I shift my hips just enough to create friction, ease the ache. He thumbs my clit and my mouth falls open. My thighs spread. My nipples harden in the bodice of my gown.
“Lord above,” I gasp, pulling his zipper down and slipping my hand inside his pants.
“Shit.” He presses his forehead to mine.
A car rushes by, shattering any illusion of privacy. We sit in the front seat, panting, reaching for some form of composure. His finger is still inside me, and he’ll have to remove it because for the life of me I cannot bring myself to ask him to. It feels too good.
“I should go,” I say for the millionth time, but make no move to do anything that would actually dislodge him from my body.
“Yeah.” He nods and huffs a laugh. “You said Lord above.”
“What? When?”
“When I was…” He pushes his finger in a little deeper, making me moan. He slowly withdraws. “When I was doing that, you said Lord above like your mother used to say.”
“Yeah, I do that sometimes.”
“Can I see you tonight?” he presses. “Will you stay?”
“Ez, maybe I shouldn’t until we—”
“We’ll be discreet. I can come pick you up.”
“That is not discreet.” I pause, biting my lip. “I’ll take an Uber.”
“Okay. I’ll cook dinner.” He moves forward to kiss me again, but I lean back, glancing around the empty street. “Tonight.”
It seems to require a Herculean effort for me to get out of his car. The pull, the temptation to stay there with him for as long as I can, is strong. After so many years apart, when we’re together, it feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. All my molecules, every atom, is at peace, but stingingly alive. It’s like when your foot falls asleep, and the needles of sensation come with sudden movement. For so long he wasn’t in my life, and suddenly he is. And beneath the layers of pleasure and delight, there is a sick feeling that just as suddenly as I found him, I’ll lose him again.
“Tonight,” I say, smiling through the window and turning to walk up Mama’s long driveway.
He doesn’t pull off until I’m inside, and I immediately wish he was here. Mama and Keith are both in the front room waiting for me.
“Well, well, well,” Keith says from the white couch in Mama’s sitting room. “Look who’s home.”
Mama always had a “front room” when we were growing up, which we would use under threat of severe punishment. Now we’re adult enough to sit on the white furniture, but it seems Keith still wants to play childish games.
“Keith,” Mama says, her tone much milder than the curiosity in her eyes. “Leave your sister alone. If she wants to cavort with a married man in front of the entire neighborhood, what business is it of ours?”
“I was not cavorting,” I say, running a weary hand over my bushy hair. “And Ezra’s not married.”
“The way you look,” Keith says with obvious relish, “you can’t tell me you haven’t been doing some cavorting, and I’ve seen the woman he lives with and his son. I just hope you don’t…how did you put it…tarnish our father’s legacy too badly.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, but with less heat than I would if he didn’t have some ground to stand on. Guilt twinges my conscience as I remember those little pink slippers under the bed. I glance down at my owned ruined stilettos. If the Choo fits…
“I’m not judging you, Kimba,” he says, the spiteful amusement leaving his expression. “I’m just asking you not to judge me, especially for something I’ve dealt with. Delaney and me, we’re working on it.”
Working on it.
That’s what Ezra said he and Aiko did, but that’s over. He’s done ‘working on it,’ and he admitted he may have started giving up after we me
t again.
“Monday.” I pull one desecrated Jimmy Choo off and then the other, standing barefoot and holding them by the heels. “I’ll meet you at your office Monday morning. Nine o’clock. You better have a plan. The people of this district deserve real solutions, and if you can’t prove to me you have some, I promise both of you…” I pause to include Mama in my warning glance. “There’s not enough sibling goodwill or guilt in this world to make me help your ass.”
“Fair enough, sis,” Keith says, his smile wide and genuine. “And sorry for cock blocking.”
“It was not clock blocking,” I say indignantly.