Jamal tried not to snort. And hell, it was true, so there was probably nothing to snort at.
“A’ight, man. She’s all yours,” Kendrick said. “At least for now. Don’t leave without coming to find me, Makayla.”
“Sure,” she smiled.
When they were alone, she looked up at Jamal, her eyes flat and emotionless. What the hell was her problem all of a sudden?
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Yup. Perfect,” she said, enunciating each syllable of the second word.
“No problems getting set up?”
“None. It worked out really well considering,” she said, her voice still cool.
“Considering what?”
“Considering our boss was nowhere to be found.”
Jamal opened his mouth to answer her when he felt a hand on his arm. Turning, he saw that it was Shantez, and she was looking slightly glassy-eyed. Damn. Did the fun never end with this chick?
“I looked around and my date was gone,” she said, huffing. “You know I don’t like bein’ around all this fake-ass-ded-ness by myself.”
“Shantez, this is Makayla,” Jamal said. “She’s on my team. You might be working with …”
“Yeah, okay. Hi, girl. C’mon, Jamal. I need you.”
Shantez turned her back to Makayla, who narrowed her eyes, turning on her heel and walking away.
“Meanwhile,” Shantez continued, “your boy over there actin’ like he don’ recognize nobody. Like we didn’t used to get busy in the back of his tour bus back in the day.”
Jamal didn’t know who she was talking about and didn’t care. The list of dudes whose tour buses Shantez used to get busy in “back in the day” was a long one.
The next time he was able to ditch her was around one in the morning when folks were beginning to leave. By then, Shantez was drunk, but still vertical. While she flirted with some young guy who was too starstruck to recognize her drunkenness, he snuck off to check in with Chris who for some reason had stuck around for the entire night. Jamal wasn’t sure whether that was because he thought he needed to keep a close eye, or whether it was because he was hanging out with Deuce, who probably didn’t want to leave too early. Either way, he thought it would be wise to check.
He found Chris sitting in one of the VIP areas with Brendan, both of them looking bored. Standing guard nearby was Tiny, Chris’ body man. In a crowd as exclusive as this one, the only reason Tiny was so visible was to act as a deterrent for any overzealous artists who might want to approach and have an actual conversation. Chris generally didn’t like dealing with the talent these days, and just as he became more accessible and family-oriented in his personal life, he pulled away in his professional life, seeming to want to keep his wife and kids protected from the music business and all its vagaries.
“How’s it goin’ Boss Man?” Jamal asked falling into one of the empty chairs.
“Waiting for my son to hurry his ass up, that’s how,” Chris said.
Jamal silently exhaled. So he wasn’t being checked up on. That was a relief at least.
“You could always leave him,” Brendan suggested. “Looks like he might be about to make something happen over there.”
Brendan nodded in the general direction of one corner of the club where Deuce had a very famous pop-star leaning against a wall, and was looming over her, his forearm braced above her head.
Chris made a scoffing noise and shook his head. “If he knows what I know …”
“But he doesn’t though,” Brendan said. “Unless you want some little beige grandbabies, you better put a hex on that little relationship.”
“I don’t care what color. I’m not looking for any babies—grand or otherwise—in my immediate future.”
Brendan laughed as only he could, and Jamal turned to see what he and Chris had been looking at. He saw Deuce, who did seem to be making some kind of progress, but more than that, he saw Makayla. She was with Kendrick again. And they were leaving.
_______________
Three-thirteen a.m.
That’s how late it was when Jamal finally got Shantez back to her West Side apartment. By then she was definitely drunk, and it took everything he had not to simply drop her at the door like a crack baby and take off. She couldn’t find her keys, so he had to call her security detail for the spare set. It took them only ten minutes to show up but even that seemed like an eternity with Shantez yammering his head off, talking about how “ain’t nobody love me, Jamal. Nobody.” He told her he loved her, and then she started to drunk-cry, and he had to hug her until the security guys showed. Once they did, he made sure they got her inside and waited until they roused Shantez’s assistant who lived a couple floors down in an apartment Shantez paid for. And once she was there, Jamal jetted.
It took him another forty minutes to get to Makayla’s apartment.
Looking around to make sure it was safe to exit his vehicle, he went to the front door and buzzed her, only slightly worried that he might wake her grandmother. Makayla had once mentioned that the old lady was a heavy sleeper while she was the opposite. Since her grandmother’s health started failing, she said the slightest sound roused her because she worried about falls, or her Nana getting up and having the idea that she might make herself some tea, then forgetting to turn off the stove.
Only three minutes passed before Makayla’s voice came over the intercom, sounding none too pleased to be woken up. He didn’t care if she’d been fast asleep and drooling into her pillow. Some things a man had to address right away. Not the next day, but immediately.
“Candace,” she hissed. “I told you …”
“It’s not Candace,” he said.
“Jamal?” She sounded incredulous.
“Yeah. Buzz me up.”
“What for? If this is another caper to get me to help you protect some adulterous rap star …”
“You want me to get robbed out here?” he demanded. “Open the door!”
