Believe in Me (Strickland Sisters Book 2)

by Alexandria House

  I leaned in close to her ear, and whispered, “My pussy, my pussy, my…pussy.”

  With heavy eyelids, she looked at me, and said, “I am so damn wet right now.”

  I hopped up and reached for her hand. “Come on.”

  She lifted a brow. “But I haven’t finished my drink.”

  “I’ll send Rell to buy a whole damn liquor store and a fucking bartender, if you want. I’m hard as hell, and if we don’t leave, I’ma bend you over this table and fuck you into oblivion right here and right now.”

  She took my hand and moved into my personal space, placing her hands on the sides of my face, bringing it down to hers and kissing me with so much passion that I actually felt a little lightheaded. Then she smiled, and said, “Why don’t we just get a room here, then? You wanna do that?”

  I stared at her for a moment. “Hell. Yeah.”

  24

  “You think this’ll be enough food for you and your sisters?” Lorenzo asked, as we stood in his kitchen facing the counter.

  With wide eyes, I nodded. “Five different kinds of finger sandwiches, meatballs, fruit and veggie trays, assorted cheeses, crackers, and you had your mother bake two cakes and a pie? Yeah, I think that’s enough, Zo. More than enough considering we usually just have popcorn and wine when we get together.” I stretched up on my toes and kissed him. “Thanks, baby.”

  He smiled, then gave me this preoccupied look. “There’s wine, too. Red, white, like three bottles of each, and—”

  “Zo, everything’s perfect.”

  He peered down at me. “You sure? I mean, this is your family. I want everything to be right.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, locking my eyes with his, and said, “Baby, I’m hosting girls’ night in a mansion, your mansion, with a ton of food, a theater at our disposal, enough wine to intoxicate an elephant, and there are seven bathrooms. Seven. That bathroom count alone is going to impress my sisters. So, you’re good, and for the record, the only person you need to impress is me, and you do that every single day.”

  He smiled, slipping his arm around me as he kissed me while easing his hand down my back to squeeze my butt. I giggled as I stepped out of his embrace and headed to the foyer, peeping through one if the thin windows that flanked the front door to see if either of my sisters had arrived.

  “You told Rell they were coming, right? He knows to let them in the gate?”

  I felt the heat from Lorenzo’s body as he stepped up behind me. “Yeah, baby. I told him.” He moved my hair and kissed my neck, adding, “And they’re not even supposed to be here for another thirty minutes,” as he reached around and squeezed my right breast.

  “I know. I’m just excited to see them. Last time, it was just me and Angie. I’ve missed Nicky’s loony ass.”

  He slid his hand down the front of my body to my jeans, fumbling with the button for a second before saying, “Unbutton those for me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What you think I’m doing?”

  “Now?”

  “You know of a better time?”

  “Yeah, later.”

  “You turning me down?”

  Before I could answer, he’d spun me around and was devouring my mouth, which served to weaken me a little. But when he took my hand and placed it on his erection, well, my lady parts instantly morphed into a water park complete with wading pools and slides and rides and lazy rivers and splash pads. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor right there in the foyer, my jeans and panties abandoned as I eagerly straddled Lorenzo’s face, what he had often told me was one of his favorite positions. I shuddered at the sensation of his tongue against my clit, loved the moans he released as if pleasing me truly pleased him, too. I grinded against his mouth, throwing my head back as I hummed his name.

  It didn’t take long for me to climax, and the orgasm was so intense that all I could do was slide off his face and lie on the floor next to him, my chest heaving as I tried to recover. I closed my eyes and placed a hand on my chest, feeling my heart race under my blouse as Lorenzo opened my rubbery legs and slid his shaft inside me. I opened my eyes as he closed his and groaned loudly, thrusting urgently, fiercely, deeply. He felt achingly good, the kind of good I wanted to last forever.

