“Aye, man, chill out with all of that.”
She let me go and backed up a few feet. Jermaine, Sandra, and Boobie were all calling out to Trina, and I felt a little bad. I didn’t want them to gang up on her. I smiled at her.
“It’s all good. Just…personal space, okay, boo?” She winked at me and crossed to the other side of the table where Sandra was waiting to grab her arm and whisper in her ear. My eyebrows shot up, and I looked at Jermaine who laughed and finally dropped down into the seat next to me.
He draped his arm across the back of my chair and leaned in until his lips were near my ear and his goatee tickled my neck.
“It looks like my cousin has a crush on you.”
I smirked at him and grabbed the nearest serving spoon, loading my plate with spaghetti then held my hand out for his. That was obvious.
“Of course she does; I’m cute as fuck.” He laughed and handed me his plate. “Plus, I’m witty and know how to dress for my shape.” I handed him back the plate and shrugged, fingering the utensils at my place setting and waiting for the other dish to make its way over to me. “I’m a catch, to be quite honest.”
Boobie passed the dish of breaded eggplant to Jermaine, and he spooned a couple of slices and the marinara sauce they were baked in onto my plate before doing the same to his own before passing the plate to Sabrina. Then he eyed me.
“Are you trying to get caught?”
I’d been watching the movement of the food around the table, waiting for the garlic bread to make its way to me, but my eyes shot up to Jermaine when he asked that question.
Was I?
Honestly, hell no. Being caught up was painful when the shit came to an end and besides…
I shook my head. “I’m still trapped in someone’s net.”
He nodded, seemingly unsurprised by my answer. “Fair enough.”
I bit into the eggplant to keep my mouth from asking a question of my own, and my eyes widened in delight.
“Ooh, this is really tasty!”
Tuning from the idle chatter around me, I dug into my food and didn’t come up for air until I heard my name called. By that time, my plate was almost clean. I glanced around until I saw Sabrina staring at me. There was a cloth napkin folded into a fan in front of my plate, I grabbed it and wiped my mouth before addressing Sabrina.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I just asked if you were a vegetarian as well.”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am. Why would you ask that?”
“Well, the boys said they saw you at that vegetarian restaurant a while back. And you just cleaned your plate faster than I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, that’s easy. I just enjoy good food.” I laughed. “Could you not tell by the size of my thighs? That’s ham hocks and collard greens all day.”
Sabrina’s eyebrows raised then she smiled. “Hawk, gon’ put another serving on this baby plate. She say she like good food. Give her what she like.”
I laughed then cocked my head. I looked at Jermaine. “Wait a minute, your mama calls you Hawk too?”
A slow smile spread across his face, but instead of answering me, he put more food on my plate. This time, the serving was smaller.
“Of course, I call him Hawk, I gave him that nickname!”
I looked at Sabrina in surprise. “Oh, I thought it was a celebrity thing.” At least, that was what Jermaine had said when he insisted that I call him by his first name. But I didn’t say all that.
“Oh no. People think we call him Hawk because of his last name, but I’ve been calling him that since he was a baby because he was always so quiet and observant. He used to watch everyone who came around us, and I started calling him ‘my little hawk’. It grew from there.”
As I often did, recently, I thought back to the other night at VR. I’d definitely been on the receiving end of his hawk-like observation. The way Jermaine had stared at me that night had been…unnerving. It wasn’t just the ogling of a man attracted; it was calculating, invasive, and weirdly possessive. So, yeah. I could see how his nickname came to be.
So, I mumbled a short, “Oh”, and forked more of the eggplant into my mouth. My eyes fluttered at the complexity of the flavors in the sauce. There was no way this marinara was anything but homemade. Sabrina started going down memory lane with her sister as I looked back down at my plate. More garlic bread appeared in my peripheral, and I nodded at Jermaine.
“Thanks, Jermaine.”
His lips twitched, but he said nothing.
I used the bread to sop up the last of the sauce on my plate and sighed. The meal was delicious, but now that it was gone and I could think clearly, I was a little sad. My belly was full from two plates of pasta and four slices of bread and although it wasn’t noticeable—due to the smart choice I’d made in attire—I was now bloated.
That meant no fucking.
Tragic.
I pushed away from the table and stood with my plate in hand, but Jermaine grabbed the plate away from me and sat it back on the table.
“I sure as hell ain’t letting you do dishes, too.”
I snorted. “Too? What else did I do?”
He ticked off his fingers. “Set the table, convinced my family to join in on what was supposed to be a romantic dinner for two,” he leaned in until his lips were, once again, near my ear and added, “flirt with Trina—”
I shrieked and slapped his arm. Damn. That arm was solid.
“I did not—”
“Y’all gon’ head with y’all date. We’ll take care of this here.”
I looked at Sabrina.
“Are you sure? It’s no problem to help.”
She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Yes, I’m sure. Now gon’. I won’t have Hawk mad at me ‘cause I held you up all night.”
“But—”
“Thanks, Mama. Goodnight, y’all.” Jermaine tossed a wave at his family, grabbed me by the hand, and led me in the opposite direction of the kitchen.
