Boss Divas (18 page)

“H
ow in the fuck is that nigga still breathing?” I snap at Python with my M4 holstered up in the air. He's looking like he's stuck on stupid while we watch this muthafucka and his boss bitch peel out.

“MASON!”

I clench my jaw and roll my eyes toward Diesel, mentally telling him to get his cousin before I knock the shit out of his ass.

Diesel steps forward and places a hand on Python's shoulder. “Let it go, cuz. We got to roll out.”

Python stands, huffing and puffing as if he'd raced a marathon. When Diesel touches his shoulder again, Python jerks away from him.

“Goddamn it,” I hiss, pacing around in circles. I gotta calm down before I approach Python. I'm not in the mood for another episode of
As The Hood Turns.

Clearly, his ass is back to tripping on that brother shit. I got his ass to bury that bullshit since the nigga was dead any goddamn way, but now here his ass is back among the fuckin' living. These damn Carvers are immortals or some crazy shit.

“If they'd made it into that warehouse, we would have killed him,” I catch Python muttering to himself.

“Good,” I shout. “His ass deserves to be six feet under.”

Python spins and roars, “He's my fucking brother!”

Without thinking, I backhand his ass.
SLAP!

“Snap out of it!”

I reel backwards, hitting the building's concrete roof and dropping my M4.

Niggas duck and run.

Python ignores all that as he grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me up against his growling face. “If you ever disrespect me like that in front of my men again, it'll be the last fuckin' thing you do. You got that shit?”

The left side of my face swells and throbs like he hit me with a two-by-four. I turn my head and spit out the pool of blood in my mouth. It's getting harder to respect this gangsta when he's pussying out over this brother shit all the time.

“You got it?” he yells.

“Got it.” I flash my bloody smile and then snatch myself out of his grasp.

Python towers over me like he's thinking about stomping my ass.

Diesel approaches up behind him. “We got to head out, cuz.”

“Fine. Round these niggas up and let's go.”

Python rakes me up and down and then storms past me like my ass ain't shit.

Diesel lingers and then offers me his hand.

Knowing what will happen if I touch him, I ignore it and pull myself up on my own.

“Pride before the fall,” Diesel says, chuckling.

“Get the fuck out of my face,” I tell him, slurring my words since my lips are also swollen. “I told you that you wouldn't bag that bitch.”

The amusement dies in his eyes. “Blame your man. We had them surrounded,” he says and marches off.

Our army was reduced by five—one of them was Diesel's homeboy, Chrome. We quickly stack the bodies, pack up our shit, and roll out as the sound of police sirens fills the air behind us.

During the flight back to the safe house, I stare a hole into the side of Python's head. What I wouldn't give to wail out on his ass right now. Why am I the only muthafucka thinking straight? Fat Ace needs to be eliminated. Full stop—period.

Two cars return to the safe house. Ours with Python, Diesel, and myself and security guards Kane and June Bug. After a bottle of Henney and a few bumps of cocaine kickers, Python barks out orders. “I want to know everything. Put ears everywhere. How did Fat Ace survive that crash? Where has he been? When did he return? Everything.”

Kane and June Bug nod. “We're on it, boss.” When they don't make a move for the door, Python yells, “NOW!”

They jump like toasted Pop-Tarts and scramble for the door.

Diesel speaks calmly, “I'll get you some more security out here.”

“I don't give a shit about that.”

“No. You're on that brother shit again,” I mumble.

Python jerks toward me. “And you. Shut the fuck up! I don't want to hear another goddamn word out of your slick-ass mouth. This is my shit and I'll handle it!”

“Handle it how? Handle it like you told me to
handle
Ta'Shara—or are you too much of a pussy for that shit?”

Python lunges for me.

I smash a beer bottle on the coffee table and lift the neck and its jagged-shard edges up, ready to rumble. “What the fuck you gonna do?”

Diesel jumps in between us. “Whoa. Whoa. Slow down.” He holds his cousin back. “LeShelle, maybe you should give us a few minutes?”

“Fine. See if you can screw his head back on right. I'm tired of trying.” I turn with a flourish and storm back in to the bedroom with my broken beer bottle. How the fuck am I going rule the streets with a mad king on the throne?

“S
hit! Shit! Shit!” I pound my fist onto the dashboard. “I knew it! I knew it! Why didn't I listen to myself ?”

Mason scowls. “Wait! We were making this deal on your fuckin' word. You said those crazy-ass crackers were good for this shit.
Now
you're gonna tell me you weren't feeling it?”

“Back off!” The last thing I need is for his ass to ride my nerves. “We gotta deal with that lying, double-crossing, redneck muthafucka.”

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

“What the fuck you think?” I snap. “Go at his ass. Hard!”

“You want to turn up on the good ol' boys?”

“You damn right! No muthafucka plays me. They got me twisted.” I'm so heated, I can't think straight.

Mason lets that shit hang in the air for a second and then reaches for his phone. “Tombstone, change of plans.”

