Making the Hook-Up (19 page)

“You done with the dishes, Dee?” I said, standing up and smiling sweetly. Darius's pants were still around his hips where I'd left them when I freed his dick from them. I reached around him and pulled them all the way up, giving his ass a squeeze for good measure.

Darius laughed. “Touché. Well played.” His hands, smelling like Joy dishwashing liquid, were on the sides of my face as he leaned in and began to kiss me—slowly at first and then with all the passion that we had built throughout the day. I was sucking and biting on his bottom and top lip and he was doing the same to me. His hands moved down my body, massaging every part of me until I thought I would scream. When I felt his hands cup my ass, I buried my face in his neck, where his cologne had mixed with the day's sweat.

“I can't take it!” I raked my nails up and down his back. “Darius, I want you so bad right now. Let's quit playing.”

“What you want me to do?” Darius asked, his hands still kneading my behind, his stiffness pressed against my pulsing clit.

“Quit playing.”

“Am I playing?” He bent down and began to suck my nipple through the thin fabric of my dress. I heard the sounds of the barbecue behind me and I began to get nervous because we'd both stopped keeping watch.

“Yes!” I hissed. Darius was starting his happy trail again, and he'd reached my belly button. “You know we can't do it here.”

Darius stood up and began to look around. “Follow me.” I wasn't sure that I could walk on my trembling legs, but I held on to Darius's hand and let him lead me into the basement.

“Won't they come looking for us?”

“They're drunk.” Darius laughed. “They ain't looking for nobody.”

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark room, but when they did, I saw boxes stacked against the wall. We were in Alicia's storage closet, and Darius's hands were under my dress again. I lifted Darius's T-shirt over his head and began my own happy trail down to my prize. I held the weight of him in my hand while I sucked and licked the tip of his dick, drawing circles with my tongue. I put its full, salty length in my mouth, bracing myself against the boxes. Darius tilted his head toward the ceiling, groaning. I pulled away so that I could push his shorts down over his ankles. Darius lifted my chin with his fingers and began to kiss me, talking between kisses.

“Now what did you say you wanted me to do?” He'd unzipped my dress and was pulling the straps off my shoulders.

“I want you to quit playing with me.” I moaned as he massaged my breast and began to suck my nipple. His left hand
found my wetness and he began to stroke my clit.

“Am I playing now?” Darius entered one, then two fingers inside my wet hole, stroking upward until he felt the ridged flesh that was my G-spot.

“No, baby.” My head was spinning; I closed my eyes and continued to stroke Darius with my hand.

“And now?” He'd cocked one leg back and was hitting my spot with more speed and force, bending to lick and suck my clit intermittently.

“No, but Darius…”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I want to feel you now.” My head was about to explode. I'd already cum once and Darius was working on the second wave. “Now, Darius. Please.” I backed up against the boxes, trying to escape the heat of his mouth, the strength of his fingers. I reached for his dick that was standing at attention.

“You sure?”

“Positive.” Darius always waited until I asked for it. He rifled through his shorts looking for his condom. I held my breath in anticipation until I saw the gold pack. We locked eyes as he rolled the Magnum down until it rested at the base of his beautiful dick. He slid to his knees and began to suck my clit again, dipping lower to lap at the juices, then coming back up to suck some more.

“Please, Darius,” I whined, reaching for his ass and spreading my legs. I wanted him inside me.

“I just want to taste you.”

“I want to feel you, Dee.”

“You sure?”

“Now.”

I was standing against the boxes, legs spread and ready for Darius. He paused for a moment that felt like an hour, then
pressed the head of his dick into my dripping slit. I thought I would pass out as I felt him stretching me, easing into my wetness. I pulled at his hips, but he wouldn't go deeper.

“Please, Dee.” But he kept pulling out and pushing in, stopping at a shallow depth.

“Can I go deeper?” he growled.

“God, yes.”

