Another Day In Paradise_A Steamy BWWM Romance

by Brandy Blake

  “Darius clearly really likes you,” he told her.

  “Oh yeah?” Imani asked, confused as to how he knew that, given that she hadn’t seen the two together all day.

  “I checked in on him when I got home, and he told me that he had fun with you today. He said he’s excited to spend more time with you,” Stavros said. Imani knew there was no way he actually used those words, but she still liked that Stavros was taking the time to get to interact with his son.

  “I had fun with him too. He’s a good kid,” Imani said. Stavros gave her a bit of a smile to let her know that she was just being nice. He was a good kid, but just not one that most people would describe as “good.”

  “I hope that what happened between us doesn’t affect the position. I think you’re still really great,” he told her.

  “Right. I think we just need to keep things professional,” she told him.

  “Right. Professional,” he replied. He watched her puff the cigarette a few more times as the only sound that surrounded them was the waves hitting the rocks below. She looked at him, his brown eyes looking sunken in the moonlight but not in a sick way. They looked deep and mysterious, like black diamonds. She gave a little smile back, too distracted by his glare to know what exactly to say. She couldn’t help but remember how good it felt the last time he had been on top of her.

  He leaned in and kissed her, throwing his cigarette over the edge of the balcony. She threw hers as well and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him deeply as he pressed her up against the railing on the side of the balcony. She felt the breeze pick up, blowing through both her curls and his thick locks. He squeezed her, moving his hand down around her hips and back up, wrapping them hard around her.

  He took her inside and placed her on the desk in the middle of the library. She was just wearing a white t-shirt, no bra, and short black pants. She had expected to grab a book and crawl back into bed, so she wasn’t exactly looking her cutest. He didn’t care, as he was wearing basically the same thing, ripping her top off as fast as he could. He slowly kissed her heavy breasts, nipples hard and brown, sliding into his mouth slowly as she threw her head back, the rush of his lips sending shivers up to her head. She let out a soft moan, focusing on her noises, as she wasn’t sure how easily sound traveled throughout the mansion.

  He slid his hand down her stomach and into her pants, kissing her neck while she held herself up on the desk. He was much taller than her, allowing her to easily grip in between his legs, feeling him growing hard quickly. She slipped off his shorts, his penis popping out hard over the top. He slid his hand out and kissed her head, Imani feeling his wet fingers on her back as she held his penis in her hand. They moved together on the desk for a bit as Stavros started to moan a bit louder and louder, and Imani knew he was ready to enter her.

  He took his shirt off, his shorts dropping to the floor. He slid off Imani’s underwear and shorts quickly, leaning over her on the desk, Imani’s back sticking to a few papers that had been sitting there. It clearly wasn’t used often, however, giving them the perfect spot to make love.

  He slowly slid himself inside Imani, hitting her walls quick as she let out a squeal. She was wet and ready, but the desk was hurting her back a bit, distracting her from really enjoying the pleasure. He started moving faster, and Imani realized he was close to coming already. She pushed him back and turned herself around, standing on the ground and using the desk only to lean over. She pushed her butt into his penis, and it slid inside Imani from behind.

  It was the perfect spot as he moved quickly now, letting Imani’s body do some of the work as they pounded each other back and forth. After what felt like just a few minutes of building, Imani could feel herself tightening, orgasming hard as Stavros kept moving in and out. He came quickly after that, pulling out and releasing himself on Imani’s back. He leaned over and kissed her neck for a moment, Imani feeling his hot body pressed against hers.

  He lifted himself up, grabbing his t-shirt to wipe off Imani’s back. “Sorry about that,” he said. He didn’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s not like Imani wanted him to finish anywhere else.

  She slid her clothes back on, and he put his on, keeping his dirty t-shirt in his hand. He leaned down and gave her another quick kiss. “Professional, right?” he asked.

  “Professional,” she winked as she walked out of the room.

