He was also unzipping his pants and pulling out his dick. With other women he had to stroke it to get it ready. With Roz, all he had to do was look into her eyes, or just feel the texture of her pussy on his tongue, and it was ready. With no soft contours on any square inch of it. It was ready to fuck.
And they did. In the foyer of Roz’s new rental house. Mick slid it inside of her, she arched even higher at the friction of his entry, and they were in their groove. Her home was especially quiet, as all had been shut down, and all that could be heard were the slapping sounds of his cock hammering into her pussy, and the sloshing sounds of their intermingled juices. They were on a roll.
“So tight,” Mick was braying as he fucked her. “Oh, my baby. I can feel every sweet piece of you.”
Roz leaned up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I can feel you too,” she said happily as she kissed him.
“One word?” he asked her.
She was about to say thick, because he was, but that word didn’t capture it for her. “Full,” she finally said.
Mick smiled. “Anything for my baby,” he said, wrapped his arms around her, and fucked her even harder.
Mick squeezed his eyes shut as he fucked her. He never thought, not in a million years, that one woman could give him everything he needed. Until he hooked up with Roz. Now he not only allowed himself to fall in love with this woman, but he asked her to marry him. It was an incredible thing. It was miraculous to him in many ways. And as he opened his super-hooded eyes and looked into her super-hooded eyes, he fucked her harder still. Because she was his. Because this beautiful African queen belonged exclusively, unambiguously to him. If he was a sentimental man he would have cried. He wasn’t, so he didn’t. But he felt the sentiment deep within his heart. Inwardly, he was balling.
And as she began to have her orgasm, and leaned her beautiful neck back from the intensity of her contractions, he rubbed his hand along that thin, gorgeous brown neck, and then across her breasts, squeezing and fondling them again.
And when he began to cum, when every vein in his body began to surface from the stress of his bountiful release, he still couldn’t believe his good luck. Not some throwaway like him. But it was true. He was fucking Rosalind Graham, the woman he loved where no other woman ever came close, and she was soon to be his wife. To be Mrs. Sinatra. He was a very fortunate man. He was the luckiest man that had ever lived, and nobody was ever going to tell him differently.
“Belt Buckle, Tennessee,” Mick said with a smile as he drove past the welcome sign of the small, sleepy town. “What’s the population?”
“Probably a couple thousand now,” Roz said as she looked at a place that used to be so familiar to her once upon a time. It still was, but it was so foreign to her too.
“More or less than when you were growing up here?”
“Less. Something like a thousand people less. Folks got out and never came back.”
Mick looked at Roz. “Sure you want to come back now?”
Roz nodded. “I’m sure. If you can go back to Jericho, surely I can pay a visit to Belt.”
“Don’t forget the buckle,” Mick said, and Roz laughed.
“Believe it or not,” Roz said, “there’s a Bell Buckle, Tennessee too.”
“Really? What’s with all the buckle references?”
“I’m sure there’s a reason,” Roz said, “and I’m sure I don’t know what it is.”
“Never looked it up?”
“Never cared enough to look it up,” she responded, and Mick laughed. He was already enjoying this trip.
But it got kind of real for Roz when they drove down the main street of the town, called Mendenthal Boulevard, and parked in front of a diner. Her big brother’s diner. The very diner she had planned to leave New York and come to work for when her acting career stalled. But then Mick entered her life in a larger-than-life way and changed everything. And, in her opinion, changed it for the better.
“Tyson’s Surf and Turf,” Mick said as he looked over his steering wheel at the name on the top of the storefront building. “Your brother’s place, I take it.”
“You take it right,” Roz said.
It wasn’t lost on Mick that her mood had changed. Not in any depressed way that he could detect, but she certainly was a little more subdued. “What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Coming home jitters?”
Roz nodded. “I guess so. It’s been a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“I haven’t been back since I left for college.”
Mick, for some reason, was surprised to hear that. “That’s a while,” he agreed.
“There was no need to come back. My dad and brother constantly visited me in New York, or Connecticut when I was in college, and my mom would drop by too when she had business to take care of. On most holidays Tyson usually went to Memphis to hang out on Beale Street, Dad was usually on the road, and Mom didn’t want to be bothered. Holidays were her time to get some rest, she always told me. Even when I was a kid she told me that. What was I coming back for?”
Mick didn’t realize how fractured Roz’s family life was until now. She rarely spoke about it, just as he rarely spoke about his own upbringing. He reached out, took her hand, and held it. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, sweetie.”
Roz appreciated his concern. “No, I want to. I have to. I want my family to meet the man I love, and understand that you’re going to be a part of our family too. This is important to me. Just give me a minute, and then we’ll go in.”
“Take all the time you need,” Mick said, and meant it. He wasn’t exactly buzzed about meeting her family either. People didn’t generally care for him on first sight. He didn’t see why her kinfolks would be any different.
But inside the surf and turf was a different story. Inside, the buzz had already begun. It was three-twenty in the afternoon, too early for the dinner crowd and the lunch crowd had long since dissipated, so the diner was practically empty. But the cashier and the waitress stood behind the counter looking out at the parking lot through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite side of the counter. They couldn’t see who was inside the car, because whoever it was weren’t getting out, but they could clearly see the car.
