Authors: K Carr
I stared at my hands, head bent to avoid looking at anyone. Oh my God. An uncomfortable silence descended over us. Well, not all of us. Matt was still trying to stifle his laughter. He draped an arm over me and pulled me into a hug.
“Ah, poppet, you do make me laugh.”
“I’m glad you find my humiliation a source of hilarity,” I said tartly, while trying to wriggle away. “This is your fault, you know. I only say stupid shit like that around you.”
Matt’s arm slid lower, until it wrapped around my waist. He bent his lips to my ear and whispered out of Nathan’s hearing, “I’ve not stopped thinking about our night together.”
The memory of his hands and mouth on me popped into my head. The air caught in my throat as a surge of desire made my skin tingle.
Nathan, trying to recover from my outburst, rallied with a polite, “Has your dance company got any upcoming productions, Madi? The last ballet I saw at the Royal Opera House was
The Sleeping Beauty
. Have you perchance had an opportunity to perform at the Opera House?”
I shook my head, images of Matt touching me intimately dancing before my eyes. I shook my head again to clear those images before sending Nathan a rueful smile. “I wish. But one day we will.”
“I would love to see you dance,” Matt said with a serious face.
“Really?” Why did I feel this spurt of girlish glee? Thank goodness Nathan was acting like nothing unusual had happened. He was going to leave the pub thinking black women were crazy. Blanket generalization, here we come. I mentally apologized to all my sisters out there.
“Yes, really,” Matt confirmed. His hand hadn’t left my waist. It felt unbelievably nice.
There was strength in his fingers, I’d seen him beat two guys up, but his hold on me was gentle. What was I doing?
What was I doing?
“I need the bathroom,” I squeaked, grabbing my cell as I pushed Matt aside, who gracefully got to his feet to let me pass. Despite his impressive stature, Matt moved like…like a dancer, smooth, almost liquid-like beneath those muscles, a sleek lion confident in the knowledge that he was king of the jungle and none would oppose him. Arriving at that apt description made me think about the phrase ‘jungle fever’.
Oh, shit.
Had I caught the fever?
Me?
I hurried to the ladies, clutching my phone tightly and confused out of my mind.
<><><>
Matt watched her scamper away. That arse of hers was amazing, something he noted those lads on the other table seem to be appreciating.
“She isn’t,” Nathan asked, looking around as if wary of being overheard. “Is she?”
With a hard glare at the other table, Matt faced his friend. “Isn’t what?”
“A virgin,” Nathan murmured harshly. “Because it’s disturbing if she is.”
“Why are you here again?” Matt drawled. “I’m a bit hazy on the details.”
Nathan clenched his hand in exasperation. “Matt, I’ve been your friend for a long time. Sometimes, I think too long. For the love of God, you can’t be—she isn’t—that’s wrong.”
Matt folded his arms, taken aback at Nathan’s apparent anger. “Why is it any of your concern, Nathan? Weren’t you the one advising me to shag her and get it out of my system? If I recall, you wanted me to shag her, then buy her something nice and expensive.”
Nathan’s mouth hung open for a second, before he ran a hand through his blonde hair. He frowned at the table top, then said coolly, “That was before I met her, Matt. She’s charmingly delightful, and the thought of her being subjected to your—” Nathan gave him a weary gaze. “I’m saying this as your friend, but you can be something of a cad with the ladies. She’s lovely, a bit talkative and exuberant, but unlike anything I expected from someone like her.”
Matt bit back the urge to say “you mean black”, instead settling for a dry, “Nathan Walthamstow, do you have a little crush on her?”
“Piss off, you clown,” he replied. “Don’t do it, Matt. Leave the poor thing alone. Why don’t you spend some time with Jacqueline? You always enjoy her company and you know your liaisons are confidential. Hell, she’s getting married next year, yet she insists on seeing you every couple of months.”
