Succulent

by Zane

  The knock was soft, but somehow I still heard it. Dressed in only my boxers and a T-shirt, I got up and walked to the door. Looking through the peephole, I could see Meredith standing there in an oversize Clark Atlanta sweatshirt, her flannel pajama bottoms hanging down over her New Balance running shoes. I opened the door, and my stomach immediately started to churn with butterflies.

  “Come in,” I offered. I cleared off a spot on my bed for her to sit down.

  It took everything I had in me to suppress my smile. She had actually come to my room! It didn’t matter what for either. She was there, and that was really all that mattered.

  “Hey, Marlon, I just wanted to take a look at some of your stories. I don’t think any guy has ever written a story about me before. I just had to see what you had to say.”

  “No problem,” I said, pulling out the stack of stories I had printed out during the week. I had arranged them in the sequence in which they were written, so the sex-aholic-meeting one was on the top. I handed them to her before I realized that I should be embarrassed by how blatant my stories were. Meredith had really brought out the freak in me.

  As I sat in the chair by my desk, facing my bed, I watched her read the first story. She nodded occasionally, as if to say, “Interesting.” When she finished the first story, she placed it back on the stack resting next to her on the bed.

  “So I inspired you to write a story about two sex addicts?”

  “Well, sort of. More like motivation.”

  “Motivation? Are all of the stories like this?”

  Now I was really embarrassed. “More or less.”

  She lowered her head for a moment as if to reflect over what she had just read. Lifting her head, she slid out of my bed and stood up in front of me. “I am Meredith Jones, and I”—she sighed, in a voice of mock frustration—“am addicted to sex.”

  I looked at her with my eyebrow raised, and just then I saw her smile, that same smile from the first day I had had lunch with her. I stood up from my seat.

  “I am Marlon Shepherd, and I, too, am addicted to sex.”

  The words were nearly identical to the words in the story, save our names. I could feel my erection starting to push the fabric of my boxers.

  “So, Marlon, what do we do now?” she said, looking down at my erection.

  Her mouth sealed around mine before I could catch my thoughts, and her tongue danced against mine, causing me to ease my hands slowly down her back, around her waist, and onto her ass. She moaned as we fell back onto the bed.

  I lifted her sweatshirt and smiled when I realized that she wasn’t wearing a bra. I held one of her breasts in my hand and flicked my tongue across her nipple, quickly enveloping it with the warmth of my mouth. My hand eased down into her flannel pajama bottoms, and at that moment I realized that she had only been wearing the sweatshirt, pajama bottoms, and sneakers—nothing beneath!

  Slowly I went over the length of her body, massaging her muscles with my fingertips and replacing the sensation with my mouth. I made a soft, wet trail from her neck, down below her navel, and as my lips reached the inner part of her hip, I lifted her legs to drape over my shoulders. She eased toward me, allowing her clit to rub against the tip of my nose before sliding down onto my tongue. She rocked into me as I licked and sucked, her hands holding my head as she moved her body back and forth. I cupped my hands beneath her ass, lifting her into me, and her legs shot out, erect, as she screamed out in ecstasy, shivering.

  I stood back from the bed, admiring her sexy body reclined in the light of the room, her wetness dripping down onto my sheets. She slowly sat up on the edge of my bed and slid one hand up my T-shirt onto my chest, as she pulled my throbbing erection from my boxers with her other hand and ran her tongue along the entire length of my shaft. I moved my hips forward involuntarily as she took the head into her mouth. As she worked me back and forth with her hands, I did everything I could to keep from cumming. I wanted to feel her sliding up and down me before I came.

  Wetting up my shaft with her saliva, she guided me between her legs and eased me into her hot wetness. The warmth worked its way down my shaft as I wrapped myself completely around her. Her hands rubbed my back, and I stroked her as if it were the last thing I would ever do in life. Lifting her legs into a V formation, I eased myself into her until she gasped. As I rotated my hips, I looked down at her beautiful, sexy chocolate complexion; her full, firm breasts; and her athletic body. I massaged her calves with my fingertips as I held her legs spread.

  “Ooh, I like it!” she cooed. “It feels so good!”

  I smiled, but I couldn’t respond because she felt so incredible that I could cum if she so much as wiggled a toe. I wanted to hold off and enjoy her all night. I didn’t want her to get on that plane the next morning and leave without knowing that she was all that.

