Mr. Mysterious In Black

by S. Ann Cole

  A ding of the doorbell pulled him from his emotional thoughts. Sadie was deep in her mixing, her pink tongue tipping over her lower lip, her brows furrowing as she concentrated on the contents in the bowl. Jumping to his feet, he tugged his ball cap backwards on his head as he went to answer the door. A sigh of frustration rushed through him when he opened the door to find Tanya gazing up at him under her lashes with a sultry smile and a gift box in her hand. Dressed in a very short, very tight red dress and make-up galore, she was much too glamorized for this hour of the day.

  “Darren’s not here,” he said before she could speak.

  When he made to close the door, she stopped it with her free hand and rolled her eyes. “I’m here to see you, silly.” Holding the gift out to him, she lilted, “Happy Birthday.”

  Glancing at the neatly wrapped, gift box in her hand, he could predict that in it was either a framed picture of herself or a stack of nude ones. Most girls were so conceited that the only gift they could think to give a guy was pictures of themselves. Very rarely did he receive a gift of something he was actually interested in. “You know I can’t accept that.”

  Taking a step closer to him, Tanya pouted her glossed lips. “Why not?”

  “Because Sadie will have my balls, that’s why.”

  She took another step closer, placed a hand on his bare chest, and whispered, “She doesn’t have to know. Let me in, Nelly. I can do things to you that that inexperienced child can’t.” Before he could stop her, she licked her tongue across his bare chest. “No one has to know anything. Neither her nor Darren. It’ll be our secret.”

  Grabbing her arm, he flung her back. “She will know because she’s here. And I wouldn’t lie to her. I’m hers. I’m not up for—”

  The door ripped from his grip as Sadie squeezed her way past him. Stopping to face Tanya she hissed, “I was here. Now I’m leaving. He’s free. Give him the birthday gift that I couldn’t,” and trotted off.

  Shit.

  Nelly shoved Tanya out of the way and ran the distance to grab Sadie around her waist. Lifting her combating body off the ground, he turned and headed back to his flat, ducking his head to shield from the blows of her flailing arms. Tanya stood at his doorway with smug smile and he shot her a death glare and barked, “Leave, Tanya!”

  Stepping across his threshold, he kicked the door shut as he tried to control a screaming, skirmishing Sadie. “Chill out, babe.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me to chill out, you…you…” she screamed. “Let me go! I hate you!”

  Ignoring her rants, he carried her back into the kitchen and set her down on the counter, forcing his body between her thighs and wrapping his arms in an inescapable lock around her. Sadie dug her fingernails in the skin of his shoulders, tugged hard on his braids, bit into his flesh… As painful as her abuses were, he pretended not to feel a thing. Eventually, she gave up fighting, folded her arms and spat, “I hate you.”

  Looking straight into her eyes, which were saying the complete opposite of hate, he demanded to know, “Why do you hate me?”

  She broke eye contact with him and began fingering her long curls. “Because if I wasn’t here, you would’ve…you would’ve…”

  Unlocking his hands from around her waist, he brought them to cup her face. “I wouldn’t have done anything, Sadie. What part of ‘I’m yours’ don’t you understand?”

  “I…but…I don’t know how…” she stuttered. “She’s right, Nelly. She’s better for you. She’s older and experienced. I’m not. I can’t even bake you a damn cake.”

  “Who says that’s what I’m looking for? What I’m looking for is right here in my arms. In my eyes, you aren’t lacking. You’re just perfect. For me. You’re mine, baby. Mine. I love you.”

  Nelly turned to the cake batter on the counter, dipped his finger inside and licked it off. “Tastes just fine to me. All you need to do is pour it in the baking pan, toss it in the oven and walla! You’ve baked me a cake. You. “

  She giggled, and the sound was amazing to his ears. But just as soon, that sound was gone as her face became clouded and troubled. She opened her mouth as if to say something then closed it, shaking her head against her thought.

  “What is it?”

