Nikki stood at the window and stared out at a sweeping view of Philadelphia’s skyline.  It was in the wee hours of the morning.  Even the busy city of brotherly love looked asleep.  It was no New York.  It was not like the city that never slept.  But it was a lot like L.A., she thought.

Gloria walked up to the window with two coffee mugs.  She handed one to Nikki.

“Thanks,” Nikki said.

“Enjoying the view?” asked Gloria.  They were in her condo, standing at her large picture window.

“Not much to enjoy this time of morning,” Nikki admitted.  Then she looked at Gloria.  “I’m sorry I came here disturbing you with my problems.  You’ve got to go to work soon.”

“Child, please.  I work for my father, and he’s in Europe.”  She smiled.  “I’m good.”

Nikki tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite get there.

Gloria saw her anguish and placed an arm around her waist.  “It’s going to be alright, Nikki.”

“I know.  It’s just that I feel so . . . I feel like such a failure!”

“A failure?  You?”

“Yes, me!  I realized this morning, when I left your brother’s house, that it was always like this.  Nothing works out for me.  No matter how hard I try to make it work, it never works out.  My marriage didn’t.  My relationship with my parents didn’t.  My career.  Nothing!  And I stopped pointing a finger at other people a long time ago.  This shit’s on me.  I’m the problem.  I either pick the wrong men, the wrong career, the wrong whatever.  I’m the problem.  I just don’t know how to correct the problem.”

Gloria stared at Nikki.  She knew there was a subtext.  “Why did you come here, Nikki?” she asked her.  “If somebody treat you beneath the way you feel you should be treated, I would have expected you to catch the first thing smoking and get up out of here.  I would have expected you to go back to L.A.  Why didn’t you?”

“I planned on doing just that.  I called a taxi and was on my way to the airport.”

Gloria stared at her.  “What stopped you?”

Nikki didn’t expect to go to confessional, but she needed to.  “I thought about Teddy,” she said, “and how much he needs me.  And how much I need him.  And I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t leave him.  Does that sound crazy?  Here I am clinging to a man who all but told me to pack my bags and leave him the hell alone.  It’s crazy!”

But Gloria was shaking her head.  “No, it’s not,” she said.  “It’s not crazy at all.  It’s love.”

Nikki was ready to deny it, but Gloria didn’t give her a chance.  “Take it from me.  I’ve been in love too many times to not know what it looks like.  And don’t hand me that we don’t know each other like that bullcrap.  I’ve known some guys a day, and knew I loved them.  We live in the age of Twitter, Nick!  People don’t have time to take their time anymore.  What you and Teddy have for each other is love.  Plain and simple.”

“Yeah, he loves me alright.  He told me to take a hike.  But he loves me.  Yeah.  Got cha.”

“You don’t understand Teddy yet,” Gloria said.

Nikki looked at her.

“Teddy not only looks a lot like our father, but he is a lot like our father.  He’s going to mess up every relationship he’s in.  It’s a fact.  It’s in his DNA.  You’ve got to be willing to give him chance after chance after chance.  If you aren’t willing to do that, don’t be with him.  Because Teddy is going to mess up.”

Then they both could hear the sound of somebody tampering with the front door lock.

“Is that somebody trying to break in?” Nikki asked.

“It’s just Teddy,” Gloria said.  “He has a key.”

Nikki’s heart dropped.  “Teddy?”

Gloria had to fess up.  “I have a confession,” she said.

“You called him?”

Gloria nodded.  “Yes.”

“But why, Glo?”

“Because he’s my brother.  Because he’s my best friend.  Because he needs you, Nikki.”

And then the door opened, and Teddy walked in.

Nikki’s heart began to pound when she saw him.  When she last saw him, he was angry as hell.  Now he looked so distressed!  His clothes looked well-worn, although she knew he’d just put them on a couple hours ago.  His hair was spiky and looked as if he hadn’t combed it for days, although she knew that wasn’t true either.  He looked tired, she decided.  Her man was just tired.  And her reaction, when he came home so late, didn’t help.

But she still stood by every single word she had said to him.

Teddy, too, was in a state when he looked across Gloria’s condo and saw Nikki standing at that window.  He should have relaxed when he saw her.  At least she was still there, and still in one piece.  But he couldn’t relax.  His ass almost blew the best opportunity for love and happiness he’d ever had.  That was why he went to L.A. to help her.  That was why he brought her back with him to Philly.  And he almost blew it.  He had to make this right.

Nikki looked sad to Teddy as he made his way toward her.  That spark in her big, amber eyes were gone.  She looked as if the hopes she had for their relationship went up in smoke when he angrily walked out that door.  She looked as if she’d been hurt too many times before, and she wasn’t going out like that again.  She looked to Teddy, as he made his way beside her, like a woman who no longer wanted to have anything more to do with him.

Gloria wanted to be angry as hell with Teddy for causing Nikki such distress, but when she saw the state he was in, she couldn’t be.  Although he was the second toughest man she knew, second only to their father, he was, really, a little lost puppy to her who needed the love of a good woman as badly as he needed air to breathe.  Her edge was gone.

“I’ll be in my bedroom if you guys need me,” she said, squeezed Teddy’s big bicep, and left them alone.

Teddy leaned against the right side of the window frame next to Nikki, who was leaning against the left side of the frame.  First, he looked out of the window, saying nothing, and then he looked at Nikki.

