Mr. Right Now, page 6
“I didn’t put it like that.”
“That’s what you meant.”
I couldn’t deny that. “Cat, Jake said he only wants to be my friend.”
“Ohhhhh, he wants to be free to fuck other people?”
“No! And would you stop using that word? It’s giving me a headache.”
“Negro, pleeeze. You use it all the time.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Geez.”
“Anyway, you told me you saw each other yesterday and you’ve made plans for the weekend together, and he wants to fuck other people? That’s bullshit. It’s not like you fu—uh, went to bed with him once and he never called after that.”
“I don’t think he wants to sleep with other people. But even if I disregard the tiny matter of the friend thing, I can’t get around that he’s not for me. He’s not Christian for chrissakes.” I shredded a napkin to bits.
“Oh, he’s Jewish?”
“No, he’s not Jewish. I don’t know what he is. He studies sorcery.”
“What? Is that like a Quaker?”
“It’s like a magician.”
“Oh, sorcery. I didn’t hear you right.” Cat laid her fork down in the empty plastic tray and regarded me. “Is it the David Copperfield or Houdini kind, or the sort where you have to sacrifice chickens to Satan and shit like that?”
“I think the chicken sort.”
“Sheeeit.”
That meant that Cat was near speechless and it took a lot to render Cat speechless. “Even if I disregarded that, he’d still never believe I love him or love me back because he thinks he’s under some magic curse that makes everybody irresistibly sexually attracted to him.”
Cat picked up her can of Diet Pepsi. “Nuts, huh? That’s too bad.” Then she perked up. “But there’s plenty of medication nowadays that works wonders—”
“Cat!”
“Okay, okay. I get it now.” Her face fell. “I was really hoping that you’d stepped out.”
“With my mother, you know I don’t deal well with crazy. You know what Grandma told me?”
“Nope, what?”
“That I’m in danger of losing my marbles too when I turn twenty-seven. Worse, she’s apparently lost some marbles already. She told me that she sees the future and my mother hears the voices of dead people.”
“Like that boy in Sixth Sense?”
“No, he saw dead people.”
“Is your grandmother doing all right otherwise? No change in her ability to do stuff?”
“Not that I can tell and I’ve been looking.”
“She may not be all that crazy then. Maybe she’s right. You hear about that shit all the time.” Cat lowered her voice. “Don’t tell anybody, but I went to a psychic once.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “You paid money? Was it worth it?”
“Every penny. This chick at work turned me on to it. That psychic knew some stuff about me that nobody could possibly know and she told me not to marry Darryl. Dammit to hell that I didn’t pay any attention to her.”
“I guess I gotta wait and see what happens on my twenty-seventh birthday. Maybe I’ll grow horns.”
There was a knock at the door. “It’s me and Allen,” Danni called. “Let me in.”
“Hey, Aunt Luby,” Allen said as soon as I opened the door. “Can I go into your room and watch MudDog Rangers? Mom said I could if I asked.”
I grinned at him and ruffled his mop of burnished brown curls. “Want some milk and cookies?”
“Sure!” he said.
“No, you don’t. You just were out and had a huge dinner. You can have something later,” Danni said.
“Sorry,” I said to her after Allen had left the room and loud noises were emanating from the television in my bedroom.
“That’s all right, but he cleaned his plate and had chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. I swear, I don’t know where he puts it. What have you been up to, stranger? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you,” Danni said.
I’d been dreading this moment. But Danni was my girl, I had to lay it out for her. “I’ve been seeing Jake,” I said.
Cat chuckled as she returned from the kitchen and set her stack of chocolate chip cookies and large glass of milk on the coffee table.
“You lucky bitch,” Danni said. She sat in a chair and tucked her feet under her. “Now, give us all the details on that luscious race-mixing jungle bunny lovin’ you got going on.”
I grinned. She was taking my copping her stud-to-be rather well. “Who’s a jungle bunny?” I asked, mock-outraged.
