Stay with Me (Strickland Sisters Book 1) Page 13

  Now, in my car, as Angela reached over and hit the scan button on my radio, I glanced at her, and said, “Uh-uh. Driver is the DJ. Stop messing with the radio, Angie.”

  She smirked. “What are you gonna do if I don’t? Spank me?”

  “Yeah. Hard, too.”

  She reached over and hit the seek button.

  “Your freaky ass wants me to spank you, don’t you?”

  She shrugged.

  I grinned. “You think your mama’s gotten hot in the ass? Look at you. I remember a time when you acted all shy, buried your face in my chest, would damn near pass out at the thought of an orgasm. Now you just be taking the dick from me, waking me up on top of me and shit.”

  She raised an eyebrow and turned in her seat as far as the seatbelt would let her to face me. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do with good dick? Enjoy it?”

  I grinned harder. “Is it good, Angie?”

  “You know it is. And anyway, you got a problem with me taking it?”

  “Hell, naw! I’m just saying…”

  “And, how can I take something that belongs to me? I mean, it is mine, right?”

  “It’s yours like a motherfucker.”

  “That’s what I thought. You keep talking shit, Ryan, and I’ma cut you off.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Sure won’t.”

  I chuckled as I reached over and squeezed her knee. “So this thing we’re going to, the Coily-Con? Is it a big event?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, it’s a pretty popular convention. They hold it in a different city every year.”

  “And this year it’s in Memphis, huh? What happens at these events? What do people do there?”

  “Well, I’ve only been to a couple, but there are vendors, tons of them. And panels. I’m on the ‘ABC’s of Type 4 Hair’ panel tomorrow. Then, on the third night, there’s the Coily Awards dinner.”

  “Hmm…”

  She smiled. “You ready to back out now? Sound too boring?”

  “Naw, baby. Can’t get bored if I’m with you. I’m looking forward to it. Can’t wait to get to the hotel.”

  “Tired? I can drive if you are.”

  “No, we’re only thirty minutes away, and I’m not tired, I’m horny.”

  “Shit, me too.”

  We both laughed.

  “Hey,” she said. “Thanks for coming with me. I know things are crazy at work.”

  I shook my head. “Things are okay. I think I’ve put out all the fires and my boss has calmed down. I’m not going to think about work this weekend. I’m just going to enjoy being with you.”

  “And hundreds of other, probably thirsty women.”

  “Baby, we could be in a crowd of a million women and I’d only see you. You got me, Angela. I’m yours.”

  She reached over and rested her hand on my cheek. “And I’m yours.”

  35

  We arrived in Memphis that evening, receiving our Coily-Con bags when we checked in. We spent the whole evening in our room, watching TV, eating room service, talking, and doing what we do best, trying out the bed. I think Ryan was actually more excited than I was, because after breakfast the next morning, he dressed in a pair of jeans and his complimentary Coily-Con t-shirt, and left to check out the convention center, which was adjoined to the hotel, saying, “I know it’s gonna take your ass a year to get ready. I’ll be back.”

  I rolled my eyes, yelling from the bathroom, “Whatever!”

  When he made it back twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the side of the bed in my bra and panties, untwisting my hair. He sat in a chair and grabbed the TV remote, giving me a smirk.

  “I had to put on a full face of make-up, Ryan,” I offered as an explanation for still not being ready.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You thought it.”

  He shook his head as he clicked through the channels.

  I eyed him looking gorgeous from his face to his Nikes. “Have I told you lately how fine you are?”

  He shook his head again. “Nah, but you keep talking like that, and we might never make it to the conference.”

  “How’d it look?”

  “Nice, filling up.”

  “That your way of telling me to hurry?”

  “Naw, baby. You’re 4C Angie. I know you’ve got to look your best, but honestly, you always look beautiful to me. You could’ve rolled out of bed and not washed your ass and you still would stand out in the crowd.”

  I left the bed and slid into his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. “Aw, thank you, baby.”

