And despite Jenay’s underlying anxiety mixed with it, and Charles’s drain, they came. He pushed deep inside of her, over and over, until he hit that spot. And that one stroke, at that particular time, took her over. She reached her hand behind her body, and squeezed his hair, as she came. As he continued to fuck her in that controlled, wonderfully exhausting way she loved so much. He pounded her ass. He made her orgasm last longer than it had in recent memory. Until he felt her pulsations that wouldn’t ease, and his masterful control broke.
He came too, shortly after her, with a push in that took him into her deepest pocket, and he couldn’t get out. He rested there. And poured into her there.
Until they both collapsed from the weight of their own love.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning, Jenay was still feeling the effects of the night before. She was unable to stop smiling for one thing. Or to walk normally for another. She was still getting leakage from Charles despite showering. And when he came down for breakfast, looking sexy as sexy could get in his Valentino suit, those sensual feelings returned. She was proud that that man right there was her man. But she couldn’t understand why such a simple love making session, when they usually had far more passionate nights, had been so effective.
“Good morning,” Charles said as he entered the kitchen. Ashley and Donald, the only two of their six grown children that still lived at home, were sitting at the center island. Bonita, the only biological child Charles and Jenay had together, and their youngest child, was seated at the island between her two older siblings.
When Bonita heard her father’s voice, she turned and smiled, and then jumped down from her stool and ran to him. He lifted her into his arms. “How are you my sweetness?” he asked her.
“Very tired,” said Bonita. “I don’t think I should go to school today.”
Charles grinned. “Oh, yeah? Then I shouldn’t go to work because I’m tired too. Thing is, if I don’t go to work we’ll lose the house and the cars and we’ll all end up on the streets homeless.”
“Charles,” Jenay warned. But Charles was serious.
“Homeless?” Bonita asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Charles said. “Those are the consequences of the decisions we make. So what’s the deal, baby cakes? You want to go to school and get a good education so that you can get a good job and take care of your family when you’re older? Or do you want to stay home and play, and I stay home with you, and we all end up on the streets scrounging around for food?”
Ashley smiled and shook her head. Donald grinned. “He used to do me and my brothers the same way when we were little,” he said.
Like her big sister Ashley, Bonita was a stunning beauty. But unlike Ashley, Bonita, Charles knew, was a thoughtful child who would actually consider consequences.
And she did consider the consequences. “Is there a third choice?” Bonita asked, and all of them laughed.
“No, Neet,” Jenay said. “Your father has laid out the choices. School or homelessness.”
“But Daddy can go to work,” Bonita said. “He doesn’t have to stay home, too.”
“No now,” Charles said. “You get to stay home, so do I. That’s the deal. We’re a team, remember?”
Bonita nodded. She remembered. “Okay,” she said. “I think I’ll go to school. I want to be a good example for you to go to work.”
They all laughed again. Charles, finding her simply adorable, kissed her, and then walked over and sat her back on the seat she had vacated.
Charles walked around to where Jenay was standing. She was the one he really wanted to hold. After last night, when he fucked her so softly and for so long that he thought he was going to collapse just from the energy he was exerting, he still could feel how wonderful it felt inside of her. He wanted in again. There was no such thing, in his life, as having enough of Jenay.
She was fully dressed, too, in a form-fitting red dress and heels, and her long hair was flung down her back in waves of bounciness and sheen. Red on a woman was supposed to make her look powerful. But red on Jenay, against her smooth, dark skin, made her look radiant to Charles.
He walked slightly behind her, hooking her waist with his arm.
Jenay turned slightly behind him, looking up into his gorgeous, but still-tired green eyes. “Hungry?” she asked him.
His look turned hooded when he looked down at her. Unbeknownst to anybody else in the room, he leaned closer against her, forcing her to feel his penis, which was already aroused by her presence alone. He was hungry, alright. But not like she meant.
“There’s no time,” he said. “I’ve got two evictions this morning.”
“What’s happening in Jericho?” Donald asked. “The economy’s tanking or something? Everybody’s getting evicted.”
“Only the ones who won’t pay their rent,” Charles said as he moved from slightly behind Jenay to beside her, “and expect me to foot the bill.”
“It’s not that simple, Daddy,” Ashley said. “I work in your office, remember?”
“Part-time now that we have the store,” Donald reminded her.
“But the point is I see things. And a lot of those people are just struggling in life. Things happen that they can’t control.”
“So, what’s your solution?” Charles asked her.
Ashley looked up at him. “My solution?”
“Yes! I have a property business. That business depends on people paying rent. People don’t pay rent, I go out of business. You don’t have a job. None of my clerks have jobs. What’s your bright idea?”
“Come on, Pop,” Donald said, “you don’t rely solely on your property business. You’re a venture capitalist just like Uncle Tommy. You’re always buying up businesses and reselling them for profit.”
“You mean like the business I bought and resold to you and your sister?”
“Yeah,” Donald said, then realized he and Ashley didn’t actually buy that store, but it was handed to them by their father. He smiled. “I mean, not exactly.”
“Exactly,” Jenay said. “You and Ash need to be more grateful for what your father did for you.”
