“That asshole disturbing your morning?” Mick asked.  Then he had to smile.  “More than I already had, that is,” he added.

Roz smiled, too. “A bit more, yes,” she said.  Then both of their smiles dissipated.  “What are you doing here?”

Mick rubbed his hand across the tops of the leather chairs as he made his way on the other side of the table, and next to Rosalind.  He sat his butt on the edge of the table, with one thigh resting on the table, and the other thigh hanging freely.  He was now facing her, and they were now eyeball to eyeball.  Her natural eyelashes were long above her bright, brown eyes, giving those eyes a look most attractive, as he stared into them.  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

His eyes looked tired and a little bloodshot, but even looking exhausted he was still the sexiest man alive to her.  “I’m okay,” she said.

“Still pissed?” he asked.

She didn’t have to think long.  “Yes,” she said.  “We’ve been through this a hundred times, Mick.  I know things come up and you have to handle your business.  I have no problem with that.  But you keep promising me and promising me that you’ll keep me in the loop and at least call and let me know what’s going on.  But you continue to not do it.  And now this woman too?”

“It’s not like that,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” she responded, “since you won’t tell me anything about her.”

And Mick still wasn’t going to.  It was a point of pride with him.  No woman, not even Rosalind, was going to be handling him.

He placed his hand on her arm and gently pulled her until her entire small body was between his thick thighs.  She glanced down as he moved her in front of him.  The bundle between his legs was expanding.  “What I can tell you,” he said, “is that you don’t have to worry about any other woman.  And that’s all,” he said as he purposely pulled her so close that her stomach was pressed against that section of his trousers that housed his expanding penis, “you need to know.”

That wasn’t all Roz felt she needed to know.  Not by a longshot.  But his eyes were so damn sexy.  And his body was so damn big and strong.  And his touch.  And the way his rod was hardening even through his pants.  It was enough for now.

Mick moved in, staring in her eyes and then down at her lips, and he kissed her.  But as she wrapped her arms around him and returned his kiss, he could smell the last remaining remnants of Dontae’s cologne on his wife’s clothing.  And Mick hated that.  She belonged to him and for some reason he had a constant need to make sure she understood that.  He didn’t want another man to so much as touch a hair on her head, he didn’t care how innocent the gesture.   The only way he knew how to make himself clear was to reassert himself on her.  To reclaim her.  To rebrand her as his.

He lifted her up onto his lap and continued to kiss her.  Then he turned her around, and sat her on the tabletop.  As he continued to kiss her, he slid down her pants and panties until one leg of both were dangling off.  “You know what I want, don’t you?” he asked after their lips stopped kissing and he was now rubbing his lips against her cheeks, and back over her lips.  “You know what I want.”

Roz wasn’t a big talker during sexual encounters, and neither was Mick.  But sometimes, she knew, he wanted to make his intent clear.  “I know,” she said.

“Next time I catch you hugging any man that isn’t me,” Mick said, “I’m going to kick your ass.”

Roz knew he didn’t mean that, but it turned her on, and she held him tighter.  “I know,” she said in a husky voice.

Mick lifted her blouse and bra, and began sucking her breasts.  Roz began to pant.  She had a backlog of work waiting for her upstairs, and one of her more successful clients just got his misogynistic ass handed to him.  But all that mattered to her right then and right there was being with Mick.  He had a way of eclipsing everything else in her life.

And when he placed her on the table, the anticipation eclipsed any other thoughts completely.  And when he went down, between her legs, he outdid himself in ways even she didn’t think possible.  He wasn’t licking her gently around the edges, and flicking her clit.  He was eating the shit out of her.  She found herself moving her body, gyrating to his appetite, as he ate her.

And then he stood up.  He stared at her as he unbuckled and then unzipped his pants.  When he pulled them down and his penis jutted out, fully aroused, her eyes hooded-over.

And when he slid into that black gold, her breath caught.  She laid back on the table, giving Mick full access now.  And he took full advantage.  He moved into her, deeper and deeper, and stroked her like a man on a mission.  And his mission wasn’t just to cum, although that would be the final outcome.  His mission was to remind Rosalind whose she was.  And as he stroked her and stroked her, as he stared at her and she stared at him, both with passionate eyes, it was crystal clear.  They belonged to each other with no daylight between them.  Nobody else was going to be able to squeeze in.

And they came together.  Mick and Roz.  They came hard.  Until Mick poured into her so completely that his body collapsed on top of her, totally and unabashedly drained.

