Page 7 of Smoke N' Stroke

I gave her a hard glare which she of course ignored with a wave.

“That’s fine. I’ll be okay getting out of here like I always do.”

Was she crazy or stupid? It had to be one or the other.

“No, that’s not how this works. There’s a reason certain protocols are in place and you leaving before he leaves is important for ensuring your safety. We’ve been through this before, Nala. Don’t force me to report you for breaking protocol this time.”

She snatched her glasses off her face as if that would put me in my place.Woman, glasses on, glassesoff, I’ll fuck that scowl off your face.That’s what I wanted to say but I didn’t. Whether she wanted it or not, she had to ask me for it. I wasn’t easy. Not anymore.

“Not you of all people, lecturing me on protocols.”

If I were being truthful, this push and pull between us never made sense. I liked her, period. But she treated me like I had done something wrong to her and I never had. Plenty of others got some of my worst behavior in the past, but she wasn’t one of them.

“What’s your problem?”

She stared back at me with an attitude that spoke volumes. A mix of lust and contempt peppered her beautiful face, and I could see the lust winning even as she held on for dear life to whatever grip she had on denying us what we both wanted.

She was infuriating and even so, I wanted to have her pinned against the wall, her desk, the floor even. Anywhere I could have my dick deeply inside her dripping wet pussy.

“I don’t have a problem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some notes to finish.”

5

ZAIRE

Nala’s dismissal of me would irritate me more if I wasn’t so concerned about her hard-headed ass. But I couldn’t cage her in because, despite that moment in the closet last month, she wasn’t mine. She was all mine then for those few stolen moments when she gave in to the lust we had been fighting since she started working here six months back.

The onboarding process was hell for me. Seeing her come in here every day wearing her glasses, her thick glossed lips pouting while she stared down at her phone. And when she switched her ass around the office leaving a sweet trail of whatever the perfume, she wore lingering in the halls, I wanted to say fuck it all and fuck her, but she didn’t know Iwanted her or had been wanting her since we were in the same Clinical Psychopathy classes back at Pitt. I would see her after class too, walking hand in hand with some dude that looked way too uptight to be with her. Nah, she needed to laugh and feel free. I could see it but it wasn’t my place, plus I was only watching from a distance and could have had it all wrong but here we are years later and that dude wasn’t around. No one was from what I could see, and that’s what I was thinking when I finally asked her out.

“Uh, excuse me?”

“I want to take you out, Nala.”

“Dr. Jackson,” she corrected me in the deep feminine voice of hers that reminded me of the voice of someone who could sing. You know like listening to Lalah Hathaway when she spoke. It was rich, feminine, and very sexy. That was Nala. But she denied me the opportunity to date her, and instead, we started fucking each other with our eyes every damn day between clients and meetings and bumping into each other in the break room until one day I needed to address why she was in the clinic alone so late. Raheem, the security guard had left, which meant everyone was supposed to be gone. I just happened to forget my earbuds and needed them for the gym.That’s when I noticed the light from her lamp slipping through the crack of her door.

“What are you still doing here?”

The way she nearly jumped up out of her chair was so comical, but I held my laugh inside my chest because this was too serious to let go. She shouldn’t have been there alone.

“You scared me.”

“Good. You should be. You really shouldn’t be here alone, Dr. Jackson. We went over this during orientation,” I reminded her.

I watched her swallow before straightening her back and pretending to be the one in charge. “I needed to finish a few things before heading home. I wasn’t going to be much longer.”

I nodded, realizing she was more hard-headed than anyone else I knew.

“Policy dictates I report this to Dr. Patton.” Her worry reached her eyes.

“For real? You’d tell on me for doing my work?”

She seemed genuinely perplexed. She truly didn’t understand. We worked with some very sick individuals from time to time and honestly, anyone was capable of losing their grip on reality at any point. Being here alone was a liability.

“For real.”

She shook her head in disbelief. I was wondering why we were still talking and not settling the other problem we’d seem to be having as of late.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that. Can you let me off with a warning?”

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