Heart's Secret

by Adrianne Byrd

  She quickly stepped to the side behind a potted tree or plant—she didn’t know which, but it would do to get herself out of view. But even then she couldn’t stop herself from peeking through the leaves for a second look.

  It took a minute, but Kitty realized that Jaxon wasn’t really responding with the same fever and gusto she was used to. When she broke the kiss and stared into his eyes, she could easily read that his mind was elsewhere. She had a sinking suspicion that she knew where. Well, she certainly knew a few tricks to get a man’s attention focused back on her.

  “What’s the matter, baby? Don’t you wanna play?” Her slim fingers made quick work of his shirt.

  “Hey, hey.” He tried to stop her. “Cut it out. Not here.”

  “Why not?” Kitty purred, her hands moving from his shirt to his belt. “If memory serves me right, we’ve done it in stranger places.”

  Jaxon swiped her hands from his belt only for her to attack his zipper.

  “C’mon, sweetie. Don’t be a party pooper. It’s not like your grandparents are going to walk in on us.” She sank to her knees and she reached inside his pants and grabbed hold of his cock.

  Jaxon leaped backward. “Kitty, stop.”

  “Oooh.” She climbed back onto her feet. “I love it when you play hard to get.”

  “Kitty.” He waved a finger at her. “Behave.”

  “No.” She playfully tried to bite his finger and when he jumped, she added an extra push, which caused him to fall back and collapse into a leather upholstered chair. While he looked stunned, Kitty used the moment to her advantage and jumped into his lap and smothered him with kisses.

  Wide-eyed, Zora watched the love play with growing envy. She also had the problem of being trapped out on the terrace with the night’s cool breeze turning decidedly colder by the second.

  “Kitty.” Jaxon’s warning drifted out onto the terrace, but to Zora’s ears it sounded as if his persistent fiancée was wearing down his defenses.

  There was some giggling and some moaning while Zora shook her head and rolled her eyes. Why didn’t I go home when I had the chance? She glanced around and checked out the stone railing. Maybe she could escape by climbing over the damn thing. However when she tiptoed over, she realized that there was no way she was going to manage such a feat in her A-line gown—not without hiking the damn thing up around her waist and possibly flashing her panties and scuffing up her knees.

  Zora moved back over to the potted tree and saw Jaxon and his girl playfully wrestling in the chair. I gotta do something to get out of here. She looked around again and drew another conclusion: she could crawl out of the open glass door. At least the billiard room was carpeted. No flashing needed and her knees would be protected.

  But will I get past them without getting caught?

  She didn’t have an answer to that, but a plan was better than no plan. The next thing Zora knew, she was on her hands and knees and crawling as quietly as she could toward the door.

  “C’mon, baby, let’s play,” Kitty whined. “Please?”

  “Kitty!”

  “Pretty please?”

  “Kitty, this is not a good time.”

  Just keep going. You’re almost there.

  “It’s always a good time, baby.” Kitty giggled. “Now, can big Jaxon come out and play?”

  Zora rolled her eyes but kept crawling. Melanie is one dead woman.

  “Kitty, you’re not listening to me.”

  “Of course not. You’re not saying anything I want to hear, silly.”

  There was more giggling, but Zora just kept her eye on the prize: the door.

  “Ooh. There’s big Jaxon.” Giggle.

  Creep. Creep.

  “Kitty—”

  “Look how hard he is!”

  “Kitty, that’s enough!”

  Creep. Creep. Almost there.

  Just then the door burst open and Richard breezed into the room.

  “What the—?” Richard’s hard gaze swept from Jaxon to Kitty and then softened with relief.

  Kitty sprang back, looking guilty as sin and adjusting her gown’s shoulder straps.

  Jaxon jumped to his feet. However, his pants slid straight down to the floor and his exposed cock stood straight as an arrow. “Shit.”

  “Damn,” Richard said. “I see why you’re so popular with the ladies.”

