by Kennedy Ryan
“I was coming to ask you that,” he says, taking a seat near the tub. His year-round California tan, bourbon-colored eyes, and thick dirty-blond hair make him a treat for the ladies. He’s devoted to only one woman, though, his girlfriend, Avery Hughes, a sports anchor based in New York.
“How’s your girl?” I lean over to adjust the setting on the ice tub.
“Still mine,” he answers with a swashbuckler’s grin.
“You gonna make an honest woman of her soon?”
“Oh, she’s already honest,” Deck returns. “But if you mean am I going to marry her . . .” He leaves the words hanging in the air, making me wonder as much as the media has about their relationship. Deck and Avery have been pretty private about it until recently.
“Then between you and me,” he says, the humor fading from his eyes and something more sober taking its place, “very soon. I can’t keep doing this. I need her with me.”
Avery is one of the most popular anchors on SportsCo, a large sports channel, second only to ESPN.
“Her contract is up for renegotiation this year,” Deck confides, leaning back in the chair. “She’s requesting the show record in LA instead of New York.”
“Bruh, that would be fantastic.”
“Yeah. This long-distance shit gets old quick.”
You telling me. I’ve only been doing it a few weeks, and I’m sick of it.
“How was it playing Cliff tonight?” he asks, skipping the bullshit and getting right to the heart of the matter. It’s one of my favorite things about Decker.
“Another day at the office.” I grin and tilt my head. “But it felt good shutting his shit down. We squashed ‘em.”
“That we did,” Decker agrees, chuckling darkly. “I’m glad it’s behind you.”
He hesitates, flicking a searching glance at me. “But I know you’re still dealing with the repercussions. What with Bridget’s show starting soon and Simone living on the East Coast now. You know I’ve navigated this. My ex was a real piece of work when we divorced. She up and moved on me, too.”
“Out here, right?”
“Yeah, out to LA when I was living and working in Connecticut.” He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. “Man, I was furious with her. I mostly didn’t want our daughter to see us fighting and to be dragged all over the place.”
“You hit the nail on the head with that one,” I mutter, passing a hand through the frigid water, hoping it might cool my rising temper as I think about all the tricks Bridget has pulled that ultimately hurt our daughter more than they hurt me.
“I know you guys were doing counseling and you lived there this summer,” he says. “That’s good. Keep putting your kid first, man. Even when Bridget takes the low road, which we’ve all seen is her default, take the high. Show your daughter over and over and in every way you can that she’s your priority. They’re in such a weird space at this age.”
“Tell me about it. Fourteen is hell.”
“Everything you’re doing now, even though it seems hard and maybe even like it’s not working, it’ll pay off later when your relationship with Simone remains intact.”
“That’s exactly what I needed to be reminded of. Thanks, Deck.”
He stands and daps me up, chuckling and pointing to the water. “You and the ice tubs. It’s a wonder your dick doesn’t freeze off.”
“Oh, it works great,” I assure him.
I still hear him laughing even after the door closes behind him. I drop my head back to the lip of the tub. My dick definitely still works. With this long-distance relationship, it would come in handy if it didn’t. I’m sure there’s a masturbation joke in there somewhere, but I’m too tired and horny to work it out. At least I should get to see Lotus for a few hours when she’s done at the hospital. Speaking of which . . . where’s my damn phone?
“In the locker room,” I remind myself. She could be trying to call me now with an update on the baby. “I’ll grab it when I’m done.”
I’ve got another five minutes of recovery in here before I can go.
The door opens behind me again.
“Forget something, Deck?” I ask, eyes still closed, absorbing the healing effects of the glacial water even while it bites my skin.
When there’s no answer, I look over my shoulder to the training room door.
Lotus.
“Hi,” she says, her voice deep, welcome, husky. Exactly as I remember it, except last time it was hoarse from screaming after a marathon of fucking on my last day in New York.
