On-Air Passion Page 7

  He grasped her hands and hissed quietly at the soft feel of them, the liquid slide of her palm against his that was oddly sensual despite the brisk and businesslike motions of her long fingers.

  “Thanks.” He slid his fingers between hers, getting at the thick smears of white on her silky brown skin.

  Elle made a low noise as they touched, warm skin to warm skin.

  “Your hands are really soft,” Ahmed said, then felt compelled to say more when she frowned up at him. “My mother is a big fan of hydration, inside and out. She hated ashy knees and hands with a passion. That’s only one of the things she passed on to her kids.”

  Elle’s tongue darted out to wet the corner of her lips. “That’s a…a great lesson to pass on.”

  “Yeah.” Ahmed rubbed his fingers between hers again, a sensuous back-and-forth movement, enjoying the texture and pressure of her slender fingers between his. Then he realized that he was getting carried away rubbing her fingers. And his body reacted accordingly. He drew back. “Thanks for the hydration.”

  “Anytime.” She sounded as breathless as he felt.

  What the hell just happened?

  But he didn’t need to dwell on a damn thing. Ahmed shoved his newly moisturized hands into his pockets and dipped his head toward the street. “Shall we?”

  “Yes, please.” She touched an earlobe where the trio of tiny diamonds blinked and resettled her purse under her arm.

  Ahmed cleared his throat, his mind hunting desperately for a distraction. They passed a historical plaque in front of one of the town’s oldest buildings, which now housed a barbershop. He gestured to the sign.

  “Valerian was founded by free Black people back in the mid-1700s,” he said and paused for Elle to read the green-and-gold sign. Tall and gleaming in the sun, the plaque was as shiny as Ahmed remembered it being during his childhood. “It was one of the few Black towns that wasn’t burned out by racist whites over some excuse or other.”

  Fingers pressed to her lips, Elle made a soft sound of distress. Her eyes moved slowly over the words detailing the founding of the town so many years ago. “Like Rosewood in Florida?”

  “Exactly like,” he said. “The original Valerian townspeople fought long and hard for their freedom and to keep their way of life here. And, of course, to keep from being lynched.” His mouth twisted.

  “People are still fighting now for the right to live as they want.” Elle crossed her arms over her chest and visibly shivered.

  “Yeah, the fight continues all over the world,” Ahmed said.

  “Although I want to believe differently, something like the Rosewood massacre or the 1921 Tulsa race riot could easily happen again. Even in this age of social media.”

  Surprise settled like pain in the center of his chest. Not that Elle knew about these things that had happened to Black people in America but that she could imagine it happening again. That didn’t fit his image of the fairy-tale princess who believed in ever-after and Prince Charming.

  “Human fear and ignorance make it possible for many horrific things to happen,” he said quietly.

  Elle bit her lip and turned away from the historical plaque. “That’s why I’m grateful for people like you…and Shaye.” Her lashes fluttered low before she swept them up to meet his gaze. “You get out there and resist the corrupt system and force it to acknowledge what they are doing is wrong. You fight for change, and that’s incredible.”

  “I…” Ahmed didn’t know what to say.

  He didn’t realize she knew about his activism, about how important it was to him, even more important than basketball had been. While he struggled for words, Elle looked over her shoulder at the park, at the couples and groups and children dancing to the music on the grassy slope and the lines of people at the various food carts. Valerian was like a place trapped in some beautiful time in the past, and not the time in the past they always showed on TV, with strange fruit and segregated water fountains and places Black people couldn’t find work. It was genuinely a Mayberry-type place. Complete with its own Black sheriff, mayor, newspaper and a history to be proud of.

  He gave up his attempt at any meaningless words, content to simply watch her enjoyment of the place that meant so much to him. As much as Ahmed loved Atlanta—and he loved the city with a passion some men only reserved for the important women in their lives—Valerian would always have a special place in his heart, would always be a sanctuary.

