Then, as if catapulting me to the heavens, he cupped my face and the kiss deepened just like it had in the barn earlier. He pressed his tongue between my lips, and I greeted him with equal fervor. In urgency and need, feasting as if on the brink of starvation, we devoured each other. We kissed like our lives depended on it. I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close. And just like the first time, he set my body on fire with the wet, hot heat of passion.
Backed against the dresser, I felt his arm, strong and firm, holding me tight. His other hand caressed my arm and traveled down, touching beneath my halter top to barely stroke my nipple. My stomach shuddered. I felt the hard thickness between his legs pressed against me, and the luscious wetness between my legs surrendered.
A silent tremor ran through my body as I heard a deep, throaty groan rumble through him. His hand traveled to my waist, hip, and thigh. Then lower, he lifted the hem of my shorts and he grabbed my butt, squeezing tight. I broke the kiss and flung my head back. I heard my own panting moans as I squirmed against him. I wanted more. I needed more. My body reeled as passion and hunger surged.
He ran his fingers through my hair, gently scratching my scalp. I staggered back. The sensation was arousing beyond measure. Then he pulled my hair and kissed my neck, my throat, and my shoulders. My thoughts whirled in a hot, sultry haze of mindless rapture.
I surrendered and the moment took me.
He stepped back at arm’s length and stared, unblinking. The look in his eyes stilled me. “I want to make love to you tonight, but we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready. I just want to be with you. We can talk or just sit here and look at each other.”
I looked at him. “I want to make love to you too.”
“Turn around,” he whispered, his voice husky.
I turned. My heart pounded as he placed his hands on my shoulders and then leaned down and kissed my neck again. I tipped my head to the side and felt the roughness of his unshaved chin. He placed my hands on the rim of the dresser. He untied the bow around my waist and then the bow at the nape of my neck. He pulled the zipper down, and my shorts dropped to the floor. Slowly he knelt to remove my panties. Then I felt his hands all over my naked body. He was tender and firm, caressing playfully, purposefully. The arousal inside me swelled. He nipped at my butt and kissed my waist. He removed his clothes, and seconds later he leaned in close. I gasped. I felt his skin on my skin and his massive protrusion pressed against me.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.
He wrapped his hands around my waist and moved them up to my breasts. He caressed and cupped them, then held still as he kissed my shoulder. “I wanted to do this, to touch you like this, at the party in Cape May, in the diner this morning, and in that barn tonight. And every other time in between.”
I was giddy with desire. “Then touch me,” I muttered. He squeezed my breasts, and his thumbs teased my nipples. My body trembled. I moaned and pushed back from the dresser. He dipped his hand between my legs, nudging them apart. I took a step out. He began to stroke me there. Soft and tender, the torturous torment was exquisite pain. I felt that amazing something building up inside my body as my legs trembled and my body tensed.
“Please, can I touch you more?” he begged.
“Yes. Yes,” I barely murmured. “More.”
“I want to pleasure you all night long,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear. I shuddered and nodded.
I began moving, rocking my hips as he touched and teased me down there. The more he stroked, the tighter I felt my insides winding. He encircled my waist with his arm and started bumping his erection against my butt faster and faster. My legs shook uncontrollably. I felt an explosion coming from within. Seconds later I threw my head back and cried out as a feeling I had never felt overpowered me. My body twitched and writhed frantically.
He took my hips and turned me around. Then he bent down and licked my nipples, one right after the other. He followed up by taking one breast into his mouth and sucking while he teased me there again. I looked down and saw his mouth on my body and grabbed hold of him. I scratched his scalp like he had done to me. He looked up and smiled. I leaned down to kiss his incredible lips. He stood and tried to dip his hand between my legs again. But I pushed him away.
He looked at me, surprised. Ignoring his confusion, I chuckled and sashayed over to the bed and sat down. I admired his naked body. His hard penis was long and thick and stood straight up at me. I scooted back on the bed and crooked my finger for him to come join me. I watched, mesmerized, as he came to me.
