“Boy!”
“Don’t you boy me,” he replied evenly. “I didn’t put that music on. And neither did I make that cozy fire, crackling over there in the family room.”
Theresa blushed. Her family room, with the lavender suede sofa and oversized chair, soft pale camel-colored walls, big plant in the corner, camel wooden blinds, plush charcoal carpet, and fire casting a warm glow across the room, was practically begging for them to come in there and snuggle up.
“Why did you turn out the light in the kitchen, Lamont?”
“So I could see the light in your eyes better,” he whispered and took Theresa’s hand and started pulling her toward the family room to sit on the sofa that had been “calling his name” all evening.
At first Theresa pulled back, not sure she wanted to venture into that family room with Lamont Green. But all he did was tug on her hand some more and slowly pull her down onto the couch next to him. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Now isn’t this much nicer than a kitchen stool?”
“Uhh . . . I like being in the kitchen,” she answered, sounding more like a sixteen-year-old than the smart and sophisticated businesswoman she always presented to the public eye.
“Oh you do, huh,” he said and pulled at her ponytail, eyes so full of heat and desire, Theresa could have sworn she saw some flames flickering in them.
“Well . . . you know something, baby,” he said seductively, “I prefer being on this cozy sofa with you.”
He blew a kiss at her and then proceeded to plant a few on her neck.
At first Theresa was stiff to keep some control over the situation. Then those kisses got hotter and sweeter. And when he moaned, “Ummm,” like she was a piece of chocolate candy, the girl forgot all of her common sense and melted right into that man.
Lamont cupped the back of Theresa’s head and brought her mouth to his for a soft kiss on the lips.
“Baby, baby, baby. Don’t know if I’ve ever gotten brown sugar this sweet.”
He licked her lips, pushing them apart with his tongue before he got himself a big helping of a deeper and hotter kiss.
That kiss was so good, Theresa was dizzy.
“Oooo, I always wondered what Queen Esther felt when King Xerxes had her all up in his private chambers. And now I know. Oooooo,” Theresa murmured.
The mentioning of his aunt’s name cooled things down faster than hearing her footsteps approaching the living room when he was sneaking and getting all busy with one of his little girlfriends as a teenager.
The shift in Lamont’s emotions were so strong, Theresa felt that mounting heat evaporate right into the cold front that passed between the two of them.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked him. It had been so long since she had the pleasure of kissing and hugging a man on the couch, she feared that she was rusty on “petting etiquette.”
“No . . . yes. Why did you have to mention Auntee’s name in the middle of all of that good stuff?” he said irritably.
Theresa took a deep breath. She’d forgotten how prickly and snappy a man got when he was in the “I want some” zone and things came to a screeching halt. Only problem, though, she didn’t remember mentioning Miss Queen Esther . . .
“Shoot,” she thought, “Queen Esther.” She said, “Lamont, I wasn’t talking about your aunt. I was talking about the real Queen Esther, the one in the Bible.”
“Baby,” he snapped, “that’s even worse. You are talking ’bout a Bible lady when I was lovin’ up on you. I mean, I may not be Denzel or Morris Chestnut, or Gerald Levert, or somebody or another like that, but I would like to think that I was giving you something you liked.”
Theresa laughed and reached for one of the four very beautiful Bibles she kept on the coffee table.
“You sure want to make sure you in good with the Lord, don’t you, girl?”
“That’s true. But I love the Bible and these four were just so pretty, I didn’t want to hide them on a bookshelf.”
Lamont picked up the New Living Translation version, admiring the delicate cream silk moiré cover trimmed with the palest of pink lace and ribbons.
“I see what you mean. This is very pretty, even if it is way too prissy and girlie-girlie for my taste.”
“That’s why I have this one out,” Theresa said, taking the prissy Bible and handing him one she knew he’d like much better.
