by Linda Verji
She reached for Ash. This time Kian released him. She bent to belt the baby into the stroller but he started to whimper in a way that told her that if she put him in there, he was quite ready to bring the store down. Putting the shopping basket with the clothes in the stroller instead, she stood up with him still in her arms only to find Kian still watching her.
“Let me at least pay for your stuff then?”
God No! Walking into the house with clothes for Ash and no money spent was even worse than coming in without a receipt. Polo would kill her. “Thank you for the offer, but no.”
“So you won’t let me show how much I appreciate your help?”
She smiled. “Just a thank you is enough.”
Before she could react, he drew closer and brushed a kiss on her cheek. His voice was hoarse when he whispered in her ear, “Thank you, Tasha.”
“You’re welcome.” Her own voice was ragged. Before she could do something stupid – like turn her head and kiss him – she walked away, the imprint of his kiss still burning against her skin.
*
What the hell am I doing? Kian wondered as he watched Tasha navigate her way towards the payment counter. She’s married. That knowledge wasn’t enough to quell his arousal or to prevent his eyes from caressing her body lustily as she walked away.
Kissing her had been just as impulsive as it’d been beyond his control. It’d been aroused by tenderness and protectiveness when she’d flinched at his touch, driven by the feel of her supple back flexing against his palm and the brief touch of her fingers against his. It was only the last bit of common sense clinging to him that’d prevented him from kissing her on the lips like he wanted to.
Their unexpected meeting had only added to his confused state of mind. Thoughts of Tasha plagued his every waking moment causing him to rethink his stance on being a bachelor for life. . He’d believed that Hanna had cured him of women. However, being around Tasha and her children had suddenly turned what had been years of freedom into years stretched out in solitary emptiness without a woman’s love.
His erotic dreams of her were now punctuated with dreams of living with her, watching her eyes come alive, experiencing her smiles everyday and receiving an ounce – just an ounce – of the love she so generously doled out to her children. She’d started him thinking of a family – something he could’ve sworn wasn’t even in his nature.
For over sixteen years he’d never allowed any woman to touch his heart and when he did – it was a married woman? A woman he hadn’t even kissed let alone slept with? He was supposed to be too smart for this to be happen to him. Tasha was a taken woman and dreaming of her was an exercise in futility.
However, he couldn’t deny the powerful desire he felt for her. He’d acted normally as they shopped but inside he’d been struggling to keep from tugging her closer to his body by her waist and silently announcing to anyone watching that she was his.
He couldn’t flick away the constant thoughts that she deserved much better than the philandering Polo and that he could give her that. It didn’t help that she was feeling him just as much as he wanted her. She’d tried to hide it but Kian had been around too many women not to know arousal.
You couldn’t fake chemistry like that and he knew that sex between them would be explosive. He’d get to touch her, taste her, fuck her. Already he could imagine her moaning, tossing and turning beneath him as he drove into her with long hard strokes. Explosive!
She’s married.
Complicated!
If there was anything Kian liked, it was uncomplicated relationships. The smartest thing to do was to walk away. He should try to minimize their meeting at all cost. In that way he wouldn’t have to be constantly taunted by her presence. Instead he found himself reaching for his phone.
“Lauren, have you sent the Nelson’s their invitation to Mrs. Cavos’s fundraiser?”
“Not yet!” Lauren’s voice sounded over the phone. “I’m just about to send a courier to their house.”
“Don’t.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll drop them off myself tomorrow.”
What was he doing?
CHAPTER 8
“Bitch, is this Pucci or Gucci?” Chryssa gave Tasha a narrow-eyed look.
“I’m offended by that,” Tasha returned as she placed a creamy cup of tea in front of Chryssa. The bag she was currently holding had cleaned Tasha – or rather Polo – of a cool thousand.
“C’mon Chrys.” Zain laughed as she bit into a cookie. “You know Tasha wouldn’t give you a fake.”
