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  “So don’t call him.”

  Zaria kicked her feet up in the air, silently wishing she could plant one of them dead in the center of Chanci’s behind. “I haven’t called him. I’m not going to. I just need to get him off my mind—and out my dreams and out of my system.”

  “That sounds like a plan.”

  “Or . . . ,” Hope added.

  Zaria arched a brow. “Or what?”

  “Or . . . maybe you can see how good it is to be in a relationship with someone.”

  Zaria shivered in mock horror. “No,” she stated firmly.

  Their story was not hers and hers was not theirs. She understood that maybe they didn’t completely understand where she was coming from. That was cool. They were the best of friends but they didn’t share one brain and thus one thought. No one else could walk a mile in her stilettos.

  “I wasted so many good years of my life on the ex, and I just want to get to know me and enjoy it, you know,” she admitted, looking up at the slowly turning ceiling fan. “My divorce and everything about it really messed me up, and I’m just trying to enjoy relying on me, and enjoying me, and discovering things that I missed while playing Suzie Homemaker while my husband was out screwing another woman.”

  “Oh, Zaria.” One of them sighed sadly.

  She hated their pity but she understood because it was damn pitiful. “I just want to have fun,” she stressed.

  “Well looky here, Cyndi Lauper,” Chanci drawled. “Maybe all the fun you’re looking for is right there with that younger man.”

  Hope chuckled. “Just lay your cards on the table and let him know you have an itch you want scratched every now and then and nothing more, and if he’s willing, then enjoy it, Z.”

  Zaria bit the side of her thumbnail. She had dated a lot of younger men since her divorce, but the numbers she allowed into her bed had been very few. Still, she enjoyed the way they were so eager to please her, and the idea of seeing Kaleb again sent excited shivers down her spine. There was a comfortable nature and an explosive chemistry between them that scared her.

  She couldn’t give in to the yearning. She knew deep in her gut, with every fiber of the women’s intuition she ignored in the past, that Kaleb Strong was not an easy man to get over. She absolutely could not take the risk.

  Kaleb couldn’t sleep. For the past hour, he had tossed and turned and then flipped and flopped all over his bed. His sheets and covers were in total disarray around his legs. He reached down and picked up his cell phone lying against the stark whiteness of his sheet in the darkness. He flipped it open and scrolled through his list of contacts. The numbers of many women—past and present—were stored, but his eyes searched for just one.

  “Zaria.” He read her highlighted name softly, his calloused thumb lightly brushing against the CALL button.

  He wanted to call her and hear her voice. See how she was doing. Inquire about her week. Tell her that he couldn’t stop thinking of her.

  But why start something they couldn’t finish?

  He flipped his phone closed, and it instantly began to vibrate in his hand. His gut clenched to see Zaria’s number. Without hesitation, he flipped it open, his heart hammering. “Hello.”

  Kaleb heard nothing but the dial tone.

  Sitting up in the middle of his bed, he called her back.

  Zaria jumped as her cell phone vibrated. She eyed her phone sitting on the coffee table. She picked it up, knowing it was Kaleb.

  Crossing her legs on the couch, she turned the television down and answered her phone, feeling an odd mix of sickness and excitement. Get it together, Zaria.

  “I didn’t hang up quick enough, huh?” she asked, feeling more than a little embarrassed to be caught changing her mind about contacting him.

  “So you didn’t mean to call me?” he asked.

  She laughed a little as she played with the edges of her shirt like a nervous schoolgirl. “I thought maybe you could come over,” she admitted, her voice and body a bundle of nerves.

  He paused. “I wish I could, but it’s so late and I have to get up at three to work my farm.”

  Zaria felt her disappointment intensely. “Oh . . . okay . . . well, I guess I’ll speak to you whenever, then,” she said softly. “And we’ll do whatever then too.”

  Kaleb laughed low in his throat. “I guess so,” he agreed.

  Zaria felt like doing a childish pout. She wasn’t used to these young men turning her down. Bad enough I had to call him and now this? Oh, hell to the no . . .