I chewed my bottom lip. This wasn’t supposed to be a date. I wasn’t supposed to be dating. Hell, I was still married!
Technically.
Legally.
At least until my lawyer called and told me otherwise. Even so, I’d had a really good time with is family. They were cool people and the food was delicious. I could easily tell myself that it wasn’t a date because his family was present, but everyone kept saying the word “date”. I stared at Jermaine’s back as he led me through his house.
No matter what I told myself about what was right and wrong, I couldn’t deny being here with Jermaine felt right in a way nothing had in a long time.
Chapter Eleven
Nedra
When a Massage Is a Massage Is a Massage
We traveled down a hallway that only had two doors, one on either side of the hall. He pushed open the door on the left and stood back so that I could enter before him. Closing the door behind him, he then pressed a few buttons on a panel on the wall. The whole room illuminated, and I heard the unmistakable sounds of bowling pins being lowered. I looked around and my mouth dropped open.
It looked like we were in a real bowling alley. The room was long and narrow and made up of two full-size lanes. Instead of the hard, plastic seats usually found at the bowling alley, each lane had plush leather couches for seating.
I looked up to see Jermaine watching me. That word “unnerving” floated around my head again. I swallowed the thought and smiled. “This is cool.”
He nodded. “Thank you. You ready to get swept?”
I laughed at his cockiness. Although, if I had a real-live bowling alley in my house, I’d play enough to be confident as fuck too. I shook my head and followed him to the rack of balls. To my surprise and delight, he had multiple sizes to choose from. “Well, you have an unfair advantage so, nah.”
He chose his ball, a big ass fourteen pounder that didn’t even look so big once it was in his hands and chuckled. “Is that what you’re gon’ tell yourself
when I win?”
“Shiiiit. If you win, that’ll be why. It won’t have anything to do with skill at all.” I was talking mad shit. I hadn’t bowled since I was sixteen-years-old, and I couldn’t even remember if a strike was a good thing or a bad thing. Regardless, I was determined not to assist in the stroking of his ego. And the easy banter with him turned me on something fierce.
“Oh, okay; well, let’s see then!”
We walked over to one of the two lanes and sat our balls on the ball return. He asked for my shoe size before disappearing behind a counter I hadn’t noticed, returning quickly with two pairs of classic bowling shoes dangling from his hand. I took the pair he handed me and smiled when I saw that the colorway was in the official Clutch colors. He keyed our names on the small screen in front of the ball return, and I slipped out of my tennis shoes and into the bowling shoes.
I stood up and started bouncing around like a boxer preparing for a fight, but when I glanced up at the screen hanging from the ceiling, I laughed. “Who is ‘G’?” Jermaine had input initials instead of our full names but, while the “J” was obviously for him, there was a “G” for me that didn’t make sense.
He sat down to change out his shoes. “That’s you.”
I opened my mouth to ask for a further explanation, but then I remembered how he called me ‘goddess’ earlier today on the phone. Is that what the ‘G’ was for? I wanted to ask but also didn’t want to know, so I said nothing. I grabbed my ball and walked over to the screen. “Am I first?” I looked back at him as I waited for my answer.
With a silent nod, he leaned back and spread both of his arms along the back of the couch. I bit my lip. Good lord, he was so big and sexy. His simple orange t-shirt stretched across his broad chest, complementing his mahogany skin and showcasing his firm pectorals and washboard abs. That milk dud of his was shiny and smooth and his thick thighs were nearly bursting through the denim of his fitted jeans.
He was fine and he knew it, and damn if I didn’t want to climb in his lap and put my pussy on his zipper.
Then, as if it could hear my thoughts, the aforementioned zipper started to rise and my heart tripped up as I watched a sizable lump form along his thigh. Whew, shit! Blue jeans don’t hide a damn thing. I needed to tear my eyes away from him and throw the ball down the lane, but I couldn’t. There was no doubt my lust for him was written all over my face.
“Nedra.” His voice was low and rough. My eyes flew from his lap to his face. “Are you going or coming?”
Was I going to roll the ball, or was I coming to get the pussy massage I was overdue for?
“I don’t know,” I whined. I was thinking too damn much.
He licked those full lips of his and my panties were ruined. I just needed to peel them off and slide them into my purse because they weren’t going to do me any good for the rest of the night.
“Why don’t you come over here and let me help you figure it out?”
There was something about a man who was down to help a woman in need. I wanted to let him help me. I just knew that he could extinguish the fire inside of me. No doubt about it. But then I imagined lying on my back with a belly full of Italian food and his big frame pressing against me. I could already feel the food moving back up my esophagus and just the thought of it made me sick. I’d be damned if I threw up for some dick, no matter how big and inviting it looked. With that image in mind, I shook my head and turned back to the lane.
I held the ball to my chest and tried to calm my nerves. A few soft inhalations and I felt more in control. I blew out a breath and moved toward the lane, dropping my arm and curling my wrist forward to release the ball. It rolled down the middle of the lane, and I threw my hands in the air in anticipation of a strike when it curved sharply and hit the gutter with a thunk.
“What the hell?!”
A bark of laughter sounded behind me, and I spun around quickly, glaring at Jermaine.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Hell yeah! You really thought you were doing something, had your hands all in the air like you were calling a damn field goal.”
