by Cross,Lexi
“Brace yourself,” I told her as she put the car in park in their driveway. I patted her leg.
My parents’ front door flew open, and my dad was on his way out to meet us right away.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a guest,” he called out in a gruff voice. He didn’t sound pleased, but I was pretty sure that was just for show.
“Yeah, Dad, this is Kendra Boles, the lady I was telling you about.”
“The one who dances for a living, right?” he asked, putting on his best senile act.
“No, Dad, the one with the charity,” I said in a mock whisper.
“Oh, the charity case! Son, you shouldn’t talk about her like that. She’s right there behind you. She sure as hell doesn’t look like a charity case to me.” He laughed and gave me a hug.
I turned to look at Kendra as he walked around to the other side of the car. She looked stunned and horrified, like my father really wasn’t happy to see her.
“I’m just playing with you, Kendra,” he said. “Lucky told us all about you and your work at Older Brothers. We’re glad to have you here with us. Now, Margaret is inside cooking breakfast. You two leave me to unload the car, and you go inside to get you some food. I’ll be in shortly to show you where you’re sleeping tonight.”
“The guest room, right?” I called back to my dad.
“That’s the one, but let me show you,” he said.
I smiled. He probably had something up his sleeve. Kendra joined me as we walked up to the front door.
“That was terrifying.”
“I told you to brace yourself,” I said, laughing. “My mother isn’t like that. She’ll be nice.”
“I’m not buying it.” She chuckled.
We entered the house, and my mother embraced Kendra immediately. It was comforting to see my mother’s white hair bobbing just over Kendra’s shoulder, around her curls. She welcomed us in and took us into the dining room where she had bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, ham, and hash browns waiting on us. It was a huge breakfast. My mouth watered, and I saw Kendra’s eyes bulging out of her head.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hendrix,” she said. The words sounded like they just fell out of her mouth on their own.
“Don’t thank me, dear. Eat.” My mother’s voice was like a piece of hard candy. It was sweet, but it didn’t settle quickly. After she spoke, the sweetness just sort of hung around.
“I should have warned you,” I said with my hand over my mouth while I was chewing. “There’s going to be a lot of food this weekend. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I don’t think I’m going to want to go back,” Kendra said with a shrug. “That’s all there is to it. We’re moving out here and living close to your parents. I’ll find a local charity, and you’ll just have to quit the team.”
We laughed and ate, and my mother joined us, enjoying her cooking as much as we were. My dad came in as we were finishing up and showed us to the guestroom.
“This was Lucky’s old bedroom,” he told us, as proud as he could be. “We have all his trophies and plaques on the walls.”
Sure enough, every plaque and trophy I had earned was in that room. I sent anything like that home to my parents when I received it. I figured they were better at taking care of stuff like that than I was, and I knew it thrilled them to see it. They also had all of my jerseys hanging up on the walls, from every team I ever played for.
“I’ll let you two get situated. If you’re tired, feel free to get a nap. We’re just going to be sitting around reading the paper until noon anyway.”
We unpacked, but we didn’t stay in the guestroom. I took Kendra with me on a tour of the grounds. My parents had a small house, but they had a large back yard. It stretched back into the woods behind the house. There were paths and hideouts still from when I was a kid. Some of them had been used as recently as my high school days, and I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea just to wander around for the day, as much as I could anyway. I wasn’t getting too far on my crutch. I was down to just the one, but it was still a pain in the ass.
We came back in for lunch and spent the afternoon in my room. My parents really seemed to like Kendra, and they also seemed to want to stay out of the way. I couldn’t blame them. She was sort of a mythological creature to them. She was the one who was going to tame me and get me to settle down.
What got me was that she didn’t realize that she really was that person. I wanted to show her how much she meant to me. And I knew exactly what to do to show her I was putting my past behind me.
I had to wait until after dinner before we could have any serious conversations. My parents kept interrupting us every time we tried to talk. I didn’t mind, because they just couldn’t get enough of Kendra. They showered her with love.
After dinner, and after we spent a little while watching TV together in the living room, talking about our day, I was finally able to get her alone in my old room, on the queen-size bed that had replaced my old twin.
Surrounded by my past, I figured it was a good time to show her I was ready to move on.
Chapter Eleven
Kendra
“Well, we’re going to bed. You two don’t stay up too late now,” Lucky’s cute old dad said as he got up from his recliner. He leaned down and hugged me, kissing me lightly on the cheek. He then took Mrs. Hendrix by the hand and helped her up from her chair. They were so cute together. They were still very much in love.
