Authors: Fiona Zedde
Tags: #African American Women, #General, #Romance, #Erotic Fiction, #Adult, #Love Stories, #Fiction, #Lesbian, #Lesbians
A Taste of Sin (13 page)
Kavi rolled her eyes. “I know you’re probably wondering why my darling here”—she lightly pinched the arm resting near hers on the table—“seems to have it in for you.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, but I didn’t think it was important enough to ask.”
“No, Kavi, don’t tell her. That’s embarrassing.” Abena looked at her friend.
“I think what’s going on here is embarrassing,” Kavi said.
“This woman is trying to take Tori out. Haven’t we all been saying Tori needs to go out with a woman with sex on her mind. Well, if everything we’ve heard about Dez is true, she very definitely has sex on her mind.” She glanced at Dez in quick apology.
Dez shrugged to say that it was nothing. Now she
was
curious where this was heading. Beside Kavi, Mick stiffened but said nothing.
was
curious where this was heading. Beside Kavi, Mick stiffened but said nothing.
“Years ago when Mick was still into the club scene, she met Dez. They had a one-night stand, or apparently Dez thought it was a one-night-only thing, and never called Mick after that.”
Dez swung her gaze to Mick.
Really?
She could see it. The woman was attractive, sleek, and flexible-looking. In the months before she and Ruben got together, she’d been voracious in her appetite for sex with women. Back then it had been three girls a day, sometimes scattered between meals, occasionally at the same time. She could imagine being drawn to Mick’s hardness in the flashing lights and smoky haze of a club, seeing her dancing, twisting, and shaking to the music and wanting to tame that energy beneath her. The memory abruptly came back to her. Dez’s brow lifted.
Really?
She could see it. The woman was attractive, sleek, and flexible-looking. In the months before she and Ruben got together, she’d been voracious in her appetite for sex with women. Back then it had been three girls a day, sometimes scattered between meals, occasionally at the same time. She could imagine being drawn to Mick’s hardness in the flashing lights and smoky haze of a club, seeing her dancing, twisting, and shaking to the music and wanting to tame that energy beneath her. The memory abruptly came back to her. Dez’s brow lifted.
“You don’t even remember me, do you?” Mick’s voice was a hard challenge.
“Actually, I just did.” Dez rolled her shoulders under the weight of their collective stare. “I never said I would call.”
Kavi suddenly looked uncomfortable. Her gaze skimmed over her lover to Dez.
“So is that how you plan on treating Tori?”
“I am still in the room, Mick.” Victoria said. “I didn’t have this dinner party for you to release your old anger at Dez. What happened between you is in the past. Let’s just leave it that way.” Still she glanced back at her friend, communicating a look of sympathy and support that even Dez could not miss. Seeing that, Dez suddenly had enough.
She leaned back in her seat. “This has been really interesting. I came here expecting to have a nice dinner with a beautiful woman and instead I end up in the middle of this . . .” she spread out her hands, not even knowing how to describe what she was now a part of. “I’m not sure what you all expected when you came here tonight, but I hope you got whatever it was.” She stood up. “I didn’t, so despite the fantastic meal, I have to go.”
With a quick nod, she retrieved her jacket from the hall closet and let herself out. In the driveway, she saw that two cars had (intentionally?) blocked her in. She shrugged on her jacket and swung her leg over the motorcycle. The grass would work just as well as the drive.
“Wait.”
Victoria ran down the front steps, quickly buttoning a long sweater coat over her thin blouse and skirt. Dez put the key into the ignition but did not turn it. Even in the dark she could see the jiggle of full breasts as Victoria rushed toward her.
“Listen, I’m really sorry about that.” She put a hand on the handlebars as if that alone could stop Dez from leaving. “Mick was out of line there.”
“Don’t you think you were a little out of line, too?” Dez adjusted her hips on the bike and crossed her arms. “If you knew your friend had an issue with me, then why invite her, or even me for that matter?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She looked up into Dez’s expressionless face. “Can we just start over?”
“It depends on what you mean by that. I’m not going back in there.” She nodded toward the house. “Give me a call some other time if you want. If you don’t want, you don’t even have to tell Derrick that we saw each other.” Her eyes raked the voluptuous body again. And she released a silent sigh of regret. “I’ll see you around.”
