The Brute & The Blogger

by Olivia Gaines

  “Ebony,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”

  She was caught in the moment, her hands intertwined in his hair, tugging at the strands trying to pull him closer. “Kissing you back, what are you doing?”

  “Trying to stop...but I can’t...” he said as he exhaled and deepened the kiss still. His mouth slanted over hers again and again until finally, he pulled away. He pulled her body to him as he leaned back on the couch, just holding her.

  “Tino, what are we doing?”

  His hand went back to stroking her thigh, “enjoying a truce.”

  “I like this truce...” she told him as she relished the warmth of his embrace.

  They both knew the moment of quietness, even as a respite, was not a good place for either of them to linger. Both understood that when action junkies found something they liked, it was difficult to not go back for more. Tino knew he would be back for another helping. Ebony was hoping he would.

  8. Who are you angry with me or yourself?

  Ebony was angry with herself. Tino had given her a few days off to stay off the ankle and get everything in order with her car. After the wonderful kiss they shared, he stayed for almost an hour and held her on the couch. He didn’t kiss her again, but she wanted him to. She was angry because she wanted to get back to work so she could see him again. The frustration was building within her because she wanted to create another opportunity for him to kiss her again. The man had magical lips. That thought led to her wondering about those big paw like hands and their potential to create magical moments as well. Before she allowed her imagination to run away with her, she focused on smaller tasks.

  Blog postings. Twenty minutes later, her mind was back on Tino Boehner. She found herself wanting to write nice things. It was a set up. Bring my defenses down and I will go easy on him. Instead of writing about him, she turned her attention to a local advocacy group that was planting trees in some downtown neighborhoods and creating community gardens. My life does not center on Tino Boehner.

  He gave me the days off, and I am going to take them!

  Ebony loaded up the Gremlin and went car shopping. Four hours and three hundred and fifty dollars a month later, she was the proud owner of a Chevy Equinox. It was sleek, beautiful and shiny blue. She drove it over to the community garden and snapped pics of herself and some of the organizers, which she added to the blog she uploaded later that evening.

  She also wrote another blog about being a woman shopping for a car. She posted a few pictures of herself and the new vehicle, making no references to the loaner. For four days, she made no references to him at all. Something that did not go unnoticed by the brute.

  On Thursday evening, she heard a pounding at her door, opening it to find him standing there, looking good enough to pour honey over and buzz about him until it was all gone. She stood in the doorway, blocking his entrance. Her voice was low as she whispered, “you should have called first.” She closed the door a little more, hindering his view inside.

  “Oh, you are not alone?” He asked, his face taut.

  Ebony shook her head no.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he told her. His disappointment evident.

  “You came all of this way, did you want something?”

  His eyes spoke volumes as he stared at her face, “yes... you.”

  It felt good to re-level the playing field. The wound was open and she was the Morton girl. Open wide, layer with salt.

  “Tonight is not a good night... next time call first.” She kissed her fingertip and pressed it to his lips. Instead of allowing her to get away with the blow off, he grasped her wrist in suckled on her fingertip.

  “Next time...call first...got it...”

  He left.

  Thank God! A few more seconds of that finger sucking and I was going to do more than let him kiss me.

  The table had just turned. Ebony was grinning, because she was liking it. He was used to being chased or being the hunter. Fine. She was going to outfox him on more than one level.

  In her closet were three pairs of jeans. One pair for scut work around the house, volunteer assignments and projects where a girl got dirty. The second pair was a throwback to her clubbing days and was guaranteed on any given night to get her at least three drinks, and invitation to dinner and in one instance a marriage proposal. The last pair...well the last pair was a reminder to all who gazed upon the superb fit, a gentle understanding of the power of a Stairmaster and good eating habits. That is the pair she put on and headed to work on Friday morning at Boehner Enterprises. She also sported a pink pair of Timberlands, with red laces.

  In less than an hour, she had the attention of every man, young and old in the facility. One lady even went out of her way to ask her about her exercise routine and diet. She gladly shared the information. The men she was cordial to, but not too friendly. One rather handsome and well-built fellow, name George, took an immediate liking to her. “What is it you do here George?”

  “I am a master carpenter,” he told her with a smile that could charm the habit off a nun. He was in the midst of explaining his many uses of wood and woodworking when Tino walked up and cleared his throat. George took it as his cue to get back to wherever he had sneaked away from, and left them alone in the break room.

  “Glad to see you back at work. The ankle is all healed?”

  “Yes, I am much better. I opted for some more sensible shoes and attire,” she told him as she fanned her hands out like one of the girls in the Price is Right displaying the showcase.

  In Tino’s mind, there was nothing sensible about those jeans. The moment she turned around in them, all of his senses rushed to his pants and the rest out of the window. “I was wondering...” he told her with his head down. “If you were free Saturday night?”

  “I am not,” she told him flatly.

  He must not have heard her because he continued as if he didn’t, “I have this movie I have been dying to see and I thought maybe I could bring a bottle of wine, and maybe some Chinese food for... wait. What?”

