Jahleel

by S. Ann Cole

  “Stop the bloody car, Manda!”

  “Why?” she demanded. “So you can go make an arse of yourself?”

  Reaching over, I grabbed the steering wheel and tried turning the car around, while Amanda fought to regain control of it. The car swayed from side to side, until it swerved up on someone’s lawn and ran over a garbage bin, careening back onto the road.

  “Alright! Alright!” Amanda yelled. “You trying to get us killed, you daft cow?!”

  “Turn. The. Car. Around!!!” My shrieks reverberated through my temples.

  “Get your fucking hands off the steering wheel then, yeah?”

  I spared her one last don’t-fuck-with-me glare before I removed my hands from the wheel.

  Slamming the car in reverse, she furiously hit the gas pedal, and the car sped back down the street. She stopped with a sharp hit to the brakes at Jamie’s curb.

  Amanda got out of the car faster than me, getting in my face. “I’m coming with you to ensure you don’t do anything dumb.”

  Ignoring her, I tried to get around her, but she pressed a firm palm to my chest, stopping me. “Just remember, he’s not yours. He has no obligation to you. He owes you nothing.”

  When I said nothing, she glared at me with those hard, intimidating onyx eyes, making sure I got it.

  Being obdurate, I glared back at her, but it wasn’t long before I sighed and gave in. “I know.”

  “Good. We’re here because we were worried about Jamie and came to check on her.”

  “But that’s the truth,” I pointed out.

  “Exactly.”

  We walked up the driveway to Jamie’s cute, brick-faced bungalow. As usual, her door was negligently left unlocked, which made it easier for me to catch them in the act.

  I heard the groans first, coming from the direction of her living room.

  We turned off the first wing to her living room. Jamie’s auburn mane was dangling over the edge of her lime-green couch, as her head was tossed back on it. Because the couch faced away from us, I couldn’t see much else.

  “Be gentle, JK,” she moaned out.

  A cocktail of raging emotions laced through me at her words, his name, and rendered me immobile, speechless.

  Picking up on this, Amanda stepped forward. “Jamie?”

  Jamie’s head jerked up at her name, and she slightly turned to glance over the edge of the couch at us. “Oh, hey, Manda. Kia,” she casually greeted, as if she wasn’t in the middle of getting pleasured by my…not my…my…Jahleel.

  “We were worried and—” Amanda started and stopped when Jahleel’s head popped up over the edge.

  Our eyes connected and I inhaled a sharp, painful breath. We stared at each other for half a minute. His expression held no apology, no remorse, his hair falling devastatingly deliciously into his eyes.

  Arse.

  Amanda grabbed my hand and tried to pull me out. “We’ll just go and—”

  “You’re still fucking her?” I impulsively directed at Jahleel, unable to just walk out like it was nothing. Not when my insides felt lacerated.

  The arsehole’s lips curved up in his signature crooked smile, and he slightly shook his head before disappearing behind the couch again.

  As I prepared to make my way towards the couch, Amanda pulled me back, while Jamie just stared, brows raised.

  “So you’re just going to ignore me?” I questioned the out-of-sight Jahleel. “You know what, raisin dick, I’m Saskia D—”

  “Shut up, Sassy,” Jahleel’s voice calmly ordered from behind the couch.

  With one sharp tug, I pulled from Amanda’s grip and power-walked towards the couch. “You don’t get to tell me to shut—” I skidded to a halt when I rounded the couch, words and movement arrested.

  Jamie reclined fully clothed in a white Capri and pink top, and her left leg, which had a huge red burn on the calf, rested in Jahleel’s lap. He knelt before her, applying some kind of ointment on the burn.

  Well, wasn’t I the idiot.

  But then again, he was here at her house. Maybe he planned on shagging her. What the hell was he doing here?

  “Bike burn,” Jamie explained. “Hurts like hell.” She dropped her head back on the couch and groaned unhappily. “I’m freakin’ scarred!”

  Jahleel quietly screwed the cap on the tube of ointment and put it in his drawstring bag lying on the floor next to him, before asking Jamie, “Where’s your bathroom? I need to get this shit off my hands.”

