I would like to thank the EyeCU Reading club on Facebook for inspiring me to write Cross Her Heart, Hope He Dies. I was challenged to do a short with a theme of social media.

This was a great challenge and I loved what I produce. Let me know what you think.

(Author’s Note: I do ask that you be 18 or over to read the following content. Thank you)

Cross Her Heart, Hope He Dies

By

Sylvia Hubbard

@2018 All Rights Reserved

“You work too hard, Daddy,” his seventeen daughter, Melissa said, kissing his brow and snatching his phone off his desk. “When was the last time you dated.”

“The last time I was with your mother,” he said not taking his eyes off his reports.

She snorted flopping on the plush chair in the corner of his office. “Wasn’t that during my conception?” Her waist length faux locks spread to the floor as she put her feet up on the back of the chair.

It was the most out of the ordinary piece of furniture in his office. He was a stickler for order, he OCD’d over perfection, but when Melissa was seven she choose this chair for his office and since then he didn’t have the heart to destroy and burn the horrible fluffy monstrosity that no one sat in except his daughter.

“And that’s why I don’t date. That one night in the back of a 1989 Ford Mustang completely turned me off,” he said with a chuckle taking off his reading glasses. “What are you doing, Melissa? You know our agreement for visits is that we don’t use the phone.”

“I’m not using my phone, I’m using your phone and I’m looking at your social media accounts.” Holding up his phone as if he could see the screen across the room, she cried incredulously, “Do you know you haven’t updated your Facebook in two years? That’s an abomination! We must do something about that.” She started typing on the phone fast and then smiled satisfied.

HIs assistant, Kym stuck her head in his office. “Ms. Melissa, your mother is down in security waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Kym,” he said as Melissa hopped up from the chair, applied a sloppy kiss on her father’s cheek, set the phone in front of him before bounding out of the room past the small Asian American Assistant.

“Will that be all, Mr. Cross?” Kym questioned.

He knew it was going on six and the majority of the office was gone. “Yes, Kym. Have a great weekend. Leave the door opened.”

She grabbed her items from her desk and said concerned, “She’s right, you really should get out. You’re too young to be stuck in the office on a Friday night, Mr. Cross.”

He didn’t respond to her and put his glasses back on as he went back to his end of the months report combing through them with a fine tooth comb.

His phone chirped and a dark-skinned woman with the prettiest heart shape smile with light brownish/brick doe red eyes came on his screen.

Taken aback by the strange beauty, he pressed the face to have his phone open up in a Facebook app with her picture filing up his screen.

Damn! Those eyes captured his attention and those lips… he had never thought he could imagine pillow softness on a woman, but they seem to beckon to be touched. This was a woman who should always smile. The curve of her lips brought a twitch in his groin he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

The phone chirped again.

He tapped on the picture and Facebook Messenger program opened up.

Her first message that initiated him to pick up the phone was still there. It read, “I’m ready.”

Since he had not answered right away, she had sent another message. “I deleted your number off phone because it’s wrong what you’re proposing. And it’s stupid to stoop to his level.”

He frowned and was about to respond a chirp came to the phone. The next message read, “Please don’t make me beg. I really am ready.”

Curiosity was killing him and he typed in response, “Ready for what?”

“I’m ready to smile again. And I’m begging for your help. Your plan is perfect revenge for what he’s done.”

The message made the twitch in his groin stronger and a strange pull in his chest. That smile was from the heaven’s – the eighth wonder of the world. To lose the perfection of the curves, the softness of angel’s wings and the sexiness to make any hard heart smile would be a terrible loss to humanity.

He wanted to have the honor to make her smile.

Part 2

He didn’t respond to her last message. The idea of “perfect lips” begging him was rather arousing, plus he’d been out the “game” so long he didn’t know how to respond.

This woman wasn’t talking to him and he knew that. Any man would know this and any sensible man would tell her she had the wrong person. Facebook was filled with men named Elliott Cross. She must’ve clicked on the wrong one.

His eyes drifted over to her profile picture and he tapped on the link to find out more about her..

Tessa Kross, an administrative manager at Heaven Gates Imperative Beauty Industries, based in Detroit. He was familiar with the popular company and he flinched. She worked for Jaelen Gates, a hard line stubborn ass with a strange knack for knowing how women wanted to be spoiled with his spa business that was growing in leaps and bounds across the United States in urban cities, Canada, the Islands and was planning growth in South America and Mexico soon.

Her title meant second in command and Jaelen didn’t hire stupid women.

So why was she messaging the wrong man?

Another chirp came in and he pressed the message to open up.

“Elliott, please help me. If I don’t do this now, I don’t think I’ll ever smile again.”

She texted HIS name! She DID know him?

His eyes went over to her picture and the smile that graced her tender lips WOULD be a loss to the world.