  I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close as he captured my mouth, hungrily consuming it as he continued to bury himself deep inside of me, then moved his mouth so that it pressed against mine as his breathing grew ragged. He caressed my cheek as he stared into my eyes. Then his brow furrowed as he thrusted one final time before roaring my name.

  We were getting redressed when one pair of car lights, then another, shone through the windows, illuminating the entryway.

  Lorenzo kissed my cheek and began walking away.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  “To get some air freshener. Smells like someone’s been having sex in here.”

  *****

  We were in the kitchen, loading our plates with food, when Nicky said, “Damn! You made all this, Nay?”

  “No, Lorenzo did.”

  She stuck a toothpick in a meatball, and said, “Wow! All these hors d’oeuvres…”

  I rolled my eyes.

  We settled around the table, and after Nicky had drained her first glass of wine, she said, “Where did Lorenzo go? He greeted us and disappeared.”

  “Probably closed up in his office writing,” I replied. “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to say this with him around. But anyway, Nay, that motherfucker is fine! Shit! Big-ole thick, grown man fine!”

  “I told you he was,” Angie reminded her.

  “And so handsome in a rough, ‘I been through some shit’ kind of way. Girrrrl, I bet he be having you yelling your ABC’s backwards! Good grief! I bet he can bait the hook and fry the fish!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Nicky! What the hell does that even mean?”

  She drank half of another glass of wine. “That he can get his cunnilingus on and then hit you with that superior stroke game. Am I wrong?”

  I grinned, took a sip from my own glass of wine, and said, “Nope.”

  “Got me all hot just thinking about how good it probably is. Makes me wanna give all of this to Maurice later tonight,” Nicky said.

  “Don’t you mean Travis?” Angie asked, looking confused.

  “No, she means Maurice,” I said.

  The confusion remained on Angie’s face.

  “Nay, this is truly some Cinderella shit. You went from that doggone frog to a big-old rich prince!” Nicky gushed.

  “Um, I think you’re mixing up two fairy tales, Nicky,” Angela pointed out.

  Nicky shrugged. “I’m just saying, you don’t bullshit with your upgrades. It’s like you traded in one of those big, brick-ass Nokia phones for some shit they ain’t even invented yet, like a damn iPhone 22!”

  “As crazy as Nicky is, I have to agree, and Nay, if anyone deserves what you have now with Lorenzo, you do. You put in enough years of misery with a man who didn’t appreciate you. But Lorenzo? Girl, he is all gone over you. I really don’t think he wanted to leave us alone. I have never seen a sexier kiss on the cheek in my life,” Angie said.

  “Yeah, he loves me, and I love him, too.” Noticing that Nicky was pouring a third glass of wine, I added, “Nicky, you planning on staying here tonight? I can’t let you drive if you’re gonna keep drinking.”

  “I’ll have Travis pick me up. Gotta go home to him since I have him right where I want him.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “He proposed.”

  My eyes widened. “Did you accept?”

  “Not yet, but I will. I told him I needed to think about it. You know, let him sweat for a while. That way, when I accept in a month or so, he’ll feel like the luckiest man in the world.”

  Angie said, “But what about Maurice?”

  “Who?” Nicky asked.

  Angie looked at me, and I just shook
my head.

  “Okaaaay…well, what about Damon then?” Angie questioned.

  Nicky frowned. “What about him? He’s still, and always will be, my BFF.”

  Angie reclined in her chair and gave Nicky a smirk. “Nicky, come on. You know he’s in love with you, and you care about him, too. You lost your mind when he came home to visit last year, and you guys have kept in touch since then, right?”

  “Uh, first of all, we love each other as friends. Second, yes, I lost my mind when he visited because I had not seen or talked to him in a decade and he is my best friend, and third, yes, we keep in touch because we’re—you guessed it—friends!”

  “Nothing more?” Angie pushed.

  I wasn’t around Damon as much as Angie back in the day, but I always thought he was sweet, and it was obvious even to me that he was crazy about Nicky. So I said, “Yeah, I always thought there was more there than friendship, too.”

