Be with Me (Strickland Sisters Book 3)

by Alexandria House

  I smiled. “Thank you, Nick. So are you, baby.”

  As she tugged on the waist of my underwear, pulling them down over my ass, I asked, “How’d you get away from your man?”

  She grasped my dick and rolled her eyes. “Why you gotta bring him up?”

  “Because I’d like to know how you managed to get out of the house so late.” I bent over and kissed her neck.

  As she stroked me, she said, “He’s asleep. Knocked him out with some pussy—celebratory sex. He’s none the wiser.”

  I sucked in a breath and grabbed one of her nipples, twisting it as I said, “What’d y’all celebrate?”

  She winced, stopped stroking me, and looked up at me as if deciding whether or not to say what she said next. “He told me I could quit my job, and we set a wedding date.”

  That was the beauty and the curse of being in love with your best friend. She told me everything, but stuff that wouldn’t hurt me under normal circumstances stung like a motherfucker. Still, I raised my eyebrows, and said, “Oh, really? Congrats, Nick.”

  She rose on her toes and kissed me. “Thanks, Damon. Oh, and he mentioned wanting you to be a groomsman since me and you are so close.”

  What?! I nodded. “Word? That’s cool.” I released her nipple and reached around, grasping a handful of her ass. “So, wait…you screwed me, what, three times this afternoon? Then you went home and screwed him, and now you’re back to screw me again?”

  She fell to her knees in front of me. “What I did with Travis doesn’t count. Believe me.”

  As she took me in her mouth, I said, “Oooooh, shit! Uh-um-um…did you wash your ass after he tried to screw you? You know I don’t like swapping dick germs.”

  She slid me out of her mouth. “Yes, I washed my ass, Damon, and I make Travis use condoms, anyway. You’re the only man I’ve ever given the luxury of going raw. Now, you wanna talk or have sex?” she asked, sliding her tongue up and down my erection.

  “I wanna…I wanna…shit!”

  4

  After Damon screwed me like he had a point to prove or something, I went back home to Travis, who was still in a pussy coma, and took a bath in his guest bathroom so I wouldn’t wake him up. As I sunk beneath the peppermint-scented bubbles, I thought about Damon, about how hard it had been for me to climb out of his bed, how he’d lain there and watched me dress with this look on his face that no other man had ever given me. Then, when I leaned over to kiss him goodbye, he’d reached up and pulled me on top of him, kissing me so passionately that I had to drive home with a wet, throbbing yoni. I’d screwed a lot of men, but no one else made my body react like that.

  And that scared the shit out of me.

  Back in the day, our sex was kind of like a routine thing. We did it because it was fun and we could get away with it. Kind of like smoking weed. Damon’s dick was like a nice blunt on a boring, I-ain’t-got-shit-to-do day. It was undeniably pleasurable and made me feel all relaxed and mellow afterwards. I wanted it all the time, but I didn’t have to have it to function. Now that he was a grown man and sexed me like a grown man? Damon’s penis was crack to me, had been since he came home for that little visit three years ago. I literally couldn’t be in the same room with him and not want to have sex with him, and I was going to have to do something about that, because I was marrying Travis.

  I had to marry Travis, because he was…Travis. Only son of Samuel and Grace McClure—a federal judge and his semi-retired law professor wife. Successful and popular, with a bank account full of trust fund money. Plus, he’d given me the go-ahead to quit my job, and I’d accepted his ring and proposal ages ago. And as wonderful as Damon’s dick was and as gorgeous a man as he’d morphed into in the ten years he was away, Damon was still finding himself. He’d left the Navy, traveled Europe for a bit, moved to South Korea to teach English, and was now back in Tennessee running not one, not two, but three fledgling Internet businesses while paying his rent out of his savings and buying groceries with credit cards. The smart thing to do would’ve been for him to move in with his mom until one of his businesses took off, but he said he got the apartment for me, for us, because I was living with Travis. That, plus he and his mom didn’t exactly get along.

