by S. Ann Cole
He grabbed my hand and started down the hall and into what I believed to be his master suite. “Just a friend,” he muttered, as he pulled me inside the room.
“Does this friend have a name?”
“Netta Williams.”
“The pop singer Netta Williams?”
“Yes.”
Oh. A compliment from a very famous and very hot person. “When did you see her?”
“Last night in New York.”
I wrung my hand free from his grasp. “You were in New York yesterday? How did I not know this?”
When he spun around to face me, his eyes were swimming with irritation. “Maybe if you’d call me sometimes or answer the goddamn phone when I call, you would know my whereabouts,” he snapped.
True. “So you two were together … where?”
Lovello released an exasperated sigh and flopped down on a red velvet love seat situated at the foot of his ginormous bed. “She was at a gala I attended.”
“And she just told you that she liked your hair? Is she really a friend?”
“Not in so little words. And no, she’s not really a friend. I only met her last night,” he mumbled.
Ha! “Ah, so she came onto you then?”
Lovello tossed an arm across his eyes as he stretched out on the love seat. “Can we change this subject, please? This is just silly and pointless.”
There was something I’d recently discovered about myself. A shocking discovery actually: I, Axia Blacksille, was a jealous bitch. A seriously jealous bitch. An irrationally jealous bitch.
I never knew I had that ugly green monster dwelling inside me until I met Lovello. It was when I met Lovello that I realized I didn’t like sharing. I didn’t want anyone else to have what I was having. Not even to compliment what I assumed was mine. My jealousy, I believe, was bordering on lunacy. That I might drive my own self into insanity. Yep, I also discovered, in that very minute, that I needed help.
“Did you fuck her?”
Lovello shot up to his feet, displaying his annoyance. “Jesus, Axia, no!” He fixed his hard, penetrating eyes on me. “I’m not going to screw every chick that comes on to me. You are who I’m about. Can’t you see that? Do you not trust me?”
Honestly … “No. I don’t.”
“Huh, well, that’s nice to know. Does that mean I shouldn’t trust you either?”
“No. You shouldn’t.” And I was as serious as a judge.
“Maybe you should just leave then,” he growled, gesturing towards the door, his eyes frosting over. “There’s no point if we can’t trust each other.”
My heart lurched in my chest and my insides felt lacerated. This time I was the one being kicked out. It pained me. And not even the sight of his all-male sexiness in front of me could temper that pain. Not even the way his pecs tightened with every angry breath he took. Not even the way his silk bottom had somehow slipped lower down his hipbones and was displaying a good amount of his dark hair. Not even the thought of knowing that just an inch further beneath that silk, was the source of my pleasure: a very large, venous, beautiful cock. If anything, it made the pain worse. Knowing that he was done with me and my shit. Damn you, jealousy. “Fine! I will, hijo de puta! I shouldn’t have come here anyway. You’re a double asshole!”
Flouncing from the room in a fit of pique, I power-walked down the hall trying to reach the exit as fast as I could. Apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough, because Lovello’s hands grabbed me around my waist from behind, lifting me off the ground as he walked backward to his room with me wriggling about, fighting to get free. “Te odio! Let me go! Te odio!”
Lovello kicked the bedroom door shut once he was inside and tossed me onto the bed like a stuffed animal. Before I could command my body to move, he launched his masculine hardness on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his weight and glaring down at me with anger blazing in his eyes.
“Stop screwing with me, Axia. Stop. One of these days you’re going to push me over the edge and it won’t be pretty. You don’t want to meet the ‘asshole’ side of me. Trust me. Stop,” he ground out, his jaws clenched.
Not caring for his anger, I pelted slaps at his hard chest while trying to free myself from beneath him — even though beneath him was exactly where I wanted to be. “Let me go, Love!”
He grabbed my wrists and manacled them above my head. “Would you stop behaving like a freakin’ madwoman? What the hell’s your problem?”
“You! You’re my problem!”
“How? What on earth did I ever do to you to make you so damn turbulent? You’re frustrating the shit outta me, woman.”