  Twining the ends of his braids around her fingers, she whispered, “We’re young, Nelly. So young. Do you think you’ll still feel the same way about me in a couple of years from now? It’s…it’s what I’m most frightened of. That this won’t be…eternal. “

  Nelly hugged her tight around her slim, delicate frame, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “My love for you is eternal. I’ll never stop loving you, Sadie. Ever.”

  He thought he heard a sob escape her, but he didn’t check to be sure. He was too caught up in squeezing the life out of her, as if she would just poof and disappear at any minute. While he could control many things, here and now, he had no control over the future. And she’d now planted in his mind that there might possibly be a future without her.

  Helpless and powerless was how he felt at that moment. And the factual thought came to him that, apart from his controlling father, she, Sadie Elizabene Francé, was the only living person who could make him, Natalio Nellandi Nelson, feel feeble and vulnerable.

  He may not know a lot of things at his age, but he knew with utter certainty that he would never stop loving her…

  The constant buzzing of Natalio’s cell phone against his thigh hauled him out of his memories. He withdrew the phone from his pocket to see a few missed calls from his new assistant Tiffany. These calls, he knew, had nothing to do with business. He cleared them and opened her text message that read:

  Guess what I’m wearing?

  He could guess, of course: nothing. To humor himself, he text back:

  What?

  And as he predicted, her answering text was:

  Nothing. x

  He ignored the message and directed his gaze out the car window as it sped along the streets. The lights of illuminated buildings and passing cars intermittently slipped through the car’s darkness.

  He’d known he shouldn’t have shoved his dick inside Tiffany’s mouth the other day. But he was only trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t dead, seeing that he’d been feeling like a lifeless man ever since Sadie walked out on him. Now Tiffany was being a nuisance, which meant he just might have to fire another assistant. Another incoming text sent his phone abuzz:

  You were so big inside my mouth. Your taste was heavenly.

  I can’t wait to feel you inside me.

  Come see me tonight. I’m wet and waiting…

  On a grunt, he set his phone on silent mode and slid it back inside his pocket. It’d been almost six weeks since Sadie left him and as the days went by, his hopes of her coming back to him seemed bleaker and bleaker. He could easily force her to be with him. Barge in on her, be a domineering sonuvabitch and take over her life. It wasn’t hard. But he wanted her to want to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her.

  If she could effortlessly live on without him, or even a thought of him, then maybe what they had was unilateral. Maybe it wasn’t what they had, but what he had. He just might have to let go of all this and live on. She certainly has.

  Should she ever try to come back, though, he’d make it tough for her. She’d have to fight. He’d test her love for him. He’d never allow her to just run back into his arms after all this pain.

  However, he wouldn’t be brainless enough to not take her back. She was his lifeline, and there was absolutely no happiness without her. She was that strong, beautiful, blooming tree, and he was that clinging epiphyte.

  He needed her to survive.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Distant mumblings beckoned me from the darkness. The darkness was comforting, relaxing and uncomplicated because there was nothing to see, hence, nothing to fear. Away with the light, away with the voices, please just let me sleep. As if they’d been granted independence, my eyes fluttered open. I groaned, and h
ere approached an unwelcomed headache—a little red devil with a sledgehammer in hand.

  Casting glances around my environment, I took note that I was in my bedroom, and that it was morning. Kelsy was sprawled next to me asleep, with white lines of dried saliva on her cheek. I sat up in bed and the little devil with the hammer in my head began pounding harder. A couple of aspirins would subdue this fiend, I was sure. Preferably some soporific aspirins that would send me right back into the darkness of sleep. Sluggishly, I rose from the bed and ambled out my room and down the hall.

  Two heads and four eyes turned to look at me when I entered the living area.

  “Oh thank goodness, you’re awake,” Brenda said through a relieving sigh. She was in Hello Kitty pajamas and cradling a large, black mug of coffee. Her brother, Tommy, sat next to her on the sofa looking equally worried.

