Without limits ssion and.., p.27
Without Limits: A BWWM Collection of Passion and Desire, page 27
“I want you naked,” she said, “Take off your clothes.”
“No.”
Her hand froze in mid-fondle.
He said, “You do it for me.”
Sage smiled in the dark. She liked it when he was bossy. As she worked on his belt buckle, Orrick's hands glided up her arms to her shoulders. He dropped soft kisses on her forehead, along the hairline. One hand slipped to her nape and traced the curve of her spine all the way down, making her shiver.
Sage tugged his T-shirt up and he obligingly lifted his arms so she could pull it off. She tossed it aside and placed her palms on his chest, dragging her nails down a wall of solid muscle. Following the narrowing path of hair down his flat belly to the fly of his jeans, she pulled the zipper tab, while nuzzling his corded neck. His hands tangled in her hair as he tipped his head back in mute encouragement.
She hooked her thumbs in his jeans and briefs and pushed them down his long legs. Impatiently he yanked off his sneakers and socks, and kicked away the last of his clothes. Then he went to work on removing her pants and underwear.
Once they were both naked, Orrick wasted no time backing Sage against the bed. He fell with her onto it and hauled her into the middle. Brusquely he parted her legs, flexed his hips and pushed into her.
Sage gasped at the intense pleasure; her nails gouged his arms. Orrick went still, clearly struggling to rein himself in. He started to pull back, started to say something, but she moved her hips, and whatever he'd wanted to say died on a sharp exhalation.
“Yes,” she breathed, as he sank into her and her body welcomed him, clutched greedily at him. “Oh, yes…”
They receded, came together, and Sage cried out in pure carnal bliss. How was it always like this with him? She’d never felt this stark, stunning pleasure, the overwhelming wonder of it of it with anyone else. Something she was grateful for because she could appreciate it more.
Sage clawed at Orrick's hard waist, feeling the muscles bunch with each powerful thrust. Their bodies slid against each other, slippery with sweat. Orrick grabbed the headboard for purchase; the fingers of his other hand dug into her hip. Her body wound tighter with each jackhammer thrust until her climax crested like a wave.
“Orrick!” she screamed, and held fast to him as the wave crashed, dragging her tumbling out of herself.
He gripped her tighter, groaning, plunging hard and deep, lost now in his own sprinting finish. Sage felt his release, the hot jet of life deep within.
She lay beneath him, spent, stroking his sweat-slick back. Sluggishly he started to lift his weight off her, but she quashed the gentlemanly impulse by pulling him back down-earning his gratitude, if she interpreted his drowsy little grunt correctly.
With trembling fingers she touched Orrick's face, rendered slack and almost innocent by post coital inertia.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I’m pretty sure I should be the one saying that,” he replied.
They lay in silence for a few more minutes before he shifted. This time she let him. The man was solid and she needed a good deep breath.
“Orrick?”
“Yes?”
She rose up on one elbow to look at him. “Are you sure about me? About this?”
For several heartbeats, his expression didn’t change. No response. Then he grinned. Oh, what a smile.
“More certain that I’ve been about anything in a long time and I plan to spend as long as it takes to prove it to you.”
Sage exhaled softly. Shifted once more so she was safe in the warmth of his arms. His breath caressed her cheek. As her eyes drifted closed, she felt something different, something wonderful. A heartbeat later, it dawned on her.
She was where she always wanted to be.
Epilogue
Three weeks later
Sage couldn’t ever recall being this nervous in her life. Not when she’d first gone off to college. Not when she started working at Hill and Pearson Fertility Clinic. And not when she’d signed the contract agreeing to carry Orrick’s baby.
He grounded her.
Kept her calm when things were chaotic.
She’d made the best decision in her life when she said yes to Orrick. In return, he’d kept his promise to her. He showed her everyday how special she was to him. While she wasn’t ready to say the “L” word, her feelings were definitely growing.
Since they’d rekindled things between them, they spent more time together than apart. She’d learned a lot about him and herself in that time. Being with Orrick came easy, even when he irritated her. It made her appreciate all of the bad relationships she’d been in because now she recognized a good one.
A knock on the bathroom door startled her.
“Yes?” she called out.
“Are you okay in there?” Orrick asked.
Just the sound of his voice reassured her.
“I’m fine. I’ll be right out,” she promised.
She looked down at the counter for a long time and tears began to gather in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she tried to collect herself. Orrick was on the other side of the door waiting on her. While he typically had the patience of a saint, Sage wasn’t positive that would be the case today.
When she opened the door, she spotted Orrick sitting on the bed. He rose as she neared him. One look at her face and frustration flickered across his expression, but he opened his arms. She rushed into them with hesitation. Resting her head on his shoulder, she was content to let him hold her. Finally, she lifted her head to look at him.
