Page 146 of The Sweetest Return

That I loved the woman who possessed it was just the supreme bonus.

And that fucking mouth.

My mind gave me the picture without permission. Mani stretched across that bed with her head near the edge, braids falling toward the floor while I stood over her. All that beautiful brown body spread out in front of me, breasts bare, pussy swollen and wet while she looked up at me with my dick filling her mouth.

She had gotten so damn good at it.

I remembered the first time I pushed deep enough to make her gag. I’d eased back immediately, ready to give her air, and that greedy woman squeezed my thigh, caught her breath, then opened for me again.

Went right back to sucking.

Wet lips. Watering eyes. Tongue doing shit I damn sure didn’t remember teaching her. Taking me deeper because she wanted to, gagging and recovering and coming right back like eight years had turned something she already enjoyed into a damn skill.

And the whole time I could see her. Every inch of her laid out beneath me while she worked my dick like she had something to prove.

Fuck.

A shudder tried to move through me right there at my mama’s brunch table, and I covered it by reaching for my coffee. The night before, I had run half a damn playbook through my head just to keep from cumming too soon. Power right. Inside zone. Counter trey. Anything involving turf, assignments, and discipline while Imani shook beneath me for the fourth time.

Or fifth.

I had lost count somewhere between her nails in my back and that pussy locking down hard enough to make me reconsider every spiritual decision I had made since Sunday school.

Then I woke up alone.

That part sobered me immediately.

I sat there for a minute trying not to get in my feelings before I had facts. Then I checked my phone.

Malcolm had sent three texts before nine.

Malcolm: Nigga…please tell me you awake before the internet gets you.

The screenshots came next.

Me and Imani leaving the game hand in hand. Me near the private gate with my head bent toward hers. Me kissing her knuckles inside the Crown Club while she looked at me with enough softness for strangers to start building a relationship announcement around it.

The internet had put its own story underneath the pictures.

Crown royalty back where they belong?

Then came the comments.

People remembered she was my college girlfriend. People said she looked good. People pulled Aubrey into the conversation because apparently hurting a woman they didn't know was entertainment before brunch. They debated which one of them looked better beside me and built timelines from photographs.

I stopped reading.

Not because I cared what strangers thought.

Because I knew Imani would.

She had never been insecure about who she was. What bothered her was somebody else reaching into her life and naming it before she decided what it meant herself.

We had been through a smaller version of that at AWU, when a woman kissed me after a road game and somebody caught the angle before I pushed her away. Imani believed me once everybody who saw it backed me up.

Believing I hadn't cheated didn't erase what it felt like to become public conversation because she loved me.

Eight years later, the scale was bigger.