  “Your loss,” she said, trying to be flippant.

  “So we can’t talk?” he asked. “It’s just dick or nothing? Damn.”

  That surprised—and pleased—her. “Talk about what?”

  “Anything. Everything. Tell me about yourself,” he encouraged. “There’s more to you than the physical, right?”

  She stood up, her shirt falling down around her bottom as she walked over to the window to look out at the full moon. It glowed. But in that moment, as he gently nudged bits of her life from her, Zaria was sure the moon’s radiance dimmed in comparison to her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Kaleb stirred in his sleep and was momentarily surprised by the feel of soft and warm breasts pressed against his back and a supple foot gently covering his. His body relaxed as he remembered that he was at Zaria’s and that they both had fallen into a deep sleep after yet another round of explosive sex that was beyond addictive.

  A smile spread across his face in the darkness as he remembered how Zaria’s touch had brought him back to a full, steely hardness after he had just filled her with an explosive climax ten minutes earlier. He couldn’t get enough of her. He didn’t want to.

  Over the last two weeks, Kaleb and Zaria had spent the weekdays talking by phone, and during the weekends they spent the entire forty-eight hours locked in Zaria’s home, completely caught up in a passion neither could deny. If not for his workdays on his ranch beginning early and ending late, Kaleb knew he would make the forty-five-minute drive to Summerville to see her during the week.

  Zaria shifted in her sleep, and just the movement of her foot up and down his calf caused goose bumps to race over his body. The simplest touch from her made his heart race. He was no newbie to the wiles of a woman—far from it—but something about Zaria made everything feel new and exciting again.

  He reached for her hand lightly resting on his hip and slid it down to wrap her fingers and palm around his growing erection. And when her hand took the lead, gaining strength as sleep left her, Kaleb arched his hips forward, filling her hand with a thrust.

  Soft lips pressed kisses to his back, from shoulder to shoulder, with a soft purr. She grasped the base of his dick firmly before easing her hand up and down the full length of him from his swollen and smooth tip and back down. Back and forth with just the right amount of pressure at the tip. He felt his slight release and she used that to lubricate the movement.

  “Damn,” he swore.

  Zaria smiled against his back. Being awakened from her sleep with the feel of Kaleb’s rod in her hand was a delight. A delicious one. She continued to massage him, enjoying the feel of his bare and hard buttocks against her fleshy mound as she cupped his body from behind with her own.

  The last two weekends had been like a dream. They laughed. They joked. They ate. They made love. He was attentive. Respectful. Thoughtful. Fulfilling.

  She was enjoying the ride. Loving every moment of exploring his body and finding out what turned him on. She had discovered many, many things.

  “Turn the lights on,” she whispered into the darkness, reaching down to lightly drag her finger across his sac.

  Kaleb leaned forward and touched the base of the lamp, softly illuminating the room.

  “Turn over,” she requested, already moving back to make room on the bed for his big and strong body, because she knew that he wouldn’t deny her.

  As soon as his back pressed down into the bed, she shifted to her knees, her buttocks hi
gh in the air as she bent down to circle his nipple with her tongue. He moaned. She suckled the tiny bud between pursed lips, the soft silver hairs of his chest tickling her mouth as she did.

  “My dick got harder,” he whispered to her, reaching up to push the dark sheet of her hair behind her ear.

  Zaria cut her eyes up at him as she grasped his hardness with her hand again while she circled his dark bud as he lightly cupped the back of her thigh. “Touch me,” she whispered hotly, lifting her buttocks higher and leaning her body over to suckle his other bud.

  The first feel of his thick fingers reaching behind her to play in her moist flesh caused her to gasp and arch her back. She pressed the side of her face against his chest, the soft hairs cushioning her against the hardness of his biceps. She spread her knees, lowering her buttocks as he eased his fingers inside her, circling her walls, teasing her swollen clit, pressing the thick lips of her pussy.

