Page 5 of No Gemini Does it Better (BLP Signs of Love #2)

Every single hair raised on the nape of my neck as I dropped the grocery bags to the floor. I could tell by the brooding look on his face that he was a dangerous man to cross. But that didn’t explain how the fuck he’d gotten into my apartment or who he was.

“Welcome home, gorgeous,” he grumbled, voice deep and gritty like sandpaper.

Our silent standoff dragged on for thirty seconds or more before he stood to his feet and inched forward with one of my throw pillows covering his package.

He looked to be at least six feet three and easily weighed a good 250 pounds, all muscle.

The nigga looked like he ate dumbbells for breakfast, and if I weren’t careful, I’d be next.

There was a sea of black tattoo ink all over his skin.

The only place I saw without tattoos was his face and whatever he was hiding behind that pillow.

His cocoa brown eyes were low, and his wide nose came to a nice curve that led straight to his dark pink lips.

He had a low wave fade and a full goatee that wrapped from ear to ear.

The wood floor squeaked underneath me as I instinctively took a step back, pressing my back against the door before locking my knees in place.

Anyone else who came home to a nigga they’d never seen before, sitting bare-assed on their fucking couch, would’ve lost their mothafuckin mind. I, on the other hand, couldn’t fucking move. I forgot how to walk, talk, and, most importantly, scream for help. Every nerve in my body iced over.

All I could do was stare at him as panic surged through my body. Finally, my legs started to thaw, and my voice returned. I parted my lips to let out a scream, but instead, I heard the familiar howl of my traumatized pet.

“H-how did you get in here? W-where the fuck is my dog? What the fuck did you do to him?” I hissed as quietly as a shadow on the ground.

“Chill, aight? He’s fine.”

I didn’t appreciate him telling me to chill, even if my shoulders were wound as tight as a yo-yo. He acted as if I didn’t have a right to be up in arms about finding a naked stranger in my apartment.

“Don’t tell me to chill. I don’t know you. Are you on bath salts, nigga? Why the fuck are you naked in my apartment? What the fuck is going on? Tell me, or tell the fucking police when they get here.” I warned, feeling myself seconds away from breaking out into hysterics.

I had no weapon or anything to defend myself with, except maybe the bag of dog treats, candles, and batteries I’d dropped to the floor, and I was completely drenched from the trip to the store and bringing all my things in from the car. All I had was my sass, and that wasn’t saying much.

The stranger inched another step closer, and I flinched but kept my back glued to the door, in case I had to make a mad dash back into the hurricane brewing outside my walls.

I nervously gripped my phone so tight that my knuckles began to turn white.

He lunged forward and quickly smacked it out of my hand.

We both watched it slide across the hardwood floor.

Anger was laced in his baritone voice. “You think I’m fuckin’ stupid? Don’t try to be the fuckin’ hero,” he warned, clearly aware of the panic feature on the iPhone. “It ain’t worth it.”

“It’s dead!” I yelled. “The battery died like fifteen minutes ago. P-please don’t hurt me. I want to check on my dog. He doesn’t like storms.”

“Listen, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said calmly, his palms raised toward me.

“Then why are you here?” I quizzed for what felt like the umpteenth time.

“I was in an accident.”

“A what?”

“An accident. I don’t have a car, a cell, or anything. I just needed to find a place to lay low in until the storm blows over, and I can call my family.”

“And you chose this apartment?”

“It was the first thing I saw. I’d been walking for miles, trying to find shelter.”

I glanced over at my patio door and immediately noticed the shattered glass around it. He’d broken into my apartment like some hulked-out Goldilocks. The next thing I noticed was the mound of my wrinkled clothes piled up on the armchair in the living room.

“What the fuck did you do with my clothes? Why are they not in the dryer where I left them?”

“My clothes were soaked, so I’m drying them. You got anything dry for a nigga to put on while I wait? Shit is a lil awkward being naked now that you’re here.”

“Nigga, this ain’t the fuckin’ laundry service, and I’m not your maid. Now who the fuck are you.” I spazzed, feeling my heart buck against its reigns.

As pissed and dumbfounded as I was, I found it funny how I was considering a one-night stand in Miami with a handsome stranger, only to come home to a naked one with my throw pillow hiding his dick. If that wasn’t the Lord’s way of showing off his sense of humor, I didn’t know what was.

“My name is Kareem,” he answered finally, “and the mutt’s in the bathroom.”

My brows instantly downturned. “He’s not a mutt. His name is Butta.”

“Butta?”

“Yeah, like peanut butter . . . because of his brown fur. Did you not even look at him before you trapped him in the bathroom, you fucking demon?”

“No. I was just trying to get him the fuck away from me.”

“There is such thing as animal cruelty. You know that, right?”

“Would you rather I’d killed it?”

I gasped. “Get the fuck out!” I hollered before rushing over to the bathroom to save and comfort my fur baby. “It’s okay. Mommy’s here now.” I whispered to him while rubbing behind his ears.

Butta was a jittery mess in my arms. I was barely able to hold onto him before he jumped out of my grip and raced down the hall to get his get back on Kareem for trapping him in the bathroom.

“You should be fucking ashamed of yourself,” I scolded the stranger.

“Watch out,” he grumbled before pushing me out of his way so that he could get to the bathroom. “A nigga gotta piss.”

