“So what? He was her best friend. They grew up together—”
“He left her a pretty sizable sum of money, and a portion of his royalties go to her, as well. She could be looking for the next big paycheck.”
“Look, I’m not going to say this again. If you can’t respect Karen, then you need to just keep her name out of your mouth. I’m not having this discussion with you. I’m volunteering at her center, and that’s final.” Darius narrowed his eyes and clenched his teeth as he bit out his words. Cullen might be his manager, but he would not tolerate anyone disrespecting Karen. It went against every fiber in his being.
Cullen’s eyes flickered with slight irritation. Darius made sure he held Cullen’s gaze.
“Fine. Whatever. If you want to be hardheaded and let this chick stick you for all you’re worth—”
“No one is sticking me for anything. Change the subject, Cullen! As a matter of fact, let’s just call this a wrap. I’ll be in touch when I’m ready to hit the studio.” He got up and walked out of Cullen’s office.
It felt good.
He still had about an hour to kill before it was time to pick up Karen. He’d been thinking about her all day. By the time he drove there from Cullen’s office in New York traffic, he’d just about make it.
Waiting outside of the center for Karen felt like waiting for The Source magazine reviews to come out just after an album dropped. No matter how much Darius told himself he couldn’t care less what people had to say, he couldn’t quite sit right until he saw the five mics and the glowing review. With Karen, heck, he’d never felt more open and anxious. He wanted the woman in a bad way.
She was five minutes late. Did that mean something like she wasn’t coming out? Or maybe she just wasn’t feeling him?
Nah, he had kissed her, and he knew she was feeling him. She might be trying to run from it. She might not want to own it. But she felt him.
He glanced at the door and willed it to open, willed her to come walking out and lock up.
The door remained shut.
He pulled in to a spot and parked, since he’d been double-parked. He shut off the car and got out. Just as he walked around the car and turned on the alarm, she came walking out.
“Hey,” she mumbled as she juggled her bag and tried to lock up.
Darius rushed over and took the bag from her hand. “I thought you weren’t gonna come out.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just…I don’t know. Just nerves, I guess.”
“What do you have to be nervous about?”
“Nothing now, I guess.”
They walked to the car, and he opened the door for her to get in before getting in himself. “So, where do you want to go?” he asked once he got in the car.
“Wherever you want to take me.” She let her words trail off, and he could think of only one place he wanted to take her at that moment: his house. His bedroom, to be exact.
Chapter 11
“Where Brooklyn at? Where Brooklyn at?” The loud bumping base of the music was matched only by the deejay hyping up the crowd in the crowded nightclub. All the deejay had to do was ask the question and the crowd was more than willing to scream and holler and let him know they were right there.
Karen and Darius were seated in the VIP section surrounded by what she could only assume was his entourage. He told her that these were the guys who typically hung out with him all the time. Some of them were actually on his payroll as bodyguards. But since he’d been home, he’d been using them less. She didn’t know if that was wise. But she didn’t say anything. The club scene certainly wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she told him he could take her anywhere he wanted. She’d been thinking of his place—more specifically, his bedroom.
She’d gone home and changed from her usual uniform of crinkled skirt, T-shirt and Isis-style Birkenstocks. She’d had a feeling her red skirt and her red, white and blue “Peace Is Patriotic” T-shirt weren’t dressy enough for the nightclub Darius said he wanted to take her to. So she went home, took a quick shower, oiled up the skin with some shea butter, did the minimalist makeup thing she only did on special occasions and put on the red, black and green minidress she had gotten from Amina’s attic.
She’d had the dress dry-cleaned weeks ago and was saving it for a special occasion. Since she didn’t want to ruin the look of the dress, she wore a pair of strappy sandals instead of her normal Birkenstocks or Converse sneakers. No matter what Amina said, Karen did own some things that weren’t “crunchy granola.” And judging by the way Darius looked at her when he came to pick her up, changing into the minidress and strappy sandals had been a good idea.
She had to admit that watching him in his element with his boys in the club having fun was a little intriguing. He was very much the center of attention, the man in control, the one everyone looked to, the alpha male. And oddly enough, against everything she ever would have imagined about herself, she found that extremely attractive.
She found herself just gazing at him, hardly hearing what he was saying but totally enraptured by the shape of his mouth and the curve of his lips. She remembered what it felt like to kiss him, and automatically her nipples started to pebble and a warm energy flowed across her chest and into her heart. She hoped that she would be able to kiss him again by the end of the night.
She did a double take because she thought she saw the black and white Bobbsey twins from the other night at the Italian restaurant in the VIP room of the club. But when she looked again, they weren’t there. She felt hyperaware and was starting to feel just a little bit out of place.
“You wanna dance?” Darius stood up and held out his hand.
Ne-Yo and Jamie Foxx’s “She Got Her Own” was playing. Darius wrapped his arms around her and pulled her super close. They swayed back and forth to the groove, and she started to smell that unique scent again that she had come to only associate with him. She didn’t think it was his cologne, because she knew she’d never smelled anything like it before.