  He rested a hand on my thigh and kissed me back. “Mm-hmm. You’re gonna start someth—” His phone started buzzing and I stood from his lap. “Don’t run,” he said as he checked the screen.

  I grinned as I stepped into the bathroom to finger-comb my hair.

  “Hello? Hey, man…Yeah, we’re in Memphis…No, not yet…Waiting on Angie’s slow ass…”

  “Who is that?!” I yelled from the bathroom.

  “My boy, KC. He wants to talk to you.”

  I walked into the room, and as I took the phone from him, Ryan said, “Put it on speaker.”

  When I strode back into the bathroom, ignoring his request, he yelled, “KC, your ass better not lie on me!”

  “Hello?” I said into the phone.

  “Hey, Angela? First, I wanna tell you me and my wife love your videos.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate you guys for watching.”

  “KC! Man, I promise you better not be telling her some bullshit!” Ryan yelled.

  “And I don’t know if you know it, but Ryan is crazy about you.”

  I smiled. “I know. I’m crazy about him, too.”

  “KC, I swear I’ma kick your ass the next time I see you!”

  I closed the bathroom door. “Hey, he told me you work at Sable Inc., too?”

  “Yeah, I told him about the job he has now.”

  “Is everything okay at work? He won’t really tell me anything. He won’t discuss work with me since…”

  “Since he got in trouble a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, Ryan doesn’t deal with problems well. But work is cool. Glenn, his boss? He’s a prick, one of the few that work at this company, but he actually likes Ryan because he’s good at what he does. The buzz around here is the project in Romey is going well despite the delay.”

  “Good. He’s been working seven days a week since that happened and I wasn’t sure if he should come here with me, but he insisted.”

  “No, I think he’s good. At least from what I can tell. Hey, I just wanted to thank you for putting up with his ass. You’re good for him.”

  I giggled. “Well, he’s good for me. He’s good to me, too.”

  “He better be. Be sure to get my number from him. Call me if you need me to straighten his ass out.”

  “I will.”

  A minute later, I opened the bathroom door to find Ryan standing on the other side of it. I handed him his phone, and said, “You really did all that stuff?”

  His brow furrowed and alarm filled his eyes, which were more brown than green at that moment. “What stuff? What the hell did KC tell you?”

  I laughed. “Nothing bad.”

  He tossed the phone on the bed and grabbed me from behind, sliding his hand down the front of my panties, quickly finding my sensitive spot. “You wanna play, huh?”

  “Wait, baby. I’m tryna get ready…”

  He clamped his mouth to my neck, pulling my skin into it and ignoring my words. We finally left for the convention an hour later.

  *****

  The convention hall was a sea of aisles of booths and clumps of people. We barely had a chance to peruse two booths before a group of women wearing t-shirts that read, “I want Ryan to wash my hair,” accosted us, gushing about our videos and requesting pictures with us. Well, they really just wanted pictures with Ryan, but he always made sure I was standing by his side when the pictures were taken. It really didn’t bot
her me that he was now the star of my channel. I mean, if I were a woman watching those videos, my focus wouldn’t be on me, either. Shit, a blind woman would be attracted to his voice alone. So I let him have his shine, because I knew he was mine. Like KC had said, he was crazy about me. Even the droves of women who damn near tackled him in that convention hall knew it, with most of them declaring, “4C Angie, this man loves you! You could just feel it in that hair-washing video!” The same hair-washing video that now had four million views.

  Four. Million.

  Yeah, he loved me, and the world loved him.

  We somehow managed to check out quite a few booths in between the impromptu photo shoots, and I made it to my panel on time. There was a huge turnout for the panel, and as I sat on a stool onstage next to a litany of natural hair stars feeling nervous about my first major live appearance, I locked eyes with Ryan who stood front and center, smiling at me. As anxious as I was, I murdered that panel.

  When it was over, he met me onstage, pulling me into a hug and a kiss right there in front of everybody, and through the loud chorus of “oohs” and “aahs,” he whispered in my ear, “I’m so proud of you, baby.”