“I am!” Ashley said. “That store is like a dream come true for me and Donnie. And we’re working it, Ma.”
“And meaning no disrespect,” Donald said to his stepmother, “but you didn’t exactly buy that hotel from Dad, either. He gave that hotel to you, free and clear.”
Charles frowned. “You sound like a fool,” he said.
“Uh oh,” Ashley said under her breath to Donald. “You got that temper going. Should have quit while you were ahead.”
“But what did I say that wasn’t the truth?” Donald asked.
“Jenay is my wife,” Charles said. “How in hell am I going to give her something she already owned? When she married me, everything I have, including the most precious thing I have, which are my children, became hers too. Jenay owns all of this! I can’t give her what she already owns.”
Ashley laughed. “I know that’s right!” she said. “And that’s why some of these women around here, to this day, still give Ma fits. They know she won the grand prize. They know, if something were to happen to Dad, she’d get it all. A black woman of all people would be the number one landowner in all of Jericho. A black woman just like me. And they can’t stand that!”
Charles and Jenay exchanged a glance. Ashley had no idea about that little encounter at the banquet, but it sure sounded like she did.
But Donald was too busy staring at his father to even hear Ashley. He’d never known a man quite like Charles. Donald loved women before. His brothers loved women before. His sister Carly loved Trevor Reese big time. And Lord knows Ashley loved many men before. Over and over and over again. But nobody was as committed, and as devoted to their lover the way his father was to Jenay. She was the air he seemed to breathe, and he made no bones about it. In their household, his father behaved as if Jenay came first, and all the rest of them were second. “That’s kind of backwards,”
Donald, being Donald, said.
Everybody looked at him. “What’s backwards?” Charles asked.
“The way you put Ma on a pedestal like that. The way you act as if she comes even before your children. That’s backwards. The children are supposed to always come first.”
When Charles just stared at his son as if he couldn’t find the words to counter what his son had just said to him, Jenay spoke for him. “You do come first, Donald,” she said. “Your father didn’t mean it like that. He was talking about property, not people.”
But Donald was still looking at his father. He heard Jenay say it, but Charles wasn’t saying a word.
“Anyway,” Ashley said, standing up. “Come on, Neet. We’ve got to get going or we’ll be late.”
“Donnie can drop me off,” Bonita said. “That way I don’t have to be to school so early.”
“Child if you don’t get your ass up from that island and go get your bookbag,” Jenay said. “You don’t be early, you be on time.”
Bonita smiled. She knew she tried to get one over on her parents. “Yes, ma’am,” she said as she got up too.
“Ashley,” Jenay said as Ashley was about to head to her room to get her purse and keys. “Wait a sec.”
Ashley waited. When Bonita left the room and headed into her own room, Jenay spoke. “What happened last night?” she asked her.
“Last night?” Donald asked. “What do you mean, Ma?”
“Nothing happened,” Ashley said. “Just a jerk being a jerk.”
“Who, Steeny?” Donald asked.
A sad look appeared in Ashley’s pretty eyes. “Yeah.”
“What did he do?”
“I told you nothing, Donnie dang!”
“What did he do, Ash?” Jenay asked.
Ashley knew she couldn’t pretend with the woman who was once married to her biological father, and who was once her stepmother. After Ashley’s biological father died, Jenay didn’t forget them. She and Charles adopted Ash and her baby sister Carly. She’d known Jenay since she was very little, and she knew Jenay didn’t take anybody’s bull. “Steeny wanted me to have a threesome with some guy he knew,” she said. “‘I said no, are you nuts?’ But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept bugging me about it. Then, after everybody left and I was about to go to the store to help out Donnie, he and his friend grabbed me and put me in one of the bedrooms. They tried to force me. But then Dad showed up.”
Donald was shocked. “Geez, Ash,” he said.
Jenay was crestfallen. Even Charles didn’t tell her how close a call it was. “Are you okay, baby?” Jenay asked.
Ashley nodded and looked at her mother. “Yes,” she said. “I’m more hurt than anything. I didn’t think Steeny was that kind of dude. But I can pick’em, can’t I?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “You remind me of my niece Gloria in that department. I don’t know what’s up with you young girls.”
“They’re looking for their fathers in these men,” Jenay said. “Ash’s father, nor her biological mother for that matter, ever really treated her the way a daughter should have been treated, and your brother Mick was never really there for Gloria when she was a kid. They didn’t get what Bonita’s getting from you, or what Donald and Brent and Tony and Robert got from you. They never had that fatherly love and affection.”
“Well you need to start looking elsewhere for the men you date,” Charles said. “Go against type.”
“Nope,” Ashley said. “I need to stop dating, period, and focus on my career. My new life as a business owner. And that’s what I intend to do.”
Donald smiled. “Sure you will,” he said. “Until the next bozo comes along.” And they all laughed.
“Bump you, Donnie! Let me go check on Bonita,” Ashley said, and left the room.
“I’d better get going, too,” Charles said as he kissed Jenay on the neck. He wanted to do so much more but knew he had to wait until tonight. She was as busy as he was.
“That meeting still on?” he asked her.
She looked at him. “Yes, Charles, you know it is.”
