Chapter 18
“I missed you.” Jamal takes the invitation and kisses Bill again, with a hint of tongue this time. His mouth feels so soft against Bill’s own. “If you had another rubber, we could do it again.”
Bill grins against Jamal’s lips. “The mall closes in an hour.”
The thought almost stops his heart. The mall.They have to get back up front.
* * * *
This time, Jamal leads the way and Bill follows, his gaze glued to the sexy swagger in front of him that pulls Jamal’s sweats taut across his buttocks with each step. Most of the crowd has dispersed, though a few on-lookers mill around the store’s entrance, waiting to see what will happen next. Tyrece is there, too, an angry scowl marring his young face. When Jamal’s close enough, Tyrece asks, “What the hellhappened back there?”
“Nothin’, man,” Jamal assures him. “We cool.”
Angie cowers behind the register, watching Bill with wide eyes, one hand hovering near the phone in case she was right and has to call security. Bill shakes his head to tell her that won’t be necessary.
At the entrance, Jamal stops to shrug his jacket into place. To Tyrece, he asks, “You ready?”
“Mr. Bey, I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding.” Bill sticks out a hand and tries to look ashamed. It isn’t hard—he issorry for the scene that was caused, but he’d give anything to be in the back room again with Jamal, alone. Tonight,he reminds himself. As soon as the mall closes, he’ll rush everyone through clean-up and leave the re-stocking until tomorrow. He has plans now.
Jamal glances at Bill’s offered hand but doesn’t take it. They’ve fallen into the parts they’re supposed to play, roles Bill wishes they could do away with, but what would people like Angie or Tyrece say if they knew what had just happened in the back? If they knew what fiery emotions burned in Bill’s and Jamal’s hearts, enflamed their loins? Angie really wouldcall security then.
“I appreciate your cooperation,” Bill says, withdrawing his hand. “Let me give you a gift card for your trouble—”
“We good, man,” Jamal says.
Tyrece slaps his cousin’s arm. In a harsh whisper, he says, “Ask how much.”
But Jamal silences him with a look. “I said we good.”
When Tyrece opens his mouth to argue, Jamal takes him by the elbow and drags him from the store. Bill stares after them—stares at Jamal, and those damn sweats that hang so well on his lean frame—then glances at his watch. A half hour to go, maybe another half hour to straighten up after closing…no time at all, really.
Behind him, Angie clears her throat. She’s ringing up a customer but looks at Bill as she completes the sale. “So I was wrong?”
Oh, honey, you don’t even know.Bill doesn’t say that, though—he doesn’t want to discourage her from doing her job. How was she to know Jamal and he are together? Returning to his leakage notebook, Bill offers, “Maybe he saw you watching him and got scared. He must’ve put back whatever he swiped, I don’t know. He was clean, though. Nothing on him.”
“He let you check all his pockets?” Angie asks, doubtful.
Remembering the feel of Jamal’s cock in his hands, his mouth, his ass, Bill gives her a wicked grin. “I definitely checked him out.”
* * * *
By quarter to ten, the carpet is vacuumed, the sound system silent, and the cash register drawers tallied and locked in the store safe, located under the countertop in the back room. Bill thinks the place reeks of sex—he still smells Jamal’s cologne in the air—but neither Angie nor the other two employees seem to notice. If they do, they don’t mention it. Bill grabs his coat off the rack and digs his cell phone from his pocket—there are Jamal’s missed calls, and there’s a recent text that just says one word: Outside.
At this hour, with the store entrance gated and locked, they use the exit that leads down the back hall and outside. The other two leave but Angie holds the door while Bill carries out a bag of trash. As they head down the well-lit corridor, Angie admits, “I was so sure that guy was shoplifting. Now I feel stupid.”
“Don’t,” Bill tells her. “You were just going by instinct. If I’d seen him watching me and hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought he was casing us, too.”
“What really happened in the back?” Angie asks, curious. “I mean, it didn’t get too nasty or anything, did he?”
You have no idea,Bill thinks. Aloud, he mimics Jamal’s words. “Nah, we cool.”
Angie walks ahead to grab the door leading outside. It opens on a trash receptacle secreted away in a screened-off nook. Bill hoists the bag into the trash and almost runs into Angie, who’s frozen at the edge of the wall. “What’s wrong?”
Her eyes are wide and scared. Staring into the parking lot, she asks nervously, “Can you walk me to my car?”
“Sure.” Bill starts across the lot, but stops and glances back when she doesn’t follow. “What is it?”
She’s looking at a spot past the overhead lights, a darkened area of the lot where only two cars sit side by side. One of them is Bill’s—when he came in earlier, that was the only spot available. The other is a silver Nissan Altima he remembers from the summer. It’s an older model that had belonged to Jamal’s sister and was his only when he was home from college. A twinge of anticipation runs down Bill’s spine.