ARIELLE
My little mermaid.
Those three words hit me right in the heart as I stared up into his brown eyes framed by dark lashes.
There hadn’t been a day that I didn’t think about Mr. Kareem Spivy over the past two weeks. Hell, who was I kidding? There hadn’t been aminutewhen I didn’t think about him.
When I slipped out of his villa after a long night of the best dick I had ever had, I knew I needed to stay far away from his ass. He had all the makings to have me falling deep in love, and that scared the shit out of me.
Speaking of being scared of love, the most recent reason kept blowing my damn phone up. I felt it now, vibrating in the pocket of my baggy sweatpants. I fought the urge to roll my eyes as Kareem held my gaze.
“W-why are you here? What’s going on?” I glanced at the big man standing beside the sleek desk before I looked behind me at Sloane and my sister, Mariah. They shrugged with confused looks on their faces. I’d told them all about the man at the resort, but I never said his name. The memory of me whimpering it while he slowly stroked me into oblivion kept me from speaking his name out loud again until a few seconds ago.
That cocky grin stretched across his face, and my pussy clenched.
Stop it, girl. Settle down,I coached my coochie as my eyes refused to look away from his handsome face.
“I own this building. I’m here to give you your keys.” He grabbed the keys from the desk behind him and dangled them in front of me.
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it was futile. “I don’t understand . . . You live here? In Desmore?”
He nodded. “And so it seems you do as well.”
“I mean . . . yes, but what are the odds?” I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I had met Kareem out of the country, at a beautiful resort, and we just so happened to live in the same city. Not only that, but he also owned the new building I’d be living in. I couldn’t believe that was true. This had to be a setup.
“Um, hi. Sorry to interrupt, but how do you know my sister?” Mariah asked as she stepped forward and stood next to me.
Kareem grinned down at me like he knew all my secrets. “You want to tell them, or should I?”
Somehow, I knew that if I let him tell it, he would tell itall. Every delicious detail about our night together.
I cleared my throat, and while still looking up at him, I responded to my sister. “This is Kareem, the man I met at the resort.”
“I know you fuckin’ lyin’!” Mariah exclaimed.
“Oh, this is too damn good to be true,” Sloane said from somewhere behind me.
“Look at God,” the other man in the room said.
“Big Homie definitely lookin’ out,” Kareem agreed, his eyes still on me.
“This can’t be real,” I muttered.
While my mind grasped at reasons for this to simply be a dream, happiness skyrocketed through my body. I felt at war with myself. In my head, my reasons for sneaking out of his villa that night and avoiding him the rest of my stay were super valid. I didn’t want to fall in love again. My mind didn’t, at least. My heart sang with recognition of Kareem, and I had to fight overtime not to fall into his arms or cheese all up in his handsome ass face.
“Oh, trust and believe, fate is very real, mama,” Kareem replied. Finally, his eyes peeled away from me for a split second as he addressed everyone else in the room. “Can y’all give us a minute?”
“We can give you an hour,” Mariah’s old traitorous ass chirped.
“Riah,” I hissed as I whirled around on her.
Kareem’s deep chuckle vibrated through my chest, and my eyes fell back on him. “A minute will do, but I ’preciate that.”
They filed out of the room while my eyes stayed on Kareem. I wasn’t sure I could look anywhere else, even if I wanted to. The idea of being alone with this man again caused my heart to swarm with a million thoughts scattered into unfinished fragments.
When the door shut behind me, Kareem’s hand found my waist and pulled me into him. I melted into him immediately and then cursed myself in my head. I tried to pull away to create some distance, but his hold on me felt ironclad.
“Bet you thought you would never see me again,” he murmured as he peered down at me.
