Insanity (4 page)

After parking, she flipped down her vanity mirror and quickly checked her hair and make-up. Her long, black extensions looked flawless as usual. And her make-up was only enough to accentuate her deep-set, brown eyes and pert lips, with little blush needed for her smooth brown cheeks and jaw line.

She climbed out of her car and stood on the concrete pavement at a runway model height of five-nine, but only after adding her four-inch, leopard-print heels. She topped the shoes off with skin-toned stockings, a medium-length black skirt, and a short, rust-colored, silk blouse with fringes. She wore a mixture of white pearls and yellow gold around her neck and wrists.

“Looking
good
,” a middle-aged man commented as he walked by her.

Queen looked to see who it was before she allowed a patronizing grin. “Thank you.” She grabbed her slim black purse from the back car seat, locked her doors and headed toward Phillips Seafood Restaurant on the Harbor.

The long stares from lustful men, as well as the hair, face and outfit readings she gathered from the women, were all expected, observed and normal. Queen took it all in like an everyday walk in the park.

If no one looked, I wouldn’t be doing my job,
she contemplated as she strutted in her heels.

Her date, Bryant Thompson, was waiting for her outside of the restaurant. He was in a navy blue suit with dark shoes and a yellow dress shirt, opened at the top button with no tie. A solid six-foot one and brown like healthy tree bark, he was a couple of years older than her at twenty-six. He kept a head full of curly brown hair that he had learned never to cut too low, at the request of several past girlfriends who liked to run their fingers through it.

Upon Queen’s arrival, he smiled and stepped forward to hug her.

“For a minute, I thought someone had kidnapped you,” he joked.

Queen hugged him and disengaged hastily. She smiled back with a joke of her own. “Oh,
you’re
the one out here looking to be
kidnapped
. What are you doing out here, scoping out the competition? I thought you’d be waiting inside for me at the bar or something.”

Bryant grinned. “It’s too nice of a night out to wait inside. Besides, I wanted us to walk in together like a real couple . . . since you wouldn’t allow me to pick you up,” he hinted.

Queen gently squeezed his arm in response. “I told you, I didn’t know what time I would be getting back from my hair appointment. And I didn’t want you waiting outside my house for a half hour.”

“You had me waiting out
here
for a half hour. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is, you don’t look like a desperate
stalker
out here. Now stop complaining and let’s go in and get something to eat.”

She grabbed his hand and led him inside of the popular harbor restaurant. It would make it their second official date after meeting a month ago on the campus of John Hopkins University where Bryant was finishing up graduate school for an MBA in business. Queen had told him she was thinking about returning to school for a graduate program herself. Her degree in social work from Towson State was not enough.

At their harbor view table, where they looked over their menus, Queen peeked at the man and imagined running her own hands through his curly mane of hair. Then she would wrap her long, flexible legs around his lower back and fuck him good. But she had forced herself to keep their conversations tactful, progressive and professional. She considered the man to be
marriage
material, and she didn’t want to spoil him by getting off on the wrong foot. Conversations about sex and other social activities tended to lead a man into thinking a woman was more of a good lay than a good partner. And she definitely wanted to be more of a
partner
than a good
lay
.

“You ready to order?” he asked her, placing his menu to the right side of his table settings.

Queen looked up from her menu and nodded. Decisiveness was her way. “I think I’ll just have the tilapia and the angel hair pasta.” She shrugged with an enticing smile that highlighted her bright white teeth. “You know, I like to keep it light,” she added.

Bryant smiled back, showing off his own pearly whites. “I see. That’s how a woman stays in great shape, by watching what she eats. All of that heavy
soul food
tastes good, but it can also kill a woman’s figure.”

“Don’t I
know it
,” Queen agreed. “And keeping it light costs you less
money
too.”

He laughed. “I didn’t know women thought about saving men money on dates.”

 “Oh,
I
do,” she told him and frowned. “I can just imagine how
I
would feel and I had to pay for a woman who likes ordering a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I don’t even like it when my
girlfriends
do that when we’re out to eat. So I make sure to keep my bill
separate
to save myself from the arguments. And they can call me
cheap
all they want.”

Bryant laughed harder as the waitress arrived to take their orders.

“May I order a glass of white wine?” Queen asked her startled date across the table.

He winced at her and said, “Of course. I’m not your girlfriends, so order what you want.”

“Well, you know, I just wanted to ask you first.”

He nodded. “That’s good. That’s very considerate of you.”

“Thank you. I try to be,” she told him.

After small talk about the boats in the harbor and the pricey condominiums that overlooked the water, their conversation swayed toward money, investing and property, Bryant’s favorite subjects.

“So it’s not always about what a man has in his
pockets
, it’s more about what he has in his
name
. That’s why I went back to school so I could handle the larger accounts at my investment firm,” he explained.

“And they’re actually
paying
for it? Hell, I wish my job would do that for
me
.”

Bryant grinned and shrugged. “Sometimes you have to ask them for the different programs that are available. And you don’t know until you ask.”

Queen nodded with confidence. “Well, that’s what I’m gonna do then,
tomorrow
, watch.”

When their food arrived, with Bryant ordering the giant snow crab legs, Queen couldn’t help herself. She watched him dig into the crab meat with his brown lips glistening from the warm butter, and she imagined those same lubricated brown lips busy between
her
legs.

She smiled and looked away, only for her date to catch her lingering grin.

“What?” he asked her.

She shook it off with no comment.

“Are you sure?” he pressed, as he licked the butter from his lips with his pink tongue.

Queen continued to grin as she nodded to him. “I’m sure.”

