Chapter Thirty-Six
Moët
T
his is the biggest mistake I ever made. Okay, not
the
biggest, but it is up on the Top 10 list.
As if he can sense my frustration, Taquan reaches over to grab my hand under the dining room table. I look over and give him a wink and a smile.
“I just don't understand, Latoya, if you've read those things in those papers about that that . . .
rapper.
How can you trust your child with him?”
My grip tightens around Taquan's hand and he winces a little. “Daddy, I don't believe those things in the paper. I never thought Bones would hurt Tiffany.”
My mother spoons mashed red potatoes onto her plate before passing it to my youngest sister Latrece. “How can you be sure?”
“His mother lives with him and helps out with the baby.”
As soon as my mother eyes me I know I have stuck my foot in my mouth. My moms has been begging me to let Tiffany stay overnight. My answer has always been no.
When I admitted to my parents that I lied about the rape and that I was sexually involved with our minister since I was sixteen, I didn't know what to expect. Their anger and immediate condemnation of me hurt like crazy. They put their love of religion above me and it hurt like hell. It wasn't until that devil Reverend DeMark was arrested for sleeping with a sixteen-year-old from their church that they even spoke to me.
And they have yet to say they were sorry.
Even though I go through the motions, a part of me hasn't gotten over that. A girl never forgets her father damn near calling her a whore to her face.
I began to shake my leg as my anger rises again.
I know my parents wouldn't hurt her physically but my childhood was rough. Restrictive. Reclusive. It was all about church until I felt like it strangled me. So I rebelled . . . in my own way. I lived a double life to find the freedom I needed so that their faith wasn't such a noose around my neck. I rebelled right into situations I had no business being in.
I just don't want them to make Tiffany feel the way I did growing up.
“Taquan, I'd like a little chat with you if we're all done with dinner,” my father says before he drops his napkin onto his plate and rises from his chair.
It's Taquan's turn to squeeze my hand.
He's the first man I ever brought home to meet my parents. My folks never met the father of their only grandchild. He was another of my secrets from last year.
I didn't want the same for Taquan. I'm proud that he's my man. He's good to me and he loves Tiffany just as if she's his own.
I wonder if he loves me too
.
My brows draw together a bit. Do I love Taquan?
I watch him as he follows my father into the living room. He turns to smile at me over his strong and broad shoulders. My heart skips several beats.
He helps keep me locked to my faith. He is so easy to talk with about anything . . . everything. He makes me better, stronger, calmer. We have such amazing chemistry and even more amazing “sex” (well, our non-penetrating version of sex). I miss him when he's not near me and I am happier than Reverend DeMark peeping through a hole in the wall of a girls' locker room when we're together.
My daughter's soft cries from her portable bassinet in the living room causes me to head that way as my mother and sisters began to clear the table.
“She's always a little cranky when she wakes up,” I hear Taquan say. I pause before I reach the living room and watch as both he and my father bend over the bassinet. “Latoya always just rubs her back a little and she goes back to sleep.”
My mouth drops open a little as my father reaches down to rub his grandchild's small back. “It's funny, but Latoya was the same way as a baby except we would pat her back and she would go right back to sleep,” my father says. “I used to just lay with her across my chest and just pat that back for her. Her mama said I was spoiling her.”
The men share a soft laugh together while I am surprised. I can't imagine my father giving out any affection far less spoiling me.
“She was a beautiful baby girl and while I was doing all that spoiling I thought of just the speech I would give any little boy, or teenager, or man that came by to visit.”
I watch as my father and my man look at each other with their bodies still bent over my daughter's bassinet.
“Neither I nor her mother nor God created her to be any man's plaything. She was created to be the best she can be and not the best you want her to be. She was created to grow and spread her wings and not her legs. She is special to me and she is rare because she is my child. Respect that. Respect her. And respect me when I tell you that you don't want me to lose my religion.”
Taquan nods and clears his throat. “Good speech.”
My dad nods his head as he looks at Taquan with clear intent. “I think so.”
For the first time in a long damn time I feel like my father loves me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Cristal
T
he Hamptons!