  Tommy was a nice chunk of a guy. Tall, dark and handsome; the typical. And he was implicitly, one hundred percent, head over heels in lust with me. The feeling was not at all mutual. Handsome he was, to die for, yes, but he had never sent my heart sprinting before. Besides, Brenda was explicit about her disdain of Tommy and I ever hooking up.

  “What the hell happened?” Brenda demanded.

  Another hard blow from the hammering devil in my head prompted my legs to move towards the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

  Brenda stared at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “Sadie, I found you and Kelsy passed out last night.”

  I frowned, and even that hurt. After swallowing two aspirins and emptying a tall glass of water, snaps of yesterday’s events came hobbling in. But the last thing I remember was driving home with a torpid Kelsy. I had no memory of how we ended up in bed. Did I pass out, too?

  Yes dummy, that’s what Brenda just said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In Kelsy’s car outside. Tommy had just come over to help me with my paper when we heard the continuum of a car horn. We rushed outside and found both of you passed out in the car; your head was resting face down on the horn.”

  Shit. “Crashed?”

  “No. The gear was in Park. So I suppose you passed out after.”

  “What happened? Were you two drugged?” asked Tommy, the fledgling lawyer.

  “Maybe. Because I can’t remember anything,” I prevaricated.

  Brenda sighed noisily. “We were going to take you to the hospital but then you woke up for about five minutes, moaning about how hungry you were and at the same time laughing like an idiot. And Kelsy, she cried in her sleep all night about cocaine and dying and Tevin. A whole bunch of nonsense.”

  I can’t believe I’d passed out, too. Lack of food and sleep, I guess. Enervation from all those dramatic, surprising and heart-pounding events. It was a miracle I haven’t died of a weakened heart. Miracle I was even awake. “I’m not sure what happened. I’m just glad I’m still alive.” Liar.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Tommy asked in his serious lawyer tone.

  No, I wasn’t about to tell these two anything. Especially Brenda, I didn’t trust her. Besides, the nature of what happened was nothing to tell. Tight-lipped I remained.

  “Being at a bar. Having one too many drinks,” I shrugged.

  Brenda eyed me distrustfully. “You’re in the same clothes you left for work in on Thursday morning. You didn’t come home since then. Which means you skipped work yesterday. Spill it.”

  I schooled my face into impassivity. “Maybe we were kidnapped and screwed into oblivion. Then they decided not to kill us and left our senseless bodies outside to be found. What else could it be? I told you, I don’t remember squat shit. Thanks for helping us in. Now lay off.”

  Brenda rolled her eyes. “You’re incorrigible, Sadie!”

  Tommy walked over to me, wrapped a solicitous arm around my shoulders and led me to the sofa. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Just peeved at the slow subsidence of this brutal headache.”

  He gazed at me with passionate dark eyes for a while, then brushed his thumb over my cheek. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

  I allowed myself the indulgence of a smile as he strode off with servility to the kitchen. Oh, Tommy Boy. His feelings for me were perpetual. “Thanks.”

  Brenda scoffed in contempt as she got up and followed Tommy over to the kitchen.”Give it up, Tommy. Sadie’s sleeping with billionaires now.”

  The clamor of falling utensils in the kitchen told me that Tommy was not pleased with that news. “Is she now?”

  “Yes,” Brenda smirked. Settling her butt on a stool at the breakfast bar, she began flipping through the day’s newspaper while sipping her coffee. “CEO of ENEN.”

  I fixed glowering eyes at her. “That’s why you got a bloody cheese for a gift. You have a gargantuan beak!”

  Brenda snapped her mouth shut, mortified. And it was my turn to smirk.

  “That true, Sadie?” Tommy asked, and I could tell his indifference was being labored for.

  “Spurious.”

  He turned his narrowed gaze to Brenda, “Why would you say that, then?”

  “Because it’s true,” Brenda defended. “Or was. The bad-boy billionaire was here in my house, sticking his tongue down her throat. They were dating, Thomas. I’m not lying.”

