Page 94 of Quasim: King Inferno

“I’m good.”

“You don’t always have to be good, Quasim.” She held the side of my face as she stared beyond my eyes.

Whenever she looked into my eyes, she was looking beyond, like she was learning about me through the lens to my soul. “I have no choice but to be good, my love. This position I’m in, I have to be good… don’t have no other choice. You want to be my wife, well, this is what comes with it.”

She kissed my jaw and hugged me before climbing out the bed. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“If this is what comes with loving you, then okay. I can tell you one thing; this won’t be our life for long… you won’t be good all the time… not with me as your wife. You’ll break down those walls eventually, Simmy.”

“You so fucking bossy.”

I never realized how fucking bossy Blair was, and how much the shit was a turn on for me. She wasn’t scared or ashamed to admit that she loved me and wanted me. Even not knowing if I felt the same for her.

“Yeah, well… when the head of the Inferno Gods tells me that ain’t no going back because he slid inside me, I have no choice.”

I laughed. “Yeah… ight.”

“Take a shower because we have a long ass flight ahead of us… your stuff is packed. I left your toothbrush and stuff out so you can handle that… funky breath.”

Shaking my head, I leaned my head on the headboard for a minute before climbing out the bed and getting on my knees to send a prayer up for my mother.

Blair

It had beena week since we had gotten back from Bali, and I hadn’t seen Quasim once. He still checked in through text messages and called me. His mother had finally woken up, and things were stressful for the Inferno family right now, so I was giving him space to be.

I wanted to be there for him, however, I didn’t want to look like a clingy fool that wouldn’t give him the space to breathe. In Bali, I realized that I had come off as super aggressive with what I wanted, and maybe I forced him into agreeing to things with me.

Who was I kidding?

Nobody could tell Quasim Inferno what to do or how to feel. That was a me problem that I needed to work on. The man had been running or distancing himself from me for so long that I was the one scared. Other than the occasional phone call and text messages, I pushed on with my own work. Since being back from California, I hadn’t been working nearly as much as I should have.

I looked out the front window of the studio and watched as Yasin pulled up and parked his bike across the street. No matterhow much he ran from me, he was going to make sure there was an Inferno God somewhere close to me.

I rounded the counter and opened the door. “I bought lunch… there’s enough for you.”

Yasin laughed. “Shit, bring it out here to me then… how long you in the studio today?”

“Our last class of the day is wrapping up now… why?”

He looked at his watch. “Hassan had class today so he couldn’t come through… Sim asked me to stick around until your last class.”

“Is he coming?”

Yasin shrugged his shoulder. “That nigga don’t tell us shit… Sim moves in silence; we see him when he pop the fuck up.”

I went back into the studio, going into the break room and grabbed the chicken sticks and shrimp rolls I had been obsessed with from the Chinese restaurant on the same block as the studio. My eyes were always bigger than my stomach because I choked down two and couldn’t eat the rest.

Yasin was sitting on his bike, scrolling on his phone as I crossed the street with the container and a bottle of water. “Good looking, B.”

He ripped into the container and didn’t wait a second before he bit into the chicken stick. “I saw Kiki the other day… I went to her for a hair consultation.”

“And this is relevant information to me, how?” He ripped open the duck sauce packages and squeezed it on his egg roll before taking a bite.

I folded my arms. “Everyone knows that you have a crush on Kiki… why are you acting like you don’t?”

He chewed while staring at me. “Kiki a different kind of woman.”

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