BWWM Interracial Romance 5: Love After Halftime (4 page)

He held his hands up, greasy from wing sauce, in surrender. “Okay, well… I
don’t
, so I think after my wings and beer I’ll probably just go home, okay.”

She shrugged, peering around the bar as if to find a quick replacement. “Do you need a ride or something?” he asked.

She perked up. “I thought you said you didn’t want to do it with me?”

He chuckled. “I meant to your dorm room or apartment or parent’s house or whatever.”

“No,” she sighed. “I live pretty close and, besides, if you’re not panning out, I should probably find someone to get with, you know?”

“Do you get with someone every night?” he asked, as if it was incomprehensible to him.

“Sure, don’t you?”

“Not quite,” he said, realizing that apart from the first chick Brad had hooked him up with, who later robbed him, he hadn’t slept with anyone since divorcing his ex-wife, Tina. “Far from it, in fact.”

“How do you stand it?”

“Are you… serious?”

She nodded, finally reaching for a wing. “There’s lots of stuff to do with people other than have sex with them.”

“What, like this?” she asked.

“Is this so bad?”

She shrugged. “Not bad, but…” She gave him a smoldering glance. Or, Joe supposed, what she thought was a smoldering glance. “It could be a whole lot better if we were having sex.”

“How do you know?” he teased. “I could really suck at it.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Besides, even bad sex is better than no sex.”

“Not true,” he said, waving Cara down.

“Something wrong, sir?” she asked playfully.

“Check please!”

* * * * *

Marlene was crossing the campus to her car when she heard a familiar voice call out her name. She turned, clutching a bag from Wine and Dine in her hand and smiling. “Joe?” she asked as he approached her, ball cap slung low on his forehead. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

“This time of night?” he asked, taking her bag before hugging her. “It’s barely nine. What are we, our grandparents?”

She laughed as they lingered on the curb. “No, I suppose you’re right, I just… never see you out in this neck of the woods anymore.”

“I was… visiting a friend,” he said, shiftily, and she noted right away the blush rising to his cheeks. Add that to the low pulled hat, the generic pullover and hunched shoulders and she chuckled, grinning.

“You’re down here for some action, aren’t you Joe?”
              “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, yes, but… nothing happened, I mean… can I have a ride?”

She laughed even harder. “Now I know why you’re out here: sniffing around? Didn’t find anything you liked so now you need a ride home.”

“I could get a cab,” he offered.

“Oh no,” she teased. “I’ll drive you home, I just… I’m enjoying watching you suffer for a few more minutes.”

“Come on,” he whined, tugging at the passenger door of her sensible sedan as she clutched her electronic keychain tightly. “You haven’t been over to my place since the divorce. I’ll order a Brick Oven pizza to sweeten the deal.”

As if on cue, Marlene felt her stomach growl, glad it was buried beneath her favorite coat so he couldn’t hear. “Eggplant parmesan style?” she asked, waiting until he nodded – feverishly casting glances around campus as if someone might catch them – before clicking her keychain and letting him in.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked as they drove away from campus.

“It seemed like a wine night,” she said.

“Sure is,” he agreed, inspecting her two bottles of red with an appreciative eye.

Marlene drove in silence for a few minutes, letting Joe begin to relax, thinking he was off the hook. Then she asked, “So who were you meeting, Joe?”

He crossed his arms and struck a self-righteous pose. “For your information, Cara works at Time Out, so I went there to check on her.”

“The sports bar? I didn’t know she worked there.”

“Me either, until tonight.”

She smirked, watching him squirm. “Uh huh, I thought you said you were going there to check on Cara.”

“Did I?” His voice, like his face, was boyish, a combination she suddenly found adorable.

“Just admit you were chasing college tail and let’s have an adult discussion about how wrong that is,” she laughed as they hopped on the interstate for the quick trip downtown, where his penthouse resided high atop the ritzy Temptation Towers.

“I wasn’t chasing college tail,” Joe sighed and explained. “Brad was.”

“Oh, it’s Brad’s fault was it?”

“That’s why I needed a ride,” he explained, slumped in the passenger seat with a bag of wine on his lap. “He dragged me along on some double date with a girl who likes to have sex in bathrooms.”

“You had sex in a bathroom?”

“No,” he laughed. “That’s why she dumped me. Or, technically, I had to dump her and…”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Marlene asked as she took the turnoff toward his street. “Maybe stay away from Brad in the off-season?”

“Point taken!” he said, handing her his security key for the parking garage. She swiped it, handed it back and found his spot, by memory, though it had been months since she’d visited his magnificent condo in the sky.

He held her wine bag in the elevator and finally took his hat off, soft brown curls radiant in the fluorescent light. “Thanks for the ride,” he said as he let them in the penthouse.

“Oh you’ll be thanking me all right,” she chuckled, nodding toward his cordless phone. “Don’t be forgetting about that pizza, now.”

He pulled out his smart phone and, leaning back against his granite kitchen counter as she opened the wine, tapped his screen several times before smirking. “Done and done,” he said.

“Aren’t you Mr. Techno?” she asked, impressed. “I can recall a time I had to help a certain jock with his phone calculator, and now you’re ordering pizza in three clicks or less.”

He found two wine glasses and held them out as she poured. “A lot’s changed since we met, Merl.”

She nodded, finding it hard to dispute him. “Yes, yes it has Joe.”

They leaned across the counter from each other, sipping their wine, and for some reason Marlene thought it sounded like they were talking about two different things. His eyes looked contemplative in the dim kitchen light, as if he was searching for something.

