No Ordinary Love (7 page)

“Casey, I’m talking to you,” he said, glad that he couldn’t make out her body parts through the shower curtain.

Calm down, girl, and get your senses together.
“What?” she shouted back when she knew her voice was reliable.

As Daemon turned the stereo off, the shower curtain whipped open, giving him a wide view of what he’d been waiting to see again for years. Her chocolate body had filled out more, her breast had grown at least a cup size in his mind. Both her waist and stomach still flat and trim. Her hips were fuller and had curves for days. They both froze, watching one another. Casey’s brown eyed gaze slid down his body and settled on his crotch.

Yeah, he want me
, she thought convinced that his erection was due to seeing her butt-ass naked. Seductively, she lifted her eyes to his and smiled before she pulled the curtain closed.

Surely he couldn’t take that long look at her long, thick, naked body and not want it. After turning off the water, she stuck her hand out for a towel and was surprised when Daemon grabbed her arm and tugged her from the shower.

She frowned. “What?” she asked breathlessly. Being this close to him had its advantages, she suspected. But having him look at her this way, with disapproval, couldn’t be a good thing.

“Get dressed and come down to the office,” he ordered pushing a towel at her.

“Hhmp,” she huffed with a roll of her eyes. Disappointment swimming in her eyes, Casey snatched her arm away from him and murmured, “You can kiss my ass, Daemon.”

At twenty-one she proved to be more of a problem now than she had when she was younger. While he wished that she would hurry up and wrap the towel around her body, his erection did not.

“Enough people have been kissing your ass, Case baby, now get dressed and meet me downstairs,” he ordered.

He does that so well
, she thought. “Whatever,” she responded. Angrily, she began to wrap the towel around her body. “I don’t need this shit from you today, D. I really don’t. Do I have to remind you that I’m not your responsibility?” she inquired with a gleam in her eyes.

Moving her body in what she knew he considered his personal space was a calculated move and one she hoped she’d be rewarded for. She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “Yeah, you remember.”

His hands went to her waist. It haunted him daily that at his whim she could be his, that he could have her, if he wanted her, and to know that he never would.

Laughing, she pulled away and circled around him to get out of the bathroom.

“You are my responsibility,” he murmured more to himself than to her. He’d forgotten that once, but he wouldn’t again.

“I am not and I won’t let you forget it,” she shouted back. The slam of her bedroom door was next.

The temptation to go after her was there but he suppressed and tapered it down, like he’d done his earlier anger. She’d gotten him so worked up he’d nearly forgotten why she was receiving a royal summons in the first place. Then again, that would’ve been hard. She paraded different guys around him at every given opportunity. They hadn’t interested him until he happened to overhear what went on with these men. He didn’t like it one bit and couldn’t wait to spell it out for her in big bold capital letters.

Catrina

The loud shrill of the telephone had twenty-one-year-old Catrina Price jumping nervously from her sleep to grab it off the hook. Her voice husky from sleep, she answered, “Hello?”

“Did I wake you up?” a male voice questioned. She recognized the voice but couldn’t identify it in her sleepiness.

“Who’s this?” she asked, her mind still filled with haze from the night before.

Clearing her throat, Catrina went to roll over onto her back and found herself pressed against a hard male body. Squeezing her eyes shut, she remembered. David, he’d stopped by the night before to catch a movie and dinner with his brother and Chantel. Somehow they never made it to the movie theater. He ended up staying the night and a very long night it had been, if her memory served her correctly.

She winced, it did. Times like this reminded her of that New Year’s Eve party in ninety-eight when she’d decided to speak to him again after two years of ignoring him. Coming to the decision had been anything but easy. The hardest thing being her having to bite back her pride to do it. Since he’d made several attempts over the first year to reconcile their broken relationship she didn’t think that he would see it as a problem.