I haven’t been back in Cali long, but it feels like months since I’ve seen her. Desire, need . . . fuck it. I’ll say it to myself though we haven’t said it explicitly yet to one another . . . love intensifies the longing and stretches out the time.
I have found the one whom my soul loves.
My beloved is mine, and I am his. I’m yours, Kenan.
I’ve replayed those moments and the sentiments we borrowed from King Solomon a hundred times in my head. Turning them over, analyzing them to see if there is any way she was not saying she loved me.
“Hi, yourself,” I finally reply, unable and unwilling to withhold my shit-eating grin any longer. “How’d you get back here?”
“Oh,” she says, leaning against the training room door. “August owed me a favor.”
“Yeah?” I ask, taking her in. The platinum hair is golden–brown again. I can’t keep up with her hairstyles and colors. A simple royal blue sundress ties at one shoulder, leaving the other exposed, and follows the curves of her body faithfully from breast to ankle.
“Yeah,” she continues, tilting her head to the side. “I practically delivered his son.”
A happy laugh barges past my lips. “Holy shit! So it is a boy?”
“Yup, secret’s out,” she says, joy lifting some of the fatigue from her eyes. “Michael Spencer West.”
“Nice. I got a stick I’ve been saving for Rook.”
“A stick?” One sleek brow lifts and she turns the lock, the sound echoing in the otherwise silent room. Even in the frigid water, my cock goes hard. “You mean a cigar?”
“Usually.” I don’t relinquish her heated stare. “But a stick could mean a lot of things now that I think about it.”
“Hmmmmm.” She frowns, takes the few steps that bring her to me beside the ice tub. “What else could a stick be?”
“Well, it could be . . .”
Words melt in my mouth when Lotus unties the knot at her shoulder and the dress falls to the ground. She’s completely nude, and with me sitting in the tub, I’m eye level with one tight, pierced nipple.
“You were saying?” she asks, brows brunched like she can’t imagine why I stopped talking. “Something about driving stick?”
At her modification, I release a strangled laugh. She leans her elbows on the tub, serving up two dark nipples I can’t resist a minute longer. Fuck flirting. I lean forward, taking the pierced one into my mouth, and watch her face. Her eyes drift closed and a shiver trembles through her body. She grips my head, pressing me harder into her ripe curves.
“I missed you, Button,” I mumble against the silky skin between her breasts before shifting my mouth to the other nipple.
“I’m picking up on that,” she says, her breath stilted. She pulls back and uses the step against the tub to climb up.
“Lotus, babe, no. It’s freezing in here,” I warn her.
“Scared you can’t get it up in the cold?” she asks, standing on the step and looking down on me for once.
“Oh, it’s already up.” I spread my legs so she can see the erection in my trunks through the water. “But for real, babe. You don’t just jump into this. It takes a long time to acclima . . .”
I trail off when she tests the water with one small foot before climbing in and sitting on the opposite side, facing me with her breasts bobbing on the water’s surface.
“Oh, this is sooo cold.” She fakes a shiver. “I don’t know how you big boys stand it.”
“You’re not human.” I laugh. “Maybe you are a witch.” I extend my arms toward her, and she takes the two steps through the water to reach me. “My witch.”
I kiss her, and the first taste of my sweet girl does things to me. Of course, my dick goes even harder despite the freezing water, but everything else melts. There’s a wall I erect when the season starts—a firewall of sorts to insulate me from the constant scrutiny, the pressure that never lets up, and all the drama that has nothing to do with ball. It’s what allows me to focus so completely, almost to the exclusion of all else.
Against Lotus, that wall doesn’t stand a chance.
It’s down and she’s storming the gates, inside, invading, marauding all my defenses. My attention, my thoughts are her willing captives.
“God, baby.” I can’t get enough, pulling her mouth open wider, spearing both hands into her hair to hold her head still so I can eat my fill. “What you do to me.”