  Jamie grumpily groaned out her response, “Down the hall. Turn right. And if you see God on the way there, tell him I said ‘thanks’ for fucking up my life.”

  “It’s just a burn, drama queen. The scar will fade in about, say, five years.” Jahleel stood up and tossed his bag over his shoulders, chuckling. “Until then, yeah, you’re blemished. Just like the rest of us.”

  Jamie flipped him the bird and he laughed out. “You’re welcome, James.”

  He moved past me as if I wasn’t even there.

  As he disappeared out of the room, I moved in front of Jamie.

  “The hell was that about?” she asked before I could question her. “Are you two, like, dating or something? Because if you are, Kia, I would never, ever do anything to—”

  “How did this happen?” I cut her off, indicating her scarred leg.

  “JK and his stupid bike,” she grumbled. “Why can’t he drive a car like normal people?”

  Getting impatient, I waved a hand at her. “I can see it’s a goddamn bike burn, Jamie. I’m asking how you ended up on his bike in the first place.”

  Jamie’s eyebrows shot up, and she studied me for a second, a smile creeping onto her face. “Holy shit! You are so doing him. All possessive and jealous—”

  “How did you get on his bike?” I snapped. “You were going to shag him?”

  Jamie waved me off, unfazed. “He treated me like ass shit after the one time I ‘shagged’ him, so NO. Definitely not.”

  Her lips curled in displeasure as she regarded her leg. “I had car trouble this evening, that’s why you never saw me. My car broke down on the road. Something about the radiator, JK says. He was speeding by and recognized me. So he turned around and came to help. He called a wrecker for my car and offered me a lift home. My ass has never been on a bike before, so when we got here, I came off on the wrong side and burnt my damn leg on the exhaust pipe. Freaking thing.”

  Bringing her apologetic green gaze up to mine, she held up her hands. “He only offered to put some crap on the burn for me because I was freaking the hell out. Nothing else, I swear.”

  As mollification replaced indignation, I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Control freak Amanda assumed the position Jahleel had been in, taking up Jamie’s leg to examine the burn.

  The distant sound of the front door closing snagged my attention.

  He was leaving.

  While Amanda and Jamie were going coo coo over a boo boo, I breezed out of the house, hoping to catch Jahleel.

  He was about to swing his leg over his bike when I got outside. “JK!”

  Surprisingly, he stopped at my call. Turning to face me, clad in his usual simplistic denim and cotton, he waited for my approach.

  “You were just gonna leave without a word?” I asked once I reached him, tugging at the hem of his tee.

  Both arms shot out from his side, the jingling sound of his keys carrying off on the cold night winds. “What do you want me to say, Sassy?”

  Moving closer into him, I touched my hand to his chest, his heartbeat pounding under my fingers. “Nothing. You don’t have to say anything. As long as you’re with me, near me, that’ll do.”

  His eyes lowered to my hand on his chest, then back to me. “You shouldn’t do this out in the open Sassy, or we’ll end up on front pages. And I know Lion well enough to know he’ll shit a brick if your name gets caught up in a ‘dating two best friends’ scandal.”

  He was right. Lion was, at the moment, pissed at me. But I was used to h
im being pissed, because he’d been getting pissed at me quite a lot ever since I moved to SF. Oh well, I’d just have to bear it until I got what I wanted, what I came to the States for, who I got rich and famous for: Jahleel Kingston.

  So, on that resolution, I didn’t stop touching him. Instead, I closed the sliver of space between us and brought my other hand up to his chest, taking fistfuls of his tee in my grasps. “I don’t care about Lion or the world. I care about you.”

  A drop of wetness hit my cheek and we both looked up at the sky that had started drizzling. The clouds were now a darker orange, angry tinges of red here and there, huffing and puffing. Any minute now, they were going to blow.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Jahleel said, dragging his squinted gaze from the sky and back to me, “I haven’t been with anyone since I was sick.”

  Wow, that’s impressive. “I’m sorry, I wa—”

  “I only crave you, Sassy,” he talked over me. “So, you see, I’ve been starvin’ myself—because, obviously, I’m not feedin’ my desires.”

  “And Krissy?”

  “I only crave you,” he slowly repeated.