  *****

  Imani woke up to screaming the next morning, not sure what could be going on. It was early in the morning, and her first alarm hadn’t even gone off yet. As she opened her sleepy eyes, she realized that she had slept incredibly soundly the night before, having released a lot of stress with Stavros in the library.

  She quickly slipped on her clothes and ran to the small balcony on her room. She looked around, not seeing anything but the empty island, realizing that it was yet again another beautiful day. She heard another loud and scary yell, wondering who it could be. She hoped that it wasn’t Stavros raising his voice so unnecessarily loud.

  When she looked out the window, she could see that it was on the main floor. She ran out of the room and towards the noise, hoping that Darius wasn’t the one getting screamed at. She wasn’t even sure she should be getting involved, but was she just supposed to sit in her room? What if someone was hurt?

  She tiptoed down, realizing that no one else was awake but those two just yet. She had run into Mateo every morning and at least one maid, but Imani hadn’t looked at her alarm, and it was clear that no one should be awake that early. She adjusted her eyes as she walked through the brightly lit house, seeing it differently now that the early sun was beaming through the windows.

  Imani realized that someone had been screaming from Stavros’s room. She wondered if he was in trouble, walking up the stairs.

  “Mateo, you did exactly what I told you not to! Of course, I’m going to be upset!” she heard Stavros yell. She knew she shouldn’t be walking towards his room, Petra telling her that going up those stairs was strictly off limits. She couldn’t help but overhear, wondering what it was that Mateo had done that Stavros disapproved of so much.

  She started to walk back down the stairs, realizing she shouldn’t listen, or rather, that it would probably be bad if she did get caught.

  “You’re done! You incompetent fool!” Stavros told Mateo. She heard the door open and started to hurry away, not wanting to get caught.

  “I will not be talked down to like this!” Mateo shouted back, storming down the stairs.

  “And you, what are you doing? Get back to work playing with the little boy,” Stavros shouted at Imani as he caught her walking away.

  “Excuse me?” Imani asked, utterly offended that he would tell her something like that. She wasn’t just playing with his little boy.

  “I don’t appreciate you listening to my conversations,” he told her.

  “I wasn’t! I just woke up because I heard someone screaming. I just wanted to make sure everything was OK,” she explained to him.

  “Well, ignore it next time!” Stavros yelled.

  “You want me to just pretend I don’t hear someone shouting when they are? I thought maybe someone was hurt,” she explained. Mateo had stormed out at this point, leaving the two to now argue on the stairs.

  “I’m in charge here, do you all not understand that?” Stavros asked. Imani knew that she was just catching what Mateo had just received, Stavros taking more anger out on her. That still wasn’t a reason for her to get talked down to in this way. She didn’t let anyone speak to her like that, millionaire boss or not. Imani could see that he was hurting, but that didn’t mean she should feel his pain too.

  “I will not be talked to this way,” Imani told him quietly. She didn’t appreciate the way he had talked to Mateo, and she certainly wasn’t appreciating the way he was talking to her.

  “Then there’s the door,” Stavros explained to her. Imani didn’t like being treated as though she was disposable. If he was willing to just toss people aro
und like that, what might she endure down the road?

  “Fine!” Imani yelled, not wanting to get screamed at for another second. Imani decided that she wasn’t in the mood to deal with that situation. She figured that if it was this bad already, it was only going to get worse. She decided to pack up her things and leave.

  She wanted to end things now before she got too attached to Darius. It might not be fair for him to see so many people pop in and out of his life, but Imani didn’t want to work for a man that had such difficulty respecting the people that worked for them. She didn’t travel all that way just to get screamed at early in the morning. She had barely unpacked her things, making it easy to just toss everything back in her suitcase. She wasn’t sure where to go, but she knew that she didn’t want to be in that mansion anymore. She grabbed her bag and walked down the hallway back towards the main front door, seeing that Petra was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Imani figured she owed it to Petra to apologize for leaving on short notice.

