Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74383 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74383 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“It’s what?” I growled as a street performer dressed as Dracula tried to get our attention. No Paranormal mess. Never played at St. Louis Cemetery and didn’t need this crap in my spirit.
Zuri asked, “You know the owner?”
“Yeah, Wash’s ex-wife. Mad,” I murmured, while we hoofed it past the vampire I might have shoulder-checked.
On our walk to St. Peter’s Street, we took a few selfies that Zuri assumed I’d post online. Nah. These were all still mine. I was waiting for the day when she checked my socials. She still hadn’t.
We’d stopped for a fresh beignet. The kind that comes buried under a mountain of powdered sugar.
Zuri reached over and gave me this teensy little pinch of the sweet dough.
“What I’m supposed to do with that, Zuri?” I stared at her. “You playing with my food.”
“Our food.” She rolled her eyes, but that smile was already there, the one that makes a dude forget he has a four-year-old trying to dismantle Mardi Gras floats—before the big day. She took the whole warm, pillowy disk and placed it against my mouth. In retrospect, this situation would look better with her mouth open.
Eyes rolling, I took the beignet and teased her lips. “Open wide, chère. Earn it.”
Her eyes smoldered for a quick second, telling me exactly where this was going later. Then she took a delicate, tiny bite.
“It’s like that?” I nodded. “This is worse than when we went dancing.”
“How?” she asked, strolling slowly. “My heels stabbed your toes.”
“I remember.” I shook my head, matching her stride. “Still worse.” The pastry left a little something, something on her lips. As I stepped into Zuri’s path, I savored the sweet taste of sugar dust on her bottom lip with my tongue. And then I stepped back before she could kiss me. “That’s all you get. And I’m talking about me and the beignet.”
Just before I took a big bite, she shoved me. Not a cute, playful shove. Zuri had me doing a two-step to stop from colliding with a vendor handing out beads.
“Damn, bébé, you big mad over fried dough? Or is it Big Country?”
“Gimme the goods, Montana,” she ordered, hand on her hip.
I bit my half, a little more than half, then handed it over as we strolled toward Madison’s place. Depending on my ex-sister-in-law’s mood swings, she might be a hammock in a hurricane or the sistah Washington met and loved from Stanford University.
Once we arrived on St. Peter’s, I was still feeling a buzz from Zuri’s petty little beignet shove, when I glared up at the sign. “Final Sale! Everything Must Go!”
That sign hung in the drafty-ass wind. Man, Washington needed to know his wife—who’d already hit rock bottom—had thrown on a hard hat and started swinging a metal bat to see how low she could go.
“See!” Zuri dragged me inside. Although a small area, Madison had always kept the place cluttered with her hand-blown-glass pieces. Them shelves were now balder than somebody’s edges. What happened? I knew it all went downhill since Elijah, but this? No matter how much Momma prayed for them to get it together, it never happened.
Zuri checked out a curvy, confident woman figurine in a bright-pink dress, striking a so-what? pose. She bounced—same as Darius, just needed some light-up shoes—to another cobalt-blue phoenix.
“Oh, this one!” She ran a hand over a transparent glass figurine. “This one is giving me I’m thriving despite the chaos of my life energy.”
“It’s beautiful, bébé.” I glanced around. Mad? Where you at girl? Forget the 50 percent-off sign on the door. The five-finger discount seemed the way to go.
No one around. I followed Zuri to a glass vase and made my move. Had to. When Momma was away … I brushed a loc from her cheek, pulling her in, right between two empty display cases.
A grin spread across her face as she took a quick look around. “Montana?”
“Uh-uh, don’t gimme that Awkward Black Girl Energy, Zuri. Give me desperate, chaotic, I want this man so bad, I don’t care where we at vibe,” I murmured against her mouth.
“Here?” she gasped between kisses, her eyes wide, but her body molded to mine.
“Ain’t nobody here.” I tightened my grip on her waist and pulled her flush. She was so short, stood just under my chin. Exactly where she needed to be. “Since we came back from Paris, you been running from me. Now’s my time. I’ll buy it. The little magenta woman. The whole damn store, chère.”
She laughed, a throaty, sexy sound that made me forget we were in public. She started kissing me back, but because she was so tiny, her mouth moved from mine, tracing a fiery path down my neck, then my chest. Man, she was graceful with it. She worked her way down.
“Not there,” I groaned.
“Yeah, there.”
“You know my belly button is ticklish.” I chuckled, twining some of her hair around my hand as she continued lower.