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her face was a study of tormented pleasure and she was panting. I rubbed gently at the breast I had just ravished as I took the other nipple into my mouth. She was shaking and leaning against me, so I urged her to turn around and rest against the door again. I hadn’t intended to kiss her as hard as I did, but when she shuddered and gathered me close, I lost all thought of holding back. When she pulled her lips away I kissed the line of her jaw, working my way back to her lips.
“We need to stop while I still can,” she gasped.
Even as I heard the halfhearted plea, my hands were traveling to the damp crotch of her shorts. I realized with stunned clarity that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Not only could I feel how much she desired me, I could feel every fold, every curve of her sex. Her clitoris shuddered against my Þ ngertips, and she let out a choked sob, which I smothered with my mouth to keep myself from crying out. I moved to kiss the scar at her cheek, her neck, and her breasts, which were still free. My Þ ngers, of their own accord, crept beneath the waistband of her shorts and paused at the neatly trimmed hair, giving her time to stop me. Her only reaction was in the heaving of her stomach, and when I moved forward, parting her legs so that she was open to me.
My Þ ngers sank into her warmth. She tried to straighten against the door and when she did, I slipped even deeper inside her. I pulled out my soaked Þ nger, gliding over her clitoris twice, and then sank back into her, this time with a second Þ nger. Her head slammed back against the door so hard that it startled me.
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t.” My hand, the free one, went to the back of her head to rub gently where I imagined she had struck the door.
“Mia, please…stop playing with me. Finish it.” Her mouth was trembling and her body felt heavy, as if she could barely keep herself standing. She thought I was playing with her. I wanted to stop, desire be damned, and make her understand that I wasn’t playing, that I had never felt this for anyone. Not Brenda, not anyone. But she was hurting and I was touching her so deeply that each breath she drew made her rise slightly off my Þ ngers.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
“Mia, someone’s coming.”
If it wasn’t for the shocked look on her face, I might have thought she was prophesying her pending orgasm. I managed to pull my hand
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from her pants and stick it in my back pocket just as Christina, Goody, and Dominique stumbled through the door.
“Oh, hey. Sorry,” Christina said. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Ryan’s breathing was shallow behind me.
“Hey, everybody, this is Ryan. She just Þ nished working out.”
“Hi,” Ryan said.
I had the horrifying realization that I had left Ryan’s breasts hanging out when I had turned around, but a quick glance back showed that she’d had the presence of mind to right herself before they came. I, on the other hand, no longer had a ponytail and my shirt was untucked.
They would have to be pure innocents not to know what they had just interrupted.
“I guess you wanted that water, huh.” I picked up the glass and tried to hand it to Dominique, but her eyes were riveted on Ryan.
Goody cleared his throat. Any fantasy I’d had that they might not realize what we were doing went out the window with that action.
“Ryan, I didn’t know you were here. You should come out and play with us.”
“No, thanks. I was just downstairs working out. I need to get a shower.” Ryan took the glass from my hand and drained it. Her eyes never left mine as she drank. She handed the empty glass back and, with a soft “excuse me” to Dominique, squeezed by everyone and escaped out the doorway, leaving me in the clutches of evil.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I want her so bad.”
The words cracked through the silence and sent a shiver down my back. If the voice hadn’t been so irreverent, so lecherous, and if Amy hadn’t popped Goody in the back of the head, I would have thought the words were my own.
“What?” Goody protested in a voice worse than the sound of a cat in heat. “I could want a woman.”
“And what would you do with her?” Christina asked.
“I’d, you know, paint her toenails and play dress-up with her.”
Both Dominique and Goody had expectant looks on their faces, while Christina had, as far as I could tell, avoided looking at me altogether. Her disapproval was no less evident than if she had picked up the phone and called our mother and told her what she had just caught me doing. I turned away, Þ lled the glass with water, and downed it in the hopes of cooling myself down. Too bad the glass was still warm from where she’d held it, too bad I had the immediate vision of her lips being pressed there. Damn, even thoughts of my mother weren’t cooling me down. I steeled myself and faced my waiting audience.
“Okay, so you gonna tell us about the chick you got living under your stairs?” Dominique asked.
“Ooh.” Goody whipped around. “I saw that movie. It was with that cute actor that played the boy doctor…what was it called?”
“Yeah, we saw it too. It was based on a true story,” Amy said.
“Shut up…for real? I had no idea,” Goody said with all the reverence of a child.
“Yeah, they ended up trying to kill the husband.”
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Goody turned to me. “You got plans we should know about?”
“Oh, be quiet.” I pushed my way past the Three Stooges. Dominique was pretending to eat a carrot stick that I knew she would exchange for the Doritos Naomi had brought once the rest of us were inebriated. I couldn’t help but reach out and touch her tummy as I passed. “You look so beautiful,” I said.
To my utter surprise, she blushed and put her hand over her distended belly. “Thanks.”
“So are we back to playing, or are you going to stand around talking about some made-for-TV movie?” I tried to sound casual but the sooner the game ended, the sooner I could Þ nd Ryan and convince her to Þ nish what we started in the kitchen.