  “I said, I am not free on Saturday night,” she said again with no expression on her face. “You also interrupted my conversation with George. He was telling me all about his wood and how he loved the feel of it in his hands.” She said the last part with a straight faced delivery as well.

  His eyebrows rose slightly. “I’m sorry I misunderstood. I thought we had reached a truce.”

  She remained rooted to her spot, although everything in her wanted to run her hands through his thick hair and kiss the hell out of him until he surrendered to her every desire. But she stood fast. “We do. We have. However, there is nothing in our armistice which requires you to cross my threshold and enter my domicile again.”

  “Would you be willing to enter mine?”

  “No. I would not. I do thank you for asking though,” she told him as she looked over his shoulder and waved at George. “Let’s you and I get through the next three weeks, okay Boss?”

  There it was again. That clever word smithing that ran hot wax down the split in his butt cheeks. Fine. I can make it three weeks and get you out of my hair for good. He only lasted a week and two and a half days, which infuriated him to no end.

  Tino was back to being the brute.

  9. Tell me what I need to hear

  The second week on the job, was her one on one with Tino. She rode in the close confines of his truck as he checked on projects, completed inspections and attended meeting after meeting. The man attended a lot of meetings. Zoning meetings. Re-zoning meetings. Finance, accounting, mayoral, senatorial, electoral, nonprofit, for profit, school board, school zones, parking zones and by the end of the week he looked completely worn out.

  “It takes a lot to do what you do. I had no idea of the level of involvement required to take over some of the projects and redevelop communities,” she told him with a touch to his arm.

  “This is the part I hate. I truly enjoy finding a property and seeing the potential in it.
I really enjoy breaking down the walls and rebuilding something new and fresh in its place. You know a second chance to be repurposed so to speak,” he said as he looked at her. His eyes intense.

  Ebony didn’t miss the cue. “Are you talking about houses or are you talking about me?”

  He chuckled. “I dunno. Maybe both. Maybe us. I like you,” he said with no emotion in his voice as he leaned back against his pickup truck.

  The careful balancing act of choosing the right words to say to him had been putting a strain on her all week. Honestly, she enjoyed it better when they were going tit for tat, but she had been playing it cool. Tino was tired of cool, he wanted to warm things back up. A lot.

  “I thought you were starting to like me as well,” he said with his voice lowered.

  Always lead with a compliment, her mother taught her, then you give the bad news. “You are an exceptional kisser,” she told him.

  “But...”

  “There is no but. You are my boss. End of that,” she said.

  “Fine, you are fired.”

  Ebony’s eyes were wide then she scowled at him, “you do realize that putting me in an unemployed position with a new car would make me truly dislike you.”

  “I can’t win with you woman! I want to kiss you again. I want you in my arms and possibly more, but everything is a fight with you!” He was yelling at her in the empty parking lot.

  She wasn’t going to back down until he was honest, with not only her, but with himself. “Good try,” she told him.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “What is it you want from me, Ebony?”

  Now they were getting somewhere, “I want you to be honest. If there is one person in this world you can be honest with, I would like it to be me.”

  “I am being honest. You see my week. I am surrounded by people who constantly tell me what I want or they think I want to hear. You are refreshing because you tell me what I need to hear.” The words were said in such a way that it was not a statement but a request. He needed to hear something from her that was honest as well. He gave her a look that said, ‘your turn.’

  “I liked kissing you as well,” she said in a low voice. It was all she was able to get out as he pulled her hard against him and began to thoroughly kiss her. He kissed her so completely, that she actually raised her right foot like in the old movies. What she wanted to do was raise the whole leg, climb up him and cling to him like a koala cub as she gyrated against him until her lady parts started to sing. The man was virtually making love to her with his mouth.

  She tried to pull her mouth away, but his kisses continued down her neck, along the side of her face, as his large hands pressed her body so close to his, it was difficult to determine where he ended and her body began.

  “Tino, we need to stop,” she told him while trying to pull out of his grasp.

  “I can’t. I want to kiss you until the swelling goes down in my pants,” he told her with a chuckle.

  His mouth found hers again as his tongue snaked inside and began to mate with hers once more. He moved, turning her body until she could feel the hardness of him against her thigh. Trying to catch her breath, “Tino, you are sure doing a whole lot of kissing.”

  “I have a whole lot of swelling,” he told her as his mouth made a trail down her neck and back up to her ear where he began to whisper to her. “Touch me Ebony. Feel how much I love holding you. Kissing you. Having you so close to me,” he said as he reached for her hand, lowering it.

  He had worked her up and she followed where he was leading and she allowed her hand to slide down the front of his pants until it made contact with his...”What the hell is that?”

  She yelled and jumped back, staring at him. Her eyes were fixed on his manhood. Her fingers didn’t lie to her brain. She blinked furiously trying to process everything she was experiencing. Her uterus was screaming hell no, but the slutty portion of her brain yelled, “I got next!”

  Ebony began to walk in circles in the parking lot talking to herself. She had dated one or two gifted black men, but had always shied away from anything that would hinder or impair her ability to walk straight. Tino would ruin her for life.

