Free A Preacher's Passion by Lutishia Lovely Page B

Stacy and using a hug to try and diffuse the situation. “I like to sleep in my own bed.”
    Stacy pulled out of his embrace. “What’s so wrong with mine? It’s good enough for fucking, but not for sleep?”
    “Stacy, don’t use such crass words.”
    “Crass? Hmph. Crass, my ass, Darius, I want real answers.”
    “Well, you’re not going to get them tonight, not with that tone of voice and not in that mood.” Darius decided to meet Stacy’s indignation with some of his own. That’s what he usually did to take the wind out of Bo’s sails. The move worked just as well on Stacy.
    “Look,” she said, following Darius into the living room, where he retrieved his keys and travel pouch. “I don’t want to have an attitude with you, I really don’t. But you know where I’m at with us. It’s been two years; we’re both in our thirties. How long are we going to date?
    “I want to really feel like you’re my man, Darius, not just when you’re in my house, or at the church. I want to be with you, really be with you: travel, hang out on the daily, wake up next to you, fix you breakfast.” She walked over to where Darius was standing by the front door. “Is that too much to ask?”
    Actually, yes, is what Darius thought. “Of course not,” is what he said.
    “So act like it then,” Stacy said with a pout in her voice as she pulled Darius into an embrace. “Stay with me, if not tonight, the next time you come over. Or let me stay at your house, and come with you on one of your upcoming tour dates.”
    “Okay,” Darius said, looking at his watch over Stacy’s shoulder.
    “You mean it?” Stacy asked, releasing him. “You’ll stay? I can come?”
    “I will stay and we’ll see about you attending an out of town concert.”
    “See, baby, was that so hard? I want us to be together forever. It’s you, Darius, that’s all I want.”
    Darius gave Stacy a quick kiss on the lips and was out the door. Somebody else wanted only him too, and Darius didn’t want to keep him waiting.
     
    The smell of scented candles greeted Darius as he turned the knob and entered the condo he shared with his personal assistant/business manager and lover of three years, Bo Jenkins. Darius smiled. He and Bo had gone through a lot, and when Stacy arrived on the scene it almost caused their breakup. But love had prevailed; Bo now understood that Stacy was a necessary accessory to Darius’s heterosexual persona. His and Bo’s relationship was stronger than ever, and that Bo had been willing to accept Stacy, keeping Darius’s best interest at heart, made Darius love him all the more.
    “Hey, you,” Darius said as he walked into a living room shimmering with more than a dozen white candles. A bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket, and the sultry sounds of Joss Stone added to the ambiance.
    “Hey, back,” Bo answered. He gave Darius a quick hug and peck on the lips, ignoring the “just showered” smell with which he’d become familiar. That drove him crazy when Darius first started seeing Stacy—Darius coming home smelling like Dove or Ivory or some shit neither Bo nor Darius would be caught dead buying. He’d finally purchased Darius a travel bag, a supply of their preferred soap, Calvin Klein’s Obsession, and explained to Darius before a date with Stacy: “so yo’ ass can smell the same going and coming.”
    “What’s all this?” Darius asked. “My birthday is still weeks away.”
    Instead of answering the question, Bo asked his own. “Don’t you want to get comfortable? I’ve got a few things to share with you and I’m sure you’ve, uh, already had quite a night.”
    Darius couldn’t lie. “Sometimes that girl acts like a nymphomaniac. It’s like she—”
    “OMG, TMI, keep those details TYS.” Bo had adopted his best diva pose as he delivered this line, finishing with a “tsk, tsk, tsk” and sashaying over to the bottle of champagne. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some