“Thank you.” He nodded.
Zola was so mesmerized by his intense gaze into her eyes. He gave a great stare. She cleared her throat, and the color deepened in her cheeks. Smoothing her sweating palms against the length of her skirt, she turned away to board the awaiting airplane, not waiting to see if he followed.
****
Removing his glasses for a moment, he wiped at his tired, burning eyes. He needed to get new spectacles again, and it had not been long since he’d purchased the pair he was wearing now. He leaned back against the headrest of his chair. His head lolled as the feelings of self-pity overwhelmed him. Why me? Why me? he cried to himself.
“Here you are. Up here in first class.”
Her sexy, husky voice whispered close to his ear. His eyes snapped open, startled by the woman’s sudden appearance just when he needed to be rescued from the depression of his own thoughts. She was a blur, but he knew that voice; it was the woman from the airport.
Clumsily, he perched his glasses on his nose and pushed them into place with a finger, bringing her pretty, smiling face into focus.
He gazed directly up at her standing next to him, sunning himself in the presence of her genuine smile.
“Mmm, here I was back there in the hell section, sausaged between two other people worried about you, and here you are up here in the heavens in this big luxurious chair, resting like the beautiful angel you are,” she said in a pouting, teasing tone. “You rent out the entire joint for yourself?”
He laughed out loud at her euphemisms. “I got my usual two seats. I imagine not many people are flying first class these days. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“If you get tired of all the airline bullshit...”
“Then take a bus?” she finished for him.
“Hell, no. Who takes a bus anymore?” He shook his head. “You rent your own plane and make your own rules.”
“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. “That must be a jest wealthy people tell over champagne and caviar.” Her brown eyes twinkled. “My Greyhound Bus crowd wouldn’t get it.”
“Champagne and sushi,” he corrected and spoke in his most preppy tone, “Caviar is so de passé.”
She laughed as he’d hoped his attempt at humor would make her do.
His breath caught in his throat. She had a sensual way of uncovering her teeth when her wide mouth parted into a smile.
“Unlike you, mister, I never get to travel first class. It’s not in my travel budget. At least not this year, and if a certain pompous scientist gets his way, I may be jobless next year,” she muttered.
“What is this about a pompous scientist?” he asked with his curiosity piqued. “Is it someone well known in the field? What is it you do, exactly?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to ruin the little time I have left to myself feeling anxious over what I have to do when I get to Atlanta. I hiked up here risking a beat down with the flight attendant to see for myself if you were feeling better. So...how are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling better by the minute.” Her show of concern warmed him. “They’ll be serving dinner in a little bit. I paid for an extra seat, so they can’t complain. Would you care to join me?”
“Oh, because I’m a big woman you think you can seduce me by feeding me, huh?”
“I...I...no...I—”
She laughed. “I was just playing with you. Sorry.” She shrugged her shoulders. His eyes went to the “V” in her white button-down blouse, displaying plump mounds of creamy brown flesh. He was beginning to see some advantages to being with a voluptuous woman. Tits a man could bury his face in and drown.
“Why do you do that?” he asked. She cocked a questioning eyebrow. “Joke about yourself. I think your body is perfect.”
She looked surprised by his words. He was surprised also. He never thought much about what he preferred physically in a woman. He never really felt he had a choice in the matter. However, now that he saw he could be comfortable around a woman outside his culture, his taste was broadening.
“You must really like my body and face too. You’re staring,” she commented with a playful wink.
“I won’t apologize for it,” he said stubbornly.
“I won’t ask you to. You see, I think my body is perfect too. It's perfect for me and as long as I am happy with it, who else has the right to tell me otherwise?”
He’d never thought about it that way, but it was true. “I’m just discovering I find self-assurance in a woman sexy.” He leaned back to regard her speculatively and stared up at her with unblinking eyes.
“I get the impression there’s still a lot more for you to discover about women—especially African-American women,” she said. She added in a more serious tone, “The medical profession goes on and on about how much a healthy person should weigh, giving merit to others that it’s okay to be rude and ugly to people different than themselves and make claims it was for their own good. I personally think doctors know this is a great business opportunity, and the more fear they put into people, the more patients they get. More patients mean a bigger payday.” She shrugged her shoulder.
“It is a billion-dollar business.” He nodded. “We trust them. They sell it and we buy it because there is an element of trust until they give you reasons not to.”
She leaned down closer, giving him a great view of the breasts he’d been admiring since he first saw her walk into the terminal and take a seat. It was also why he chose to sit down across from her to read his book.
The physical attraction he felt the moment he saw her was immediate and surprising. He had heard about such things happening to others. Yet, with no adequate scientific deductions to assure him of the theory, he still wasn’t willing to call what he felt “love at first sight.”
