Make It Last Forever

by Gwyneth Bolton

  “And what if your girl Karen had something to do with it? What if she was trying to have you killed by Saul, as well, once she got you open enough to put her in your will? Would you be okay with it if this DVD went to the police and it took her down, too?”

  “If she was involved in any way with Saul taking that man’s life then she isn’t the woman I thought I loved. So, yes, I’d be fine with her paying the price for her crime.” He let out a sharp breath, and he realized he meant every word he’d just said. “Let’s stop by Karen’s place first.”

  Even though he had no idea how he would feel if it were true, he wanted to see if Saul was there.

  Chapter 17

  The harsh knocking on the door jolted Karen from the few minutes of sleep she had managed to get. She had left Saul on the sofa an hour ago. They both agreed that she should have one of her staff members open up the center in the morning because for the first time since she staffed the center she was in no shape mentally to be there.

  She had just placed her head on her pillow and had finally been able to doze off when someone decided to bang on her door like the Gestapo. She got out of bed and walked out into the living room just in time to see Saul opening the door.

  Darius barged in followed by seven more men. They looked like the men who had been at the club with them the other night. But she couldn’t tell. Two of the men grabbed Saul and started frisking him.

  “He’s clean,” the biggest and burliest one of the bunch said. But they still held on to Saul and didn’t let him go.

  The entire time Darius was just staring at her. She started to feel way underdressed in the lavender nightshirt that came just under her behind and had the slogan, “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” in purple letters. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “What’s going on here, Darius? Why are you here? Why are you doing this? Haven’t you done enough? I told you to stay away from me. It’s over between us. I guess I’ll see you next lifetime.” She rolled her eyes. “But do me a favor, stay the hell away from me then, too. Asshole!”

  He just stared at her and then looked over at his boys holding Saul. He noticed Saul was shirtless with just his pants on at about the same time she did. He turned back to her with all kinds of accusations in his eyes, and she thought he had some nerve given the black and white Bobbsey twins who had ruined their evening.

  “Go put on a robe or put on some clothes, Karen.” Darius gave the order like he paid rent there or like he thought somebody was going to actually listen to him.

  He had the wrong somebody as far as she was concerned. She knew that much. She folded her arms across her chest, tilted her head and glared at him.

  “I’m not doing anything. This is my apartment, Darius. You can’t just come busting in here making demands. In fact, I think you need to take your thugs and leave.”

  Darius narrowed his eyes and spoke between clenched teeth. “Go and put on a robe or some clothes now, or I will take you back there and help you with that, Karen.”

  She noticed that all eyes in the room were now firmly on her.

  One of the men took his eyes off her and noticed Saul’s duffel bag by the sofa. He went right over and started looking through it. He pulled out a gun with his handkerchief and held it up for everyone to see.

  “I do a lot of traveling. I need protection. And unless y’all are the police and are about to read a brother his rights then y’all need to just step off.” Saul struggled to break free from the men holding him.

  The sight of the gun made her eyes bulge. What the hell was Saul doing with a gun in her house? The man kept looking through the bag and came up with several wads of cash rolled up in rubber bands. He put everything back in the bag and put the bag to the side all the while continuing to stand by it.

  Darius was barely paying attention to the gun or the cash apparently. Because while she stood there shocked with her mouth hanging open, she heard, “Karen, I’m gonna tell you one more time to put some damn clothes on.”

  Her head snapped up, and she looked him in the eye. Something was very wrong here, and for the life of her, she didn’t know what. But she did know she wasn’t going to test fate to see if Darius was crazy enough to make good on his threat to take her back in her bedroom and make her get dressed.

  He didn’t seem exactly like himself—whoever the hell that was.

  She realized she’d never really known him at all.

  But she wasn’t foolish enough to try and find out at that particular moment.

  She went back to her bedroom and quickly threw on a bra and a T-shirt and some jeans. When she came back out, she saw that Darius was putting a disk into her DVD player.

  “Are you happy now? I’m dressed. Can you please tell me why the hell you’re here? I told you I didn’t want to see you again.”

  “Just watch this DVD, and tell me if you knew anything about this,” Darius said in a no-nonsense voice that grated her nerves.

  She walked over to her little twenty-seven-inch television, and what she saw literally brought her to her knees. She dropped where she stood, and the tears started immediately. There, for all to see, was Saul waiting in the same alley where Shemar’s body had been found shot to death. Saul murdered Shemar and walked away like it was nothing.

  “Nooooo!” She heard the loud cry that didn’t even sound human to her own ears and realized that it was her own voice.

  “No. No. No. No,” she whispered as she sobbed.

  Shemar was her best friend. They went back all the way to when she was in the first grade and a new kid in the neighborhood. Shemar had been her protector and her biggest advocate. He always had her back.

  She stood up and ran over to Saul.

  She went wild, striking him with her fists, hitting him with all the pain inside of her. She couldn’t believe that she was the one who’d brought that monster into their lives.

  How could she ever face Amina again?