“Orrick, we’re going to have a baby.”
Orrick went completely still. “But—”
“These are tears of happiness,” she murmured.
His knees buckled slightly as he eased down to the bed, holding her. He cradled her on his lap and held her tightly to his chest.
“I can’t believe it,” he said over and over. “Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely.
Her hands cupped his face as she kissed his lips. Seconds later, she began to cry as they shared another joy that neither of them had ever experienced in their lives. A joyfulness that she hoped to share with Orrick for many years to come.
About the Author
Stephanie Morris enjoys creating a story that combines a sensual energy with a captivating storyline. Sometimes her heroines have an edgier persona to them and sometimes they are of a softer essence. But all the time, her heroines are like real women, just trying to make a living and keep on going no matter what challenges life brings them. She believes in romance and happy-ever-afters. In Stephanie’s opinion, there is nothing like curling up with a good book that you can’t put down, and she is addicted to writing them.
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The Descendants
Angela Kay Austin
About the Story
Power of Thakathi flowed through their veins. Belle Johnson and her coven protect their people by offering safe passage. Safe passage through a network that was protected through magick and blood-ties.
Their magick and their family is threatened by someone who wants her dead.
Plagued by visions of her own death, how will Belle protect herself, her family and her people from the evil that chases her?
Blooded through history to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Acknowledgments
After the American Civil War ended several southern states instituted the Black Codes which restricted the rights of Blacks in America and attempted to hold them to a specific economic position. Then we had the Jim Crow era in the United States of America which was a time when there were actual laws on the books that enforced segregation. Fight after fight, things slowly changed from 1948 to 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while visiting Memphis, TN to champion for striking sanitation workers.
The Descendants is set during a time in America when Black Americans had to fight to be accepted as equals.
Chapter One
New York, United States 1964
Ada Johnson sat in the audience in the back of the darkened theatre house as she watched her mother make her entrance onto the stage. The audience in the room roared at her presence. The woman had done nothing more than step from behind the dark curtains that stretched across the stage hiding the chaos she knew occurred every night in the crossover behind them. Many might believe that they hid some elaborate room filled with props and dresses, but she knew it was strung up to hide the naked bodies of the women as they ran from the left to right wings of the theater. The Harlem theatre was special, but the women her mother had recruited throughout the years to join their coven were even more so.
The descendants. Her mother had told her the stories her entire life, but that history had locked her away in a burlesque cage. No freedom to live or love, as she wanted. They lived in preparation for the possibility of a fight that they may never see. You can’t fight ghosts. More than a century had passed and nothing. Nothing.
The music grew louder with each step her mother took. No move was missed by the spotlight. Her mother’s dress sparkled like diamonds as she danced across the stage. Each rhythmic step she took teased and taunted the curious audience watching. Although candle-light flickered around the room, the shadows didn’t conceal their excitement.
Long dark hair, curvy with long legs. Ada couldn’t remember a time when men didn’t want to be her mother’s Prince Charming. But her mother had accepted none of them. Running her fingers through her short brown tresses, she knew most wouldn’t recognize her as the daughter of the beautiful woman on stage. They looked nothing alike. Her mother’s fair skin hinted to her New Orleans roots, but her darker skin spoke to their Haitian ancestors.
Ada never had admiring Prince Charmings waiting at her feet to provide for her every need. Her Prince hadn’t rescued her, she stumbled over him. Leaving the stage after a performance, she tripped over the dress she wore and fell into his arms. Unlike other men, he didn’t care she wasn’t a long-legged brown fox like her mother. He fell in love with the awkward woman who barely knew herself.
Nevertheless, her mother nor any of the women who worked in the club wanted to be rescued. They lived their lives quietly. If her mother wasn’t the owner of the local dance club, they would be like every other family. Except, they weren’t.
She watched her mother control every person with nothing more than the sway of her hands and hips. As hypnotic as the slow jazz filling the room, her mother’s dance demanded everyone’s attention. However, she didn’t have that same magical ability. No matter how hard she tried, she never possessed that power. Awkward as a bowlegged duck on land would be the only way to describe her. Tripping over her own feet would be more natural than strapping on heels and a sequined gown to gyrate across a stage.
Unlike her cousin Dora.
Dora pulled out a chair and joined her at her table.
Damn! Just as I thought of her…here she is.
“Welcome back,” she said.
Ada smiled at her cousin. She knew Dora didn’t mean it. It wasn’t that they hated each other, but with her out of the picture, Dora had the opportunity to be exactly what Ada thought she always wanted to be her mother’s favorite. Everything Ada hated or didn’t want to do, Dora would.
