Page 24 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)

She laughed a little more before admitting, “I just felt so guilty. Feel…I still feel that way. Like I’m cheating.”

She watched Drew dropped his eyes to the table, obviously cherry picking his words.

“You’re a good person, Tahli.” That comforted her. “You feel guilty about having drinks with an old friend after the level of betrayal that Dalvin put you through.”

It hit like a throat punch. Tahli felt like it was plastered on a billboard: Big Dummy Tahli Wore a Clown Suit for the Past 12 Years!

“I always thought he’d protect me,” she uttered, pain stuck in her throat. “I never thought I had to worry about my heart with him.”

Drew moistened his lips, nodding down at the half-eaten bar pie.

“I can’t imagine how you feel. And…I’m not sure what to say. All I can say is…I’m sorry it happened to you. And I know it doesn’t feel like it…but it will get better. I never thought I would get through what I did. But time heals. Cliché, but I stand by it.”

She nodded, ready to shed the heaviness. Ready to shed it all. “I need another drink.”

“Got you,” Drew answered right away, calling the waitress with a finger.

Another twenty or so minutes later, Tahli sucked in three healthy gulps of her Mai Tai until she was slurping against ice, and her body tingled everywhere. People would judge her for her thoughts. Judge her more if those thoughts became actions.

She didn’t think of her dead friends the way most people thought of their deceased loved ones.

She didn’t spot rainbows or sunrays in clouds or picture Jay or Lexie shining down on her.

No, she listened to Drew now going on about his 9-year-old godson following in his footsteps of becoming some profound baseball player. However profound one can be at nine.

After Dali’s violin recital in the fifth grade, Vin had sent her video to Julliard. Parents—and apparently godparents, in childless Drew’s case—were biased. So as Drew grinned white teeth and gushed over his prodigy baseball godson to lighten the mood, Tahli thought of Jay.

One time, he’d disclosed so brash and Jay-like, “I was fucking this bitch, and I couldn’t nut. She was bad as fuck, but I couldn’t. I had to think of her sister just to get off.”

In disgust, Abby and Tahli had questioned in unison. “Why are you fucking somebody that can’t make you cum?” “Why are you fucking somebody when you want to fuck their sister?”

To which Jay shrugged. “Why not?”

Tahli nodded to her empty glass. Why not?

Because she was trying to shake fantasies of Dalvin Hayes storming into the restaurant, grabbing a handful of her locs and lifting her from this table before tossing her onto it.

Visions of the man she’d familiarized with all of these years, fucking her right on these jalapeno poppers, as the liquor extinguished her inhibitions, ticking up her sexy scale.

“I’m serious. The boy can hit,” Drew grinned, and Tahli chuckled, wanting badly to hold onto a big body, feel the weight of a man, and have his gruff voice echo in her ear.

She wanted the guarantee of endless, raging orgasms. The freedom of Dalvin adoring every stretch mark and cellulite patch that she didn’t have to worry about his approval of.

Dalvin Hayes. The supplier of her greatest love and greatest heartache. He made her float from earth to heaven. He knocked her back down to the pits of hell beneath it, too. There was no love like Dalvin Hayes. There was no torture like Dalvin Hayes.

“How long have you been wanting to fuck me?” The words tumbled out of Tahli’s mouth onto the table. She gave Drew points for not fumbling, though he did cut his words short. His tongue crept out, gliding across his bottom lip.

“How many of those you up to, now?” He nodded toward her glass.

“Not enough,” Tahli smirked. “But don’t worry. I’m making sound decisions.” She slurped melted ice and traces of liquor.

“What kind of sound decisions?”

“The kind that gets some shit off of my mind by doing what everyone else seems to. Which is exactly what the fuck they want to.”

“That’s the thing,” Drew leaned in. “I don’t think you really want to do that, Tahli. Not right now.”

Tahli moved her glass to the edge of the table.

“Have you been with other women since your wife died?”

“I always appreciated how unpredictable you were,” Drew gave a half smile, swallowing down the last of his vodka tonic. “It’s been five years. Of course.”