“Now that’s what I’m talking ’bout,” Lamont said, as he ran his hands over the fine buttery cinnamon-colored leather with Amplified Bible in dark gold letters stamped on it.
Theresa opened the cream silk Bible.
“Here, let me read you something,” she said, with a very mischievous grin spreading across her face. “These are verses twelve through eighteen in chapter two of the book of Esther.”
“I applaud you on your Bible etiquette,” Lamont said, sounding about as excited as somebody waiting to get a flu shot—knowing it was good for you but wishing you didn’t have to take it.
“Bible etiquette?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve always thought it a show of good manners to tell somebody where to find what you’re reading from in the Bible.”
Theresa nodded. He had a point. Too many folks quoted and read Bible verses and passages without giving the listener any clue as to where it was coming from.
“Listen to this, Lamont.”
“I’m all ears,” he said dryly and sat back on the sofa, with his arms stretched across the back of it.
“Before each young woman was taken to the king’s bed, she was given the prescribed twelve months of beauty treatments—six months with oil of myrrh, followed by six months with special perfumes and ointments.”
Lamont’s ears perked up at that first verse. This was getting kind of good. He sat up straight and said, “You mean to tell me that a sister spent a whole year getting ready for a date with the king, just so he could hit that? And how many sisters did the brother have on hand anyway?”
“Lamont,” Theresa said in what sounded like a middle-school-teacher voice, “Watch your mouth, boy. This is the Bible. And to answer your question, I think it says here what he had.”
She flipped through her Bible and found the section describing the roundup of all the fine women in the land for the king.
“Well, actually it doesn’t give an exact number but it had to be a lot, if he could wait a year for somebody to get ready for him.”
“Read some more,” Lamont said. “I’ve got to hear the rest of this.”
“When the time came for her to go in to the king . . .”
“You mean the flava of the evening, and not Queen Esther, right?”
Theresa nodded and finished.
“. . . she was given her choice of whatever clothing or jewelry she wanted to enhance her beauty. That evening she was taken to the king’s private rooms, and the next morning she was brought to the second harem, where the king’s wives lived. There she would be under the care of Shaashgaz, another of the king’s eunuchs. She would live there for the rest of her life, never going to the king again, unless he had especially enjoyed her and requested her by name.”
“Awe sookie-sookay now,” Lamont said laughing. “Sounds to me like ole boy was not the king but the Kang with a capital K. The sisters were brought to his pri-vate rooms and if one didn’t whip it up on him, he did not have to give her some flimsy excuse for not calling the next day. And if she did put some ‘whip appeal’ on Xerxes or Ahauserus or whatever he was calling himself, then he’d go and request the honey by name. Girl, that was one bad brother.”
“Boy, you are so silly,” Theresa said, trying hard not to laugh. The story was kind of wild when you put it in a modern context. “Let me finish reading.”
When it was Esther’s turn to go to the king, she accepted the advice of Hegai, the eunuch in charge of the harem. She asked for nothing except what he suggested, and she was admired by everyone who saw her. When Esther was taken to King Xerxes
at the royal palace in early winter of the seventh year of his reign, the king loved her more than any of the other young women. He was so delighted with her that he set the royal crown on her head and declared her queen instead of Vashti. To celebrate the occasion, he gave a banquet in Esther’s honor for all his princes and servants, giving generous gifts to everyone and declaring a public festival in the provinces.
Theresa put that Bible down and picked up the copy of the Contemporary English Version, a raspberry suede Bible with black leather piping trimming the edges of the book.
“I just want to read this for you because it gives a bit more insight into what happened to the king that night. As much as I love the way the story is told in the first Bible I read from, this one verse just put the icing on the cake for me when I read it: None of them pleased him as much as she did, and right away he fell in love with her and crowned her queen in place of Vashti.”
By the time she finished with that last sentence, Lamont was laughing so hard, he rolled right off the couch and lay on the floor holding his sides. He wiped at his eyes and got back up on the couch.
