Page 49 of B.D.E
“I been watching you for years. Even when I wasn’t around, I wasaround.Making sure nobody fucked with you.”
The room fell into a silence deeper than before.
“You was the closest thing I had to a brother,” I said. “So, I protected you then and I always will, regardless of what your bitch-ass daddy did.”
Marcus sat down across from me. We sat in silence thinking about all the fucked-up shit that happened in our lives. Then he cracked a crooked grin.
“So, you telling meyouout here falling for somebody? Mr. Cold-as-Ice? That shit is wild.”
I shook my head. “Specs different. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Nah, you right. Sheisdifferent,” he said. “I see why you’d spin the block for her. But let me guess… she don’t know all this crazy shit you been on, huh?”
I chuckled, but it was empty.
“She will. One day.”
He stood up and clapped my shoulder. “Long as you don’t pop up inmycrib every time you spiral, we good.”
I smirked. “Long as you don’t end up athercafé again, we good.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
Little did he know, I was serious as fuck. So serious to where I was going to pay that weird ass nigga that love to come in and flirt with her a visit. He wouldn’t be as lucky as Marcus was.
CHAPTER 26
Ghost
I was backfor my night routine... watching her. The soft rise and fall of her chest, the faint sound of her breathing, the way her arm twitched in her sleep like she was chasing something behind her eyelids. I was definitely on some creep shit, but I didn’t give a fuck. I knew I should’ve walked away. Should’ve done it the first night I came back to her place, just to check the locks and make sure no one had followed her from the café. But I couldn’t stay gone for shit. That pull she had on me, the way being in her presence make my dick twitch wasn’t some shit I could fight off. Not with reason, not with force, not with time. She shifted under the blanket, then I saw her lips move.
“I knew it was you,” she whispered, voice low.
My hands stayed on my knees. I didn’t flinch and didn’t rush to explain. I just sat in silence staring at her beautiful face, letting her sit with the weight of what she already knew.
“You been watching me sleep. Slipping in here every other night like I wouldn’t feel it,” she added, lifting her head, eyes locked on me in the dark. “You brush my hair back the other night?”
My mouth opened but the words were stuck. I could kill a man without a thought, without a flicker of doubt. But standing there with her voice cutting through the dark like that? I didn’t have shit to say at first.
“I ain’t mean to scare you," I said finally, my voice low, hoarse from the fight I’d been having with myself every night since I left that note. "I just needed to see you breathing, Specs…still here… still mine."
She didn’t say nothing for a second. Just threw the covers off her and stood up slow. She was naked underneath. That shy, timid part of her was nowhere to be found as she stood in front of me with no shame or hesitation, just bold, raw fucking beauty staring me dead in my face like she was daring me to turn away.
“You said you were done,” she said as she walked toward me. “You left that damn note and ran. So why are you here?”
I still didn’t move. My Glock was on the floor beside the futon, but all I could focus on was the sway of her hips and the fire building behind her eyes. I clenched my jaw. I was supposed to protect her from all this shit, from me. I was supposed to protect her from the kind of man I turned into when the blood dried and the rage settled.
She got close enough for me to smell her sweet familiar scent that made my chest burn, and her hands slid across my shoulders. She straddled me without asking. My hands gripped her thighs out of instinct.
“I missed you, Roman” she said, voice cracking just a little. “I hate that I missed you after you left me, but I did.”
I could’ve told her I missed her too. I could’ve confessed all the nights I stood outside her window or sat in my car watching the front door like a man ready to kill any muthafucka that came close to her, but that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now.
“You glowing, baby,” I murmured against her collarbone, letting my mouth drag across her skin. Her breath hitched whenI kissed down her chest. I let my tongue slide between her breasts, slow and deliberate, before dropping lower. My lips met her stomach, and I stayed there, pressing a hard, reverent kiss just below her navel. She looked down at me as her eyes watered.
“You carrying my seed,” I muttered, voice rough and raw. “I knew before you did. I felt it. That’s why I left. I was trying to give you a clean break, Specs.”
She grabbed the back of my head, fingers in my hair, nails digging a little. She pulled me up until our mouths met, and her tongue pushed against mine with a desperation that made me grip her ass tighter. She rolled her hips slow, letting the friction build until I was hard as fuck, throbbing under her, jaw clenched from trying to keep it together. Her mouth broke from mine, and she slid down to her knees in front of me without saying a word.