 

Later, after he took her to the conference room bathroom and began cleaning her up, he finally let her in.

He had sat her on the bathroom vanity, and was wiping between her legs with a wet cloth, when he spoke up.  “I used to have a partner,” he said.

Although Roz was surprised to hear it, since she always thought Mick worked alone, she knew not to interrupt him.  It was amazing, given his stubbornness earlier, that he was giving her any details at all.

“His name,” Mick continued as he wiped her, “was Santo Vichy.  He wasn’t a partner in the traditional sense.  I ran my own show.  But he was my number one.  We were closer than brothers.  But we were also thugs in the worse sense.  But Santo changed.  He started getting crazy and careless with it.  When it got too bad, and he was running around offing people if they looked at him wrong or some other stupid shit like that, I knew I had to put an end to our partnership.  I don’t mind tough.  On the streets, you had to be tough.  But Santo was behaving as if he had a bloodlust.  As if his ass made a deal with the devil.  I wasn’t with that shit.  No way no how.  I told him to get his ass away from me.  I didn’t want any parts of him anymore.  And if you’re crazier than a fucker like me?  You’re crazy.  So he bounced.  He left.  I didn’t see him for a while.  I heard he was selling drugs on the street corners, doing shit like that.  I threw jobs his way.  A lot of jobs.  But I kept my distance.  Then I heard he did a stint in prison in some murder-for-hire bullshit.  But I didn’t hear anything else.  Until a week ago.”

Roz stared at him.  Did this have to do with that woman and his staying out all night?

“I get this call from his woman.  From Natalie,” he said and looked at Rosalind.   She nodded.  It was about last night.

“She calls me,” Mick said.  Roz’s vagina was now completely clear of his semen.  He was wiping her needlessly now.  But it felt good, so she didn’t object.

Mick continued: “She said Santo was in trouble.  She said they were trying to kill him.  But before she could tell me anymore, the call went dead.  I didn’t want to be bothered with her, or him either, but I couldn’t just let that call stand.  Santo was my boy back in the day.  So I get my men on it.  Find out what they can.  But that was the problem.  They couldn’t find Santo or Natalie.  Until last night.”

“They found her?” Roz asked.

Mick nodded.  “They found her.  So I met up with her and we talked.  She told me not only was Santo dead, but that his own people, his own men, had killed him.  She said I had to avenge his death.”

“Like hell,” Roz said.

“That’s was my initial reaction too.  Until those same fuckers started shooting at me.  And before I killed their asses, I got a look at them.”

“They were Santo’s people?”

Mick nodded.  “Yup.  They were his.  And if their asses were bad enough to shoot anywhere near me, they were bad enough to kill their own leader.”

Roz stared at him, fearing what he was going to tell her.  “So what does this all mean?” she asked him.

Mick finally stopped wiping her and began wiping himself.  “It means I’ve got to avenge his death.  I spent most of the night figuring out the landscape, and the players.  They aren’t just a ragtag bunch of drug dealers like I thought.  I put Natalie in a safe house and her ass finally came clean.”

“What is it?” Roz asked.

Mick began folding the cloth.  “The kill order didn’t just come from the rank-and-file of Santo’s organization.  He wasn’t out there on his own.  He had a godfather.”

Roz’s heart began to pound.  “Who?” she asked.

“Teddy Stefani,” Mick said.

Roz knew that name very well.  “Teddy Stefani?  The man our Teddy was named after?  But he’s dead, Mick.”

“I know,” Mick said.  “But that’s the name Santo had given to Natalie.  And they didn’t just want to take out Santo, according to her.  I was the one they wanted.”  Mick looked at Roz.  “So yeah, I’ve got to go to war.  And apparently, if Natalie is to be believed, I’m going to war with a fucking ghost.”

Roz stared at Mick.  She knew he hated days like these.  She pulled him into her arms.

After several minutes of just holding each other, Mick and Roz released each other.  “Just keep me in the loop, Mick,” Roz said.  “That’s all I’m asking.  Call me when you won’t be home.  Don’t leave me worrying about your big ass all night long.”

Mick looked at her.

“Okay?” Roz asked.

Mick kissed her.  “Okay,” he said.

“So what’s next?”

“Since getting any sleep appears to be out of the question,” Mick said with a slight smile, “I’ve got to be somewhere.”

Roz got down from the vanity.  “Be where?” she asked.

Mick just stood there, unwilling to say any more.

Roz couldn’t believe it.  “Mick!” she decried.  “You’re doing it again?”

But Mick, being Mick, still just stood there.