“Whew . . . I love it. That was what the kids would call a crunked story.”
Theresa was laughing now. The more she thought about it, the more she laughed. Bible-day folks really were something else.
“You know,” she said in between a hearty chuckle, “a li’l ole sweet country girl from the ’hood, went up in the king’s, no, correction, the Kang’s private chambers and put something on ole boy.”
“Yes she did,” Lamont agreed.
“And,” Theresa added, “it was so good, she was able to appeal to the king to save a whole nation of people. And you know it just occurred to me that in doing all of that, Esther probably helped to save the king, too. I’m sure he was a better man when she came into his life.”
“Ain’t nothing like a good woman coming into your life to make you a better man, baby,” Lamont said softly. “I’m sure he got to know the Lord after that li’l country girl got ahold of him. And you know something, even though the scripture doesn’t say it directly, it does give you the impression that Esther was a sweet li’l thing.”
“You think she was little?”
“Yeah, tiny, fine, good-looking thing just like my girl Yvonne Fountain,” Lamont said matter-of-factly.
“I agree,” Theresa said, as she thought about her friend. Yvonne was a little bitty thing, with a big booty and big boobs. She was just so cute and the sweetest person Theresa had ever met.
“You know, this is going to sound so silly. But when you were reading the story, I kept imagining Xerxes looking like Curtis Parker.”
“Me, too,” Theresa said. “I kept thinking he was just under six-four, chocolate, with a big booming voice, and always telling folks what to do.”
“Sounds like my boy.”
“And,” she added, “if you think of Xerxes as looking like Curtis, you can’t help but put Yvonne in the picture. Because ever since she came back from Virginia with the girls after that fool left her, I keep wondering why Curtis won’t hook up with her.”
“He has a steady girlfriend right now.”
“Who?”
“Regina Young.”
“Stuck-up, sleep-with-yo’-husband Regina Young?”
“One and the same,” Lamont said, wondering what Curtis saw in that woman. But then folks wondered what he saw in Chablis and his other girlfriend, Marsha Hadley. He had been crazy about some Marsha Hadley and his mother and Aunt could not stand her.
Once when he said Marsha was sweet, all Auntee said was, “She ain’t trying to make even a brief acquaintance with Jesus, baby. And that sweetness is only reserved for when the two of you are behind closed doors all laid up. ’Cause she ain’t sweet enough to figure out what you really need, boy.”
“You really think Regina Young is ‘the one’ for your boy?” Theresa asked.
“No,” he said sincerely. “Regina is so full of flair, chic, and confidence that she has out-sophisticated herself. And she has absolutely no interest in coming to church and humbling herself before the Lord. A man doesn’t need a woman like that. And if I am remembering the first part of the story in Esther correctly, Queen Vashti was brought down a few notches for being a biblical version of the kind of woman Regina works so hard to be.”
“So,” Theresa began, “what you’re telling me is that give it some time, and the Kang of Eva T. Marshall University basketball is going to find himself pleased with Yvonne more than the others, and then become so delighted with her, he falls deeply in love because she is his yet-to-be-crowned queen?”
“Something like that,” Lamont said, scooting closer to Theresa. She smelled so good in that Hanae Mori perfume.
“Speaking of queens, baby,” he said in the sexiest voice Theresa had ever heard coming out of a man’s mouth. “This Kang wishes he could get you to come to his, uhhh, ‘private rooms’ sometime.”
Theresa tried to think of something sassy to say but couldn’t. When she looked into Lamont’s eyes, they were smoldering. He was so fine—deep caramel complexion, dark hair with silver running through it, long curly eyelashes, sexy laugh lines around his dark eyes, and that old crooked smile that made him look like he was always up to something.
Lamont cupped her head once more and pulled her lips to his. Only this time, the kiss was hot and demanding. As he caressed her tongue with his, he gently and ever-so-smoothly pressed Theresa back into the couch. When she tried to get up, he slid a hand down the length of one of those long sexy legs, pulled it up near his waist, and whispered, “Uhh, uhh. You are right where I want you, baby.”
