The Brute & The Blogger (6 page)

S
unday dinner at the Millers was more like a meal with the Klumps. Grandpa Sherman Miller was either incontinent or full of gas, but Ruby Miller, Ebony’s mother thought it was disrespectful for her father to not sit at the head of the table in his own home. Grandma Pearl, who had divorced Sherman Miller 30 years ago, thought it was disrespectful that she still had the share the table with the old farting bastard and opted to eat in the kitchen or not at all.  Since her home had been torn down by Boehner Enterprise and replaced with fancy apartment homes, Pearl had to move back in with her daughter.

Ruby saw it as a blessing, whereas her husband, Ira stayed quiet on the matter.  His parents had long since passed and he was not going to come between his wife and her parents.  Ira was adamant that Ruby hire a nurse to help with her father, who seemed to snack all day in an effort to either create more gas or fuel more incontinence.  Ebony overheard her father one evening mumbling, “No wonder she left the old buzzard, he is just a nasty sumbitch.”

Ebony was starting to worry that she had gotten part of his mean streak, which is what put her onto Tino Boehner.  Displacing her grandmother hadn’t helped either, or the other low income families who had to find somewhere else to live. His words haunted her as she scrolled through all of her blog posts over the past five years. Over eight hundred blogs posts were on her site and nearly three hundred and fifty of them were on Boehner Enterprises. “Dear God, I am a stalker!”

She read through a few of the postings at random and each one was a personal challenge to him of some sort.  True to his word, he had responded in some form to every article she had written. Some in a positive manner and others more in her face. “Oh my Jesus!  He is right. It has been foreplay!”

She went back and read her last article on the wolf and the sheep.  The more she read, the more embarrassed she became.  To the outsider looking in, it was an article on a big bad guy that was chewing up and spitting out the little man. Reading it from the perspective of a man who felt she was writing him personal love letters, it was indeed an invitation.

Several times Tino had cautioned her about word choice and she looked at hers in the article. 
Sensuous
.
What does that have to do with a wolf?
  Masticating the hunk of mutton as he stroked the unwilling sheep who fell under his hypnotic stare ...grinding...ripping...undulating...strolling through, rolling his hips with each conquest...

“Oh my word! I wrote a porn script!”

Her mother found her on the patio, face down on the sofa, mumbling into the cushions.

“What’s wrong Ebony?”

“I have to pay the piper.  And he has a really big pipe,” she told her mother.

“You have such a way with words Dear,” her mother said as she patted her on the leg.  “Don’t forget to shut down my tablet when you are done playing around with your pipe dreams.”

It wasn’t her big words she was worried about. It was Tino’s big dictionary that was causing her to almost lose her mind. She grabbed the tablet and took another look at her resume. 

She attached it to an email sending it to four other non-profits in the city and hit ‘send’.  In two weeks this would be over and she would start to write about something other than Boehner Enterprises and Tino.

T
hirty minutes later, Rodney found her, but she had moved from the patio couch to the one in the family room.  She was sprawled on her back with her arm across her forehead, almost shielding her eyes.

“What's going on with you, Blog Queen?”

“I am dying a slow death,” she told him.  She had not looked at him but her brother knew her well.  He was only older by two years, and had always looked out for his little sister.

“Is this about you and Tino Boehner?”

She sat up on the couch looking at him with wide eyes. 
What did he know? Who told him?  Had Tino reached out to my brother
?

Instead, she played coy, “What do you mean?”

He sat on the couch and swung her feet around so he would have more room to sit.  Rodney was a good sized man.  He stood at about five foot nine and weighed a solid one seventy.  He was all muscle. His dark skin was smooth and blemish free and he shared the same large eyes that were inherited from their mother that Ebony also had.  Eyes that seemed to see everything; including what was troubling his sister.

“I mean you are the dumbest smart person I know,” he said as he picked up the remote to turn on the game.  For Rodney, it didn’t matter who was playing, or which sport was being played.  He liked to watch anything where teams of men were chasing a ball and clobbering each other.