They also treated me like the daughter they’d never had. They treated me like a princess because they thought I was Lucky’s actual girlfriend. They thought I was the one. I had never felt so welcomed by a man’s family before.
It made everything else feel very real to me. I started looking at Lucky differently. He had surely set up this meeting with his parents to make me reconsider a real relationship with him. It was starting to get difficult to remember that we weren’t in a real relationship already.
“Come with me,” he said after his parents left the room. “I’ve got something to show you.”
He led me back to his old room like we were kids and he was showing me something he wasn’t supposed to have. Then, I saw what he was going to show me. He handed me his phone.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s my phone.”
“But why?” I insisted.
“Because I don’t want to have any secrets, Kendra. I know that you were put off the other night when we kissed, and I know that you’ve been sort of distancing yourself from me ever since then. But I want you to know that I’m serious about you, about us. This whole arranged relationship thing? I don’t want to do it anymore. I want it to be real,” he explained.
“But what does your phone have to do with it?” It still felt like he was up to something, trying to get me in bed with him or something like that. I couldn’t believe he was trying to get me in bed with him in his old bed from when he was a kid. That was kind of perverse. It didn’t seem right at all. But then he told me something I really didn’t expect to hear.
“My phone has all my old girlfriends in my contacts. All the girls I’ve slept with in every town I’ve visited. Some of them are repeat offenders, because sometimes I call them when I’m back in those towns. I want you to delete all of my contacts. I’ve got the important ones backed up,” he told me.
“Just delete all of them? But what if you have some of these girls backed up? What does this prove to me, then?” I asked. I wanted him to tell me this was just another stunt before I fell for it, because I could already feel myself starting to fall for it.
“That’s the other part. After you delete them all, I want you to load the backup contacts so you can see that it’s only the people I need to keep, like you, my parents, the guys here, and contacts for the team.”
I did it. I opened his contacts and told his phone to erase them. I showed him that it had been done, and then I told it to load the backup file. Sure enough, there were only a few contacts in there, just like he said
there would be.
“This isn’t a stunt, is it?” I asked him as I handed him back his phone. “You’re not pulling my leg right now and trying to just get me to agree to sleep with you, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” he said in a gentle, soothing voice.
He put his phone on the nightstand, face down, and ran his fingers down along my chin. I felt chills run up my legs and up my spine. He slid his hand around behind my neck and pulled me to him. I wanted to resist because as much as I wanted him, I wasn’t ready for this to go to the next level. Not yet.
When his lips touched mine again, however, I realized I was ready. Another kiss was all I needed to convince me that it was time to move on with him. I closed my eyes and gave myself to the kiss. My lips parted for his tongue, letting him into my mouth.
His hands were roaming down from my chin to my shoulders, down over my arms, and to my waist, where he grabbed my shirt and pulled it off over my head. Our mouths moved apart for just an instant as my shirt passed between us, but we were immediately right back together.
He gripped my breasts through the thin bra I wore. He squeezed them like ripe fruit while I worked to unclasp the back of my bra and slide it off. He pushed me back onto the bed then and kissed my neck slowly, gently.
There was something furious and passionate in his energy even though he was being careful and gentle with me, as if he thought my body would break if he were too rough. He kissed down over my shoulders and slowly down to my breasts. His firm hands still gripped me and squeezed, presenting my soft pink nipples for his mouth to suck. His lips brushed my hardening pink peak. His tongue flicked the tip of my flesh.
Then, he locked his lips down around me and started sucking the tender skin into his mouth. Pleasure ran through me like a jolt of electricity. I moaned and arched my back, and buried my hands into his slicked back hair. I held his face against my chest and rolled my hips, searching for his.
His leg rested between my legs, pressed firmly against me. I rubbed myself against him, rocking my hips back and forth while the pressure between my legs generated ecstasy deep inside of me.
“Please, Lucky, I want you,” I begged, pulling on his shirt, pulling him to me.
I spread my legs for him, and I felt his strong fingers sliding down across my stomach to the waist of my jeans. He unbuttoned them and slid them down with my panties, exposing me in one swift motion.
I pulled his shirt over his shoulders and let it fall to the floor while I reached down for his belt. I unbuckled him and unbuttoned his pants. I slid the zipper down with my thin fingers and felt his throbbing erection pressing against my hand, longing to get out of his pants.
He pulled his pants and boxers down, and I grabbed his hardened shaft. I pumped his taut skin with my small hand and pulled him to me.
“Fuck me,” I commanded him. “Fuck me, Lucky.”
