by Diana W.
“What... the hell was that?”
Rather than answer, Cornell closed the distance between them again, forcing Harley to brace herself. He stared at her with his usual hard expression, accompanied by a bite to his lower lip before dropping his dissecting gaze to her breasts. The view of her hardened nipples pushed against the material of her dress destroyed the minuscule drop of willpower he was fighting to hold onto.
“I need to touch you.” He was out of breath from the pent-up desire that needed to be managed. He hadn’t been to Madam Sinclair’s since he found out that Harley was Eden and it wasn’t due to a lack of time. He tried interacting with a different woman when the staff told him Eden was no longer employed there, but nothing felt the same. The phenomena he experienced with Harley couldn’t be duplicated or generically replaced.
Harley swallowed hard. Was that a statement or the request for permission? She wasn’t sure. Her mind swarmed with responses and decided a refusal would be best. She was playing a role in a place she didn’t want to be in and doing anything to jeopardize her freedom would be stupid on her part.
“Please.”
One knee at a time, Cornell knelt before her and looked up, finally succumbing to his addiction. He needed her to give him anything that resembled a yes, and he wouldn’t hold back. He couldn’t hold back.
Make him leave.
Harley’s brain was practically hoarse from screaming the simple action to herself. This entire scenario was crazy, and she was, too, if she continued to allow it.
Her gaze dropped to Cornell whose nose skirted up and down her thigh. She pretended to be unfazed by the tingle it sent to her core as if curiosity wasn’t currently dripping down her leg. Gianna was willing to lose everything over this man, and here he was, on his knees, requesting to ruin her life too. Her simple ass was actually contemplating letting him.
“No.” She slammed her eyes shut, afraid that if she opened them and continued to watch his mean but so very sexy ass at her feet, she’d fold. She had to hold onto her disdain for him. He was a horrible person and didn’t deserve anything but her knee to his groin. “You need to go.”
But he didn’t budge. Didn’t even attempt to.
“Harley.”
The delicate way he said her name made her eyes slip open, and that’s when she knew she fucked up. He stared at her as if he’d come to her altar to take communion.
“Don’t make me beg.” He kissed his way up the material covering her thigh, making her shudder. “I’m no good at it.”
At this point, Cornell was willing to place his ego in a perfectly wrapped box with an obnoxious bow and hand it over to her if she would just say yes. Every second she took to decide was a second he was deprived of being inside of her.
Harley's head rolled back as lust and power consumed her. The ironclad asshole was surrendering himself, just to have her body, and although she didn’t understand why, she wanted to experience what his hunger could do to her. She wanted to know if it would be as intense as her need for him right now.
“Ok.”
The two syllables fell from her lips in a soft whisper.
Cornell closed his eyes and took in a thankful breath. He wasn’t sure where to start, where to lick, or where to bite, but he needed to control himself or he’d ruin her.
He stood to his feet, taking in her flushed face and the vein in her neck pulsing at the same rate as his heart. He held her neck and trailed his tongue along that same vein, eliciting a traitorous moan.
“Turn around.” His voice was gruff as he discarded his tuxedo jacket to the ground.
Harley followed the directive, unsure of what to expect next. Would he be gentle? Did he like foreplay? Would he try some off-the-wall kinky shit that she wouldn’t be down with? Or hell, what if she enjoyed it too much and became addicted?
She felt her zipper slowly slide open down her back, finally relieving her body from confinement. She heard Cornell groan at the sight of her naked backside, and then she suddenly felt the warmth of his body cloaking her.
“You’ve been walking around all night without underwear.” His lips grazed her ear. The discovery infuriated him because he wondered how many other men knew it, too, like Jason’s lame ass, but his dick was even harder knowing he would be the one to blow her back out.
“I couldn’t.” She stopped to revel at the massaging grip he lavished upon her shoulders before sliding off the entire garment. “Not with this dress.”
