by B. M. Hardin
I was surprised at the news, but I was sure with the baby coming out not to be Drake’s, things had probably changed drastically between them anyway.
If Dray was anything with her like he was with me, then finding out that she had been with another man had definitely changed a few feelings within him, if not changed them all.
But no matter what Drake said, he’d stayed with her for a reason though, and I was sure that one day that reason would probably come out.
But either way, as for now they’d both walked away and he walked right into my open arms.
Life couldn’t be better.
“Good morning gorgeous,” Drake said.
I hadn’t even noticed that he was awake.
I smiled at him.
He touched the side of my face.
“I know that I did you wrong. I’m a man. I fuck up. I’ll admit it. But I’m here now. And if you got me, you know I’ll always have you,” he said.
I nodded and smiled.
“So, I have to ask you a question.”
I waited.
“Did you have sex with ole’ boy?”
My heart dropped and drowned in the depth of my stomach.
I didn’t know whether to tell him the truth or lie to him in his face.
If I told the truth, he might call off the engagement.
If I told a lie and then the truth somehow came out, he would definitely call off the wedding.
And with either scenario, I was bound to take an ass whooping, so I said the only thing that seemed logical.
“No. Of course not.”
The night of the proposal, on the way home I’d stopped and got a box of vinegar and water douches.
I’d taken a long bath once we were home and used both douches, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Of course he wanted some, it was the night that we’d gotten engaged.
Hell, I wanted to make love to him too, but I couldn’t forget about what I’d done earlier that day.
Kane had definitely done some slight damage, but I took my time freaking Dray by pleasing him with my mouth and by the time he got inside of me, all felt and seemed just right.
Drake looked at me.
I smiled at him again and then finally he smiled back.
“Okay,” was all that he’d said.
Now, I just had to make sure that he didn’t find out the truth.
Ever.
~***~
I couldn’t deny it, the sexual attraction was overwhelming and so strong.
Kane was just so damn sexy!
He oozed with sex appeal and charm and it was hard for any woman not to want him.
And he had some good dick?
That’s a dangerous man I tell you, and I couldn’t have any more parts of him.
Even though I kind of still wanted to.
He was the type of man that had you bouncing checks, and catching charges left and right from trying to fight every woman that even looked in his direction.
He was the type of man that you had to be at the door, on your knees, ready to suck him off as soon as he walked in from work, just to make sure that you was always on your job in hopes that there would never be any room for anyone else to do it.
Yeah, I had to stay away from him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“So, I know we haven’t chatted much since that day, but…”
“He moved in. I saw the movers. Look he’s your business. But we can have a little business of our own can’t we?” Kane asked and came closer to me.
I was actually surprised at his suggestion.
He didn’t strike me as a man that would be comfortable knowing that he wasn’t the one and only.
He touched me and instantly my inner juices drenched my panties.
I moved away from him.
All of a sudden, I was as hot as hen’s piss, so I started to fan myself.
“That’s not all,” I managed to say and showed him my hand.
He glanced at the ring and swallowed.
He didn’t look at me for a while, nor did he say anything for a few seconds.
Was he mad?
Why would he be?
Surely he didn’t actually have real feelings for me did he?
No, I was sure that he didn’t.
He’d just wanted a piece of the pie I’m sure, but then again, we had become very close and I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t something more in between us two because there was.
Before Dray proposed that is.
Finally, Kane spoke.
“So. What does that mean?”
I looked at him.
He started touching on me again and I tried to move but his touch made me weak.
My mind and my heart didn’t want him, but she sure as hell did.
“No. I can’t,” I told him.
Something told me that I shouldn’t have come down there.
I should have just left well enough alone until he said something to me.
“Yes you can…and you will,” Kane said.
Excuse me?
What the hell was he talking about?
“I will what?”
He smirked.
“You will give that pussy up again. It’s rare that I find a piece of ass that I actually like, and I want to keep you around for a little while longer.”
My mouth damn near fell off from hanging so wide open.
This was definitely not the Kane that I had been getting to know for the last few months.
This is not how he talked.
And he damn sure wasn’t going to talk to me that way.
I wasn’t giving him anything, ever again!
The good news was that I was no longer hot and bothered; I just wanted to get the hell away from him.
“Bye Kane,” I said.
“If you want to keep your job, you’ll be back, tonight, around eight. And you might as well not wear any panties,” he said.
Really?
And did he just threaten me?
Of course he’d pulled the strings to get me hired, so I was sure that he could probably pull them again and get me fired.
“You can have that damn job.”
I proceeded to walk off.