Theresa wrapped her arms around him tight and returned the passion in that next kiss. Lamont felt wonderful and smelled so good. She loved Chanel’s Allure cologne for men.
When he started kissing down her neck, fingers tugging gently at the zipper on her top, she practically purred with delight. It seemed like it had been forever since she had shared something this wonderful with a man. But as good as this man felt, they couldn’t take this to the next level.
Theresa looked up at Lamont, whose eyes were almost black they were so dark with passion. She pressed her hand gently on his cheek.
“We’d better cool down before this goes where it can’t go.”
Lamont kissed her lips tenderly, and whispered, “Okay.” Theresa was right. They were both saved and had to act like it. He shifted his body so that they were lying side by side on the oversized sofa.
Theresa blushed and gazed into his eyes with love, respect, and friendship. It was the kind of expression he’d always believed should come from the woman who was to become his wife. While he had always been able to imagine this expression, he’d never been blessed with the opportunity to have a woman look at him in this way. He had seen Rhonda gaze at James that way, his mother with his father, and, of course, Auntee always looked at Uncle Joseph like that.
In fact, Auntee was so prone to gazing at Uncle Joseph, he once overheard him say to his father, “Bill, sometimes Esther gets to looking at me so, it’s unnerving. I made her cry once getting on her about that looking. Then I felt terrible when she said, ‘Before me, no woman ever loved you enough to have it in her to take pleasure in seeing every inch of you. No woman appreciated how the good Lord formed you. And now you have the nerve to be ugly to me because I truly love you and have the good sense to appreciate every physical quality that you have.’”
He had to agree with Auntee on that one. A man needed to appreciate that kind of look from a woman, even if it did come across as the direct stare that he could imagine Uncle Joseph received from Auntee. He’d never been viewed through the lens of the kind of love reflected in Theresa’s eyes until tonight. And he was going to make sure that he could be gazed at like that for the rest of his life.
Lamont kissed Theresa and stroked her cheek.
“Sweetheart, I know who you are. But the important question is do you know who I am?”
The
first thing Theresa wanted to say to him was, “I know who you are, hubby-to-be.” But she remained quiet, second-guessing herself and not listening to the sweet words being spoken to her heart about Lamont by the Lord.
“I’m going to ask you one more time if you know who I am. And whatever you are thinking, please share it—no matter how ridiculous it may seem to you.”
“You are my husband,” she mumbled.
“Say it again,” he said, wanting her to fully grasp and accept what the Lord had placed on her heart.
“You are my husband,” she said clearly.
“Are you sure?” Lamont asked.
“Positive.”
“So, you’re going to marry me, right?”
“But we’ve never even been out on a date,” Theresa said, thinking with that so-called limited human “logic” that they couldn’t hop up and marry just like that.
“Neither did Xerxes and Esther until they . . . uhhh . . . consummated the marriage.”
“Hmmm,” Theresa said, biting her bottom lip. “I see what you mean.”
Lamont started laughing.
“Girl, you are a trip. Look, when God brings you together, you really don’t have to follow the world’s so-called protocol. Now don’t get me wrong, everybody doesn’t need to do this thing like we’re going to do it. But then again, nothing is impossible with God, now is it?”
“No,” Theresa answered, wondering how she was going to plan the wedding of her dreams in what probably amounted to days.
Lamont sat up and pulled her up with him.
“Theresa, a true dream wedding is marrying the man of your dreams.”
“You’re right,” she said contritely. “When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as we can. So, you just be ready, okay?”
“Okay.”
He stood up and started walking toward the foyer.
“You’re leaving?”
“Girl, if I stay here a moment longer, I will take your fine self up those stairs and get all let’s become one with you. Now go and get my telephone, so I can leave.”
Holy Ghost Corner Page 26