The buzzer sounded and Jamal pushed the door open, looking behind him and hitting the fob to double-check that he’d locked his car. What difference did it make anyway? He was almost certainly going to be missing his rims and maybe even the tires when he returned.
Up at the apartment, Makayla was standing at the door in white pajama pants and a blue-and-white striped tank, her hair loose about her shoulders and her eyes puffy.
“That crack you made about getting robbed was completely unnecessary,” she said. “Not everyone lives high on the …”
“Whatever. Like you don’t know it’s true,” he said, moving around her and into the apartment.
Makayla locked the door and without a word, headed toward the rear. Jamal followed her into a small bedroom. It was bare, almost ascetic, like she didn’t plan on being there for very long. All she had was a dresser and mirror, a full-sized bed, a desk and chair. Atop the desk was a computer that needed—like her phone had been—to be replaced. Though he’d never been in her bedroom before, Jamal felt a profound sense of déjà vu. He came from a place just like this one. Just like it.
Shutting the door behind her, Makayla leaned on it.
“You could have woken up my grandmother,” she said, folding her arms. “This better be important.”
“It is.”
And when he said nothing more, she opened her eyes wide and shook her head, prompting him to continue.
“I saw you leave with Kendrick,” he said.
Makayla shrugged. “Harper told me that at one a.m. I was free to go. And it was just about that …”
“That’s not what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. I told you about getting too cozy with the talent, right?”
Makayla scoffed. “Really? Have you met … I don’t know … yourself? Getting cozy with the talent is your stock in trade.”
“You’re not me. You don’t know dudes like Kendrick. He has ten chicks just like you on speed-dial.”
“Just like me, huh?” Makayla said, her nostrils flaring. “Because I�
�m so forgettable, so interchangeable, so … disposable, right?”
Jamal narrowed his eyes. What the hell was she ..?
“This is not the office. I don’t even know why you’re here, Jamal! If you need to talk to me about how I am with the talent, you need to call me into your office during normal business hours and …”
“This is not about work!” he said, remembering at the last second not to raise his voice too much.
In an instant, Makayla seemed to deflate, her eyes dropping to the floor and then raising once again, this time with the light of a new realization in them. “Did you think I …”
“Where’d you go?”
Makayla put a hand to her mouth and smothered a laugh. “Are you kidding me right now?”
Jamal took two steps toward her. “Do I look like I am?”
Shaking her head, Makayla exhaled. “You ignore me for two weeks after what happened at your house and then you have the nerve …”
“Ignore you?”
“Yes!”
“Makayla I’ve been working. You’ve been working. We’re not in high school. I’m not in a position to text you ten times a day just because you cross my mind.”
“It didn’t seem like I crossed your mind. It seemed like you had me very much out of your mind. You see me every day just about and not even one acknowledgment that something’s a little different? After what happened …”
“Will you stop saying that ‘after what happened’ bullshit? You’re grown, you can say it. After I went down on you, made you come harder than you ever came in your life …” He took another two steps. In the barely lit room he saw that Makayla blinked, twice very quickly. He’d hit a nerve. “You did, didn’t you? You came so hard …” He licked his lower lip. “I can still taste it.”
“Well obviously I’m not the only one who was sprung that morning. Because here you are … breaking down my door at three in the morning. Begging.”
Jamal gave a short laugh. “I never beg. I don’t have to.”
“Then why are you here?” Makayla challenged. “We didn’t even have sex, and yet …” She opened her palms. Jamal took that opportunity and grabbed her wrists, pulling her against him.
“Where were you at?” he demanded. “Where’d you go?”
Makayla seemed to have lost all her bravado and was breathing harder, looking up into his eyes. “I’m here, aren’t I? Where do you think I went?”
“No stops? He didn’t try to talk you into first going …”
“We walked out together, but he got in some tricked-out ride and I got in the Lincoln Town Car that Dean called for me.”
Jamal stared into her eyes and saw that she was telling the truth.
And then he felt stupid. What the hell was he thinking when he came here? And yeah, he didn’t beg. But still, just like she said, here he was, propelled by a crazed feeling that he didn’t even want to examine too closely. He didn’t do … ownership where women were concerned. He let them do them, and he definitely did what he had to do. Sometimes he was monogamous, but when that happened, mostly it was circumstantial and not out of conscious choice. It was just that one woman was infinitely easier to handle than multiple.
“I take back every single nice thing I ever said about you,” Makayla said, almost to herself. “You’re such an asshole. I was spread-eagled in your kitchen one day, and the next you acted like I wasn’t alive.”
“That’s not true,” Jamal said, even while he knew that it was. Lowering his head, he kissed her shoulder and worked his way slowly up the side of her neck to behind her ear.
Makayla was trying to hold still—he could feel the tautness of her muscles—but her shoulders were giving her away, heaving up and down slightly, each time his lips made contact with her skin.
He had been avoiding her. True, he’d been busy, but all that did was make it easier not to face her. After he’d gone down on her that morning and she came like a starburst … that shit was intense … the look on her face was … intense. He could tell Makayla was like a wide-open book, wide open, and brand new. And like a brand new book, once you cracked the spine, you had to keep it. You didn’t put it back on the shelf and pretend you hadn’t been the one to crack it open in the first place.