  36

  The Coily-Con was actually a lot of fun. Exhausting, but fun. Never thought I’d say that shit about a natural hair convention. My ass was turning into KC. Or worse. Hell, I was turning into a natural hair celebrity. Not that I minded. I just wished I’d thought of those “I want Ryan to wash my hair” t-shirts. I saw at least thirty people wearing them, asked one lady where she’d bought it, and she said from a store online. Someone was making a killing!

  Sunday was pretty much just like Saturday. We checked out some more of the vendors, I bought Baby a ton of shit, and we caught a couple of panels before heading back to our room to rest and get ready for the awards dinner that night.

  It was black tie, but since I didn’t bring a tuxedo with me to Tennessee, I settled for a black suit that Angela said made me look so good it made her want to screw my ancestors. She wore a black dress that fit her ass like a glove, stopped at the middle of her thighs, and made me want to put hickies on both of her legs. Suffice it to say, we looked good when we stepped into the hotel’s ballroom together.

  We settled at our assigned table, a huge round one covered with a black table cloth with ivory roses as a centerpiece, and were soon joined by six women, all of whom were natural hair bloggers or vloggers that Angela said she knew by name only, but Nappy Nina, Naturally Shay, Kinky Hair Don’t Care, Got Curls?, Braid and Slay, and Goldie Locs were all friendly and excited to meet both me and Angie.

  Looking around, I realized there were very few men in the room as had been the case the entire weekend, but it really didn’t bother me. I had half-expected to be confronted by some chick I’d messed over, but either the women of my past weren’t into the whole natural hair scene, or they just didn’t want to confront me. Either way, I was prepared to lie if I had to. I was not losing my woman over some bullshit from the past.

  Baby was pointing out someone to me, supposedly some famous YouTuber. I nodded and said something about the lady being on one of the panels we’d attended earlier, and when I turned my head, I saw her approaching us. I quickly shifted my eyes back to the famous YouTuber and thought to myself, was that…? But then I turned and fixed my eyes on her again, and the closer she got, the more I realized it was her, and my first thought was—

  Angela hopped up and shrieked, “Alexis!”

  Shit.

  “Hey!” Alexis shouted back, walking into Angela’s open arms, and the two women hugged like lifelong friends.

  Damn.

  What kind of luck did I have for the one woman I’d messed over in the whole state of Tennessee to know Angela? Okay, so there was more than one, but whatever.

  “Hey, you haven’t met Ryan, have you?” Angela asked.

  Fuck.

  Alexis shifted her eyes to me and narrowed them. “Oh, we’ve met, but Ryan? I thought your name was Trey. Good to see you actually didn’t just fall off the face of the earth since that’s what I thought when you stopped answering my calls all out of the blue.”

  Thankfully, she wasn’t being loud, but still…fuck my life.

  I stood and shook her hand like I hadn’t screwed her brains out on more than one occasion. “Uh, that’s my nickname,” I lied. “Nice to see you again, Alexis. And sorry about the phone thing. I just got, uh, really busy.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She pursed her lips as she slipped her hand out of mine and looked at Angela. “It was nice seeing you, Angie.” Then she left, throwing her ass so hard she probably threw her spine out of alignment.

  Although Alexis hadn’t really caused that much of a scene, I was still scared, literally scared to look at Angela, but shit, I had to. When I did, she just stared back at me with this little smirk on her face.

  “Baby, I—”

  The MC shouted a greeting into the microphone, signaling the beginning of the ceremony, and Angela focused her attention on the stage. I just sat my ass there wishing I could disappear. Of all the damn luck…

  I was quiet during the ceremony, uncomfortably quiet, clapping when appropriate, smiling and laughing with the rest of the crowd. Baby was doing the same things, but my mind never strayed from the fact that she was probably going to curse my ass out when we got back to the room. I had planned to slide my hand under the table and into her panties and play with her during the ceremony since there was a huge tablecloth on the table and I knew she liked when I did stuff like that, even though she sometimes acted like she didn’t. But Alexis had cancelled that plan.

