Mr. Mysterious In Black (30 page)

Sometimes he had to remind himself that this was Sadie Francé he was dealing with, and not those uppity, fake-nosed, Barbie doll rich brats that his father deemed worthy of him. Those chicks that spoke only of the latest brands, the next new car, the current hip restaurant or club et al. Sadie, on the other hand, was real. All of her. She had a dream, she had a passion, she had a direction. And he could see that those dreams were what she held onto, with unyielding hopes.

Though she had no reason to be, due to her state, she was prideful. It wasn’t attractive…but, in some ways, it was.

Many a time he’d wished he could read what was going on in that beautiful head of hers. What she thought of him. What she thought of them as a couple. What she envisioned their future to be. Did she believe, like he strongly did, that they’d be together till death? Or did she merely view him as a teenage crush? Did she know, like he indubitably knew, that she was the one? Or did she hold the expectation of him leaving her one day for someone else?

Reading Sadie wasn’t simple. Often times she’d just shut down, the wheels churning in her head, and he’d drive himself barmy trying to figure things out.

To the cake baking suggestion, he’d capitulated. They’d fetched the ingredients along with a cookbook and headed back to his flat. Now he took entertainment in watching her as she stirred the batter in a large stainless steel bowl, flour spots on her nose and forehead. She’d changed from her sundress and into one of his white T’s and boxers, her mass of curls pulled back with a hair tie, revealing that long, graceful neck he loved so much. He wanted to run his tongue all over it, sucking gently on her smooth, soft skin, leaving behind a mark that would identify her as his…

The feeling he had as he watched her in his kitchen, in his clothes, wasn’t a feeling he could fathom. The emotion he had at the moment was far more powerful than ‘love’. Love, however, was the strongest word out there to describe his feelings, so he had no choice but to call it
love.
The intense, burning, searing feeling, he also knew was insalubrious. As young as he was, this, too, he most assuredly knew: he wanted to
marry
her.

A ding of the doorbell pulled him from his emotional thoughts. Sadie was deep in her mixing, her pink tongue tipping over her lower lip, her brows furrowing as she concentrated on the contents in the bowl. Jumping to his feet, he tugged his ball cap backwards on his head as he went to answer the door. A sigh of frustration rushed through him when he opened the door to find Tanya gazing up at him under her lashes with a sultry smile and a gift box in her hand. Dressed in a very short, very tight red dress and make-up galore, she was much too glamorized for this hour of the day.

“Darren’s not here,” he said before she could speak.

When he made to close the door, she stopped it with her free hand and rolled her eyes. “I’m here to see you, silly.” Holding the gift out to him, she lilted, “Happy Birthday.”

Glancing at the neatly wrapped, gift box in her hand, he could predict that in it was either a framed picture of herself or a stack of nude ones. Most girls were so conceited that the only gift they could think to give a guy was pictures of themselves. Very rarely did he receive a gift of something he was actually interested in. “You know I can’t accept that.”

Taking a step closer to him, Tanya pouted her glossed lips. “Why not?”

“Because Sadie will have my balls, that’s why.”

She took another step closer, placed a hand on his bare chest, and whispered, “She doesn’t have to know. Let me in, Nelly. I can do things to you that that inexperienced child can’t.” Before he could stop her, she licked her tongue across his bare chest. “No one has to know anything. Neither her nor Darren. It’ll be
our
secret.”

Grabbing her arm, he flung her back. “She
will
know because she’s here. And I wouldn’t lie to her. I’m
hers
. I’m not up for—”

The door ripped from his grip as Sadie squeezed her way past him. Stopping to face Tanya she hissed, “I
was
here. Now I’m leaving. He’s free. Give him
the
birthday gift that I couldn’t,” and trotted off.

Shit.

Nelly shoved Tanya out of the way and ran the distance to grab Sadie around her waist. Lifting her combating body off the ground, he turned and headed back to his flat, ducking his head to shield from the blows of her flailing arms. Tanya stood at his doorway with smug smile and he shot her a death glare and barked, “Leave, Tanya!”

Stepping across his threshold, he kicked the door shut as he tried to control a screaming, skirmishing Sadie. “Chill out, babe.”

“Don’t you dare tell me to chill out, you…you…” she screamed. “Let me go! I hate you!”

Ignoring her rants, he carried her back into the kitchen and set her down on the counter, forcing his body between her thighs and wrapping his arms in an inescapable lock around her. Sadie dug her fingernails in the skin of his shoulders, tugged hard on his braids, bit into his flesh… As painful as her abuses were, he pretended not to feel a thing. Eventually, she gave up fighting, folded her arms and spat, “I
hate
you.”

Looking straight into her eyes, which were saying the complete opposite of hate, he demanded to know, “
Why
do you hate me?”

She broke eye contact with him and began fingering her long curls. “Because if I wasn’t here, you would’ve…you would’ve…”

Unlocking his hands from around her waist, he brought them to cup her face. “I wouldn’t have done anything, Sadie. What part of ‘I’m yours’ don’t you understand?”

“I…but…I don’t know how…” she stuttered. “She’s right, Nelly. She’s better for you. She’s older and experienced. I’m not. I can’t even bake you a damn cake.”

“Who says that’s what I’m looking for? What I’m looking for is right here in my arms. In my eyes, you aren’t lacking. You’re just perfect. For me. You’re mine, baby. Mine. I love
you
.”

Nelly turned to the cake batter on the counter, dipped his finger inside and licked it off. “Tastes just fine to me. All you need to do is pour it in the baking pan, toss it in the oven and walla! You’ve baked me a cake.
You.
“

She giggled, and the sound was amazing to his ears. But just as soon, that sound was gone as her face became clouded and troubled. She opened her mouth as if to say something then closed it, shaking her head against her thought.

