Promise Me Forever (Top Shelf Romance)

by Kate Stewart

Grip’s tender smile reaches across the small space separating us, and he kisses my fingers meshed with his. The brush of his lips drops feathers in my belly. I pull in a breath to suppress the shivers even that soft touch sets off across my skin.

  Grip’s smile fades, and the air thickens between us, making it harder to breathe. He leans across the console, takes my chin between two fingers, and kisses me, softly at first. As soon as I open, inviting him into me, his mouth demands my surrender. With a needy moan, I open my heart wider, taking as much of him in as I can. The kiss becomes compulsive, something I couldn’t stop if I tried. My lips, my hands, seeking and hungry. His response, possessive, ravenous.

  Grip hauls me over the middle console, squeezing me between his chest and the steering wheel, fitting my thighs on either side of him, shoving my dress up around my waist to expose my lacy panties. His hand wrings in my hair, pulls my head back, holds me still.

  “I love you.” His eyes probe mine so long I’m sure he plucks my thoughts from my mind, the emotions from my heart. “What you did back there, what you said . . .”

  He presses his lips to mine, groaning against my mouth, his tongue diving in over and over until my head is spinning. I hold onto him, my arms clamped about his neck. He digs into my hips, urging me over him in a rolling rhythm, in the groove he sets. I assume the pace, riding the hot beam of flesh and steel behind his zipper. He lifts me to capture my breast through the thin cotton. He doesn’t nibble at me like a delicacy. He gobbles at my nipple, pinching with his lips, nipping with his teeth. He shoves the collar aside with his chin, suckling me, singeing me through the sheer layer of my bra for long seconds before pulling my arms out of the dress, leaving it a strip of bunched material encircling my waist. He jerks the bra straps down to cage my elbows and finally takes my naked breast into his mouth.

  “Oh, God.” I rise and fall over him, my thighs trembling. “I need this.”

  “I know.” He slides a hand into my panties, rubbing my slickness between his fingers. “Please say you’re ready for me.”

  “I am.” I drop my lips to his neck, sucking the skin roughly. “Get it.”

  He doesn’t bother removing my panties, but shoves them aside. I can’t wait, fumbling with his belt and zipper. He’s hot and hard in my hand as I position myself and slide down, the scrape of flimsy lace against our joined flesh only intensifying the pleasure. He’s wide and thick, and there’s still a sting when his body insists past my tightness, still a kiss of pain underlying the rapture as he drills all that dick to the bottom of me. Oh, but God, it’s worth it.

  “Shiiiiiiiit.” Grip’s brows scrunch, bottom lip trapped between his teeth, head dropped back against the headrest. “I wanna die this way. In here. Inside you. Just like this. Promise you’ll fuck me on my deathbed.”

  Laughter erupts in the luxurious confines of the car, mine and his.

  “Oh my God,” I gasp, laughing but so close to coming I already see spots. “You’re crazy.”

  I twist him impossibly deeper into my body, wanting to feel him where no one has ever been. Where no one’s ever touched me.

  “Bristol.” My name bursts from his mouth as he explodes inside me, his passion warm and liquid. “God, what are you doing to me?”

  Making you more mine every time.

  A smug, satisfied smile rests on my lips a few moments later. He’s still inside me, and I’m slumped onto his chest, the steering wheel digging into my back. I know we need to move. There’s a sticky mess between my legs, and we could get caught at any moment, but I can’t stop kissing him, my tongue in his mouth sustaining our intimacy like a note held at a conductor’s command.

  “We need to go,” he whispers, his breath still labored, his palms starting at my feet folded under me and sliding up my thighs and under the panties I never took off. He fills his hands with my ass, the leisurely caress of a satisfied man, and I revel in the fact that I did that. That I satisfy him.

  “Hmmmm.” I snuggle deeper into him.

  “Bris.” His hands wander over my back and then coax my bra straps into place on my shoulders. “For real, we need to leave before we get caught. We already had one close call today, and that wouldn’t exactly be the low profile we’re supposed to be keeping.”

