by Zuri Day
Eden finally worked her arm out of the sheet, but the cotton bunched in and around her legs—not to mention Jansen’s viselike arm grip—still made quick flight impossible. She focused all her attention on his long, thick fingers, trying to pry them away from her waist. In the tousling that ensued, the pink strap of her lingerie top worked its way off her shoulder.
Jansen was secretly amused at Eden’s valiant attempts to free herself. “You might as well quit squirming, girl, and get ready for this cold sh—” The rest of the words faded from his lips as Jansen turned to Eden. His eyes were quickly drawn from her face to the black, hard, perfectly formed areola that, with each deep breath, peeked out of Eden’s top. In a matter of seconds, he took in the creamy caramel skin surrounding this flawless rendition of a chocolate kiss, allowed his eyes to travel to the indentation of her collarbone, to the slightly parted lips that had tempted him for days. His gaze moved to Eden’s darkened eyes, and he knew that she, too, had felt the shift—that the mood had gone from playful to passionate. He wasn’t even aware that his arm was moving until his finger reached out and lightly flicked Eden’s nipple just before his mouth covered hers in a searing kiss.
Eden barely had time to breathe, much less think. At first, all she could do was feel—Jansen’s solidly sculpted body pressed against hers, the long, thick evidence of his desire pressing into her stomach. His other hand slid down and cupped her derriere, pressing her into his hardness. Her mouth had opened of its own accord and welcomed his tongue, swirling, probing, claiming . . . once, and again. A slight whimper escaped when Jansen deepened the kiss while teasing Eden’s nipple into further hardness with his thumb, mimicking the same swirling motion of his tongue in her mouth.
Oooo, Jansen. This feels so good, your tongue in my mouth. Slowly thoughts began to seep through her haze of desire. Jansen’s tongue in my . . . wait! This isn’t supposed to happen. This can’t happen! It took all the strength she could muster, but Eden broke the kiss and pushed away from the chest that she could feel forever. “Stop. We can’t. . . .” Eden took in deep gulps of air, still reeling from the intensity of her body’s reaction to Jansen’s touch.
Jansen was trying to recover as well. His heart was pounding as if he’d run ten miles, and one very specific muscle was aching for a release that even a marathon couldn’t provide. In this moment, Jansen knew there was only one thing, only one person who could give him what his body craved, and her name was Eden. And in this moment of stark realization, he swore to have her.
Jansen thought these thoughts even as he sought to diffuse the current tension. The time for the inevitable would come soon enough. “What, baby girl? Can’t take the heat?”
“I can’t believe you did that,” Eden snapped, thankful she could breathe again. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth!”
“It’s a good thing my breath is fresh enough for the both of us then, huh?”
“Move out of my way. You’re disgusting.” Eden pushed past Jansen and tested the water still running into the tub.
“If you’re not downstairs in ten minutes, I’m coming back up here.” Jansen’s eyes narrowed as he gave Eden the once-over from head to toe. “And if I do, I promise you we’ll still get our workout on, but running won’t have anything to do with it.”
12
“You still got a crush on Morris Chestnut?” Jansen asked. He and Eden were in the living room, eating on TV trays and checking out the movie she’d rented last night but hadn’t watched.
“Naw,” Eden answered before putting a forkful of the fluffy vegetable omelet she’d prepared into her mouth. “He hasn’t been my main squeeze since The Best Man.”
“I remember you cried like a baby during that scene from Hood when he gets shot,” Jansen teased. “You would have thought the brothah really died.”
“I was heartbroken, that’s no lie. It even took me a while to warm back up to Ice Cube. Even though his character’s finger didn’t pull the trigger, it was because of Doughboy’s thuggish behind that Ricky took a bullet.”
“Boo-hoo,” Jansen mimicked, clutching his heart and leaning sideways. “They shot him! Why’d they have to shoot him! It was you and . . . What was your friend’s name?”
“Who? Oh, Chandra. Chandra Brockman. Wow, I haven’t thought about her in years. Wonder where she is?” Eden sipped Jansen’s freshly squeezed orange juice while she pondered the whereabouts of one of her former best friends.