  I mean, I believed in what Damon was doing, but I was past struggle mode. Damon was deep in struggle mode. And besides his financial status, he’d fucked us up years earlier and I still couldn’t see past that. So, Travis it was. And if I was going to make this work, if I was really going to be able to marry Travis, I was going to have to stop screwing Damon. But shit, how?

  I slid all the way down in the water, wetting my permed hair again. Closing my eyes and holding my breath, I thought about how Damon was the reason I’d refused to set a date for so long, because…hell, I really don’t know why other than I lost my ability to think around him.

  When I felt a hand touch my knee, I bolted out of the water, sending some of it sloshing out of the tub. I gasped for air as I opened my eyes to see a naked Travis smiling down at me.

  Please don’t wanna have sex again. Please.

  “Hey, I missed you in bed. Did I scare you?”

  I swiped my hand down my wet face. “Yeah, you did.”

  “What are you doing in here so late? Did you start your period? Cramping?”

  I nodded and lied in agreement, because I simply could not take a chance on him trying to screw me again. That was the one thing I was going to have to learn to deal with. Sleeping with Travis had been almost bearable before Damon moved back. Now, it was just horribly bad in comparison. Hell, half the time I didn’t think he enjoyed it either.

  “Come back to bed. I’ll make you some tea,” he said.

  “Thanks, babe.”

  Travis and I had a great weekend together. He decided to take me on an impromptu trip to New York City—shopping, dining, and we even caught a showing of that new hipster musical, Polaroids, Starbucks, and Vapes, that everyone had been raving about. We stayed in a five-star hotel, and in the absence of Damon, the sex was pretty decent (I told Travis the cramps had never materialized into a period).

  I was feeling good, mentally making plans to wear one of my new outfits to work, strut into my supervisor, Delois-the-bitch-mistress’s, office, and hand her my notice. I really wanted to just walk in there and quit without notice, but Travis talked me into doing what he termed the “responsible” thing.

  When I made the mistake of looking up from my freshly-manicured nails and out the windshield, I saw Travis had decided, for some unknown reason, to take a route home that would put us on Damon’s street. So I pulled out my phone, tapped on the Instagram icon, and tried to pretend I gave a damn about the latest picture Halle Berry had posted—I honestly did like her photos; they were so beautiful and ethereal—but somehow managed to look up again just as we were passing Damon’s apartment complex. I didn’t turn my head, but let my eyes take in the fact that his car was on the lot right in front of his apartment, and my insides began to shift. My core began to deliquesce, and my heart rate rocketed.

  After we made it home, I had to fight not to come up with some asinine reason to leave at 10:00 PM. But I wanted to so badly, I started feeling anxious and irritable. So I took a bath like I always did when I didn’t want to be in Travis’s presence but was trying not to do the wrong thing, something I’d struggled with long before Damon returned to town. The only difference now was that I’d only messed around with Maurice maybe a dozen times over a period of months during my relationship with Travis, just to take the edge off from having to be around him all the time. But Damon? Shit, I’d lost count of how many times we’d done it in the past ten or so months. We could hit a dozen in a few days, less than a week. And my coochie was on five-alarm fire for him after a whole weekend without him.

  So I sank deeper into the tub, closed my eyes, and willed the desire to climb my BFF like a tree away.

  *****

  Three days later, I found myself in Damon’s lap, grinding and moaning during my lunch b
reak.

  Our eyes were locked as Damon’s huge hands slid up and down my back. I watched him lick his luscious lips before asking me, “So, where did he take you last weekend?”

  I closed my eyes as I continued grinding. “New York…shopping…Broadwa—oh, shit! Shit, Damon!”

  He leaned in and gently suckled my neck. “Celebratory trip?”

  “Mm-hmmmm…”

  “Yeah, I figured he took you somewhere out of town when I didn’t see you all weekend. I know how you gotta have it.”

  I opened my eyes and frowned at him. “Whatchu mean ‘I gotta have it?’”

  He reached between us and slid a finger over my clit, causing me to bite my lip. “Just what I said. You gotta have it.”