The condo was warm despite the late January chill, Joe looking handsome in his soft, woolen pullover and faded blue jeans. She’d always adored his jock looks, in a way she might never admit to her friends in the English department, but now they looked more settled, more grown in, his youthful cockiness mellowed into a soft, glowing confidence that was like a magnet.

Sipping her wine helped to ease the sexual tension she was feeling, but not the fire in Joe’s eyes. “What’s up with you tonight?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not quite sure,” he said. “Just wondering why we don’t do this more often.”

“I told you I’ve been busy,” she explained. “Exams and your ex-wife and syllabuses to write and…”

He held his hands up, defensively. “I just meant… do
this
, what’s happening now.”

“What
is
happening now?”

“
This
, Merl. You… me… the wine.”

“How much did you say you had to drink at Time Out?” she teased, laughing nervously because, well… he was making her nervous. Talking about things they’d never talked about before, looking at her the way he’d never—

The doorbell rang and she jumped. Joe ran to pay the delivery boy. Marlene poured herself more wine, shaking her head at her thumping heart and flushed skin.

He returned, sliding the pizza next to her. Despite the heady aroma that slipped from the large, cardboard box, Marlene had suddenly lost her appetite. For food, that is.

He reached next to her to top off his glass, then lingered, his hip on the counter as he faced her.

“Do you ever have regrets?” he asked, his voice gentle.

She turned to face him, slowly inching back slightly so as not to be tempted. “About what?”

“Anything,” he said before fixing her eyes with his. “You? Me?”

“Are you asking if…” Her voice trailed off. “I’ve ever thought…”

He nodded, as if reading her mind. Setting his wineglass down, he gently slid his hand atop hers on the kitchen counter. “I have,” he said, white skin upon her black hand. “I do all the time.”

“Joe,” she said, wanting to pull her hand away but unable to. “What… where is this all coming from?”

“It’s nothing new,” he said, and she realized he’d inched closer. “I just, never got to tell you how I felt about you before.”

“That’s a joke,” she laughed, joylessly, hating the breathy, needy tone in her voice but unable to control it. “We’ve known each other for almost a decade.”

He nodded, brown eyes liquid and longing. “And if you’ll recall, I met Tina right after you, so…”

“Hold on there,” she said, placing a hand against his chest. “You’re telling me you’ve had... feelings… for me all this time?”

He nodded, licking his lips as she shook her head. “And you went ahead and dated, got married, then divorced before telling me?”

“It’s not like that,” he explained. “I didn’t… you never showed any interest, never got jealous about Tina, never seemed to think of me that way before, so…”

“Who says I feel that way now, Joe?” she chuckled, more breathless than ever.

He smirked. “Your hand on my chest,” he said, tugging her closer. “Your warm, wet lips so close to mine, the fact that you’re not running away screaming…”

“Stop, Joe,” she said, trying to push him away.

He inched even closer, a hand on either side of her generous hips now.

“This is… crazy.”

“Why?” he asked. “What’s so crazy about us, doing… this…?”

He kissed her then, soft and slow, warm gentle lips grazing across hers until they could both hear the lustful moan that escaped her lungs, betraying her as she sank into him, desperate for more.

“Because,” she panted even as she bit his lower lip, tasted his sweet skin and pinned him against the counter at his back. “It’s… just… crazy…”

He chuckled, pushing her gently away and glancing up and down her curvy body. “You’re sure using little words for an English Professor,” he murmured, tugging at the top button of her favorite black sweater.

“No one’s ever made me speechless before,” she panted as her blouse fell away, drifting to the kitchen floor.

“Oh?” he murmured, leaning forward to smother her with another kiss as he helped her wriggled out of her skirt. “I was hoping for some very literate dirty talk.”

“I think tonight,” she purred, her inhibitions drifting away like her blouse and skirt, “I’ll rely a little more on body language than usual.”

His breath caught in his throat and she enjoyed having that power over him. For years she had thought her feelings for Joe – a slow, tender yearning she wouldn’t even admit to herself – had gone unnoticed, even unrequited. To discover that he’d harbored the same fantasies all these years ignited a fire in Marlene she was suddenly desperate to put out, by any means necessary.

He freed her breasts from her bra, tenderly kissing and sucking each until she could stand it no more. Pressing him away, she tugged off his sweater, then his T-shirt as he kicked off his shoes and unzipped his pants.

“Look at us,” she grunted, tugging them down as he stepped out of them. “Like two teenagers in heat.”

“What happened to all that body language?” he asked as she slid her hand along the front of his grey boxer briefs.

“You hear me now?” she murmured in his ear as she stroked him through the clingy material of his briefs. She’d imagined Joe, naked and writhing beneath her touch, more times than she’d care to imagine. Now, her hand upon his thick, throbbing staff, she wanted to take her time. Peering into Joe’s eyes, moist with desire, lips trembling with longing, it didn’t look like he was in any kind of hurry, either.

* * * * *

Marlene’s hands were warm on his skin, proving to Joe that the years he’d spent harboring a slow kindling desire had been well worth the wait. “Not here,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the master suite.

“I’ve never been in here,” she purred as he laid her down in his silver comforter, the king size bed a palette upon which they would finally paint their desire for one another.

“My loss,” he said, dribbling off her panties to reveal her thick, unruly bush. He smiled to see her in the raw, her brown skin glowing in the weak light from the living room, soft curves waiting on his touch. He could smell her musk and, suddenly, ravenously, bent to taste her.

“Joseph,” she murmured, sliding her hands above her head as he peppered her patch of pubic hair with soft, tender kisses. “If I’d known you were going there, I would have manicured…”