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip as I watched him part my legs. Slowly he crawled over me and started kissing my naked body everywhere. The roughness of his beard was even more tantalizing and exaggerated. It scratched and tickled my skin. I leaned up on my elbows, watching him doing all kinds of things, kissing and licking me everywhere, in places I had never even imagined being touched.
I closed my eyes. I moaned and tried to close my legs, but he was there between them, kissing me, licking me. I reached down and grabbed his penis and held firm, then rubbed up and down his shaft. He made a guttural sound that made me bolder still. I started massaging him, feeling wetness trickle out. He leaned back and looked at me. He grabbed his penis from my hand and pushed it deep into me. I gasped. I felt the staggering pain of his sudden entry. I screamed out and moaned.
“Yes, don’t stop.” I wrapped my legs around his waist as he kept pushing into me, quicker and deeper, over and over again. Every thrust pushed me closer and closer to the edge again. I dug my nails into his back, holding on for dear life. My body shivered and quaked. I moved my hips against him, and we collided and joined as one. A violent rage was coming and I couldn’t stop it. I exploded a second time and then a third.
He held me tighter and I felt him quicken the pace. His hips pushed, pounded, thrust. Then he tensed and shivered as his breathing got heavier. He groaned louder and deeply, then called my name like it would forever be the last name on his lips. He convulsed in spasm after spasm. His body jerked. My body tingled, and I felt like I was floating.
I wanted to speak, but I didn’t trust my own voice. I lay there with him on top of me and relished the moment. Just as I got comfortable with him there, he rolled over and wrapped his arm around my body and held me close. I lay on my side, using his arm as a pillow.
Moments later, still breathless with passion, we kissed and touched and caressed and surrendered to the smoldering fire still simmering deep inside us. He touched my neck and ran his hand down to my breasts. He playfully tweaked my nipples and smiled as I gasped. I watched as he licked his lips. I knew he wanted more of me.
I sat up and straddled his hips, then looked down as his eyes pierced right through me. I kissed him sweetly, and he raised me up so that my nipples hovered over his face. I watched, enthralled, and I arched my back as he tasted me. His tongue was gentle with long, luscious, exaggerated strokes sending me down that path to desire once more. Then he took my breast into his mouth and suckled, causing unimaginable delight. My body soared.
Without realizing it, I rested my hand on his chest. I felt the swell of strong, toned muscles flex beneath my fingers. I touched the tight firmness of his stomach and teased the tiny hairs just below. I touched his penis, still slightly stiff, and heard him moan his pleasure. Emboldened, I impaled myself. I rode him with fervor and delight until he was no longer slightly stiff.
Sexually spent and decadently sated, we lay side by side facing each other. His eyes stared at me, and his oh so tender lips nibbled my shoulder, then my neck. I reached up and felt the scruff of tiny hairs on his face.
“I read an article in the newspaper that we’re gonna have a man walk on the moon next year.”
I chuckled. “Where in the world did that come from?”
“I just thought of it. So what do you think about that?”
“I think it’s going to be amazing to watch,” I said. “I hope it happens.”
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“Oh, I think it’s going to happen. Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds. That means people are going to have to learn to change and keep up. In a few months we’re supposed to take off from the Kennedy Space Center, fly to the moon, orbit it, and then come back to Earth.”
“I’d love to watch them take off. Blasting out into the unknown.”
“Do you ever think about the future?” he asked.
“The future? You mean flying cars, Dick Tracy telephone wristwatches, and spaceships like that TV show Star Trek, where people are green with pointy ears?”
He smiled. “Well, maybe not that far in the future. I mean like in five or ten years, or even twenty years from now.”
“Well, hopefully the war will be over by then. I can’t see it going into the next decade.”