He personally concluded it had more to do with no physical contact with a woman for months, being tired, and seeing this curvy woman dressed in a black, slim-fitted skirt, a snow-white blouse that molded her breasts to perfection, and a pair of pointed-toed black stilettos that set his pulse racing.
“Weight reduction is a billion-dollar franchise. Who is going to admit they’re wrong when they’re raking in all that dough? That’s just bad business,” he found her saying once he was able to focus on more than her breasts going up and down each time she breathed.
Her nipples were hard, and he would have sworn if he stared hard enough, he could make out the areola through her shirt. Then again, it might just be wishful thinking on his part.
“A person should lose weight for her health, hah! I work out four times a week. I don’t smoke or do drugs. I have a physical every year. I can prove that I am healthier than some who have never been over a size six.”
“That’s commendable in these days and times,” he commented.
“I think so.” She nodded. “Except for my doctor making me feel like an alien creature by deeming me one of the obese—it sounds like some creature, doesn’t it? I am a healthy thirty-two-year-old woman. I—I’m ranting,” she ended on a chuckle. She fingered her short hair behind her ear. “Sorry.”
Feeling her apology was unnecessary, he remarked, “I never would have thought you were five years older than I am. Not by looking at you.” He regarded her from head to toe speculatively, liking more and more what he saw.
“You are just too sweet.” She gave him a knowing smirk when he lingered on her breasts longer than necessary. Embarrassed to get caught staring, he cleared his throat and looked away. “You like my tits? They’re real. Do you want to touch them?”
“Do you always say what you’re thinking?”
“Always, except when I sense honesty won’t be appreciated. I have this gauge that tells me how much of my personality to reveal and how much to hold back. You know, my specialty is reading people,” she answered truthfully.
“Like a psychic.” He looked at her skeptically. This was an argument he wasn’t going to get into. He absolutely did not believe in such
things.
“No, like a person who has spent hours in a rigorous training program to be able to detect signs that others don’t know they are projecting,” she confessed.
Studying to take your mental capacity to a higher level was something he believed in. “You’re saying you picked up from me in the little time we have spoken that I’m a man who appreciates directness?”
“Do you have time for anything else?” she asked, raking her eyes over his face. “You try hard to appear relaxed, but you’re chomping at the bit to find your next mental stimulation. You are a no- nonsense person,” she stated. “You appreciate directness in others because you are direct to the point of unintentional rudeness when you’re distracted by something you decide is of less importance than whatever you’re focused on.”
“True.” His eyes narrowed on her face. “I’m sure my assistant would vouch for that.”
“You think too much. It’s exhausting.” Her eyebrow cocked knowingly at him. “You want me and instead of going for it, you’re overthinking the situation.”
“Am I?” He fingered his chin thoughtfully.
“Aren’t you?” she spoke slowly. Then with a curling little smile, she added, “Or am I projecting what I want onto you?”
“Maybe I’m hoping the want is mutual,” he admitted since she’d opened the door for him. “I find you interesting,” he admitted with his own boldness. She was right about him being blunt and direct, but it was only in business. He would have never had the nerve to be so approachable to her if she hadn’t made the first move. It would have remained his personal unrequited lust.
“And I find myself interested,” she said. “So the next question is, what do we do about it?”
“I think I can get used to this.” His grin spread wide.
“Used to what?”
“A woman who says exactly what she means.”
“It makes things less complicated.” She disarmed him again with her beautiful smile and sudden change of topics. “What are we having for dinner?”
She was staying. It took him a moment for his sex-numbed brain to remember what the flight attendant had told him once the plane had taken off. “Uh...prime rib or chicken?”
“How about we get one of each and we try a little of both, and for dessert we sign up for the ‘mile-high’ club.”
It was on his list of experiences he would like to have. “I would like that,” he replied. His headache had practically faded with the extra push of testosterone circulating the blood to his hardening cock.
“Good.” The pink dart of her tongue grazed her bottom lip. “I’ll go and get my things and freshen up for dinner.”
“You drink wine?”
“Damn, you get wine too? You are living large up in here.” Her eyes grew round. “All I got was iced-down cola, and she wouldn’t even leave what was left in the can. I was offered a snack of two packets of peanuts—regular ones for dinner and honey-covered ones for dessert.”
He didn’t think he’d ever find a woman he would enjoy speaking about such trivial things with until now. He also couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this much.
“To celebrate our meeting, why don’t we pull out the big guns and order glasses of champagne?” he asked with a twinkling in his eyes. “But don’t get overly excited. It’s probably that cheap stuff hotels send complimentary served in plastic champagne glasses.”
