Free Wait for Me by Cora Blu

about why I’m here. I’m tired of being looked upon as if I’m here for whatever all this is,” waving her hand in the air, “Jonathan I don’t want your money or your status or whatever else is going on here. As long as you believe that, I’ll stay. Soon as you start questioning why I’m here, I’m back on a plane for the States.”
    “You’ve already shown me why you’re here. Everyone else just wants what’s best for the family. I wish I could say it won’t happen again, but this is what it means to date someone in my position.”
    “I understand them wanting what’s best for you and if this were my uncles they’d take you for a drive through the country. Threatening to hurt you if I turned up pregnant or you looked at me sideways.” He leaned back eyeing her. Kenya shrugged. “It’s a part of the black family ritual to torture any man looking at the woman in the family. Don’t look at me like that, every family has its quirks.”
    “So why does this bother you?”
    “Understanding doesn’t remove the ugly feeling. Can we go somewhere I won’t be hosed down with questions and suspicions of my character? Believe it or not I am somebody without you, Blakemore.”
    Jonathan eyed the room while placing his jacket over her shoulders. Crossing the room, he edged them around some of the chairs pushed away from the tables. Ushering her out the door, he caught the tension in her back with his hand around her waist. He tucked his jacket around her shoulders. He doubted she wanted to go back for her coat. The negative sting of being a Blakemore reared its ugly head.
     
    ~~~~
     
    The grounds were dormant this time of year. Brown grasses, and the water off the river chilled the air blowing across the flat ground. Jonathan stepped from the jeep, handed Kenya from the front seat, and eased her across the walk to the whiskey vault. The cellar went deep into the mountains. Impressed she didn’t seem bothered by the claustrophobic feeling some felt going down the stone stairs.
    “Gonna be quiet the rest of the day?” he asked.
    “I’m trying not to cuss you out. Your family is too suspicious for my taste, and if every woman you bring here has to go through this, I see why you’re still single.”
    Stopping, he pulled her against his body, whispering in her ear, “They’ve had no experience seeing me with a woman. Jamie’s a different story as he lives here. It’s new for them, go easy. I want you here with me, and have a bar full of questions won’t, I hope, send you packing and jumping on the next plane to the States.”
    Fisting his sweater, Kenya leaned away from him. “You’ve never brought a woman here before? I didn’t believe Sophie.”
    “Forgive me if I hog the covers tonight. I’m not accustomed to sharing my bed either, outside of us back at the penthouse with you.”
    “You’re serious?”
    “You think I have a rotating door on my bed?”
    Kenya tilted her head and he couldn’t help running a hand through her thick hair.
    “The way everybody’s coming at me, says you’ve been burned by women and they’re protecting their interests.”
    “It’s time for me to take over. Everybody’s watching whoever’s on my arm.”
    She stared at him before kissing him, slow. Slipping a hand down her thigh he cupped her ass pulling her into his groin, hungry for more of his woman regardless of having taken her less than hour ago.
    “Pretty lady, you have the sweetest lips, makes me wanna kiss you all day.”
    Running her fingers over his lips, she said, “How often did you visit here growing up?” Kenya asked, her hand on his back as he led them through two steel doors into a room covered wall to wall in bottled whiskey, some older than the estate itself. The scent intoxicated the senses, the moment he took a breath. 
    “As a boy Seamus brought me back at least twice a year,” he recalled, smoothing a hand up the side of the wall finding a light switch and flooded the room in soft