Page 37 of Church Girl
“You’re not close?” she asks, the first personal question about me since she’s started this job.
“With a father who’s a truck driver and more out the house than in and a working mother, we didn’t have a choice but to be close. She’s my best friend other than Chelle.”
I could’ve just said “yes,” but something I refuse to scrutinize compelled me to give her more. Usually, if it didn’t have anything to do with tattoos or the money paid to get one, then it wasn’t anyone’s business.
“I don’t know if we’re close or not,” she says after carefully setting the forks and knives beside the plates—just a fork next to G’s. “Growing up, no. Actually, not until very recently would I say that we’recloserthan we’ve ever been. She’s been nicer than I deserve,” she quietly adds, but not so low I don’t catch it.
“Than you deserve?” I snort, moving the colander to the sink then pouring the pasta in. “I can’t see you purposefully hurting or offending anyone, ma.”
“Just because it’s not on purpose doesn’t make the hurt any less.”
I still, the empty pot hovering over the sink. Her words sinking so deep, they grow claws and cling tight.
How fucking true.
“What’d you do to hurt her?” I ask, deliberately keeping my voice even. Free of judgment.
Another pause, and for a few seconds, I don’t think she’s going to answer. Then, “Didn’t think for myself. Being a coward.”
My involuntary response is to contradict her, tell her the woman who stood up to a principal, threatened a parent and defended a small girl like a lioness isn’t a coward. And that same woman, who left the safety and familiarity of her hometown to travel to another state so different it might as well be a new country, definitely owns her own mind.
But I don’t say it.
Because, though it’s true, that feels like lip service. And something—call it instinct, call it a knowledge gained by dealing with a lot of people’s shit—tells me that not many people in her life have listened to her. Trulylistened.
Crossing the distance separating us, I stop next to her, cup her shoulder and gently but firmly turn her around to face me. Like earlier at the school, an electrical current sizzles from my palm, up my arm, arcs across my chest and works its way down to my dick.
Damn. The way even the littlest thing causes me to brick up around her, I might need to start wearing a fucking jockstrap. Clenching my jaw against that jolt, I grip her other shoulder.
“So what if you were a follower? Or a coward? So the fuck what? Weren’t we all something else other than who and what we are today? Everything in our lives shapes us into who’s standing here now. Not just the good shit but the bad, too. The shit we’re proud of and the things we don’t even like to think of, much less talk about. That ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, ma. It is what it is, and anyone who tries to make you feel bad for learning a lesson—whether it’s at fourteen or the big age of twenty-four—is a muthafucka who probably has their own shit they haven’t dealt with. Lift that head up, baby girl. You ain’t got nothing to be ashamed of.”
She stares at me, her heavy-lidded eyes searching my face as if waiting for a punch line. The longer I remain silent, the deeper the stain across her rounded cheekbones. The faster her soft breath. Finally, she slicks her tongue across her lips, and of their own volition, my fingers tighten. Her eyes dilate as if I cupped her pussy instead of her shoulders, and shit, my body reacts the same way.
I should take my hands off her. Back up. She’s my fucking employee. She isn’t aware of how she’s looking at me. What those eyes, those lips are begging for...
Those last two warnings should be enough to have me releasing her and falling far back, but damn. They got lust flashing into a gotdamn inferno. That innocence, bruh. Innocence tempered with curiosity, and her body pleading for something she probably doesn’t acknowledge.
Let me find out lil’ mama likes to be handled and to be fucked hard and nasty.
Her being my employee and me wanting nothing to do with breaking in virgins won’t save her.
Caution alarms blare in my head, nearly deafening me, but they don’t stop me from lowering my head, my gaze briefly flicking to Gia to make sure she’s still occupied. I press my lips to the top of her ear. A hard shudder ripples through her, echoing in me, andfuck. Why didn’t she hide that reaction from me?
Every restraint, every reason why I shouldn’t be doing this, evaporates like smoke.
Sliding one hand across her shoulder blade and down the elegant length of her spine, I grip her hip, holding her. As small as she is, I’m almost folded over her, but these fucking curves... I squeeze the rounded flesh under my hand, my fingers grazing the top of that perfect, fat ass.
I pause, granting her time to object, to shove me off. But she doesn’t move. Unless you count the shiver that rips through her again. Pressing closer, I growl at the softness of her small, plump breasts brushing my chest. The graze of her beaded nipples that the thin sweater she’s wearing can’t hide. The feel of those thick, perfect thighs against mine, granting me the perfect idea of how firm and welcoming they would be around my waist—my face. The give of her slightly rounded belly under my dick.
Shiiit. If it feels this good grinding against her stomach, pushing into that wet, soft pussy might take me the fuck up outta here.
Slowly, still silently offering her time to tell me no, I trace the outer rim of her ear with my teeth. Follow it up with the tip of my tongue.
A small whimper punctuates the air, and it’s both a pump of my dick and a caress to my chest. Warring sensations, equally devastating to my body and senses.
Yeah, some of my original assumptions about Aaliyah might’ve been off, but one still stands.
She’s dangerous.