  Oh God. “So are you sayin—”

  “You.”

  As if we couldn’t have gotten any closer, I lurched hard against him and tipped up to connect our lips. Caught off guard, he stumbled back a little and chuckled in my mouth, but I didn’t stop kissing him. I was too fucking happy. No more Krissy dilemma! He was all mine.

  Mine.

  The drops from the sky were getting fatter, stinging our skin like wasps.

  One splatted on Jahleel’s forehead and trailed down his nose as he tried to pull away. “Sassy,” he mumbled, trying to pry our lips apart, but I was greedy. “I have to go before the rain. Bike, remember?”

  The fat plops of rain came faster, as if to spite us.

  Amanda rushed out of the house, jingling the car keys. “Break it up, world’s weirdest couple! Rain’s coming.”

  “Come home with me,” I begged him.

  He began to decline, but the rain came down faster, working in my favour.

  “It’s risky to ride in the rain, JK. And, clearly, this one’s going to be torrential.”

  Jahleel squinted up at the sky, his bike, then the house, before acquiescing. “‘Kay. Lemme ask James if it’s okay to park my bike in her garage.”

  Far from getting enough of him, I kissed him one last time before letting him go. He jogged off to the house, while I ran to the car where Amanda sat behind the steering wheel, impatiently waiting.

  “Okay, I’m very confused. Are you two shagging or not?” Amanda inquired the second I got into the car.

  “No, we’re not. Platonic, somewhat.”

  “So, basically you guys just kiss and feel each other up like you’re in high school?” she asked as she flicked on the headlights to reveal Jahleel’s hot bod moving his bike into the garage. “Hell, even back then I was getting penetration.”

  “It’s complicated, Manda.”

  “Clearly.”

  Jahleel left his bike and ran back to the car, opening Amanda’s door. “I’m behind the wheel, Mandy.”

  “Like hell!” she argued. “And do you always just slap a nickname on everyone you meet?”

  “Yeah, because I can,” he said impatiently. “Out.”

  Amanda wasn’t used to being bossed around. But there she was, complying, unsnapping her seatbelt and getting out of the car even as she fired, “I’ve got bigger balls than you, you know.”

  Laughing, Jahleel gave her a once over, regarding her lifted chin and squared shoulders, her confidence and air of dominance. “I’ve no doubt about that, Mandy. No doubt at all.”

  Ducking into the car, he adjusted the seat to his comfort, and as soon as Amanda was settled in the back, Jahleel peeled off from the curb. And, as if it had been waiting for us all to take shelter, the rain instantly poured.

  Chapter Twenty

  Curled up among scads of pillows on a puffy cream comforter laid out on my bedroom floor, I shoved a spoonful of chocolate-chip pistachio ice-cream in my mouth as the rain cascaded in a loud torrential deluge outside, the thunder rolling, growling, roaring. Lightning flashing through the darkness.

  As I was wonted to do whenever it rained, I’d drawn back the drapes from the sliding glass doors to watch the rain beat down on the city, the sky a beautiful coral despite its windy rage.

  Jahleel sauntered from the bathroom, a white towel slung low on his hips, his damp hair finger-combed back from his face, his abdominal muscles contracting with each breath, his calves strong, toned, fucking sexy.

  I sighed around another spoonful of ice-cream, ogling him from the floor as he stopped, looking askance at the bed bench where he’d left his clothes.

  “I gave them to Sylvie to get them washed and dried for you,” I told him.

  As though he hadn’t noticed me there before, his gaze dropped to me on the floor. A brow arched up. “Something wrong with the bed?”

  “Nope,” I said, scooping in more ice-cream. “I always do this when it rains. It’s amazing to watch.”

  He continued over to the bed bench and retrieved his cellphone, doing god-knows-what on it, while he groused, “We should’ve gone to my place. I smell like a bitch with all that flowery, fruity shit you have in there.”

  “Hey, I have to at least smell like a woman, okay? Else people are gonna start wondering…”

  The tell-tale sound of a Samsung Galaxy powering off sounded as he tossed it in his bag. “Your hair, I’ve always tried to place that scent. Now I know. Coconut. With a ‘burst of’ lemon citrus.”

