AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Get set!”
Malakai bent his knees slightly, his hold on my thighs firm.
“Already made that mistake the other night.”
What?
“Go!”
After our triumph was declared I untied my scarf from his eyes and they were ready for me, waiting for me, searing through my flimsy resolve to not let him in again, because who was I kidding, he was already here. My chest had grown a hook for him to hang his smile on whenever he came around. He reduced all half-reconstructed walls around me to magma. I was in trouble, had been in trouble since I first set eyes on the kid.
The party around us began to roar back into action, as Ty clapped Malakai’s back in good sportsmanship, as the tunes picked up pace and volume under Kofi’s resumed authority, and as my whirling literary analysis of Malakai’s words gathered speed.Already made that mistake the other night. I hopped down from him, but his hands stayed on my waist and my arms stayed around his neck. He opened his mouth to speak, but then Chi was pulling my arm up from Malakai’s neck, looping hers through mine and dragging me away. Shanti promised that they would return me in one piece while pushing a cup of something syrupy andpotent into my hand. Aminah loudly commanded Kofi to play our newest favorite song.
Then we were dancing, and the lights dimmed and my thoughts became looser, and though it became harder to grip on to what Malakai had said, the taste of it stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I realized that there was something sweet there, something intoxicating there, stronger than what was in my cup. As I rolled my tongue around its possibility, I got more excited.But then there was the burn. The thrill quickly got chased with fear. He could have just been playing, saying things just to say things. I looked across the room and he was with his boys by the drinks; he caught my eye and stole a heartbeat. There was too much to lose here—my head, my heart.
I was getting waved right then and my girls were waved, and it rolled under us and merged with the rhythm to pull us into the middle of the room. We went with it, hand in hand in hand, weaving through a crowd that had somehow doubled in size within the last hour. I lost sight of Malakai but found myself in a cluster with the girls where we fell into moves that called and responded to each other, that were in conversation, hips calling each other’s to come join, and I found myself laughing. I was here, with my girls, and our hair was swishing, and our booties were teasing gravity and we were whining on each other and delighting in each other. I wasinthis. I wasn’t on the outside anymore. Our laughter was a featuring artist on every banger and it made it better. We rapped, we sang, we rolled, and we dipped as our bones became tender with the heat of the beat. The chandeliers in the garden house shimmied in appreciation.
Ty bellowed, “The Blackwell Baddies In-fucking-DEED,” gassing us knowing we didn’t need gassing, gassing us knowing it was surplus because our energy was self-generated. Phones whipped out to film the movie we were all in and Kofi chose a song just for us, the rhythm bowing for us. Then, a hand on my waist. I turned around and Malakai addressed a question to the group while barely looking away from my face.
“Sorry to interrupt, ladies.” He smoothly avoided someone kicking him on the makeshift dance floor while gbeseing to Burna Boy. “You think I can have her back now?”
Aminah rolled her eyes. “Temporarily.”
Malakai bowed. “Many thanks.”
Chi smacked my ass and Shanti stuck her tongue out as Malakai took my hand and drew me to the corner of the room, and I floated through, high and happy, panting, feeling pretty.
He ran his eyes across me, his smile faint. “This looks good on you, Scotch.”
I leaned against the wall. “What does?”
“Everything.”
He took a moment.
“I owe you an explanation.”
The tempo had switched through the speakers, and a grown and sexy Afrobeat song flowed through, playful, soulful, sensual, created for slow misbehavior. I wanted this moment to stay still for a while—there was no denying what was between us right here and now and nothing he said would have changed that.
“Yes, you do. Dance with me first.”
Malakai blinked and then smiled something hot and narcotic and sweet. He took my hand and pulled me forward, his hands moving to my waist, as I slowly rotated it. His gaze followed the motion, transfixed, my hips his North Star, and I turned around and pressed my back against his chest. The beat acted like a catalyst to whatever chemical reaction was occurring, had been occurring, would be occurring within us, causing our bodies to answer the questions our mouths were too nervous to ask.
My back arched gently and Malakai’s hands curved across my hips, pushing me slightly closer to him.
“I’m sorry, Scotch.” Malakai’s breath was hypnotically warm againstmy ear, his grip still tight on me—the song had changed but the tempo remained the same, giving us an excuse to stay like this.
I swallowed. “What for?”
“Making you feel like I don’t want you.” He stopped moving, spinning me around so I was facing him, his hands still resting on my hips.
“Kiki, I want you. Been wanting you. And I wanted you so bad the other night. The reality of you isn’t messy, it’s... man, it’s perfect. I’m the mess. That’s why I got freaked out. I mess things up, Scotch. If I fuck this up, I will never forgive myself. This isn’t a casual thing to me. You’re not just a link to me. You’reitto me.”
His sentences were fired in searing, sharp bullets as if he didn’t speak them quickly they would melt in his mouth. Malakai was looking at me, eyes bright and wild yet stricken, apparently waiting for me to weigh up the truth of what he just said or figuring out if it was light enough to haul it back to him without me noticing.Too late. It was out there, too heavy to throw banter over, too impactful for us to revert back to how we were before.
Words were not at my disposal at that moment, and the only thing remotely resembling solid thought in my mind was the internal siren instructing me to kiss him. As I curved my hand around his neck and his face inched closer to mine, a bellow shattered the delicate spell above the room.
“Hear ye, hear ye, the KING has arrived. Yo, Ty, did my invite get lost in the post or something?”
Who else would pronounce their own entrance? Who else would command people to bow in their presence? Who else could make the butterflies in my belly flutter down and curve their wings around each other in protection? And who else would roll through with Simi in front of him, the harbinger of chaos, wearing a glossy, demure smile on her face and a red floor-length body-con with a thigh-high slit?
Zack Kingsford walked into the room, a bottle of Cîroc in his hands, smile wide, eyes scanning the party until they found mine. He winked.