  “No! We’re just friends! Me and Damon are not going down that road again.”

  “What road?” Angie asked. Then she sat up straight and shrieked, “You and Damon—”

  Nicky downed her wine in one gulp and shook her head. “I don’t wanna talk about this.” Her voice sounded shaky, like whatever had happened was deeper than she was willing to let on.

  Angie and I looked at each other as Nicky stood from the table and excused herself to the bathroom.

  “You remember where I showed you it was?” I asked her retreating back.

  “No, but I’ll find it.”

  Once she was gone, I asked, “What was that?”

  Angie shook her head. “I don’t know. Looks like something went down between them that’s got her shook. Never seen her like that before. She looked like she was really upset.”

  “Right.”

  A few seconds later, Nicky returned with slightly puffy eyes, as if she’d been crying, and me and Angie dropped the subject of Damon altogether.

  25

  I had to agree to take call for three weekends in a row in order to travel with Lorenzo to the three-day Black Fiction Festival in Maryland, or as he called it, the Fic Fest. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go, it was just that, like I said before, I hated conferences, and he’d told me that was essentially what this was. A huge conference with writers and book lovers, complete with panels and everything. The only big difference would be that the authors would be the vendors, and Lorenzo, or Street, was one of the featured authors. He was also on a panel, and as a featured author, was hosting his own meet and greet.

  He was so excited about this event that by the time the day came for us to leave, I was kind of stoked about it, too. He promised this event would be like nothing I’d ever attended before, and well, he was right.

  The Fic Fest was held in an event center in the DMV. We arrived early to set his booth up and met some other really nice authors. We’d flown in the night before, had rested well, but were a little late getting to the venue because Lorenzo, and I quote, had to have some of his pussy that morning. Not that I was complaining.

  Lorenzo had had all his books and table swag shipped to a member of his street team, which he’d had to explain to me was a group of fans who helped him spread the word about his books. Most volunteered their services, but he’d actually paid this young lady to receive and bring his inventory to this event.

  She damn near climbed him when we arrived, and I pretty much had to talk myself into not snatching her bald. But after Lorenzo introduced us and made it clear that I was his woman, she calmed down considerably. That might have also had something to do with the scowl I gave her. I usually wasn’t really the jealous type. That was probably why Robert got away with cheating on me more than once. I never went looking for anything or got upset when women approached him. Wait, who was I kidding? Robert wasn’t Lorenzo by a long shot, the longest of shots. Women didn’t exactly fawn over him, because he wasn’t attractive. He just managed to somehow find affair partners who, like me, were willing to see past his looks. But I never experienced with him what I experienced with Lorenzo that day.

  Anyway, the street team member, Stacy, left shortly after we got there to change and promised to be back with the others. The others turned out to be five other women who all came dressed in shorts and black t-shirts with the words “Street’s Team” on them in red lettering, made to look like oozing blood. I quickly found out their jobs were to walk around the venue handing out Lorenzo’s promotional items, like postcards and bookmarks, as a way of driving traffic to his table, while Stacy, dressed in the same attire, stayed behind to help him at the table by handing him books to sign. He gave me the task of handling the payments, and I quickly had to get acclimated to using the app on his tablet to process credit card payments or make change for the cash customers. Not complicated work, but extremely chaotic, because to say my man was popular would be a huge understatement.

  Good Lord!

  When they opened the venue’s doors to the public, people literally poured into the place, with a vast majority of them making their way to see Lorenzo. Some came prepared to buy one or all of the seven books he had in publication. Others came with their own personal copies for him to sign. They grinned, declared their love for him—not for his books, but him—took pictures with him beside the huge standing sign of him that sat next to his table, had him sign everything from the variety of Street’s Team t-shirts some of them wore, to the souvenir books that were handed out at the door, to the palms of their hands. One woman had him sign her bare back!

