Just Like Candy

by Kimberly Kaye Terry

  Davis had completed several drive-bys, circling her block four or five times, before he came to a halt and parked his SUV down the street from her small house.

  If he wasn’t careful, her neighborhood watch would be all over him, considering the lateness of the hour.

  He could have sworn he saw a woman who looked a hell of a lot like Sister Pauline, standing on her neatly manicured lawn, staring him down. Her hands rested on her ample hips while the light streaming from inside her house from the door she’d left open showed the suspicious scowl on her face as she stared at him as he made the fifth drive-by.

  Deciding he didn’t want to get arrested for suspicious behavior, he started the engine back up, drove down the street, pulled into Candy’s driveway and cut the engine.

  As he glanced out of his rearview mirror, he noted the woman with the resemblance to Sister Pauline continued to stay rooted in her spot, not moving a muscle.

  With a resigned sigh, he opened the door and climbed out of the car. He knew if he didn’t the woman would give him only so long, before she called the cops.

  “Hey you…aren’t you Davis Strong?” she called out. Surprised when he heard her voice, he turned toward her, and realized that she didn’t resemble Pauline Rogers, she was Pauline Rogers.

  “Sister Pauline?” He began to walk toward the old woman.

  She was wearing a thickly matted, faux-fur coat, buttoned completely to the top, and although she wore a big white fluffy knit cap on her head, complete with white puff ball, Davis could see the tips of her of her curly, gray wig peek out from beneath. He felt the beginning of a smile tug at his lips.

  “Mmm, hmmm…it’s me. I’m over here taking care of my sister while she’s recuperating from that ugly hip replacement surgery. Although God in heaven, and his heavenly host only know why Nadine is even bothering with all that at our age! I’m younger than her by eighteen months so I don’t exactly know what she’s going through, but still,” she said.

  She patted her wig in place through the hat on her head and made the familiar popping sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  Davis wanted to laugh, but checked himself. He’d learned from Candy that Sister Pauline, although a professed saved, sanctified, God-fearing, church-going woman…had no problem losing her religion, so to speak, if someone tested her, as Candy put it.

  Davis had no desire to test her.

  “The doctor said Nadine’s last replacement would last another five, ten years before she’d have to replace it; hell, this new one will last longer than she will!” the old woman cackled, a wicked, humorous glint in her dark eyes.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s glad you’re here to take care of her. Nothing like a sister’s love and devotion at a time like this.”

  The old woman “hummed” and squinted her eyes at him, looking over the tops of her fogging half-lenses.

  “It’s too cold to be running around outside. The weather-man can say it’s going to be an early spring all he wants…but it ain’t warm yet.”

  The way her eyes bored into him, Davis felt like an errant boy in front of his mother and resisted the urge to straighten and button his leather jacket.

  “What are you doing around here anyway? Here to visit Ms. Candy?” she asked and rolled her tongue with her signature pop against the roof of her mouth.

  It had been two weeks since he’d spoken to Candy. The first week he’d done everything in his power to talk to her, apologize…beg for forgiveness. She’d been right about so much.

  The night she’d left, he and Angelica had stayed up until well past one in the morning talking. After he realized Candy had left, twenty minutes into talking to Angelica, he’d been worried and had one hand on the phone when he discovered the note she left, telling him she’d called a friend to take her home.

  Unbidden, wild jealousy ran rampant when his first thought was that the friend was Nate, her intern from the center. He’d called her cell phone and she’d answered, assuring him she was safe and at home.

  He’d demanded, like an idiot, to know if she’d called Nate to bring her home and she’d quietly hung up the phone on him. That was the last time they’d spoken.

  He’d then gone back to Angelica and they had spoken about things that in the beginning he felt uncomfortable sharing with her. Although he tempered his words, he was honest with her. Direct.

  But after the initial sadness he caught in her eyes, the tears that tugged at his heart, she sat back against the headboard of her canopy bed and smiled around the tears, when he told her about her mother.

  Sharing stories of what she was like growing up, how funny she was, her dry humor and quick wit that he knew Angelica had inherited from her.

  In the end it had been emotional for both of them. But it was needed, way overdue.

  The following week, Davis had left work early and picked Angel up from the center early. Every time he’d come, Candy had found an excuse not to be there. He’d done his best to try and catch her alone, but either she was with a child, or Sister Pauline would run interference and, frustrated, he’d started to e-mail her.

  She hadn’t answered those any more than she had his phone calls.

  At spring break he decided to take Angelica on a small vacation, deciding they both could do with getting away from Stanton. He’d returned on the weekend, and like an addict, he’d driven by the center on the pretense of discussing the spring plans for construction for the center only to find out Candy had taken the last few days off.

  Frustrated, he was determined enough was enough. She would see him, they would talk, and she’d quit acting like a kid and admit she loved him. And forgive him for acting like an ass.

  Because he sure in the hell loved her.

  He hadn’t realize how much until he felt as though someone kicked him in the gut after he’d hurled the hurtful words her way.

  The proud way she’d stared him down didn’t hide the pain in her eyes.