He told her, “You have been sitting in your little room behind your computer pontificating and feeling powerful.  He called your bluff and now you have to deal with the man face to face.”

“I know...he is rattling my cage,” she told him with some hesitation in her voice.

“I hear what you are not saying,” Rodney paused. “You like him don’t you?”  There is was.  Floating in the air like pollen in the Spring.

“... And he likes me.  A lot,” she said quietly. “I just don’t trust him.  He is that guy, you know Rodney, the one who loves the chase...and I am not that kind of girl.”

Rodney turned his head to look at her, “What kind of girl are you?”

“I’m a nice girl!” She told him as she punched him in the arm.

He was shaking his head, “No that is not what I meant.”  He put down the remote and ceased his Sunday exercise routine of channel surfing. “Women don’t understand men. Yes, some like the chase, but every now and then, we like to be pampered as well. Why don’t
you
take him out to dinner?  You pick him up, buy one of them goofy flowers for his lapel.  Be clever...have some conversation cue cards to get to know him.  I mean on a deeper level.  Ask poignant questions which provoke thought and meaning, not what’s your favorite color.”  He rolled his eyes up in his head.  “I actually had a thirty five year old woman ask me that?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Who cares what my favorite color is...I am a grown ass man.  Asking me how I like a woman to treat me is a more pressing question.  You can look at what I wear and tell my favorite color.”

Ebony agreed with him.  If he was not in his brown delivery uniform, he was in some shade of blue. He had also given her something else to think about. She needed to get to know the real man.

It was going to be the longest two weeks of her life, but she could get through this and in the interim, she was going to learn a great deal about Mr. Tino Boehner, COO of Boehner Enterprises.

T
he first few days were an exercise in restraint.  Each time she spoke with Tino, it took a determined effort not to gaze at his crotch.  A couple of times when he walked by, she found herself whispering,
hey there big fella
.

It became a confounded irony when she sat at her desk trying to write about the many ways the company was giving back to the community, when her mind began to write metered stanzas. 
Dear Lord, I am writing poetry and we haven’t even gotten to second base
. Technically, she had rounded the base, headed to second, but was brought up short with huge bat.  Ebony was not a large woman.  She gazed at her small wrist and looked down at her size seven feet.
I cannot accommodate all of that
. It didn’t stop her from wanting to try.

By Wednesday, she was avoiding him altogether, something he pointed out. “Kitchen too hot for you Bloglady?”

“No, you just like stirring the pot, you big brute,” she mumbled as she continued to the break area.

On Thursday she got a call from a United Way partner who wanted to interview her right away.  She set the appointment time for Friday afternoon.  With any luck, she would wow the interviewer and get the job.  More than anything, she wanted to get away from Tino. 
How can I dislike someone so much yet want to get naked with him at the same time
?

Friday was a tense day.  Tino was tense.  She was tense and it created a ripple effect through the office.  She used an excuse of meeting Montrice for a site visit to escape the workplace.  On the site visit, she used the excuse of a headache to leave for her interview. In an interview she was certain she had blown especially when Tino Boehner’s name came up.  Ebony began to stammer over her words as if she had done something wrong or had been caught red handed about to commit a felony.  At the end of the thirty-minute inquisition, she lumbered home to stand in her kitchen feeling sorry for herself.
If I had some friends, now is when I would call one over
.

The doorbell rang and Ebony nearly jumped out of her skin.  Whoever it was pressed and held the button until she looked through the peephole to see Tino standing there.

“Whaddaya want?” She yelled through the door.

“Open this damned door Ebony Miller,” he yelled at her.

“Nope, you can’t make me, no matter how much you huff and puff,” she said with some amusement.

“I have a whole damn construction team.  I will blow this door down and call them to come and replace it. Now open it!”  There was such command in his voice that she was turned on beyond measure.

“I will open it only if you promise to behave,” she said.

“I will do no such thing!  You have until three,” he told her with a low growl.

It was with some hesitation that she opened the door. He pushed it hard, nearly knocking her to the floor, but he caught her with his left hand and shut the door with his right foot.

“Tino, what is the meaning of all of this?”  She tried to pretend she didn’t know what it was about.