They’d been at Casey’s house and she’d been debating over the idea since her last relationship had ended. She sat in a corner watching David and his date fawn all over him. She could tell that he hated it. The woman in her had hated the tingle of jealousy she’d felt.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Briannah had said to her friend after having observed her watch David. She had done enough staring in that direction as well since Tyree sat there with David discussing business opportunities.

After continuous trying on his part, Tyree had convinced Briannah that they would be good together.

She’d frowned. “Case is my best friend and I certainly wouldn’t miss this party because of him.” It had been as if the party around them had stopped despite all of the noise that had been fluttering about.

“Come on, it’s been a long ass time. And if it was just about him cheating on you, you would have been just dropped this. He’s been asking about you and how you like school.”

She’d been right. It had been over two years. “Maybe he should just ask me himself.” She took a sip of the Bacardi Breezer she’d been drinking.

Briannah’s eyebrows had arched at the news causing her to frown. “So where’d the Cat get this new attitude?”

Catrina had shrugged. “He’s good in bed.”

“What? Are you the hell crazy?” she asked even as she spied Casey flirting with Daemon. Catrina had laughed.

“I’d rather the two of you get back together,” Briannah had said, even though she’d been very adamant that they break up. “Not use him for sex, heffa.”

“Bri, don’t go there with me. Plus, he was good at it.”

Briannah had shaken her head. “You know that it’s all or nothing with him—”

Why is it always about what he wants? she’d wondered. He wanted her, dammit, and he’d go by her terms.

“Not this time. It’ll be my way.” She’d be in control.

“I still say that it’s a mistake”

“What’s a mistake?” Casey had joined the conversation. “What are you two hussies talking about?”

“Your best friend is thinkin’ about sleepin’ with Dave.”

Casey’s face had lit up. She always had been the romantic. “Y’all gettin’ back together?”

“Sleep with him, Case baby. Not a relationship,” Briannah had explained.

Casey had frowned then. Disapproval had been written all over her face. A virgin, Casey believed that you only shared yourself in that intimate way if you loved that person you shared those intimacies with.

“Don’t say anything,” Catrina had warned.

“I just don’t want you stressed out over him again.” Casey had stated. Their break-up had cause Catrina to move with her grandmother in New Jersey for Catrina’s last year of high school.

“I think I can handle myself,” she returned.

Casey had decided to change the subject since her best friend had a hard head. She knew that hard heads made soft behinds. After scanning the room she found where Briannah’s eyes were glued, she had her next target.

“So, Briannah I heard that you blacked Nyimah’s eye.”

“I did.”

“I’m going to go talk to Dave,” Catrina had announced.

He was there with Tyree discussing his favorite thing. “I’m tellin’ you that this company is going to make tons of money. Stock per share is only-” David stopped dead in his tracks when Catrina walked up and began talking.

“Excuse me. Hi, Ty” Then she looked at David and had swallowed hard. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

He remained silent, had been in shock from hearing the first words directed to him in over two years.

He’d scratched his head when Catrina added, “In private.”

David nodded anyway and had followed her into the kitchen. “I thought that it was time that I stopped being drastic. I just wanted to bury everything that happened before.”

Assured that she must have been under the influence of something really powerful he had asked, “Catrina, are you serious?”

Taking his reaction as rejection, Catrina continued to hold her head high. She leaned back on one of the counters. “Yes, I’m serious. I just thought that it would be pointless for us to continue to ignore each other when we have the same circle of friends. Maybe I was wrong,” she added when he stared blankly. This is such a mistake, she had been thinking, losing her heart to continue. “Yeah, I can see now that it was,” she responded when he remained silent. She made a moved to leave the kitchen, but he grabbed her before she could make her dignified exit.

“No, just give me a minute to process this,” he’d told her, bringing her around to stand in front of him. “You just decided that I can be talked to, and you thought that I would just fall into line.”

Catrina stepped closer to him and lifted her pleading eyes to his. “That’s not all I want.”

David took a cautious step back and dropped her arm. “Whoa, I must be the fuck dreamin’.”