“What meeting?” Donald asked.
“With the new guy who now owns half of Eye Sore,” Ashley said.
Eye Sore, a nickname, was an old, rundown building on acres of land next to the Jericho Inn, a hotel owned by Charles and Jenay. The retired optometrist who owned the property agreed to sell the land to them, but only if he could maintain fifty percent stake in that property. Jericho Inn was landlocked and would soon need to expand. They weren’t going to be able to expand at all unless they owned a share of Eye Sore. So they agreed.
But what threw them for a loop was when the optometrist sold his stake in the property to the highest bidder. And they knew nothing until the sale was final. Now they had a partner in that property that they hadn’t banked on.
Jenay looked at Charles. She could tell he still hated the idea. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” she said. “But he bid and won. He’s now our equal partner in that joint venture. Either we give up our stake and never expand the Inn, or we have to figure out a way to work with him.”
“What’s the problem with him?” Donald asked.
“He’s Jenay’s ex-lover,” Ashley said.
“Oh,” Donald said as if he fully understood his father’s hesitation. “You’re going in business with Ma’s ex-lover?” he asked him.
“We didn’t plan to,” Jenay said. “We didn’t even know those shares were up for sale. But he bid and won, just like I said. And now we either work with him or give up our dreams for Jericho Inn’s expansion.”
Then she pinched Charles’s chin. “Stop worrying about it, Charlie,” she said. “He’s not as bad as you think. We meet with him next week. Let’s go to the meeting. Let’s worry about how things shake out after you’ve at least met him.”
Charles nodded, although he still didn’t like it. Then he kissed Jenay again. On the lips this time. He grabbed the keys to his truck and was about to turn to leave.
And then the sound of a shot fired could be heard outside of their home. At first, everybody froze. Because they knew what it was. Could it be some yahoos with too much liquor in them? But then a second shot was fired, and this one sailed right through the living room window and shattered it. Nobody froze then, least of which Charles.
“Get down!” he yelled as he pulled Jenay down behind the center island and as Donald got down and began crawling behind the island too.
As more gunfire was heard, Charles hurried to a back cabinet, pressed the combination to the lockbox built-in, and grabbed the loaded gun inside.
“Call Brent,” he said to Donald, and Donald pulled out his cellphone. “Everybody stays right here!”
“Charles, Bonita!” Jenay yelled with pain in her voice.
“And Ashley!” Donald yelled too.
But Bonita and Ash were already on his mind. He ran out of the kitchen, and into the dining room. “Bonita?” he yelled from across the room. “Ash?”
“Yes, father?” Ashley yelled back. She sometimes called him father when she was terrified.
“You’re in Neet’s bedroom?” he asked her.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get Neet and get under that bed and stay there until I come and get you guys. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get under there now!”
“Yes, sir,” Ashley replied. Charles could only pray she did as he had instructed.
But he knew he had to get outside. The gunfire was coming from one place and one place only: the front of his house. He ran back through the kitchen, warning Jenay and Donald to stay where they were and that Bonita and Ashley should be fine, and out of the backdoor.
Outside, a man, short and stout and in overalls, was firing a shotgun at the Sinatra home, then pumping it and firing again, then pumping it and firing again.
Charles saw him from the side of the house. He fired a warning shot, although he wanted to kill that fucker’s ass, b
ut not with his baby girl right inside the house.
But his warning shot worked. The man, whom Charles already could tell was a rank amateur, ran to the pickup he was in, and took off.
Charles ran to his own pickup truck, the truck he planned to take to work, jumped in, and took off after him.
And the chase was on.
The shooter drove fast through the long, winding backroads of Jericho, but he couldn’t shake Charles. And because Charles’s truck was bigger, and more powerful, he eventually caught up to the would-be assailant and rammed the side of the truck to force him off the road.
But the shooter looked at Charles and kept going. He wasn’t giving up that easily.
Charles tried again. He rammed him again. He wasn’t giving up easily, but Charles wasn’t letting him get away. Something, Charles knew, had to give, and it had to give before they got into town where the real traffic was.
Charles made a decision. No more soft pats. No more delays. He rammed the shooter’s truck again, but only this time he rammed him so hard, and stayed against him in an undeniable force-off-the-road maneuver, that the shooter had no choice but to swerve to get away. But in swerving he lost control and the truck hit the side of the road hard. So hard that it flipped, landed on its wheels, and then raced down the slope to the bottom of a ravine.
Charles pulled over to the side of the road, went to the back of his truck and grabbed his rifle off the rack, and hurried down that ravine too.
He didn’t realize the shooter had been thrown from the truck during the crash until he made it to the bottom. A tree had stopped the truck on one side and the shooter was lying some fifteen feet away on the opposite side. Charles ran to the shooter. It was obvious, by the way his body was contorted against a big rock, that he was in serious trouble.
“Who are you?” Charles asked.
“You Sinatras think you can get away with anything. Steeny is a good boy. The best child I have. Now he may never walk again. You beat him down like he wasn’t a human being, and now he’ll have problems for the rest of his life because of what you did to him. Nobody touches mine without retribution. You did my boy wrong!”
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