“I have a room upstairs,” he whispers.
I tip up onto my toes to reach his ear. “So do I.”
“I’m on the fourth floor.”
“Eighth.
“We’d get to my room first.”
“The sooner the better.”
He grabs my hand and we make our way to the elevators, heads down, eyes averted, stopping for no one. The dim light helps, but I think our body language tells anyone who would try to approach us to fuck off.
When the elevator arrives, we are the only ones boarding. As soon as the doors shut, Touré leans against the wall and pulls me to stand between his legs. He bends to take my lips between his, hands tracing my sides and over my hips. Standing this close, his erection is unavoidable, pressed into the juncture of my thighs. I roll against him, drawing out a groan that rumbles from his throat.
“We only have four floors, Ni.” His chuckle reverberates through my clothes, my bones and into my heart. “Save that for the room.”
I giggle into our kiss, feeling lighter. Feeling like we’re those impressionable kids freshman year leaving our friends behind at a party. It didn’t happen that way, though. He didn’t approach me. I was afraid to approach him. When I left that party, Tyrone and a group of upperclassmen were standing out on the sidewalk. I wasted time with him and he broke my heart. The arrogance of youth is assuming you’ll always have more time. It makes you reckless or in our case too cautious. Now as the elevator doors open and we practically run down the hall toward Touré’s room like the kids we once were, there is no caution. There is chaos in my belly, a swirl of anticipation. There is eagerness in the way he jerks the door open and pulls me in, closing it behind him and pressing me to the wall. There is urgency in the way we tear at each other’s clothes. Impatiently, he yanks the zipper at the back of my dress. It slumps around my torso, slides down my arms, bares my skin to the cool air and the dark.
“I want to see you.” He leaves a trail of kisses across the naked slope of my shoulder.
I nod jerkily, letting him tug me through the suite and into the bedroom. Standing in my strapless bra and thong, I’m glad I trimmed and waxed and buffed things to a shine. I reach behind my back to unclasp my bra letting it fall forward. He draws in a sharp breath, reaching to cup my breasts. His thumbs rubbing, tugging make me gasp. Make me hot. With trembling fingers, I pull at his buttons until his shirt is open and then on the floor. His belt and pants and briefs follow, and with every inch of him revealed, I want more. More kisses, more time, more of this man I’ve never had and always wanted.
Years in the field, chasing stories, climbing rough terrain—whatever in his life has kept his body hard and beautifully defined—I’m grateful. He lays me down on the bed, takes my breast into his mouth, dusts kisses down my stomach, coaxes my legs wide and puts his mouth on me. I reach over my head, sinking my nails into the softness of a pillow. He licks and laves and loves between my legs until I explode. I moan, a helpless sound for a voiceless feeling. I cannot articulate how right it feels stretched out for him on the cool sheets as I come undone. Unspooled.
Quickly he reaches to the floor and grabs a condom from his pants, then wraps up. When he climbs back over me, I grab his face and spread kisses all over his cheeks, opening my mouth over his, tasting myself and his passion. I can’t remember the last time I felt this spent and free. He hovers above me, naked and strong and ready.
“You okay?” he rasps, obviously forcing himself to go slow, to wait.
“Yes. I’m ready.” I lean up to kiss the strong column of his neck, my laugh short and raspy. “It feels like I’ve been ready twenty years.”
He cups my face, brushes my lips with his thumb, one arm propped above my head as he peers down at me. “It seems likethis should have happened a long time ago, but I think our timing is perfect.”
He reaches between us, finding me hot and wet and slick for him. He slips one, then two fingers inside, stretching and preparing me. The rhythm he sets has me bucking against his hands, the fire stoking higher in me again. I grip his shoulder to anchor myself because it feels like I could fly, I could soar, and this time I want him with me. He eases between my legs, widening me and slowly, perfectly pushing inside. We share a gasp; a breathy thing that wrestles between our lips. A sense of rightness spreads through my body as he possesses it. It’s a sweet invasion. I’m captive and willing and wanting.
“Oh.” That singular syllable is all I can manage as he fills me, thick and hot and insistent. The tightness of the muscles in his back and shoulders speak of restraint, and I don’t want that. I want him to feel what I do; out of control, winnowing, flapping like a kite that got away, taken by the wind. I reach behind him grab his ass and push him in deeper.
“Shit, Ni,” he mutters, burying his face in the pillow beside my head. “That feels?—”
I do it again and again, thrusting up to meet him, aggressive and seeking. I repeat the action, feeding him my hungry desperation until he’s ravaging my mouth, his elbow hooked under my knee, pressing me open as wide as I can go. Slamming into me with animal force. Rocking the bed ferociously. The faster and harder he goes, the less civilized I am, reduced to grunts and gasps and clinging, clawing hands. Protections, rules, and inhibitions fall away like a molting skin, leaving us raw and exposed and new. He reaches between us and strokes me again before he comes, which sends me hurtling after him, tumbling together into this new ecstasy. More than forty years on this earth, and I’ve never felt anything like this. It brings tears to myeyes—not just that all this time I didn’t have this, but that all this time I didn’t havehim.
And now I do.
He doesn’t leave me right away. Doesn’t roll off to the side and let in the cold. He stays with my legs wrapped around him, my arms hooking at his neck.
“I promise I’m not usually this clingy after sex,” I grin into the smooth muscled warmth of his shoulder. “I just can’t seem to let you go.”
“You don’t have to.” He dips his head, drops a quick kiss on my tingling lips before brushing wayward strands of hair away from my face, tenderness in his eyes when he looks down at me. “We’ve got all night.”
I nod, and the tears in my eyes slip over my cheeks. I don’t even bother wiping them away. I don’t hide. We wasted enough time because of things we didn’t say, didn’t share with each other. If we’ve got all night, he can have it all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
touré
“Areyou sure you’re okay with Niomi joining us?” I search Celine’s face carefully for any sign that she’s not being entirely honest.
“Am I fine having my idol all to myself for a couple of hours?” She grins and pops a blackberry into her mouth from the buffet set up for the Gospel brunch. “I’ll manage.”