  He could see past that. She’d gotten so far under his skin that he knew her.

  And he realized he felt like this only because he loved her. The kind of deep, soul-wrenching type of love that came only once in a lifetime. It had been building for almost a year. Slowly creeping up on him, sneaky. Irritating as all hell, it was. It confused him, had him twisted all up, dreaming of her at night, hot scorching dreams where he would wake up damn near in pain his dick was so hard, cum all over the damn sheets as he’d made love to the woman in his dreams, the woman of his dreams.

  Because even though he hadn’t claimed her, she’d been his from the first moment they’d met.

  It had taken his mind longer to catch up with what his heart already knew.

  Shit.

  And now he needed to “re-claim” his woman. And he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

  He turned his attention to Sister Pauline and felt the burden lift with his resolve.

  “No, Sister Pauline, It’s deeper than that. I’m here to get my woman back.”

  She stared at him, squinting her eyes behind her fogged-up glasses for long moments. Then the old woman’s mouth twitched before she let out a loud guffaw and popped Davis so hard on the back he nearly fell face forward in the melting snow.

  “Well hell it’s about time! What in the name of heaven took you so darn long, boy? Go on in there and get your woman and quit playin’ around!”

  33

  “H old on, I’m coming,” Candy yelled.

  She dropped the shirt she’d clutched in her hand like it burned her when she heard the banging at her front door.

  She quickly picked the T-shirt back up and walked toward the door, glancing at the old grandfather clock in the corner.

  At nearly midnight, she wondered who was coming to visit her so late and cautiously raised herself on tiptoe to glance through the peephole.

  Before she saw his large frame filling her lit porch, Candy already knew who was at her door banging like he’d lost his mind.

  Davis
.

  She looked down at the T-shirt clutched in her hands and was torn. She either put the shirt back on, or answered the door wearing nothing but her bra and brazen it out.

  With a mental shrug Candy decided she might as well put his shirt back on and hope Davis wouldn’t notice it was his.

  “Hold on, please. I need to take off the chain,” she spoke loudly over his banging and yanked the T-shirt down over her hips.

  She drew back the chain and carefully opened the heavy door. Candy inhaled a deep surprised breath when she saw he stepped further into the light, and she could see his face.

  His normally closed expression was an open book and a wealth of emotions flashed across his face, ranging from desire, anger, frustration…to love.

  It was all there and Candy forced herself not to respond, not to reach out and grab him by the lapels of his leather jacket and haul him close to her.

  She carefully kept her features neutral, not wanting one bit of her feelings, none of her emotions, to show.

  “I love you, Candy,” he said staring down at her with such an incredibly intense look in his light gray eyes that she nearly staggered back from the effect.

  “I said I love you, Candy,” he repeated and cleared his voice before he drew in a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”

  Davis stared down at her and waited, with an expectant look on his handsome face.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say something?”

  When she made no response, a small tic appeared in the corner of his sexy, chiseled lips before the hesitant smile that had began to flower gradually began to wither away and all but disappear.

  “Did you want to come inside, Davis?” she asked calmly and when he nodded his head shortly she stood back and allowed him to enter.

  She closed the door and locked it, before she turned to face him. He’d only taken a few steps into her living room before she spoke.

  “What did you want me to say, Davis? Did you want me to jump up and down and shout to the heavens in gratitude that my man loves me?” she asked, her voice only squeaking just the smallest bit.

  “That my man reached down deep,” she said, warming up to her topic. She not only emphasized the word “deep,” but dragged it out as far as she possibly could.

  Davis crossed his arms over his leather-clad chest and raised a brow at her theatrics. He opened his mouth to speak but Candy beat him to it.

  “And discovered that he loved me? That he couldn’t live without me? Me with all my strange unconventional ways,” she began and watched warily as he took his leather jacket off and carefully laid it over the back of her small forest-green sofa before turning back to her.

  “Go on,” he said when she paused when he took steps closer to her.

  “A woman who not long ago he didn’t think was suitable to give advice to his daughter, much less a group of impressionable young women? Yes, I know I have some things to work out, but who doesn’t? But you know what?”

  Davis cocked his head, encouraging her to continue. “Tell me what, Candy?” he asked.

  She glanced up, caught off-guard, wondering how he’d gotten so close so quickly. He now was standing less than a foot from her.

  Candy felt her renegade nipples response to his sudden nearness, but she refused to allow that to stop her until she’d had her say.

  “I neither want, nor do I need your or anyone else’s stamp of approval over my life. I am an educated, intelligent woman who has a lot to offer not only to the young women I mentor—which I do a damn fine job of, by the way—but also to the right man. A man who doesn’t judge, a man who will love me for me, tattoos, piercings, and all. A man who loves me with all his heart. For that man, I will give my all. I won’t hold anything back from him, the good, the bad, whatever…all of it. He’ll be worth it. Because he’ll know that I’m worth it, and I won’t have to prove a damn thing to him,” she finished, unable to hold back the tears that trickled down her face.

  “I don’t fucking deserve you, but God, I love you, Candy,” he said and that was all.

