Page 7 of The Hellcat Barbies: Saskia
The bust-down Audemars watch on his arm topped his jewelry and competed for shine with his necklaces. It wasn’t his height, jewelry, tattoos inked on his skin, muscles that stretched over his frame, or his tantalizing cologne that made him a work of art. It was the damn profile. I’d never seen a man with hair the color of his. It was a brown hue, almost blonde but not quite. To make matters worse, or better, his brows matched. The color wasn’t bright enough to suggest he’d used dye. No. His square jawline, structured cheekbones, wide nose, and deep caramel skin that, in the sun, I knew had to have turned chocolate were all natural.Only a man this fucking fine could pull off light brown hair and not look gay, and only a man this fine could be born with it. I wanted to turn around and tell the bartender that I understood, but I was too captivated by what was in front of me.
“Don’t tell me no.”
His mouth moved, and I heard the words coming from him, but I was still in a lustful haze. A tingling sensation in my stomach shot down to my pussy, and that had never happened before. I’d been aroused before, but it was almost always due to alcohol and boredom. The drink had been good and calmed my nerves, but I wasn’t drunk.
We had a stare-down so intense that I hadn’t realized he was waiting for a response to what he had said.
“Hunh?”
His gaze traveled from my face, still perfectly painted with makeup that hadn’t moved, then down my body, resting on my hips that spilled over the stool. I wasn’t as curvy as Dasani or as voluminous as the women in the bar, but mine did poke out.
He took a step, and his long legs carried him right in front of me. Hints of vanilla and something peppery wafted up my nostrils, and I’d be damned if it didn’t match him perfectly. He was a perfect— a perfect ass nigga —tatted from his neck to his upper calves. The tattoos might have continued further, but because his clothing concealed parts of his body, I couldn’t confirm or deny.
He leaned in, way too close for comfort, but he was so fine that neither I nor any other woman on the planet would ever tell him otherwise. When his chain brushed against my face, hanging from his chest, I thought about it doing the same while he was on top of my naked body. I’d had sex—not a lot, but enough to be tempted by it—yet I’d never experienced that earth-shattering, mind-blowing sex that women in books and movies rave about. He looked like he could give all that and more.
“I said, don’t…tell…me…no.”
I tried to calm the overwhelming sensation flooding through me. He stepped back a little, and since he was so close, I noticed a hint of gold in the middle of his eyes, but because they were mostly dark brown, I couldn’t be sure. Who the hell were his parents, and how had they mastered the art of birthing children? I hope his mother had bred more than once because the world needed more men who looked like this one.
I opened my mouth to reply, but the stern look he gave me made me close it right away. He tapped my knee, sending jolts to my vagina even though the gesture was nonsexual.
“Let me get this seat. Move over one.”
He hadn’t been rude with his demand, but a man telling me to get up from my seat was offensive. Still, I remembered what he’d just told me about not telling him no, so I stood and plopped down on the stool next to mine. When he took his seat, he swiveled the chair so that he was facing the side of my body. Having made enough of a fool of myself to last the rest of the month, I stared straight ahead. The bartender, who was done fixing my drink, placed it down in front of me and asked him if he wanted something again. When he declined, she looked my way, her eyes resting on my hair. I’d completely forgotten that I had clips in them, except for the one that had come undone during my flee, but it was too late to do anything about it now. This was the type of man that, even if your life was falling apart, you'd want to look your best in front of, while he’d been dressed down.He was the true definition of,it ain’t on you, it’s in you.
Since the drink was right in front of me and I didn’t have to pay for it, and I needed something to calm the nerves that had just formed, I sipped from the black straw of the fruity concoction. I wanted to drink straight from the glass like I did with the last one, but I already looked like I was at home about to get ready for a gala or something and didn’t want to make myself look even more like an idiot. Having pins in my hair was like having rollers in or a bonnet. Both are only for temporary or quick public appearances, yet here I was, having traveled in them and now sitting in a bar.
I could feel his eyes on me but I ignored them as I finished the drink. I didn’t have a phone or anything to keep me occupied, so I watched the bartender who was going out of her way to get the man's attention. Yak, as she called him, was todamn fine. Now that he had been close, I could see that the hair that ran along his sharp line up was brighter than the rest of his coils.
“You done?”
The baritone of his voice hit me again as I sipped the ice, since that was all that was left of the drink.
“Uhh.. no.”
If he was paying, then there was no reason for me not to indulge. I needed to be coherent, but for now, I was letting myself drink away my troubles a bit before I went back to grieving and figuring out my next move. I’d gone against my father, something I’d never done before, and even though his plan was flawed as hell and he was dead, I was still torn up about it.
He signaled for the bartender to give me another, and she nearly shoved the drink into the face of the customer she was serving to get to us.
“You want to tell me why your pretty ass in here day drinking alone?”
I didn’t want to tell him, but I was tipsy, scared, alone, and vulnerable—thanks to the alcohol and the fact that a man hadn't touched me in three years.
I tilted my head toward him, his arm stretched out on the bar in front of him, while one of his long legs was planted on the floor, and the other rested on the bottom of my stool. Both my feet were on my stool, with nearly a foot between my feet and the ground. If I was five feet five, he had to be at least six feet three or taller.
Needing to see his facial expression when I told him the whole truth, or at least enough of it that I was comfortable sharing, I picked up my drink from the bar top, holding it in my hands.
“My father died.”
His face tightened, and his shoulders drooped slightly, showing he felt bad for me. Even that was insanely sexy.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
“Yeah,” I took a sip of my drink, thrown off by him calling me baby, but I dared not correct him.
“Me too.”
Silence lingered as we stared at each other. Here I was, down on my luck, but if he ran his large hands between the middle of my leggings, he’d not only feel but see that they were damp.He was attractive—extremely attractive. But I was close to ovulation. My window would open in two days, which was another reason I’d been on edge. I’d been praying like hell that my groom-to-be didn’t want to have sex with me on our wedding night because there was a real chance I could get pregnant. If I didn’t want to marry a man I’d never met, I sure as hell didn’t want to bear his children. What if he was fat, ugly, and illiterate? I wasn’t trying to have children with some beastly-looking guy. Fuck that! Then there was the whole race thing. I was almost certain that the man my father was pairing me with wasn’t black. That in itself was a hard no! Most of his clients I’d seen had been of every race except our own. It wasn’t that he hadn’t taken on black clients—because my father loved his skin. He was a black man who had fallen in love with a black woman, produced a black daughter, raised me in a black neighborhood, and sent me to prestigious black schools. He had black clients, but they weren’t the majority among criminals—at least not ones who had been caught and needed his services. Many of them did have him on retainer, though. That much I knew.
