She signed for the documents, completely ignoring the way his eyes were enjoying the fit of her sleeveless bright red shell dress on her curves. Danielle had nothing for him but a polite smile as she e-mailed the secretary of the attorney about his delivery.
As the receptionist for the firm, Danielle barely ever left her desk in the front office. Although she was constantly active, it all felt like mindless busy work. She wanted more.
Bzzzzzzzzz.
Danielle picked up her cell phone again but then sat it facedown on her desk at the sight of Monica’s office number. She immediately felt tension radiate across her shoulders and neck. She honestly didn’t know how much more she could stand.
Monica and Keesha were both tearing up her phone bitching about the other one. Latoya had jumped up and married Taquan yesterday without inviting anyone to their courthouse ceremony and then announced she was moving out. Monica was ticked at her for revealing to Keesha that they discussed the loan and Danielle wasn’t particularly happy about Monica finally returning her dress . . . complete with a torn hem.
Keesha stayed whining about money.
Latoya was steady trying to covertly change them to be more like her.
Monica kept her phone ringing with her Cameron drama—real or imagined.
And Danielle? Danielle was tired of it all.
She was the ear to listen and the shoulder to cry on in their friendships; so much so that she rarely had a chance to sing her own sad song. And it was hard to always absorb everyone else’s drama and energy and never get a chance to get hers off. Somehow the one in their midst without a mother had become the mother figure.
Danielle looked down at her cell phone again and she felt one of those sad smiles filled with regret touch her lips. There was no need to answer their calls or even call them to ask what to do about meeting Mohammed later; their conversations would just turn around to their issues and she would be left again to help them maneuver and think through their problems while grappling with her own alone.
Hours later as her workday ended, Danielle was still thinking over how unsatisfied she was in her life. Her friendships. Her job. Her lack of family. Her lack of a life. Period.
Everybody had somebody they could turn to—even Keesha had her crazy, inappropriate-ass, weed-smoking mama. And that made it harder for her not to run back to Mohammed or any of the other men she used to catalog in an address book complete with their photo, financial status, and dick game rating.
No one understood, and she honestly didn’t try to reveal to anyone, just how lonely she was. How lonely she had always been. How she had lived the majority of her life disappointed, hurt, and too afraid to expect and want more.
Being left behind by parents had a way of fucking someone up like that, but the years in foster care taught her how to hide it because seeing pity in the eyes of people looking at you made everything much worse.
And so her friends neglected her feelings, her life, and her own issues and Danielle hid it all well. Still, shit had been brewing inside her for a minute. A lot of shit.
She leaned back in her chair and released a heavy breath filled with a lot of that shit. Allowing herself a ten count to hold back some “cry myself a river, I’m so fucking sad” tears, Danielle took her compact from her tote to smooth her asymmetrical bob and reapply a fresh coat of sheer pink MAC gloss to her lips. Next she slid on her jet-black oversized shades and stiffened her back as she rose to her feet with her tote now in the crook of her arm.
She could have appeared to be Carolyn Ingram or any of her contemporaries as she made her way down on the elevator and out the building to her parked car. It was all a façade. Just as forged as the role of perfect wife that Carolyn played.
Behind the wheel of her car, Danielle purposefully played the music loudly as she drove. The bass reverberated in her chest. She was trying to drown out her thoughts. Her doubts. Her concerns. Her second-guessing . . .
Danielle parked her car onto the driveway behind Mohammed’s battered Jeep. She eyed his house as she eased out from the car to head to the steps of his small house, nervously playing with her keys in her hand. Her body was all nerves, racing pulse, and pounding heart as she crossed the porch and knocked on the door.
There was a time I had keys to this motherfucker, she thought, taking one step back and looking around at the row of small houses and three-family apartment buildings on the quiet street.
Everything about this neighborhood screamed normalcy: working forty hours a week to live a decent life in a decent neighborhood.
“Danielle?”
She turned around and there he stood. In nothing but a pair of jeans slung low on his hips. Her ex. Mohammed Ahmed.
Danielle’s eyes ate him up from the thin, black, shoulder-length dreadlocks down to his bare feet and every damn thing in between. Broad shoulders. Hard chest. Six pack abs. “I-I-I got your text,” she stammered, feeling completely overwhelmed by being in his presence again.
There was a time this man—this fine man—was her everything and too much of anything wasn’t good.
Mohammed nodded in understanding but he still stood there blocking her entrance into his world. “When you never responded I just assumed you said ‘Fuck him’ and wasn’t coming.”
Danielle continued playing with the keys in her hand, wishing she hadn’t lost control of her body to her nerves. “I just got busy at work,” she lied, taking a deliberate step forward with her eyebrow slightly arched. Am I in or out?
Mohammed smiled just a little at the corner of his full mouth before he stepped back and waved her inside. “You want something to drink?” he asked, his Jamaican accent light but still evident.
Danielle shook her head as she turned a full three hundred sixty degrees with her eyes, taking in the rows of boxes and covered furniture. She whirled to face him, her eyes filled with the surprise she felt. “You’re moving?” she asked, pointing behind her to the boxes.
