“Take your time,” Natasha pleaded. With her strong legs around his waist, she continued to measure his tempo, constricting him to slow him down.
“I’m trying,” he whined as he struggled to control himself.
“You can do it. You can do it,” Natasha repeated, feeling the sweet heat of pleasure.
“I love you, baby. I love youuu,” Brandon moaned into her twisted face.
Natasha giggled and felt herself convulse. “I know,” she moaned back to him. “You feel good, Brandon. So good.”
Brandon could no longer control himself, and Natasha didn’t want him to. “O-kay, o-kay, o-kayeee,” Natasha moaned as her body clamped down.
Brandon could feel her tremor. It was the best he ever had. They had a deep physical and emotional connection. Natasha meant the world to him, and he wanted more than anything to impress her. So he dug in deep, arched his back for leverage and swam his body into hers and began to vibrate between her legs.
“Oh, Bran-don, Bran-don, Bran-donnnn …”
Natasha’s body locked on him a second time as Brandon found himself losing control. It was the strongest anticipation he had ever felt in his young life.
“I love youuu,” he moaned.
“I love you too. I love you toooo,” Natasha moaned back and kissed his lips roughly while stroking his hair. She could feel all of him as he felt all of her for eighty seconds of eternity.
Brandon breathed heavily when it was over and fell facedown into the damp pillow beside Natasha. He was exhausted. “Wow,” he mumbled into the pillow.
Natasha giggled. “Was it what you expected?”
“Was it ever! Yeaaah,” he moaned breathlessly.
Natasha leaned over and kissed his head. “For me too.”
>>>
Brandon’s roommate had headed home to Long Island that Friday to spend a weekend with his family. He didn’t remember to text Brandon about it until after midnight.
“Talk about a perfect night,” Brandon said with a smile after receiving the text.
Natasha leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Are you sure you didn’t tell your roommate to go home?”
Brandon smirked. “Nope. I wasn’t even sure you were coming to New York by yourself.”
“I told you I would.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna start making plans to have you over. I was just happy to see you tonight.”
“And now you got to see all of me.”
“Yeah,” Brandon gushed. His smile was infectious. And Natasha’s body was to die for.
She giggled and squeezed his ribs. “Now we can sleep all morning and do brunch tomorrow.”
“Whatever you wanna do is fine with me,” Brandon said. “But can I ask you a question?”
Natasha paused. “What?”
“Are you my girlfriend now?”
She laughed hard. “Yes,” she told him. And she leaned up and over to kiss his lips.
Brandon kissed her back and continued to smile. “That’s so awesome.”
FINAL PREPARATIONS
WITH LESS THAN two weeks to go before their big event, the guys worked on the final details of the show, including model rehearsals. So Leon organized a walkthrough at one of NYU’s small stage auditoriums. Brandon and Simba watched it all from the audience with Natasha and Jinni, while Adrienne decided to model with eleven other girls onstage.
“So, you want us to walk out with a box of sneakers, open the box, show off the shoes and then walk back off?” Fei Yen asked Leon. Her voice and face registered skepticism, as if she thought the idea was corny.
While standing onstage with Fei and the other models as an audience of college supporters watched them, Leon answered, “Yeah, but you don’t walk off too fast. You have to show the shoe from different angles first. You know, walk to the left and right with it. Shake your hips and dance to the music. Do the whole model thing.”
Right after Leon explained it all, Jacqueline Fernandez grabbed a box of their practice shoes. She did a model walk to center stage, placed the box on the floor, took out one shoe to present to the crowd, walked it to the right end of the stage and froze, walked it back to the left and froze again, then she returned to the center where she presented the shoe a fourth time before placing it back in the box and walking offstage with it.
The audience was impressed and started clapping and cheering immediately. Jacqueline rocked it on her first take!
“It’s that simple,” she told Fei Yen and the other models.
Leon nodded, agreeing with her. “Yeah, that’s basically it. Just do what she just did.”