“You are, darling,” Cat drawled. “I never thought you had it in you, to be honest. Goodness, was it my good influence? I do believe that I feel proud.”
“Me too,” Danni said. “You haven’t gotten any since time out of mind, but when you break out, I gotta say, you do it in style.”
“Y ’all need to quit,” I said, getting embarrassed.
“Details, details,” Cat said. “Is he as hot as he looks?”
A smile curved my lips. “Oh, yes.”
“I think I’m jealous,” Cat said.
“Girl, what’s wrong with your neck?” Danni said, getting up and approaching me on the couch. She squatted down and sucked air through her teeth. “Damn, it looks like you let a pit bull gnaw on your neck like it was a bone.”
“It’s not that bad. He gets a little carried away in the neck area, that’s all.”
Danni was scrutinizing the area, tilting my head. “That’s more than a little carried away. He’s broken the skin in several places.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Get a mirror and see for yourself. It’s around the back, so you wouldn’t be able to see from the front easily. He actually bit your neck? Shit, Luby, that’s freaky.”
Cat moved in and looked at the back of my neck, squinting. “I see only one little puncture.”
Little puncture? I reached back and tried to feel it. Danni slapped my hand away. “Don’t. You’ll infect it. See the lacerated areas,” she said to Cat. “Do you have any Betadine? I’ll clean it up.”
I headed to the bathroom. “I’m going to get a mirror,” I said. There was no way Jake bit through the skin of my neck.
Allen was lying on my bed, engrossed in his television show. I retrieved a hand mirror from my dresser and headed for the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I turned around and examined the back of my neck with the hand mirror. I flinched inside at the extent of the bruising. I didn’t bruise easily. I peered closer. Okay, there could be a puncture wound, but that was ludicrous. It was likely a bug bite. My bruised neck was probably feast central for Kansas City, Missouri, mosquitoes.
I moved to my medicine cabinet to get some hydrogen peroxide to clean my neck, but then hesitated. Instead I studied the pattern of bruises carefully.
Allen looked up at me as I came from the bathroom. I smiled at him briefly and went to my chest of drawers to get a bandanna. I tied it jauntily around my neck and returned to the living room. Cat and Danni were talking quietly.
I returned to my seat. Their gazes went straight to the bandanna at my neck.
“It could be a bug bite,” I said. “I’m going over to his place for dinner. I’ll talk to him then.”
Both Cat and Danni still looked too worried.
“He’s good to me, y’all. He’s passionate in bed. It’s cool. Really.”
Cat stood. “I’d better get. With Darryl gone tonight, I planned to go to the gym and get in some primo DVD and novel reading down time.”
“Did you talk to Darryl?” I asked.
She didn’t meet my eyes. “Not yet, but I will.” She regarded Danni. “Darryl always has good things to say about you. If I weren’t so damned secure, or if I gave a damn, I’d be jealous. He’s the sort of man you need to be hooking up with, instead of no-good dawgs like Marcus.”
Danni said nothing, her facial expression shuttered.
“You heard from Marcus?” I asked. Here they were worrying about me when Cat’s marriage was disintegrating and Danni was out of a car and in the middle of cutting loose the thug who caused her to lose it.
“Nope.” Danni said. “My brother let me use one of his cars temporarily. What’s killing me is that I’m going to have to pay all this money to get my car out of impound when they finally decide to release it—and the car payments don’t stop.”
“If you pressed charges against Marcus, insurance would help you out.”
Danni gave a tight shake of her head. If she got back with Marcus ... I thought of Allen and a rush of anger flew through me. “Danni, do you remember that you have a son in there? A black son who needs a decent role model? He doesn’t need to be exposed to no-working, crime-dependent thugs.”
“Amen to that,” Cat added.
“I know.” She looked out my window. “Marcus is history. It’s that ... I don’t do well without a man around. And that’s the sort of men who seem to like me.”
“Bullshit,” Cat said, surprising me. “All sorts of men hit on you, decent men. You offer yourself up on a silver platter to—”
“You know the deal,” Danni said flatly to Cat, her normally light and pleasant voice gone dead and harsh.