Mohammed nodded and licked his bottom lip as he slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “My mom is not well and I’m going back to Jamaica,” he said, shifting his eyes up from the floor to fix them on her.
Danielle swung her eyes away from his as she locked her knees and fought not to show him her bitter disappointment. “I hope it’s nothing too serious with your mother,” she said, barely able to get the words past the tightness she felt in her throat.
The end of a relationship was always easier to swallow for the one who leaves the relationship over the one who gets left. In her heart there had been some assurance because Mohammed was there, easy to find, easy to contact . . . when she chose to have him back in her life. He was leaving and snatching away her option to take him back.
“She broke her hip and is having surgery,” Mohammed said, taking a few steps forward toward her.
Danielle nodded and turned away from the sight of him. “She is going to need help around the house as she recovers,” she said softly, her eyes shifting about the small living room as she fought not to let her emotions show.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“When are you leaving?” she asked, nibbling at her bottom lip.
“In the morning.”
Danielle whirled to face him. Her heart clenched. Her eyes widened. Tomorrow! “She . . . uh . . . must be happy you’re—”
The rest of her words were swallowed by Mohammed’s lips. Danielle’s eyes widened and she paused for just a hot second before she returned his kisses and brought her hands up to tangle in his dreads. She moaned in sweet pleasure even as her tears of loss welled up in her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered against her lips in between heated kisses.
Danielle shook her head even as she let it tilt back to expose the smooth skin of her neck to his mouth. “I’m not.”
“Not yet,” he said, sucking the spot just under her chin as his hands moved from deeply gripping her hips to massaging her ass.
She shivered as he licked a sultry circle at
the base of her throat as he roughly jerked her dress up around her waist. “Shouldn’t you ask first?” she whispered hotly, her heart pounding as she freed his dreads to reach down in between them to undo his belt and the button of his pants.
“Do I need to?” Mohammed asked in return, leaning back to look her in the eye as his jeans fell down around his ankles.
Danielle panted as that crazy energy between them pulsed heavily and surrounded them like a cocoon. She licked the sudden dryness from her lips and freed his dick from the flap of his boxers. “Do I?” she countered boldly, tightening her hold on his hard inches.
“Hell no,” Mohammed said darkly. He wrapped one strong arm around her waist and took three large steps to roughly back her body against a wall before tearing her lace panties away with one tight tug. Danielle gasped in anticipation and locked her legs behind his strong back just as he worked the thick tip of his warm and hard dick inside her.
Mohammed’s body went still as he fought for control at the tight and moist feel of her surrounding his shaft. “Shit,” he swore, dropping his head to her heaving chest as she winded her fingers into his dreads.
Danielle kissed his temple and deeply inhaled the scent of the coconut oil he used on his scalp. Love for him swelled inside of her. Lust for him intensified at the feel of his hard dick pulsing against her walls. “Fuck me,” she begged in a ragged whisper.
And he did. And well.
Each stroke of his dick felt like a jolt of life. Not even the pressure of his body lightly slamming her body against the wall with each thrust broke through the sex daze.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Fuck it.
In that moment Danielle didn’t give a shit about anything else. “Fuck me,” she demanded again, her voice sharp like a commander dictating to his troops.
And he delivered hard, forceful thrust after thrust.
Danielle cried out and tugged his locks with her fists, sharply jerking his head back to suck his neck.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His neck was slightly salty from the sweat of his work. Danielle felt the valley of her breasts and her inner thighs dampen from the sweat of her pleasure. Their hearts raced and pounded. Their sex was wild. Frantic. Frenetic. They both could almost see the white hot chemistry they created.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Danielle tugged harder on his hair and tightened her ankles against his back as she felt the explosion in her core build with a feverish pace. “Don’t go, Mohammed,” she whispered, pressing her upper back against the wall to brace herself as she fucked him back with a steady back-and-forth churn of her hips. “Please don’t leave me.”
He twisted his head to free his locks from her hands and looked forward to lock his eyes on her as he continued the onslaught. Continued to fuck her. Continued to bury himself inside of her like he wanted to be lost in each rhythmic spasm of her pussy walls against his dick. “I have to,” he said, his voice filled with his regrets. His eyes tortured with the pain he knew he caused her.
As Danielle rode wave after wave of her release as she came, she let her tears flow even as she cried out roughly and got lost in the pleasure while grappling with her pain. It was a true emotional roller coaster and Danielle wasn’t quite sure that she wasn’t about to cross the line into madness.
Mohammed’s dick hardened as he roared with his own nut. He continued to thrust upward inside of her, slickly coating her walls with his release. “Aaaah,” he cried out against her shoulder as his face twisted and his hard buttocks clenched and unclenched with each plunge.
Danielle was breathing so hard the muscles against her ribs ached. As she came down off her dick high she opened her eyes and spotted her torn panties on the floor. And then her eyes shifted to take in all of the damn boxes. Tomorrow Mohammed would be gone and she would be left behind with only a memory of him and this last encounter.