  We rolled over, and she climbed on top of me, sliding her hips into mine. I could feel her wetness dripping down my balls as she pushed into me and wiggled her body. And when she was ready, she did a Kegel pull that made me scream out.

  “Oh, shit! I’m gonna cum!”

  She pulled me into her as I felt myself exploding in what felt like a psychedelic Technicolor orgasm, my erection throbbing in repetition as her walls tightened around me. We held on to each other for what seemed like one interminable moment before realizing how late it was.

  As she dressed, I watched her cover up her perfection with each piece of clothing I had taken off earlier.

  “I want a copy of the stories,” she said.

  “Take them. I have the files on my laptop.”

  I walked her to the door and kissed her. “Sleep well,” she whispered, caressing my face.

  I offered to walk her back to her room, but she refused, saying that she was fine. She only asked me to do one thing for her just before she left: she asked me to write this story.

  Shiny, Nappy People

  Been

  I’d started braiding hair in my apartment on the weekends for a little extra cash. My job in cubicle hell didn’t pay for shit, and besides, there were these funky red leather boots on Zappos that I just had to have. (Hey, a girl needs her footcandy.) Anyway, I didn’t mind doing it. I actually kinda liked braiding hair. There was something relaxing about it, comforting even, especially since my mama had up and bought herself a pine condo four years ago.

  Braiding hair had become a refuge; one of the few times, other than fighting or fucking, that I had a legitimate excuse to lay my hands on other black folks. And I needed an excuse because somewhere along the line, between childhood and adulthood, it had ceased to be okay to touch the brown, black, and high-yellow people who were related to me by blood. And a girl can really miss that, ya know?

  So running my fingers through the soft, nappy, kinky spirals of brown-skinned strangers was my answer to paying some clueless shrink $120 an hour to listen to me bitch and moan about how much I missed my dearly departed mommy. Braiding was, well, braiding was therapy, black-girl style.

  So, maybe you can understand why when my celly rang one Sunday afternoon, and Amani asked if he could make an appointment for some cornrows, I was real quick to say, “Cool. Why don’t you just swing on through now, baby.”

  Amani was the kid brother of this chick from work who sat three squares down from me on the cubicle farm. Fatima was mad cool, and I figured if she was okay, her brother had to be awwright, too. That, and the fact that I wasn’t doin’ shit except painting my toenails a tasty new shade of Urban Decay’s Asphyxia, made me more inclined to overlook a tiny, little, inconsequential detail like I was inviting a complete and total stranger into my crib.

  Twenty minutes after the first call, my celly rang again (which reminds me, I really gotta change that annoying Beyoncé “Ring the Alarm” ringtone, but I digress). Anyhoo, Amani told me he was pulling up outside my building. I went to the window and spotted a honey-brown-complexioned brother parking a shiny, white Jetta with gold rims. Cute, I thought.

  I told
Shorty to “Look up…. No, higher, baby…. No, to the right of that big red sign over the sushi restaurant…. Yeah, that’s me, Kiki, waving at you. I’m in 3A. I’ll buzz you in, okay?”

  Moments later, I heard a knock on my door. I opened up and stepped aside to let this tall, fine, caramel piece of ass come in. Amani was wearing all white from head to toe, a sexy Good Humor ice cream man, and he commenced to doing a nice little broh-man swagger right into my tastefully-gawdyyet-minimalist-with-a-Moroccanish-Indian-sort-of-vibe studio apartment and looked around.

  “Nice place, Kiki,” he said, picking up the gleaming golden statue of a Hindu goddess that sat on the mantelpiece over my bed. “So, who’s this supposed to be, Shiva or somebody?” He raised a curious eyebrow in my direction.

  “No, playa, that’s not Shiva.” I tried my best not to sound like a know-it-all. “Shiva is a dude. This little beauty here is Sarasvati. And, since you asked,” I said, flipping open my handy-dandy book on Hindu deities I just happened to have, “she is the goddess of knowledge, speech, poetry, and music.”