  Angie won vlogger of the year, and I hopped my ass up and kissed her like she’d won an Oscar. I was so proud of her, I almost forgot about the whole Alexis thing. But as soon as we were in the room alone and she went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her without saying a word to me, I remembered.

  I heard her running water in the sink, figured she was washing her face or brushing her teeth or both, so I undressed, sat on the side of the bed in my boxer briefs, and waited for her.

  She finally stepped out, make-up free, wearing only her bra and panties, and walked over to the closet to hang her dress up.

  “Baby, uh, about Alexis. We—it was before us, before me and you.”

  “Hmm, I figured that,” she said, as she squatted in front of the closet and dug in her overnight bag.

  “And I was different then. I gave her a fake name, because…shit, I don’t even know. But like I told you, I’m different with you.”

  She stood with a small bottle of lotion in her hand and sat beside me on the bed. “I know.”

  “You were right. I messed over a lot of women before, including a couple of others here in Tennessee, too, before we got together. Look, my mom dying when I was a kid kind of messed me up. My brother, too. Only his ass can’t stay out of the pen. And our father wasn’t shit, still ain’t shit, brought all these different women in that tiny, claustrophobic-ass house over the years, making us call them Mama, when none of them could ever replace my mother. Half of them were crazy or didn’t know how to treat kids. Most of their asses couldn’t even cook. We had to learn how to act around them, and by the time we learned one, he’d replace them with another one. It was hard to deal with and it made me bitter and angry, and I just ended up being this selfish asshole. But I’m not like that with you.”

  She stopped rubbing the lotion on her face and looked me in the eye. “I’m sorry about your childhood, Ryan. It breaks my heart to know you went through that, baby. It really does. I’m so, so sorry.”

  She sounded sincere, had compassion in her eyes. Still, I stared at her, waited a second, and said, “But?”

  She shook her head as she turned for me to unhook her bra. I unfastened it and slid my hand down her back.

  “But, nothing,” she said, as she pulled the bra straps down her arms.

  “You’re not mad?”

  She stood and kicked her panties off. “About wha
t?”

  I licked my lips as she stood naked before me. “Me messing over Alexis. You two are friends, right?”

  She stepped between my legs. “Not really. I mean, we’re Internet friends. We comment on each other’s posts, like each other’s pictures, retweet, stuff like that. We live in the same town, but this is my first time ever meeting Lexxi Curls in person.”

  “Oh, so do you want to talk about…anything?”

  She fell to her knees in front of me. “What’s there to talk about?”

  As she reached into my underwear and grabbed my shit, I sucked in a breath, moaned a little, and said, “Alexis or Lexy or whatever her name is.”

  She tugged on my underwear and I lifted my ass to help her take it off. “No,” she said, grasping my erection and flicking her tongue across the head.

  I fell back on my elbows. “Shit!”

  Still gripping me in her hand, she said, “Ryan, my daddy has been cheating on my mother since the beginning of time, my brother-in-law cheats on my sister, both of my past boyfriends cheated on me. I know the signs, and I know them well. Could write a book about it. You haven’t given me any reason not to trust you. If you say you and Alexis and whatever you two had was before us, I believe you.”

  She wrapped her mouth around me and I closed my eyes, groaned, “Okay, baby. Because you know…I…love…you.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she hummed, as she slid me in and out of her mouth.

  “Damn—shit!” I yelled, sitting up and looking down at her, placing my hand on her head. “Baby?”

  She didn’t answer. Well, I guess she couldn’t answer, because she was too busy making my toes curl. And my ass forgot what I was going to say anyway.

  She pleased the hell out of me for several minutes before she stood, pushed me onto my back, and straddled me, using her hand to guide me into her hot, dripping wetness. I grabbed her hips, holding her still while I thrusted upward. She leaned forward, her hands on my chest as she kissed me, pulling my bottom lip into her mouth and biting down on it. I winced, reached around and gripped her ass, and she winced.