I’m sure you’re gonna lick this pussy up like those crab legs when I finally decide to give it to you, but not yet,
she thought to herself.

She took a small bite of tilapia from her fork and kept the peace between them. But then the man squeezed fresh lemon juice onto another piece of crab meat and sucked it into his mouth like some kind of jungle animal. He even made an enticingly loud slurp.

Shit! Is he fucking with me now or what?
she pondered.

Bryant continued to dig into his snow crab legs with reckless abandon. He ate as if his
life
depended on it.

He must really be hungry in here. And that shit is turning me on,
she mused, acknowledging his ravenous appetite.

“Can you cook pretty good?” he asked her.

“Hunh?”

Queen had already drifted away into a bedroom daydream. She was even moist between her legs already.

“Can you
cook
?” Bryant repeated, cracking open another crab leg.

“Oh, I umm . . . I do what I need to do,” she admitted. She was too bad busy to cook.

The man grinned and said, “That sounds like a new wave woman; cooking just enough to get by.”

“Yeah, but I’m willing to
learn
, you know. I’m still
young
. It’s not like I don’t
wanna
learn. But I’ve been more focused on where I wanna go with my
life
lately.”

“Which is?”

She swallowed a bite of her food before she answered.

“It ain’t dating a bunch of different
guys,
that’s for sure. I wanna be able to focus on
one thing
and give my
all
. But it gotta be
worth
it
.”

With that, she got his undivided attention. He stopped eating to respond to her.

“And what do you consider
worthy
?”

“Somebody who’s
consistent
. I mean, a lot of guys start off good on the first couple of dates
or
whatever. But once you really get to know them . . .”

She let her words trail off with a shrug as she returned to eating her meal. Surely, he got the point. There was no more to be said about it. So she twisted the angel hair pasta around her fork without another word.

Bryant nodded. “That’s understandable,” he told her. “We teach the same thing in the stock business. You want to be consistent with your growth.”

Queen continued to eat and took a sip of her wine.

“A man should
also
value what he invests in,” she agreed. “But too many guys try to throw money into a situation and
lose
. Then they get all mad about it, but that’s just
life
. The pay-off may not come in one day. And it
shouldn’t
.”

She establishing her game of patience with him, and Bryant was impressed by how forward she was. He leaned back in his dinner chair and said, “
Damn
, that’s pretty profound. And
true
. Watch what you put your money on, especially if you’re gonna
complain
about it.”

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

After dinner, they walked briefly hand and hand along the harbor. Bryant was eager to extend their night out on the town, but Queen had other ideas in mind. She continued to fight her urges to have him eat her pussy, while keeping their second outing as PG as possible.

“Are you sure you wanna go back in so early? It’s a beautiful night tonight,” he hinted.

Not yet spring in late March, the temperature hit the mid sixties and was still breezy along the water, but it felt good after a typically cold Baltimore winter. Nevertheless, Queen didn’t trust herself to enjoy it with him. She liked him too much.

No, no, nooo, make him wait for everything,
she reminded herself.

“I mean, it’s gonna be even
warmer
than this in a couple of weeks,” she told him. “It’s almost April. But right now my back is still killing me from being in the chair for three hours.”

He asked her, “You got off work early to get your hair done.”

“Oh, of
course
. If you try and wait for the weekend, it’s even
worse
.”

He smiled and shook his head. “It’s good being a man. I’m in and out of the barbershop with a trim and a shape up in twenty minutes.”

Queen looked up at his curly hair and felt an intense craving to run her fingers through it and had to compose herself.

Okay, it’s time for me to get the hell out of here before I do something stupid.

She could already feel herself throbbing between her legs for him. So she squeezed his hand
hard
and began to pull him toward her car.

“Next time,” she promised. “But tonight I really need to get some
rest
.”

“As long as this
next time
is sooner than a couple of
weeks
,” he told her, resisting her urgent pull.

Queen smiled. “We’ll see.”

She was dying to get back inside of her car and drive away from him before her imagination drove her crazy. She gave him another quick, stingy hug at her door before climbing inside to leave.

“All right now. I’m investing,” he joked to her.

Once inside the safety of her car, Queen allowed herself a laugh.

“I know you are,” she told him through the window.
And I’ma give your fine ass a mouthful when I’m ready for it. Trust me.

In the meantime, Queen was so hot for pleasure that her panties felt on fire. Her legs were literally bouncing up and down and flexing with exhilaration under the steering wheel. And her titties were standing at attention beneath her blouse, ready to be fondled by warm hands and sucked by soft, buttery lips.

She drove away in haste and piped, “
Shit
! Now somebody’s gonna have to eat this
pussy
tonight. And I just ate the wrong kind of food for it.”

A young woman never wanted to mix the scent of fish with lovemaking, but it was what it was. She would get home and deal with it.

She was so hot that she looked over at her car clock, imagining who she could call over to fulfill her needs in such short notice. And it was already 10:33 PM.

She reached for her cell phone and grunted, “Mmmph. Which one of these
fools
would be best to call right now?”

The idea was to call the safest, low-maintenance provider of immediate pleasure, while saving herself from ruining her perfect lady stance with Bryant. She couldn’t allow a marriageable man to come away with an overly sexual impression of her. So the other, not-so-marriage material men, served to benefit in the most selfish of ways.

“They don’t care about relationships anyway, as long as they can get some,” she rationalized. She couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about it. But then she thought deeper.

“You know what, I really don’t even feel like being bothered too much with their egos tonight. I just wanna get my coochie licked, take a good bath, and go on to bed without the drama. So I know just who to call.”