I was astonished to see Cat pull back. “Yeah, I guess I do,” she said. “But it’s a damn shame.”
“C’mon Allen, we’re going,” Danni called.
“You don’t have to leave,” I said.
“Yes, I do. And you be careful, girl. Don’t let some good dick mess you up.” Her face looked weary and defeated. “You don’t want to be like me.”
Cat reached out and hugged her. Danni leaned against her for a moment soaking up the affection and support. Then Allen came out of my room and a moment later they were gone.
I frowned. Cat may know the deal with Danni, but I sure didn’t. My hand crept up to my neck. Be careful, she’d said. That was one thing I always tried to do.
My eyes widened in surprise as Jake let me into his apartment. What had been an empty space with only a sleeping bag on the floor had been transformed. Carpet that looked like the pelts of some black furred beast covered the floor. He had furnished the living room with a black leather couch and two matching oversized chairs and ottomans. One wall was covered with a large picture of a beautiful nude woman with black hair, her head thrown back in abandon. It looked old. I moved closer, and saw it was an oil painting on canvas that wasn’t a reproduction. Then I drew in a sharp breath when I saw the dark substance she was lying in on the white-tiled floor ... it was blood? In an instant a charming, baroque painting was transformed into something rather sinister.
“Do you like it?” Jake said, near my ear. He handed me a glass and I sipped it without looking at the contents. It was a martini, sophisticated, dry and perfect. Too much like him.
I nodded at his question.
“It’s my grandmother, several greats removed, an original painted by my great-plus grandfather. Their story is very romantic,” he said.
“Is that blood she’s lying in?” The question slipped out.
“It could be, I suppose. But don’t worry; she lived to a very old age.” He sipped his own drink. “My family tends to be long-lived.”
I tore my gaze away from the portrait on the wall and looked over at the opposite wall with its large screen plasma television and state-of-the-art stereo system he’d somehow purchased and installed in this short time.
“You’ve been busy,” I said. The aroma from the kitchen made my stomach growl audibly. “And it smells delicious in here.”
“Not as delicious as you look,” he said. His green eyes caressed my body, along with the rough silk embrace of his voice. My mouth dried at his unmistakable meaning. “I want to show you something. Come with me.”
He moved to the second bedroom, that he’d apparently transformed into an office. A large desk stood against the wall with a computer and a large flat screen monitor on it. Jake must have dropped thousands and thousands of dollars in a few days on all this.
There was something covered with a white sheet in the room. He drew me toward it and pulled away the sheet with a flourish. I gasped. There was an easel with a portrait of me on it. A me I barely recognized. My hair flowed over my shoulders like a woolen black cloud, my eyes were large and luminous, and my lips a cupid’s bow made for kissing. Did I really look like that?
But it was my body that caught my breath in my throat. He portrayed me as a brown satin Venus, all curves and feminine hollows—a body made for loving.
“Do you like it? I’m not finished yet.” There was a touch of anxiety in his voice that made him even more appealing if such a thing were possible.
I felt as if he’d punched me in the stomach—that was how overwhelmed I was at this tangible evidence of his regard for me. “Is that how you see me?” I asked in wonder.
He gathered me to him. “That’s exactly how you are,” he said and his lips finally caught mine.
I surrendered without a whimper, being only friends and personal ads forgotten. Our tongues mingled and his smoky cinnamon taste and scent washed over me. His kisses were tender, almost worshipful, and in no way friend-like.
“We’ll fill our stomachs first. The night is young,” he said as he raised his head, his voice hoarse.
I heard him with regret because I was juice-soaked and ready to receive him inside me. I’d never imagined a man’s kiss could be as potent as making love with a lesser man. My empty stomach seemed unimportant in comparison to my sharp desire for Jake to fill the more intimate place.
But I pulled myself together and asked, “What did you cook?”
“I hope you like lamb,” he said.
“I love it.”
