Mr. Mysterious In Black (38 page)

My lids fluttered down as he ran his hand up my side and curled his fingers around my right breast, brushing his thumb over my nipple. “I have no idea. My father probably took it…”

He shifted closer to me so that his body brushed against mine. “I shall pretend not to be wounded. It was worth almost two hundred thou, which, back then, was a lot of money.”

What the hell? That’s
still
a lot of money.
“I’m sorry. I have no doubt my father took it during his assault on me. He’s good for it.”

His tongue licked between my breasts, and desire pooled between my legs as something unfurled internally. As usual, I was helpless whenever he touched me.

“How shall I punish you, Sadie?” he whispered as he feathered kisses about my belly.

“I don’t know. With your tongue?”

Tearing away the duvet, he edged down my body with steaming kisses. I was so hot, I just might’ve burned a hole in the mattress.

“Pleasure unto thee, thy tongue shall bestow,” he whispered in that poetic voice that he used to tease me with as Nelly. I would’ve rolled my eyes at him, had they not already been so far back in my head on account of his roaming tongue. He pushed up my legs and then licked, nipped and kissed my inner thighs, while I bucked up my hips imploring him to taste me there—all done to no avail. He kissed around my folds, kissed my lips, my mound, kissed everywhere except where I desired him the most.

“Oh, please,” I begged.

“I love it when you beg,” he moaned. He resumed the torture, never conceding to my pleas. “You know what I want, Sadie. And I know what you want. So let’s barter.”

My hips bucked up again but it touched nothing, just thin air. I wanted to scream in frustration. My hands reached for his head but he grabbed them and pinned them to my sides.

Just once, he kissed my folds, and I sighed in gratification at the much-anticipated gesture. “Will.”
Kiss.
“You.”
Kiss.
“Marry.”
Kiss.
“Me?”

Oh sweet lord, how could he be so cruel? “This is not playing fair,” I whimpered.

“I hate rules. So I break them…like dry twigs in a forest.”

“Please, Natalio.”

“Will.”
Kiss
. “You.”
Kiss.
“Be.”
Kiss.
“My.”
Long swipe.
“Wife?”

Hell, I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Yes. Yes. Yes!!!! Anything! Now suck me you bloody hellion,” I screamed.

Natalio grinned smugly. “Thank you.” And the moment his mouth covered my folds, the fireworks blasted and I detonated.

“So will you be at the family dinner, too?”

My question was directed to the svelte, effervescent, brown-haired, brown-eyed Lori who was trying to stuff me into a lime-green gown, as we made a mess of Natalio’s apartment. I liked her, because she wasn’t uppity. Neither did she bombard me with questions or try to pry into her cousin’s privacy. Kelsy, who had popped in an hour ago with the intention of us going shopping, believing that Lori wouldn’t have anything I’d like, was rummaging sparkly-eyed through Lori’s racks. She hadn’t anywhere to attend that needed formal wear, yet she’d set aside four gowns that she decided she
had
to have. I, on the other hand, was yet to find a gown I liked.

“God, no!” Lori shrieked in horror. “I can’t stand Uncle Nelson.”

“Is he that bad?”

“Yes.” She added a slow nod to emphasize. “But it’s not just him. It’s the whole setting and requirements for the dinner. I mean, all we go to do is eat and catch up with family. I don’t see why all this formality is needed, gowns and tux and all that nonsense.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Kelsy jumped in, her voice muffled by the racks of clothes her head was stuck between.

Lori scoffed. “No one likes to go. We’ll skip from time to time, drafting the lamest excuses. But three consecutive months of absence and Uncle Nelson will be on your doorstep with a tirade of how much of an ingrate you are.”

We snickered. Then I glanced down at the gown. “I don’t like it,” I told her. “Let me try that blue one with the studs.”

Without disputation, she lurched for the blue dress while I shuffled out of the suffocating lime gown. I wondered if she was terrified of Natalio, also. He could be such a scare sometimes.