And he decided to just come out and say it.  “I’m sorry, Nikki,” he said, “for how I behaved.  I’m not asking for forgiveness, because I don’t deserve that.  I just want you to know that I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You’re under a lot of pressure, Teddy.”

But Teddy was shaking his head. “That’s no excuse,” he said.

“Oh, I know it’s not,” said Nikki.  “And I meant every word I said to you.  But the truth is the truth.  You’re under a lot of pressure.  And I know I can help you.  I know I can.  But if you close up, and won’t let me in, how can I?  How can we even be a couple if you shut me out?”

“We can’t,” Teddy agreed.

Nikki’s heart dropped.  Was he about to tell her it was over?  Their little experiment with a committed relationship had failed?

“That’s why I promise you, Nikki, if you don’t leave me, I’ll never shut you out again.”

Nikki’s heart soared.  “You won’t?”

“I promise I won’t.  And I am a man who keeps his word.”

Nikki stared at him.

“I wasn’t out fucking,” he said.  Then he frowned.  “Why would I?  Why would I want to be with some hoe I don’t give shit about, when I can be with you?  When I can be with the woman I think I’m falling in love with.”

Teddy said those monumental words and then looked at Nikki.  Did she realize what it took for him to go there?  Did she understand what those words meant?

She understood.  She understood so deeply that tears appeared in her gorgeous eyes.  And Teddy, relieved, pulled he into his arms.  “You scared the shit out of me, Nikki, when I went home and you weren’t there.  I realized how much you meant to me.”

Nikki tried to smile through her tears.  “Flying all the way across the country didn’t already tell you that?” she asked him.

“It told me I had something special I needed to check out.  I needed to see where this might lead.  But when I got home, and you had packed your suit case and was gone, that told me something different.  That told me I was an asshole of the first order.”

Nikki grinned.

Then Teddy pulled back and looked at her.  His look was as serious as serious could get, as he wiped her tears away.  “It told me I’d better track you down, get on my knees, and beg you to give me a second chance.”

“According to your sister,” said Nikki, “I may have to give you a whole lot of second chances.”

Teddy nodded, still looking so serious, Nikki thought.  “She’s right,” he said.  “I fuck up a lot.”

Nikki smiled.  “So do I,” she said.

“But I promise to do all I can to not blow it ever again.”

Nikki stared at him.  “You’re forgiven,” she decided to say.

“But I haven’t gotten on my knees yet.”

“No need,” Nikki said.  “I don’t play games or need you to suffer longer to prove some point.  None of that’s me.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Teddy said heartfelt.

Nikki smiled.  Then she asked: “If I mess up, will you give me another chance, Teddy?”

Teddy laughed.  “Will I?”

He grabbed her hand and began hurrying for the exit.  “Let me get you home,” he said as he hurriedly moved her along.  “I’ll show you how many chances I’ll give you.  I just hope your ass can handle it.  And by ass, I mean ass!”

Nikki laughed.  “Bye, Glo!” she yelled, as Teddy all but dragged her out of that condo.

 

They were fucking before they could make it upstairs.  As soon as they entered Teddy’s house, he had her back against the door and was kissing her passionately.  And as he kissed her, he pulled down her jeans and panties, and she removed her shoes and stepped out of them.  Then he jerked down his own pants and underwear and removed his shoes, too, as he stepped out of his clothes.  Then he lifted Nikki into his arms, Nikki wrapped her legs around his hips, and he began carrying her upstairs.

His dick was hard as a rock by the time they made it inside the house. By the time they made it to the second step of the winding staircase, his dick was pointed straight toward Nikki’s vagina, and was poised for entry.  Nikki was wet just from their passionate kissing alone, and she was ready for the onslaught of that big dick and that furious way Teddy fucked her.  All Teddy had to do was move her ass slightly further down his naked lower half, and put it in.

He tried to wait.  He tried to get her to that bed, for her comfort sake.  But he couldn’t wait.  By the time they made it to the fourth step, he put it in her.  And as soon as he put it in her, Nikki let out such an endearing cry of ecstasy that the little control Teddy still had completely broke. And right then and there he put it on her.

He laid Nikki on those stairs and fucked her so hard, and had her legs open so wide that one of her feet was against one rail, and the other feet was against the other rail.  She’d never been this wide open before.  But it eased the pain of his bigness, and it made the pleasure that she already thought was too high to be sustained, even higher.

Teddy was breathing so heavily, and fucking her so hard, that he thought his heart was going to beat out of his chest.  He’d never wanted a woman’s pussy as badly as he wanted Nikki’s.  He’d never wanted a woman’s everything, as badly as he wanted Nikki!

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he was saying as he kept putting it on her.  “You don’t know what you do to me!”

And it was too much for Teddy.  He came.  Even before Nikki came, that sweetness between her legs caused him to go all the way over.  He strained every vein in his body as he pushed that load out and into Nikki.  And then she came.

But if she thought the onslaught was over, she was badly mistaken.  Teddy wasn’t done yet.  Not by a long shot.  It took him a few minutes of remaining where they were just to regain his strength, but as soon as he did he was lifting Nikki into his arms again.  With his dick still wedged inside of her, he carried her to his bedroom.

And then, true to his word, he turned her onto his stomach, and put what she could only describe was a hurting on her ass, too.

Nikki had thought the first time Teddy made love to her was the best fuck she’d ever had.  She was mistaken.  He was topping it that morning.