The acid in her belly threatened to anxiously bubble. Hating your family and wanting one of them to go far away wasn’t the way to start over. Leaning forward, she kissed her cousin on the cheek. “I know it’s been a while.”
“A while. Is that what you call three years?” Dora side-eyed her as she focused her attention on the stage.
She knew how long she’d been away. “I missed you, too, Dora.” Not one minute.
“Your mother is beautiful, isn’t she?”
Constant comparison between her and her mother annoyed her as a child, but as a woman, it pissed her off. “Yes.” She loved her mother, but she was her own person. Leaving their sanctuary in part had been to be able to live her life without interference. Nevertheless, the cost may have been more than she originally thought.
“I mean, look at these men, they all think she’s a fox.” Dora laughed as she straightened her posture and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Don’t get ticked off,” she added after turning to look at Ada.
The audience jumped to their feet and applauded.
Ada looked at the stage, and her mother was gone. At some point, she lost her nerve and was unsure about staying. She’d meant to leave before her mother left the stage. It had been three years, but as she sat surrounded by her past, she wasn’t sure there would be enough time ahead of them to fix what was broken between them. But now that her mother knew she was there, she wouldn’t have any more time to run and hide. Her mother wouldn’t allow her to keep running from her family. Maybe it’s time to stop running. I was meant to return, but why?
Visions that guided Belle and her coven had warned Belle of both her daughter’s departure and return. There had been nothing she could do to stop Ada from leaving, as well as nothing to speed up her daughter’s return. As she walked away from the stage, she refused to look behind her. She’d just walked off the stage, but each night it grew harder and harder to walk onto it because the image of her lifeless burned body sprawled across the stage bombarded her every night. But no matter what her dreams told her, she would try to stop what was coming next. My death. Without her family around her, she was certain she would not win against the evil that would challenge her.
Approaching the table where her daughter and niece sat, she knew there may only be moments before her daughter would stand and run away, if she didn’t get to the table before her niece said something stupid. “Welcome home, daughter,” she said as she sat.
The people around them stared, but she ignored them and their whispers. They knew her daughter left, but regardless of what anyone believed or knew, she had maintained a watchful eye. The future ahead of them would need every woman who had the blood of the ancestors flowing through their veins. There was no time for the old battle between her daughter and her niece because the risks were too high.
“Dora, isn’t it time for you to go on stage?” she asked. Loving her daughter or her niece shouldn’t create such problems, but when her sister left their fold, it changed everyone. Abandoned by a mother who claimed to love her had damaged Dora’s heart. Maybe it had been broken beyond the ability to ever be repaired. Belle wasn’t sure her niece would ever truly be capable of loving her mother, maybe no one again.
With a single nod of her head, Dora stood, “Yes, ma’am.” Obediently, she walked away.
Dora knew Belle would only permit so much, but she continued to test the limits. However, their world would soon change, they didn’t have time for her and the mind games she played with Ada.
“Mother, I—”
“Your cousin is about to dance, let’s watch.” Would her daughter offer an apology for leaving, or would she make excuses to leave again? Belle wasn’t sure she was ready for either. In time, they would need to discuss why she believed she needed to run from their home simply to be with the man she loved. Although Belle didn’t agree with her decision to risk her life for the love of a man, nothing would’ve stopped her from loving her child.
Belle sat in silence with her daughter and watched Dora as she danced across the stage to the loud music. No one in the audience seemed to notice or care. And it gave her more time to think before she and her daughter spoke.
Glancing at her daughter, she could tell from her tight jaw she was uncomfortable. Not because of the dancing, but because she always compared herself to everyone. Dora wasn’t her child, but she’d practically raised her after Dora’s mother turned her back on them.
For different reasons, or maybe the same ones, they both fought against the world. Nevertheless, they could only win the fight ahead of them, if they all worked with each other. They didn’t know it, yet, but the safety of all of their futures depended upon them all remembering the ancient ways and fighting for their new way of life.
Chapter Two
Ada stretched across her bed in her old room above the theater. The sounds of New York rushed her senses. No sound went unheard. Taxis. The rumble of the subway. People’s conversations floated through her senses as if they sat beside her. Then, she heard it, a soft whisper, but strong.
Her mother’s voice. “We must prepare my child. No time to waste.” Then silence. “I have missed you.”
There had been too many nights she had cried at the absence of her mother and her family. Nights when Thomas held her close and allowed her tears to cover his chest. On too many occasions, he had offered to return with her to her family for whatever judgment they believed fitting for the past, but she wouldn't allow it. The choice to leave had been hers, not his. When they were advised of the choices her mother gave them, she decided to leave with the man she loved was the only choice she could make. The look on Dora’s face when she left the theater had been nothing less than excitement. Ada never forgot the smile her cousin wore as she closed the door behind her.
