Baller: An Interracial MMA Stepbrother Romance (8 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Hannibal

It doesn’t matter how old you get. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you make in a year, or what nice things the newspapers write about you.

When your dad tells you to sit down, shut up, and listen, you fucking do it.

So that’s how Hannibal Alexander found himself sitting at his father’s kitchen table, listening to his dad lecture him.

“Well, this is a nice way to greet your old man,” the big, rotund professor stomped around to the head of the table. “I don’t see you for six months, and
this
is the welcome I get?”

“Pops,” Hannibal held up his hands. “It’s not like that. I came round earlier and you and… and
her
were out.”

“Your step-mother has a
name
,” Cornell growled, “and it sure as hell isn’t ‘her.’”

Hannibal growled. He hated to hear Kristen’s mom described as his ‘stepmother.’

“So what were you and Kristen up to? Drinking and partying it up?” Cornell shook his head, his shaggy afro swaying as he did so. “This ain’t Vegas, son. And Kristen’s too smart a girl for me to let you lead her astray, like you did with Julius.”

Hannibal’s eyes narrowed into slits.

“Actually, the reason I wasn’t around is because we were
seeing
Jules. Mom told me the trouble he’s getting into.”

“’Seeing’ Jules?”Cornell slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. “Where were you ‘seeing’ him? At the bar? That kid’s barely old enough to drink.”

“Nah, that happened afterwards,” Hannibal explained, and then shut up. His dad was looking for ammunition. No need to feed it to him.

“I’d hoped you’d have done some growing up by the time you came home,” Cornell continued. “Start living up to your responsibilities. You’ve caused this family enough heartache with your childish shenanigans.”

And that was what tipped Hannibal over the edge.

“
My
childish shenanigans?” He hissed. “
My
responsibilities?” The big man’s hands balled into fists. “What about
your
responsibilities, Pops? You’re responsible for Mom living in a shitty townhouse, when she should be here living with
you
. With
us
.”

Cornell visibly reeled when he was hit with that.

“N-now Hannibal,” he stammered. “It’s more complicated than that…”

“
The fuck it is
,” Hannibal spat, pushing back his chair and standing up. Cornell was visibly intimidated as his oldest son towered over him. “You sit there and you blame all this shit on me, but
you’re
the one who tore this family apart.” He pointed a thick finger at his father, and snapped: “You spend so much time giving me and Jules a hard time for our behavior, but you forget: We
learned it all from you
.”

Cornell pushed his chair back, and struggled to his feet.

“How
dare
you,” he growled.

“I dare
just fine
,” Hannibal spat back, looming over him. “I think it’s about time somebody called you on it. You’ve spent so many years playing the kindly old professor, I think you’ve started to believe that’s who you really are. Not some conceited jackass who cheated on his wife.”

“Get the hell out of my house!” Spittle ran down Cornell’s chin as he screamed at his son.

For a moment, Hannibal saw red. His hands balled up into fists and he seriously considered knocking his seventy-year-old father to the floor.

But then he took a deep, ragged breath of air, span around and headed for the door.

“With fucking pleasure,” he spat – and the walls of the old house rattled as Hannibal slammed shut the door after him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hannibal

It was three in the morning, and a rapidly-sobering-up Hannibal was stomping down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and his breath misting in the air.

He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t care. He just had to keep moving – to get as far away from that house – and that man – as he possible could.

At first he’d wanted to slide behind the wheel of his Bentley – but then he remembered that Kristen still had the keys. More than that – he was too proud to go knocking on the door and face his father again when he asked for them.

So he walked.

He walked with purpose, and an angry swagger, and must have covered a full mile of the suburban sidewalks before the wail of a siren snapped his out of his fugue.

Blue and red lights flashed behind him.

Shielding his eyes, Hannibal wheeled around and blinked as he tried to peer through the scalding beams of a cop car’s headlights.

“Put your hands down please, sir.”

“What are you doing out so late, sir?”

Two cops were on the sidewalk, cautiously circling him. A black guy and a white one; one with his hand on his radio, and the other with his hand on the butt of his holstered gun.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Hannibal demanded.

The two cops ignored his question.

“Keep your hands were I can see them, please.”

“We need to see some ID.”

“Have you been drinking tonight, sir?”