Her hunger rises to match mine, her small hands gripping my head and her eager tongue delving in aggressively, devouring me back. She spreads her thighs over mine, rubs her breasts into my chest, mewling like a little cat in heat, scalding me in arctic water. She tugs at the string on my trunks. With her hands shaking, she jerks them down over my hips.
Damn, that’s cold.
“I don’t have a condom,” I mutter into the wet, searing heat of our kiss.
“Good,” she says, turning her back on me, catching my eyes over her shoulder, positioning herself over me. “You don’t need one.”
In one swift move, she takes me into her body, offering sanctuary, and we share a gasp. The contrast between the freezing water and the wet heat of her pussy squeezing me, the muscles contracting to keep me, steals my breath and most of my sanity.
“You okay?” I ask into the damp silk of her neck.
“You tell me,” she says, laughing as she starts to move.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She clamps her internal muscles and they drag on me every time she propels herself up and down. And the view.
The motherfucking view from back here is breathtaking.
She pulls her hair away from her neck. Does she have any idea how she looks? A handful of tattooed stars trickle down her nape. The flowered zipper embroiders the sexy length of her spine and undulates with our every thrust.
And her ass.
Those two round, plump globes riding my dick. She reaches back to spread the cheeks, taking me even deeper. I reach one hand around to cup her breast and slide the other hand down to caress her clit, spreading my whole hand over it, rubbing my palm over her until it’s a hard, tight nub.
“Oh, my God, Kenan.”
We create a rhythm of shared sighs, breaths we draw together, a copulating choreography. The pace turns furious, the vigor of our bodies churning the icy water into a riptide. We ebb and flow like a wave, turbulent waters climbing, rising. Even submerged in the cold, sweat glazes my forehead, her neck. We are wild and hot beneath the frigid water. I lay my hand flat against her heart, which roars in her chest like a beast trapped in a cave. My heartbeat answers, clamoring to get out. To find its other beating half locked inside of her.
My beloved is mine and I am his.
She turns her head and I bend to take her mouth, slide my hand down the tight plane of her belly and find her clit, pinching, twisting rubbing until her lips break free of mine on a whimper, then a moan, then a scream that yanks an answering cry from me—a call, a response. Our voices and our bodies twist, mating until we’re both hoarse and spent.
And finally, we’re silent.
36
Lotus
“So I guess we have to clean this tub out,” I joke a few moments after the storm has died.
The door is locked, but the demands of both our careers wait on the other side. The plane he’s taking to China in two days. The one I’ll take back to New York.
But right now, it’s just us in the quiet split by the rumble of his chuckle.
“It’s self-cleaning actually,” he replies, kissing my temple. “Low maintenance. Lucky for us.”
The reverse cowgirl has flipped around, and I’m sideways on Kenan’s lap in the cold water.
“Does this water never get warm?” I ask. Now that the initial rush of passion has died, the cold is getting to me, but I don’t want to move. Not until Kenan does. I don’t want him to outlast me.
“Never.” He lifts my hand with its fingertips, puckered even though I haven’t actually been in that long. “You ready to call it? The cold too much for you?”
“Nope,” I reply immediately, clenching my rattling teeth. “Feels great in here. I love it.”
“I agree.” His head drops back and he spreads his arms out over the lip of the tub, as if he’s got all night. “I fall asleep in here sometimes.”
Oh, hell no.
I stand abruptly, disrupting the water’s smooth surface. I’m climbing out when his mocking laughter makes me turn.
“I win,” he says, his white grin a taunt on that damn handsome face.
“Not everything’s a contest, Kenan,” I say, faking exasperation.
“Oh, yes, it is.” A well-muscled arm slinks around my waist and his lips brand my butt, a kiss on each cheek. “And I win. I won you.”