  “Very funny.” Jaxon bent over to grab his pants when his eyes clashed with Zora’s on the floor on other side of the pool table.

  However, she wasn’t exactly looking him in the eye. More like she was stunned at the sheer size of Jaxon’s thick, smooth cock. Hell, it looked like a piece of fine art and was hands-down the most beautiful thing she’d seen in a looong time. Slowly, she began to realize that everyone’s eyes were on her.

  “Hi.” What else could she say?

  Richard cocked his head. “What are you doing down there?”

  Zora drew a blank. “Um. That’s a good question.” She sat back on her knees and then used the billiard table to help herself up off the floor. “I, um.” Zora scratched at her brow, trying to search for a plausible excuse, but the only thing she could come up with was to admit the truth. “Well, they seemed to be having a good time—” She gestured toward Jaxon and Kitty without looking at them. “And I didn’t want to, um, interrupt…so I was just trying to make my way out…without, um, disturbing them.” Her face was red-hot by the time she finished explaining.

  Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.

  Of course, she looked over at Jaxon…and the bastard was actually smiling as he zipped himself back into his pants.

  Kitty smirked as she looped an arm around Jaxon’s waist. “When you’re engaged to a man as fine as Jaxon, it’s kinda hard to keep your hands off of him.” To emphasize her point, she ran her hand up and down his chest.

  Embarrassed, Zora rushed toward the door. “Excuse me.”

  Richard dropped the two flutes of champagne, trying to stop Zora’s exit, but she was way too fast for him. “Zora, wait.”

  Zora didn’t wait. She couldn’t. She needed to get the hell out of there.

  Chapter 7

  Zora did everything she could to forget about her embarrassing night at the Landons’ estate, but after two weeks, it was safe to say that nothing worked. It didn’t help that every day, since that night, she received two dozen roses. One dozen from Jaxon and a second set from Richard. Both tried to apologize and insisted on taking her out to make up for the embarrassing evening. It reached a point where Zora couldn’t stop rolling her eyes every time Monica brought the flowers into her home office. Her place was starting to look like a florist shop or a funeral home—she could not decide which.

  Then there was Melanie. She called every hour on the hour. Zora refused to take any of her calls. In fact, it was probably going to take a long time for their friendship to recover from this.

  Though she kept telling herself that she didn’t want to know the whole story of why Melanie even thought to set her up with a man that was clearly off the market, another part of her was dying to know the 4-1-1—just as there was an itty-bitty part of her that kept replaying the moment when Jaxon Landon’s beautiful cock sprang out of his black silk boxers. She couldn’t get over how ramrod straight and smooth and polished it looked despite the dim lighting. Hell, sometimes, Zora took creative license and removed all his clothes in her mind and added a bright red cape around his neck.

  Ridiculous—yes.

  But fitting.

  Zora struggled to keep her head out of the clouds, but there were moments where she’d still catch herself fantasizing about what it would have been like to touch it, kiss it, maybe even give it a little ride. She was turning herself on. Of course it was easy to do when one was in a dry spell. Damn, how long had it been?

  Zora leaned back in her chair and thought about it. The more months she counted, the deeper her frown became. Last Thanksgiving? She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Zora stood up and retr
ieved her BlackBerry from her purse. For the next several minutes, she flipped through her calendar, shaking her head. Sure, she was too busy for a committed relationship, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t have squeezed in at least a couple of booty calls every now and then.

  Sure enough, her calendar confirmed it. Last Thanksgiving with Calvin Jackson. She gave his performance one star. Then the horrific experience crystallized in her mind. His sloppy wet kisses were like a Saint Bernard mopping her face with its tongue. Hell, she didn’t know what he was trying to do. Calvin’s big NBA hands had pawed and groped her breasts to the point that she was convinced that they were going to be black and blue by morning.

  And his dick? Forgetaboutit.