Cornell took a small step back to view her exposed body from behind then unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.
“Do you think he knew?” He pulled himself from his briefs.
Harley wanted to ask which “he” he was referring to, but her anticipation was making her core ache distractingly.
Stroking himself, Cornell guided his length up and down between her thick butt cheeks that he squeezed and jiggled for his own pleasure. “I asked you a question.”
“Knew what?” Harley bit her lip and instinctively leaned forward, hoping to make him slip inside of her. “Who knew what?”
Cornell had to slightly bend his knees to achieve the right angle, but at the first feel of her wetness, he placed an anchoring hand on her shoulder and slowly eased his way fully in.
Harley winced, bordering on a whine. “Shit.” Her mouth suspended open, and she anchored her hands against the wall as her body allowed him in inch by inch.
“The man that you let kiss you.” He shifted her position completely upright, forcing her to balance on her toes and palming her lower stomach to keep her in place. He retracted slowly then pushed back in hard and deep, causing Harley to send a fighting slap to the wall. She was guilty of his accusation and knew Cornell was proving that he knew it too.
His long fingers worked their way down to her bare lips and with gentle massaging circles to her slickened pearl grinded in and out of her.
“Do you… think he knew you were walking around with no panties on?” Another forceful thrust reprimanded her like a lightning strike.
“I don’t know!” Harley almost cried, bouncing helplessly against him. She knew she was on the brink of losing her mind when she was about to apologize for being good at doing her job on top of not wanting a panty line.
“You think he wanted to fuck you like this?” Cornell picked up his pace and shook off the incoming orgasm. He fantasized for weeks about this moment and this feeling for too long to go out like a horny teenager watching his first porno. Harley felt every bit as good as she looked, smelled, and argued. To curb his threatening orgasm, he wrapped her hair around his hand and pulled her head back so he could slide his tongue up her glistening neck.
“Yes,” she gasped, snaking her hand up to hold Cornell’s head in place. Her neck had always been her weakness, and if he stayed there too long, she was going explode all over him.
Justin had propositioned her for sex after their perfect after-hours hangout and the kiss they shared, but she declined to keep the appearance of being hard to get. It was comical, considering she was giving it up like a hoe on the living room wall to a man she was certain she hated.
Giving her neck a temporary break, Cornell’s lips were back at her ear, enjoying the melody of her hisses and moans. “And you know why he can’t fuck you like this?” He stepped them both forward, sending a sting to Harley’s bricked nipples from contact with the cold wall.
“Uh uh.” She closed her eyes, on the verge of coming violently from the current spot he was drilling like a machine. “Tell me why,” she whined.
His response was to spread her cheeks wide open and go back to the slow, deep strokes that he knew would make him and her bust. “Because I’m tattooing my name in this muthafucka, and you want that shit, don’t you?”
“Oh, God!” Her legs began to shake. “Yes,” she could hardly breathe.
“Show me you do.”
Cornell could feel her grip on him tightening, and he knew what was coming next. Grunting in tune with wails from her convulsi
ng orgasm that he could feel gushing down his dick, Cornell delivered a final thrust that brought him off his heels and onto his toes. “Fuck!” he yelled to the ceiling as Harley continued to bounce up and down, increasing the load he was shooting off in her.
Cornell suddenly felt dizzy and placed his hand on the wall to steady himself while Harley rested her forehead on it, exhausted. Both were still breathing harshly. The post-orgasm euphoric cloud they were floating on was slowly dissipating, and a storm of awkwardness was creeping in to replace it.
Cornell gritted his teeth and withdrew from her. Without a word, he pulled his pants up from the ground, back to his waist, and made his way to the guest bathroom to get himself together.
