Page 19 of Serenity
I laughed. His eyes dipped lower. He smirked and leaned closer. My right ankle commenced to the incessant rocking beneath my left leg. Thoughts of him on stage at Genevieve encroached on my self-control. My leg was fidgeting again. That fucking leg betraying all sense. All cool. All calm. All composure. Memories that didn’t belong to me revisited a video of a well-lit bedroom with the weight of Duke’s generous dick destroying an unknown woman’s center.
Hands to ankles…
A dismantled decorum. His sex tape. The memory of Genevieve. Together, they’d devastated me. I’d worked hard to project a woman tamed. A woman who had it all. A woman who needed not.
Nothing about Duke screamed tame. From the moment of his arrival, he’d signaled the revival of a lover girl. He craved wild and free yet soft and submissive. It was threaded in his clothing, from the unbuttoned shirt bearing a well-developed chest to the allure of his gentle and playful eyes. Total devastation and elation simultaneously. Those were his motives.
Well-groomed nails on long, tapered fingers seized my restless ankle, stopping the motion.
He knows.
God.
He knows.
He remembers me, too.
I stilled. He stilled. We waited. Him for permission. Me, to see what he was asking.
Fluidly, his hand removed my Loewe mule, and firm fingers dug into the rigid muscles contained in the heel of my foot. Had there been money on the line to do so, I would have failed to inform what was occurring around us. Though startling upon impact, his hands were favored by God. With every motion, he annihilated a week’s worth of keyed-up nerves. Dissolving, my guard withered to bits.
“Pity,” his pink lips freed.
Me?
“The lady pedaling relaxation and ease is tense,” he answered my silent question. While a jab at my lack of composure and not necessarily my spa, it prompted several of my own internal queries.
“You told me you were here on business. What type of business takes place in a club named Sin on a night like this?”
In need of a shift of topics, I motioned to our surroundings, trying to ignore the pressure points he’d awoken in my foot.
“The kind requiring distractions to alleviate financial inhibitions and heavy liquor to loosen the tongue.”
A glance at the timepiece on his wrist altered his countenance. The spell was broken. That magnetism—that need, that Edgar Allen Poe shit? It gathered its belongings, preparing to flee. His energy shifted, welcoming in sadness in his absence.
“The kind which will pull me away from you shortly,” he stated, confirming my suspicions.
Gently, my foot was freed from his grasp and lowered. I mourned the absence of his touch, praying my face didn’t betray me and reveal my feelings. The ones he’s unzipped me of and placed on display without effort. My shoe was replanted in its proper place and slid on from toe to heel. Leaning in, he kissed my neck, lingering for seconds before drawing back. The brief connection was enough to set me ablaze internally.
“You shouldn’t let strange men touch your feet. They may have unhealthy appetites, gorgeous.”
He was far from strange. Armed with the knowledge that he knew Supreme well, the value of our interaction was enhanced tenfold. My brother didn’t fuck with anybody. The men in his circle were just like him. Supreme. Before I knew it—before I’d met him, Duke had been vetted, screened, stamped, and approved.
“I’m not worried about you, Duke.”
“Nothing about me yells worry. I was referring to these…” Left and right, his eyes roamed. “Niggas in here.”
His eyes flitted to an ambiance of women I imagined looked like me in the arms of men who were nothing like him. They danced to Mokenstef’s “He’s Mine.”
Imposters.
Duke smirked. The satisfaction domiciled on his face revealed he’d driven his point home. The absence of his touch. The yearning. It was his intention. He’d claimed his domain. These cum-colored toes were his.
“Be careful, Duke. I’m not one of these ones. I’m more like one of one.”
“I already told your fine ass I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be,” I tossed back.