I am standing on the balcony of my bedroom in the Ingrams' house looking down at the Who's Who at their all-white pool party. My eyes sweep the crowd and fall on Marc Ellison standing there looking fine as all get out in a white linen pants suit. The wind blows slightly and the thin linen attaches to his thighs and his dick. My eyes shift up to his face and he is looking at me. He raises his glass of champagne to me and I smile at him.
The gifts have not stoppedâin fact I am wearing the white Gucci bathing suit he sent to me just yesterday. My man threw me out his house and stopped answering my phone calls. Oh, this just might be Marc's lucky damn day.
Yes, Mohammed hurt me. It still hurts. He never came back to his house that day or that night or the next day. I sat there and I waited for him to come back. I called his cell phone endlessly. I left the kind of crying “please don't go” voice mail that he could play to a crowd for laughs. He never came back.
I finally picked up my face and my things and went home but I drove back to his house late that same night. To see his beat down jeep finally parked there hurt. I wondered if he came home, saw my car still there and then just kept on moving. It took all the fight I had in me to drive back home.
It is over. Mohammed wanted it over and it is over.
I clear my throat and squint my eyes against the sun. It is a sorry attempt to push away my pain.
I will focus on living my life. I have to.
Hours later, Marc finally traps me in a corner of the cabana. I take a deep sip of my champagne as I am overwhelmed by his warm and delicious scent and his presence. He leans in closely to my neck. “God, you smell good,” his words whisper against my throat. “And you wear Gucci so damn well.”
I shiver a little as I turn my head slightly to take another sip of my champagne. “Yes, I do,” I tell him smugly.
“But I bet you look even better out of it.” He presses one kiss and then another to my neck as he brings his hands up to that deep curve of my waist. He does not cause the kind of sparks and electricity I receive from just being near Mohammed, but this warm fuzziness is nice. Shit, in the past I have slept with a lot worse.
My champagne glass slips from my hand as I bring it up to stroke the side of his face. I turn his head and press my lips to his just as the glass shatters against the cement floor of the cabana.
One of my eyes pops open as he damn near sticks his whole tongue down my throat. I ease my head back and take the lead to show this sexy millionaire just how to kiss a woman.
As he eases some of that tongue back inside his own damn head I let him press me down onto one of the plush lounge chairs. I try not to think of Mohammed and wish he was Mohammed as he kisses an overly moist trail down my neck. Lord, more and more I am feeling myself fall into bad sex. Damn. Damn. Damn.
He eases the straps of my bathing suit down exposing my breasts. I close my eyes and arch my back as I massage his broad shoulders through the thin linen of his shirt.
He rubs his fingers across my nipples and they tingle from his touch. Damn, they tingle so much they feel numb. He starts sucking and licking my nipples. I open my eyes just in time to see him use one hand to pour some white powder across my chest. “What is that?” I screech.
My question is useless as he lowers his head and snorts the powder from my body.
Is that why my damn nipples feel like that?
“Man, get your cokehead ass off me,” I yell as I push against his shoulders.
“Huh? What?” he asks as he looks down at me.
Why am I just noticing how glassy his eyes are?
“I do not do coke,” I tell him as he finally rolls off me. I frown as he sits up on the edge of the lounge chair and pours more coke on the back of his hand to snort.
I grab a throw pillow from the lounge and wipe the coke powder from my chest before I ease the straps of my bathing suit back up onto my shoulders. My damn nipples are
still
numb as hell.
Marc laughs as he looks up at me. “You keep your nose up Carolyn's ass and you don't do coke? Man, what the fuck ever.”
Huh? What is that? Say what? Say who?
“Carolyn gets high?” I ask him as he wipes his nose with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.
He looks up at me and shakes his head at me like
I
am pitiful.
In the words of Dom: “What the fuck ever.”
I whip open the curtains of the cabana and step out into the pool party that is still in full effect. A servant carrying a tray of drinks grabs my arms.
“Mrs. Ingram wants to see you.”
“Good, because I want to see her too. Where is she?”
“In her bedroom suite,” she answers.
I breeze past her to walk into the house. I damn near run up the stairs and barge right into her suite. I stop in my tracks as my mouth drops open. What the fuck?
