Heated (10 page)

As his body became hot and trembling as he got closer to coming, Kahron stood up straight and released a holler into the woods that bounced off the trees, the veins in his neck straining as each wave of euphoric pleasure washed over him. His thick penis jolted with spasm after spasm of his release filling her.

Bianca’s fingers gripped the bark of the tree as she began to shudder. She squeezed her eyes shut, spiraling toward that place where sexual high reached its peak. “Harder,” she begged Kahron with force.

Kahron pumped vigorously, reaching around her to press his fingers against the swollen bud between her legs as he did, knowing it would intensify her release.

“I’m coming,” Bianca shouted, her body jerking as her poor heart galloped at a racehorse’s pace.

She cried out hoarsely with each delicious wave.

They both shuddered as the waves subsided after long, delicious moments. Bianca stood straight with Kahron’s rod still planted deeply within her and he held her tightly against him as she rose her arms to wrap around his neck.

“Damn,” they sighed together.

Although Kahron felt weak and beat, he carried Bianca back to their pile of clothing, laying her down before he took the spot beside her. He pulled her body close to his. They lay there naked and exposed together still reveling in what they shared for a long time.

Bianca wanted to express how she felt to Kahron, but she didn’t know how exactly to verbalize it. “Everything with you from the beginning has been so intense,” she began as she lightly played with his fingers. “My attraction to you the first time I saw you on the back of the truck all the way up to what we just shared has been… so… powerful.”

Kahron lightly kissed her sweaty brow. “I feel the same way, B.”

“I’m not saying I’m in love, but I am saying that I care about you a lot and I have never felt this strongly about someone so quickly.”

Kahron nodded as he looked down at their entwined fingers. “It just feels right,” he added.

Bianca rolled over onto her stomach, propping her chin on her folded hands, as she looked out at the running stream. “I haven’t made love with a man in nearly six years,” she admitted softly.

Kahron pressed his hand onto the small of her back. “Are you regretting what happened?” he asked, his voice unsure.

Bianca turned her head and locked her eyes with his. “Never,” she admitted fiercely.

He reached out to move a stray curl from her face. “I’m so glad I met you, B. I’m glad you came back to Holtsville. I’m glad that you just shared your body with me. I’m glad you’re in my life.”

Bianca smiled at him, softly and sweetly, leaning over to capture his lips with her own. “Ditto,” she told him.

Kahron reached over and tweaked her nose.

1
0

To move or not to move: that is the question.

Bianca tapped the pen she was holding against her cheek as she lightly swiveled back and forth in the office chair. Her eyes shifted to the lease agreement on the desk before her. An agreement she had yet to sign.

The concept of moving back home was easy in theory, but there was a lot to be thought out. Pros and cons to be weighed. She thought the decision had been made until the realtor faxed the agreement to her and it was time to sign on the dotted line.

She reached across the desk for a notepad, drawing a line down the middle. She wrote
Pros
at the top of one side and
Cons
at the top of the other.

“Pros,” she said lightly, before she began writing. When she was done she read the list aloud. “Nearer to Daddy. Rebuild the ranch. Possibly expanding business with second clinic. Extra cash flow from selling house in ATL. Kahron—’nuff said.” She placed cartoonlike exclamation points next to his name.

Lord, she was sprung and that was no lie.

Her cheeks warmed as she remembered their tryst in
the woods. “Uhm… uhm… uhm.”

That man could work her like it was his J–O–B.

And work it he did… that night in the living room. The next day they snuck a quickie in this very office—her eyes shifted to the plush chaise lounge sitting before the fireplace. “If it could talk, the things it would tell,” she said with a delighted little laugh.

Beyond the sex—the great, mind-blowing sex—they really enjoying spending time together. Be it lounging on the couch watching television—both were junkies of reality TV and blaxploitation films—or relaxing on his bed with his head in her lap as they read, or going horseback riding over Kahron’s property. They had slipped into a comfort zone with each other.

Bianca could hardly believe she had just been back in Holtsville for less than two weeks. Everything was moving so fast.

Her hazel-green eyes fell to the lease agreement and then to the notepad. The
Cons
. She read off each one as she wrote it: “Giving up clinic in Atlanta. Selling dream house. Possible disappointment in Daddy. Trishon.”

She thought about it and then crossed off “giving up the clinic”—she could sell it and use the money to open a clinic here in Holtsville or neighboring Summerville, or she could acquire a loan against the business in Atlanta and open a second clinic in Holtsville and just expand her practice. Regardless, she was going to continue practicing veterinary medicine.

She crossed off “selling house.” Her dream house, which she honestly loved and had decorated herself, had already increased considerably in value since she brought it. She could sell it and just build a replica or better in Holtsville.

“Disappointed by Daddy.”