  Some of these women were even crying about finally getting to meet him. It was like I was at the table with Drake or The Weeknd, or shit, Beyoncé. It was amazing, exhilarating, and when I wasn’t side-eyeing some of the bolder women, I was feeling extremely proud of my man. In this world, just like in my world, he was a superstar.

  But at the end of the day, I was also exhausted. So was he, but I could imagine that much interaction with other people would be hard for him anyway. I worked with the public every day. Lorenzo didn’t. He spent most of his time in his office writing, and other than Rell and an occasional visit from his sister or mother, I was his only link to the outside world. Once, I’d asked him about that, and he told me he’d seen people do so much bad stuff in the past that he preferred a more low-key life now and didn’t particularly like being around people. And when we made it back to our room and he instantly fell into bed, I knew our plans to go out to eat were nixed, especially when I came out of the bathroom to find him asleep. So I ordered room service for both of us, woke him up to eat, and then we both climbed into bed.

  As we settled into bed that night, he whispered, “Thank you for taking care of me, baby.”

  I kissed his bare chest and closed my eyes. “Always.”

  *****

  The second day was a bit less hectic, since Lorenzo’s panel was scheduled for first thing that morning. Stacy, who I found to actually be very sweet once she learned her boundaries, manned the table while I sat in the panel audience and watched Lorenzo work his magic. He was seated at the front of the room with four other male authors for a discussion titled, “Will the real men of black fiction stand up?” And I felt like the Author Street fan I was as he sat there looking all thick and luscious, discussing the perceived shrinking number of male authors in black literature.

  The rest of that day was more of a blur than the first, as even more people crowded the venue, with Lorenzo’s table being surrounded by readers, mostly women, for most of the afternoon. Again, we were both too exhausted that evening to do anything other than order room service and collapse into bed. The next day was his meet and greet, and I knew it would be exponentially more exhausting for him.

  26

  “Street! I just gotta know about that sex scene in Bulletproof! You know, the one where Monty and his woman make up after that big fight. I could just feel the passion. It was so hot, it had me squirming and stuff. Did you write that from real life experience? I mean…” The woman smiled as she
shifted her weight on her feet in the middle of the packed room. “Are you that passionate and intense when you make love?”

  Damn, these women were getting bolder by the second! You’d think they’d never seen a fine man before. Sitting off to the side at the front of the small room crammed full of forty or fifty readers who’d won the coveted prize of this intimate time with Lorenzo through some online contest, I was beginning to get a little heated about all this flirting. I mean, Lorenzo had introduced me as his lady, but that hadn’t stopped a thing. These women were shameless.

  With a grin, Lorenzo said, “Let’s just say most of my writing comes from personal experience, especially in that department.”

  “Oooo, that must mean he can eat it good, because Monty ate his woman like she was a plate of neck bones!” some woman in the crowd shouted, to which most of the room burst into laughter.

  Another woman yelled, “And that must mean he can knock you out with his sex like Monty, too. Had his woman calling him Nyquil!”

  There was louder laughter as Lorenzo just shrugged and smiled, then turned and winked at me. Even I had to smile, because they were both right on the money. Lorenzo was good at many things, but as Nicky had put it, his cunnilingus skills were at the top of the list in a tie with his mind-numbing stroke game, which had knocked me out on several occasions. I adjusted in my seat and thought to myself how I couldn’t wait to get his big sexy ass back to the hotel.

  “I have a question?” a young woman said loudly, standing from her chair on the far-right side of the room.

  Lorenzo nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay, my name is Cheryl Pointer, and first of all, no disrespect to your lady here, but Street, I have been in love with you and your pen game since I first picked up a copy of Bulletproof. I remember turning the last page of that story and thinking it was the most heartbreaking, intense, emotional thing I’d ever read. It was so different from a lot of the other books like it, because you could feel Monty’s emotion. He did some bad stuff, but you still wanted him to win, because you understood why he was doing what he was doing.”