When I glance over my shoulder, he’s still seated in the water, and the look on his face is almost reverent. Did King Solomon look at his lover this way? Did her resistance crumble like mine? Did his beloved feel him wrapping around her heart like a vine? Did they have an inkling that centuries later, two people would take the words they passed between each other, destined to be canonized, to heart? That we would take their passion, their words for one another literally to our hearts?
But who am I to hide behind their bold declarations of love? To not bare my soul, my heart to a man finally worthy of it?
I turn, sitting on the lip of the tub, and take Kenan’s face in my hands. I want to, need to tell him in my own words. In my own way.
“I love you, Lotus.”
It’s an eerie silence that follows his words to me before I could say them to him; the kind that follows a miracle; the kind that chases the supernatural, searching for reason. That’s what this is—the synchronicity of our hearts, a shared beat and thump. The miracle is that we’ve found each other.
“I wanted to say it first,” I tell him, tears pricking behind my eyelids. “You beat me to it.”
“I told you I always win,” he says with a gentle, if slightly cocky, smile. That smile starts in his eyes and spreads over his face, slowly but surely, until it illuminates all the dark passages no one else has ever ventured into. He’s a castle with secret tunnels and abandoned dungeons and heavy locked doors.
And I’m his skeleton key.
I dip to kiss him again, wanting as much of his taste as I can keep.
“You’re staying, right?” he asks, his hands working the muscles of my naked back. “Until I leave for China in a couple days, you’ll stay?”
“Why not?” I shrug. “Got nothing better to do.”
“Why you little . . .” He wraps his arms around my waist and hauls me back into the icy water.
Shit!
The frigid shock forces the air from my lungs.
“Kenan!” I slap the water with my hand so it flies in his face.
He laughs, pulling me in onto his lap and clamping me to his wide chest with one hand and tickling my sides with the other.
“No!” I yelp. “Stop it!”
I can barely breathe. We’re both wheezing with laughter, struggling to catch our breath. When he finally relents, I lie limp against his heaving chest, breathing as hard as he is.
“I love you, Button.”
It’s even sweeter the second time. I can’t hold back my tears. They roll of their own accord over cheeks still aching from laughter. “I love you, too.”
His arms tighten around me and I lean back to kiss him again, but my phone rings, disrupting the moment.
“Leave it,” he mutters against my lips. “Don’t go.”
“First of all, it’s freezing in here.” I leave one last quick kiss on his lips before scrambling over the side to grab the phone from my dress pocket. “And second, it’s Iris’s ringtone.”
“Nice view,” Kenan says from behind me.
“No more reverse cowgirl for you,” I warn, glancing over my shoulder and wiggling my naked ass.
“Oh anything, but that.” His smile drops. “No, for real. Anything but that.”
I smirk and answer the phone. “Hey, Bo. What’s up?”
“Lotus, where are you?” The solemn tone of her voice sobers me right away.
“What’s wrong?” I reach for a towel hanging on a nearby hook. “Is it Michael? Is he okay? Are you—”
“We’re fine,” she rushes to reassure me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . we’re fine.”
There’s a hesitation, a pause before she resumes.
“My mom called,” she says.
“Aunt Priscilla?” A frown knots my eyebrows. “What’d she want?”
“She didn’t have your number.”
“Neither of them do. Why would they?”
“She was calling to let us know your mom’s in the hospital, Lo,” she says. “Mama says you need to go home.”
37
Lotus
Home is not New Orleans.
And home certainly isn’t anywhere near May DuPree, the woman who abandoned me thirteen years ago for a piece of shit named Ron Clemmons.
I haven’t called Aunt Priscilla back. I don’t know if I will. Iris’s relationship with her mother isn’t quite as bad as mine, but it’s not much better. It was a coincidence Aunt Pris called the day her new grandson was born. Iris hadn’t shared any of the details of her pregnancy with her. They have their own drama.
I’ve chosen to have no contact with my mother, and don’t see any reason to change that. Iris thinks if it’s as serious as Aunt Pris says, I may want to try making some kind of peace before it’s too late.