A smile visited my face as my mind catapulted back to our crazy lovemaking this morning. All over the bedroom. I could never get tired of his touch, his kisses, his warm embrace. I could never get tired of
him.

Our prolonged coition was interrupted, unfortunately, by the unexpected visit of Darren and Tanya. Or as Ruddy announced them: Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Apparently, Natalio had promised to have lunch with them but such promise had been mind-slipped due to our soul-enshrining morning. They’d come by to check if he was okay, worried, because his phone went unanswered when they’d called. “And such was highly unlikely,” Darren had said. Natalio had apologized and suggested we all had lunch together, but quickly retracted the idea when he recorded my patent disapproval.

No way.
I wouldn’t go anywhere with Darren, for he’d been the cause of all our heartaches. The cause of his brother’s death. The cause of every damned thing. If he had respected Nelly when he’d said ‘no’ and hadn’t gone banging on his door, things would’ve been different. But clearly, Natalio didn’t see it as I did. And I do understand he loved him as a friend, but I didn’t. Darren knew, too, because he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes at all. And Tanya’s scowls and disapproval of me were just as transparent as they were seven years ago. Positive I was that her desire for Natalio had amplified since she’d found out
who
he was. The dreamy look in her eyes when she’d looked at him and her coquettish fluttering didn’t go unnoticed to anyone but Darren. Oblivious sod that he was. So much for being
happily
married.

“No. I’ve never slept with her,” Natalio had said when he’d caught me scowling at the closed elevator door when Darren and Tanya—Mr. and Mrs. Wilson—had left.

And I’d wondered how he’d known my thoughts.

“Darren’s my friend,” he’d said. “I’ve never told him of Tanya’s shameless advances because he loves her a lot. And it would hurt him. I sure as hell know that I’m never going to sleep with her. So why bother? If she does it with someone else, then that’s a different story.”

“I don’t like either of them,” I said contemptuously.

“I can see that now,” he’d replied, then gripped my chin forcing me to look up at him. “But you can’t blame Darren for all that’s happened. I was just as imbecilic to go. Larry was wrong for shooting at the cops. Travis was turpitude at setting us up. And if we want to play the blame game we can go as far as blaming the people who invented ammunitions, or Eve for eating the apple which introduced us to sin, or God for making human beings at all. But all that’s illogical. Shit happens. As long as we retain life, we just have to learn from our mistakes, forgive and live on. I have you now, you have me. We’re happy. Let’s live on.”

I’d worried my lip at the irritating fact that he was right and that I couldn’t be combative. And he’d kissed me senseless and led me back upstairs, only for him to be alerted an hour later about an urgent meeting and leave with bristling apologies.

After I shimmied into the other gown, I turned to the mirror and smiled. “Yes. This is it.” A strapless, cleavage-dipped, flowing navy blue gown. Diamond studs launched from my left hip and crept upwards to rim the deep sweetheart neckline. The slinky material cleaved to my skin, accentuating my small waist and ample hips. It was perfect.

Lori beamed at me. “You look amazing. Natalio is going to grow hazy when he sees you in this dress.”

Kelsy popped her head from where she was rummaging through the racks. “I think he’ll prefer her
out
of it.”

After abounding me with apparels, undergarments and needed cosmetics at Natalio’s behest, Lori wished me a good day and—accompanied by a commiserative expression—good luck at the dinner, and left.

Kelsy flopped back on the sofa, surrounded by the mess of unnecessary apparels she snatched from Lori. “Holy shit, you’re with Natalio Nelson bitch!”

I rolled my eyes and waved her off, folding the scads of clothes heaped in the living area into neat piles. “He’s just a normal guy that I fell in love with when I was seventeen.”

“Normal, you say?” Kelsy said, blowing a large bubble of her chewing gum then popping it. “There’s nothing normal about that sexy, blue-eyed—”

My phone started ringing and I held up my hand to stop her blabbing when I saw that it was Natalio. “Hi.”

Natalio’s voice came over the line in a tone that was levels less spirited than it had been before he’d left a few hours ago. “Hey, babe. How are you doing? Found a dress yet?”