He HAD to protect humanity, right? He chuckled to himself. He hadn’t made himself smile in a long time. Usually, Melissa brought out his humor. She was the only who could. Elliott had a lot to be bitter about in his life.

He rubbed his fingers over Tessa’s bottom lip and wondered would her mouth taste as good as it looked.

The chirp was becoming intoxicating… he was like a Pavlov’s Dog and read the message quickly.

“Send your address. I’m coming tonight, Elliott. While he’s out of town. We can spend the entire night together.”

For some reason, instead of correcting her, he responded, “Doing what?” because he couldn’t believe the direction this was progressing.

There was no immediate response and he thought for sure she had figure out she’d contacted the wrong man.

He put the phone down, flipped it over so he wouldn’t look at her face anymore and tried to concentrate on the work in front of him.

Every minute that passed, the twitching in his groin became worse. How could some strange woman from social media invade his concentration all of a sudden? Elliot was a man of focus, supreme concentration. When he wanted to get something done, he made it happen.

Yet, he had to wonder was his daughter and assistant right? Did he really need to get out? Do something different?

Melissa really had given him permission to venture out more and he loved his daughter above everything. She had been his life since the moment he heard her heartbeat. She had been the only thing keeping him from choking the life out of her mother, who he always felt stole a child from him.

Seventeen years he dedicated his personal time to Melissa, making sure she knew she was the only woman in his world.

In less than five months, Melissa would be going off to college on a full ride scholarship for engineering and later, she had expressed worry her father would be all alone.

In the back of his mind, Elliott knew without Melissa consuming his life, loneliness would seep into his life again and he had been worried about what he might turn to.

The thought of ending up with another baby mother for eighteen years made him shudder and this really brought him back to reality.

A one night stand would be stupid and it wasn’t going to happen. She’s realized her mistake.

Opting not to respond to her, he determined she would give up and go find the number she lost and talk to the man she was meant to talk to tonight.

Someone else would make her smile.

This thought just didn’t sit right with him.

Ten minutes later, the phone chirp.

One word was there. One word that felt he’d been waiting his whole life for sat on his screen breaking down his resolve.

“Please.”

His fingers were on automatic as he texted her his office address and suite number.

Would she really show up? Would he really have the honor of making her smile all night?

There wasn’t a twitch anymore between his legs.

His manhood had thickened and was becoming uncomfortable lounging on his thigh. Reaching down he adjusted his semi-aroused firmness.

All he could do was stare at the open door to his office where he could see at the end of the other side of the office where the elevators would open.

All paths led to him. The light in his office was the only illumination on the floor except for the emergency lights and some desk lights staff members had forgotten to turn off.

He was becoming more than semi hard the more he thought about her stepping off that elevator.

Calling down to security, he left her name at the desk and gave them permission to let her up without an escort.

They would know his request was strange because Elliott was a stickler for guest having security escorts if they didn’t have proper security clearance.

In the business he was in, he needed security. People wanted him dead, but a smile from a strange woman on social media made him put down his guard.

Maybe this was really all a trap and this woman was coming to kill him for all the lives he had destroyed.

That still didn’t make him change his mind.

He had to see that smile in person.

And he’d be cautious.

He’d be sensible.

He’d make her come all the way there let her see she made a mistake and then take her out for dinner for her trouble.

He’d be a gentleman.

Make her smile over a nice glass of wine.

He was a rather attractive almost forty-year-old African American man at five feet ten, broad-shouldered and fit. He always kept his head bald since the stress of his life made him go bald at twenty, but his daughter often said he looked like thicker, Boris Kodjoe. Elliott was fat but brawny. Growing up as a fat kid and seeing his parents die from heart failure at young ages, he stuck to a fish and vegetable diet and swore the obesity on the male side of his family wasn’t going to affect him.

Getting up and going to his private bathroom, he changed shirts and then decided to wash up a little and brush his teeth.

As he walked out the bathroom, he heard the bell on the elevator chime and immediately he became hard again.

Internally he asked himself as he moved to stand in front of the desk to watch the elevator doors open if he was going to be a gentleman, why the hell had he washed his dick extra good as if he just knew those perfect lips was going to polish his seven and a half off tonight?

©2018 SYLVIA HUBBARD AND THE LITERARY WORLD OF SYLVIA HUBBARD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. UNAUTHORIZED USE AND/OR DUPLICATION OF THIS MATERIAL WITHOUT EXPRESS AND WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THIS SITE’S AUTHOR AND/OR OWNER IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. EXCERPTS AND LINKS MAY BE USED, PROVIDED THAT FULL AND CLEAR CREDIT IS GIVEN TO SYLVIA HUBBARD AND THE LITERARY WORLD OF SYLVIA HUBBARD WITH APPROPRIATE AND SPECIFIC DIRECTION TO THE ORIGINAL CONTENT.

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