They were all seated on high stools around the kitchen island. Last night Zain had called her asking if they could meet up. Polo had grudgingly agreed but given her a one-hour-tops time limit. Tasha had expected to go over to Zain’s but before she could leave, Chryssa and Zain had shown up at her gate. Polo hadn’t agreed to that!
Tasha was a hundred percent sure that this impromptu visit was going to earn her another black eye or split lip, especially because Chryssa had sent cops to check on her and Asia after the shooting. But she couldn’t exactly turn them back at the gates. As much as she was dreading the show down with Polo, she was determined to enjoy this time with her friends.
“Uh uh! I don’t know nothing about that.” Chryssa peered at the bag suspiciously. “Everybody knows all you bourgie bitches are just thugs in pencil skirts and Jimmy Choos.”
“You’re wearing a pencil skirt and Jimmy Choos,” Zain pointed out with another cookie in her fingers. This one she chucked down in only two bites.
“Immaterial. This is for the government,” Chryssa gestured to her black skirt suit. “In my heart I’m in a cropped top, booty shorts, clear spike heels and make up that you can see from three hundred miles away.”
Shaking her head, Zain popped another cookie into her mouth. “Does Eli know you’re this ratchet?”
“They’re still dating?” Tasha asked. She’d met Eli, a doctor colleague of Zain’s only once and from what she’d seen of his and Chryssa chemistry, it seemed like a disaster made in heaven.
“How many times do I have to tell you nosey hoes that Dr. Stuck-Up and I aren’t dating?”
“They’re dating.” Zain nodded at Tasha before she reached for another cookie.
Chryssa snatched the plate away before she could. “Okay you’re done. Tasha’s must have laced these things with some crack ‘cause your pregnant ass is delusional.”
“Heeeey.” Zain protested just as Asia came dashing through the kitchen, giggling madly, before disappearing into the connecting dining room.
Jaslene came rushing in her wake but came to a screeching halt when she saw the three ladies in the kitchen. Her eyes widened behind her glasses before her a bright smile lit up her face. “Hello.”
In the two days since Jaslene had been staying with them, Tasha had learnt a lot about her sister. Like her at that age, her sister had some serious self esteem issues when it came to her body but hid it under indifference. However, she’d made up for her perceived physical inadequacies with an amazing personality. She was constantly smiling, was wonderful with both Asia and Ash, and beyond making a pointed effort to keep away from Polo didn’t constantly nag Tasha to leave him.
“Ladies, this is my sister Jaslene,” Tasha introduced the women. “Jazzy, these are my friends, Chryssa and Zain.”
“You can call me Jazzy,” Jaslene said as she shook hands with Zain and Chryssa.
Once Jaslene was out of ear shot in search of Asia, Chryssa immediately asked, “When did your parents start talking to you again?”
She wasn’t really a sharer but her friends knew about her background. Tasha returned, “They aren’t.” She didn’t want to put Jaslene’s business out there so she finished with an, “It’s complicated.”
Chryssa opened her mouth gearing to ask more questions but was interrupted by the clanging of the main gates as they opened. All three women turned towards the large open windows. Expecting it to be Polo, Tasha’s heart r
ate sped up. However instead of Polo’s white Mercedes truck, a black Ferrari smoothly slid into the estate. Her pulse jumped from both anxiety and excitement.
Kian.
“Give me a minute, ladies,” Tasha excused herself. Feeling their curious gazes searing into her back and Polo’s always present cameras, she mentally commanded her body to keep her steps even – and not rush towards the door like it wanted to. She got to the door just as he pressed the buzzer.
“Kian!” she said as she opened the door, feeling both flustered and excited at the same time while struggling to curb her instinctive smile of welcome.
Kian wasn’t as reserved with his own smiles. His mouth widened into a slow one that curled her toes as he inclined his head. “Tasha.” The way he rolled her name on his tongue and caressed her face with his eyes sent her senses skittering and tumbling over each other in excitement.
“We didn’t know you were coming over,” she said, proud that her nervousness didn’t carry over into her voice. “Polo isn’t here?”
