Page 49 of Omar

"I ain't sweet, baby. I'm honest." He grinned. "There's a difference."

The food came. He talked while we ate, running through a deal he was putting together with some distributor upstate, the margins, the logistics, the personalities involved. He was animated, hands moving while he talked, pausing to eat, then picking up where he left off. He was good at this part. The dinner, the conversation, the performance of being a man who took his woman out.

"You listening to me?" he asked, catching my eyes drifting.

"Of course I am." I speared a piece of pasta. "You were saying the margins don't work unless he moves at least sixty units a month."

He pointed at me with his fork. "See? That's why I love you. You actually hear what I'm saying." He took a sip of wine. "Most people just nod and wait for their turn to talk. But you? You're with me."

"Always," I said.

His phone rang twice during dinner. Both times he checked the screen, silenced it, put it back down. "That can wait," he said. "Tonight's about us."

The third time it rang he answered it. His face changed. The warmth stayed on the surface but something colder moved behind his eyes.

"I said tomorrow," he told whoever was on the other end. "Handle it or I'll find somebody who can." He listened for a second. "Then make him understand. I don't care how."

He hung up, put the phone face down on the table, and picked up his wine glass like nothing had happened. "Sorry about that, baby."

"It's fine." I cut another piece of pasta. "Everything okay?"

"Just people being stupid." He waved his hand. "You know how it is. You give a nigga one job and he find seventeen ways to fuck it up."

I laughed because that was what the moment required. He grinned back at me, pleased with himself, pleased with the evening, pleased with the woman sitting across from him laughing at his jokes while his phone sat face down on the table holding whatever conversation he'd just had about making someone understand.

I smiled and told him that was nice. His hand found mine across the table again. His thumb on my knuckles, rubbing those slow circles. Omar's thumb pressing against my pulse at the coffee shop flashed through my mind. His hands gripping my thighs, pulling me closer. The sound he made when he came, my name buried in my neck.

I ate my pasta and held Supreme's hand and smiled.

We got home just before eleven. Supreme was in a good mood from the wine, the dinner, the feeling of having shown me a good evening. He loosened his collar on the way up in the elevator, his hand on the small of my back, his thumb tracing lazy circles there too. Always touching. Always marking territory.

I changed in the closet while he got ready for bed. When I came out in one of his t-shirts he was already propped up against the headboard, waiting.

Tonight's performance was a new variation. Supreme had been watching something on his phone earlier in the week, some video that gave him ideas, because he started by telling me to sit at the foot of the bed facing him.

"Just watch me, baby. Just look at me."

I kept my eyes on him, wishing I was anywhere but there. How the hell could I go through this when I knew where I wanted to be and who with?

He pulled himself out of his boxers and started working his hand over his dick while I sat there cross-legged at the foot of the bed giving him my full attention. His head went back against the headboard.

"Tell me what you see," he groaned.

"I see you, Premie." I made my voice low, breathy. "I see all of you."

"Yeah? What else?"

Lord.

"I see the most powerful man in Brooklyn," I said, finding the script, delivering it the way he needed to hear it. "Taking what's his."

"Fuck yeah." His hand moved faster. "Keep going."

"Nobody else got what you got." I leaned forward slightly, giving him the angle he liked. "Nobody else could handle all that. That's why I'm here, baby. Because I'm the only one who can."

His eyes rolled back. He was close. His breathing came in hard bursts. "Say my name."

"Premie," I breathed.