However, Fei Yen didn’t appreciate being shown up like that. She eyed Jacqueline with envy and mumbled, “Smart-ass bitch.”
“What?” Jacqueline said. “It’s not my fault you don’t know how to model. You’re not a model.”
“Bitch, you’re not a model either. You’re fresh out of high school, thinking you’re a somebody,” Fei Yen snapped at her.
“You don’t know me and what I’ve done,” Jacqueline argued.
“Yeah, but I know who you fucked,” Fei Yen spat.
Brandon and Simba looked at Leon from their seats in the auditorium. They were embarrassed by the whole scene.
Oh, man! Simba thought and looked at Jinni, who covered her mouth in horror.
The next thing Leon knew, he was in the middle of a shoving match.
“Bitch, I will kick your ass! I don’t care where you’re from,” Fei Yen yelled and pointed as Leon held her back. “Fuck the Bronx!” she shouted.
A dark-brown model from Trinidad, with long silky hair and skin as smooth as chocolate satin, responded instantly, “Wait a minute. Don’t even go there.”
An East Indian model stood in between them on Fei Yen’s side.
“Oh, so you’re down with her?” the Trinidadian model said.
“I just don’t want her to get jumped,” the East Indian responded.
“Please. Nobody has to jump her,” Jacqueline stated.
Sides were being chosen from five New York City boroughs with racial divides. Brandon and Simba were then forced to rush onstage to stop it before things got out of hand. Natasha and Jinni were right behind them to calm everyone down. And Fei Yen got so unruly that Leon had to pull her completely out of the auditorium and into the backstage hallway.
“What is wrong with you?” Leon barked at her in private.
“I know you’re fucking her! I’m not stupid, you know,” Fei Yen barked back.
Leon said, “Look, I’m not your man. We’re just cool.”
“Yeah, you say that now after I sucked your dick!” she shouted.
Jinni walked out right in the middle of it and shook her head. She pulled her friend aside and said, “Fei Yen, you are really making a spectacle of yourself.”
“I don’t care. Fuck him!” she spat. “Just get my shit from stage.” And she stormed off and left the building.
Jinni turned and glared at Leon.
“What?” he asked, feeling guilty.
“Whatever,” Jinni snapped and headed back to the auditorium.
Before Leon could follow her back in, Brandon and Simba walked out to stop him.
“What’s going on, man? You’re screwing all of the models?” Brandon asked his friend.
Leon denied it. “Nah, man, just like, four of them. But not all of them.”
Simba started laughing. “Man, that’s nearly half,” he commented.
“You can’t do that, man. What if they start fighting onstage at our event because of you?”
“They’re not gonna do that,” Leon argued.
“You don’t know that,” Brandon insisted.
“Well, even if they did, that would make us more popular,” Leon joked.
“I don’t wanna be popular like that, man. So leave the fucking models alone! Or least until after the show,” Brandon snapped. “So Fei Yen is out, and you need to kick out someone else. We’re going back down to ten.�
��
“Well, let’s kick out Adrienne then,” Leon suggested. “You know we can’t kick out Jacqueline.”
“Why, because you’re fucking her?” Brandon assumed. “Come on, Leon, get it together. This is our business, man.”
It was getting close to showtime, and Brandon was anxious as it was. Uncle Paul had still not found a new basketball team to join overseas, and they had a lot of money riding on their first sneaker event. So Brandon was nearly tapped out.
“This is not a game, man. This is serious. We’re gonna have a lot of people coming out to this thing—important people, and we need to get it right.”
“It will be right,” Leon promised. “Just calm down, man. I got this,” he boasted.
Brandon eyed his friend’s new hairstyle of thick, dark curls and assumed that Leon was getting full of himself.
The two friends stared each other down before budging.
“What?” Leon asked him. “I’m single, man. So you guys can do the lockdown thing, and I’ll do what I do.”
Simba shook his head and mumbled, “That’s pathetic.”