  “I’m glad Valerian survived.” She turned back to the path before them, sighing, then began walking again. “I wish that every Black town and neighborhood had a story of triumph like this one.”

  “Me, too.”

  Their arms brushed as they made their way down the sidewalk in silence. The cobbled sidewalk ended, becoming a stone path flanked by a nearly empty street on one side and acres of green grass on the other. Wildflowers, rushed into bloom by a premature spring, nodded their purple and white heads along the edges of the grassy field. Peaked rooftops appeared above rolling hills. The silhouettes of barns and sprawling houses on the farthest edges of town painted the distant landscape.

  Elle’s shoes tapped on the stone path, a peaceful tattoo of sound. In that moment, it felt like they were walking on the edge of the world, just the two of them in the quiet, no games, just a man and a woman enjoying each other’s company.

  “I wonder how Shaye knows this place is here.”

  At her question, Ahmed’s bubble burst.

  Any illusions he had about what they were doing abruptly disappeared. This wasn’t a real date. If it wasn’t for Clive and his machinations, they wouldn’t even be here. Not together. Certainly not in Valerian.

  With difficulty, he swallowed, annoyed he’d allowed himself to forget that this was all for publicity, that it was not real and that Elle didn’t want to be here at all. He shook himself.

  Time to head back to town.

  Ahmed opened his mouth to suggest just that when it started to rain. Delicate and sparkling drops falling from the sky like a sprinkling of diamonds, but rain nonetheless.

  Elle looked up with a soft gasp. “My hair!” Her hands flew up to touch the straight wisps of hair already escaping from their elegant twist in the humidity.

  Ahmed glanced behind them. Most of the town, with its sheltering buildings and trees, was far back, too far for him and Elle to run without getting soaked. They’d walked farther than he thought.

  “I didn’t bring an umbrella.” He cursed, checking his pockets as if they would miraculously produce one.

  A few scattered trees, their branches thick and wide, listed nearby in the rising wind, but he didn’t want to chance running under one of them in case of lightning. The date, even if it was a fake one, would definitely be an automatic failure if he got Elle electrocuted before dropping her off at her front door.

  Not too far up ahead, the wide shape of a barn beckoned like an oasis. It was a place Ahmed was familiar with from his many visits as a child. The rain was still light enough that they could make it to the barn before being completely drenched.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Elle looked more annoyed than horrified at the rain, holding the little purse above her head in a vain attempt to protect her hair. She squeaked in relief when he pointed to the barn, nose twitching like a put-upon kitten’s. After another quick glance skyward, she slipped off her shoes then ran ahead with nothing of the delicate flower at all about her as she pelted toward the barn at a full sprint. Ahmed wasted valuable moments staring after her and the flashing pale soles of her feet, the raindrops catching the light like jewels and falling around Elle, making her flight from him almost beautiful.

  Despite her sprint, Ahmed caught up to her easily. Even a woman on a mission to save her hair was no match for a man who’d aggressively and successfully played professional basketball for years. Just past the entrance to the barn, she stopped, breathless and smiling out at the rain, while Ahmed tried not to make it too obvious how much he was staring at her
. At her long legs, now that he knew they weren’t just for show. Her breasts heaving gently under the sun-colored blouse. He shook it off. Whatever it was that kept pulling his attention back to Elle.

  “That was—” Elle stopped, dropped her shoes near the door and patted her still-lovely hair back into place. “I haven’t run in the rain in a long time.” Her smile was brilliant enough to replace the sun.

  Ahmed ached at how beautiful she was.

  The rain came down harder, a rush of sound pattering on the ground outside and the roof above. Despite the thundering sound of the quickly multiplying raindrops, it was a light late-winter sprinkle. Ahmed doubted it would last ten minutes.

  Elle moved away from the entranceway of the barn to walk deeper into the smell of hay, previously sun-warmed and now competing with the smell of the winter rain battering the wildflowers and grass outside.