Ceasing my fighting, I stared him straight in the eye. “You stayed away from me. You made me grow attached to you, and then you just disappeared.”
Lovello released my hands along with an exasperated grunt. “Axia, you kicked me out of your house. I gave you the space you said you wanted. I gave you my home information so you could come to me whenever you need me. I can’t understand…” he trailed off, then nailed me with an accusing glare. “Are you trying to drive me insane or something? ‘Cause I think it’s working.”
His inky-black hair partially curtained his eyes as he held his head down, and I brought my hands up to cup his beautiful face. Tracing my fingers over his stubble and along the angles of his jaws, I prevaricated, “I don’t like your hair like this.”
“Fine. I’ll cut it.”
Just like that. For me.
“Okay, I lied,” I said, watching as his face contorted into confusion. Maybe I was truly driving him insane. “I love your hair like this. But I don’t like it that you’re keeping it grown because Netta Williams complimented it. I want to be the reason for everything you do. When you cut it, and it starts growing again, I’ll compliment it, and then you can keep it grown for me.”
Lovello dropped his forehead to mine and closed his eyes on a sigh. “Jesus, Axia, you’re crazy. You. Are. Crazy.”
“Only because you make me.” Right. He makes me crazy. He’s turned me into an irrational, hopeless sap. Yet I felt no remorse. I liked being crazy for him. “I missed you.”
Lovello opened his eyes and gazed down at me through his curtain of hair. “Obviously. Or else you wouldn’t be here screaming my ears off about inconsequential crap.”
Lowering his lips to mine, he whirled me into a deep, impassioned and renewing kiss. Possessing my mouth and taking it whole. Lips locked, tongues tied, breathing ceased. I ran my fingers through his hair, stopping at the nape of his neck to pull him deeper into the kiss, even though we couldn’t get any deeper than we already were. But I wanted to be so much closer than this to him. I wanted to crawl inside his body and become one with him. Make him a part of me. Of one flesh. Right then, I had to accept the truth I’d been running from: I was falling in love with him.
He broke the kiss when I suggestively thrust my pelvis up to meet his hardened arousal. “No, beauts. We need to wind down.”
“No. Please, I need you now. It’s been too long,” I mumbled, pulling his mouth back down to mine.
“Exactly. Which means we’ll be too savage with each other. I want to enjoy you thoroughly tonight. And the only way I can do that is to take some time to wind down. There are still vestiges of anger, induced by you, in my veins. And you need to get rid of your maniacal streaks,” he said on a half-smile while getting to his feet and bringing me up with him.
“Fine,” I pouted. “What’s your idea of ‘winding down’? Can we make it quick?”
Lovello bit down on his lip, repressing a smile. “You’re absolutely adorable when you pout. Not something I’ve ever seen you do before. You should be a girl more often.”
“Don’t make jest of my sexual frustration,” I said, smacking his chest.
He pressed me to him, his erection rock-hard against my stomach, and planted a kiss on my nose. “We could head down to my theater den and watch a movie.”
“Action?”
“You’re not the typical
girl, are you? I thought you’d say romance.”
My face twisted in revulsion. “Yuck.”
Lovello shook his head, chuckling as he led me out of the bedroom. Shoving his hand down his pajama bottom to adjust his insubordinate erection, he groaned, “Goddammit, this is gonna be painful.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I sang, reaching over to pat his bulge.
He slapped my hand in mild reproof. “Stop it. Shut up. And…” he tried subduing his member again, “walk faster.”
“Holy shit!!” Lovello exclaimed for about the hundredth time since the movie Shoot ‘Em Up started. We were lying in a tangled heap on the zebra-striped carpeted floor. I fell in love with the carpeting the second I entered the theater den, and insisted we lay on the floor. I’d also insisted on choosing the movie. Lovello’s choice was Takers while my choice was Shoot ‘Em Up, and, of course, I won the battle.