Her father was doing well in rehab. He called her and Trishon as often as he could. During each conversation he sounded stronger and more confident in his recovery.

Bianca had faith that he would be better, so she crossed that off the list as well.

Her feelings about Trishon she would just work on. If she moved she would be in her own home, with her own life, and if Trishon was what her father wanted—and she obviously was after fifteen years—then so be it.

There were other things to be considered. Things she hadn’t written down. What of all her board and committee memberships? And Mimi? How would she make it without her diva friend strolling in with her quick wit and even quicker sip from her fancy little flask. Even Anton. He was a rogue, but he was also a good friend when she needed it.

Those were all excuses, though, and she knew it. She could resign the positions and just visit her friends back in Atlanta.

So, even with every Con dismissed, all excuses explained away, and a list of Pros she looked forward to, why was she still hesitant to sign the lease on the modern three-bedroom townhouse located in a gated community in Walterboro?

Dropping her pen atop the pad, she leaned back in the chair, letting it bounce back and forth slightly. She was still bouncing and her wrestling with her plans when Ralph knocked twice on the open office door.

Ralph was one of the two ranch hands she hired. He was tall and white with more freckles than anything. She knew it was childish, but when she looked at him she could just hear Eddie Murphy saying, “Opie Cunningham.”

Bianca waved him in. “Come in, Ralph,” she beckoned, grasping the desk’s edge to pull her chair forward.

“Bad news, Ms. King,” he said, removing his Stetson.

“What’s up?”

“Looks like the new equipment’s missing.”

“What?” Bianca exclaimed, rising to her feet as her stomach lurched.

“Don and I we’re going to start setting the supplies up in the new tack room, you know the way you said ’fore we left yesterday, and well…”

Bianca came around the desk. “What exactly is missing?”

“Everything, ma’am.”

Bianca felt like she could throw up. She raced past Ralph to dash out the house, past her newly repaired vehicle, to eat up the distance between the house and the new barn with her feet.

Her lungs ached from the running and her heart raced from the exercise and fear. She barely stopped to pull open the door to the tack room. Her steps faltered and her eyes widened in disbelief.

She felt like her legs wanted to give out beneath her, but Bianca
refused
to fall.

All of it was gone.

All of it. Nearly $10,000 worth of supplies and equipment.

Bianca heard the door swing open behind her and she quickly composed herself with a cool face.
Never let ’em see you sweat, girl
.

She didn’t know what was going on around here, but she was tired of sitting back and reacting to the crap somebody was pulling at that ranch. She was going to get to the bottom of it.

“I’ll call the police,” she told Ralph and Don, moving
between their broad shoulders to leave the barn.

“Yes’m.” Ralph said, his freckled face concerned.

“It’s a damn shame,” Don added.

Bianca said nothing else and just continued back up the worn path to the house. Her mind was too busy working. When had the thefts occurred? When the men left for the day it had been around 6
P
.
M
. yesterday and everything had been where it belonged. An hour later she left to go to Kahron’s and she’d gotten back around eleven and nothing had looked out of place. Then again, she hadn’t exactly done a security sweep to ensure that. So the robbery had to take place while she was at Kahron’s.

“I don’t know which is worst.”

Bianca looked up to find Trishon on the porch dressed entirely in red, a cigarette in hand. “I’m not in the mood for your gossip right now, Trishon, “she said, climbing the stairs of the porch.

“Umph, having one of your boyfriend’s women puncture your tire or the same boyfriend who’s trying to buy a business from underneath your father.”

“Shut the hell up, Trishon,” Bianca told her angrily, those tiger like eyes flashing their namesake. She was tired of holding her tongue and just a tad bit afraid that there was truth in her words.

“Ooh, so touchy, Bianca. I’m just trying to look out for you
and
my husband.” Trishon released a stream of acrid smoke from her crimson lips that stained the butt. “I told you when you first got here that Kahron Strong was trouble with capital T, but did you listen? Hell to the no.”

Bianca crossed her arms over her chest as she stepped closer to the woman. “It’s funny that somebody who wants the town to forget their shady past can’t muster
enough humanity to do the same for someone else.”

Trishon’s eyes glittered. “You always thought you were better than me, Bianca King. You and your friends. You think I didn’t hear ya’ll laughing and whispering behind my back ’cause I ain’t had fancy clothes and shoes like you.”

“You’re not the only one had it bad growing up, Trishon. When my mother died I ended up with a daddy who’s a drunk and married to the town slut!” Bianca gasped a little and her eyes rounded as soon as she said the words.

Trishon’s eyes cooled. “Sticks and stones, Bianca. Sticks and fucking stones.”

Bianca closed her eyes, hating that she resorted to flinging childish insults at the woman. When she opened them again Trishon was climbing into her little red BMW and speeding off down the dirt road. “Damn,” she whispered.