“Yes, I have. Lori just left, actually.”

“Well, um, that’s good…” he trailed off, sounding a little odd. His agitation was palpable and it was sending me into a panic mode.

“Is everything alright, Natalio?”

“Not really. I, uh, have something to tell you…Hang on, baby.” I could hear him yelling at someone in the background threatening to cut their lying tongue out or something of that sort, then came back on the line. “Yeah, Sadie? Maybe I should just wait until I get home later. Is Kelsy still there?”

“Yes, yes she’s still here,” I answered in impatience. “But please, tell me what you have to tell me now. You’ll only leave me worried if you don’t. What’s going on?”

Natalio sighed. “Something’s happened. It’s Tevin.”

An unusual feeling jolted in my chest, and I sprung to my feet. The piles of clothes that were sitting on my lap tumbled to the floor as I began pacing the room. Kelsy perked up, watching me closely. But I tried my damndest to avoid her eyes. “What-What do you mean ‘something’s happened’?”

“Well—Just a sec.” And again I was on hold. There was rustling in the background as Natalio gave some sort of order to someone, then it sounded like man was howling in pain. I couldn’t hear what was being said, and I just wish he’d hurry up with the chit-chat and tell me what the hell has happened to my best friend. As wished for, he came back on the line. “Sadie?”

“Yeah, am still here, Natalio. Will you just freakin’ tell me already?!” Every vein of patience had left me.

And just like that, he dropped the words that pushed me into an abyss. “Tevin’s dead, Sadie.”

Tears sprung to my eyes so fast, it was as if I’d been punched in the nose. My heart felt extremely heavy in my chest, beating so hard I could feel it in my ears. My knees wobbled, threatening to take me down. Kelsy stood up from the sofa, imploring me to look at her. But each time she came near, I turned my back to her, hiding. She suspected the news I was receiving was terrible, but she couldn’t imagine just
how
terrible. There was no way to prepare her for this.

“Sadie? Are you still there?”

“Y-yes I’m still here,” I croaked. Pain and lament clogged my throat. “How did it happen? Who did it?
Who
took my best friend’s life?!”

A long, winding wail pierced through my ears as Kelsy tore her eyes wide, her hands fisted in her own hair. Now she knew just how terrible the news was. I never meant to say it aloud like that, but the pain was so unbearable it incited anger. On a sigh, I averted my eyes from the horrific sight of her. It was more than I could handle.

Natalio breathed heavily down the receiver. “He’d…done something. And they took his life back for it. He was found stabbed to death in his jail cell this morning.”

A noise that sounded too horrible to be my own voice left my lips and I doubled over in pain, a heaviness pulling at my stomach. “W-w-what did he do?”

“That doesn’t matter, Sadie. He’s gone and there’s no way to bring him back. I really wish I was there with you right now, but I’m a bit tied up and—” A gunfire went off in the background, cutting him off. An angry Natalio shouted, “Ruddy, what the
fuck
?”

I could hear Ruddy’s familiar voice rumbling in apologizing tones, but Natalio swore at him again and came back on the line. “Sadie, I gotta go. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

“You!!” I yelled at him. “You could have saved him! You could have stopped this! You…you bastard!”

“What?” Natalio said, sounding shocked at my outburst.

“You got me out of there. You could’ve gotten him out, too! But you left him; you left him in there to die!! I hate you!
You
let him die.” Finding it impossible to speak another word, the rest of my blame choked out in my throat.

Kelsy’s caterwauling grew louder. Deafening. And I felt like stripping myself bare and running butt naked to a place farther away than Africa. Away to a place where bad things never happen. What’s the route to Utopia? Was I to just close my eyes and imagine myself there? For once, couldn’t the damned place just be
real?
!

“Sadie, the only way Tevin could’ve lived to see another month is if a helicopter had landed on the prison grounds and got him out of the state—the
country
. Tevin was a dead man walking in or out of jail. Even if I’d gotten him out, he’d still be dead by now. Too many people were after him. There’s nothing I could—”