He served me a sumptuous meal of braised lamb chops with a clever sauce, sublime stuffed mushrooms, and tiny new potatoes. My heart flipped over. The man could cook like a god. Was this true love or what? The way to my heart wasn’t only via my nether region.
“We have a tradition in my family. It’s a little odd, but it would please me if you’d acquiesce.” Jake sounded hesitant. Surely the man knew by now if he asked me to stand on my head and wave my legs in the air, I’d be bending over right now?
He uncorked a bottle of red wine. I know nothing about wine, but it looked expensive. “It’s a special toast,” he said. “Sealed by blood.”
I didn’t hear him right. “What?”
He poured two glasses of wine and picked up a knife. I focused on its sharp point. He didn’t say what I thought I heard, did he?
“Sealed by blood,” he said and raised the knife.
I have too much sista in me for my feet not to fail me on occasions such as this, so I was halfway to the door when I noticed that he’d pricked his finger with the knife.
I stopped my headlong flight.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s a strange custom, but not harmful.”
He dropped a fat drop of blood into my glass of wine, then lifted it and held it out to me.
He had to be kidding. I moved slowly back to the table and took the glass from his hand. I peered into its depths. There was no trace of his blood, only swirling liquid depths of red wine. “We wear condoms to protect ourselves against disease transmitted by bodily fluids, and you want me to drink your blood?”
“The alcohol in the wine would kill any fragile microorganisms such as HIV.”
I frowned, remembering that I’d read somewhere that the hepatitis virus wasn’t all that fragile and alcohol didn’t touch it.
“Please,” he said. “I’m disease free, I promise. And it means a lot to me. Sort of as if you’re my blood sister.”
Being any sort of sister to him would be awfully incestuous, but I raised the glass to my lips. Under some potent spell he wound around me, I couldn’t refuse him anything. The wine ran down my throat like red velvet. It hit my stomach and brain at the same time with an instant buzz.
He refilled my glass. We picked up our utensils and ate. The food was good. It was as if I were high. The food was almost as good as sex. Every sense I had was heightened, and if it wasn’t insane, I’d swear that a faint haze of red overlaid everything.
I’d cleaned my plate and the wine bottle was empty. I barely knew how it happened.
Jake pushed his plate aside and circled to my side of the table, holding out his hand to help me up. I got to my feet, feeling more satiated than I ever had before.
“You’re mine,” he said, tones of undeniable triumph ringing in his voice. I swayed into his arms. Did he have any doubt?
He waved his hands and music floated around us. I wondered how he did that trick and meant to ask him about it, but my mind seemed filled with cotton clouds. Nothing was definite; reality wavered as if edged in red.
Inner alarms were ringing, but I chose not to heed them as he moved my body to the richly textured classical sounds.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and dropped into a red mist of slow, passion-drugged bloodwine kisses. I lost myself.
We tugged away each other’s clothes as we stumbled to the bedroom, evaporating the annoying obstacles between our skins.
Skin against skin, honey dipped in chocolate. Jake circled my nipple with his lips and sucked, gently pulling. I groaned as he pulled the heat up from my pussy. I pulled his head closer and arched my body, grinding my clit against his hard dick.
He moved his head to my other nipple and circled it with his tongue before he gave it another hard suck, while his hands worked my panties off. Ah, so good.
He lifted me and we fell on his bed, without missing a beat in the grind. I pulled him free from his briefs. His penis sprang out hard with a drop of pre-cum on the swollen tip. I circled it with my thumb, loving this part of him.
He growled and pushed me back on the bed, kneeling between my legs.
I drew in a sharp breath as Jake moved his head between my legs. I wanted to close them and draw away, embarrassed, but he didn’t let me.
“You’re lovely,” he said. And his tongue worked magic. Damn. It was as good as my showerhead. No. Much, much better.
Thought fled from pure sensation as my fingers grasped and pulled at the sheets and my head tossed from side to side. My throat worked, emitting whimpers as the syrupy heat grew from my clit and filled my entire body. If he stopped what he was doing I would die.