He positioned himself against my tender, wet lips and pressed the tip of his head against my opening. His body tensed above me as he waited.
“Please fuck me,” I begged. “I want you so bad. Please.”
“No,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
My breath caught in my chest. At first, I thought he wasn’t going to do anything. I thought he was telling me we were done, and he was going to get up to leave me lying there naked and longing for him.
I threw my arms and legs around him, holding him to me, and he slowly slid himself inside me.
I moaned as he filled me with his thick, solid shaft. It filled me side to side and front to back. Every inch of him slid past my spread lips to fill every inch of me inside. He moved in and out of me in slow, measured strokes, sliding deep inside of me before pulling all the way back.
He wasn’t fucking me. That wasn’t what he was doing at all.
He wrapped me in his arms and kissed me as he rolled his hips back and forth. I rocked mine against his, pressing myself against him each time he entered me.
I pumped myself more and more furiously as I grew closer and closer to orgasm.
“Oh god, Lucky,” I cried out. It wasn’t taking him long at all to get me there. He fit me so perfectly, so completely, that I was worried it was going to be too fast.
I gripped his shoulders and held him against me as I pumped my hips against him. My body jerked beneath him as white hot pleasure roared through me. I tilted my head back and cried out in ecstasy as my body became one giant pleasure center.
I pulled myself back from him, sliding him almost all the way out of me, feeling my tightening muscles resisting as I forced myself to let him go.
I slammed myself against him again, letting him stab my ecstatic sex. I cried out as the last of my ecstasy rolled through my body in one crashing wave that landed against his body.
“That’s good, baby,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m so close.”
“Give it to me,” I said.
I could feel him growing harder, stiffer inside me. He was getting closer, and I didn’t want him to waste a drop of it. I pulled back from him and moved to take him in my mouth.
He groaned and put a hand on the back of my head, tangling his fingers in my curls as I took him into my mouth. I could taste myself and my pleasure along his thick, hard shaft. I wrapped my fingers around the base and squeezed as I slid my lips and tongue up and down along his length. His head stuck into the opening of my throat, and I knew that swallowing him was going to be a challenge. I worked him anyway. I pulled on his shaft with my tongue as I sucked.
He started to shake, and his grip on the back of my head tightened. He was about to come. He said something above me. I couldn’t hear what it was because he exploded in my mouth at the same time. He filled my mouth with his hot, salty juice.
“That’s my girl,” he panted above me.
I looked up as I finished him off, getting every last drop out of him. He sat with his head tilted back, panting and moaning at the ceiling.
“That’s my Kendra,” he said. Both hands were on the back of my head now, and he started thrusting his hips against my face, driving himself into my mouth, letting the last few drops of his precious flavor spill out onto my tongue.
I pulled my mouth back as he finished, and he collapsed onto the bed.
“Oh, baby, that was good shit,” he said, stroking my leg.
“So romantic,” I teased, laughing at him as I wiped my mouth.
“Baby, that was beautiful,” he said, sitting up. “Kendra, that was…” he started again, but I put a finger to his mouth to stop him.
“I need to use your bathroom,” I told him, and I grabbed my purse as I got up.
“Don’t be too long,” he said as I left his room, still completely naked.
The bathroom was just a door over from his. I hurried in and sat down on the toilet. I opened my purse and pulled out my phone. I’d heard it go off while we were in bed. It was from one of my donors, and he’d left a voicemail.
While I sat in the bathroom, I listened to his message.
“Kendra, it’s Tommy. I’d like to talk to you again about my offer. I can give you so much more than just money for your charity, and I think you know that already. Give me a call back when you get this message, love. I’ll talk to you then.”
I deleted the message. Tommy had been trying to get me to sleep with him for a large donation to Older Brothers, and for enough money to solve the financial problems that had followed me from a few other failed charities.
He couldn’t have called at a worse time.
Lucky had just shown me that he wasn’t going to hide anything from me, but one of my secrets had just popped back up to throw a kink in everything. I shoved my phone back in my purse and tried to pretend nothing happened.
Chapter Twelve
Lucky
“Hey, Lucky. I haven’t heard from you in a while.” It was Raven. I regretted letting Kendra delete all of the women out of my phone. If Raven’s name had come up with her number, I wouldn’t have answered.
“There’s a reason for that,” I told her, hoping she’d get the point that I didn’t want to talk to her, no matter how good she was in bed. That was doubly true now that things were starting to move forward with Kendra. I had convinced Kendra that I was for real.