Even though it was my third time seeing the said movie, it had me rapt just as much as it did the first time I’d seen it. There was something about seeing bad guys getting their marrows blown and guts blasted that I enjoyed. Lovello, however, didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as I was. He’d yelled “Holy shit!” and “Fuck!” so many times that I’d begun tuning him out. When he’d first seen Clive Owen slam a long carrot through a man’s mouth which lanced straight through the back of the man’s head, he’d leaped up in sitting position with wide eyes, leaning closer to the screen as if he wanted to climb inside the movie and shout, “Cut! Cut! I said freakin’ cut!”
His reactions told me that he didn’t watch movies often. Especially this kind. This was probably a once-a-month indulgence for him. After all, the only thing I’d ever seen him watch when he was at my house was CNBC.
“Okay, beauts, this movie is just way too intense for me,” Lovello said, tossing an arm across his face. “This is not helping me wind down.”
“You’re such a girl, Pretty Boy. This is light action. And that Takers movie you wanted to watch, I’ve seen it and it’s whack. It’s just a lame version of the Jamaican film Shottas.”
“I guess I’m a girl, then. You call this light?” he asked, moving his hand from his face to point at the screen where Clive Owen was spraying bullets at his attackers while naked and straddled by his partially nude lover. “All I’ve been seeing since the movie started is scads of people getting blown open with bullets. Oh, and there’s a newborn baby involved! I don’t even know why people are dying. Everyone’s just getting shot because of this one man who stuck his nose into something that doesn’t concern him.”
“Dude, what’re you complaining about? It’s your blu-ray, not mine,” I laughed. He really wasn’t enjoying my choice of movie.
Lovello frowned. “I honestly have no idea how that got there. But I can bet it’s Natalio’s. He’s the one who likes watching shit like that.”
“Oh shoot,” I said with mock disappointment. “I chose the wrong brother. I need to plot a way to snipe Sadie.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, which only served to make me laugh harder. Taking up the remote, he paused the movie and then hauled me on top of him. “Who’re your favorite T.V. stars, hardcore girl?”
I thought for a second. “Favorite actor is Al Pacino. Favorite actress is definitely Jennifer Lopez. It doesn’t matter how shitty the movie is, as long as J.Lo is in it, you can’t get me to move from in front of that television. Who’re yours?”
“Don’t think I have any. I can probably count on my fingers the scant number of movies I’ve seen. I’m more of a computer person, if you haven’t noticed.” Frowning in thought, he attempted at answering. “Leonardo DiCaprio, maybe. Marlon Brando. I dunno,” he shrugged. “But I can tell you who annoys me. That idiot who’s only funny because he’s not funny. What’s his name? Ah, yes, Will Ferrell! My mother and my sister love watching his films. But I just can’t understand why producers continue to put him in their films. The guy’s just … not funny.”
I guffawed, rolling off him onto my back as hard laughter waved through me. “Oh my God, I know right! Have you seen him in Step Brothers, where one guy was like: ‘There’s just something about your face that makes me want to punch it. You need to change your face or I’ll change it for you’?”
“No I haven’t, but there is something about his face that makes you wanna punch it for sure,” Lovello said, gazing down at my laughter-racked body in amusement. It’s the same look he’d had when I’d laughed uncontrollably at the bike show. One that told me he loves it when I laugh.
“Well, I can manage to watch Will Ferrell, he’s funny because he’s not funny. But the actor that annoys me the most is Steven Seagal.”
“Why? He’s an action star, I’d assume you’d love him.”
“Nuh uh. It’s like he’s Mr. Indomitable or something. No matter what he gets embroiled in, he always walks away with not even a scratch. His clothes clean and neat, his hair in place, everything impeccable. I swear it irks me. I mean, I’m all for heroes, but not even a little scratch over the eye? Really? Really? I’m sorry, but I like it when my heroes get knocked around a bit, and nothing ever seems to happen to him in his movies.”
Lovello chuckled. “I’ve never noticed.” He hauled me back on top of him. “So, you like it when your heroes get knocked about, huh? Is that why you insist on driving me insane?”
“Are you my hero?”
“If you want me to be.”
“What I want…” I whispered, slipping my hand down his silk pants and grasping him. “ … is for this hero to rescue my libido that you’ve left in limbo.”