Darius pushed himself deeper inside me, brushing against my spot so that I covered my own mouth to keep from screaming with pleasure. I wrapped my legs around Darius's waist, determined to hold him there. He began to stroke me slowly, and I felt every hard inch of him bathed in my wetness.

“Janae, you feel so good.” He kept his strokes slow and even, then gradually picked up speed. “So good.”

I leaned forward to kiss him, tightening my legs for balance. We danced tongues as he stroked me and massaged my ass. Still hard inside me, Darius carried me to the other side of the storage room where a table stood in the corner. With one arm, Darius swept the boxes off the table, laying me down gently onto it. I thought I would cum then, but I was afraid to tell him, lest he pull out. I bit my lip, which was always my giveaway to Darius, who watched my every movement.

“Don't worry, Nae. I ain't playing this time.” Darius picked up speed and began to stroke upward, hitting all the right spots. His left arm was beneath my head and he began to rub my clit with his right hand. “I'm not going to stop until you cum.”

“Darius!” I was rising, almost at the point of no return. “Ooh, Dee…I'm gonna cum!” He continued to hit my spot and I felt myself stretching to accommodate his thick dick while his hand made magic on my clit. He was stroking and rubbing, stroking and rubbing until I burst, legs shaking, hips jerking uncontrollably. I closed my eyes tight to ride out the wave while Darius
kept stroking, slower now. When I opened my eyes, he was still staring at me with the same intensity, still hard inside me.

“Again?” he asked, thumb pressed against my clit. I nodded, all words lost with the last orgasm. “Can I put you on your belly?” I nodded again as Darius eased himself out of me. My pussy began to spasm as if protesting the void he'd left. I rolled over on the table, facedown, ready for round two.

I felt Darius's hand beneath my chin. “I want to see you, Nae. Your eyes make me cum.” I was growing wetter with every word. I strained my neck to look at Darius as he entered me from behind, sliding easily into my dripping pussy.

“Umm, Janae, umm,” Darius moaned over and over, and I could tell he was near his own orgasm. I tilted my hips up so that Darius's stroke hit me in the right spot. I began to shake as I rode out my third or fourth orgasm of the day—I'd stopped counting.

“I'm coming, Darius.”

“Me too, love.” I came and I froze, Darius's last word resounding in my mind. Love? I felt Darius's hips shake and his strokes became erratic, losing all their rhythm. He collapsed against me, stroking slower now and holding both my breasts in his hand. Love? After a moment, Darius pulled out and turned me over, kissing the space between my breasts before he laid his head there. Love? I played with his hair with one hand, stroked his back with the other. I didn't know what to say. Maybe it was a nickname with the same power as “baby” or “honey.” I didn't know. What I did know was that I was suddenly afraid, the weight of what we'd been doing the past week as heavy as Darius was, collapsed onto my small frame.

“They'll be looking for us,” I whispered, stirring beneath him. Darius got up, interrogating me with his eyes.

“Something's wrong.”

“No, it's not. You were good, baby. I like your all-day game.” I tried to smile and hide my fear.

“Something's wrong and I know it.” Darius was stepping into his shorts, pulling his shirt down over his head. “Did I do something to make you uncomfortable?”

“No, Darius. I would tell you.” I stepped into my white dress, pulled the straps onto my shoulders. Darius came behind me to zip up my dress, then kissed me at the nape of my neck.

“You promise?” He kissed both my shoulders. I nodded, unable to lie to my friend. Friend?

When we got upstairs, the sun had left the sky, leaving pink footprints in its wake. Alicia and her friends were still in the same place, her husband and his still playing cards. The girls were on to some other game, the hula hoops discarded in the yard. Alicia walked us to the door as we said our good-byes to the others. She was standing on her porch as Darius opened first my door, then his. He started the car.

“Y'all nasty!” Alicia laughed, waving as we pulled away. I laughed too, embarrassed and feeling dangerous. Darius's hand found my own as we drove toward my place.

 

 

 

 

 

O
nce upon a time Rosemarie met a man of integrity. He was six foot two inches of gentle, with warm blue eyes and a fiancée.