And even from twelve feet away, Hannibal knew the smell of liquor on him wouldn’t make it worth lying about.

“I’m just going for a walk,” Hannibal growled. “What’s the deal, officers?”

“Just stay calm please, sir.”

“I need to see some ID.”

There it was. The tone of voice that Hannibal – being an affluent kid from a good neighborhood – had been fortunate enough to only hear once or twice in his life.

A cop, swapping the ‘
can
I see your ID’ that they’d ask a white kid to ‘I
need
to see your ID’ when it’s a black kid they’ve got cornered.

Hannibal reached for his pocket.

“Slowly with the hands there!” There was a click as the cop with his hand on the butt of his gun popped open the clasp securing it in the holster.

Hannibal froze.

He felt a chill in the pit of his stomach.

“Very slowly,” the cop growled, “reach for your wallet.”

And Hannibal did. Very,
very
slowly.

And it wasn’t there.

“Shit,” Hannibal swore. “I left it in the car.” He had a momentary vision of his black leather wallet, sitting in the console of his Bentley.

“Is that right, sir?” One of the cops asked. He was circling him now. Hannibal had an absurd flashback to that Jurassic World movie, and how the velociraptors circled their prey before striking.

“Your car?” The other cop asked. He sniffed the air – no doubt detecting the stink of tequila even from eight feet away. “You been driving tonight, sir?”

Hannibal’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sir’ was supposed to be a term of dignity and respect, but they both mouthed it like a curse word.

“Nah, I’m just going for a walk,” Hannibal tried to explain. “Clear my head, like.” And that’s when he saw the flash of metal, as the officer circling around behind him pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

Fuck, Hannibal thought. This was it. He was going to get arrested.

For what, exactly? Drunk and disorderly? For not having his ID on him? Did cops even need an excuse to arrest a black kid?

For a moment, his hands balled up into fists and Hannibal contemplated turning a bad decision into a fucking disastrous one – and then a crisp, clear voice rang through the night and he knew everything was going to be okay.

“Excuse me, officers,” it was Kristen, stepping out of Hannibal’s Bentley, which she’d pulled to a halt behind the cop car. “Does there seem to be a problem here?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kristen

The door of the Bentley slammed shut, and Kristen gratefully gunned the powerful engine.

“Holy shit,” in the passenger seat, Hannibal’s dark brown face was drained of blood. “That… That could have been
bad
.”

“It’s lucky I came out after you,” Kristen gave the cops a respectful wave through the windscreen, and pulled the car out onto the street. “You’ve been away from Hartford so long, you clearly forgot that you were black.”

Hannibal snorted bitterly, but it was true.

This was a nice, white neighborhood in a nice, white suburb. Hannibal might have spent twenty years growing up there; but to two young cops who’d never seen him before, he might as well have been a gangbanging hoodrat out casing houses to rob.

“It was 3am,” Kristen tried to explain, “and you were drunk, and didn’t have ID. You can’t blame them, Hannibal.”

“The fuck I can’t,” Hannibal still couldn’t believe how the situation had deescalated the moment Kristen had explained that he was her stepbrother. “Those fucking pigs would never have stopped me if I’d been white.”

“I don’t know,” Kristen said non-committedly. “I wouldn’t dwell on it. It’s just lucky I was there.”

Hannibal snorted. He reached over and squeezed Kristen’s hand.

“Fuck, yes, it was.” Her tiny hand felt cold in his. “Shit, Krissie. You’ve been about the only good thing about coming back.”

And her lips curled when she heard that.

“So where am I going to take you?” Kristen asked. “Back home to your mom?”

Hannibal snorted derisively.

“Aww, hell no. If you thought Pops was giving me a hard time, you should see what Momma would say if I came home at this hour.” He narrowed his eyes. “Shit, I’m just hoping there’s enough on my credit card to score a room at the Holiday Inn for the night.”

Kristen pursed her lips.

“I might be able to do better than that.”

And then she turned the big wheel of the Bentley, and took the car down a different street.

“I’ve still got the keys to Jules’ dorm room, over at college. He’s paid up until the end of the month. That’s why your Dad was so pissed when he moved out.”

Hannibal snorted.

“You expect me to crash there?”

“You prefer to sleep in the back of your car?”

That was a good retort, so Hannibal fell silent and let Kristen drive.