The anger she felt in that moment had nothing at all to do with her father’s alcoholism or his marriage to Trishon. It had everything to do with her anger at Trishon striking out at Kahron and planting a seed of doubt that Kahron was playing her. In her mind there was always the hint of, “what if…”.

Trishon stopped her car outside the battered and defeated trailer where she lived until she married Hank King. She could fit the whole pitiful 14 X 60 thing inside her home.

The grass and bush that surrounded the pale pink trailer was overgrown. One of the windows had cardboard taped on it. Their were sheets and towels at the window as makeshift curtains. The wooden steps were
decrepit as if one good stomp could send it falling like dominoes.

The door opened suddenly and Trishon accelerated forward.

“Trishon! Trishon, come back, Trishon!”

She heard a woman’s voice calling her name—probably her mother—but she kept on going determined to leave any aspect of that life—and those in it—behind.

Once they were done giving the police their statements, Bianca sent Ralph and Don home, telling them both they were off until Monday. She walked down to the barn, entering through the door to stand in the center of the massive structure.

“What made me think I could do this?” she asked herself in a soft voice, feeling defeated. As she walked in a slow circle around the barn her eyes took in all the empty stalls—stalls that needed to be filled.

She was tempted to call Kahron, but she didn’t. Yes, it was nice to have someone to support you, but she didn’t want to get in the habit of him being her first line of defense. She had opened her own prestigious practice, brought her own home, and lived a good life—all without a man dictating or leading her.

The “what ifs” were dogging her and Bianca needed to think some things through. Being caught up in Kahron might have just cost her ten grand, and that was a mistake she wasn’t planning to make again.

Bianca strode out of the barn, her Reeboks making tiny puffs in the dirt as she did. She made sure to turn off the lights and securely lock up the barn with the newly installed padlocks—good use they were now.

She rushed back to the house and up the stairs,
quickly throwing some items in a Louis Vuitton duffel. She scribbled a quick note to Trishon and taped it to her door, before jogging down the stairs and tossing the duffel and her purse into her trunk.

Bianca drove to Kahron’s ranch, hoping he would understand. She turned down the road leading to the set back ranch, one hand playing in her nearly gone straw set curls while she steered with the other. She pulled up and parked in front of the house, leaving the car to climb the few steps onto the porch.

“How you doin’?”

Bianca turned on the top of the step to find one of Kahron’s ranch hands sitting astride a horse at the foot of the steps. His keen, ebony eyes were on her. She smiled in greeting. “Hi…”

“Dante,” he supplied, smiling at her and perusing her with those eyes in a way that quickly let Bianca know he was interested.

“Yes, Dante, that’s right. How you doing?” she asked.

“Better now,” he answered with a lick of lips that was such a bad imitation of LL Cool J.

He wasn’t a bad looking man; in fact, he was boyishly handsome with a tall solid frame and a short afro that fit his face well. But, she thought him foolish to come on to her right in front of Kahron’s house. Foolish or bold… maybe both.

“Kahron around?” she asked, wishing he didn’t make

her feel like she was naked and gyrating on a pole.

“Haven’t seen him,” he drawled.

Okay, you know what
…

Bianca scratched her scalp and forced a smile. “How can you not see him and you’re on his property?” she asked, trying to keep the censure from her voice.

Dante just shrugged slowly.

“You’ve been so helpful, Dante, thank you ever so much,” she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm as she turned and knocked on the door.

Maybe his housekeeper knew where he was.

“Anything I can help you with?” Dante asked from behind her. “I’m more than willing to… help you out.”

He laughed low and cockily.

Bianca turned and put a hand on her hip as she tapped her finger against her lip, glanced down and then back up at him. “You know what, Dante, I have all the dick I need in my life right, so I won’t be needing yours, but thanks for offering.”

“You tell him, girlfriend.”

Bianca turned and her jaw literally dropped at the sight of the beautiful woman standing before her in the doorway of her
man’s
home.
Get it together, Bianca.

“You must be Bianca. I recognize your from the photo on Mister Strong’s nightstand,” she said, her heavy accent prominent, her smile friendly.

The photo they took in his study with the digital camera. Bianca smiled in return, but that little piece of her that was as green as grass with envy wanted to tell the little señorita to hit the road.

“It’s nice to meet you, Garcelle,” Bianca said, deciding to take the high road of maturity and self-confidence. “Your cooking is delicious. I really loved the chicken and rice dish.”

Garcelle leaned forward like an old friend and winked. “I will give you the recipe. Our little secret, no?”

Bianca didn’t know if the woman was truly sincere or not, but she decided to trust her—with the stipulation that she would give her an old fashioned country girl whupping if she found out the woman was making a
play for
her
Kahron.

“When I return,” she told her. “Is Kahron around?”

“No, ma’am. He had to go to his father’s ranch in Walterboro.”