  Zaria cried out as his fingers began a rapid inand-out motion. He bit his bottom lip and locked his hooded eyes on to her face. She knew he enjoyed seeing the pleasure he gave.

  He reveled in her rapture.

  She felt the same.

  Zaria fought the urge to take his hardness into her mouth to suckle. Not yet. It’s too soon, she thought, even as she craved the taste of him against her tongue.

  Instead, she stroked him, being sure to squeeze and tease the tip just the way he liked as she placed kisses on his entire chest with details to his nipples. Each touch, stroke, kiss, and nibble made his body shiver beneath her.

  “You wanna come now or later?” he asked thickly.

  “Both,” she said, before doing a snakelike motion with the tip of her tongue.

  Kaleb’s eyes watched the move, and he had to take his free hand from her hair to keep from guiding her head down until her tongue teased the tip of his dick. He couldn’t deny that he wanted the treat from her, but it was a move he rarely requested, never wanting to offend. Still . . .

  “Sit on my face,” he said.

  Zaria looked up at him, and he loved the way her eyes glazed over as she did as requested. As soon as her intimacy spread in front of him like a blooming flower, he sucked the whole of her sweetness into his mouth and then kissed each cheek of her smooth brown buttocks before burying his face between them and letting his tongue get lost inside her walls.

  Zaria closed her eyes tightly as her back arched into a semicircle. She reached out to grab his ankles, forcing herself not to move as he devoured her with passion and promise. She just wanted to enjoy the work of a master, and he needed no help at all.

  His erection grazed the side of her face. The scent of his body intrigued her. The thrill of exciting him taunted her.

  With one deep breath, she turned her head and quickly took the tip of him into her mouth. He cried out against her core as she circled the smoothness with her tongue. She moaned deeply in pleasure and just enjoyed the taste of him. The strength. The smoothness. The hardness. All at once. Everything.

  As he returned to pleasing her, Zaria pleased him as well.

  They moved in perfect unison.

  Soon, an energy she was now familiar with began with the tingling of her toes and up to the roots of her hair, feeling alive. With deep guttural gasps, her fingernails dug into his ankles as she climaxed again and again.

  Kaleb grabbed her buttocks deeply at the first feel of her explosion against his tongue. He was thirsty for her juices and drank every drop, but as he felt his own climax building and finally exploding, he was sure he would lose his voice from roaring in fiery release like nothing he had ever known.

  Hours later, Zaria was sitting on her front porch and sipping on a cup of brewed tea with lemon and honey. The sun was just beginning to rise beyond the towering trees, and the sound of nature was echoing in the air. Dressed only in Kaleb’s oversized T-shirt, she swung back and forth on the swing her daughters had cherished while growing up. It was one of the few routines of her past that she hadn’t relinquished. It had been many days that a quiet moment alone in their swing had brought her peace.

  She had just needed a little breather from the sex marathon she and Kaleb were on. She had just wanted to enjoy seeing the sun rise alone.

  Zaria hadn’t expected to see her ex-husband’s navy blue pickup truck pulling out of her backyard.

  “What the hell?” she said, jumping to her bare feet and moving to the top of the step.

  He pulled the truck to a stop in front of the house and lowered the passenger window. “I just came for my table saw,” he said, leaning over to look at her out the open window.

  Zaria’s eyes took in the saw in the bed before shifting back to him. “You need to call and get my permission before you take things off my property, Ned,” she said. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you take out anything else you have stored in that shed so you have no reason to leave Boomqueisha home alone. The authorities don’t like minors being left unsupervised.”

  Ned shook his round head. “I came for my saw and not your nickel on my wife.”

  Zaria leaned down and squinted her eyes before arching one brow and coming down the stairs with her mouth wide open. “Oh my God, Ned. Have you dyed your hair?” she shrieked, before throwing her head back to laugh.

  “Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Zaria,” he said, reaching for the baseball cap swinging from the rearview mirror and sliding it onto his head.

