutely nothing. He didn’t believe in doing that.”
He eyes my skirt again. “You mean he didn’t even eat your pussy, baby?”
“Never.”