Within minutes they were heading towards West Hartford, and a series of ropey apartment blocks that looked like they got designed in the 1960s, and hadn’t been updated much since.

“Shit,” Hannibal pressed his nose against the glass. “If this is where he was staying, I can’t blame him for moving out.”

“Don’t be mean,” Kristen eased the Bentley into the parking lot, beneath the towering buildings. “Not all of us could get into Wesleyan, you know.”

Again, Hannibal shut up. Him dropping out of the 13
th
best college in America was a sore subject. In fact, since coming home, Hannibal was beginning to realize he had a lot of sore subjects.

“Come on,” Kristen yanked the car into PARK, and shoved open the door. “Let’s hope the keys still work.”

Fortunately they did, and the RA wasn’t around to ask who these two strangers were letting themselves into the apartment block.

There wasn’t a soul about at that hour, and Hannibal was grateful for that. After a short ride in a rattling elevator, Kristen led him down a dark corridor, rattled the key in a lock and swung open the door to a small, cramped dorm room with a single, twin-sized bed in the corner.

“Welcome to your luxurious accommodation,” Kristen laughed.

Hannibal chuckled himself, bending his head to get in through the door.

Here he was, Hannibal ‘Baller’ Alexander: One of the top-ranked fighters in the MMA league, and a man who’d christened more beds in more luxury Vegas hotel suites than Frank Sinatra.

And now he was here. In this dump.

“Fuck,” the big man ran a hand over his shaved scalp. “I’m fucking beat.” He turned to Kristen. “Where are you going to do? Back home to Pops?”

Kristen stood in the doorway, her arms crossed.

“I guess,” she said reluctantly. And then she yawned. “But I’d really like to lie down for a minute first.” She looked up at Hannibal with her big, blue eyes. “Can I? Please?”

Hannibal looked down at her, and shrugged.

He slipped off his jacket, and started peeling off his shirt.

“Sure,” the big man grumbled. “But don’t hog my side of the bed.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Kristen

Hannibal’s massive, beefy arm was thrown over Kristen’s shoulder like a blanket.

She felt tiny, lying in that narrow little bed, spooned up against her muscular stepbrother.

Tiny, and not a little bit squirmy.

There was something indifferent about the way Hannibal had peeled off his shirt and kicked off his pants, and stripped down to nothing but his boxer shorts in front of her. As if he didn’t even register than his stepsister was a girl at all.

But she was – and she had the same urges as one. Especially when she saw her brother strip off.

His body was incredible – barely an ounce of fat on him; just slabs of rock-like muscle and sinew. Painted in tattoos, he was menacing, and beautiful, and lethally sexy.

Kristen gasped a little as she watched him undress.

And then he’d lain on the bed, and lifted his arm, and nodded at the space beneath it utterly inconsequentially; like he was inviting his dog to come lie down next to him on the bed; not his 21-year-old stepsister.

Very deliberately, Kristen kicked off her shoes but remained fully clothed as she climbed onto the small, twin-sized bed and let Hannibal’s comforting bulk crush her into the mattress.

His arm was hot and heavy across her shoulders. She drank in his smell – cologne mixed with the sweat, cigarettes and alcohol of the warehouse and bar they’d visited.

Closing her eyes, she snuggled into his warmth.

For a moment, the two of them just lay there in bed, and Kristen shuddered at the experience.

She was utterly conflicted. Part of her was happy that Hannibal was being so cool about this. He was treating her just like a little sister, which to a certain extent she believed he saw her as.

But she was also a young woman, and being back in Hannibal’s presence had reminded her of the feelings she’d had for him all those years ago; before he’d fucked off to Vegas and left her and Jules to fend for themselves.

He was sexy. And powerful. And she felt squirmy in his presence.

Shit, her panties were even getting moist, as she lay with his arm draped casually over her.

For a moment, she wondered if she’d have to excuse herself and drive home, simply before her arousal got too intense for her to ignore.

But then something happened that made her question all of that.

She and Hannibal were spooning in that bed – supposedly absolutely platonically.

But her ass was pressed against his hips; and as she lay there she began to feel a firm, swollen lump press against her ass.

Bigger, and bigger it was getting. To the point that it started to throb rhythmically.

Holy shit, Kristen realized, as she lay there.

Hannibal had a fucking erection.