“I don’t want Jacqueline, and I am not having this discussion with you anymore.” Matt turned his head towards the window, signalling the end of the conversation. Nathan sighed angrily, fingers drumming on the table. Ten minutes of charged silence passed between them. Nathan spun around, searching the direction she’d went. “What’s taking her so long?” he asked, impatient to be gone from this place.
“I have no idea.” Matt was annoyed with his friend. Nathan’s words had stirred up the guilt Matt felt about his planned pursuit of Madi. He was an arrogant bastard, there was no doubt about that, but he wanted her, fuck’s sake, he wanted her immensely.
“Do you think she’s bulimic?” Nathan asked, eyebrows rising.
“What? Why on earth would you think that?”
Nathan shrugged, looking over his shoulder. “She’s a dancer, they’re like models, anal about their weight. That was an extraordinarily large burger she wolfed down. She ate the whole thing. With chips.”
Matt waved Nathan’s concern away. “She’s perfectly healthy. Her body doesn’t show any—” Matt realised his mistake. The slip of tongue that had Nathan staring open-mouth at him.
“And how do you know that?” he asked sarcastically.
Matt ignored him by looking over at the bar. The pub was surprisingly nice, though the food was appalling.
“Where is she?” Nathan asked.
<><><>
I had relieved my bladder, was still freaking out over my attraction to Matt, when I realized he hadn’t told me what he did. In fact, most of the conversation centred on me. Was he deliberating avoiding talking about himself? I knew he was well-to-do, but people could earn money from illegal shit. Maybe he was a drug dealer. He had that intense dangerous thing going on.
“I’m going to Google his ass,” I muttered to my reflection. The woman washing her hands next to me moved away, not bothering to dry her hands as she scampered out of the ladies.
Bradston…Brody…Bradley, that was his surname. George had called him Mr Bradley. I brought up Google on my cell and typed in Matthew Bradley. It was the third result. I felt faint, literally felt faint as I read Wikipedia. He was a fucking gazillionaire, his family fortune spanning generations. Oil tycoons that had branched out into corporate businesses all over the world. I stared at my face in the streaked mirror. What the fuck? There was information about his personal life: the socialites he’d been linked with, the models he seduced. A fucking incident in Monaco where he’d crashed his yacht. He hung out with politicians, schmoozed at charity balls where royalty was present. He was the elite of the elitist. A damn gazillionaire who I had let stick his tongue in my private parts and call me poppet. Poppet. I was certain it now meant puppet on a frigging string. Was this some sort of joke? Realization dawned, and I didn’t like the wakeup call.
I was his token black fuck.
That’s why he was all over me. He wanted to see what it was like to fuck a nigger bitch, then go laughing to his snobby friends about the experience. They were probably laughing at me right now. Him and Nathan. Probably laughing at the way I talked, and acted.
Well, fuck him.
I was not going to be the token black in this asshole’s life. I stormed out the ladies, fuming. I was supposed to be smart, street-wise. Yet, the idiotic dude, who was a decade older, had played me.
Fucking poppet.
I’d show him a poppet. I was so mad my hands shook. On my way back to the table some guy stopped me, asking me my name and whether he could buy me a drink. I ignored him, too busy trying to decide whether to punch Matthew Bradley in the face or knee him in the nuts.
He stood up as soon as I got to our table, grey slits of irritation trained on the dude who had stopped me.
“Are you all right, poppet? Was that lad bothering you?”
Fucking poppet.
I reached over to grab my wallet, which I’d left behind on my trip to the ladies. No, I wouldn’t beat the shit out of him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of playing into the stereotypes his kind had—black women are aggressive, ghetto. No, I would be polite and take my leave. Then dance some shit out in the studio. The way I felt right now, I could dance ’til kingdom come and still be pissed.
“Madi.”
“Don’t touch me,” I spat, jerking away from his hand on my arm. “Don’t ever touch me again, Mr Matthew Bradley. You are a disturbed man, a psychotic man who shouldn’t be allowed out in public.”
“What has gotten into you?” he asked, startled by the vehemence on my face. He glanced askance at Nathan, unsure where my anger was coming from. It was polite to clear it up for him. Yes, I would politely tell him to eat shit and die.