Danielle lightly knocked the back of her head against the wall as she arched her back. Regret filled her and her soul just couldn’t take another emotion being added. She pushed her hands against Mohammed’s shoulders and shook her head back and forth, fighting to get the hell away before she really laid everything she was feeling out in front of him.
“Danielle?” he said, freeing his dick as he stepped back and allowed her body to slide down the wall until she stood up on her heels.
“Good-bye, Mohammed,” she said, blinking rapidly as she moved past him quickly to reach the door.
“Wait, Danielle,” he called out.
She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see him stumble from his shorts around his ankle. He fell to his knees, his dick flopping back and forth like one of those inflatable Sky Guys outside of a car lot. For a half sec, she considered going back to help him but changed her mind as a quick vision of his sexy ass living it up—without her—in Jamaica in less than twenty-four hours filled her mind.
Ignoring the sticky wetness coating the crack of her ass, Danielle raced out the house and to her car, leaving behind her torn panties and broken heart. Mohammed had just rushed out onto the porch as she reversed down his driveway and sped away up the street.
The familiar smell of their sex filled her nostrils and Danielle rolled her eyes. She hadn’t laid eyes on the man in weeks and she gave up her panties like a whore selling pussy for a penny. Pussy topped brains again.
“Don’t go, Mohammed. Please don’t leave me.”
Danielle gasped in horror at the memory of her pleading. Insult just trampled all over injury. She slammed on her brakes in the middle of the street and let her head drop to the steering wheel.
I begged him not to leave me, she thought, lifting her head and looking at the reflection of her eyes in the rearview mirror.
Insecurity was hard to look at and so she shifted her eyes away.
And the very last thing Danielle Johnson wanted to be was insecure. Needy. Desperate.
She wanted more.
“With my connections and your looks I could have made you into something.”
Danielle’s eyes shifted back to the rearview mirror as Carolyn’s voice echoed in her ear like a tiny well-dressed minion pushing devilment. She could just picture the woman propped on her shoulder in a form-fitting red Versace dress and six-inch heels—red-bottom Christian Louboutins of course.
Danielle didn’t know how long she sat in the middle of the street with her thoughts racing. She didn’t move her car even as the minimal traffic on the quiet street was forced to drive around her. She had a lot of shit on her mind.
Her needy friends.
Her thankless job.
Her invisible parents.
Her pathetic childhood.
Her shady past.
“I need more,” she admitted to herself.
She reachd down to the floor of the passenger seat to grab her tote. She dug out her cell phone. Mohammed had called a dozen times. He was leaving and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help her get her life off pause.
With one breath and hopes that she didn’t live to regret it, Danielle dialed a number she knew by heart. It rang twice.
“Well, well. Lookey, lookey,” the female voice said smugly into the phone, sounding like a more refined Sheneneh from the 1990s sitcom Martin.
Rolling her eyes, Danielle stiffened her spine against the driver’s seat.
“With my connections and your looks I could have made you into something.”
“Carolyn, we need to talk,” she said, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder before she accelerated her car and finally sped off toward home.
Fast Forward Five Years . . .
“The secret of two is God’s secret,
the secret of three is everybody’s secret.”
—Proverb
Chapter 5
Monica (née Alizé)
Present Day
“Come on, baby girl, let’s make this money, yo.”
Monica smoothed her hands over her form-fitting
pencil skirt as she coolly settled back in her leather executive chair and eyed her client with a demeanor that completely spoke of her belief that he was not to be taken seriously. And over fifty percent of the time, she was completely serious about her life and everything in it.
The television sitcom star who wanted to become a hip-hop icon was a caricature. The slang that sounded forced. The diamond jewelry that seemed borrowed. The tattoos that were random as hell. Kelson Hunt a.k.a. K-Hunta was on the back of a speedy bullet headed to obscurity.
It wasn’t her job to tell him to use both hands to grab hold of his life. She was hired to manage his money, not his career.
No, Monica did not take him seriously at all.
She didn’t bother to hide it. She didn’t care to.
In the three years since she established and became the CEO of Winters Investment Services, Monica had steadily climbed the ladder to success. Her boutique agency included a small but very exclusive roster of celebrity clients who respected her and her ability to make the wealthy even wealthier.
And she had only just begun.
Monica rose to her feet and extended her hand. “It was good meeting with you, Mr. Hunt,” she began with a polite smile that was meant to be a subtle nudge that it was time for him to leave.
She didn’t miss how his eyes lingered on the way the rich satin of her blouse clung to her breasts. Monica cleared her throat as she removed her red-framed spectacles and held them in her hand.
“Just call me K-Hunta,” he said, rising to his full six-foot-five-inch frame.
Uh, no, sir. I will not. “Yes, so, I’ll be touch with more information on your portfolio. I think it’s wise of you to let your money make money,” she said, coming around her large glass desk to guide him by his elbow to the door.
“Usain said you’re straight, so we’re all good,” K-Hunta said, his chains lightly hitting against each other as he finally walked out the door to his entourage scattered about her waiting room.
Monica never talked business in the company of hangers-on. An attorney or business manager? Fine. The fellas you grew up with from the block? Nada.
Never Keeping Secrets Page 4