  The way he emphasized ‘burst of’ as though they highly annoyed him, had me giggling.

  “No joke, Sassy,” he said, chuckling at my mirth. “All your products in there are burstin’ with something. Marketers can’t come up with a less trite description for their products?”

  “Why should they? Women like having things bursting—or squirting—all over them.”

  Jahleel shook his head as he walked over and joined me on the floor—me, partially naked in a lacy nude boy-leg and sheer bra-top. Placing a hand on my bare stomach, he leaned over and touched his lips to mine, ever so gently, then propped back on a pillow and stole the container of ice-cream from my hands.

  “You’re right,” he muttered agreeably. He stared out the glass doors at the rain and spooned ice-cream in his mouth. “This is nice to watch.”

  I sidled closer and lay my head on his stomach. We fell into comfortable silence, watching the rain’s downpour outside. Under the towel, I could feel his erection hard as steel, but by now I knew he wouldn’t act on it. How he managed going without sex for so long was beyond me.

  Whenever we were together like this, in a matter of seconds, I’d be in a state of dizzying lust and arousal, which usually resulted in me asking him to make me come, which he would do with just his fingers. But I was learning to live with it.

  The sensible side of me warned me not to take comfort in his vague admission of being over Krissy. Because if he was, why abstain from sex with me still? In addition, he hadn’t actually told me he wanted a relationship. I was still locked out and confused about ‘us’.

  All I knew was whenever we were together, we fit. Words weren’t needed. We could lay in silence for hours, just soaking in each other’s warmth, then walk away feeling whole and complete. Fulfilled and satisfied. Until we saw each other again.

  Sexless, yes, but it was with him. Jahleel Kingston. He’d shed his asshole veil for me and let me in…somewhat. And I was clinging, grabbing, scraping for what I could get from him.

  I loved him.

  Trailing a finger along the tattoos on his side, I broke the silence. “Are you ever going to tell me what the inscriptions on your arm and leg mean?”

  His voice came out raspy from being quiet for so long, “Like I tell you each time you ask, it won’t make sense to you.”

  “And like I keep telling you, I still
want to hear.”

  He claimed it wasn’t about Krissy, but I had a hard time believing that. Who else could it be about?

  “Someday, then.”

  “How about tonight?” I pushed. “It’s going to be a long one.”

  Chuckling, he set the now empty ice-cream container aside. “Okay,” he agreed, sliding down the pillow and shifting so my head was on his chest instead of his stomach. “It’s about God. The end.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly.”

  I tilted my head back to peer up at him. “No, I mean, what do you mean it’s about God?”

  “I don’t know Him,” he said with an easy shrug.

  “And you want to?”

  “My parents taught me about Him since I had the ability to understand. I know all the stories of miracles and works of wonders. I can probably quote the Bible verbatim. But Him, I don’t know. He never talks to me or give me guidance like my parents said He would. So…yeah.”

  After a moment of silence, I agreed, “You’re right, I don’t understand.”

  “I told you.”

  Thing was, I wouldn’t know how to even go about having a conversation on such a topic. My life was too busy, and I’ve never taken the time out to get to know a God, let alone talking to one. So I backed off. His tattoos were his, with his own personal, incomprehensible, meaning behind them.

  “Hey, your tats aren’t straightforward either,” he pointed out. “I think I might’ve figured out what some of the images you’ve hidden in the ink along your arm symbolizes, though. The two skulls represents your parents. The joined hearts wrapped with barb-wire represents Ferbz and Timber on a leash—your leash. The microphone and music sign, represents your career.” He slid a finger under my chin and tipped it up to see my face, asking, “Am I right so far?”

  Astonished at his unerring reading of my tats, I barely got out, “On point.”

  Lifting my arm, he studied the tats and pointed at the last image on the lower part of my inner arm, watching my eyes carefully. “I’ve never been able to figure out what this one represents, though. From what I can make out, it’s a red hood over an obscure face. What’s that about?”

  You.

  But I didn’t divulge that secret. Instead, I took a few minutes before answering, searching for a better way to explain it, while Jahleel waited patiently for my answer, a suspicious gleam in his eyes. “It represents what I hope for.”