I nod with my trigger finger itchy as hell. No way these muthafuckas think we have the balls to jump off some racial shit, but I'm about to show them how low my steel balls sag.

We rumble back off that beaten path, locked and loaded. That god-awful country twang assaults the night. Our four Escalades don't even ease off the accelerator when we approach a line of Harley-Davidsons parked outside.

Mason mows over that shit with no remorse.

The front door of the club explodes open, but when the first wave of angry rednecks spill out, I slap in another magazine into the Bushmaster and hop onto the ledge of my open window to mow those wiggas down.

The second wave of stupid hillbillies comes running with handguns and a couple twelve-gauges, but they're unable to even fire off a shot before Tombstone plows straight into the club, busting through the front door and a panel of windows.

I spring out of the vehicle and hold tight to my weapon during recoil after recoil.

Half-naked bitches are screaming everywhere while we aim at everything with leather jackets. Shit gets nastier when more rednecks pour from the back room, most of them rocking with twelve gauges and fucking up the grills and front hoods of our cars. But my ass ain't playing tonight. I pick their drunk asses off one by one.

Exchanging cartridges, I look for Thor's ass among the dead and wounded. When I don't find him, I grab's Stony by the back of the head and jerk his mat of bloody hair up off the floor. “Where is he?”

“Fuck you, you black bitch!”

I slam the butt of my gun against the back of his head and then lifted that fucker back up. “I'm the wrong black bitch to fuck with, you cousin-fuckin' half breed. Now, where the fuck is he?”

I'm listening to his ass choke on his own blood when I hear Thor's ominous voice speak above me.

“I'm right here, bitch.”

I glance up into the barrel of a twelve-gauge.

Thor drops his weapon as he's lifted into the air and blown back a good five feet.When he finally hits the floor, his body is riddled with bullets.

Rising up, I glare at the dead redneck while Mason walks over broken glass behind me.

“Are you all right?” he asks, panting with fear reflecting in his eyes. Had he not taken Thor out, I wouldn't be standing here right now.

Stony grunts at my feet. I look down, aim my weapon at the back of his head, and tap the trigger.

Stony's head explodes open, drenching my new black Timberlands.

“Yeah. I feel much better now.”

I
can't sleep.

I can't eat.

Hell. I can't even think straight. All that runs through my head are all the different scenarios of how Profit can get hurt tonight on this secret gun run. Shit goes left out here on these streets every day of the week. The morgues and the prison cells are like fucking factories in this city.

I jump up off the sofa and pace a hole in the carpet.
Shouldn't they be back by now?
I rush to the window and peek out.
Where are they?

The knots in my stomach tighten. I have a bad feeling about all of this. Pulling from the window and fighting a new wave of anxiety, I go to the bedroom and retrieve my bottles of Xanax, Inderal, and Tofranil that were prescribed to me from the hospital. The bottles are more than halfway empty.
What am I going to do when I run out?
Tossing common sense out the window, I wash the pills down with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Five minutes later, I have an incredible buzz that smoothes my rattled nerves.

At the sound of a car door, the wineglass slips out of my hand and smashes onto the kitchen floor. Ignoring it, I race into the living room just as Profit opens the front door. “Profit! Oh thank God!”

I launch into his arms, and my hands and legs wrap around him like a hungry octopus while I pepper his face with a thousand kisses. “I'm so happy you're home. You have no idea how worried I was.” I smother him with even more kisses before I hear his painful grunts.

“What's the matter? Are you hurt?” I spring back out of his arms and flip on the light switch. “Let me see.”

“Turn it off,” he barks, the second the light hits him.

“Why? What's wrong? Something happened, didn't it? You can tell me. I can handle it.”

“T!”

“I want to see for myself.” I pat him down and spin him around, looking for bullet holes or blood—something to confirm my worst fears.

Profit hisses and then jumps away from my touch when my hand lands on his padded rib cage.

“You
are
hurt,” I gasp. “Where? Do we need to get you to a doctor?”

“Calm down, T.” He groans and chuckles at the same time. “I'm fine. I just need to sit down for a minute.” Wincing and limping, he heads toward the sofa.

“Let me help you.” I drape his arm around my shoulder. “Just lean on me.”

He wants to argue, but he relents and lets me help him. Once on the sofa, he unstraps his bulletproof vest and pulls it off.

“Are you going to tell me what happened or are you going to let me imagine the worst?”

“It was a setup. We were ambushed.”

“What?” I drop next to him, my heart hammering.

“It's okay. It's all right. By some fuckin' miracle our asses got out of there without losing a man. But I swear, Lucifer's ass is slipping all over the place. It's been one fuck-up after another with her lately. Thank God Mason is back. Who knows what the hell would've happened under her so-called leadership.”

Shocked, I'm caught off guard by his venom.

“What?” Profit snaps, defensively.

“Nothing.” I shrug. “I just never heard you talk about Lucifer like that before. I thought y'all were cool.”