  “This is an honest-to-goodness barn.” She tucked her purse under her arm and spun in a full circle. “You are just full of surprises today.”

  “You’ve never been in a barn before?”

  “You know I haven’t.” Elle pointed to herself. “City girl, remember?”

  But, unlike Ahmed would’ve expected from a so-called city girl out of her depth, she didn’t seem like she was searching for an escape. She actually looked intrigued with her new surroundings. With her worry about her hair apparently gone, Elle took in bales of hay and straw-strewed floor with curiosity, peeking into each empty stall that used to house the horses the Troyans—the town’s founding family—kept for the children to ride. The mayor had decided keeping the horses so close to the town square was too much of a hazard. Now the horses lived at the Troyan ranch, a modest name for the massive mansion the family occupied on the far western side of town. The barn, though still used to store hay and host the annual pumpkin-carving contest and Halloween party, was largely for show.

  Elle stopped near the foot of a tall ladder that disappeared up into a large square opening in the ceiling.

  “The hayloft.”

  But Ahmed had barely gotten the word out before she kicked off her shoes and started to climb, her hands gripping the sides of the ancient ladder, her bare feet moving quickly up each rung. Ahmed looked up and got a nice eyeful of her butt in the snug cream-colored pants.

  “What if they keep snakes up there?” he asked, shamelessly speculating about how it would feel to tug those pants down her thighs and palm her narrow hips, cup her rear end and guide her movements in his lap. “Would you be that eager to climb that ladder?”

  “Probably.” Nearly her entire body was already up in the hayloft, and one remaining foot quickly disappeared from the ladder and past where Ahmed could see. From the hayloft, her voice was muffled but amplified at the same time.

  Ahmed shook his head. He followed after her quickly, but by the time he got to the hayloft, the rain had stopped. Crouched in the prickly hay, Elle was looking up at the long, slanted window someone had forgotten to close. The hay beneath the window was only a little damp.

  “Oh.”

  Sunlight poured down through it as if the rain had never been. The wide space was awash with light, the smell of the hay fresh and heady, the entire hayloft an invitation to sit and stay awhile.

  “The view from up here is amazing.” Elle sank to the floor and made herself comfortable against a rectangular stack of hay nearly twice her height. Outside the window, all of Valerian lay spread out like a mirage. Church steeples, swaying trees, the houses in a grid formation that made room for miles of green space and the river running through the center of town.

  Elle made a soft sound of contentment, an openmouthed sigh. And Ahmed abruptly remembered the flash of the bottoms of her feet and the desire to feel her bare ankles crossed behind his back, to taste her lips and hear her soft voice losing control.

  He cleared his throat and made a point of sitting across from her, not next to her. The scent of her, kissed with rain and breathless from her sprint, made him want to reach out and touch. Deliberately, he draped his crossed arms over a raised knee. Just in case his body betrayed him again.

  “I envy you this,” she said after another distracting sigh.

  “What?” My inappropriate arousal?

  “This…history. This town, these people.” She paused, nibbling the corner of her lower lip. “Your family.”

  He frowned. “What about your own history? The town you came from?”

  “It’s nothing as pretty as this, believe me.” She made a dismissive motion and cast another longing glance out the window toward Valerian.

  “What, no king and queen of suburbia in your past to give everything their princess wanted?” At the flash of hurt that moved across her face, he could have cut out his own tongue. What was it with him and this princess fixation?

  But she quickly erased the look of pain, making it easy for Ahmed to imagine he hadn’t seen it. “I definitely didn’t have that kind of life,” she said. “My parents died in a car accident when I was a kid. I was raised in foster care.” She shrugged as if she hadn’t just pulled his entire rug of assumptions from under him. “I was too old to adopt, so I aged out at eighteen and started my own life. Me and Shaye. We were lucky to end up with the same foster family in the beginning.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ahmed said, and he was. Now if only he could stop himself from saying these stupid and hurtful things to her.