“David, I need to be honest with you,” she had explained. “I’m over what happened between us. And that’s why I’m able to come to you with what I have to say now.” Her heart had been pounding in her chest as each word fell from her lips.

“And that would be?”

“I thought that we could be friends and that maybe we could sleep together.”

She would never get over the look on his face when he said, “You want me to fuck you?”

She had laughed. “Yes. Now that I’ve said it, I’ll let you think about it for a while.”

David had grabbed her again. “Naw, stand here. You don’t speak to me for two years and four months, and the first words that you basically say to me are can we fuck?” he had exploded.

At that point she had raised her eyebrows and didn’t say anything, because she took heed to his grabbing warning.

She then half listened to him rant about her being stubborn and hardheaded. When she through listening to him, she had told him to sit down and kindly asked him to shut up.

They had in that time discussed how their relationship would be.

It was at this point left open if either of them were following the rules and outline they’d agreed on back then.

“It’s Mike,” the strong male voice said, disrupting old memoires.

Catrina opened her eyes.

Oh shit, I forgot
, she thought. “Hey, Mike, what’s up?”

“I thought that you were gon’ to come down last night?” he questioned.

“Mike, baby, I forgot. I was up all night with Chantel. She and Chris had a fight last night. She was a wreck,” she added.

“How ‘bout I shoot up dere and hang out with you for a while before I gotta be to work,” he suggested.

Catrina rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I promised Case and Briannah that we would get together and do the girl thing. We haven’t been out since my graduation,” she explained.

He sighed. “Well, can we hook up later on, den?”

Catrina frowned. “Not sure. We may end up just kicking it.”

Mike cleared his throat. “When you gon’ just kick it with me?” he asked angrily.

Never
. “I’ma call you,” she led him on.

“You make sure you do that.”

Because it was more like an order than anything, she laughed. “I’ll talk to you,” she responded before hanging up.

“Damn, that nigga don’t give you time to get up?” David growled, opening his eyes.

Catrina sucked her teeth and prepared herself for his surly morning mood. “It really doesn’t matter now. I’m up, and he might just stop by, so you have got to go,” she informed him, making the attempt to get out of the bed.

David grabbed her arm, and pulled her back. Before she could protest she found herself pinned beneath his hard body. David watched as annoyance flashed in her hazel eyes and found himself stifling a chuckle when Catrina tried to push him off her. Proving to be faster, he took hold of her arms, cuffed them at the wrist, and put them over their heads.

“I keep telling you that I don’t like being brushed off.” With that said, he began planting kisses along the column of her neck, whispering invitations into her ear.

“Dave,” she spoke, her voice as clear as it could have been under the circumstances. “I don’t have time to play games with you. Mike could be on his way here in a—”

Continuing his sweet assault, he murmured, “Fuck that nigga.”

Then placing a kiss on her lips, he looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I’m here, and I’m not leavin’ ‘til I get ready, so get used to it.”

Catrina frowned instantly. She hated when he was territorial. She found it annoying and unreasonable. It would’ve been different if he had a right to be, she mused. “I don’t like the macho shit, so just drop it and get the fuck off me.” She bucked beneath him.

David chuckled. “It’s like that?” he inquired innocently after letting her arms go. It had to be her decision.

“Yes, it’s like that. You’re involved with someone else.” It was funny that she never forgot it when it suited her own purposes.

“Well, you know what you gotta do, right?”

Frustrated, she wriggled more insistently, because he was still atop of her. “Don’t start this shit again.”

Just recently he had begun to press her about being in a relationship with him and for that, she wasn’t ready. Her heart wasn’t ready.

“Tell me that every time I’m inside you, you’re not thinking of finding ways to keep me there. That I’m not in your head when I’m nowhere around,” he pressed. He kissed her hard before the expected denial came from her lips.

Of their own accord, her legs parted, accepting him there. The words he murmured had her hips arching upward, seeking his. Sex with him always made her weak and vulnerable. At that moment she couldn’t think, but moaned as he slid his hands beneath her bottom to lift her to him as he slowly slid into her.