Jansen bit into a tender sausage. He’d been pleasantly surprised when Eden didn’t make a big deal about his pig consumption, though she had warned him not to fry the links in her newly purchased stainless steel. “I’m surprised y’all didn’t stay in touch.”
“Me, too. We were thick as thieves until she and her family moved to St. Louis. We kept in touch for a while. Then she got pregnant and—”
“Chandra had a baby?” Somehow Jansen just couldn’t see the fly-girl chick with the sassy mouth taking care of a child.
“At least three, from what I heard. She and I lost contact, but I ran into another classmate around my sophomore or junior year of college and found out she was married with children, and a preacher’s wife at that.”
“You’re lying!” Jansen exclaimed. It was no secret that half the basketball team had slept with Chandra, and the other half had wanted to. Jansen wasn’t proud of the fact that both he and Eden’s brother, Michael, had been on the receiving team, on more than one occasion. He wondered if Eden knew this but quickly decided against asking her. Some things, he deduced, were best left in the past. “Wow, I guess anybody can change,” he finished, an opinion formed by firsthand experience. He’d given up his player card when he got married and hadn’t renewed it since getting divorced.
Between scenes of Furious Styles teaching life lessons to his sons, and the streets conducting classes of their own, Jansen and Eden took another stroll down memory lane. Eden learned things she’d never known, like how Jansen’s grandmother had “cured” his stuttering by forcing him to take a breath between each word when he spoke to her. Jansen laughed, recalling how it would sometimes take him five minutes to ask if he could ride his bike to the store for chips and candy. One day, he explained, he woke up and simply didn’t stutter anymore. Another surprise was the fact that Jansen had actually been a preemie baby, and spent his first couple years in and out of hospitals. Eden took in the picture of health sitting next to her, the well-defined this and ridiculously buffed that, and found it impossible to put Jansen and frail in the same sentence, even one describing a premature child.
The credits rolled, and Jansen and Eden enjoyed a companionable silence. Neither wanted to acknowledge how right it felt spending time together and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. Jansen clicked the screen from DVD to TV. A woman’s hands swam onto the screen, rubbing parts of her body as she advertised a lotion that was “soft as satin.” Eden’s body is as soft as satin, and as rich as silk. Jansen remembered how good she’d felt up against him, even as his fingers itched to once again squeeze her round booty. Eden’s thoughts were similar, recalling the swirl of Jansen’s tongue in her mouth, and imagining how it would feel on her nipple . . . and elsewhere. . . .
“You know what?”
“Hey, remember that time—”
Both spoke at once and then broke out in nervous laughter.
“What?” Jansen asked.
“No, you go ahead,” Eden encouraged.
“All right. I was just remembering you and the frog.” Eden picked up a pillow from the couch and flung it at Jansen’s head. It caught the side of his ear before sliding to the floor. “C’mon, now! I apologized for that!”
Eden picked up another pillow and this time held it in both hands as she playfully pummeled him. “I’d never been so scared in my life! You almost made me have a heart attack!”
Jansen couldn’t defend himself for laughing. “Girl, I never saw anybody move so fast in my life. You ran out of your bedroom, barefoot, through the living room
. . . and I think you were halfway down the block before your dad finally caught up with you to find out what was wrong. You woke up half the neighborhood that night.”
“Thanks to you. I’ll never forget the feel of that slimy creature on my leg. I’d just gotten that baby-doll nightie, feeling all grown up with my legs bare, a departure from my cotton pj sleeping attire.”
“That’s why I knew it would work so well. You came prancing out of the room, thinking you were cute.”
“Knowing I was.”
“Me and Michael had found the frog earlier that day, came home, and made a little cage with some grass and a shoe box.”
“I knew something was going on, but when I tried to come into the room—”
“We’d put it on lockdown!”
“I knew y’all were up to something.”
“And I knew that if I bided my time, and played it cool—”
“I’d drop my guard. By the time I went to bed that night, I’d forgotten all about your sneaky behavior.”
“Mama! Daddy!” Jansen screeched, in the high-pitched voice of panic he remembered Eden using. “It’s in my bed! Something’s in my bed! Argh!” Jansen began to laugh so hard it became difficult to breathe. “That scream rivaled those you hear in horror movies. And all you could see was this blur of pink, yellow, and braids fly through the house!”