  “What for? You didn’t kill my parents.” She looked unbothered, but Ahmed had a feeling it was an expression she practiced often, one put on her pretty face to mask whatever discomfort she felt. Or maybe this was another of his assumptions.

  “I didn’t kill them, true, but I keep saying inappropriate things.”

  “Why stop now?” Her lips pursed and her eyebrow curved up.

  They both started laughing at the same time.

  “Damn,” Ahmed cursed through his laughter, although he had no idea what was so funny. They were talking about her dead parents for God’s sake. “I really am sorry. I’m sorry about your family, and I’m sorry I said the crap I just did. I’m not normally like this.”

  “So I’m the lucky girl to be the only one to bring this out in you? Charming. It’s better than birth control, I guess.” She grimaced and turned away, the corners of her mouth still twitching. “Forget I just said that.”

  “Not gonna happen.” If anything, with the mention of birth control his mind was firmly back where it had been minutes before, reveling in the brief fantasy of her panting beneath him, open and wet and begging him not to stop.

  “You’re such a little prick.”

  “Not so little, thank you very much.” He forced out the comment to get past the dead-parents awkwardness. But even with his attempt at lightening the heaviness he’d dropped between them, something still bothered him.

  “So this romance business…”

  “What about it? It’s doing great. Shaye and I couldn’t be happier about how Romance Perfected is doing.”

  “No, no. I don’t mean the actual business. I mean your—” he didn’t know how to say it without insulting her, so he just went for what he knew “—your insane belief in this stuff you sell. Happily-ever-after, love, all of it. With your parents dead and you being left to fend for yourself in an environment that must have been hellish…” He winced at the rough tone of what he’d said and hoped, unlike before, that she wouldn’t be offended. “Shouldn’t you believe there’s nothing good out in the world? Certainly not happily-ever-afters.”

  Elle rested her chin on her upraised knees, a thoughtful expression replacing the laughter of before. “Just because I lost my family doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the idea of family. Forming romantic connections is about creating your own bonds even in the face of loss. And if I manage to create my family and it becomes lost to me through death or some other terrible thing, it doesn’t make the notion less precious, less happy or beautiful. Bad things happen all the time. The important thing is to be grateful in spite of th
ings that tell us happiness is futile.”

  It sounded like something Ahmed’s mother would say, with one important distinction.

  “So you’re basically a pessimist. Eat, drink, have sex, for tomorrow we will die?” He deliberately butchered the quote to see the faint smile curve her mouth.

  “That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.” But the light of amusement in her eyes glowed even more. She tipped her head back, and it was the perfect angle for the sun to land on her slender throat and follow the rise of her breasts and the irresistible dip of her waist.

  So damn fine.

  “What did you just say?”

  Had he really spoken the thought out loud?

  He touched the face of his watch without looking at it. “I was thinking it’s fine if you think the world might end tomorrow. Who knows? You could be right.”

  “Um…okay.” But the curve of her mouth deepened. She’d heard exactly what he’d said the first time.

  And suddenly Ahmed couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to taste that smile of hers.

  He moved before he could second-guess himself, slipping across the few feet of space that separated them to sink down next to her, and she looked at him not in question but expectation, like he wasn’t the only one feeling the incredible pull between them. Or maybe he was just looking for an excuse to do what he wanted.

  Elle blew out a quick and quiet breath. And Ahmed drew it into his own mouth.

  She tasted like sweet cream. Cool and delicious. Addictive. Her tongue licked his, a slow caress that confessed to a wanting he had only hoped for. Elle moaned into their kiss. And his initial impulse to draw out the seduction crumbled entirely to dust.

  He pulled her into his chest and she made another soft noise that undid him. Lust flashed through his body like a fever, heating his skin, his blood. Ahmed dragged Elle closer, and she damn near climbed into his lap, licking into his mouth and digging her kitten claws into his chest. God, she was soft…and he was so hard. The hay shifted under them, the scent of it wafting up along with her moans to drive him steadily out of his mind.