15
Arjen
The next day, seeing a smile on my brother’s face had awakened mine. Khane smiling was a rarity, but after he married Desiree, smiles were expressed often and sometimes for no reason at all. At times, it was obvious that he was remembering a great time he’d had with his wife.
I had made every imaginable attempt to incorporate happiness into his life through the years, but nothing had worked, until Desiree.
Today, he wasn’t wearing his contact lens, something else he had rarely done. So his eye, the one he was nearly blind in, was on full display. He gave me a chest-pounding hug while I stared at him, not hiding my curiosity. He and Desiree were making it work, and I was curious to know how.
“How’s married life treating you?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or genuinely interested in knowing.
“It’s. Shit. I don’t know. I’ve hardly seen my wife in the last two and a half weeks because she works more than the both of us put together. I’ve had to put four guards working in shifts on her just to keep a safe eye on her.”
I cupped the back of my neck and squeezed at the tension there. I had fool-heartedly tricked myself into believing an arranged marriage would be a stress-free endeavor, another task on my to-do list.
“Most nights she sleeps at one of the Black Saints’ safe houses, her condo, or even at their trap houses. Sometimes it feels like we’re connecting, but fuck, I don’t know. What the fuck do I know about being married?”
Khane fought to keep his lips from forming into a smile. He knew that I wasn’t used to having women problems because they usually fell all over me. Mecca was resistant, and she had also informed me that she would consider being with me when she was ready.
Now, I was starting to think her version of ready wasn’t what I’d had in mind. My fucking balls were so blue, they needed a song written for them.
“How the hell did you get Desiree to go so crazy for you?” I questioned, waiting for his reply.
Khane’s unusual burst of laughter was like a kick to the side of my head. His head tilted, and the question I knew he would ask me, flashed in his gaze before he had even spoken it.
“You’re asking me for advice on women? You must be sick.”
He continued to laugh, and the rare sound coming from him caused me to ease into a laugh of my own.
“So?” I questioned in case he assumed I was joking. “How did you get Desiree?”
I shook my head, thinking of the trouble he and she had gone through to be with each other.
“You know the night before the wedding ceremony, through a curtain of tears, she told me that even though she was marrying me, she was still going to be in love with you.”
His brows lifted, widening his eyes.
“She told you that?”
“Yes. Which is why I’m trying to figure out what the hell you did to get her that devoted to you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I disclosed every secret I expected would drive her away. She saw the real me. Saw what I did for a living, saw me torture someone, saw me kill a whole group of people at that spa, and still accepted me. She saw my eye the first morning she walked into my kitchen and didn’t shy away, no pity or anything, only interest.”
Khane shrugged like he was still attempting to figure out him and Desiree.
“I was honest with her. She also seemed happy when I started showing her how to cook, so I kept teaching her. I’m not much of a conversationalist, you know that, but I sit with her and listen until she makes me talk.”
“What about the rest? The way your ass keeps smiling, I know that you two are fucking the shit out of each other.”
The way he bit into his smile made my words ring with truth.
“If that’s all you want from Mecca, she’s going to know, and it will likely make her stay away even more. I deliberately pushed Desiree away, but it had the opposite effect. Talk to Mecca like you’re talking to me now. Figure out what she wants or needs, not material things, and give them to her. I’m still figuring it out, but I believe women feed off of emotional connections. They like when you’re in tuned with their bodies and when you invest in their minds and the things they value.”
He tilted his head in thought for a moment.
“Make that equal parts mind and body,” he added.
I pushed my fingers through my hair while mulling over Khane’s advice. Did women still want the old school ways: the gentle caress, the smooth lines of care, surprises, and the listening ear? Didn’t that type of romance die out in the nineties? I was thinking about buying Mecca a car or two, but in light of what Khane was saying, had changed my mind.