Dez turned on the engine and Victoria’s hand fell away from the motorcycle as she slowly backed the bike away from the house. She stepped back as Dez pulled down the drive, slipping through the narrow space between somebody’s Honda SUV and a dark Mercedes sedan. Dez rode away but couldn’t stop herself from watching her brother’s best friend grow smaller and smaller in her rearview mirrors.
Chapter 13
“F
uck...” The steady ringing of her phone woke Dez from a sticky, erotic dream. In the dream, she spooned steaming butternut squash soup down Victoria Jackson’s back, watching the sensual mix of colors, her lover’s deep gold skin, the paler gold of the squash as they mingled and separated. Victoria didn’t seem to mind the heat of the soup at all. If anything, she moaned and wriggled beneath Dez, begging for more. The liquid gathered in the deep valley of her spine, trailed toward the thick mounds of her ass. Dez pressed her mouth against the shifting flesh, tasting the salty and robust flavor that was nothing but Victoria’s skin. She cupped the squirming ass in her hands and prepared to slide between the thick, responsive cheeks. Dez jolted awake when Victoria’s ass started ringing. She reached blindly for the phone.
uck...” The steady ringing of her phone woke Dez from a sticky, erotic dream. In the dream, she spooned steaming butternut squash soup down Victoria Jackson’s back, watching the sensual mix of colors, her lover’s deep gold skin, the paler gold of the squash as they mingled and separated. Victoria didn’t seem to mind the heat of the soup at all. If anything, she moaned and wriggled beneath Dez, begging for more. The liquid gathered in the deep valley of her spine, trailed toward the thick mounds of her ass. Dez pressed her mouth against the shifting flesh, tasting the salty and robust flavor that was nothing but Victoria’s skin. She cupped the squirming ass in her hands and prepared to slide between the thick, responsive cheeks. Dez jolted awake when Victoria’s ass started ringing. She reached blindly for the phone.
“Hello?”
“Desiree?”
“Mom?”
“Come over and help me with the laundry.”
At three in the morning?
“Okay. I’ll be right over.” Dez rolled over and turned on the light. She dressed quickly and stumbled to her truck, managing to get to her mother’s house, still only half-awake, without getting into a wreck.
“Okay. I’ll be right over.” Dez rolled over and turned on the light. She dressed quickly and stumbled to her truck, managing to get to her mother’s house, still only half-awake, without getting into a wreck.
The house looked dark from the outside. The sense of déjà vu shook the last of sleep from her brain. Instead of knocking, Dez used the key and deactivated the alarm from the panel by the door.
“Claudia?” She called louder. “Mama?”
“Up here, love.”
There were candles everywhere. They followed the winding thread of the staircase, dozens of tealights in tiny glass cups, glittering and dancing like phosphorescent ghosts. Dez followed the lights up the stairs and found her mother in the bedroom, where only a single white candle burned at her vanity table.
Dressed in a pair of worn, comfortable-looking pajamas, her mother knelt on the floor in the rubble of dirty clothes. The pajamas hung from her slight frame. The last time Dez saw Claudia she had seemed fashionably slim in her jeans and sweater, but today she just looked tired and too thin. Almost childlike.
“What are you doing, Mama?”
“Sorting laundry. Don’t ask silly questions, love. Put your things away and come down here on the floor and help me.”
Dez looked down at the backpack in her hands, grabbed at the last moment for who knew what reason. She dropped it on the bed and went to Claudia. They silently sorted through the clothes, putting whites with whites, jeans with everything else dark blue, linens with linens.
“Is everything all right?”
When Claudia only gently shook her head, Dez tried again. “What are all the candles for?”
“To keep away the darkness inside, of course.” Her mother smiled weakly at her.
“Did something happen?”
“Doesn’t something always?” She put a lacy camisole in the small pile of hand washables. “Your father called me today. He’s coming to see us.”
“To see you and Derrick, you mean.”
She made a dismissive motion. “He’s coming to see us, all of us.”
“I thought you and he were such great friends. Aren’t you happy that he’s coming?” Her tone was less than charitable.
“Dez, don’t be unkind.” She was quiet for a moment. “He’s bringing his family with him.”
“I see.” And she did.
When her father had left them twelve years ago with the excuse that he felt stifled and should have never been with Claudia in the first place, Dez hated him. She didn’t understand why he had to leave them, his family, to move across the country where no one knew him.
“Warrick called me last night.” Claudia looked at the clock on her bedside table. “A few hours ago, really. That’s when he told me. I thought I was over everything that happened between us. But I’m not.” She stood up and hefted a basket of presorted clothes. “Come on. Grab the other one.”