  “You’re right. I’ll move in a second.” I chuckle, eyes closed and depriving my other senses so I can fully absorb the scent of him. “You were the one who couldn’t even make it home.”

  “True.” He pauses, lifting my head from his chest. “What you said at my mom’s house . . .”

  “I meant every word.” I frame his face between my hands, my eyes latched with his. “I’m going wherever you go.”

  “And you think I would object?” He tilts his head, his eyes so warm as he looks at me. “You’re everything I wanted before I even knew what I was getting.”

  I kiss him thoroughly, deeply, surrendering everything before pulling back to smile down at his contented expression.

  “You wanted me, you got me.” I kiss him one more time, branding him mine as surely as I’m branded his. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Grip

  IT SHOULD SCARE me how much I missed Bristol after just one day away from her, but it doesn’t. I fully embrace my addiction to the girl. Luke and I flew out to join Kilimanjaro for the show in Chicago, their hometown. Bristol’s brilliant last-minute idea of Prodigy solidarity, but even that one day without Bristol has me fiending. We’ve only been official a few days, and I don’t sleep right without her. I’m so bent out of sorts waking up alone in an empty bed that I had Sarah change our flight to the earliest out this morning so I could get home sooner.

  I need my girl.

  “You don’t wanna go home first?” Amir asks from the seat beside me.

  The SUV picked us up at the airport, and I told the driver to go straight to the Prodigy offices.

  “Nah, I’ll take my stuff home later."

  A knowing grin spreads across Amir’s face. His eyes drop to my bouncing knee.

  “You got it bad, don’t you?”

  My knee stops bouncing long enough for me to scowl at him, but I can’t hold back an answering smile. He’s watched Bristol and me from day one. Knows the full story. I turn my head to watch the cars zooming by on the interstate.

  “Damn right I got it bad,” I mutter. “Look how long it took to get her.”

  “How was she after . . . well, you know?” Amir lifts his thick bushy brows. “Dinner.”

  “She’s Bristol,” I say wryly. “She’s fine. Ask me how my mom is. That’s a better question.”

  “You guys talked since Sunday?”

  “Have we talked?” I pffft. “She’s called me like eight times. She felt bad about the way things went down, but she still wants to talk sense into me. She thinks I’m in some kind of phase with Bristol. It’s not like I haven’t dated white girls before. I’ve dated everything in our species.”

  “Yeah, but you ain’t ever brought a girl to Sunday dinner. Ms. Mittie knows you’re serious about Bristol. She knows you think Bristol is the one, and she ain’t okay with you marrying a white woman. She told us that when we still thought girls had cooties.”

  “Ma has been consistent, but Bristol is the one. She always has been. She just had to trust me to be her one.”

  “It’s like that?” Surprise stretches Amir’s face from top to bottom. “So, ya’ll are already talking marriage?”

  “Hell, no.” I laugh at the thought. “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to convince Bristol to actually marry me?”

  “It was obvious on Sunday she’s into you. I mean, I wanted to salute after the speech she gave.”

  I saluted her, all right. My dick was at attention under the table the whole time she was talking and was not “at ease” until I had her bunched up against that steering wheel with every inch I got fucking the hell out of her.

  “I’ve made studying Bristol Gray my life’s work.” I lean bac
k in the comfort of the SUV’s leather seat. “Marriage will scare her to death. She’s seen too many bad ones. The worst up close. It’ll take some time, but I think I’ve proven I’m a patient man.”

  “And what about Qwest?” Amir’s frown comes quick and heavy. “You heard from her?”

  “Nah.” It pains me to think of how Qwest got caught in the drama between Bristol and me. “I ended things almost a week ago, and we agreed we wouldn’t talk for a while.”

  “So does she know about Bristol? Does she know you’re already with someone else?”

  “I never gave her a name, but I told her there was someone I wanted to be with who didn’t want to be with me.” I shake my head. “Then Bristol and I got together the next day. We’re keeping things quiet until it’s public that Qwest and I called it quits.”

  “Yeah, if it comes out about you and Bristol while folks still think you’re with Qwest . . .” The look he gives me has “oh shit” written all over it.