She pressed her face to his muscular chest, inhaled deeply and felt an almost drugging effect. Who knew that nutmeg, summer rain and desire could have such an impact it damn near made a person woozy? At least it made her woozy. She inhaled again before tilting her head, gazing up at him.
He stared at her for a moment and then bent his head and captured her lips in a kiss. The slight brush of his mouth on hers gave way to an intensity that took her breath away. Their lips opened simultaneously, and their tongues seemed to play a sensuous game of hide-and-go-seek. Her tongue darted out to chase his before rushing back into her own mouth to savor the traces of him left there. His tongue came out searching for hers in order to tag her in a game so sublime she knew one of them had to stop or they would lose sense of the fact that they were in the middle of a dance floor in the small club.
She pulled away and immediately regretted it. The sense of loss was that instant, that deep.
His hand continued to caress her back, and he continued to hold her in his arms. It felt like he had held her like that forever, and she didn’t ever want him to stop.
Where in the world were all these feelings coming from? Luckily, a faster club classic started playing, a fast dance track that was mostly instrumental with a pounding beat. She stepped out of his arms and started to move to the music, shaking her hips and moving her feet with every ounce of seduction inside of her.
“I see somebody has moves,” Darius said with a smile as he put his hands back on her waist and started to dance to the faster beat. “I don’t care if the music is fast or slow. I need to touch you.” He winked playfully, but his request was made in a tone so serious it almost felt like a demand.
She wanted to tell him that he could have been touching her all he wanted if they had gone back to her place or his instead of coming to the club, but she didn’t. She just grinned at her wicked thoughts and winked back at him.
He took a deep breath and inhaled. “What�
�s that perfume you’re wearing? Your scent has been driving me crazy. It’s subtle most of the time, and then it kicks up and makes me want you in the worst way, like the air becomes charged with you. Whatever that is, I’m buying you boxes and boxes of the stuff so that you can wear it all the time.”
She frowned. “I’m not wearing any perfume. A lot of people are allergic to scents. So, I try to be sensitive and not wear anything but some good old shea butter.”
“Stop playing, girl. It smells like honey and hibiscus and dew and—” He stopped and frowned for a moment before shaking his head and laughing. “Well, it must be your natural sweet scent then.” He bent his head and inhaled.
She chuckled nervously and thought that it would have been a great time to ask him what else he was wearing besides Cool Water cologne. She knew the cologne wasn’t the scent she smelled when the attraction heated up between them.
She’d read articles in the occasional women’s magazine about attraction, subconscious scents and pheromones. But what they seemed to be experiencing kicked all of that stuff—which she used to think was total crap, by the way—up about ten thousand notches.
“You have an interesting scent yourself, Mr. Rollins.”
Go for broke, girl. You can do it. Either he’ll think you’re crazy or he’ll be able to confirm what you’re feeling.
She sighed. “It’s almost like the air is constantly charged with desire when you’re around me. It’s subtle for the most part, but then out of the blue it feels like the air becomes superfilled with you and only you. And it makes me want to be with you in the worst way. It’s not reasonable or rational, and it doesn’t make any sense at all. Because I just met you, and I shouldn’t want you this much.”
He stopped dancing and stared at her, taking deep, staggered breaths. His hooded gaze roamed her body and made her hotter and hotter. She became so overheated that in the far-back regions of her mind she worried she might just forget her views about public displays of affection and start making out on the dance floor again.
“We should go.” He took her hand and led her off the dance floor.
They said goodbye to all of his friends, and they were out of the club and into his car fairly quickly.
“I hope you don’t mind coming to my place tonight?” He turned to her before starting the car.
“No. I don’t mind at all.”
They rode in silence, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. There was so much she wanted to say. There was so much she wasn’t sure how to say.
His loft apartment was stunning. She couldn’t believe he had all this space in the city and rarely used it. Her tiny apartment times five could probably fit in his loft easily with room for five more and probably five more after that! The building had an around-the-clock door person, and there were only ten other tenants, two luxury lofts on each floor.
A professional must have decorated Darius’s loft, Karen thought as she looked around. She couldn’t help but think she was in a high-end showroom. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, but what was there made a statement.
“Have a seat, and I’ll open a bottle of wine.”
She sat down on the cappuccino leather sectional, admiring the clean lines of the piece. There was also a matching cappuccino leather ottoman that doubled as a sofa table and two very modern-styled chairs in the space allotted for the living room. The living room was centered in such a way that she could see all other areas of the loft except for the walled-off master suite and the bathrooms. The chrome dining table in the dining area echoed the two chrome end tables in the living room. All she could think as she took in all of the furniture and expensive art was that someone had certainly paid a lot of attention to every detail.