“What is it?”

Twining the ends of his braids around her fingers, she whispered, “We’re young, Nelly. So young. Do you think you’ll still feel the same way about me in a couple of years from now? It’s…it’s what I’m most frightened of. That this won’t be…eternal. “

Nelly hugged her tight around her slim, delicate frame, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “My love for you
is
eternal. I’ll never stop loving you, Sadie. Ever.”

He thought he heard a sob escape her, but he didn’t check to be sure. He was too caught up in squeezing the life out of her, as if she would just poof and disappear at any minute. While he could control many things, here and now, he had no control over the future. And she’d now planted in his mind that there might possibly be a future without her.

Helpless and powerless was how he felt at that moment. And the factual thought came to him that, apart from his controlling father, she, Sadie Elizabene Francé, was the only living person who could make him, Natalio Nellandi Nelson, feel feeble and vulnerable.

He may not know a lot of things at his age, but he knew with utter certainty that he would
never
stop loving her…

The constant buzzing of Natalio’s cell phone against his thigh hauled him out of his memories. He withdrew the phone from his pocket to see a few missed calls from his new assistant Tiffany. These calls, he knew, had nothing to do with business. He cleared them and opened her text message that read:

Guess what I’m wearing?

He could guess, of course: nothing. To humor himself, he text back:

What?

And as he predicted, her answering text was:

Nothing. x

He ignored the message and directed his gaze out the car window as it sped along the streets. The lights of illuminated buildings and passing cars intermittently slipped through the car’s darkness.

He’d known he shouldn’t have shoved his dick inside Tiffany’s mouth the other day. But he was only trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t dead, seeing that he’d been feeling like a lifeless man ever since Sadie walked out on him. Now Tiffany was being a nuisance, which meant he just might have to fire another assistant. Another incoming text sent his phone abuzz:

You were so big inside my mouth. Your taste was heavenly.

I can’t wait to feel you
inside
me.

Come see me tonight. I’m wet and waiting…

On a grunt, he set his phone on silent mode and slid it back inside his pocket. It’d been almost six weeks since Sadie left him and as the days went by, his hopes of her coming back to him seemed bleaker and bleaker. He could easily force her to be with him. Barge in on her, be a domineering sonuvabitch and take over her life. It wasn’t hard. But he wanted her to
want
to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her.

If she could effortlessly live on without him, or even a thought of him, then maybe what they had was unilateral. Maybe it wasn’t what
they
had, but what
he
had. He just might have to let go of all this and live on. She certainly has.

Should she ever try to come back, though, he’d make it tough for her. She’d have to fight. He’d test her love for him. He’d never allow her to just run back into his arms after all this pain.

However, he wouldn’t be brainless enough to
not
take her back. She was his lifeline, and there was absolutely no happiness without her. She was that strong, beautiful, blooming tree, and he was that clinging epiphyte.

He needed her to survive.

D
istant mumblings beckoned me from the darkness. The darkness was comforting, relaxing and uncomplicated because there was nothing to see, hence, nothing to fear. Away with the light, away with the voices, please just let me sleep. As if they’d been granted independence, my eyes fluttered open. I groaned, and here approached an unwelcomed headache—a little red devil with a sledgehammer in hand.

Casting glances around my environment, I took note that I was in my bedroom, and that it was morning. Kelsy was sprawled next to me asleep, with white lines of dried saliva on her cheek. I sat up in bed and the little devil with the hammer in my head began pounding harder. A couple of aspirins would subdue this fiend, I was sure. Preferably some soporific aspirins that would send me right back into the darkness of sleep. Sluggishly, I rose from the bed and ambled out my room and down the hall.

Two heads and four eyes turned to look at me when I entered the living area.

“Oh thank goodness, you’re awake,” Brenda said through a relieving sigh. She was in Hello Kitty pajamas and cradling a large, black mug of coffee. Her brother, Tommy, sat next to her on the sofa looking equally worried.

Tommy was a nice chunk of a guy. Tall, dark and handsome; the typical. And he was implicitly, one hundred percent, head over heels in lust with me. The feeling was not at all mutual. Handsome he was, to die for, yes, but he had never sent my heart sprinting before. Besides, Brenda was explicit about her disdain of Tommy and I ever hooking up.

“What the hell happened?” Brenda demanded.

Another hard blow from the hammering devil in my head prompted my legs to move towards the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

Brenda stared at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “Sadie, I found you and Kelsy passed out last night.”

I frowned, and even that hurt. After swallowing two aspirins and emptying a tall glass of water, snaps of yesterday’s events came hobbling in. But the last thing I remember was driving home with a torpid Kelsy. I had no memory of how we ended up in bed. Did I pass out, too?

Yes dummy, that’s what Brenda just said.

“Where?” I asked.

“In Kelsy’s car outside. Tommy had just come over to help me with my paper when we heard the continuum of a car horn. We rushed outside and found both of you passed out in the car; your head was resting face down on the horn.”

Shit
. “Crashed?”

“No. The gear was in Park. So I suppose you passed out after.”

“What happened? Were you two drugged?” asked Tommy, the fledgling lawyer.

“Maybe. Because I can’t remember anything,” I prevaricated.

Brenda sighed noisily. “We were going to take you to the hospital but then you woke up for about five minutes, moaning about how hungry you were and at the same time laughing like an idiot. And Kelsy, she cried in her sleep all night about cocaine and dying and Tevin. A whole bunch of nonsense.”

I can’t believe I’d passed out, too. Lack of food and sleep, I guess. Enervation from all those dramatic, surprising and heart-pounding events. It was a miracle I haven’t died of a weakened heart. Miracle I was even awake. “I’m not sure what happened. I’m just glad I’m still alive.”
Liar.