“If you want me to keep my mouth shut, you’ll be here like I said. I’m sure that he doesn’t know that I tapped that ass, does he?” Kane quizzed.
Who in the hell did he think that he was?
Better yet, who had he become?
This was not Kane.
This was not wine fine, top of the line, inspiring, motivating, business and most definitely pleasure, Kane.
This wasn’t the Kane that I had come so fond of but I was willing to bet that this was the real Kane and the other man had just been a fake.
I’d always known that I had to watch him.
I only now wished that I’d never crossed any lines with him.
Something told me that I was about to regret it.
“Tell him. Better yet, I’ll tell him,” I said.
Before I let him tell Dray the truth, I surely would.
I would just have to deal with the consequences.
I pressed the elevator button and just as the doors opened, Kane spoke again.
“I was there that night; the night that he killed my brother. He’d had me dropped off after you left saying that he wanted me to take a ride with him the next morning. I was in the bathroom. I heard the gun shots and when I peeked out the cracks of the door, I saw him heading for the back door. You took the charges for him, but I saw him. So, like I said. I want what I want. And at the moment, I want you. Or, I could tell our little secret. I’m sure the police would love to hear it and I’m sure you took the rap for a reason. Like I said, I’ll see you at eight,” Kane said and entered his condo.
Stepping on the elevator and watching the doors close, I couldn’t believe what he’d just said.
But I knew exactly what I had to do.
/> “See you at eight,” I said to myself out loud as the elevator started to move.
********************************
Chapter EIGHT
I couldn’t believe that Kane knew the truth about Drake and his brother’s murder!
I’d had to lie to Drake as though I was taking a late night run to Wal-Mart that night.
Kane opened the door on the first knock that night as though he’d been waiting for me.
I’d tried to talk to him, and reason with him, but he hadn’t wanted to hear all of that.
All he wanted was what was in between my legs and he made it more than clear that I had better give it to him.
He was blackmailing me for my booty…now that was a new one!
Who does that?
And why would he even want it if I didn’t want to give it to him?
Of course the sex had been nothing like it had been the first time around and I laid there as though I was a corpse.
I’m sure that being forced to do it had something to do with it, but Kane didn’t seem to care whether I participated or not.
I was so mad and so disgusted but I didn’t have a choice but to lay there and let him have his way with me.
I had to do it to keep him from trying to rat out Dray.
The only thing that kept me from throwing up and damn near dying during the process was because I had to keep it together so that I could force him to give me more information once he was through.
There were a few things that I needed to know and I needed to know how much he knew.
From there, I could figure out a plan and my next move.
Once he was done, I immediately got dressed and though I could barely even look at him, I started in on the questions.
“Why hadn’t you said anything before?”
“It didn’t really matter who had killed him as long as he was dead.”
“Then why bring it up now?”
Kane looked at me.
“You can’t just lead someone on and then drop them when you feel like running off and getting engaged,” Kane said.
This fool was a little bit crazy huh.
I should have known.
It was always something wrong with the good looking, good dick having ones.
And so he had some hard feelings about Dray and I getting engaged?
It wasn’t like Kane and I were a couple or anything and I never led him on.
We talked regularly, flirted, and one day it led to sex.
It wasn’t like we were full blown dating and I just dropped him to go back to my ex or something.
He was definitely taken it too seriously and going way overboard.
“I didn’t lead you on. We were friends, kind of. We flirted and all but who knew that it would be anything more? What happened recently, the sex, was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake to me.”
So he did like me or something?
I’ll admit, I had started to like him too, but Drake was the love of my life and now that he loved me back, again, there was no way that I was going to mess that up.
Dray had stepped up, so Kane had to step off!
“I think you’re bluffing. You wouldn’t go forward with what you know.”
“Try me.”
“They won’t believe you. I already did the time for the crime. They’ll question why you didn’t come forward back then.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe they will reopen the case. Maybe he will go to jail for murder and I’m sure that they could send you back on some kind of charges for lying to cover up for him. I’m no lawyer or anything. But maybe.”
I was furious!
I didn’t understand what his point was for being so damn messy!
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why am I doing what?”
I’d wanted to smack him to sleep.
Something told me to stay away from him.
Why hadn’t I listened to my gut?
Hell, why hadn’t I listened to Drake?
“Look, I already have a woman. You’ll just be my something extra on the side; until I find someone else. You keep me right when she can’t and I’ll keep my mouth shut. It’s that’s simple.”
Oh hell no!
I’d just come from being a side chick, and now Kane was trying to make me his?
Over my dead body…or more like over his.