  “Queen, you know me. Think about it. It’s clear that I’m being set up. That DVD must have been doctored. What reason would I have to kill Shemar? I knew how much he meant to you, Queen. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. He is lying and trying to set me up!” Saul glared at Darius as he tried to pull away from her blows, but he couldn’t move because Darius’s men still held him.

  She felt someone come up behind her and pull her away. She struggled, wanting to hurt someone as much as she was hurting at the moment.

  “Look, I don’t know what Cullen told you, but it wasn’t me. I don’t know where they found the look-alike, but it wasn’t me.” Saul glared at Darius and suddenly looked like the monster he was.

  She wondered how she could have been so blind to it before now. Saul was a monster—a fake, lying, murdering monster.

  “Who said anything about Cullen?” Darius slanted his eye at Saul.

  Saul’s face went blank for a moment, and then a panicked expression came across it. He opened his mouth and then closed it.

  “We never said a word about Cullen. Why would you bring his name up? How do you know Cullen, Saul?” Darius was relentless.

  Saul squinted his eyes angrily and gritted his teeth, but he refused to answer Darius.

  “You might as well come clean. That’s you on the DVD. The cops can easily authenticate it and prove it’s not a fake. So you might as well tell us everything. Since you mentioned Cullen, you might want to start with how he knew you would be over here now. You working for Cullen?” Darius snapped.

  “I don’t have anything to say. And unless y’all are the police, y’all need to let me go and give me my shit. I don’t have to tell you anything or admit to anything.” Saul tried to pull away again.

  “Rob, get this trash out of here and take him to your boys in blue along with that DVD and the gun. Who knows, it might even be the gun that shot Shemar. He looks stupid enough to keep it.” Darius was holding her tight, and she was still trying to break away from him.

  Saul tried to break away even more. He str
uggled with all his might, but the men held him fast.

  “I hope that’s enough to put him away.” Darius frowned.

  “The DVD might be enough, but a confession would be ideal. If the gun is the murder weapon, then he’s as good as gone,” one of the big guys holding Saul responded.

  Saul started kicking his legs and really putting up a fight. “I’ll deny it. I’ll tell them y’all planted that gun. I’m not admitting to anything.”

  “Whose prints do you think they’ll find on the gun? You might as well give it up,” the big one said while shaking his head.

  Karen’s heart stopped. Saul’s behavior told her everything she needed to know to confirm what she saw on the DVD with her own eyes.

  Saul had murdered Shemar.

  A raw and painful gasp escaped her throat, and her gut clutched.

  “Get him out of here,” Darius snapped.

  The shock of everything left her raw.

  The men left with Saul and his things in tow. Soon it was just her and Darius standing in her apartment. It was four o’clock in the morning. She was heartbroken and still reeling from everything that had just happened. She wanted him to leave her apartment so she could continue having her nervous breakdown in peace.

  Was that too much to ask?

  Darius locked the door and turned to her. He stared at her for several minutes, and her heart raced violently in her chest. She was in so much pain about Shemar’s death, and the only thing she really wanted was for Darius to hold her until it didn’t hurt so much anymore.

  Was she crazy?

  He walked over to her, picked her up into his arms and she lost it. She started sobbing all over again as he carried her to the sofa. He held her while she cried. She didn’t know how much time had gone by. All she knew was the guilt was ripping through her chest and eating her alive.

  “Shh. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” His words tried to soothe her back from the depths of despair.

  Either his words had started to work or she was just spent, because the tears stopped. She glanced up at him and tried to move off his lap, but he held on to her.

  “I didn’t give those women keys to my place. I didn’t have a threesome with them. I didn’t even know them. My first and only time seeing them was the night they asked for autographs, and I didn’t even remember them from that. I need you to believe me.” He paused and looked at her intently.

  “I need you to believe me because tonight Cullen gave me documents with your signature on them that said you accepted money from him for the center as payment to stop seeing me. He gave me the DVD of Saul shooting Shemar because he wanted to plant the seed of doubt that you knew it was Saul all along and the two of you were in cahoots to make the same thing happen to me.”

  Her mouth dropped open in shock, and she shook her head.

  Would this horrible night ever end?

  “Everything inside of me screamed that you would never do that to me, Karen. Everything. I didn’t want to believe that of you, so I kept faith in you—in us. And I came over here knowing in my heart that even if we found Saul over here, you wouldn’t have done anything with him. I have faith in you. Do you have faith in me?”

  His voice sounded so raw and emotional that it was breaking her heart all over again.

  She suddenly didn’t care if she was being a fool for trusting him. She just wanted him to stop hurting. “I have faith in you, Darius. Thank you for trying to help bring Shemar’s murderer to justice.”

  “I need to tell you what happened.” He went into everything that had happened that night after he dropped her off.

  When he got to the part about his grandmother, the setup, the gambling and the murders of his family members, tears were rolling down his cheeks. She knew that Cullen Stamps was a snake, and everything Darius said about his role in the chain of events rang true. She felt horrible for not having more faith in Darius. Even though she had never met the man, she could see Cullen hiring those tramps and blackmailing Darius’s grandmother.