  Qwest in the role of woman scorned, even if I didn’t technically cheat, would not be a good look. For any of us.

  “Yeah, we need to get ahead of it,” I say “I’ll bring it back up with Bris.”

  “Does Rhyson even know yet?”

  “No.” My cocky grin comes fast. “Serves him right, too. Bristol told him how she felt about me weeks ago and he never let on. Asshole.”

  “You think he’ll be happy for you?”

  “Yeah, but Rhys can’t figure out if he should protect me from Bristol, or Bristol from me. He knows for sure he wants to protect the business in case anything goes wrong between us. He doesn’t have to worry about that. Bristol and I are solid now. Ain’t no going back.”

  “Is she back to managing you?”

  “Yeah, no reason not to now.” I shrug and turn my mouth down at the corners. “She’s so damn good at it.”

  “And that dude she was, um, dating?” Amir asks the sentence like he’s tiptoeing over a minefield and Parker is a trip wire.

  “They weren’t dating.”

  I trap the truth behind my teeth. I can’t even tell Amir that Parker slept with Bristol while she was basically unconscious. I can’t get it out of my mind, the way he grabbed her on the tarmac. All the messages he’s left, even though she’s told him it’s not happening. The extra senses my mama says we have tell me this dude’s nature is fundamentally crooked. He won’t hesitate to play dirty to get what he wants, and he wants Bristol. I may have grown up in the hood, but I’ve been straight as an arrow all my life. For this man, I won’t hesitate to get a little bent if it means protecting her.

  “Hey, you still got them contacts with Corpse’s boys?” I ask.

  Amir looks at me like I’m smoking crack and just offered him the pipe. Our moms steered us clear of the Crips, but Amir’s cousin Corpse crossed over to the dark blue side. With a “b” name like Brandon, he changed his name when he joined, and became Corpse when it was clear he had a talent for assassination.

  “I ask you about Charles Parker—one of the richest dudes in the world, by the way—and then you ask me about Corpse? Uh-uh. Nah, bruh.”

  “I’m not putting a hit on Parker.” I run my tongue over my teeth, squeezing my hands into fists on my knees. “But he isn’t taking Bristol from me. And I’ll be damned if he’s gonna hurt her. I just want options.”

  “Corpse ain’t an option. Ever.” Amir glances at the raised glass partition insulating our voices from the driver’s ears. “And I’m gonna forget we had this conversation.”

  “I don’t want you to forget.” I level a hard, narrow look at him, everything in me pulled tight. “He’s your cousin. Just reach out to him.”

  “I don’t fuck with Corpse, and you know it.”

  “I got pulled over for no damn reason Sunday before we got to Ma’s, Amir.” My voice carries the bitterness of that memory. “Bristol was right there while some no-nut cop threw me against the car and cuffed me. He had me hemmed up, sitting on a curb. He could have hurt her. He could have touched her, and I wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about it. Do you know how that made me feel?”

  It’s quiet in the car while Amir studies me with grave eyes. He’s been beside me on that street before. The two of us in a line of our friends, bellies scraping asphalt, plastic cuffs cutting off circulation, dogs sniffing around us like hounds scenting prey. All while cops searched the car for drugs. And me, a music student making straight A’s.

  “The power we have, the control we think we have, it’s an illusion. We can lose it in an instant." Cynicism roughens my voice. "Now, I’m a lucky man with more blessings and opportunities than most people, no matter what color they are. And I know all cops aren’t bad, but it only takes one. I know the whole world isn’t out to get us, but it only takes one. And there is one motherfucker out to get my girl, and I just want options. Ya feel me?”

  We pull up to the imposing glass building housing Prodigy, but I’m not getting out until I know Amir understands how serious I am about this. I sit with a stony face while Amir weighs what I just told him.

  “I’ll call Corpse.”

  “Good.” I open the car door.

  “But,” Amir reaches over and grabs my arm, “I’m talking to him, not you. We can’t have any of this shit anywhere near you if things . . . if anything ever happens.”

  I stare at the face I’ve seen evolve from acned adolescence to the grown ass man still trying to protect me.