  As he thrusted upward, I said, “Ohhhh, damn, baby! Wait, are you saying I can’t be in town with you and not have sex with you?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying, and you damn sure can’t be in the same room with me. It’ll really be on then.”

  I stopped moving and stared at him. “You think I’m sprung on you or something?”

  He stood from the sofa, taking me with him. Almost involuntarily, I wrapped my legs around his waist as he walked us to his bedroom. Once there, he laid me on the bed and settled between my legs, gliding back inside me so deeply that I released a gasp. “You are sprung…and so am I,” he finally answered me.

  “Ohhhhhhh! No…I’m…not.”

  He thrusted deeper. “Yes, you are.”

  “Damon…do you think I’m still gonna be screwing you after I marry Travis?”

  “I think if we stop screwing, you and Travis are going to break up, because me and my dick are the only things making being with him bearable for you.”

  “For your…shit! For your information, we were in a relationship and got engaged without you even being in the country.”

  He started plunging faster and faster inside of me, his voice vibrating from the impact of his pelvis hitting mine. “Yeah…but—damn, Nick! Shit! But-but, you were screwing someone else then. Remember? You told me you dismissed his ass after I moved back.”

  Shit, I did tell him that. “I…I…I can stop fucking you whenever I want tooooooooooo,” I wailed, as an orgasm so intense hit me, tears sprung to my eyes.

  He thrusted a few more times, grabbed my face, plunged his tongue into my mouth, and yelled my name. Then, through labored breaths, he said, “Prove it.”

  I kissed him as my heart pounded in my chest. “Fine. No more sex.”

  “So, that means I’ll never see you again, huh?” he asked, with this big, dumb grin on his face.

  “I can be around you and not have sex with you, Damon.”

  “So, I’m still in the wedding?”

  “If you want to be.”

  He smiled, slid down my body, and flicked his tongue across my clit one time before hopping out the bed. “Oh, I want to. Gonna take a shower. I’ll be in there all wet and naked if you need me.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat on the side of the bed, fighting like a ninja to stay put, but I managed to do it. I took a shower by myself and was actually a little disappointed when he didn’t join me. When I left, I said, “Bye, Damon.”

  Without looking up from his laptop, he said, “Bye, Nick.”

  5

  I can’t stand Damon Davis’s stupid ass, I thought as I sat in Travis’s living room. He was watching a damn Matlock DVD, and I was stuck there sitting next to him like I gave half a shit about what was happening on the TV screen.

  Damon knew me too well, knew which buttons to push, and the other day, the last time I had some of him, he pushed the you-can’t-tell-me-how-I-feel button along with the I-can’t-stand-to-be-wrong button, knowing I’d take the bait. He did it on purpose, too, and I hated him for it. Mainly, because he was right. I couldn’t stand to be on the same continent as him and not touch him, and knowing that, I’d kept myself away from him. Four days had passed, and I was about to climb the walls because I hadn’t seen him.

  Asshole.

  Fine, sexy, irresistible asshole.

  I was considering jumping off the roof of the condo when Travis turned to me with this serious look on his face, and said, “I really feel like Conrad McMasters is a highly underrated character.”

  The fuck? “Who?”

  “The black guy, babe.”

  “Oh, yeah. Totally. Hey, sweetie, I’ve gotta go potty. Be right back.”

  “Hurry. You don’t wanna miss the end.”

  “Of course I don’t. Won’t take but a second.”

  I locked myself in the bathroom, sat on the closed toilet lid, and dialed his number. After two rings, he answered with, “Hey, Nick.”

  It was the same greeting he’d been giving me since elementary school, and it shouldn’t have made me feel the way it made me feel. I laid a hand between my open legs and sighed quietly. I missed his stupid ass so much.

  “Hey, Dame. What you up to?”

  “Not shit, really. Sitting here trying to decide if I wanna play Call of Duty. Theo’s been worrying the hell out of me about playing it with him.”

  Oh, good. His cousin was there. Theo was a complete turn-off for me. “Hey, let me say hi to him.”