“What is it?” the waitress asked. “Some kind of Corvette or something?”
“That ain’t no Corvette,” the cashier said. “That’s like a Camaro.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. My cousin has a Camaro and it don’t look nothing like that car out there.”
“What are you two retards musing about?” Darren, the cook, was coming out of the kitchen.
“Forget you, Darren,” the waitress said. “You need to mind your own business.”
“I work here too. This is my business.”
“That car out there,” the cashier said to Darren. “What kind of car you think it is?”
Darren smiled. “Damn! Now that’s alright there.”
“But what is it?” the waitress asked.
“I thought you said it was none of my business?”
“Darren!” the cashier said.
“It ain’t everyday a Lamb come driving through this town, though,” Darren opined. “That’s nice.”
“A Lamb?” the cashier asked. “What’s a Lamb?”
“A Lamborghini,” Darren explained. “That’s a Lamborghini y’all. Don’t y’all know nothing?”
The cashier and waitress looked at the car again. Both had heard of a Lamborghini before, but neither had ever saw one. “So that’s what it looks like,” the cashier said.
“Like a race car,” the waitress said.
The cashier smiled. “Wonder who’s behind the wheel? Wonder if he’s single?”
“Yeah, right,” Darren said. “A man who can afford a Lamb is coming to Belt to fall in love with a cashier. Yeah, dreams do come true. Just not in Belt Buckle,” Darren added with a grin, “but they come true.”
When the door finally li
fted up and Mick stepped out, the cashier’s big eyes grew bigger, and she grabbed hold of the waitress’s arm. “Looka there, looka there!”
Darren laughed and shook his head. “You’re so country,” he said.
But the waitress wasn’t as impressed as the cashier. She watched Mick carefully as he walked around to the passenger side of his car. “I don’t know, girl,” she said. “He looks mean to me.”
“He probably is mean,” Darren said, playing it up. “What white man ain’t these days? He’s probably going to the passenger side of his car right now to pull out his arsenal of rifles, you know how those scary-ass white boys love their guns. And then he’ll probably march in here and shoot and kill every black face in sight!”
The waitress was terrified. “For real, Dare?”
“Unless his arsenal of weapons includes a beautiful black lady,” the cashier said, “I doubt it.”
The waitress, confused, looked at the cashier. “Look,” the cashier said, her eyes still looking outside.
The waitress and Darren looked outside too. And that was when they saw Roz get out of the car with Mick taking her hand to assist her.
“She’s beautiful,” the waitress said.
But the cashier frowned. “Wait a minute. She looks familiar.”
Darren was already walking from behind the counter and toward the window. “I’ll be damn.”
“You know her, Dare?” the waitress asked.
Darren turned around to the cashier. “That’s Roz,” he said. “That’s Roz Graham.”
“You’re right!” the cashier said. “That’s Tyson’s sister.”
“What’s she doing with that white man? I know better than that. I know my fantasy girl didn’t leave Belt Buckle just to hook up with some cracker.”
“That’s enough, Darren,” a firm voice said, and everybody looked toward the back hall. Tyson Graham, Roz’s brother, was walking toward the front.
“I’m just playing, boss,” Darren said with a smile even he knew was fake.
“Get back to work.”
“Yes, sir.” Darren began to head back toward the kitchen.
“All three of you,” Tyson added, and the waitress and cashier got back to work too. Only it wasn’t much to do, so they started with wiping down the counter and pickup station.
And Tyson waited for his sister to step into his place of business for the first time in her life, and bring a stranger with her. She told him she was coming, and that she wanted him to meet her man. She failed to mention the race of that man. Not that it mattered to Tyson. It actually didn’t. But he knew it was going to matter mightily to their mother.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Tyson!” Roz tore away from Mick and ran into her brother’s arms.
Mick was pleased to see her so pleased, as she and her brother hugged and laughed and then just looked at each other. They looked nothing alike, in Mick’s estimation. Her brother was older than Roz, maybe in his mid-thirties, and was big, bulky, and had darker skin than Roz. But he had that perfect, bright-white smile just like his baby sister, and that approachable, friendly demeanor.
“Come on,” Roz said to her brother as she took his hand and began moving him toward Mick. “I want you to meet somebody very special to me.”
“So this is your fella?” Tyson asked as he moved toward Mick.
“This is my fella,” Roz said with a smile, remembering how they often used that term when they were kids. “This is Michello Sinatra. Or Mick, as he prefers to be called. Mick, this is my big brother Tyson.”
Mick smiled and extended his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you, Tyson.”
“An honor to meet you, sir,” he said as they shook. Then he smiled. “Roz has told me nothing about you.”
Mick laughed. “She’s embarrassed to know me, what can I say?”
Tyson and Roz laughed. “I’m sure that’s not true,” Tyson said. “Roz isn’t that kind of girl. But come on, guys, let’s have a sit down.”
Tyson escorted them to a window table in the small establishment. Mick placed his hand on Roz’s back and sat her down next to the window. He sat beside her. Tyson sat down across from them. The waitress hurried over, ready to take their orders.