They met in a hotel in an old European country, he on business, she on business and neither intending anything more carnal than the breeze tickling the edges of the grand, oily building. Her room was bigger than her apartment back home—the management had converted ancient stables—and sometimes she thought she could hear the grunting of horses in the walls and their stamping feet at night waking her up.

She found the country an odd place, not green or red or orange like Trinidad, where all things, especially secrets, were Technicolor, but instead full of rare moments of light: a brilliant flower in amongst the shadowy walls, a flag on a car whizzing past, or the calm eyes of this man of integrity whose room faced hers on the other side of the hotel courtyard. They met in the middle, laughing at the queer accoutrements on show: a game
of bowls set out for visitors; a giant chess set with figures as big as a small child and a brilliant blue and purple peacock stalking around a cage in the background.

She had a habit of fixing men she desired with her large brown eyes, and he had the same habit. They began an eleven-day staring match in which he taught her bits of his language in the courtyard below the other guests' bedrooms every night, and they laughed until 1:00 a.m. At no point was there any suggestion of impropriety; he told her on the first night that he loved his woman, and she understood.

Rosemarie tried to stop looking into his eyes because the water there was so very tempting, but she was drawn in again and again. It didn't help that he was awkward during the day: when he entered a room he checked to see where she was, fidgeting, biting his fingernails, looking at her when he thought nobody was watching. He stuttered over her name when he said it in public. Some days he loitered around the edges of groups she was in; other days he ignored her. She was in a constant pit of emotions—triumphant, happy, relaxed, terrified, self-conscious. But regardless of how they were during the day, he would find her in the night: to talk politics, religion, film, and always to laugh. She was worried that he could smell her, soaking through her thin cotton trousers, and she found herself stroking things as he spoke—the tabletop between them, a pebble on her palms, her own cheek—yet each always holding the other's gaze so very deeply. He began to mirror her body language, to lean forward seconds after she did, cupping his hands to his face the way she did, his pupils dilating. He touched her three times: to flick an earwig from her shoulder, to pick something off the back of her sweater, and another time when their knees touched, like a baby's kiss, when he left his knee there for screaming seconds.

Goodnights between them lingered, and they were painful and
warm. He reached out for her, or was happy for her to hug him or kiss his cheeks, but it was all so wooden and difficult! Never had she seen two such worried people. It was because they could both feel the bedrooms around them, leaning in on them.

Why you keep finding me every night
, she thought, wanting him to, but proud of his restraint, this good man.
What you want from me?

She sought respite in another friendship: an elderly, married man called Leo, who sometimes joined them outside in the evenings to smoke. Leo laughed when she told him how much she liked the man of integrity. “I understand,” he said, and patted her hand.

“But you know that he will never betray his fiancée.”

She felt sick. Leo and the man were friends, and part of her had hoped that he would tell her something she didn't know, like fighting or disagreements or that the fiancée had no integrity. But she knew it wouldn't be so: every night, when the staring began to waver, to splinter at the edges, she could feel him leaving her. It was as if water began to seep through the cracks in their speech, and as time trickled by, his new reluctance became a river, unending and unquestionable. It was as if his woman was swimming toward them, whispering. At these times, his smiles didn't matter, the hours they spent together didn't matter; she was a mere puddle of rainwater when compared to the inevitability of his impending marriage.

“I will be your
butlava vrba
, your hollow willow tree,” Leo said. It meant confidante in their language, somebody to fill up with words, to stop herself from saying them out loud in the courtyard. She was grateful for his affection—she could call him over and lean against him, and their easy hugs soothed her.

On the ninth night Rosemarie told the man of integrity that it had been good to get to know him. He changed the subject
and began to explain theories of relativity, looking up into the sky, saying how far away the stars were, when compared to the sun, and that it took seven years for their light to reach us. She was hurt that he'd changed the subject, but then realized he hadn't; clumsily, he'd brought it back to them, saying that wherever they were in the world they would be close, certainly in comparison with the stars, that they could reach out anytime, that they looked at the same sky.