“I didn’t come to see Polo.” He’d come to see her. The thought sent her pulse racing into overdrive. Self consciously she ran her moist palms over her skirt unwittingly drawing his attention to her body. His eyes skimmed her, dropping from her face to her hips then back up her body, leaving a blazing trail of heat behind before he said, “Can I come in?”
“Um…I don’t…um…” She tripped over her words as her eyes swung towards the camera at the corner of the foyer. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Polo had already warned her not to bring Kian into his house but it was rude to refuse a guest entry into the house. Choosing the safer option she improvised, “I’m sorry. I was just about to leave for the store before you came.”
As excuses went it wasn’t her best work. She didn’t even have her car keys and she had house shoes on. That however didn’t stop Tasha from pulling the door closed behind her. Kian’s expression gave nothing away. His silent stare as she joined him on the porch was disconcerting; like he could read all her lies. Fortunately he didn’t call her out on them.
He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and came up with an envelope. “I brought you the tickets for the fundraiser…”
“Oh, thank you.” She reached for them, ensuring that their fingers didn’t touch in the exchange. Her nerves were already too frazzled.
“…and I wanted to see you again.”
There was something about the way he said it and the grim way he was looking at her that told her she didn’t – she shouldn’t want to know why he wanted to see her again. But her mouth had a will of its own. “Why?”
In silent answer his eyes skimmed over her, lingering long and hard on the outline of her breasts beneath the white blouse she had on. Her heart lurched and her flesh immediately perked up as if awaiting his touch. His grey eyes rose to her face, touched her parched lips before they met hers again. “Do you still have my number?”
She was too breathless to do anything but nod.
“Call me tonight.” Without waiting for her yay or nay, he turned and headed for his car.
Call him? Tasha had never been so glad that Polo’s cameras didn’t come with sound. Anyone listening in to Kian’s words wouldn’t have missed their meaning. He was trying to start something.
It was so tempting. What would it feel like to be touched tenderly even once? When she was younger, she’d thought that Polo’s roughness in bed was normal, that it was something every woman learnt to live with. Glad for the tiny morsels of affection he’d given her she’d accepted the violence. It was much more than she’d ever received from her father. After running away she’d avoided every man who even sniffed in her direction. She was done with that kind of love.
It was only listening to Zain and Chryssa discussing their sex lives that had cued her in to the fact that there was a lot more to sex and love. There were better men – and everything she’d seen of Kian told her he was one of them.
Didn’t she deserve a taste of tenderness just once? Just one real orgasm? Polo had stepped out on her so many times that her own infidelity would be just a small dot on a marriage already crowded in dirt stains. It wouldn’t be hard. A call on the emergency phone she kept underneath her car seat and a clandestine meeting in the guise of a shopping trip would do it.
The whole idea was so tempting.
But even as she mulled it over, Tasha knew she wouldn’t do it. She had a sick child, a step-child, a homeless sister and a disappearing act to organize. An illicit affair was just one complication too much. Regret washed over her as she strolled back into the house.
*
“Do you still have my number?”
“Call me.”
Polo drank in Kian Harper’s expressions as he said the words. Tasha’s back was to the porch camera so he couldn’t see her reaction but Kian’s words were enough to heat Polo.
After the Lucky fiasco and during one of Tasha’s shopping trips, he’d installed new surveillance in the house – this time with sound. After how she’d betrayed him he wanted to know everything she said and did. If there was some kind of spy gadget to find out what she was thinking too, he’d have already installed it.
And now it was paying for its worth in gold.
“Do you still have my number?”
“Call me?”
Kian Harper was straight up hitting on his wife.
That fucking bitch! What had she done to make the man think that he even had a chance? Polo didn’t blame Kian. He was a man and when a woman threw herself at you, you didn’t walk away. He should’ve disciplined her that day at the photo-shoot when he’d caught her trying to sidle to Kian using Polo’s kids. He pressed on the rewind button then replayed the scene again.