“Would you guys care for anything to drink, or eat, or anything?” Tyson asked.
“Beer for me,” Mick said. “A ginger ale for Rosalind.”
Tyson was stunned to see him presume to order for his sister. “You don’t want a beer, sis?” he asked her.
“No, it’s too early for me,” Roz said. “Mick knows what I like.”
Tyson had forgotten how long it had been since he really knew his sister’s likes and dislikes. He felt sheepish questioning Mick’s knowledge of her tastes. But it was done now. He looked at his waitress. “A beer for me as well,” he said, and she left.
“So,” Roz said, looking around the place, “this is the famous surf and turf.”
Tyson laughed. “More like infamous, but yeah. This is the place you once talked about retiring to.”
Just the idea of it sounded ludicrous on its face to Roz now. “Thank God Mick rescued me from myself.”
Tyson laughed. “Yeah, I think coming back to live in Belt Buckle would have been a shock to your big city system, sis. I’m glad he rescued you too.”
Roz stared at her brother. “What about you? Ever thought you’d still be here? Could you use a rescue yourself?”
Tyson continued to smile, but even Mick could see the regret in his eyes. “It’s done now,” he said. “I make the most of it.”
“You sound like mom,” Roz said.
“The devil is a liar,” Tyson said, and Roz laughed.
Then Tyson looked out of the window. “That some car you drive, Mick. A Venano Roadster, no?”
Mick nodded. “That’s it.”
“Sweet. How many miles per hour?”
“220.”
“Geez, “Tyson said with a grin, “that’s awesome! Maybe I can take a spin in it before you guys leave. That’ll work?”
“No, it won’t,” Mick said unapologetically. “Nobody drives my vehicles but myself, or Rosalind. I don’t throw around keys.”
Roz looked at her brother, certain that he would be hurt. But oddly enough, he was smiling.
“Wow,” he said. “Every man I have ever met who wanted Roz, always tried to get in good with her family first. But you don’t care about that, do you?”
Mick smiled and shook his head. “I don’t give a shit about that. I stay in good with Rosalind. Then I’m good.”
Tyson nodded. “I can appreciate that because, in truth, I don’t throw around my keys either, and I drive a Buick.”
Mick laughed.
“We understand each other,” Tyson added.
“I’m glad you two do,” Roz said, “because I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Good,” Mick said, putting his arm around her. “It’s a man’s thing.”
Tyson laughed. And he and Mick high-fived.
But if he thought he was going to reach that happy understanding when they arrived at Roz’s mother’s house, he was sadly mistaken. Even Tyson had warned him to beware. And as soon as Mick drove his car onto the slanted driveway of the beautiful Tudor-styled home, Roz attempted to warn him too.
She placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t take my mother too seriously,” she said. “She can be very contentious, but don’t take it personally.”
Mick could see the change in Roz’s demeanor as soon as they drove up to the house on the hill. It was as if she was going to a firing squad, rather than to her mother’s house. “You okay?” he asked her.
She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. “I’m okay,” she said.
Then Mick got out, walked around to the passenger car door, and opened it. Roz got out at her childhood home for the first time in over a decade, and trembled.
Mick saw her nervousness and placed his hand in the small of her back. He was sufficiently concerned now. “What
’s the matter, babe?” he asked her. “We can leave right now.”
“No, I’m fine,” Roz said. “I just . . .”
“You just what?”
“She can be . . . intimidating. Very intimidating. I just have to get used to it again.”
Mick knew it was far more than that. This mother was apparently the sole reason Roz had not returned home before now.
“Come on,” she said, and began heading for the front porch.
Because of the oversized Hawthorn tree against the porch rail, they didn’t realize a male was sitting on the porch until they were nearing the steps. Mick saw a tall, lean man dressed in jeans and a dashiki, with a ring in his ear, start to grin when they realized his presence. But Roz saw something much more than a mere description. She saw her beloved father.
“Daddy!” she yelled with a sudden burst of joy, and broke away from Mick again. She was up the steps and running across the porch toward him just as he was standing up.
“There’s that lady!” her daddy said with equal joy, and pulled her into his arms.
Mick walked up the steps and onto the porch as father and daughter moved from side to side with an exuberant embrace. He leaned against the porch rail, with his legs crossed at the ankle.
When they stopped embracing, Roz was shaking her head. “I had no idea you would be here. Tyson didn’t say a word!”
“I told him not to. I wanted to surprise you.”
“But I thought you had that gig in Missouri tonight. What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I’ll be heading that way next. Ty told me you were coming to town today, and I just wanted to see you. I’ll be heading out soon enough. I’ll get there in time for my set.”
Roz smiled, she really loved her father. She leaned back against him. Then they both looked at Mick.
Mick was all smiles too. Just seeing Roz happy did it for him. “You must be Mr. Graham,” Mick said as he extended his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Call me Cecil, and I’ve heard a lot about you as well.” He shook Mick’s hand. He was staring into Mick’s eyes. “So you’re Roz’s old man? You’re Mick the Tick?”
Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho Page 9