“No, it’s pathetic that you have a girlfriend in college talking that no-sex-until-marriage stuff. That’s what’s pathetic,” Leon snapped.
Brandon looked at Simba in surprise. It was news to him. He had assumed—with all of the time they spent together—that Simba had been intimate with his new girlfriend.
“She really said that?” Brandon asked Simba.
“I mean, she might change her mind,” Simba commented with a shrug.
Leon chuckled. “Yeah, just don’t hold your breath waiting, because if she doesn’t have a reason to change her mind, she won’t.”
Brandon shook his head. “That’s your business, Simba. We don’t have to know about that at all. And as long as you love her and respect her then … whatever.”
Leon laughed again. “Yeah, and invite us to the wedding in four years.”
“Whatever, man. At least we care enough about each other not to cause a scene.”
“Yeah, because nobody wants to see a G-rated movie,” Leon joked. “That’s for toddlers who don’t even know what’s going on. They’re just happy to see big colors on the screen.”
Brandon smiled. That only got Leon going.
“I mean, come on, Brandon. Would you date Natasha for four years and no sex?”
Brandon couldn’t see it. “Yeah, that’s like torture, man,” he admitted. “I mean, I could see if it were long-distance or something, but going to the same school? We have hormones, man.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Leon agreed. “So, unless you’re planning on getting married early, that’s crazy.”
“We’ll see,” Simba insisted. “Her decision doesn’t have to be set in stone.”
“Yeah, we will see,” Leon barked. “I think she’s serious.”
“Anyway, let’s get back out there before they start fighting again.”
>>>
Back inside the auditorium, Jinni collected Fei Yen’s things while Natasha and Adrienne took it upon themselves to sit the models down and give them all a lecture.
“Who put them in charge?” an older model mumbled as they took seats in the front row. She was a junior.
Natasha overheard her and kept her cool. “Just hear us out for a minute,” she reasoned. Once everyone calmed down, Natasha began to speak. “I just wanted to tell you guys that we did an internship with The Beast Team at Adidas over the summer, and we know what they can do. They are already on the national radar. And all of the sports companies are watching them now, including Nike and Air Jordan. So, if some of you guys think this is beneath you or whatever, because it’s not real fashion modeling and all of that, trust me, when September twenty-first rolls around—with the crowd and the people that we’re expecting to be there—you’ll be sorry that you missed it.”
“Nobody looks at it like it’s beneath us. She just didn’t take it seriously enough,” the Trinidadian spoke up. “It’s not about your personal life in here; it’s about the work. And the serious people already know that.”
“Well, I take it very seriously,” an Irish blonde added from the middle. “I know how big the sports industry is, and they’re starting to design team fan apparel for women. And if you’re late to the party, you don’t get in. So, I’m ready to put on my Beast Team baby T next Saturday and rock it.”
“Beast Teeeammm!” Adrienne squealed with a raised fist. She then pointed to the Irish model and said, “I like her.”
“Well, there you have it,” Natasha continued in front of them. “You guys have already seen the new Beast Team designs, and you know how the guys are gonna respond to them. So, if you can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen, because that’s exactly where we’re going with it. We want this first show to be talked about for the rest of the year. Then we’ll do another one before Christmas break—possibly the weekend before Thanksgiving.”
Brandon and the guys returned to the room while Natasha spoke.
“So, tell your supporters to show up with their cameras and take every picture that they can get for your portfolios, but they won’t be getting in for free,” Natasha stated. “It’s twenty dollars per person. And we can put them on a roll call guest list to make sure that they get in, but they’ll still have to pay. Just tell them to support you or don’t come. It’s as simple as that.”
Brandon watched her onstage and felt even more in love. Wow, she’s excellent for business too! he thought. She just takes over when she needs to. Her presence is undeniable.
Adrienne raised her hand to speak. “I just wanna say that I’m gonna back out. I’m not as serious about modeling as you are. And I don’t want to be in the way. So, we’ll have ten models, and I’ll just be backstage, helping out with the boxes of sneakers or whatever.”