“Oh, my, you got hotels kissing your ass too?” She winked at him and clucked her tongue. “I’ll be back.”
He moved, turned, and half stood to look at her bottom wiggling as she walked and blushed a shade of red when the airline associate caught him. He quickly gave her his order for dinner and settled back down in his seat.
The muscles in his stomach tightened in anticipation at what was to come. Damn, he didn’t have any condoms. Wait, he shouldn’t assume she meant fucking in the bathroom. It could be a simple make-out session with no penetrating of any orifices.
He couldn’t believe he was about to do this. He was nervous. What If she found him lacking? Would that put an end to the comfortable banter they were enjoying now?
Chapter Three
The dinner and champagne wasn’t bad, considering—but the company was better.
Zola was surprised at how much she enjoyed their talks and laughter. They had a lot in common. He talked about his family fondly and seemed very close to them, as she was to her family.
His parents were immigrants from Japan born in the Chūkyō Metropolitan Area of 8.74 million people. They owned several high-end department store franchises around the world. He was born in Lahaina, Hawaii in West Maui. He had a younger brother, a younger sister, and an older sister.
“I can’t believe we’ve eaten dinner, talked about our families, and I still don’t even know your name,” he said.
“My closest friends call me Zoë, and you?”
“My closest friends call me Shin,” he replied.
“Nice to meet you, Shin.” Zola held out her hand for him to shake.
“Nice to meet you too, Zoë.” He accepted her hand and held it intimately, intertwining her fingers with his.
The simple gesture made her heart race, and she looked up from their linked hands into his eyes askance. Was this his way of showing her he wanted her as much as she wanted him right now?
Zola realized she had initiated the sexual willingness, and some men looked down on women taking the initiative. She was totally clueless about an Asian man’s wants and needs. She could only treat him like an African-American, Hispanic, or Caucasian man she found attractive.
Shin’s dark eyes glistened like onyx gems behind the thick lenses of his eyeglasses under the dim ambiance. She savored the way his gaze would drop from her eyes, to her lips, and to the exposed full cleavage in appreciation.
“What are you thinking?” Zola chanced asking.
“I was thinking how grateful I am that you approached me in that airport,” he answered. “I don’t think I would have had the nerve to approach you.”
“Why?” She was curious to know. “Is it all women who make you hesitate, or is it because I’m a black woman?”
“Maybe a little of both,” he admitted with a nod. “I don’t know if it would make a difference about the offer you extended me by telling you this, but I’ve never been with a black woman before.”
“Is that all?” Zola chuckled. “I’ve never been with ah...ah...” Zola gently assured him.
“Japanese,” he supplied with a grin.
“See, white folks think you all look alike too.” She winked with a slow grin. “Hey, our cultures already have something in common.”
He laughed. “Crazy, huh?”
“Very much so,” Zola agreed. “In my family alone, you will find anything from a cocoa brown to your shade of French vanilla. Even though I look similar to my momma, she’s about two shades lighter than I am. There is no mistaking us as twins.”
“That’s better than my family. You just might mistake me for my younger brother because we look very much alike, except he doesn’t have to wear the glasses.” He tapped at them as he spoke. “However, what gets me is when I’m mistaken as Chinese, or worse, when some associate thinks of me as being Oriental. For us, ‘Oriental’ refers to furniture, vases, or items that come from the Orient, not people.” Shin shook his head.
“Well, I won’t even begin to get into some of the things people like to associate black people with,” Zola muttered.
“I can imagine. I’ve heard some tasteless jokes and, unfortunately, I have repeated a bad joke or two that I’m sure would be insulting to several cultures,” Shin sheepishly admitted.
“You’re not the only one.” She squeezed his hand in understanding. “I’ve done the same thing about your culture and yes, sadly, my own. I can only say, maybe we both will learn something from this chance meeting that brought us together.”
“I think so also, Zoë.”
“You know, Shin, I’m not one t
o put men on the spot by having any expectations.” She reached out with the hand he wasn’t holding and pushed the glasses, which seemed to haphazardly balance on the tip of his nose, back up.
She wondered at the moist sheen on his brow. She wasn’t sure if he was overly excited by her nearness or if he was uncomfortable at the thought of being intimate with her. The last thing she wanted to do was make him uncomfortable now that dinner was over and it was time for the “dessert” she had teased at.
“Zoë, I—”
“You know, if you want to just sit here like this and talk or take a nap until the plane lands, I understand,” she hurriedly interrupted. It would be easier on her ego if she was the one to vacate the offer than to ruin any mental illusions she had by thinking he was as attracted to her as she was to him.
Beauty & the Geek: Zola's Magic Touch (Mocha Memoirs Presents Beauty & the Geek) Page 3