Dez picked up the laundry and followed her mother downstairs.
In the laundry room, more candles burned. The dryer and washer were empty, opened and waiting to be filled. She put the basket on top of the dryer.
“Did you know he wasn’t in California a month before he started seeing that woman? I tried not to take it personally, but I did. My friends in Berkeley say that she’s pretty and young. Somebody from Africa. Her parents sent her to U.C. Berkeley to get a good American education. And he found her. What does a forty-year-old man want with a college girl? Don’t answer that.” Claudia’s neck bowed over the basket of laundry. “I feel like such a fool. An old fool.”
Dez looked on, feeling helpless. “It’s okay, Mama. You don’t have to see them if you don’t want to. You can hide out at my house all week if you like.”
Claudia lifted her head to reveal a watery smile. “Thank you, love. But I doubt that’s going to work.” Her body shuddered lightly. “His call just took me by surprise, that’s all. I’ll be fine.”
Right.
Dez watched her mother putter around the laundry room, putting clothes and soap in the machine, trying to do the most mundane of tasks to take her mind off her aching heart. After all these years. This was how love could cripple you, turn you into something less than a child even when there were more important things to worry about. Like death.
Dez watched her mother putter around the laundry room, putting clothes and soap in the machine, trying to do the most mundane of tasks to take her mind off her aching heart. After all these years. This was how love could cripple you, turn you into something less than a child even when there were more important things to worry about. Like death.
It was worse back then when he’d left them, so Dez supposed that she ought to be grateful. She wasn’t. She blinked against tears of her own and fiddled with the handle of the basket. The washer with its load of whites began its rhythmic growl, but it didn’t quite hide the sound of Claudia’s crying. Dez made no pretense of paying attention to the pile of clothes under her restless fingers.
Claudia kept to the business at hand, separating the small pile of white delicates from the colors. Eventually she turned away to pour fabric softener in the washing machine, then to clean the dryer’s lint trap. Candles flickered restlessly. Dez opened the door to night sounds and stood glaring into the darkness until she felt her mother’s presence close behind her. “I don’t like to see you like this.”
“I’ll be fine. Really.” Claudia put a hand on her daughter’s back and let it rest there with her cheek pressed against Dez’s head. “Thank you for being here. I just badly needed your company for a few moments. You’re the best daughter any woman could ever hope to have.” She went back to the laundry. “Now go. I’ll call you later in the week so we can have lunch.”
Dez left, but went back upstairs to her mother’s bed. She put her backpack on the window seat and slid under the covers. At some point she must have fallen asleep because she never saw Claudia walk through the door, only felt a shifting weight behind her in the bed, then a warmth at her back. Relieved, she fell into a deep sleep.
“Was it the sex?” Dez asked her mother. “Is that why you’re still hung up on him?” She took a bite of her butter-and-honey-soaked whole-grain pancake and watched Claudia’s face. “I’ve done a lot of crazy things for good sex, too.”
Claudia almost choked on her Belgian waffle. “I don’t think this is the most appropriate conversation to be having with your mother, darling.”
Dez didn’t think so either, but she wanted to distract Claudia. There was still a lot of sorrow on her face.
“But,” her mother said with the beginnings of a smile, “since you asked, he was wonderful. I never had anyone to compare him with, but Warrick always made sure that I had a good time.”
“Oh.” That blew Dez’s shit right out of the water. “Okay. Next subject.”
Claudia shook her head and laughed softly. “Yes, please.” Dez shrugged. After the misery of last night she had had to get her mother out of the house. The place where Claudia had moved wraithlike about her life’s minutiae was not the place to attempt the great cheer-up. In her mind’s eye, everywhere Dez looked she saw burning candles and her mother’s drawn, sad face. The light flickering over its delicately etched lines only made her seem more fragile. So, Novlette’s it was. The light, weekday crowd was a nice change from the Sunday crush. Without the tightly packed bodies, it was easier to appreciate the view of the bay and the gold dust sprinkle of the early morning sun on the water.
Other books
You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
The Fog by Dennis Etchison
Blurred Lines (Watching Her) by Metal, Scarlett
American Vampire by Jennifer Armintrout
Bird by Crystal Chan
The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII by Seiden, Othniel J.
Viking Raid by Griff Hosker
Deadly Temptations by Mina J. Moore
Stiletto Safari by Metz, Kate
Chills & Thrills: Three Novel Box Set by A. K. Alexander