“She's a'ight. I mean—shit. She's Mason's problem. I've never understood why he's always put so much trust in her.”

“Because she scares the shit out of everybody, I'm guessing.” My answer seems to irritate him.

“Can I get a beer or something?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah.” I pop off the sofa and jet into the kitchen. When I return, he has peeled out of his shirt, displaying his broad, muscled chest with a purpling bruise against his rib cage, beneath the spray of bullet-sized keloids that he received from LeShelle.

“Here you go.” I hand over his beer. “Do you want something else—something to eat?”

“Nah, I'm cool.” Profit pats the empty spot next to him.

Smiling and curling up against him, I search for the right words. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

Profit huffs out a long breath. “There's not much too say. Lucifer vouched for some redneck Confederate boys on tonight's pickup and when we got there those grimy Gangster Disciples scrambled out like cockroaches.”

“I don't understand. Why would
they
be there?”

“Clearly those biker muthafuckas got some fuckin' allegiances.”

“Was . . . LeShelle there?”

“Shit. I don't know. I was too busy trying to take out as many of those muthafuckas as I could.”

Profit looks over into my spooked face. “Hey, don't worry about it. You see I made it home okay.”

This time, I glance back at his purpling bruise. “But you were hit.”

“And I was protected.” He gestures to his vest. “I can take care of myself, despite what anyone else thinks.”

I'm confused. “What?”

Profit chugs from his beer bottle. “I'm just saying that I don't need anyone treating me like a kid. I'm a grown man and I don't need a fucking babysitter. When Lucifer dragged me back, the other dudes looked at me like . . .” He sucks in a deep breath and calms down. “Never mind.”

I'm stunned to see him so upset—especially at someone like Lucifer. She's always been so hardcore and everyone in the set respects or fears her. “So what happens next?”

He tightens his arm around me. “Well, after we got out of there, Lucifer tried to make up for the fact that she screwed up and took us out to that bikers' club out in the middle of no-damn-where and we just . . . mowed down everything that moved. It was a fuckin' massacre.”

His words hang in the air between us while he drains the rest of the beer.

“They had it coming,” I conclude, nodding.

Profit's gaze finds me again.

“If they double-crossed her, she couldn't let it slide. Muthafuckas will keep coming at you until they break you. I don't blame Lucifer. She did the right thing.”

“Oh. You're her cheerleader now?”

I shrug. “Well, just because she doesn't like me doesn't mean that I don't like her. In fact, I kind of admire her.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. She's a boss bitch.” Another shrug. “I wish I was more like her.”

Profit laughs, hurting my feelings.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh. You were serious?” He sets his beer down.

“Of course I'm serious. If I was more like her, I would be hunting LeShelle's ass down instead of being walled up here on Ruby Cove afraid that she's going to pop out of nowhere all the time.”

Profit leans over and brushes a chaste kiss against my lips. “Baby, I don't want you worrying about that crazy bitch anymore. You're safe here.”

“I don't want to just be safe. I want to fucking take her out—beat her at her own fucking game.”

He looks at me strange again.

“What?”

“N-nothing. It's just . . .”

“It's just what?” I demand, pulling away and glaring.

“It's just that, no offense, you're a good girl.” He pulls me back, but I try to resist. “You're
my
good girl.”

At the touch of his lips against mine, I sigh and melt. He has always been able to do that to me. His tongue glides deeper and dances erotically with my own.

“Mmmmm.”

He tugs up my T-shirt and then tosses it across the room. “You'll always be my girl,” Profit mumbles, abandoning my lips to dive his head down between my breasts.

Every cell and atom in my body come alive under his touch. By the time his mouth closes over my right nipple and my panties slide off my hips, fireworks are exploding inside my head. He knows how to work my body. His kisses continue to trail down the center of my body until he reaches the soft hairs shielding my pussy.

“Open up,” he commands.

I spread my legs east and west while he settles in for a late-night snack.When his slippery tongue dives in, my hips lift off of the sofa and I grab and squeeze my own titties in total bliss.

Profit takes his time taking me to the edge. Hot, dizzy, and tingling all over, I scream out when my first orgasm hits—and still he refuses to stop. Panting, I try to inch away from his swirling tongue, but it's beating my clit mercilessly. Before I know it, another orgasm steals my breath.

He doesn't stop.

I'm practically up on the arm of sofa, when he locks onto my hips and drags me back down to the center.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” I can't breathe. “P-Profit, please.” I push on his head, but he refuses to bulge. “AHHHHHHHHH!”

I'm floating. Where? I don't know. But at long last, Profit takes mercy on me and releases my honey-filled pussy. Between more kisses and caresses, I have trouble remembering exactly how or when he removed the rest of his clothes. I just know that when his thick cock enters me, my body welcomes him with warm honey.

“Damn, baby. You feel so good.”

Our bodies entangle as love and lust take over. I lose track of time and the number of orgasms. For this one brief moment in time, I'm content and happy.