“Does that song even have words?”
“None you can hear, no.”
“None that you can hear?” I cock a dubious brow. “Explain, old man.”
“I’ll let you get away with that just this once,” he says with a wide smile. “That man speaks his soul through his trumpet. It’s not words. It’s emotion. Power. Passion. Pain. You don’t have to hear one word to know what he’s saying.”
“I honestly don’t think I’ve heard it before,” I admit.
“That’s a travesty,” he replies, still holding one of my braids lightly in his grip. “I’ll play it for you sometime.”
“It’s on Spotify, I assume?” I ask, pulling out my phone.
“No way.” He grabs the phone and shoves it into my back pocket. His hand lingers at the curve of my ass through the thick denim, and our eyes lock. Hold. Heat.
“Sorry.” He withdraws his hand from my pocket, leaving the phone behind and clearing his throat. “I want your first time hearing it to be on vinyl.”
“Vinyl? And where am I going to find vinyl just laying around? Much less something to play it on?
“At my place,” he answers, his voice low and deep, his glance caressing my cheeks, dipping to touch my lips.
Any retort dies in my throat. My face is on fire, not from embarrassment, but from the heat of his look. Of the answering fire it stokes in me. This man is so dangerous. He’s the kind who could fool me into thinking I’ve had it all wrong. That the cycle I’ve seen from the women in my family is one I could break. That I could share more than my body, and be rewarded with more than his in return.
“Michael Jackson,” I blurt, needing to shatter the intimacy swirling between us like sweet smoke.
Kenan blinks once, twice, clearing some of the desire from his gaze. “Excuse me?”
“Michael Jackson’s pretty universal,” I reply quickly. “Millennials love his music. People your age do, too.”
He laughs and shrugs, letting me diffuse some of the sexual tension with the King of Pop.
“People my age.” He inclines his head and leans back against the wall, arms folded and slightly bulging. “You might be right. What’s your favorite Michael Jackson song?”
“There’s so many.” I bunch my brows, concentrating. “Maybe ‘Man in the Mirror.’ What about you?”
“I used to think it was ‘Off the Wall,’” he says, recapturing the braid hovering at my shoulder and brushing the curled tip over my mouth, leaving my lips throbbing, aching. “But I think I have a new favorite.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask breathlessly. “What is it?”