  Amani cut his eyes at me in a way that said, “Shut the fuck up,” and continued scoping out the apartment, admiring my Eastern-flavored decor every now and then. I was admiring something, too. Mmm-hmm, like the way those white linen pants were skimming his deliciously shapely derriere. Goddamn, he must live at the gym, I thought. Now usually, my rule was to avoid those ego monsters known as gym rats who loved a mirror more than I did, but Amani was looking so damned tasty that I figured sometimes you just gotta forgive a person’s shortcomings…know what I mean?

  Amani and his fine, fine behind made their way over to my bookshelves, which covered two walls of my bedroom. His eyes darted curiously across the endless titles.

  “Damn, you got a lotta reading material in here and shit, girl. What are you, some kinda librarian or bookworm or somethin’?”

  I preferred to think of myself as a book whore, but tomayto, tomahto. “Yeah,” I said. “Something like that. Actually, I was an English lit major in college and I guess I just can’t ever kick the book habit.”

  “Let’s see. What do you got here?” Amani asked rhetorically. “Hmmm, a section of Caribbean cookbooks, a whole ’nother section on Buddhism, some shit in French, oh, and what do we have on this top shelf here? Oooh, Kiki got herself a little porn section.”

  “It’s called erotica, thank you very much,” I huffed indignantly, snatching my steamy copy of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. out of his hands and putting it back on my, errrrrr, ummm, “erotica” shelf.

  “Well, if it looks like porn and quacks like porn,” Amani teased, winking. “What else you got? Kamikaze Lust, Lovers’ Yoga, the Kama Sutra, Going Down: Great Writing on Oral Sex, Tantric Orgasms? Ms. Lady, I do believe you is a straight-up freak perpetrating as some kind of ghetto-fabulous hippie intellectual.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t you come here to get your hair ‘did’ or something, if I remember correctly?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. The cornrows.” Amani took a seat in the kitchen chair I had moved into the living-room-cum-bedroom for braiding purposes. “I really do need to get my wig smoked in a hurry because I’m going to the Wizards-Heat game later tonight and I want my stuff looking right.”

  “No problem. I got you, boo. You’re dome is gonna be looking sharper than Allen Iverson’s when I’m done with it, my Nubian prince.”

  He smiled at me, revealing a set of teeth so white and pretty, they would put Taye Diggs out of business, and lips so soft and juicy even Angelina would have to hate on him.

  Putting my mind back on work for distraction from the tingling feeling I was beginning to get in the recesses of my cunt, I started combing through his long, billowy ’Fro. Gently, I worked some coconut oil through his tresses, massaging it occasionally deep into his scalp. Amani’s strong, textured hair was thirsty for this moisture and started to gleam almost immediately. I noticed how the beautiful honey-brown skin at the side of his neck shone also, and overall he gave the impression of a shiny copper penny in human form. I started to think about how I’d like to spend that penny when…my goddamn Beyoncé ringtone rang again (damn, I really gotta change that).

  “Whatchu doin’?” my friend LaTonya asked.

  “Co-chillin’ with a client,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could.

  “Co-whoin’ wid a what?”

  “Girl, I’m braiding hair, okay?”

  “Oh, excuse me, Ms. Lady, for not bein’ up on all the ling-O. We still on for seven o’clock tonight or what? I am fiending for a mojito.”

  “Nah, girl. I don’t think I’ll be done by then,” I lied, knowing good and well the style Amani wanted should only take me an hour and a half, max.

  “Okay then, sweetie, I’ll catch you at yoga class tomorrow night?”

  “Oh, fo’ sho, gurrrllllll. I’ll be there.”

  Amani must have closed his eyes and gone into full-on chill mode while I was on the phone with LaTonya. I half wondered if he was actually asleep, which would be okay by me because I wanted a chance to drink in that sexy man without having to pretend anymore I wasn’t staring at him. And I wanted more time to feel on him. I started braiding real, real slow, redoing sections that didn’t need to be redone, shifting from one foot to the other. Oh, my feet didn’t hurt or nothin’, don’t get it twisted. I just had to shift because the very smell of him (the coconut oil mixing with some kind of warm patchouli scent he was wearing) was making my crotch twitch like a muthafucka. Amani noticed my restless movements and looked up at me seductively. So, he wasn’t sleeping after all.

  “Kiki, you getting tired?” Aww. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Naw, I’m okay, boo. My back is just a little achy from spinning class earlier today,” I lied.