The slam of the door in my face followed his announcement. It was as if he paid the rent every month around here, and Butta and I were visiting.

He was vulgar.

He was absurd.

And he had the smoothest dark chocolate ass I’d ever seen.

Regardless of that fact, he had to fucking go. But with the roaring wind and flooding from the hurricane, I already knew his ass wasn’t going anywhere.

“What’s your name?” he probed when he reentered the living room wearing a stained white T-shirt and some boxers.

By that time, I had already put Butta in his crate so that I could sweep up the broken glass and put a couple of towels down to soak up the water and keep any more from coming in.

“The help, obviously.”

He smacked his lips. “Real cute. Fine, don’t tell me. I really don’t give a fuck.”

I scoffed. “It’s the audacity for me. You walk around here swinging your dick around like you pay bills in here! This is my shit, okay? Mine! It might not be much, but it’s mine. And I don’t appreciate you fumbling your way up in here, fucking up my life, when I didn’t ask for none of this shit.”

“I told you, all I need is a place to lay low until the storm blows over. After that, I’m out of your hair.”

I rolled my eyes before giving him a onceover. “Those all the clothes you got?”

“It’s all that was dry.”

I huffed. “Fine. Wait here. Let me see what I can find.”

He ignored me and started to follow me down the hallway to my room. “You gon’ let me hold somethin’ of your nigga’s?”

I cut my eyes at him. “I ain’t got a nigga, but something tells me you already knew that.”

“I did. I ain’t see no photos of no one around here that would even look like he could be at your side: no cologne, no pair of old ass Jordans by the door, or nothin’. Nah, I knew you were single from the moment I stepped in this mothafucka. It’s part of the reason I stayed.”

“Mmm,” I grumbled. “I have a couple of oversized sweatsuits I got from the thrift store that I like to paint in. The largest I have is an XL. If you can’t fit that, then I don’t know what to tell your big ass.”

“The hell your lil ass doing with an extra-large anything?”

“Sometimes I like to layer up. Do you want the clothes, or do you want to continue to judge me?”

He chuckled. “An XL is cool. Thank you.”

My brows rose toward my baby hairs. “Wow, so you do have some manners?”

“Shut up before you piss me off.”

“Tsk. Join the crowd.”

“Look, this ain’t gotta be all bad, aight?”

“Says the homeless nigga who finessed his way into my apartment.”

“I’m not homeless.”

“Then what are you?”

“I already told you my fuckin’ situation.”

“Yeah, an accident. I remember,” I replied while looking through my dresser drawers.

I pulled out a pair of gray sweatpants with teal blue paint stains on them and some unopened crew socks from a past Christmas stocking stuffer. “Here. Try these.”

“Thanks again,” he said before dipping back off into the bathroom.

I closed my bedroom door and quickly locked it behind me before peeling out of my wet clothes and changing into something more comfortable to move around in.

When he came out, he found me in the kitchen putting a few doggie treats in Butta’s bowl and refilling his water.

The poor thing was shaking like a leaf on a tree at the sight of outside.

I didn’t blame him. With the way the wind was howling and bending the palm trees to its will, I didn’t want to risk us getting swept away like Dorothy and Toto in The Wizard of Oz .

He’d have to relieve himself in his crate, and I’d clean it up after.

But Butta didn’t seem to be the only male I found myself cleaning up behind.

The minute I stepped into my bathroom, I was met with a crumpled wet towel on the floor—a mega pet peeve of mine, especially when I had hooks behind the door and a damn towel rack.

Not only had the nigga taken it upon himself to take my clothes out of the dryer to dry his own, but he’d also helped himself to my body wash and shower.

“I take back what I said about you having manners. Who do you think you are, leaving your funky ass wet ass towel just lying around and shit? I thought I made it clear I wasn’t your maid. We pick up after ourselves around here.”

“My bad,” he acknowledged, stepping into the bathroom to grab the towel. He hung it up on the rack next to the shower, shutting me up for the meantime. “Happy now?”

I replied with a nod of the head. “Can you get out? I’m going to take a shower,” I announced.

“Where’s your phone?”

“On the counter.”

“Good. Leave it there,” he instructed.

“I already told you it’s dead.”

With all the chaos that had popped off since I walked through the door, unlocking my suitcase to find my charger was the last thing on my mind.

He sucked his perfectly aligned white teeth. “Just do what the fuck I said.”

I swear I wanted to pop off so bad, but due to his size and angry demeanor, I listened.

I picked up Butta’s crate and brought it into the bathroom before closing and locking the door behind me.

After turning on the shower and letting it run for a few seconds, I started pacing the small space between the sink and the shower while the water heated up.

I glanced into Butta’s crate that I’d set on top of the toilet.

He was looking back at me crazy like I was in the process of growing a second head.

Truth be told, I didn’t know what the fuck to do.

I didn’t know if I believed that Kareem was in a car accident or not, but something had brought him to my apartment.

If he was telling the truth, how could I call myself a good person and willingly throw a stranger out onto the street in the middle of a hurricane?

Aside from that, I couldn’t ignore how fine he was.

When I finally started to stop racking my brain for a sensible solution, I peeled off my clothes and stepped into the shower.

The water was heated to the perfect temperature—not too hot and not too cold.

Just when I started to relax under the rhythm of the soapy water droplets, everything suddenly went black. The power had gone out.

Fuck.