What? She cares about fake shit like this. I don’t. I’m here under duress. As a matter of fact…
“For real, Michelle,” I say, leaning a shoulder against the wall, “if you have an issue with my presence here, take it up with your son. He demanded I attend. Why, I have no clue. Ask him,” I add, throwing Asad under the bus.
I wish Asad would come get his mother. My patience level with her runs somewhere between none and sewing lips shut to keep her from talking to me. But I get why she’s asking me. Asad would quickly tell her to mind her business. Still…
When is this engagement announcement going to happen so I can get the fuck up out of here? The delicious aroma of whatever food is being prepared tickles the air, but I’ll stop and get an Animal Style cheeseburger from In-N-Out if it means escaping this hell sooner.
“Kareem invited you?” She frowns, voice dripping with disbelief. “He would never.”
“And didn’t.” I sip more Macallan. “You have another son.”
Her mouth slackens, lips parted. Then fury tightens her features, and I swear, if she pops off, she got the right one. I was with all the bullshit and have no one to impress up in this bitch.
“You a fucking lie.”
I slowly smile.
“Not the Leimert Park coming out.”
“Bitch—”
“Michelle.” Asad appears behind her, his low, midnight voice rumbling with a silken menace that even his mother isn’t safefrom. She stiffens, her mouth snapping shut around whatever else abusive shit she’d been about to spit at me. “The caterer needs to speak with you about what time to start serving dinner. She’s in the hall outside the kitchen.”
His tone, threaded with I-will-show-the-fuck-out, has her giving an abrupt nod and turning to leave us… but not before pinning me with another hate-filled glare. As if that shit bothers me.
“If you came over here to reprimand me about getting into it with your mother, save it. She came for me,” I say, preempting him.
His gray eyes narrow on me, probably not appreciating me speaking out of turn like a bad little handmaid.
“Don’t assume you know what I’m thinking or about to do. Fuck that making-an-ass-out-of-you-and-me shit—it’s just you. Now, let’s try this again before you opened that big-ass mouth and pissed me off. What did Michelle come over here for?”
Well, damn.
He read me down, and my dumb ass kind of likes it. At least my pussy does from the way she’s pulsing and wetting up.
Jesus.
I feel like I need to give her a sermon on being careful what you wish for, but she’d probably just turn around and do some bald-headed ho shit like pray for Asad to lay hands.
Clearing my throat, I straighten from the wall and imperceptibly squeeze my thighs together, to try and extinguish the heat between them. But I forgot this is Asad I’m standing in front of—he misses nothing.
His silver gaze fixes on my face, gliding over my cheekbones and mouth in a damn near physical caress before moving to my dark blond hair that I wore in its natural curls in a thick halo around my face and brushing my shoulders. I’m frozen under that hypnotic… molten stare as it drags down over another one of my signature pantsuits, lingering on the deep, French-lace-adorned V-neck of the black blazer, searing the bare flesh between my breasts. That scrutiny continues down over theasymmetric bottom of the jacket and loiters on my thighs and the pussy cradled between them. There’s no way he can see through the material of my high-waisted, flared pants to notice the moisture soaking my panties but, God, the way he’s staring… I don’t know. And—fuck. Did my body not receive the message from my brain not to fidget?
The gleam of satisfaction, of damn victory in his eyes after they travel back up my oversensitive body and land on my face again, has my fingers clenching tighter around my glass.
“What I tell you about that, ma?” he murmurs in a voice low enough for only us to hear. “Ball that hand up, you better be prepared to throw it. That’s my last warning. Next time we’ll be moving furniture in here, but know that it’s gon’ end up with you bent over it. So tread careful, li’l baby.”
Ma. Li’l baby.
Endearments that should be exclusive for intimate partners, for lovers.
His voice wrapped around them, especially as he threatens me with fightingandfucking, shouldn’t have my breath coming in shallow pants. Shouldn’t have my skin heating like a Bunsen burner is lit underneath it. Or have electrical currents crackling from the nape of my neck to the soles of my feet.
No, none of this should be happening since the woman he’s currently fucking is no less than five feet away from us, chatting within a circle of male and female admirers but still casting not-so-subtle pointed looks in our direction.
The reminder dries me right on up.
The anger that had been simmering flares into flickering flames, evaporating the lust that had just seconds ago invaded my veins. Disgust and rage replaces it now.