  “And all that crispy jet-black hair looks crazy on you,” she countered, pressing her bare feet into the dew-moistened grass to stand by the truck. “You wait until your behind is damn near dying for real to dye your hair. Bonita Applebaum got you messed up, playa.”

  He eyed her. “And what’s the difference between that and all that fake hair glued to your head.”

  “I’m not as old as you?” she spouted.

  “But you ain’t as young as you think either.”

  “Humph, I’m old enough to drink, Cradle Robber.”

  “Maybe too old to drink, Grandma.”

  Zaria’s mouth fell open. “No, you didn’t.”

  Ned blew his horn twice before he pulled away.

  She fought the childish urge to pick up a pebble and throw it like a pitcher in the Major League. Sipping from her tea, she turned and jogged up the stairs. She and Ned hadn’t shared a kind word since their divorce.

  Back when Meena and Neema were schoolaged, she would have never imagined that her marriage would end. She had been it for the long haul. Through good, bad, and indifferent.

  She knew now what she didn’t know then. Their marriage had been comfortable. Routine. Ordinary. But there had been no passion for a long time. The sex was perfunctory before becoming damn near nonexistent. Their kisses were more out of habit than true intimacy. Their touches were that of strangers.

  Did Ned find passion with his new wife? Had that been the reason he threw away their marriage? Had she been the one to give him the spark that faded from their marriage? Had something in Zaria pushed him to look for that energy?

  She found it with Kaleb, but if Ned had never left her, she would have never strayed to find it. She had settled in with her husband for the long haul. Till death.

  “Breakfast is ready.”

  Zaria looked up to find Kaleb standing in the open doorway. He wore nothing but his low-slung jeans and one of her aprons around his waist. She smiled at him, pushing away any thoughts of her failed marriage. “You cooked for me?” she asked.

  Kaleb smiled. “I did my best anyway.”

  She walked past him into the house, fighting the urge to stop and taste his lips. She frowned a bit at the acrid smell of something burned.

  “Ignore the smell. It’s not as bad as it seems,” he said with a chuckle from behind her.

  Zaria smiled at him over her shoulder, thinking she had never seen a more handsome chef. “It’s the thought that counts,” she said.

  Zaria hated that her interaction with Ned had put a damper on her spirits, especially when sh
e spotted the bacon, eggs, and waffles Kaleb cooked for them. “You’ve been busy,” she said, taking the plate he handed her and sitting at the table that was covered in the sunlight.

  “I was hungry and you looked like you were enjoying your tea and the swing,” he said, taking a seat across from her at the table. “Until you were interrupted.”

  She looked at him as he cut his intense eyes over at her. “You saw that?”

  He nodded and shrugged. “I heard a little bit too,” Kaleb admitted. “I opened the window earlier to let the smoke out. I closed it once you two starting the verbal sparring.”

  “My ex makes my ass itch,” she admitted around a bite of eggs.

  Kaleb laughed.

  Zaria looked up at him. “No, seriously,” she said, her expression deadpan.

  Kaleb’s smiled faded a bit. “You want to tell me about it?” he asked, reaching across the table to stroke her face.

  Zaria allowed herself to press her face against his warm palm even as she shook her head.

  The simple gesture of kindness and concern nearly made the dam inside of her break, but she refused to let one tear fall, so she closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and got lost in the scent of Kaleb’s cologne. She hated that the pain of her divorce still surfaced so often.

  “You’ll have to let me show you my ranch.” Zaria allowed herself one more deep breath before opening her eyes to look at him. She smiled warmly. “Me and my stilettos on a ranch?” she quipped.

  Kaleb gave her cheek one final stroke as he nodded. “Yeah, I want you to go horseback riding with me,” he offered, picking up a very crispy strip of bacon.

  Zaria raised a brow. “I’m a Southern girl for sure, but the only horse I’ve seen is Mr. Ed, sugar.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  Zaria rolled her eyes heavenward at the twentysomething not knowing about the popular 1960s sitcom about a talking horse. “Never mind,” she told him. “But that’s a no on the horses. The only stallion I want to ride has two legs . . . not four.”