  “I’m sorry, this just isn’t going to work out,” Imani told Petra, still not fully awake and feeling pretty emotional.

  “I’m not surprised. Not a lot of people can handle such a challenging position,” Petra told her, looking her up and down.

  Imani wanted to be a bit offended that she thought she wasn’t cut out for the position, but it wasn’t like Petra was wrong. Imani wasn’t OK with letting someone talk down to her. She deserved to be treated with respect. She wondered how many times Stavros had yelled at Petra. Imani didn’t say anything else and walked back to the front of the house, looking up at Stavros’s own personal staircase. She understood wanting to have a private space, but she was so infuriated that she marched right up to his room, walking through an archway to three different doors. On the right was what looked like an office, as if he needed more space to work. She barged right in, seeing him sitting at the desk. She froze up, but she wasn’t going to leave without getting the last word in.

  He was looking down reading some papers, and Imani figured this was her chance to say one final thing before leaving for good.

  “Maybe you should realize you’re the problem, not everyone else,” Imani told him before walking out the door. Little did she know that she wouldn’t be gone for too long.

  Chapter4

  Imani had managed to get the rental that she had stayed in when she’d first gotten to Mykonos. She managed to call a cab to come pick her up at the house, though the first driver didn’t believe that she wanted to get picked up at Stavros’s mansion, her having to convince the next driver she was legit. She sat and had another drink at the Alley Cat with her suitcase between her legs, using their Wi-Fi to find a place to stay for the night on her phone. The same bartender was there, and she ordered the same drink, this time for stress relief instead of loosening up for a fun night. Things hadn’t turned out good, but she couldn’t say she was completely blindsided. She scrolled through her phone, looking up prices for flights, not yet wanting to accept that she was actually going home. She wished she just had a clock to momentarily freeze time. Sometimes, Imani hated the way that people abused technology, using it for advertisements and to invade other’s privacies. In the situation she had found herself, she wouldn’t have survived without technology.

  Part of her knew that it might end up like that. She just had something inside of her, some seed in the back of her brain that said it wasn’t going to work out the way she thought it would. Perhaps she watered that seed herself, or maybe she was doomed ever since her eyes met Stavros’s. It wasn’t the first time she experienced a quick burning situation, but part of her also didn’t feel like it was quite over. She paid her bill at the bar, not taking any strangers home that night. Part of her was relieved she wouldn’t be responsible for taking care of Darius, though she did grow attached to him just in the short moments they shared together. He was charming, just like his father, and knew how to talk himself out of a situation. He was also arrogant, something that Imani was not interested in blending with. Those things often blended, creating a man with a good sense of humor that knew how to take a joke. His ego wasn’t too big, but still present like an ankle monitor. The thing she had wanted most from the experience was to see the two interact more. She worried what might happen to their relationship, leaving the island like one might have to wander from a stray kitten they know they can’t take in.

  It didn’t feel real, so she didn’t think it would be. From the moment her father mentioned this job to her, she thought she was having a dream. He was always calling her with crazy ideas, suggestions for jobs, or interesting new ways to make money he heard about while watching the nightly news. He would tell her what happened in his latest crime show or explain what he ordered for takeout that night. Most of the time, Imani would just say “mhm,” or “oh, that’s interesting,” sometimes adding a “that’s so funny.” It’s not that she didn’t like talking to her father; it’s just that he was clearly lonely.

  Imani told him he could date; barely knowing her mother as a child made it easier for her to see him with other women. He used her as an excuse to not date, clearly still loving his first wife. She felt bad that she hadn’t called her father in a while, using the time difference as an excuse for missed calls. Hearing about the job was one call she was glad she had taken, but even as she looked around her, seeing the Greek culture everywhere, she felt like she had been taken back to that first phone call, back to that dream. She wondered when she would wake up. Would it be on the plane over? The boat ride from Athens? When she first felt Stavros’s lips on the back of her neck? If she were going to be waking up, she wished it were now, when everything felt like it was fading into nothing just like her dreams in the morning.