“Common sense,” I said coldly. “Common sense has gotten into me. I Googled you. It was weird the way you avoided my question about what you did for a living. I thought you might be a drug dealer, but the truth is a whole lot worse. You’re a gazillionaire.”
Matt’s face had visibly paled when I told him I’d Googled his ass.
Ha!
The gig was up.
“Madi,” he began, hand reaching out.
“You put that hand on me, and I swear to God I will kick your ass.” I couldn’t maintain my detached demeanour. “What was it, Matt? You saw me today and decided that I would be your new experiment? What? You’d missed your chance the night we met and, as luck would have it, we bumped into each other today, and you couldn’t wait to—to—I’m furious with you. Jesus. I thought you were a nice person. A frigging knight.” I had to get out of here before I started crying like a baby. “You’re a bad person, Matt. A bad man, and I will not be a token black fuck to you so you can run back to your gazillionaire friends and laugh about your walk on the dark side.”
“Stop saying those things,” he said in a controlled, empty voice.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I hissed. “I’m not some—some—bloody dog. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve made me hate you. I don’t hate anyone—well, some people deserve to be hated on principle, like Hitler, and—” I was babbling. I shook my head and got back on point. “I despise you. You’re sick and I thank God that, after today, I will never see you again. Asshole.”
My voice had gotten a tad louder than expected, so loud that people were starting to look over at us. I had one more thing to say before I left: “Eat shit and die, you pompous, old racist.”
With those last words, I spun on my heels and stormed out the pub, furious at Matthew Bradley, at the shitty world, at myself. I was stupid. So damn stupid. Letting him flirt with me, letting him touch me. I’d told a strange white dude about myself, about my ballet company. Oh, man, I was stupid.
<><><>
“Ah,” Nathan said in the wake of uncomfortable tension after her enraged departure. “That went well.”
Matt sat back down, internally fuming at the way she had spoken to him in public. And bizarrely turned on by her glorious anger.
“Eat shit and die?” Nathan continued, fiddling with his cuffs. “I must say I’ve never heard that expression before.”
Matt sighed in response, conscious of the curious glances being sent their way.
“Aren’t you going to go after her?” Nathan queried.
“She’ll be back.” Matt ran a hand through his hair and scowled at the salt and pepper shakers.
Nathan burst into incredulous laughter. “You have lost your mind. She’s furious, Matt. Surprisingly so. Most women would be ecstatic to learn a man of your vast wealth was interested in them. I can’t believe we didn’t think of her doing a search on you. Lack of foresight on your part.”
“She’ll be back,” Matt stated with surety. “She doesn’t have keys.”
Nathan blinked a few times, then understanding dawned. “Her bag is in your car.”
Matt nodded curtly. “Yes, and she didn’t have keys on her, so it’s logical to assume they are in her bag. If she wants to get home, she’ll need her keys.”
They fell silent for a few minutes, then Nathan drawled, “She’ll never shag you now. Did you hear what she called you? A pompous, old racist. Thirty-six isn’t old. Then, again, you are a decade older than her.”
Matt grimaced at Nathan. “I was right here when she said it, so, yes, I heard. Thank you for mentioning it.”
Nathan shrugged, thoroughly enjoying his friend’s discomfort. It was rare Matt ever got shot down by a woman. In fact, Nathan couldn’t remember a time when it had ever occurred.
“I did advise you to stay away from her, Matt.”
“Will you please refrain from speaking until she returns? The last thing I need is your gloating over my public embarrassment, and some of the blame lies at your feet. I never asked you to locate her to begin with.”
Nathan heeded Matt’s annoyed words, silently chuckling to himself. Matt’s face had been a picture he would never forget. Madison DuMont had truly humbled the great Matthew Bradley with her harsh words. Nathan himself felt embarrassed at being present during such an outrageous scene, but he would never frequent this pub again so it didn’t matter.
Token black fuck.
She had a mouth on her that one.