Page 55 of Curvy Girl Summer

But it was crowded without being packed. I could easily maneuver through the crowd but not without brushing into someone. The DJ didn’t have the music that loud, so there were some people dancing, but it seemed that most people were talking. The lights were bright, and the energy was positive and light. I could tell it was going to be a good night, and I’d just arrived.

I followed the directions the bouncer gave me and climbed the steps to the platform. As soon as I reached the top step, I stopped. Before I got a chance to survey the scene, I saw a tall man with broad shoulders and a sponge-curl fade with his back to me.

I knew it was Ahmad without him having to turn around. He was at the end of the walkway talking to someone I couldn’t see. He had on black pants and a black short-sleeved collar shirt with stripes. My eyes danced over his muscular arms as he pointed to something, and I inhaled deeply.

Get it out of your system now.

The man looked good. I didn’t even have to see him from the front to be taken by him.

“Hey, angel. You looking for me?” a man in the first section asked.

I shifted my attention to a short but cute man in a white shirt and white linen pants.

“We match,” he pointed out as he rose to his feet and opened his arms. “So, if you aren’t looking for me, you should be. Because I got room for your thick, pretty ass over here.”

The three men in his section snickered at his antics.

“I’m good, but thank you,” I replied.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, she’s sure,” a deep voice answered for me.

My head snapped toward it, but I already knew to whom it belonged.

Ahmad’s voice sounded like thunder as it rumbled over the velvet rope toward the man in white. He looked good as he drew closer to me. The shirt was just as stylish from the front as it was from the back. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but somehow, he looked even better outside of Onyx.

As he reached his arm out to me, I glanced at how his tattoo snaked down his bicep. He slipped his hand to the small of my back as he took his final step.

As soon as our eyes locked, my heart thumped in my chest.

Well, damn.

9

Placing his hand on my lower back, Ahmad escorted me down the walkway to his section.

“You good?” he wondered when we’d taken a few steps.

Still reeling from the array of emotions that interaction elicited in me, I didn’t answer at first. I was concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. “Oh, yeah, sorry.” I cleared my throat and looked up at him. “I was fine. He seemed harmless.”

He sighed. The disappointment pulled his full, luscious lips into a frown. “And this is exactly why I wanted you to come out tonight.”

I made a face. “What?”

“Those guys have tried to get at every beautiful woman who has crossed their path for the last thirty minutes or so and because I knew you’d come looking like this and they’d try you—”

My skin heated as his compliment rang in my ears. In the midst of the point he was trying to make, my body clung to the fact that he was low-key attracted to me.

I’m glad I didn’t change.

“I don’t know what game they’re playing, but they are not what you’re looking for. And for a minute, it looked like you were falling for it.”

My face scrunched up as I processed everything he was saying. “Do you really think I’m unaccustomed to being hit on? Do you think I give my number to anybody who asks?”

“No, I don’t think that. But I do think those guys are the same type of riffraff you’ve been bringing into Onyx.”

I balked. “Riffraff?!”

---