I grinned—unable to refute that—and shrugged, walking back to the ball return. “I just knew I was about to knock something down.”
“Luckily, you get a second bowl.”
“Mmhm. I’m about to strike out all over this lane.” I ignored his unnecessarily loud guffaws and let loose my second bowl. The ball didn’t go in the gutter but somehow it managed to only know down one pin at the far end of the setup. I frowned.
“This is some bullshit.” With a disgusted huff, I trudged back to the couch and plopped down, leaving an entire seat cushion in between us for some semblance of space, and gave him a side-eye. It was his turn to bowl, and he hadn’t made a move to get off the couch.
He’d stopped laughing and—there it was!—that nerve-wracking gaze of his landed on me again. There was no way I was going to be able to endure this for too much longer. I twisted in my seat and gave him my full attention.
“Why are you always looking at me like that?”
He licked his lips and one corner of his mouth lifted. “My bad. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” In one smooth motion, he ran both of his hands over his head and down his face then stood up.
I pursed my lips, unsatisfied with his response. “That definitely wasn’t an answer to my question.”
He winked at me then scooped up his ball and tossed it down the lane. It was going so fast that it sounded like an explosion when it hit the pins, knocking them all down. When his ball resurfaced, he repeated the phenomenon then returned to his spot on the couch with a smug grin on his face.
“What was the question again?”
I lifted a brow but didn’t say a word. He laughed beckoned for me with his hand.
“C’mere.”
As if under a spell, I scooted toward him without hesitation. My butt had barely hit the cushion that was once in between us when he beckoned again.
“Come closer.”
He wasn’t asking me to do anything that I didn’t already want to do, but instead of scooting up underneath his arm like he wanted, I took it a step further. I came up on my knees, swung a thigh over his lap and straddled him. My dress rose to my hips as I sat down, finally putting my covered pussy on his zipper, and gripped the hem of his shirt with both hands. I didn’t lift it up, just held it there, anchoring myself as I felt the length of him grow under the heat of my center.
I dragged my gaze from where we were separated by denim and lace, up the length of his abdomen, and finally locked on to those chestnut colored eyes that were now heavily lidded with desire.
“Is this close enough?”
His hands found their way to the outside of my thighs and squeezed. “Closer,” he instructed.
I rolled my hips, grinding down against him, and leaned forward, draping my arms on the back of the couch on either side of his head. My forehead pressed against his and my lips hovered above his own.
I inhaled his scent. “What about now?”
“Uh uhn.” He bucked his hips, and I gasped at the unexpected action. My arms wrapped around his neck in an attempt to steady myself, and as my eyes leveled with his, I felt this inexplicable pull toward him. Before I knew it, we were kissing. I have no idea who moved first or even if there was a ‘first’ instead of a simultaneously fluid movement forward by the both of us.
His hands released my thighs and relocated to my waist as his pillow-soft lips devoured my own. He opened his mouth, and I responded in kind, allowing our tongues to meet and dance sensuously. I grabbed his hands and moved them to my ass, moaning when he began to massage my cheeks enthusiastically.
“Hold on,” he murmured in between kisses.
I locked my arms around his neck as he shifted on the couch and laid me down on the cushions, settling between my thighs. I heard warning bells go off in my head, but I shook my head to clear them and smiled up at Jermaine. When he bent down to continue kissing
me, the pressure on my belly caused my stomach to lurch. I sat up so fast we almost bumped heads.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
My hands cradled my stomach, and I whined petulantly, “I ate too much and now I’m too full for missionary!”
He sighed with relief and smirked at me. “You can always be on top.”
Oh, yeah. I grinned. “Lay back.”
When he complied, I once again straddled him. I placed my hands on his chest and mimicked riding him, rocking back and forth and hitting his pelvis with my ass. I felt slightly nauseous, and when I stopped moving, we both heard the liquid in my stomach sloshing around. My face fell and I moaned in frustration.
Jermaine laughed and sat up, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“It’s all good.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”
He chuckled. “Now, I know that next time I need to save dinner for an after-sex treat.”
I leaned back. “Why do you think there will be a ‘next time’?” I was bullshitting. There would absolutely be a next time. All he had to do was call my ass, and I’d be there like the Jackson 5, but I just wanted to see what he would say. He reached between us and his thumb expertly sought out my clit, swiping across it a couple of times—just enough to pull a moan out of me—before bringing the thick digit up to his mouth and licking off the essence of me that had soaked through my panties.
His gaze burned into me as he husked, “You know why, don’t you?”
I nodded, rendered speechless at his audacious move, even though I had just fake fucked him two minutes earlier.
“Do you want to finish the game?” He nodded toward the abandoned lanes, but I shook my head.
“I’m only in the mood for one thing right now, and unfortunately, I can’t have it.”
How the hell would I be able to concentrate on a damn game when all I wanted to do was ride him like a brand new bicycle on Christmas Day? Nah, it was best if I just moseyed my little self right back across the highway to my temporary home. I climbed out of his lap, pulling my dress back down over my ass and gathered my purse.
To Buy a Vow Page 16