  The other part of her wondered if she was just making a huge mistake. Had Imani overreacted to how Stavros had treated her? Maybe she just hadn’t gotten enough sleep and was feeling grumpy. Mornings were never good for a girl like her. She enjoyed her time alone, and getting out of bed in the morning meant she would have to walk back into the real world, once again interacting with people that constantly agitated her. She was notorious for fighting in the morning, and it was wrong for her to snoop in the first place. She knew that no one was hurt in the house but still made the decision to walk up Stavros’s private staircase to get a better listen of the drama going on behind those thick wooden doors. Imani hated when she would have to reflect on her own actions, wondering if she was the one that was in the wrong. She wondered if the situation was just too much for her to handle. The family seemed like they needed someone to help mend them back together, but a teacher wasn’t the one to do it.

  Just as Imani was about to close her tab and head home for the night, she spotted a familiar face walk into the bar.

  “Imani, what are you doing here?” Mateo asked as he walked up to where she was sitting.

  “Hey, Mateo, figured a drink might help my day,” she explained. He had left before she walked out, meaning he probably didn’t realize that Imani had quit as well.

  “Yeah, Stavros is a dick,” Mateo said. Imani knew how hurtful he had been, but she was surprised to find that part of her stung when she heard Mateo insult Stavros.

  “Yeah, I ended up walking out too,” she told Mateo. His mouth dropped.

  “Hell yeah, girl!” Mateo said, hi-fiving Imani. “Listen, I’m meeting a friend here, but we should definitely get a drink or lunch sometime. Petra has my number!”

  “That sounds awesome! I’ll absolutely hit you up,” Imani said, not wanting to explain that she was actually headed back to the states. Mateo waved as he walked up to another small Greek man, kissing him on the cheek. Imani smiled, happy that Mateo had someone to keep him warm that night.

  Imani walked from the bar to the same clay hotel room, a few people smoking outside. She thought about asking to bum a cigarette from them, but that was a nasty habit she didn’t want to get back into. She also felt more like just being alone, unable to remember if there was a bath
or not. She wanted to blast some music while soaking in a hot bath, closing her eyes and going under water for as long as possible. She didn’t like getting her hair wet unless it was time for a wash, but she was willing to get soaked if it meant losing all her senses for a moment. Imani walked up the stairs to the entrance, looking back once at the men smoking cigarettes. They were her age and not bad looking. Were they the type of people Imani should be hanging out with? Young adventurous men that didn’t have children? She wondered what it might be like to just boldly invite one back to her room, hey, maybe even both at once. She could do that if she wanted, but not tonight. Instead, it would just be her and hopefully the bath. She didn’t struggle to get the key code right this time, getting back into the same room easily. The last time she had made that journey, she had done so with Stavros. Imani realized after hopping around the city to kill time after leaving Stavros’s mansion that her hotel was so inexpensive because it wasn’t as nice as the rest of the island. There was certainly a difference in quality, and now that Imani wasn’t sleeping, rushing to get ready, or making love with Stavros, she realized that the place was a bit dingy and beat up.

  She walked into the bathroom, happy to see a tub but disappointed to see that there was some brownish black sludge caked in the corners. The tiles were pretty, perhaps a decade ago. Now they were covered in layers of other people’s filth, and Imani had no interest in soaking in that tub. Imani hated the people on renovation and home makeover shows that would be picky about every last detail of the place. She felt like one of those people now, but she was suddenly feeling their pain, having the fantasy of a hot bath ripped away from her just like all other hopes and dreams of the trip so far. She could maybe take a shower, but even that thought made her stomach turn. She was likely to come out dirtier. Her next priority was to find a flight back home, not sure how she was going to explain the situation to her father. She opened her laptop on the small desk set up in the room. She knew emailing her father would be the best right now, as she had no interest in hearing him lecture her over the phone about commitment and priorities. He wouldn’t be mad too long. He’d be happy to have his little girl back home with him.