Leon heard that and smiled at Brandon. “I told you.”
>>>
As Brandon walked Natasha and Adrienne to the subway station after the rehearsal, his feisty new girlfriend had some sound advice to offer him. “Brandon, you really need to watch out for Leon. I know he’s your friend and all, but it looks like he’s about to turn into a monster.”
“You got that right,” Adrienne agreed.
Brandon couldn’t deny it. “Yeah, I know. But at the same time, he’s done a great job at this. You guys have to admit that.”
“Yeah, but that’s the problem,” Natasha told him. “When you do things well, you tend to keep it moving without getting caught up in the moment. But Leon is really feeling himself right now. And I hate to say it, but he fits right in in New York. He’s loud, he jokes all the time, he’s all up in your face, and the New York people really to respond that.”
Adrienne nodded. “Yeah, they really do, because that’s how they are. I’m from Baltimore, and we’re not as loud as New Yorkers. I mean, we’re real and urban and all that, but we tend to keep to ourselves more.”
“Yeah, but Leon doesn’t,” Natasha insisted. “And that’s gonna become your problem, Brandon, because once he starts getting around these New York people, and they know that he can make things happen, they’ll be like leeches. That’s why those model girls are listening to him now. They don’t really like him like that. They’re thinking, ‘This is my chance for this boy to blow me up.’ And Leon is crazy enough to sell them that dream too.”
Brandon couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, but he has them excited to do it. And we need him to hype it up like that. That’s his job. I don’t have the time or temperament to do it. I have to focus on my part with all of the business stuff. I have a bunch of shipments coming in this week. And you guys both know that Simba can’t deal with any models. Those girls would eat him alive.”
Adrienne laughed, imagining it. “Well, what does Simba do?”
“He follows up with all of our paperwork,” Brandon answered. “He stores all of the faxes, e-mails and all of that. We even put a file cabinet in his closet. And he needs to read every do
cument and understand it so we all know what everything is.”
Adrienne said, “Damn, you guys are organized.”
Brandon smiled. “Simba’s not really comfortable with anything else. So he becomes our legal guy. He understands that.”
“Yeah, and his new girlfriend is cute,” Natasha mentioned.
“She really is,” Adrienne agreed.
Brandon smiled and kept his thoughts to himself. All he could think about was no sex before marriage. But he couldn’t talk to Natasha about that while Adrienne was around.
When they reached the subway station at the corner, Brandon gave Natasha a kiss. “Are you guys gonna be all right on the train? It’s almost eleven o’clock now,” he said.
Natasha grinned. “There’s still plenty of people riding the trains right now, Brandon. Especially in Manhattan. So we’ll be just fine. We’ve done this before.”
“Well, call or text me when you get in.”
“Will do.”
>>>
Brandon headed back to his dorm alone with lingering thoughts about his friends/partners. Simba was fine, while settling in with his college girlfriend, but Leon was another story.
Curious about where he was and what he was up to, Brandon dialed Leon.
“Hey, B. Were those models bad today or what?” Leon answered cheerfully.
Brandon chuckled. “Yeah, you already know. But what are you up to right now?”
“Chillin’. And getting ready for school tomorrow.”
Brandon doubted that. Leon never got “ready” for school; he just showed up and did it. “Oh, yeah? So, you’re back at the dorms?” Brandon quizzed him.
“Nah, not yet. I’ll be back soon though.”
“So, where are you?”
Leon paused. “Why, man? What’s going on? We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m all talked out on business tonight,” he complained. “You press things too much. You need to learn how to turn it off sometimes, B. Push your snooze button, man, and chill.”
Leon started giggling. Brandon then heard other voices and coughing in the background. “You’re not out with another model, are you?” he asked.
“All right, you got me, man. Are you satisfied now, Inspector Jenkins? I need to unwind. It’s only a week left to go now.”
The Sneaker Kings Page 23