He came over and handed her a glass of wine before sitting down right next to her. She took a sip and decided that she should put all her cards on the table and tell him about the journal, Dicey’s reading, the dreams, all of it. If he thought she was crazy and kicked her to the curb—and she wasn’t so sure anymore that she wasn’t certifiable—then at least it would happen before he kissed her again and made her yearn for more.
So she spilled and told him everything that had happened since she picked up the journal in Amina’s attic. And he listened, taking an occasional sip of wine but all the while listening intently.
When she finally finished, she took a deep breath and then took a gulp of her own wine. “Crazy, right?”
He took her glass from her and got up, taking the wineglasses back to the kitchen. When he returned, he sat on the ottoman right in front of her. He took her hands in his.
“Let me ask you this. If you weren’t having all of this woo-woo stuff—as you call it—going on, do you think you would still be attracted to me? Would a brother still have a chance to kick it to you?”
“Do you mean if I was just minding my own business and the famous rapper and actor D-Roc came up to me would I talk to him?” She gave him a look that answered her own question. Are you kidding me? Of course.
“Even without all that fame and stuff…just me, the man, Darius Rollins. Would he have a chance with you if he wasn’t D-Roc and you weren’t having these dreams, just strip all of that away and then what?” He squeezed her hands before continuing, and her heart started pounding loudly in her chest.
“Because I have been having dreams, too, and I feel like I’ve known you forever even though I only met you a few days ago. And I feel compelled to just stop all this talking, take you to bed and make love to you until you can’t think of anything else but me for the rest of your life. But when I strip all of that away and really think about you the woman, and if I would still want to be with you if all of that wasn’t bouncing around in the background, I would have to say yes. I’m so impressed with you, the work you’re doing in the neighborhood, your wit, your passion, your fire. The way you look in that dress. I would want you even if my soul wasn’t demanding that I claim you right now.”
“Right now?”
“Right now!” He leaned forward, and his lips lightly feathered hers, pulling away too soon. “But I need to know where you’re coming from because for me none of that other stuff matters. Call it ego, call it caveman antics, call it arrogance, call it what you want. I need to know that you’re here right now because you want to be here and you want to be here with me. All that other stuff will either work itself out or it won’t. But I know that once I make love to you there won’t be any turning back for either of us.”
Dang it if the strength and determination in his voice wasn’t making her nipples tighten and pebble to an almost painful point. She wanted—no, she needed—to make love to him more than she had ever wanted anyone before.
But she tried to push all of that to the back of her mind and focus on and answer his question.
She thought about Darius the man. He was a man who believed in hard work and achieved success in two cutthroat fields where the path to success was any thing but easy. He was a man who cared about his family enough to want to continue to take care of them financially. He was a man who felt guilty enough about his cousin’s death that he would volunteer in order to touch the lives of other youths so that they wouldn’t end up losing their lives. He was handsome, sturdy, steady and strong. He made her smile and made her laugh, and he was hella fine. He was the kind of guy any girl would want to have a relationship with. Of course, she would want him in her life if he wasn’t a superstar, if he was just hardworking Darius from the hood.
She nodded. “If this weird woo-woo stuff wasn’t going on and you weren’t a superstar, I’d still want to know you, Darius. I’d still want to be with you.”
He smiled. “Good. Then let’s try and focus on each other, on getting to know each other and building a relationship. And if the dreams continue and if you still smell like honey, hibiscus, dew and desire, it’s all good. Even if we were somehow together in our past lives, it doesn’t matter now. All that matters now is what we have in the present, what we build now.”
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“That makes sense. I guess… But what if we were supposed to learn something from the past, if it is all supposed to mean something…more?”
“Then we’ll figure it out. But right now…right now I need you more than I need air.” He stood and lifted her from the sofa so quickly that she thought he might drop her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on. At the end of the day, she wanted what was about to happen more than she wanted anything else at the moment.
Chapter 12
Darius didn’t have any second thoughts or hesitation about taking the next step with Karen. The sincerity in her eyes when she said she would want to know him and be with him whether he was a superstar or not or despite the unexplainable attraction they felt for one another made him feel ten feet tall.
More than he needed to make this woman his, he needed her to fully and completely want to be his. He refused to accept anything less.
When they entered his bedroom, he stood her on her own two feet and stood in front of her, taking her in for the umpteenth time that evening. The red minidress with the black-and-green pattern was so her. And she seemed so familiar to him in that moment, like he’d seen her in that exact dress countless times and it always had the power to slay him. The material hugged her curves perfectly. Her long, brown legs glistened and beckoned for him to reach out and stroke them.
“Take off your dress.” He spoke the words in a barely controlled rumble. He wanted to see more. He wanted to see all of her.
She slid the dress over her head and tossed it to the side. Standing there in black lace matching bra and panties, along with those strappy high-heeled sandals, she looked like she was ready for a Victoria’s Secret photo shoot.
He could see more of her than he had ever seen, and still it wasn’t enough.
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