“You are interviewing...you wore those damned jeans again, even when I asked you not to, and your last blog post included an original piece of poetry,” he said as he stared at her mouth.

His hand was still holding her arm, as she told him, breathing hard from the excitement of his very alpha male approach to handling the matter, “I am not sure what you are taking from all of those random things.”

“I am taking that you want me as much as I want you.” She looked down at the front of his pants and he wasn’t lying.  Neither was her body because it was responding. He pulled her in close, loving the feel of her in his arms. He sighed deeply, “tell me what you want Ebony.” His mouth planted small kisses along her jawline, then the base of her neck. 

“Even if you just mumble yes, no, or maybe—I will know what to do,” he said as his mouth found hers.  “Tell me how far I can go right now Ebony. I need you so much I am hurting,” he told her as his hands slid down her hips hooking his thumb in the waistband of her pants, tugging at the soft cotton of her panties.

She tried to find the words as his lips pressed against hers, leaving only enough room her to mumble the word, “...maybe.”

“Good enough for me,” he told her as he lifted her in his arms and headed towards the couch.

“The door...lock the door,” she said as his hands fumbled behind him to flip the latch on the door, all the while holding her in his other arm.

His hands, his mouth, his fingers were everywhere as he laid her upon the couch, partially trying to cover her body with his own.  Ebony would not hear of being in such a vulnerable position.  She pushed at his chest until she was able to sit upright.  If things were going further than she was comfortable with, that position would limit her chances to fight him off.

“Fair enough,” he whispered as he pulled her to him so she straddled his lap.  His mouth seeking hers again, with deep passionate kisses.  His tongue, reminding her of things he wanted to do with her body.  He pulled away to watch her face.  Her eyes heavy with passion.  He reached for her blouse to pull it over her head, but she stopped him. Tino kissed her again, slipping his hands under the soft fabric, his thumbs making contact with her bra, pressing against the straining buds.

Ebony threw her head back at the sensations that were rippling through her body, letting a soft moan escape her lips. She cried out softly as she felt the warmth of his mouth against the material. Before she could say a word, he lifted the top, yanked the bra aside and plucked the nipple into his mouth.  The sensations caused her to rock her pelvis against him.

Her pelvis was moving faster as was his hands, which had come down to rest on her hips.  Thick fingers pressed into the flesh of her buttocks encouraging her to move faster.  Ebony’s hands were in his hair, trying to pull him closer, boosting the assault of his mouth on her breast.  She was on fire and wanted more.

So did Tino, who turned her on the couch and she found herself on her back.  He moved over her, his mouth on her breast, her abdomen, pulling at her pants.  She felt them coming over her hips and panic set in.

“Stop,” she asked him.

Tino’s movements slowed as he planted a small kiss on her belly.  “Please, stop,” she asked again. “I am not going to sleep with you Tino.”

Tino stood up, his need for her evident, yet he said nothing for a second. “I’m not planning to sleep.”

The need in his eyes was more of a turn on than his touch. “Damn, I want you so bad, I could just...”

Ebony bounded to her feet, “you could just what, Tino.”

“I can almost taste you...” he said as he pulled her back into his arms and began to kiss her again.  He whispered in her ear, “Would you like me to taste you? I will bring you pleasure...so much pleasure...”

As he spoke, somehow Ebony’s hands ended up in his pants, touching him, stroking him, as he whispered sensuous words in her ear about how he would use his tongue to touch her in places... take her places... cry out his name in her pleasure. The more he talked the more she stroked.  Harder. Faster.  He was moving in her hand, his voice thick, husky...”Ebony, I need you.” He said in her ear.

Then, he suddenly pulled away. The darkness in his eyes was more anger than passion now. “I get it now.  You like yanking my chain don’t you?” He told her as he pulled her hands from inside his pants and straightened his clothing.

“This isn’t a game.  You are playing dirty and I don’t like it,” he told her as he walked towards the door. “I thought you were different.”

He was gone. Ebony stood there, confused, angered and very frustrated.
He thought I was different
.

Different from whom
?