Then he took her home and met her grandmother and it got even more real. She was young, and she was working on her Master’s degree, taking care of her grandmother and living in a rundown little apartment trying to keep up with a fast-paced and demanding job with a boss who plucked her up late at night and sent her on fools’ errands to babysit the marriages of emotionally immature rappers. As he left her building and got back in his hundred thousand dollar car, Jamal felt … ashamed. He wanted her, and was curious about her, but he couldn’t pretend he had well thought-out intentions beyond that. So how could he go through with it?
Except now, here he was. Because there were dudes out there like Kendrick, and many, many others who she would meet in this business. Their intentions were clear, but they weren’t pure. She was better off with him, he reasoned. She was better off with him.
“I can’t play that game,” Makayla said, breathing short, audible breaths. “Where I pretend you’re not … where we ignore each other when people are around and then …”
“And then?” Jamal prompted, kissing her along her jaw.
“And then you do stuff like this; come over here sweet-talking me …” Makayla began, “when I just watched you with Shantez Page …”
Jamal lifted his head. “I don’t recall doing any sweet-talking just yet. And as for Shantez, you’re the one who can’t be serious.”
“She was all over you, and you didn’t seem to mind. And you know you have a reputation …”
“That is ninety percent bullshit, by the way. And as for Shantez, I can’t even begin to tackle that one.”
“Try,” Makayla said, pressing her palms against his chest to get some distance between them.
Jamal shook his head. “If we’re doing this, you’re going to need to know. There’ll be lots of women I’m out with for work. And not all of them will be as repellent to me as Shantez is, I can tell you that right now. Some of them will be downright gorgeous. So you’re going to have to toughen up.”
He expected Makayla to balk at that, but instead she was smiling. Not a full-on wide smile, but a small one that she couldn’t hide. “Are we?” she asked. “Going to do this?”
She was so damn cute.
“You tell me. Depends on what you can roll with.”
“Depends on what you expect me to roll with.”
Jamal took a breath. “I’m tired of talking,” he said. Then he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her pajama pants down, quickly, unceremoniously. Makayla gasped. He was crouched at her feet, in a position of supplication, but looking up at her face he could see she was all his. He owned her right now.
Lifting one foot and then the other, he removed the pajama pants altogether and tossed them aside. She was wearing pink cotton underwear with little white flowers on them. Jamal considered ripping them, but instead, peeled those down too. When he looked up at Makayla again she took a deep breath. He could smell her arousal.
Pressing her thighs apart, with a hand on each, he took her in his mouth, sucking and licking, tasting her warmth and wetness. As his tongue glided across her, he felt the tension in her thighs and then her hands resting lightly atop his head. She was trying not to press herself into him. She’d done that last time as well, afraid of her own feelings, holding them back.
He loved going down on her, and one day, though probably not tonight, he was going to get her to let completely go. He would make her come so hard she cried.
“Jamal,” she said over and over. “Jamal …”
She’d done that last time too. But last time he stopped, and this time there was no way in hell he would. Reaching up, he slid two fingers into her making her gasp, and stand up on the tips of her toes for a moment before she allowed herself to settle into it, arching he
r pelvis toward his tongue and fingers, working in time to bring her to completion. She tasted slightly salty, slightly sweet, and the texture … silky and slick. His erection was becoming uncomfortable, so he would take care of that in a minute, but not until …
“Jamal!”
Slowly, he eased his fingers out of her, replacing them with his tongue, drinking her in while she held his head in a death-grip, quivering and jerking against his face. When she was motionless, he cupped her buttocks and stood, lifting her and putting her on the bed. Makayla lay there as though dazed and then a lazy smile crossed her lips.
“This … this is not how I thought tonight would end,” she said.
Taking his shirt off, Jamal began working on his pants. “How’d you think it would end? Something involving Kendrick maybe?”
Makayla smiled again, this time wider. “Who would’ve thought?” she said dreamily.
“Thought what?”
“That Jamal Turner would be so … possessive.”
“Well he is. I mean … I am. Come to think of it, gimme your phone.”
Makayla raised herself on her elbows. “For real?”
“Yeah for real. Gimme the phone. I’m not having you keep him on stand-by in case you get all bent out of shape when I take a client to a party.”
Makayla looked amused. Then she shook her head. “No. You’re not getting my phone,” she said finally.
Jamal looked around and spotting it, took a dive across the bed, but not before Makayla rolled out of the way and grabbed it first. For a minute, they wrestled over it, until she finally tossed it across the room onto what looked like a pile of laundry.
“Don’t you break that phone that SE paid for!” Jamal said, mock-seriously.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Makayla said. “I love my new phone.”
Their faces were almost touching. His bare chest was pressed against hers, still covered in the striped tank. Jamal reached down between them and peeled it upward. Makayla raised her arms to help him take it off. Her breasts, which he now realized he had never been quite this close to, were beautiful, her nipples large and dark. He swiped one with his tongue, and then the other. Makayla let him play with them awhile, then began squirming as though uncomfortable.
The Come Up Page 18