Page 70 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“I came to apologize.”

I quirked an eyebrow, folding my arms across my chest as I jutted my hip to the side. “And you thought doing it in public was the best course of action?”

“Man,” she drawled, sucking her teeth, “I ain’t studdin’ these folks and you ain’t either. I know you like this type of shit, stop playin’.”

She stared at me, waiting on me to deny it, but all I did was laugh. There was no need to lie when she knew me as well as she did.

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky I was done with my workout.”

She grinned and slid her hand from my arm, up my shoulder, and down my side, scorching a heated trail onto my skin with the soft caress.

“Except it wasn’t luck. I had some help with that.”

I followed the jut of her chin toward the front desk where Shay stood with her eyes on us. When she waved, I frowned, causing her to burst into laughter. Swinging my eyes back to Poppa, I shook my head.

“I can’t do this with you here.”

She took a step toward me. “I know—”

“No,” I emphasized with a shake of my head. “You don’t. This isn’t a conversation I can have with you in public, even with all of this.” I held up the paper bag and gestured at the vase in her hand.

“I know,” she repeated, gripping my waist and stepping closer still. “I didn’t come here to talk like that, I swear. I just came because I wanted to see you smile.”

Ugh, those sweet words wrapped around my heart and squeezed.

“Poppa...” I trailed off, not even sure what I wanted to say, but feeling like I needed to say something.

“Shh,” she murmured before leaning in and dropping a kiss onto my lips. I could be mad about her shushing me another time but at that moment all I wanted to do was siphon her unique flavor from those pillow-soft, plush-ass lips.

“Awww!” went up around us, making it clear that, while we’d moved out of the center of the gym and the women had started returning to their equipment, we still held everyone’s attention.

Poppa broke the kiss before I did, her eyes open and on me as I swiped my tongue across my bottom lip like I was licking Cheetos dust from my fingers after emptying the bag into my mouth. She moved her hand up from my waist to cap the back of my neck.

“Go shower and get dressed. I’ll follow you home and then take you to lunch so we can talk. Is that aight?”

Hell yeah.

The list of things that weren’t aight concerning Poppa was very short—but those few items were pretty damn significant.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod, “that’s aight.”

Rubbing the side of my neck with her thumb, and simultaneously increasing the pulsation between my thighs, Poppa smiled, dropped a swift peck at the corner of my mouth, and took the paper bag from me. She then nodded toward the hall where the showers and sauna were located.

“Take your fine ass on.”

I rolled my eyes at the command, but you know what else I did? I took my fine ass on across the gym toward the hall, stopping first at the front desk where Shay sat on a stool, a smug grin on her face, looking pleased as punch. Propping my hands on my hips, I glared at her.

“You set me up!”

There wasn’t an ounce of shame visible on her face. In fact, she preened a little, clasping her hands over her heart and lifting her shoulders.

“I did!” she practically mooned.

Her lovesick reaction was cartoonishly funny, so of course I busted out laughing.

“You’re not even ashamed of yourself, are you?”

She tossed her head back as she joined in on my laughter.