Lovello sucked in a sharp breath as my fingers tightened around his arousal that grew harder with each breath. “You can feel him muscling up, can’t you? Means he’s more than ready to attend to your rescue.” He rolled over so he was on top of me, pressing his erection against my core. “I want to taste every inch of you tonight.”
“And I want you to,” I replied in a short breath.
“Axia,” he began, dropping kisses on my eyes, my nose, my cheeks. “I want to try something…”
“Hmm?” was all I got out, as I melted into a human puddle beneath him.
He scraped his teeth along my jaw and trailed his tongue down my neck. “I want … I want to make love to you. Nice, and slow, and long. I want to feel closer to you.”
Even if he’d said he wanted to bring in half a dozen men and have us all a gang-bang orgy, I don’t think I would’ve objected at that point. My lower half was in turmoil, sprouting arousal after arousal with every flick of his tongue.
As he went about making sweet, passionate, savoring love to me that night, wrapping me in such tenderness and gentleness that I’d never felt before, fulfilling his words and tasting me all over, every crevice and corner, extending our leisure of pleasure into infinity, my heart could only melt and pool at the pit of my stomach. And with each drop of pleasure that he sent flowing through my veins, I whispered words deep, deep down inside me where I knew he would never hear them:
Te Amo
XVII
When the sound of Lovello’s alarm went off, I knew I’d have to call Tish and have her open the gym. At this hour of the morning, I’d normally be leaving for work, but I’d been so wrapped up in Lovello last night, that I’d neglected setting my own alarm. Since I met Pretty Boy Nelson, I’d morphed into a rather negligent business owner. Not complaining, though.
As his alarm wound on and on, Lovello grumbled something incoherent and stretched across me to silence it. He smelled of sleep and overnight sex, and a smile curved my lips as I sniffed his firm frame that was stretched across me. His movements paused, and I opened my eyes to find his sleepy ones staring down at me with a lazy smile.
“Are you sniffing me, Miss Blacksille?”
“Guilty, your honor. What’s my sentence?”
He ground his hips into me so I could feel his good-morning-hardness. “Oh, I could think of numerous penalties.” He ground harder against me and groaned. “But
for now, meeting’s adjourned. I’ve gotta go pay homage to the Big Guy. You know, the guy that’s bigger than this Big Guy,” he said, as he lifted my right leg to grind his erection deeper against my core one last time before he gave me a swift kiss and rolled off me, snatched his Bible off the nightstand, and vanished through the bedroom doors.
He was going to do devotion with a hard-on? I mused. I could imagine that being a very awkward moment for God.
Fumbling for my cellphone, I made a quick call to Tish, giving her instructions to get the gym open and running. The woman had been more than overworked ever since I started humping Lovello’s third leg. I needed to remember to give her a raise. A huge raise.
As I started for the bathroom, I gained a new knowledge: prolonged lovemaking will leave you far more sore than thirty minutes of jackhammering. Yet, though I was sore, I was starving for more. For two people who’d never made love before, last night was out of this world. The way his tongue had … his lips had … his touch was so … the slowness of it all was … Gah, I just couldn’t explain how great it felt. It was a moment I’d never forget, that’s for sure.
Denuding myself in the opulent en suite bathroom, I sluggishly aimed toward the rain-shower, grabbing a washrag from the towel rack on my way there. While I turned the taps and waited for the shower to heat, I noticed my favorite Balenciaga Paris Shower Gel. Lovello didn’t buy that for himself, I’m sure. For one, it was for women, and two, he didn’t like shower gels. All he used were those Tom Ford soap bars — and yep, there was a reduced bar right next to the shower gel.
Did he buy that gel for me, or was it someone else’s? It couldn’t possibly be for me when he didn’t even know I’d be coming here. Or did he? Looking around the capacious bathroom, I also noticed a replica of my purple robe on the hooks outside the shower. On one side of the large double-sink vanity, there was an exact purple Oral-B vibrating toothbrush like I had at home, along with the face wash and moisturizer that I used. Lovello had said he didn’t bring women here, so maybe he knew I’d turn up eventually?