  “Oh, he’s not here. His girl is due any day now, so he’s sticking close to the house. We were gonna play online.”

  Shit, don’t tell me you’re alone.

  “I’m alone right now.”

  I groaned inwardly as I slipped my hand inside my jeans and then my panties. Maybe if he kept talking… “Oh,” I said softly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching some bullshit with Travis. Matlock.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That nigga stay watching some court shit, don’t he?”

  I closed my eyes as I stroked myself. “Mm-hmm.”

  “You’ve got to be bored as hell. I know Project Runway is more your speed. Or old-school Star Trek.”

  That he knew that about me and Travis didn’t really turned me on. “Yeah…”

  “Why haven’t you been over?”

  “Uh…been…busy.”

  “You sure that’s the only reason and not because you’re scared you’ll wanna screw me if you see me?”

  “No…just been…busy.”

  “Nick,” he said, in this husky voice.

  “Yeah?” I almost whined, because I was right there, about to—

  “Are you touching yourself right now?”

  I sucked in a breath, fell against the back of the toilet, then panted into the phone. “No, why do you think that?”

  “Because, unlike Travis’s unskilled ass, I know what it sounds like when you’re about to come.”

  I closed my legs and shook my shoulders a bit. I felt so much better. “Well, you heard wrong.”

  “You know, there’s no reason for you to be over there touching yourself, baby. I’m here for you. Just hearing your voice has got me all hard. Damn, Nick. You know what I would love to do right now?”

  I glanced at the bathroom door. “What?”

  “Oops, gotta go.”

  And then his stupid ass hung up. And I was hot all over again from the thought of what he was possibly going to say. I despised him for playing with me.

  So I texted him: I can’t stand u. U play 2 much.

  Damon: I love u 2.

  I sent him a picture of Michelle Obama giving side-eye.

  He sent me a dick pic, then quickly followed it up with a picture of his smiling face—gorgeous pecan shell-colored skin, slightly slanted eyes that were so dark they were almost hypnotic and swathed in thick eyelashes, gorgeous nose, juicy lips, closely-trimmed beard and mustache, a faint vertical scar on the right side of his forehead from when a bully pushed him into a tree on the playground when we were kids (I kicked that bully’s ass for it, too), his thick hair cut so low it was almost imperceptible. Damon was extremely handsome, something I’d recognized about him long before he did. He might’
ve been awkward, had a bad acne problem, and worn glasses back in the day, but I always saw his beauty. And that body of his? That was a hashtag Transformation Tuesday for the record books! He was six-two with chiseled muscles covered in tats. So strong, he could toss me around if he wanted to, and I loved it.

  Damon was finer than a motherfucker.

  Hell, he was finer than ten motherfuckers.

  And the confidence he exuded as an adult? Shit! There were times when his confidence bordered on arrogance or pure assholery, and that really turned me on!

  Next, he sent a video of him licking and slurping on an apple that had a wedge cut out of it. He was licking the part of the inside that was exposed while closing his eyes and moaning loudly as Ro James’s Burn Slow played in the background. The caption of the video read: This could be you, but you over there watching Matlock.

  I fired another text to him: Fuck u, Damon.

  Damon: Anytime, Nick. Anytime.

  Me: I can’t express how much I despise u right now!

  Damon: No, u can’t express how much u want this D!

  At the end of his text, was an eggplant emoji.

  “Ugh!” I yelled, as I shut my phone off.

  “Hey, you okay in there?” Travis called through the door.

  “Yeah, constipated!” I replied.

  “Oh, need anything?”

  “No, be out as soon as I can.”

  “All right, babe. I’m just gonna start the Perry Mason DVD now.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, sweetie.”

  Against my better judgment, I turned my phone back on to find Damon had sent another video. In this one, he had Joe’s All the Things (Your Man Won’t Do) playing while he stood in front of his dresser mirror licking his lips and giving me a full view of that beautiful body of his in his boxer briefs and nothing else. I smiled, watched the video ten times, and then finally rejoined Travis just as some man confessed to committing murder right there on the witness stand.