“I vote both,” Goody said.
I rolled my eyes and stalked back to the poker table.
“Who the hell was that?” Naomi stage-whispered. “She was hot!”
This is going to be a long night.
v
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.” Dominique tossed down her two cards.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Amy munched on a chip while she looked at her cards. “You’ll get some good ones soon.”
“No, I mean I can’t just act like she isn’t up there.”
“I see your Þ fty and raise you seventy-Þ ve,” I said, hoping that by betting three times the blind, someone would call me. But they all folded like the scared bitches they were. I swept the chips toward me and stacked them neatly. I could feel their eyes on the top of my hair.
“So, who is she, Mia? I mean, you can’t just expect us not to be curious.”
Amy reached for Dominique’s hand to quiet her. “Hon, let’s leave Mia alone. I don’t think she wants to talk about it.”
It wasn’t like Dominique to be so persistent, and I could tell that the others were equally interested. So I reluctantly offered an explanation that I hoped would end the speculation. “She’s a friend and she’s doing some work on the house.”
“Does Brenda know about this friend living in her house?” Naomi demanded.
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“You see Brenda here?” My words carried an anger I didn’t know I was feeling. Maybe Ryan was right. Maybe my business with Brenda was too unÞ nished to even contemplate a new relationship.
“So I have a question,” Amy said as she mucked her cards. “Is it even possible to be friends with someone who looks l
ike that?”
“Hey,” Dominique protested.
“Sweetie, you’re gorgeous, but you know what I mean.”
Dominique growled a response, but she seemed somewhat molliÞ ed. They exchanged a few other private remarks that were punctuated with gentle kisses. I was grateful not to be the focus of everyone’s attention, because my imagination had just shifted into overdrive as I envisioned Ryan stepping into a shower. The fact that the pipes had begun their normal chorus of groans lent itself nicely to the imagination process.
Finally Dominique said, “Well, I’m just glad Mia ignored you all these years.”
Christina choked and sat her glass down hard. “Did I just miss something?”
“Oh, my God, you didn’t know Amy had a thing for Mia in college?” Goody said. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“Are you kidding me?” Christina looked from Amy to me.
I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed with Goody for picking up on something that I had obviously missed or Christina, whose reaction had just a tad too much shock to not be insulting. Was it so far-fetched to think someone had found me attractive in college? The night had gone from fantastic to ridiculous in the span of a few minutes.
“Since when did Amy have a crush on me?” I asked. “She spent most of her time dating jocks.”
“I always came home to you, though.” Amy turned to Dominique, who had her bottom lip stuck out. “That was a long time ago, sweetie.”
She leaned over and kissed her wife.
I blinked at them all like strangers. “I haven’t had anything to drink and you guys haven’t drunk near enough to be acting like this.”
“Sorry, Mia, but you were just getting out of that awkward stage and entering the stage you’re in now. I may not have wanted to admit I was a lesbian, but having a beautiful woman, who was deÞ nitely a lesbian, sleeping right next to me was difÞ cult.”
Amy’s confession ß oored me. I considered her my closest friend.
We didn’t spend near enough time together because of work and
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relationships, but she had never admitted to being remotely interested in me. I had spent the Þ rst two years after she came out waiting for her to change her mind about being gay. Even after she and Dominique became serious, I kept waiting for her to call me and admit that she had made a mistake in becoming serious so quickly. I’d been wrong about that, and soon I was going to have a godson to prove it.
“It would have been hard having an attractive woman as a roommate when you were trying to come out,” Naomi said matter-of-factly. “When I Þ rst came out, I wanted to have sex with any woman who looked remotely lesbian, let alone like Mia.”
I’ve had friends and people who love me tell me I’m pretty enough times that the direction the conversation had taken shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. Hell, my mother’s favorite phrase was “but you have such a pretty face.” Even though that was disguised under a warning about my weight, I knew better than to believe any of them.
“Thank God I grew up in a small town, because I was too young to be getting out there like that,” Dominique said as she put a ridiculously small bet on the table. I immediately mucked my hand, suspicious that she was trying to lure me in with her slow play. Naomi called and I watched unsurprised as Dominique turned over two kings, clobbering Naomi’s pair of tens.
“So?” Naomi was looking at me. “You gonna tell us who she is? I mean, what’s the big deal? You said yourself Brenda isn’t here. It’s not like we’re going to tell her, or—”
“You know what, Naomi?” I slammed my cards face down on the table. “Call her. Tell her if you want. I’ll give you her phone number.
I don’t give a shit what you do. I really just want to play cards.” I’d overreacted. I could see it in Goody’s face and the way that Christina wasn’t looking at me. “She’s a contractor, okay? She’s doing some work on the house.”
Goody had been quiet up to this point, a fact that had me trying to Þ gure out when he was due his next raise, until he opened his fat mouth with a nifty idea. “Why don’t you just invite her down to play with us?”
“She’s taking a shower,” I growled.
“If that racket your pipes make is any indication, she’s done now.”
“I already asked her, she said no.”