  “Aw, that ain’t no good. Want me to sit on the floor so you can get more comfortable?”

  “You don’t mind?” I cooed. “Yeah, that would be cool.”

  I sat on the edge of my bed and positioned Amani on a plush, velvet Moroccan poof on the floor in front of me. Wrapping my legs around the sides of his finely sculpted torso, I began braiding down the last remaining section of his unruly ’Fro. I could feel Amani’s body heat radiating through the fabric of his tight white T. My legs burned with anticipation of I didn’t know quite what…yet. When he breathed or stretched, Amani’s shirt tugged upon the exaggerated outline of his magnificently worked-out chest. Was it my imagination, or was his body getting hotter by the second, too? My question was answered moments later, when I felt a man’s hands drifting up and down the back of my calves. Warm, coarse palms wandered over the flesh of my thick, curvy legs for what seemed like an eternity. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, Amani turned himself around so that he was kneeling between my open thighs. With one hand he slowly eased my body down toward the mattress, while the other spread apart my willing limbs even farther, as far as they could possibly go (without morphing into Dominique Dawes, that is). I could feel Amani’s warm breath against the fabric of my panties, then the insanely delicious brush of his lips grazing their white lace edges. Exquisite torture as he slowly nibbled at the lace, working his mouth ever so lightly across my snatch, like a butterfly fluttering over the petals of a flower. Tenderly, his fingers pushed aside the satin crotch of the panties and spread open the lips of my anxious pussy. My healthy brown legs quivered uncontrollably as soft, pillow-light lips brushed my vajayjay just once before I felt his warm, sensual mouth begin to explore the wet folds of my coochie. He groaned softly, that unmistakable mmmmm, you know, the mmmmm we reserve for sexual pleasure and eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts? When his tongue shot inside the walls of my cunt, I reached for the closest pillow I could find and screamed into it like a white girl at a Dave Matthews concert. Not a good look. It was one of my Eastern “decorative” pillows from Pier 1, and though it did an okay job of muffling my cries of pleasure, I ended up with a mouthful of silver sequins. Before I had a chance to reach for another, more practical pillow to shri
ek into, Amani had grabbed me by both legs and yanked me even farther over the bed’s edge so that my dripping cunt was practically sitting on his long, hard spear of a tongue; a melting chocolate Häagen-Dazs bar skewered on top of her own personal Popsicle stick.

  Amani threw my legs up over his shoulders and continued to eat me so, so, so, soooo good, as I admired my glossy new Asphyxia pedicure behind his head. Damn, but that boy could eat a coochie. And he didn’t seem like he wanted to stop… ever. Typically, I can almost sense that “I’ve done my duty, now it’s your turn to do me” vibe coming over a brother, but not Amani. Oh, hell, nawww. This sweet thug was acting like he had found himself the juiciest peach in the farmers’ market, and he wasn’t ’bout to let it go until he had sucked every last drop of nectar and sweet flesh from its pit, which was fine wid me. I had to pray those sequins I was swallowing weren’t too terribly toxic, ’cause this man was fixin’ to keep me squealing into my “purely decorative” pillows all night long. I couldn’t take it. I threw my head backward in wild abandon as he suckled at my screaming honey trap, and there, looking down on us with a vaguely approving, serene little smirk, was Sarasvati, the golden goddess. I swear, it was almost like she was talking to me as Amani lapped at my pussy. Like she was saying, “Mmmm-hmmm, girl. That’s right. That is where a man belongs…on his knees, prostrate, between our legs, worshipping the pu-nah-ny. Don’t fight it. Let him bow down. Let him lick, let him suck, let him nibble, let him bite, let him rub, let him fondle, let him taste. Let him give the almighty pussy its due, sister.”

  Hours and countless screams into my poor, poor mangled pillow later, I gazed down upon Amani’s beautiful, brown face still nestled between my moist legs. Stroking my hands over his neat, pretty cornrows affectionately, I said, “I think you missed your basketball game, boo.”

  Amani smiled up at me mischievously, his face still gleaming with my juices. “Mmmm-hmmm. I know,” he replied sarcastically. “Sisters is always trying to keep a brotha from enjoying his NBA game. That’s okay though, Shorty, ’cause I was doing a little goaltending of my own down here.”