  Zora had thought he was kidding when he would jokingly refer to himself as Millimeter Man.

  He wasn’t joking.

  The man was small. Small. S-M-ALL.

  During their wild and crazy two-minute sexathon, Calvin really wore the hell out of one corner of her right thigh. All the while, he kept asking, “You like that, baby? It feels good, don’t it?”

  Talk about rather having a V-8.

  Zora almost didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t even in.

  Keyword—almost.

  When Calvin was finally so inclined to stick it in, he came twenty seconds later—with his face a contorted hot mess and enough sweat pouring off him that one would’ve thought he’d just finished playing the final game in the NBA championship. Zora didn’t come, not that Calvin cared, but she remembered being relieved that the whole experience was over.

  Still, lousy sex was no reason to just throw in the towel. She reached back into her purse and pulled out her pink book. It was time for her to put in an old-fashioned booty call. Maybe that was what had her all screwy and obsessing over Jaxon’s cock. She was just horny.

  Zora returned to her office desk and started flipping through the pages. Over the years she had collected hundreds if not thousands of men’s names and numbers. She certainly hadn’t slept with them all, but there were some four-star performers that she wouldn’t mind hooking up with again.

  “Let’s see.” She settled back and smiled as she flipped through the pages. “Three star, three star, two star. Wait. Here we go. Four star—Cedric Daniels—defensive lineman for the Atlanta Falcons. Now that man played a good game between the sheets.” The memory of their weekend together a couple years back caused her to start hand-fanning herself. “He would be perfect,” she reasoned with herself.

  Zora reached for the phone, but then stopped. “Wait—didn’t Cedric get married a couple of months ago?” She quickly scrolled through her memory Rolodex and seemed to recall reading something about him marrying some Argentina model in a lavish ceremony. No. She hadn’t read about it, Melanie told her about it. She was the one who had introduced him to the girl.

  “That had to have been some kind of fluke.” Zora shook her head and then planted her nose back into her pink book. “Two star, one star, one star. Oh, here we go. Russell Charles—four stars.” Another big smile monopolized Zora’s face. She remembered their three-month affair fondly. Russell was a brother who liked to take his time with a woman. He loved mixing things up with toys—food—whatever he could get his hands on. One night, he had her feeling like a banana-split sundae with the whipped cream and chocolate sauce he’d poured all over her body. Of course the fun part was watching and feeling him eat every bit of it off her.

  Zora’s body quivered deliciously from the old memory.

  “Every woman loves a man with a mad head game.” She chuckled to herself and again reached for the phone. Once the line was ringing, she sat up with her heart pounding in her throat. What should she say? Would he be happy to hear from her? She was sort of the one to end things between them because of her impossible work schedule.

  “Hello.”

  Zora froze. Could she and should she really go through with this?

  “Hello,” Russell said again.

  “Hey, Russ. Guess who?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Zora slapped a hand across her forehead. Surely, she could’ve come up with something better than that.

  “Um, I…don’t know. How about giving me a hint?”

  Zora couldn’t tell whether he found the question amusing or annoying so she just cut to the chase. “It’s me. Zora.”

  Silence.

  “Zora Campbell,” she clarified. She was starting to feel more ridiculous by the second. “We used to—”

  “I remember who you are,” he finally said, chuckling.

  Thank God.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Feeling a little more relaxed, Zora eased back into her chair. “Ah, c’mon now, Russell. You know I’ve always been fond of you.”

  “To my recollection, you’ve always been too busy for me. In the three months that we were together, I had been stood up more times than I care to count. Dating you was a serious blow to my ego.”

  “I wasn’t that bad.”

  Silence.

  Zora tensed up again. “Was I?”