I looked into his eyes. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
“The day Calvin was killed I was out on operations. We were supposed to secure a small village. Intel said it was deserted. It wasn’t. I stepped on a booby trap. For some reason it didn’t detonate. I should have been killed right then, but I wasn’t. Suddenly there was an attack, and the routine turned into hell. We were taking on enemy fire from all directions. I was hit in the shoulder and side. But others were slaughtered. We were rushed to an evac hospital near Tân An.
“Calvin was there. He shouldn’t have been, but it was good to see a familiar face. He was stationed at Long Binh near Saigon. We talked for a short while, then a helicopter came in with wounded. He went to help. Moments later there was a massive explosion and firebomb. It blew me off my cot. I saw body parts scatter, men on fire, screaming, dying. The sight. The smell. The sounds. I’ll never get that moment out of my head. I couldn’t hear anything for weeks.” He paused. “I should have saved him.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“My father had just been killed in Saigon. He was shot saving civilians. He was proud to be in the military and so was I. I was honorably discharged a few weeks later. I’m the only one left.”
I didn’t say anything. I understood.
“Maybe Calvin would still be alive. I should have made him stay there with me.”
“No, you can’t think like that. That’s not how it works. It wasn’t your job to protect him. You can’t blame yourself for him getting killed. It wasn’t your fault. It was the war.”
Daniel shook his head. “We were best friends, brothers. And I betrayed him. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“Of course you feel like you feel. It’s only human. But it doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that. Your father had just been killed. You were almost killed too.”
He looked at me serenely. “You know what, Miss Motown? I really like you,” he said.
“I really like you too.” I touched his face. “So, what about the future? Do you mean like George Orwell’s book 1984, in which Big Brother is watching over us all the time and we have no freedom?”
“I’m thinking more like the turn of the century.”
“Ah, we’re back to talking about flying cars, people living on Mars, robots, and computer machines the size of a fingernail running the world instead of real people.”
“I don’t know about all that,” he said. “The year 2000 is only thirty-two years from now.”
“I know, but it seems so far off, like a million years away. I can’t see myself living on Mars. Maybe I’ll just go there on vacation.”
“What’s your major at Spelman?”
“It’s a double major, political science and English. I’ll be attending Howard Law School next year, and after that—”
“When we get to Atlanta, I want us to still see each other. Morehouse is right across from Spelman.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Good. You’re something else, Miss Motown.”
My heart swelled. “You’re something else right back.” He kept talking, but I didn’t say a whole lot after that. I let him talk. We lay in each other’s arms, and I fell asleep to the sound of his soothing voice.
21
I JUMPED UP. “DIDN’T YOU HEAR THAT? SOMEONE screamed.”
We listened intently to the silence for a few moments but didn’t hear anything. “Lay back,” Daniel said. “It was just a bad dream.”
“No. I heard it. A girl screamed and then there was a bang or a bump or something,” I whispered. I didn’t dare move or make a sound, fearing I’d miss hearing it again, but still there was nothing. I slid my legs out of the bed, sat up listening.
“Where are you going?”
“I’d better get back downstairs to my room.”
“Stay.”
“I wish, but I can’t.” I started getting dressed.
Daniel did too. “It’s so hot. I’m gonna step outside and get some air,” he said.
“Good idea.”
The house was dark when we went downstairs. I opened the front door and looked outside cautiously with Daniel right behind me. There was no one around and the world was silent, except for the sound of a dog barking somewhere in the far distance. The sky was black and the stars were shining brightly, but the moon, a little less than full, was covered by dark clouds like monstrous fingers eerily creeping across its surface.
My grandmother, both religious and superstitious, called it a foreboding moon, a sign of trouble coming. She saw a moon like this the night they came for my grandfather. “Full moons drive men crazy,” she used to say.
“You okay?” I jumped, startled by Daniel’s affectionate touch on my back. “Hey, easy. It’s just me,” he said reassuringly. I nodded wordlessly and wrapped my arms around my body.