“I felt like I was in a horror movie, believe that,” Eden said, her own laughter threatening to erupt. “I was barefoot, but I don’t remember my feet touching the ground.”
“They probably didn’t!”
Finally Eden couldn’t hold it any longer, and soon her chortles joined Jansen’s guffaws. “You know what,” she continued, wiping away tears. “I never got you back for all that stuff you did to me. And just so you know, payback can happen at any moment.”
“And just so you know, a J-styled prank can happen at any time. You might want to check between the sheets before getting into bed at night.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Jansen’s smile was brilliant and totally mesmerizing.
“No, you wouldn’t.” Eden stood, reached for their dishes, and walked into the kitchen. Her thoughts were definitely of something—correction, someone—being in her bed that night. This thought alone almost made her run screaming out of the house again.
13
“Yeah, man, I’ll substitute for you. The practice lasts for how long?” Jansen turned off Imperial Highway onto Crenshaw, his eyes critically surveying the surrounding area even though he was off the clock. He subconsciously took in an old lady pushing a shopping cart, and two skimpily dressed teenage girls who laughed as they sauntered past a group of teenage boys. The group paused in their trash talking to ogle the goods on display before one began his plea to “get with that.” He then noticed another older man talking on his cell phone, standing off to the side, surveying the area every bit as carefully as Jansen watched him. Jansen was 80 percent sure that, if searched, the man would have a supply of drugs on his person. This assessment had nothing to do with the man’s skin color or loose-fitting wardrobe, but rather came as a result of an intuition honed through years on the streets of Chicago’s south side and the last four Jansen had spent in south LA neighborhoods.
“Hey, dog, you there? I need to know for sure you’re down with this. For a lot of these boys, the league is all they have to look forward to.”
“I’m here, man. Got sidetracked while observing some suspect activity, that’s all.”
“Where you at?”
“Crenshaw District.”
“Oh, well, I heard that. But like I said, practice starts at one o’clock and lasts for two to three hours. The boys have to present their reports to you before they’re allowed to suit up. And by the way, one of the teams still needs a coach. We’ve been searching ever since my super’s early and unexpected retirement. I still say you’d be perfect, even though I know your game is shot.”
“Aw, here we go.”
The two men who’d known each other for more than a decade talked another few minutes before his colleague had to take another call. Jansen continued toward his destination, thinking about his friend’s last-ditch plea to get Jansen to coach the tenth citywide basketball team. Volunteering had always been an important component of Jansen’s life. He regularly participated in EXPLORE and in Chicago he’d mentored a young man, Cameron, whose single mother, Nicki, struggled with keeping him on the straight and narrow. When he’d told the teen he was relocating, the boy asked if he could move to Los Angeles with Jansen. Telling him no was one of the hardest things Jansen had ever had to do. In the back of his mind, getting too close to the young men in this league was something Jansen feared. And Jansen Darrell McKnight didn’t fear much.
Eden stood in the middle of her bedroom, second-guessing what a couple hours ago had seemed like a great idea. The plan had hatched itself in her brain after she’d finished a yoga workout at the Santa Monica studio and then decided to browse a mall and look for summer-clothing sales. Twelve years in DC had left her wardrobe heavily weighted on the forty-and-below side. Now that she was back in seventy-five-and-sunny-every-day LA, Eden realized she needed to cool down her clothes. She’d purchased a couple sun-dresses, short sets, and matching sandals and was on her way out of the mall when she passed Victoria’s Secret. A cotton-candy-pink number in the window caught her eye. She’d immediately thought of Jansen. Now here she stood in her bedroom, feeling ultra-feminine, fairly feisty, but more than a little fearful, in a lacy top with satin boy-short bottoms, wondering if she really wanted to go through with the idea. The sound of the front door closing caused her to jump. He’s home. Eden’s hand went to her mouth as her heartbeat increased. I’m not going to go through with this! What in the #$@! was I thinking? But Eden knew what she’d been thinking—about this morning, and the kiss. The feel of Jansen’s lips against hers, his tongue probing, claiming, hadn’t been far from her thoughts all day. Sure, they’d regained their casual comfort while eating brunch and watching the movie. But Eden had sensed sizzling heat just under the surface of their calm demeanors. And she thought Jansen had sensed it, too.