  “Zora, you broke my heart. I thought that we really had something going and then…”

  The silence was damning. Suddenly, Zora remembered all the times that she had broken dates or forgotten that she was supposed to meet him somewhere. Russell had been great in bed, but outside of it, he was a complete bore. A trust-fund baby himself, Russell never expressed interest in anything outside his privileged upbringing. Though he was generous when he dated women, it didn’t escape her notice that he only dated models and actresses. He always had to have something pretty on his arm.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Russell finally finished. “I’m sure we’ve both moved on. Taylor and I are expecting our first child and no doubt you still have an army of men banging down your door.” He laughed.

  “Taylor?”

  “Yeah, my wife. We’re five months along. Of course I would have never met her had it not been for your friend Melanie Harte.”

  Zora’s hand clutched the phone. “Melanie introduced you to your wife?”

  “Can you believe it? Me—enlisting the help of a matchmaking service? C’mon, let’s face it, I’m not a bad-looking dude—but for some reason I just kept hooking up with the wrong women. Uh, no offense.”

  Zora rolled her eyes. “None taken.”

  “Anyway, after you dumped me and I spent a sufficient amount of time with a new therapist, I let a few of my married friends know that I was back on the prowl. Everyone kept talking about and referring me to the Platinum Society—you know, Melanie’s company.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m aware of the name of her company,” Zora droned. She was really ready to end this conversation.

  “I didn’t believe it at first, but the chick really knows her stuff. At least I don’t have any complaints,” he said.

  Yea! Whoopee for you. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, Russ.” Zora tried to inject enthusiasm into her voice, but it just didn’t work out.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just go on about myself. You hadn’t even told me why you were calling.” He laughed.

  Zora laughed right along with him. She needed a few extra seconds to think of a good lie. “I, um, recently saw Melanie…and um…well, I was like…wow! Russell got married. So I, um, wanted to say congratulations and just—wish you both the best.”

  “Aww. Well, that’s very sweet of you. You know, in retrospect, your breaking up with me was the best thing that ever happened to me. I keep seeing you all over television, pushing this product or that. I gotta tell you—even though it didn’t work out with us, I’m very proud and happy for your success.”

  “Thanks,” she deadpanned. “Well, I better go—but good luck to you. Your wife is a lucky woman.” After a couple more pleasantries, Zora managed to end the call. When she picked up the pink book again, her exuberance had dropped significantly. This time, she wasn’t reading the stars next to anyone’s name, but realized that the status
for most of these men had changed. “Married, engaged, married, married.” She frowned. “When did everybody start getting married?”

  Before long, Zora grew disgusted with the whole ordeal and just tossed the pink book across the room. “How pathetic am I if I don’t even know how to make a booty call anymore?” Zora moped for a few minutes and then got another idea. In her purse she found a private treasure trove of business cards—all of which had been passed to her from men around the world. Why shouldn’t she call a few of them? She didn’t need a professional matchmaker to do what she could do herself.

  The idea cheered her up. Her love life wasn’t DOA just yet. She had plenty of options—and Jaxon Landon wasn’t one of them.

  “Let me get this straight,” Dale said, holding up both hands like stop signs. “You had Zora Campbell crawling on her hands and knees while you stood with your dick out and another chick tryna hitch a ride on the muthafucker?”

  Jaxon laughed. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”

  “It will be when I tell the story.” He glanced around the crowded Velvet Rope as if he was going to do just that.

  “Will you behave? I have a serious problem on my hands,” Jaxon stressed, taking another sip of his drink.

  “Aww. C’mon. Where’s your sense of humor?” Dale asked, rolling his eyes. “Some of us would be happy to just have one of these hot chicks in this fantasy. You have the hottest stripper in Manhattan and a supermodel and you come up in here whining about it. My only choices are to hate you or wish that I was you. But I certainly don’t pity you.”

  Jaxon chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not asking for your pity. I’m asking for your help so I can figure out how to fix this.”

  “What? The big mastermind of Wall Street needs my help solving a problem?” Dale set his drink down and then ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Somebody needs to take a picture of this historical moment. Ain’t nobody gonna believe this if I tell them.”