  “Stop overreacting Ebony,” he told her.

  “You stop overreacting. Please, let’s just go back to the office. We will pretend none of this happened,” she told him as she sidestepped him and slid into the passenger seat of the pick-up truck.

  “I can’t.” he told her as he slid inside of the truck. “You upped the ante when you wore those frickin’ jeans to work. You have me so hot for you I can barely make it through my day and now, you want to play like you are scared?”

  Her eyes were wide, “Who’s playing? I am scared, I would end up in a wheelchair trying to take on all of that!” She motioned with her hand at his groin area.

  He leaned his weary mind against the headrest, “I would never hurt you. Besides, I know how to wield by bid dictionary. I can’t believe you think I would.” He started the engine.

  “I know you wouldn’t intentionally hurt me, but you have some very rough tendencies and...” she thought about it for a second. “Why are we discussing this? It is not going to happen. I have only been in your physical company for two weeks. I am not jumping into bed with you.”

  “Again, as always you are wrong Ebony.” He hit the signal and pulled into the flow of traffic.

  “How am I wrong now, Tino?” She really wanted to hear his answer on this one.

  The Ford merged into traffic and he picked up speed along the interstate, “it has not been two weeks, but five years. You and I have been going at each other for five years. For five years you have been taunting, teasing and beckoning me to come and get you with your sideways invitations. You consistently post long notes to me waiting to elicit a response. Running into you that night was chance. Your last posting was intentional. You know, me as wolf, decimating the flock, licking my chops after every tasty bite. Ebony, you said come get you in your own words. I am here. I came to you and I am ready.”

  Tino pressed the CD player and Anita Baker’s sultry voice filled the cab of the truck with Sweet Love. Ebony’s mind was reeling. This man had a soundtrack for every instance in his life. But what troubled her more was if her last blog post been a reach out to him? She could not believe that her fiery words been an aphrodisiac to a man whose life was filled with meetings after meetings. It became a heavy load to think her words had become a fuel to his dying embers.

  The only other words he said as they pulled into the parking lot of his offices were, “When the time comes, and it will, I plan to make love to you so thoroughly the only thing you will be able to write for the rest of your life is poetry.”

  “Well, damn.” She said to the back of his head as he walked away from her. Two more weeks Ebony. You just have to make it two more weeks.

  It was easier said than done.

  10. Editing the content

  Sunday dinner at the Millers was more like a meal with the Klumps. Grandpa Sherman Miller was either incontinent or full of gas, but Ruby Miller, Ebony’s mother thought it was disrespectful for her father to not sit at the head of the table in his own home. Grandma Pearl, who had divorced Sherman Miller 30 years ago, thought it was disrespectful that she still had the share the table with the old farting bastard and opted to eat in the kitchen or not at all. Since her home had been torn down by Boehner Enterprise and replaced with fancy apartment homes, Pearl had to move back in with her daughter.

  Ruby saw it as a blessing, whereas her husband, Ira stayed quiet on the matter. His parents had long since passed and he was not going to come between his wife and her parents. Ira was adamant that Ruby hire a nurse to help with her father, who seemed to snack all day in an effort to either create more gas or fuel more incontinence. Ebony overheard her father one evening mumbling, “No wonder she left the old buzzard, he is just a nasty sumbitch.”

  Ebony was starting to worry that she had gotten part of his mean streak, which is what put her
onto Tino Boehner. Displacing her grandmother hadn’t helped either, or the other low income families who had to find somewhere else to live. His words haunted her as she scrolled through all of her blog posts over the past five years. Over eight hundred blogs posts were on her site and nearly three hundred and fifty of them were on Boehner Enterprises. “Dear God, I am a stalker!”

  She read through a few of the postings at random and each one was a personal challenge to him of some sort. True to his word, he had responded in some form to every article she had written. Some in a positive manner and others more in her face. “Oh my Jesus! He is right. It has been foreplay!”

  She went back and read her last article on the wolf and the sheep. The more she read, the more embarrassed she became. To the outsider looking in, it was an article on a big bad guy that was chewing up and spitting out the little man. Reading it from the perspective of a man who felt she was writing him personal love letters, it was indeed an invitation.

  Several times Tino had cautioned her about word choice and she looked at hers in the article. Sensuous. What does that have to do with a wolf? Masticating the hunk of mutton as he stroked the unwilling sheep who fell under his hypnotic stare ...grinding...ripping...undulating...strolling through, rolling his hips with each conquest...

  “Oh my word! I wrote a porn script!”

  Her mother found her on the patio, face down on the sofa, mumbling into the cushions.

  “What’s wrong Ebony?”

  “I have to pay the piper. And he has a really big pipe,” she told her mother.

  “You have such a way with words Dear,” her mother said as she patted her on the leg. “Don’t forget to shut down my tablet when you are done playing around with your pipe dreams.”

  It wasn’t her big words she was worried about. It was Tino’s big dictionary that was causing her to almost lose her mind. She grabbed the tablet and took another look at her resume.