  Tears had escaped her eyes as she’d spilled her heart to him and his hungry gaze had roamed over her beautiful face, over every beloved feature before traveling over her body.

  He felt the unexpected sting of tears in his own eyes by the time she’d finished speaking and clenched his teeth tightly.

  The corners of his lips lifted slightly when he noticed she was wearing his shirt over one of her funky little fabric wraps and thick grey granny socks on her feet. Her hair was gathered into a sloppy topknot on top of her head and she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.

  He didn’t say anything else, simply reached out to her over the small distance separating them and pulled her into his arms.

  “Shut up, Candy. I was an ass, no two ways about it, but you love me and you know you do,” he said and lowered his head and kissed her.

  She struggled for a respectable amount of time before her lips softened and she returned his kiss. He slipped his tongue into the seam of her lips and groaned when she allowed him entry.

  He knew she loved him, it was there in her face, despite the carefully neutral expression she’d tried to erect and maintain. She had every right to be angry with him, had every right to tell him to go to hell after what he’d said to her.

  But he knew she wouldn’t. Because she loved him almost as much as he loved her, no matter what.

  Her body’s response to his was instant. He could feel her tight little nipples stab him as she pressed herself against his chest, groaning as she wound her arms around his neck.

  After several long minutes, he dragged his mouth away from the nirvana of her lips long enough to ask, “You do believe me, don’t you, Candy?” he asked, his breathing heavy.

  Her tongue snuck out and nervously licked the full bottom rim of her lip and he placed a finger beneath her chin and raised it.

  “I’m serious, Candy. I need to know. Do you believe me?” he asked and felt more nervous than he ever had in his life, as he waited for her answer.

  “Yes, I believe you,” she finally answered and a part of the pressing weight on his heart lifted with her answer. “But we need to talk—” she started to speak, but Davis placed a finger over her mouth, hushing her.

  “I know. Baby, I know we do. But all of that’s going to have to wait. I have to feel you, Candy. I need to feel you wrapped around me before I lose my damn mind. Two weeks without you has me climbing the walls, and if I don’t get to that pretty kitty of yours soon…” he laughed shakily, a husky catch in his throat. When she nodded her head in agreement, he lifted her in his arms.

  “Where’s your bedroom?”

  She pointed the way down a hallway in her small house and Davis walked with his beloved bundle down the short hallway that led to her bedroom.

  He didn’t bother turning on the light, simply walked to the bed and lay her down, immediately crushing her small body with his.

  Between muffled kisses, groans and soft sighs, they managed to undress one another other and soon she lay naked and compliant beneath his body.

  “I don’t know how long this is going to last, Candy. God, I’ve missed you so much!” he said and slipped a hand between their bodies, separating her vaginal lips and testing her readiness for him.

  He groaned harshly when she was creamy and ready for him.

  “That’s okay, Davis. Please, just love me,” she begged.

  Davis tried to be gentle as he moved her thighs further apart, afraid he’d hurt her, he was so damn randy for her. He guided the head of his penis into her streaming entry and carefully pushed into her moist heat.

  Once fully embedded inside, Davis paused, not moving as he enjoyed the feeling of being one with her.

  He felt complete, whole. He’d never felt like this while making love with another woman, the way he did with Candy. Making love with her went beyond the physical act, and became a total expression of love, of finding the other, perfect ha
lf to him.

  He adjusted her sweetness on his cock, and carefully lay on her, blanketing her with his body. He held her hips steady as he slowly, with excruciating slowness, ground into her, nestling deep inside her warmth.

  As impatient as he was to make love to her and how badly he needed to come, he still rocked her nice and slow, easing in and out of her creaming heat with care. This time as they made love he wanted to feel her.

  He wanted to relish her, saturate and drown himself in her essence. In the short time they’d been intimate, Davis had become addicted to her sweetness, and now that he had her beneath him again, he intended to take his time, and reacquaint himself with her.

  When Candy wrapped her legs around his lean hips and tried to hasten his pace, the heels of her feet pushing against his taut butt cheeks, he gave a rough masculine laugh, and she groaned.

  “Oh God, I missed you, missed this” she whispered as she accepted, gladly, his short easy glides.

  He was feeding her just enough of himself to feel good, but not enough to completely satisfy her.

  When he picked up the pace of his strokes and roughly pulled one of her breasts into the warm, wet cavern of his mouth and sucked, Candy felt her body hum, tingling as the orgasm began to churn through her.

  “I’m coming, baby…Davis, I’m coming…” she screamed.

  As the orgasm overwhelmed her, he began to rock into her hard, both hands grasping her hips in a grip so harsh she knew she’d have marks in the morning.

  But now she didn’t care, all she cared about was the pounding thrusts and the tight suction he maintained on her titties as he plummeted into her pussy.

  She reached between their close bodies and cupped his tightly drawn balls and he reared his big body away, and yelled.

  “I love you, Candy,” he yelled as he came, his hot seed bursting, jetting into her like a geyser, splashing the walls of her uterus, her womb.