  “It won’t come to that,” I assure him. “These are just precautions, but yeah, you can deal with him. Unless I need to.”

  Amir drops my arm, sucks his teeth and shakes his head.

  “Fool.”

  “You the fool.” I chuckle. “And don’t think I didn’t see you tryin’ to holla at Shondra Sunday.”

  He groans, but a smile illuminates his face.

  “We’re going out this Friday.”

  “No way.” I lean into the open door, arms braced against the car. “You finally grew some balls and asked her out.”

  If his skin wasn’t so brown, I bet his cheeks would be red. Chagrin and embarrassment sit together awkwardly on his face.

  “She actually asked me out.”

  “She . . . so wait. You been crushing on this girl half your life, working up the nerve to ask her out, and she . . .” I press my fist to my lips to stifle the laugh. “So what you’re saying is Shondra’s balls are bigger than yours.”

  “Hey, some might say the same about you and Bristol,” he says defensively.

  “Oh, no, homey. Bristol loves these big balls. Trust.” I propel myself away from the car with a deep laugh and yell. “Deeze nuts!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Bristol

  “BRISTOL, GIVE ME your phone.”

  Sarah is posted against my office door when she makes the odd request. She came in, closed the door behind her, and demanded my phone.

  “What?” I return my attention to my laptop with a laugh. “My phone? Why?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I look back up. She’s still standing there, back pressed to the door as if she’s keeping something at bay. Her eyes are round. Her lips are tight. Her hands wring around one another at her waist. She catches sight of the phone on my desk at the same time as I do. We both dive for the it. Somehow from across the room, that little ninny manages to snatch the phone that was only two inches from me.

  “Give me my phone.” I hold out my hand. “Right now.”

  “Bristol, let me just paint a picture for you first.” Sarah tucks my phone behind her back.

  “Let me paint a picture of you in the unemployment line if you don’t give me my phone.”

  “Are there actual lines anymore, though?” Sarah stalls. “I mean, it’s all computerized now, right?”

  “You’ll know for sure tomorrow unless you give me my phone.” I sigh, exasperated. “How bad can it be, whatever it is?”

  Her silence and the eyes shifting from me to the floor tell me it’s bad. The wo
rst things I can imagine immediately leap to mind.

  “It’s Grip? Rhyson? Kai? The baby?” Sarah’s unchanging expression gives me no assurances. “Just tell me.”

  Sarah blows out an extended breath and starts tapping keys on my phone. When she finds what she’s looking for, she turns the screen around for me to see.

  “Let’s start here,” she says.

  I take the phone, my eyes still trained on her face. At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It’s surveillance footage from the “routine” stop on Sunday with Officer Dunne.

  “What is this?” I search Sarah’s face for an answer. “This happened Sunday when Grip was stopped by a cop.”

  “Yeah, someone got a hold of the surveillance footage and posted it.” Sarah bites her bottom lip. “There’s a lot of talk about the irony of Grip being stopped DWB when ‘Bruise’ is just coming out. But there’s a lot more . . . discussion about you and Grip. Keep watching.”

  I look again, and then I see it. I get out of the car and join Grip on the curb. I remember this moment when his forehead presses to mine and we whisper to one another, the intimacy between us obvious. Our lips touch and our eyes hold onto each other.

  Oh, God, please no.

  Our lips touch and linger. We kiss.

  I slowly lift my eyes to meet Sarah’s. Hers are wide and questioning.

  “It’s just a . . . an itty bitty kiss, right?” False hope lilts my voice.

  “Well, yeah,” Sarah agrees and bites her lip. “But there is that other part.”

  “Other part?”

  I look back to the phone. There’s another clip after Officer Dunne leaves. A different feed, different angle. Maybe from a nearby pole. Who knows. We’re chatting with Greg, and Grip kisses my hand and presses it to his chest. He pulls me into his side. I lean into him. There’s nothing platonic about any of it. We look like we’re in love, but it’s nothing too incriminating until Greg leaves. The footage shows the long kiss we shared against the Rover. If there was any doubt we’re more than friends, this kiss eliminates it.