I had to find a way out of this mess, even if I had to tell Drake about what I’d done in order to do it.
But even then we would still have a problem.
I couldn’t let him send my future husband to jail.
I’d just gotten him back, and I couldn’t lose him again.
I had to protect Dray.
I had to make sure that he would be okay.
So simply put…I didn’t have a choice.
For now anyway.
I would just have to screw Kane every now and then until I came up with something.
And I was going to have to come up with a plan that was going to get rid of his ass.
For good.
That night I’d left Kane’s place with a headache.
I couldn’t believe what he was doing.
He had been the perfect guy.
And I had been his perfect fool.
Why couldn’t he have been the man that he’d pretended to be?
That man was understanding, inspirational, and he would have congratulated me on my engagement, instead of trying to mess it up.
But I wasn’t going to lose Dray.
I would lose my life trying to keep him. And Kane would lose his too.
~***~
I was meeting my sister Lee Lee for lunch.
Since Drake’s proposal, we had started the healing and bonding process and my family seemed to be working it all out just fine.
They had forgiven me.
I had forgiven them.
My only regret was that it all hadn’t happened in time before Mama’s time was up on this earth.
But I firmly believed that she was somewhere sitting high and looking low with a smile on her face.
Oh how I wished that she could see me now.
I watched Lee Lee walk in.
Lee Lee was what some would call stupid thick!
She had one hell of a body on her and she had curves and booty for days.
She was short with it though but she definitely had a body that would make you do a double take.
Her body was perfect and it always had been.
It was the one thing about her that I’d always envied.
But she wasn’t all that pretty though.
I’d always thought that she was the least attractive of the girls and that was only because she looked just like Daddy; just with hair and without the beard.
But she kept herself a man.
And in her case, it was definitely her booty because it damn sure wasn’t her beauty.
She was my sister and I loved her, but she was good and ugly.
I was just being honest.
But I’d better not hear anyone else say it though.
“Hey,” Lee Lee smiled with her ugly self.
I smiled back.
“So, how are the wedding plans coming along?”
“Good. I haven’t done much but good. I hate that Drake doesn’t have family. I know he’s going to feel some kind of way on our special day.”
Drake didn’t have but one living close relative; an uncle.
Everyone in his family only had one child, for generations.
All of the older ones had died off, including his parents, and he only had distant cousins other than his one uncle.
His uncle had one son, who died in the Army during battle only his second year enlisted.
So, basically, Drake was all alone.
But he still had me.
He always had me.
And I couldn’t let Kane mess that up.
I would do anything to make sure that didn’t happen.
>
“Well, we have enough family for the both of you. I’m sure they all will be glad to see you. Anyway, I went by your job the other day to bring you lunch and they said that you quit. Are you sure that was a good idea, considering, well you know,” Lee Lee asked.
I quit so that Kane couldn’t continue to hang the job over my head.
I went ahead and got it over with.
Though I wanted to still be independent even though I was now with Drake, I wasn’t in such a rush anymore.
I would continue to put in job applications and explain the incident and somebody, someday, would see my potential and give me a chance.
And I wouldn’t have to sleep with nobody to get it.
“It’ll happen again for me when it’s supposed to. Drake and his business does pretty well, so I’ll be fine,” I said to her.
“Speaking of fine, Drake has really come a long way,” Lee Lee laughed but I didn’t see a damn thing funny.
She was known to sleep with somebody’s man and sleeping with mine would get her in an oak box, right beside Mama’s.
Though I didn’t really think that Drake would stoop that low; you just never know what folks would do these days.
Speaking of Drake, I’d seen his ex-wife, Naomi, the other day, and she’d pretended as though she didn’t even know me.
I wasn’t trying to speak or anything but she’d really looked at me, and continued on her way like I wasn’t even there.
She and a woman were talking and she was pushing the baby in the stroller.
I’m telling you, that baby could have passed for Drake’s child all day long.
I could see it all in the nose.
But they were 99.9% sure that she wasn’t his, so it was what it was.
Maybe the old saying was true that said if you got on a pregnant woman’s nerves enough or if you fed her enough, the baby could actually come out looking like you.
In this case, it just had to be somewhat true.
But she was the past and I was enjoying my present with Drake and looking forward to the future as his wife.
I didn’t feel at all bad about him choosing us; this was how it was supposed to be in the first place.
He’d been talking my kind of language and mentioning having children as soon as we were married, so I was more than excited to get things on the ball.
We didn’t need a long engagement or a big wedding.
We’d known each other long enough and we had enough money, decent money, to pull a wedding together in no time.