“What’s it like?”

He chewed his lip, seeming to ponder. “It’s like…a quick shot of dopamine. Like a drug or those Mai Tais you’re having. A fleeting feel-good. A distraction.”

Drew was trying to deter her. He didn’t realize how dark the hole was that Tahli was buried in.

“Well, then you’re wrong. Because I want that,” she murmured, and Drew met her unflinching stare.

“Tahli, I have thought that you were the girl of my dreams since I met you almost 16 years ago. I kept my eye on you throughout the years, winning your awards, and shit. Looking good as fuck while doing it; even in a hardhat renovating properties.”

Yes. She and Vin had built a mini empire of passive Black wealth.

“So while I would love to take you back to my hotel and show you everything I’ve fantasized about, more than I probably should’ve.

I don’t want to do anything that ruins my chance of being your friend first, then being there for you through this, courting you when you’re ready, and then sweeping you off of your feet and us living happily ever after. ”

Tahli didn’t even know if she wanted that again. But it made her eyes mist. She was tangled in a ball of uncertainty. She’d only undone one thread.

“I know it’s hard.” Drew reached over, taking her hand. “I know you’re hurting. But I always remember something my grandmother told me: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’. Sometimes you have to let the pain run its course.”

“People say that shit like I scraped my knee. It’s not a pain with breaks. I am in constant emotional torture, Drew.”

“I know,” he appeased.

“My family…my life…was snatched away in an instant. That’s the surface burn.

Then the charring underneath; the unbearable shit.

The flames that made me raw to the bone.

The real shit…is the lie. Finding out that unlike you, I don’t have sweet memories to live off.

Because all of those memories are tainted. ”

His eyes lowered in some sort of offense, or empathy…or pity. No, no. Tahli didn’t want that, either. She wanted an orgasm that would split her fucking skull in half.

“So, if everything you said is true. If I’m really your dream girl that you’re still trying to bag,” she chuckled, rubbing his fingers—his tattoo-less fingers…

“Then the last thing you want to do is not give me what I want.”

They held a stare.

“Another round?” The waitress interrupted, unknowingly walking into their considerations. Drew bounced his gaze from Tahli to her, then back, his eyes settling into a brewing heat.

“Nah. Just the check.”

A supple moan climbed from her belly to her throat as Drew tongued her neck. Soft. Wet. Tangled with the effects of the liquor and his cologne, her horniness swirled at her feet and shot flames up her body. Those kisses sprinkled on her chin before Drew devoured her lips.

“You smell so good. You feel amazing to me,” Drew groaned. “Fuck, Tahli, I want you so bad. You gonna let me fuck you?”

She shut her eyes, pebbled nipples brushing the cups of her dress, aching to be tasted. Hot breath on her mouth…and Vin’s dark eyes bearing into hers.

“Yeah,” Tahli breathed, smashed between the unopened hotel door and Drew’s toned body. Drew was built like a track star, lean and cut.

She reached behind her, fondling his hard dick through his slacks as his fingers dug into her panties, pressing against her sticky clit.

Vin’s kiss on her shoulder instead of Drew’s.

Vin fucking Sophie on a plush couch, sprinkling Sophie’s empty womb with magic glitter seeds of perfect, almond-eyed babies .

“Shit,” Tahli hummed, as Drew bypassed the barrier, dipping into her slickness—one and then two fingers—while struggling to open the door to his room, sucking on the back of her neck. His fingers pummeled in and out of her, as Tahli’s sopping sensitivity raced to an overdue orgasm.

“I’m a bust in my fucking pants.”

“Don’t…don’t do that. You gotta get inside of me first.”

He tapped the key card against the lock, only for it to turn red. Drew smacked it down again, grunting from her strokes. Slammed the key down, and still, no greenlight.

“Motherfuck…”

“What’s wrong?” Tahli whimpered.

“I don’t know,” he uttered, tongue-kissing her shoulder. “Somebody doesn’t want us to fuck. Shit’s not working.”