I close my eyes and try to erase the image of Carolyn butt naked and bent over touching her toes as some big-dick, tall, buff brother is stroking her from behind. What the fuck? Does she get off by me being in the room while some random man is sexing her?
“Oh, my, Danielle,” she purrs as she reaches back with a thin and wrinkled hand to his chest (you can have all the plastic surgery you want but them hands and neck NEVER lie). He backs right out of her. My eyes get wider because I am thinking I will never see the tip of his dick. Well goddamn.
As he struts by me naked with his dick swinging above his balls like a muscled arm, I try my best to keep my eyes above his waist.
Shee-it
. Tried . . . and failed. His dick is making a damn shadow on the floor! I gasp when he makes it do damn pushups in mid-air. Up and down. Up and down. My eyes jump up to his and he has the nerve to wink at me before he grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. I turn to watch him leave the room. Okay, I have seen some dicks in my day but that has to be
the
biggestâ
I swerve around at the feel of a finger stroking my nipple.
“Carolyn, what are you doing?” I ask as I push her hand away.
“I'm getting what I paid for,” she says in this voice that is slurred as she reaches again and snatches down the top of my bathing suit causing one of my breasts to pop free.
I feel disgust when she openly stares and then licks her collagenfilled lips. “What are you talking about?” I ask her as I step back and push my breast back inside my bathing suit from her view.
“Stop playing games, Danielle. I've waited long enough for that pussy.” She advances on me and quicker than I can blink this bitch has her hand between my legs palming my pussy.
I grab her wrist. “Carolyn, I am not gay.”
She flings her head back and laughs as she raises her hand and licks her tongue between the vee she makes with her fingers. “Neither was Kelle until I financed her dreams and licked that fat clit. That bitch used to beg me to eat her out.”
Kelle? I frown as she turns and walks away from me. Kelle? My mind flashes back to the woman from the restaurant screaming at Carolyn.
So you don't know me now, you old bitch?
“So you and Kelle were . . . were lovers?” I ask as she moves over to sit on the edge of her champagne silk covered bed and spread her legs wide to finger her pussy.
“Up until the day I saw you at the office. I knew as soon as I laid eyes on you that I wanted you and I always get what I want.” Carolyn rises from her bed, strutting her naked ass over to her closet. “And I get what I want because I give people what they want. Like fancy clothes, my friendship and the friendship of my wealthy and famous friends, their own business.”
That makes me pause. This bitch that I been hanging around is a wealthy lesbo cougar. Oh no, hell no. “So sometimes you feel like dicks and nuts, sometimes you don't?” I snap sarcastically.
She laughs as she walks back out of her closet holding a wad of bills. I watch as she carelessly flings the money up into the air above the bed just before she climbs onto the middle of it. The money rains down on her body. “You feel like eating my pussy now, don't you?”
“Carolyn, I'm sorry but you got the motherfuckin' game twisted.” Oh, that hood shit always come through my ass when I'm pissed.
She climbs off the bed and walks over to me. Her hands grope my breasts as she pushes me back against the wall and tries to press her lips to my mouth. “I can make you feel so good,” she whispers.
When I feel Carolyn's hands shifting my bathing suit to the side, I am repulsed. And when she attempts to slip her fingers inside of me I am fed the fuck up.
I push her off me to get just enough space to slap the hell out of that bitch and send her spinning across the room. I turn to walk out the room and pause at some random white bitch sucking off Big Dick Willie while Marc sits by snorting coke and jacking his own dick.
Marc looks up at me with glassy eyes.
I look at them all in disgust.
I walk out of that room and down that hall to my room. Quick as I can I throw as much of my shit as I can into my overnight case and pull a sweat suit over my bathing suit.
There is a knock on my door. “Danielle, I'm so sorry. Let me in, sweetheart.”
Crazy ass Carolyn.
Wait on it bitch
.
I walk onto my balcony and the party is still in full effect.
Well, party on
. As I walk down the outdoor wrought iron stairs leading to the lower level of the mansion, I flip my cell phone open. It's time for me to get a one-way ride out of this jacked-up-ass world.