Harley, who unexplainably felt more exposed and more vulnerable than she’d ever felt in her life, finally stepped out of the expensive dress that was pooled at her feet and headed to her room. She could feel the proof of Cornell’s invasion dripping down her leg, and she needed to get rid of the recklessness. She rushed to her bathroom and turned on the shower. When she went back into the bedroom to grab her robe hanging by her closet, she paused when she saw a fully dressed Cornell, standing in the doorway, giving her his signature dissecting gaze.
Harley quickly put on the robe and tightly wrapped it around her. She didn’t like the way she felt and hoped that he would say something to pacify her bruised ego. What the hell were they supposed to do now? Their dynamic wasn’t exactly normal.
“I’ll have Cyn drop an emergency contraceptive off to you in the morning.”
That’s it? she thought. He sounded robotic as if he was speaking about a finance report.
Harley had to act as if everything was all good, even though she couldn’t ward off how insignificant and cheap she suddenly felt. He was literally just at her feet, making her feel like ethereal, and just like that, she was back to being an employee. A temporary vice. No emotion. No discussion. Just another person he could bark an order to. This was her fault, though. She didn’t refuse him, which meant she had to swallow this fuck-up and keep it moving.
“No need to. I’ll get it and I’ll record myself opening it and taking it so you don’t think I’m operating like an ‘opportunistic gold digger’.” She didn’t leave room for a response and walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She discarded the robe and hurried into the steaming water, needing it to quickly wash away the tears pooling in her eyes.
CHAPTER 17
Mo hauled the heavy black vase overflowing with long-stemmed red roses into the front door of his house, along with the navy Chanel bowling bag he saw Mia eyeing a couple of weeks ago. He had been staying on the righteous path of fidelity since the Lex situation though he did indulge in a little harmless flirting here and there. Hell, he knew he couldn’t stop lusting over women, he just needed to be able to do it from afar without involving his dick, which was the equivalent of telling a fish to steer clear of water. Lately, he was going above and beyond to show Mia just how much she meant to him, whether it was sending her to the spa for massages or popping up with flowers like he was doing today. He took her not finding out about his most recent indiscretion as a sign that he needed to reprioritize and focus on their marriage. Mo was the only one in his family who had someone to go home to, and he took pride in that. Mia was his peace, the one thing in his life that he’d rightfully earned and that his dad couldn’t take away from him. She loved him despite all the baggage and flaws that accompanied him, and although he often took it for granted, he knew he couldn’t survive this life without her.
“Baby!”
He called out and placed the vase and purse down on the eight-seater mahogany table, quickly adjusting a few of the flowers for presentation purposes. He smelled pot roast, his favorite, and headed to the kitchen to see the love of his life that he’d been missing like crazy all day. Knowing her, she probably had her earbuds in, dancing around the entire kitchen and he, like a creep, was going to sit back and watch her. She was a buck thirty soaking wet, but the way she made her tiny body move to a beat was a form of sorcery. It’s what drew him to her in the first place. Well, that and the fact that she looked like a video vixen with those kissable, pouty lips.
He and his boys were at an off-campus party at a club in Atlanta, and there in the middle of the dance floor with her friends, was a little fireball in the tiniest pair of black shorts. She wasn’t engaging in that bend over and twerk kind of dancing either. Everything from her arm movements to her hip rolling was all calculated. She was smiling and seemed so carefree, and her rich, toned body was anything but a joke. Mo was so infatuated with her that before he knew it, he was in the middle of the dance floor, too, asking her to bust a quick move with him. She didn’t immediately say yes but instead smirked and asked him if he could keep up. He knew his mind was gone when she grabbed his hands and put them to her waist while she did a slow grind on his thigh. Over a drink at the bar, he learned that she was a dance major at Spelman with dreams of performing on Broadway and planned on moving to New York once she graduated.
Mo had never been in love before, at least nothing close to what he felt for Mia, and when she disclosed her virginity to him after a few weeks of dating, he became obsessed. Although he never gave up his slew of women, Mia was always his top priority, and he made sure that every person on every campus knew it. She was tested from time to time by a few of his former and wannabe sidepieces, but all that dance training made her light on her feet, and having two older brothers made her quick with a right hook.