Through her Mai Tai clouded mind, Tahli went from stroking Drew through his pants to releasing him from them. Whoever didn’t want them to fuck would just have to deal with it. Like the shit she had to deal with.

That gave him silent permission to raise Tahli’s dress over her ass cheeks, pressed close enough against her to shield her from exposure.

“You sure you wanna do this? ‘Cause I don’t have the willpower to ask again.”

Tahli bit her lip. “Nigga, if you don’t take this pussy.” Vin made a baby with someone else. She could go find her a nut.

Drew slid inside of her, pushing Tahli’s chin in the air.

“Sssss…oh fuck,” she panted, as he grazed sensitive nerves of her walls, making her cream. “I…I have condoms.”

“You want me to stop to put it on?” He grunted.

“Not yet,” she cried, feeling the buildup of an already and long-awaited release. It had been four months.

“Shit, Tahli. You so fucking wet, baby. I’m a take care of you. I got you, baby. You gonna finally be mine?”

Every word came with frenzied power, until the grinding hum of a rising elevator sobered her a little.

“Wait, wait… some-somebody’s coming up?”

“It’s the penthouse,” Drew grunted in ecstasy. “Nobody is coming but us.”

Tahli bit her lip, giggling. Pressing her palms against the door, she arched her back to throw her ass into him.

Drew thrust into her from behind, and Tahli moaned with each stroke.

The smacks from her ass against his core were as erotic as his groans, and the squeeze in her belly told Tahli what was coming.

A ding from the elevator jolted her upright. Drew slid out of her, yanked her skirt down, and fixed himself as he helped her do the same.

“I’m…sorry, sir,” a bellhop approached them. “We…were alerted that your key wasn’t working. Here’s a new one.”

Tahli crossed her arms, fidgeting in her heels, licking at her surely smudged lipstick as Drew took the key card.

“Alerted?” Drew quizzed, staring calmly at it, but still breathing heavily.

“Yes. From the unsuccessful entry attempts,” the bellhop replied.

Drew nodded. Tahli glanced to be sure he was put away, only to spot the stains from her cum all over his pants.

“Also…the cameras,” the bellhop muttered like he was doing them a favor with the warning, then he hurried off.

Tahli slapped a hand over her opened mouth, as Drew’s unflinching gape burned into the keycard. When the elevator chimed, the bellhop disappeared into it, and Tahli’s giggles rained over her fingers. Drew only shook his head, his brown skin a hue of maroon.

“Tahli Hall…you…you’re gonna get me kicked out of here. We already putting on a show for whoever’s watching those cameras. You’re fucking trouble, girl.”

She giggled, feeling high. Already free. Bold and in control.

“Get this door open and let me show you how fun that can be for you.”

Drew’s trance spiraled in his eyes. This time, he got his suite door open with no hassle, igniting a marathon of three rounds of body-rocking sex.

They feasted on each other and rode one another into concurrent orgasms. It wasn’t better or worse…

merely different. Like the difference between weed and cocaine.

Still felt good. Still made problems dissipate. Perhaps, one was more addictive.

After their final release, Tahli curled up on Drew’s chest, finding astonishing solace. Emotions sprinkled over her – vindication, power, pleasure. Drew shifted with a light snore, and Tahli caught a whiff of his scent. Her dewy eyes fought off the tidal wave of sorrow.

Letting Drew fuck her in different positions and all over his hotel suite, orally pleasing him, and letting him drink from her well—Bitter Tahli was fine with.

She was sexually in charge of her body. And fuck anybody who judged her for it.

But lying on his chest and not smelling Vin’s underarms? She wasn’t quite ready for.

Vin always joked how sick it was – how much she loved the smell of his sweat, especially after sex or a workout.

Especially his underarms. Tahli always combatted that there was nothing nastier than his fascination with her worn panties.

The amount of panties she’d had to replace because he’d steal them, packing them with his luggage for business trips.

She used to jest if she didn’t know him better, she’d think he was a crossdresser.

Fucking another man was easier than she predicted. But inhaling another man’s underarms would take time. Grief was strange.