The refrigerator door closed. Eden turned and stared at the closed door. She knew Jansen’s routine. When he came home, he walked straight to the refrigerator, pulled out a soda or beer, and drank it while watching some form of news: CNN, MSNBC, even FOX. After that, he’d head upstairs to take a shower. That’s it. I must have been crazy to even consider such foolishness. Eden eyed the stretch yoga pants and strappy top she’d discarded before she’d taken a shower. She took a step toward the bed and a saner wardrobe choice but stopped as Jansen laughed at something he saw or heard on TV. His was a deep, rumbling chuckle that resonated through to one’s bones and, in some cases, their punanas—a deeper version of the same laugh Eden had heard many times after Jansen had embarrassed her in one way or another.
And then she remembered why she’d thought her little scheme was a good idea—the dare. Even though she knew they’d both enjoyed the kiss, Eden also believed that at the end of the day Jansen’s seemingly spontaneous come-on was actually a thought-out part of his plan to seduce her. And win. Again Eden thought of Jansen’s competitive nature. She knew that during the few remaining days she was in Michael’s house she couldn’t let her guard down, even for a minute. You’ll come to the shooting range with me, learn how to handle a firearm, and I’ll get to put my handcuffs on you . . . at a time that I design. Remembering Jansen’s prize if he won the dare spurred Eden into action. There was no way that she’d ever touch a gun, much less shoot one. Eden hurried out of her room and into madness. Just as she got into position, she heard Jansen’s hard-soled shoe land on the first stair to the second floor. It was too late to turn back now.
Jansen entered the guest bedroom and stopped short. He planted his feet wide, crossed his arms, and looked around. His eyes narrowed, looking in the direction of Michael’s room, where Eden spent her nights. W
ith one more look around the room, he sat on the bed, took off his shoes, and then walked into the master bath.
She heard the shower turn on, and Eden let out the breath she’d been holding. Again she wondered about her sanity as she huddled behind a row of sweatsuits in the guest rooms’ walk-in closet. It had been pure accident that she’d hid behind the rack that held Jansen’s clothes. Her tough luck; the woodsy, musky scent she’d smelled when he’d hugged her that first night now filled her nostrils. Eden took one last deep breath, slowly turned the knob, and exited the closet. She blinked several times, her eyes readjusting to the indirect yet bright sunlight that spilled in through the open blinds. He’s gonna know something’s up, but I’ve got to close them. Eden hurried over to the windows, closed the blinds, and then climbed into the bed that had been made with military precision. And, again, the smell of Jansen enveloped her. She tried to tamp down her nervousness, as well as the excitement building between her legs. But it was as if her body had a mind of its own. All she could think about was the fact that Jansen was mere feet away from her—wet, hard, and buck naked.
The water stopped. And so did Eden’s breathing. Willing herself to breathe again, she took a deep, calming breath through her nose, slowly releasing the breath out of her mouth. Ah, that feels better. She took another one, and again. Eden imagined Jansen wrapping the towel around his waist, imagined his shock when he’d exit the bathroom and find her in the center of his bed. She almost giggled, but then movement behind the half-closed doors stopped her. This is it! Remember, girl, you’re in control. You’re seducing him. Get him hot, and hard, and then run for the border. Five minutes, tops. You can do this.
Seconds later, Jansen emerged from the bathroom, drying his still wet head with a towel. Which was why he didn’t see the look of shock and awe in Eden’s eyes before her hand clamped over her mouth. Too late, it didn’t stop the gasp that sprang forth at the sight before her. By the time Jansen heard the sound and removed the towel from his face, Eden had scampered off the bed, run out of the room, and slammed her bedroom door. Jansen’s deep, throaty laughter rang out, piercing the wooden door where Eden rested, willing her heartbeat to slow down.Girl, what in the heck were you thinking? “I wasn’t thinking,” Eden whispered. She closed her eyes and viewed the image of what she’d seen, etched like a painting in her mind’s eye. She’d often wondered what Jansen was working with, and whether he was all of what she’d heard other females brag about. Well . . . now she knew. And he was. Eden still didn’t want to handle a gun. But Jansen’s more personal weapon? That was another matter altogether.