“Ask her again.” Naomi squirmed in her seat like Goody when
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he got what he thought was a decent hand. “I’d like to get to know her better if she’s single. That is, if you’re being honest with us about there being nothing going on between you two.”
Now I was angry. “She doesn’t play poker.”
“Even more reason to invite her down. With Brenda gone, the pots just aren’t what they used to be.” Christina glared down at her hand. I folded; Christina only glared when she had face cards.
“Tell her we won’t make her buy in; you’re loaded, you can throw another twenty in for her,” Naomi said and they all looked at me expectantly.
“Fine.” I stood up. “Fold my next hand for me. I’ll go ask her again just to appease you people. After she says no again, I don’t want to hear any more about it. Deal?”
I stalked away before any of them could answer. I’m pretty sure they were all psychoanalyzing why I was so annoyed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her playing with us. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to hide my emotions with her sitting inches away from me.
I reached her door and paused, nervous and unsure. The intimacy in the kitchen had been shockingly unexpected and I wanted more, but Ryan had now had time to think. There had been no doubt in my mind that she wanted nothing to do with me other than friendship. What if she decided that she needed to move out now because of what had happened? Maybe I shouldn’t go in there, maybe I should give her time. I could just turn around and go back downstairs and tell them she refused again.
I had forgotten all about Pepito and the fact that I hadn’t seen him all evening when he gave a high-pitched bark from inside Ryan’s room.
Before I could react, the door opened and Ryan stood in front of me.
Her damp hair, for once, was tamed by a band and she had on loose-
Þ tting gray yoga pants, a T-shirt, and no shoes. Her eyes were soft and she smelled of soap and shampoo.
“Hi. Company gone already?”
“No, they want you to come down.”
“They do? Do you want me to come down too?”
“I would love for you to come down, but only if you want to.”
“Are you upset with me? About what happened in the kitchen?”
“Why would I be upset?”
“Because I told you we shouldn’t and then I did.”
I laughed a little. “It is kind of confusing,” I admitted.
• 161 •
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“I know, and I’m sorry.” She sighed and I tensed, waiting for her to tell me that it was a mistake and it would never happen again.
Instead she reached out and cupped my cheek. It wasn’t the sexually charged touches we shared in the kitchen, but a comforting thing meant to soothe both of us. “If you’ll give me a second to change, I’ll come down with you.”
“For real?” I was so surprised that I let my mouth gape open. “I thought you didn’t like gambling because of your father.”
“But you said it wasn’t really gambling, right?”
“Well…it is, but the girls won’t ask you to buy in or anything. So no, for you it isn’t really gambling.”
Neither of us spoke for a long moment
“You don’t need to change,” I said. “You look Þ ne.” She looked better than Þ ne, but I kept that to myself.
Ryan looked down at her attire and then down at Pepito, as if to ask his opinion. He snorted, turned, and trotted out the door. “I guess you can deal me in.”
v
&nbs
p; My grandfather once told me that the company a person keeps represents them. My company was acting really stupid. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that Amy nudged Christina when we walked into the room. Goody almost choked on his celery stick, and Naomi looked like she was about ready to go down on somebody. I wanted to kick the shit out of every last one of them, but I have to admit that the fact that Ryan was actually willing to hang out with us thrilled me no end.
“Since you people insisted on new blood, I found you some.” I introduced each of them to Ryan.
“Hi, everybody.” If possible, Ryan’s accent thickened.
“Here, you can sit next to me.” Naomi pulled the seat I had vacated not Þ ve minutes before so close to her that the chair backs formed a perfect heart.
“Don’t do it,” Goody said. “She cheats.”
“Actually, Ryan is a novice, so she’ll sit next to me.” I snatched my chair back and sat it down a safe distance from Naomi. “Here, have a seat. I’ll grab another chair.”
“Thanks.”
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I couldn’t help but smile at her. She looked so shy that I felt the need to protect her from the vultures. I picked up the cards Goody had just dealt; the thrill that went through my body had nothing to do with the pocket queens I was holding and everything to do with the fact that Ryan’s arm had just brushed against mine. I bet four times the blind and turned to Ryan. “You know you can fold if you don’t have good cards.
Or you could call me or…” She was looking at me oddly, so I stopped speaking. “You probably already knew that, huh?”
“It’s okay. Thank you for helping me. It’s really sweet of you.”
I blinked on that. Did she just call me sweet? Did she forget I had my hand down her pants not thirty minutes ago?
Two chips hit the pile in the center of the table and I had to tear my eyes away and squint at her.
“Uh, Ryan, did you mean to call me? You could fold.”
“No, it’s okay.”
I looked Ryan in the eye. Fold, sweetie, don’t make me take your chips.
Everyone else folded, which left me up against Ryan. I did not want to take her money, so I decided to up the ante. I almost hated to do it, but I threw in a pot-sized bet and waited for her to fold. Although I was telling her with my eyes to throw away her hand, she was telling me with hers that she never would. Me and my trip queens felt strangely disconcerted.
Such a Pretty Face Page 18