“Do you still have my number?”
“Call me?”
Tasha stood there looking like a dumb bitch, not even telling Kian that she wouldn’t call. If she thought she was going to disrespect him like that, she was an even dumber bitch.
“You’re gon’ learn today,” Polo said, his voice reverberating in the room. Instead of going straight upstairs, he sat back in his chair playing and replaying the scene and nursing his fury. You’re gon’ learn today.
This was the kind of anger he liked –cold rage that he could control. He hated the short uncontrolled bursts of temper that plagued him because they caused him more trouble then they were worth. Being able to think through his anger and mold it as he saw fit was addictive, powerful and arousing. This anger and sexual frustration were one and the same thing. The more he nursed one, the more the other grew.
When his rage was finally at tipping point, he switched off the small TV screen, slid the wooden sliding doors that hid it shut then pushed back his chair. He stood, letting the fury slither its way through the rest of his body before he slowly moved towards the door. The house was completely silent, its eerie quietness stroking his temper and heightening it. Polo smiled slightly as he turned the corner towards the master room. Ash had been moved into Jaslene’s room so he knew he had Tasha all to himself. He opened the door then locked it behind him.
She was bundled under the covers, deep asleep. She didn’t even stir when he flicked the light on. He stood watching her body rise and fall with every restful breath she took. Is she dreaming of fucking him? Walking towards her, he unbuckled his belt then pulled it though the hoops of his jeans. The first whizz of the leather through air was exhilarating but Tasha’s yelp as it fell over her was even more satisfying.
She sat up upright in the bed, her shocked gaze meeting his. Stupid bitch!
“You wake the kids and I’ll fuck you up.” Flexing the belt with both hands, he ordered, “Strip!”
Her movements were erratic as she pulled her green negligee over her head, her eyes already watering. He mentally urged her to let the tears fall but she didn’t. Once she was completely naked, he pushed the covers to the end of the bed. “On your stomach.”
Except for the dark stripes
that lined her back, his wife had a beautiful body. Over the years and because of his care, she’d lost all her baby fat and had become a woman worthy of Polo Nelson the Second. He’d made her and he owned her. Why couldn’t she just learn that? His belt met her skin with gratifying snaps.
Every small mew or jerk from her only aroused him more. By the time his arm was too tired to go on flinging the belt, he was harder than a bag of hammers. He stripped out of his clothes quickly and fell on her.
“Did you call him?” he growled as he tucked his dick into her tightness. When she didn’t answer, he shoved himself in harder. “Did you call Kian Harper?” She shook her head. He jerked her head towards him where he could see if she was telling the truth. Her face was a mess and stained with tears. “Let me find out that you did. You’ll wish I’d killed you.”
He pushed her face back to the pillow before he started driving into her with no let up until his orgasm hit him like a refreshing wave. When he was done, he flopped onto the bed and kicked Tasha off it.
He must’ve kicked too hard because there was a loud thud on the bedside table followed by Tasha’s distressed yelp. Polo didn’t even bother opening his eyes.
CHAPTER 9
They were late.
“They’re late,” Rafe pronounced unnecessarily.
“I know.” Kian’s eyes roved the room, skimming the sea of shimmering dresses and tuxedos in search of Polo and Tasha.
“I say we should count ourselves lucky,” Rafe said as he snared two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed it to Kian. “If they don’t come Dahlia might actually forgive us.”
While Rafe and Kian stood on the fringe of ballroom observing the entrants, Dahlia was at the frontlines, personally making sure that each guest was happy. They’d both underestimated her dislike of Polo. She’d not only put Rafe on the spot last night, but she’d called Kian and given him an earful too.
“They’re coming,” Kian insisted.
Where was she? Last night he’d stayed up waiting for her phone-call. He’d had no idea what he was going to say to her and all his mental rehearsals had fallen short. Wooing married women was not something he did everyday. Tasha had probably saved him from embarrassing himself.