Mo noticed that the pot roast on the stove was still smoking and went to search for her throughout the rest of the house.
“Mia.” He stopped at the entrance of their bedroom when he saw her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, flipping through a photo album.
She looked up and that’s when he saw the tears.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Concerned, he moved closer.
“Don’t you come anywhere near me,” she gritted through a sniffle.
Mo froze, his thoughts frantic. She was fine when he left to run errands that morning.
“You know,” her eyes went back down to the album filled with her dancing photos, “I used to close my eyes and imagine what it would feel like to win a Tony. While everybody else wanted to be in music videos or the Nutcracker, I just wanted that award in my hand because I knew I had what it took to win it.” Overcome by her thoughts, she held her mouth, hoping it would somehow stop the tears that were falling. “I gave up everything for you. And time after time after fucking time again, you make me hate myself for doing it.”
“Baby,” his voice cracked, “tell me what I did. Tell me how to fix it.” He held out his hands, wishing she would let him comfort her.
“Fix?!” she said as if the word were acid on her tongue. “You can’t fix whatever disease you have that won’t allow me to be enough for you.”
The daggers her words shot through his heart felt as if they were burning their way out of his body. He didn’t know how, but he knew she knew about Alexis. “That’s not true.” He was on the brink of tears. “I love you more than my own life, I swear. You know that Mia.”
“Stop lying to me!” His deceitful voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and Mia pulled on her hair, further disheveling her usually perfect asymmetrical bob. “You wanna swear on something then swear on the baby I can’t seem to have because I’m too busy running behind you and the bitches you keep fucking! Swear on that!” She threw the album at him, narrowly missing his head.
Mia’s inability to get pregnant, on top of Mo’s cheating, was slowly eating away at her soul. Every time she stepped in front of a mirror, it was getting harder to stomach the sight of the woman she allowed herself to become. She was no longer full of dreams and fight but complacency with being a wife who would never have her husband’s full attention, not even when she was drowning in depression.
“I need to be away from you.” She was doing her best to stand up confidently althoug
h she felt as if someone had drained every ounce of energy from her body.
“No, Mia.” Mo fell to his knees, struggling to breathe. “Please don’t do this. We can do counseling or anything you want, just don't leave.”
They had done this dance so many times before that Mia knew how he would react; from what he would say to exactly how he would say it. She was so tired of the lies he loved to dress up in diamonds and designer clothes to soothe everything wrong between them.
“I need time for myself, Morris, and if you love me as much as you claim to, that’s the least you can do for me.”
Her own calmness surprised her as she went for the duffle bag on their bed that was packed the minute she read the contents of the unmarked envelope someone had left at their front door. It was one thing to know that he was cheating but another for it to reach the point of a court case. She could hardly stomach reading the woman’s accusations, even if she didn’t believe their validity.
Mo wiped the tears from his cheek as he watched Mia pick up her things. She wasn’t screaming or trying to fight him, and that made this time feel different.
“Where will you be?” he asked solemnly.
She shifted the bag on her shoulder and walked past him. “Somewhere trying to figure out if there’s a next step for us.” Mia gave him a lingering look of disappointment and descended the helical staircase of their home, making sure to grab her car keys on the way out.
She climbed into her two-seater Benz, started the engine, and powered off her phone. If she didn’t, Mo was going to bombard her with texts and calls that she didn’t want. When she pulled off and out of the sub-division, she was struggling to hold it together. Part of her wanted to head straight to Atlanta to be with her family, but the therapeutic drive would be in vain once she had to face the invasive questions and countless I-told-you-so’s she knew would be waiting. Choosing to marry Mo over pursuing her aspirations never went over well with her parents nor her brothers. They wouldn’t miss the opportunity to rub it in her face, and she didn’t need that on top of the hell she was currently going through.