Let Me Hold You Read online

  He nodded toward his crotch. “That look like I don’t want to?”

  I looked down and with wide eyes, asked, “Oh…then what is it?”

  He dragged a hand down his face. “I just…I was wondering if I deserve to touch skin like yours, to feel what it’s like to be inside you. You’re perfect.”

  “No, I’m not. Not by a longshot.”

  “To me, you are.”

  I suddenly wanted to cry again, but not because of my past mistakes or what I’d witnessed at Shemar’s house. The tears that were collecting in my eyes were tears of, I don’t know…relief? It almost felt like I’d waited my whole life to hear someone say such beautiful words to me, like unbeknownst to me, I’d been anticipating this moment and it was finally here.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, with a smile and then leaned in to kiss me again.

  A second or two later, he’d returned me to my perch on the desk, slid my panties to the side, and was stroking my clit, edging me closer and closer to delirium while his tongue explored my mouth. Dragging his mouth to my neck, he suckled on it while sliding a finger inside me, making me take in a breath as he found his way back to my mouth, darting his tongue out to lick my lips. I threw my head back and released a moan as his long fingers eased in and out of me, then felt his free hand on the back of my head, pulling it to his as he kissed me again, much more urgently than before. The movement of his tongue and fingers became almost frenzied as he assaulted me, inching me toward an orgasm more intense than anything I’d ever felt in my life. Seconds later, the pressure swelling in my core reached capacity and shattered me from the inside out.

  “Ahhhh!” I breathed into his mouth.

  And then he was gone.

  Opening my eyes, I watched him reach down on the floor and stand with his wallet in his hand. Then there was a condom in his hand; then he was covering his erection with it. I licked my lips, letting my eyes rise from his groin to his face. He grabbed my hips with both hands and pulled me to the edge of the desk, gently pushed me onto my back, put my legs on his shoulders, and eased inside me with a moan, clutching my thighs. With his eyes clamped shut, he released a groan as he slid out and back inside me. I lay there and watched him, tears spilling from my eyes as I wondered what the hell was happening and how on this earth anything, and I mean anything, could feel like this. Because I’d be damned if his dick wasn’t made of pixie dust, blood diamonds, that delicious Olive Garden unlimited salad, and childhood dreams or some shit.

  Got. Damn.

  “Shit, McClain!” I screamed.

  Him opening his eyes and staring into mine only added to the intensity of what I was feeling, so I frowned, yelled, “Damn-it!” and reached for his face.

  His lips met mine again, and he grunted against my mouth, thrusting in and out of me at a faster pace, finding a rhythm that threatened to drive me completely insane.

  “Ohhhh, shit! You feel so good!” I yelled against his lips.

  “I ain’t never felt no shit like this before in my life,” he replied, grabbing my bottom lip with his teeth. “This pussy is—got damn, girl!”

  He thrusted and kissed and rolled his hips and yelled my name, and as another orgasm hit me, he screamed, “Ohhhhh, damn!” expanded inside me, and exploded with a grunt.

  Resting his head on my chest, through heaving breaths, he asked, “What holiday is today?”

  “What?”

  “You said you celebrate random holidays every day, right? What’s today?”

  “Hell, whatever day you want it to be.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, then it’s Got-damn, You Got Some Good Pussy Day.”

  I smiled and really tried not to giggle like a damn twelve-year-old. “Um, thank you?”

  “You welcome, baby.”

  9

  “Aye, you busy, man?”

  “Yeah, busy tryna get some from my wife,” my brother said into the phone. In the background, I could hear his wife, Jo, say, “Who are you saying that to?!”

  “It’s Leland, baby,” Everett replied.

  “Tell him I said hi, and you need to quit! I just gave you some this morning!”

  “Damn, Ev…you tryna wear her out or something?”

  “Yeah. So, what’s up, man? Trouble with Mildred?”

  “Fuck you.”

  His dumb ass laughed into the phone. “For real, what’s up? I know it’s early over there in the states, and you never call me early unless you got something on your mind, so what is it?”

  “Uh, I ain’t on speakerphone, am I?”

  “Naw…wait a minute. I’ll be right back, Jo.” A second or two later, he said, “Okay, shoot.”

  “So, I fucked someone I probably shouldn’t have fucked.”

  “Probably? You ain’t sure about it?”

  “I mean, I know I shouldn’t have fucked her. It just…kind of happened.”

  “That sounds like the shit niggas say when they cheat on they woman. You cheated on Gertrude?”

  “Nigga, will you be serious?”

  Through a chuckle, he said, “A’ight, a’ight…so who was it?”

  “Kim Hampton.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Armand Daniels’ mother.”

  “Uh, what? Whose mother?”

  “Armand Daniels.”

  Silence.

  “Ev, you still there?”

  “Um…shit, man. All this traveling and changing time zones and stuff is messing with my head. It sounded like you said you fucked crazy-ass Armand Daniels’ mom. Damn, I think I’m losing it.”

  “You heard right. I had sex with his mother.”

  More silence.

  “Ev?”