We sat down on the porch railing and he draped his arm around my shoulders and held me close. He kissed my forehead. “How do I make this night last forever?”
“You can’t.”
“You, my dear Zelda, are too damn practical.”
“I am not,” I insisted. “I’m realistic.”
“Same thing, baby. This just feels right. I don’t want to lose it when we get back to Atlanta,” he said, nuzzling and holding me tighter.
“We won’t,” I said, then sighed, contented. I knew we would never see that room upstairs again and it saddened me.
He started talking, and I commented from time to time, but mostly I listened. I studied the pitch, the tone, and every inflection.
I rested my head back on his chest for a little while longer and smiled as he kept talking. Birds began chirping, and although the sky was still dark, I knew it was going to be dawn soon.
“I’d better go in before Veronica and Daphne miss me.” I stood up, but Daniel remained seated. “Are you coming?” I asked.
“I’ll be in after a while,” he said.
As soon as I stepped inside, I heard a bloodcurdling scream. Daniel stood up. We ran up the stairs to the second floor toward the noise. It was nearly dark except for the dim light coming from inside our bedroom. Daphne and Veronica were standing in the hallway, their eyes wide with panic.
“What was that? Are you okay?” We heard another thud but couldn’t tell exactly where the noise had come from.
“Maybe it was a television set?” Veronica said.
“No, not that loud. I don’t think so,” I whispered.
We moved down the hall closer to Mazie’s room. Her door was closed. There was another loud bump and a grunt, as if somebody had crashed into a wall. And yet another terrible thud, which shook the floor. Then we heard someone running up the stairs from the first floor. It was one of the white guys we had seen at the barn. “What’s he doing here?” I asked forcefully, completely stupefied.
“Who is he?” Veronica asked.
He looked confused and stunk of whiskey and foul body odor. “I’m Rob,” he said.
“I don’t care what your name is. Why are you here?”
“She invited us,” he said. “Billy told me to drop him off and wait in the car hours ago. I guess I passed out.” He rubbed his
eyes.
“Who invited you?” Daniel yelled.
“I don’t know her name.”
“He must mean Mazie,” I said.
“Son of a bitch! I’ll kill you, motherfucker!”
“Shit!” Rob yelled and ran down the dark hallway. He banged on Mazie’s bedroom door. “Billy, open the door. Let me in!”
“Get in your room!” Daniel yelled, shoving Daphne, Veronica, and me back into our bedroom. We heard him run down the hall toward Mazie’s room.
Immediately we came right back out again.
Daniel and Rob banged on the door. “Open the door! Billy, open the damn door,” Rob said.
“No! No! Leave him alone,” Mazie screamed.
I saw Daniel and Rob shove the door open, then push their way inside. Daphne rushed down the hall, and Veronica and I followed. We cautiously looked inside Mazie’s bedroom and found a dresser partially blocking the door. The place was a shambles. It seemed as if absolutely every piece of furniture had been either upturned or broken. Liquor bottles had been broken, and glass was all over the floor. Daniel was holding on to Winston, and Rob had Billy. They were both struggling to keep them separated. Winston and Billy were still drunk.
Winston’s lips were cut and bloody, his eye was swollen, and there was a cut on his cheek where blood oozed down the side of his face, covering his shirt. Billy’s face looked as if had been through a meat grinder. His nose, bleeding profusely, was probably broken, his eye was swollen shut, and the side of his face was already turning purple and blue.
“Look what dat motherfucker did to her face,” Winston yelled. “I’ll kick his motherfucking ass. Let go of me.”
Mazie’s face was a sight. One eye was puffy, her lip was cut and bleeding badly, and there was a gash on her forehead above her left eye. Her neck was red and bruised like she had been choked. She was standing by Billy’s side holding on to his arm. “Get out, Winston. You cheated on me. Billy loves me. He’d never cheat.”
“Get off me,” Billy yelled at Mazie. Slurring his words, he shoved her away. He staggered and nearly fell. “I don’t love you.”
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