  But the role his grandmother played in it all? Karen could tell by the tears falling down his strong, solemn face that his grandmother’s betrayal cut him to the core.

  She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. It was her turn to comfort him now, her turn to try and take away some of his pain. She felt raw and numb all over again from his pain alone. The betrayal he had faced tonight was horrible and yet he came through for her and made sure that Saul and the DVD made it to the police station.

  She ached for him, and her tears joined his as they cried together. When they stopped, he stared at her.

  “I love you, Karen. I’m not perfect, and I know I’ll probably make some mistakes along the way, but I need you to have faith in me. I need you to love me and stand by me the same way I love and will always stand by you.”

  She got up and straddled his lap. “I love you, too, Darius. I’m so sorry I didn’t have more faith in us tonight. I’ll do better if you give me a chance. I promise.” She pressed her lips to his and kissed him with everything inside of her. She held him tight, and she never intended to let him go ever again.

  She stood and took his hand, leading him into her bedroom. She slowly undressed him and led him over to the bed, making him sit on it while she knelt in front of him.

  She kept her swollen eyes on him as she took him in her mouth. He stared at her with all the love he had expressed earlier as she circled his manhood with her tongue and stroked him with everything inside of her.

  She thought of the times he had pleasured her this way and renewed her efforts to bring him just as much pleasure as he had brought her. She clutched his behind, trying to bring as much of him as she could fit into her mouth. Just when she thought she couldn’t fit any more Darius stood and his sex plopped from her lips. He lifted her up and started removing her clothing. Once she was nude, he grabbed his pants and put on protection. He got back on the bed and looked at her.

  “I want you to ride me, baby. Make me feel it.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. She straddled his lap and slowly enveloped his sex with hers. She pressed down and swiveled her hips and began to bounce—up, down, around and even sideways.

  He reached up and teased her nipples, one in each hand. He pulled and tugged and twirled them until she could have sworn he was controlling the movement of her hips with the way he worked her nipples. Each pull and tug and twirl caused her to press and swivel and bounce.

  She threw her head back and let out a soft hiss of air as a miniature orgasm pulsed through her. But her hiss turned into a holler once she realized that the small orgasm was just an opening act for the bigger one that ripped through her just seconds after the tiny one ebbed. She dropped her head and looked down at Darius again. He was still watching her intently as he maneuvered her nipples.

  She leaned down, pressing her lips to his with a hard and demanding kiss. His hands moved from her nipples to her behind. He clutched part of her hips and part of her behind, getting a good, firm grip on both sides. And he started to move her up and down his shaft, stroking her until the friction and the buildup was so intense she could barely contain herself. She started to buck wildly even though he was controlling her movements.

  His hips started to lift up and met hers as he pressed her down. Soon he slammed her hips down and thrust his up and held them together tightly. The jumping contortions of his release triggered another orgasm in her, and they both reached completion together, panting and spent.

  He got up and removed the protection, got back in the bed and wrapped her in his arms. The sunlight of a new day filtered through the blinds on her window as they drifted off to sleep still entwined.

  They didn’t wake up until sometime that evening. And when they did, the first thing Darius did was kiss Karen. He gave her a soft, lingering peck on the lips. He couldn’t believe that he still had her. He hadn’t lost her in spite of everything that happened.

  She stifled a yawn. “Um, I can�
��t believe we slept this late. I’m starving. What was that kiss for?”

  “Because I love you. You know you’re gonna be my wife, right?”

  “I love you, too. And if that’s you asking me to be your wife then the answer is yes even though I’ve only known you less than a week.” She gave him that sassy little grin of hers that he loved.

  “You’ve known me a lot longer than that, baby. I’m your soul mate, and we’re going to be together forever.”

  She smiled. “Oh, speaking of that, I had another dream, and I think this one was about the future, although it could have been the past. It looked really primitive. But anyway…I was a warrior princess, and you were this corrupt warrior prince and I was leading a resistance against the corrupt monarchy—”

  He kissed her. “Enough about the past and the future. Let’s focus on the here and now. Let’s focus on making our slice of forever better than it ever has been or ever will be. If our souls dream about us in the future, I want them to be like, damn!” He laughed at his own joke.

  She kissed him back. “I do like the sound of that.” She deepened the kiss, and soon all either one of them could think about was the present and how they were never going to let each other go.

  Epilogue

  Sometime in the far future…

  Kiona loved it when she got a chance to visit the relics auction. Ever since she was a kid, she had a zest for knowledge about history and a desire to collect things from days gone past. Books were her favorite.

  Even though hardly anyone had read a bound book in decades and every piece of knowledge known to man was safely housed in heavily guarded computer data centers, she still had a collection of old books. Her favorite things to bid on in the relics auctions had to be books, followed closely by vintage clothing.

  As she walked around the great hall and eyed the items up for auction, she also thought about how much she could afford to spend from her very limited budget. She worked part-time translating and transcribing ancient texts for the United Freedom of Knowledge Archive Federation. The work was flexible and allowed her to have the free time she needed for her true passion. Agitation!