  “Okay, just tell me this: all the old-ass women in the world and you chose to mess with her? The hell is wrong with you? I mean, what in the LeBron James are you doing?! What you do, make a special trip to Miami to fuck her?”

  “She lives here now, in St. Louis. She runs the community center I’m volunteering at.”

  “But why her? I mean, why?”

  “I don’t know, man. She’s fine, but she’s young, younger than any woman I’ve been with in a long time. Shit, she ain’t even really my type.”

  “How the hell she young and got a son in the NBA?”

  “Remember when he first got drafted, he was big news and they did that special about him on ESPN? You watched it with me. She was a teenage mother, like fifteen when she had him. He’s twenty now.”

  “Wait, I remember that. Shit, she is fine. Pretty, too. She reminds me of that Afro-Latino chick from Love and Hip Hop: Miami.”

  “See, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, okay. When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “A’ight, so you did it and got it out of your system. You just gotta stay away from her from now on. Act like that shit never happened before some mess pop off with her son, and on the real, man, I wouldn’t blame him. That’s his mom. That’s some ass-kicking shit you did. Actually, niggas get killed over shit like this. That was way out of line. You don’t fuck a man’s mama. She’s off limits like a motherf—”

  “I want her.”

  “Nigga, you done had her!”

  “No, I mean…I want to be with her.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, in a relationship.”

  “Why?”

  “I like her.”

  “No, you like her pussy, but ain’t no pussy worth that kind of trouble.”

  “It ain’t? Really?”

  “Jo is more than a pussy to me, always has been and you know that.”

  “Kim is more than that to me, too.”

  “Man, you don’t know her to be saying that…or do you? You wasn’t messing with her in Miami, were you? Is that why he was always tryna fight you?”

  “No, I mean, I always thought she was pretty, but I wasn’t messing with her back then. And how well did you know Jo before you realized
she was the one?”

  “You saying this woman is the one?! For real, man?!”

  “I don’t know. I just know I want her. Bad.”

  “Are you doing this just to fuck with Daniels? This some revenge shit for you having to leave Miami?”

  “Damn, didn’t I already tell you why I left, that it really wasn’t about him?”

  “But that’s what it looks like, man.”

  “Okay, even if I left because of him, it ain’t like my ass is unemployed. Shit, I’m on a better team now with a better contract. And besides all that, you think I’d do some shit like that? Screw her for revenge? You don’t know me no better than that, Ev?” It cut me for him to think I was capable of something like that. I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t have that kind of heart. I thought my big brother, the one I’d always looked up to and tried to be like, knew that about me.

  “Naw, you wouldn’t. I just don’t understand, though. Why her? You ain’t never wanted a real relationship before. Why you gotta want one with her?”

  “I don’t know. Just something about her, man. You know what I mean, right?”

  After a few seconds of silence, he admitted, “Yeah, I do. She want you like that, too?”

  “I hope so. I mean, I think she likes me, but we didn’t do much talking last night. I’ma hit her up later today, though.”

  He sighed into the phone. “A’ight, look, I got your back if you really got feelings for her. Just…be careful, man. Like I said, a motherfucker will kill over they mama. I know I would.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  “Keep me in the loop.”

  “I will.”

  “I thought you said it was gonna be some NBA players here!” Zabrina shouted over the music.

  “No, I said they were all invited. I also said I didn’t expect any of them to show up.”

  She huffed before stuffing a piece of a hot dog into her mouth, then garbled, “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “To support the center’s biggest event thus far this year, maybe? And how you gonna be so disappointed about the ball players not showing up when you got a whole fiancé at home?”

  “First of all, he’s at work. Second, it don’t hurt to look. Third, he ain’t my fiancé till he gives me a ring.”

  I rolled my eyes and scanned the packed parking lot—carnival rides, food trucks, live music from local artists. This Fourth of July block party was proving to be a huge success.

  “Armand paid for all this? I can’t believe it. He is so cheap—like his mother.”

  “We’re frugal, and yes, he paid for it after I badgered him into it.”

  “It’s nice, be nicer with some NBA players here.”

  “You know what? I’ma go get me a funnel cake.”

  I had made exactly two steps in the direction of the Sinthia’s Sinful Sweets food truck when yells and squeals made me stop and turn around.

  It was him.

  And if there was any doubt in my mind that it was him, the look on Zabrina’s face and her rallying cry of, “It’s that fine-ass Leland McClain!” was confirmation.

  My eyes expanded as I watched her and several other people race toward him, and then I looked around the crowded space for an escape route, finally deciding to duck behind one of the other food trucks and head around the back of the stage and into the building. The only part of it that was open to the public was the gym where there were a few activities going on. The rest of the building was empty. I would just close myself up in my office until…when? Until the party was over? That wasn’t going to work. At the very least, Zabrina was going to come looking for me and wonder what was wrong, and I was having a hard enough time acting normal around her after what I did, what we did.

  Although I wanted to forget about it, I couldn’t erase the fact that I had sex, really good sex, with Leland McClain, a super-nice, super-hot guy my only child seemed to hate for unknown reasons, from my mind. So I had kind of betrayed my son—I think—and I owed him too much to ever even think about betraying him. Hell, the boy basically took care of me now, and on the most basic of levels, had saved my life. Plus, I promised him long ago I wouldn’t make a decision like this anymore, that I wouldn’t get involved with the wrong man ever again.