  “Finally. You’ve used the right word,” I droned from where I lounged on the sofa. “Were.”

  Tommy strode over, handing me a mug of coffee. “You were dating a Nelson?”

  I took the mug. “Briefly.”

  He reseated himself next to me. “So what happened?”

  “Oh, you know,” I shrugged. “The rich and the poor don’t blend well. They always end up with their own their kind.”

  Please, can we stop talking about him?

  Heaven knows, I missed him. Loved him. Wanted him right here with me to comfort me and warrant that everything would be alright. That he was here to stay and wouldn’t ever leave again. Oh God, why did I push him away? Why didn’t I listen to what he had to say? I bit my lip, quelling the sudden urge to call him and beg him to come back to me. It was my turn to burn in hell. Pride was one of the seven deadly sins, and it’s the sin I was most guilty of.

  Tommy leaned closer. “You know I fancy you. Think you to be one of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen. But you’re so damn hard to get through to. And so irritatingly cute with that ‘whatever’ personality of yours. I find it a heady blend.” Tommy’s gaze darkened. “I want you, Sadie. Badly.”

  I sipped my coffee. “Yeah. I know. You’ve been telling me that for a few years now.”

  “So won’t you give us a try?”

  “It doesn’t matter to you that I might have been kidnapped and raped by over a dozen men? My vajayjay must be as wide as a martini glass now. Leather skinned with no grip whatsoever. No tightness. Oh, Tommy, you wouldn’t want that.” I bit the inside of my cheeks, failing to repress my laughter at the horrified expression on Tommy’s face.

  “That didn’t happen,” he said in a soft tone, trying to convince himself.

  My shoulders jerked in a shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not. I told you, I can’t remember. Anything could have happened, even worse than that.” I tried my damnedest to sound serious, reveling in the myriad of expressions racing across Tommy’s face. That ought to keep his libidinous pursuits at bay.

  The sound of Kelsy’s voice jerked both our heads around. “Sas’ Christ, why do I feel like a newborn baby who’d been locked up in a bloody womb for nine months? I feel damned miserable and mushed. Someone please slap me on my ass.”

  I giggled. It was good to see my friend awake and back to her old self. Last time I saw a conscious Kelsy, she was wide-eyed, speech-impeded and blanched. Abandoning my mug on the coffee table, I opened my arms to her. “Come here biatch, give me a kiss.”

  “Am I allowed French?”

  With an ears-wide grin, I nodded. “Oh, hell yeah!”

  Kelsy leaped into my arms and we landed on the floor rolling and giggling like two teenager
s while Tommy looked on in amusement. Brenda appeared in the periphery of my vision with her hands planted on her hips, jabbering about being sure not to break anything with our childish gamboling. But Kelsy and I were in our own world, laughing like there was no tomorrow, as if we had no problems in the world. Not because we were senseless idiots but because of all that happened in the last forty eighty hours. It was too much to remain serious and worried about. Too much to even talk about. So we just laughed. Hard, cathartic, bubbling laughs until our bodies were once again back to normal, relieved of stress. Relaxed.

  “I love you, biatch,” she giggled.

  “I love you, too, sis.”

  Deep in contemplation, I flipped my Blackberry over and over in my palm. The salty sea breeze caressed my skin as I pleasured my eyes with the beautiful marina view from the balcony of Kelsy’s apartment at Esprit. Queues of yachts and boats sat unsteadily on the perpetually moving blue water. It’s amazing here. I hadn’t told Kelsy that I was gifted an apartment a few feet away from hers. She would only try coaxing me into taking it since I’d refused to move in with her.

  I’d packed my materials, sketches and needed implements and decided on spending the rest of my weekend here with Kelsy so I could focus on completing a few pieces for the bidding on Monday. Getting such tasks done back at my residence had proved to be impossible with Brenda’s constant prying and Tommy’s relentless pursuit. They’re an annoying pair.