  And now look at me.

  Different time, same Kim and same dumb-ass thinking when it came to men.

  Despite dodging Leland McClain for three straight days—having Peaches take messages when he called and tell him I couldn’t be disturbed when he popped up at the office, leaving work early, and missing work altogether yesterday—I wanted him. I wanted all of him, like a crackhead wants that next rock.

  Shit.

  Fuck it. I was going to my office if for no other reason than to try and get my mind—and vagina—right.

  It took forever to get through the crowd to my decided escape route with so many of the adults stopping me to compliment me on the event and the summer camp or some other program we’d been running, but I managed to eventually make it inside the building and was almost home free, inches from my office door, when I heard his voice. “I’m good. How are you?”

  I stopped and glanced around before doing a one-eighty, fixing my eyes on him. Tall, almost too handsome, afro up in a bushy ponytail, thick eyebrows lifted, his beard and mustache making him look that much more delicious. He was wearing black basketball shorts, a white t-shirt, and black and white South sneakers. I’d always thought it strange that his brother had a sneaker line and he didn’t.

  “I didn’t say anything to you,” was my reply.

  He took advantage of my stationary position and moved in so close that the heat from his body enveloped mine. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to her.”

  I frowned. “Who is her?”

  He leaned in, pressing his lips to my ear. “Your pussy.”

  The floodgates in my yoni opened instantly, more from his proximity than his words, but his words most definitely turned me on, too. “I didn’t hear her say anything,” I managed to respond.

  “You ain’t listening. She just said something else.”

  I turned, continuing my journey into my office on legs that had grown inexplicably weak. “Really? What?”

  “She apologized for her owner avoiding me.”

  “I haven’t avoided you,” I lied, as I fell into my chair and watched him close the door.

  “Yeah, you have, and I wanna know why.”

  “If you think I’ve been avoiding you, then you should have an idea why.”

  He leaned against the door, and I kind of just took him in, all of him. He was so tall, a giant really, not that I wasn’t used to tall people. My own child was six-four. Hell, I was five-nine myself. But Leland was a damn skyscraper who made my small office feel like a broom closet.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” I asked, because the intense look in his eyes was making me uncomfortably hornier than I already was.

  “Shhhhh, she’s saying something else.”

  I shook my head. “What are you supposed to be? The vagina whisperer? You travel around talking to vaginas or something?”

  He shook his head. “Yours is the first one to speak to me like this. It’s crazy. It’s like we got this special bond.”

  I fought against smiling, then gave in. “What is she saying now?”

  “That she misses me.”

  She ain’t lying. “Hmm, I didn’t get that memo.”

  “So you don’t miss me?”

  “Nope.”

  “She just called you, and I quote, ‘a motherfucking liar.’ And your nipples agree with her.”

  I gasped as I glanced down at my chest. Then I slapped my hands over my snitching-ass breasts. My nipples were hard as hell.

  He chuckled and pointed to his groin. “You ain’t alone in this, baby.”

  Licking my lips, I tore my eyes away from his delectable-looking erection. “We can’t do this again. It’s not right. I’m too old. You’re too young. I have a
son whose only a few years younger than you. We can’t do this.”

  He pushed himself from the wall and moved toward the desk. “You said that twice.”

  “Because I meant it.”

  “Why can’t we when we both want to? And you ain’t old. Little Kim took offense to that statement.”

  “Little Kim? You named her?”

  “She told me that was her name.” He was next to me now, and I could barely breathe.

  I glanced up at him, shifted my eyes to the door, and tried to recall if he had locked it, because as hard as I was trying to act, I was exactly a millisecond from giving him some.

  “She’s real talkative today, huh?” I asked.

  “She says she only gets this way around me. Unlike you, she likes me.”

  “I like you,” I confessed.

  He crouched down beside my chair. “You do?”

  I nodded. “But I shouldn’t.”

  He grabbed the end of one of my braids and twisted it around his finger. “Damn, really?” he asked.

  “Yes, really.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you. You interrupted Little Kim.” He spun my chair around and opened my legs, brought his face close to my crotch, and said, “Oh…okay.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “For us to stop talking because she wants me to, and I quote again, ‘get this pussy.’ She nasty.”

  I was in the middle of laughing when he seized my mouth. I almost involuntarily grabbed the sides of his face, returning the kiss, which was somehow sweet and lava hot at the same time. When we parted, I said, “Lock the door.”

  “Is that you talking or Little Kim? Y’all sound the same.”

  “It’s both of us.”

  He stood and pulled me to my feet, burying his face in my neck and suckling on it gently. “I already locked it.”

  “Good,” I said and dropped to a squat.

  He looked down at me with wide eyes. “What are you do—”

  I snatched his shorts and underwear down and had him in my mouth in seconds. I was so damn hot for him, I think I might’ve lost my mind in that moment. Either that, or it was just him. He made my head spin. Being around him seemed to erase the rational portion of my mind. He was just…too much, but I still wanted more of him—all of him.