Power (Romantic Suspense) (5 page)

“Did you just compare me to an animal?” They jiggled again.

Stop looking at them.

I turned my attention back to her face. “So, the cute puppy has bite?”

“I have a big bite.” She targeted me with a gaze that was probably supposed to incite fear, instead it made my cock twitch.

I licked my lips. “I bet you do.”

She backed away. “I don’t think you get what I’m saying.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I took another quick glance at her breasts. “I’ve got a solution for now. You’re going to stay here for a little while.”

“What?” She gestured at the area around her. “Stay here?”

“Yes, stay here. Now, finish the joke.”

“I-I can’t stay here.”

I pierced her with my gaze. “If you can’t stay here, then tell me where you want me to shoot you.”

She touched the center of her chest. “Shoot me?”

“Yes.”

She cleared her throat. “So. . .sure I can stay. Can I just bunk on the couch or is there a guest bedroom or something?”

Where will she sleep?
I drank in her form.
I better keep her in the guest room far away from me. There’s something different about her. I can’t point to it. I better leave her alone.

“Finish the joke,” I said. “What was the question? In the hood, what’s the difference between a bullet and a dirty cop?”

She looked around, unsure of what to do next. “A bullet only kills one black kid. A dirty cop kills many.”

I thought about that and replied, “That’s a sad joke.”

“Sometimes, there’s humor in dark things.”

“Yeah, but you should consider my metal-human angle. It’s much better and less violent.”

“You want less violent? Really? And your metal-human angle is only funny if I want to bore the shit out of people.”

“Careful, Mary Jane.” I put my hands in my pockets and glanced over my shoulder. “Fuji!”

The front door rushed open. That fat man hadn’t been able to run after Mary Jane downstairs, but now he’d gained some speed.

You’re worried about her, huh? What are you doing, racing in here to save her? Jesus!

“Yes, Boss.” The big guy wobbled in, looked Mary Jane’s way as if hoping I hadn’t choked the life out of her and then exhaled in relief.

Come on, man. Get it together. Can I even trust you with her?

Sighing, I walked off. “Lock my new guest in one of the extra bed rooms, keep her quiet, stay away from her, and get that goddamned bowl of popcorn off my coffee table!”

“She’s staying, Boss?” Fuji grinned.

“Stop sounding so happy. It’s not a fucking slumber party.” I stormed down the hallway and prepared myself to hunt for Domingo. “Oh, yeah. And if you lose control again, Fuji, I will kill you.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Don’t make me do that. I’m starting to like your fat ass.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Something vibrated in my back pocket. Mary Jane’s phone. I pulled it out and checked the device. A dick pic appeared on the screen. A stubby little black one. Under the image the words read, “Are you sure you want to give all this man meat up?”

Who the hell is this sending her a picture of their dick?

“Mary Jane?” I looked at the messenger’s name and yelled down the hallway. “Who’s
Don’t Answer: Harrold
?”

Mary Jane groaned. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“I see why he’s your ex.” I laughed at the tiny dick pic, shut the phone off, and headed downstairs. “Dream bigger, sweetie.”

“What the hell does that mean?” she called after me.

Ignoring her, I pulled out my notebook and added another task to the list. My dick got hard too fast with this one. I must’ve been too stressed and my body sought a quick relief.

Get some pussy

Stay away from the cute puppy

Chapter 3

Mary Jane

An intellectual during the night ravished his grandmother and for this got a beating from his father.

The intellectual complained:
"Father, you've been mounting my mother for a long time, without suffering any consequences from me. And now you're mad that you found me screwing your mother for the first time ever!"

–
Philogelos (The Laughter Lover)

H
ow
can somebody so delicious looking be so evil? He tells me to stay, like I have no choice? Well, maybe I don’t!

Scooping up the pile of green skittles, I followed Fuji to the guest bedroom.

How long is he going to keep me here?

I glanced over my shoulder at Fuji and tensed. I’d thought that Noah had already left, but he remained down the hallway at the door. With a little notebook and pen in his hand, Noah had stopped whatever he’d been writing and centered his gaze right on my ass. Warmth covered my cheeks.

As soon as he realized that I was looking back at him, he turned around.

Good. Leave, you big, bossy ogre.

“So let’s be chill from now on.” Fuji led me to a bedroom and gestured for me to go in. “I’ll be right outside the door, making sure you don’t go anywhere.”

“Can I open the door and hang out with you?” I batted my eyes at him.

He considered it for a few seconds and then shook his head. “No, I better not.”

I ate three skittles at a time. One skittle didn’t provide enough flavor. Two was a tease of sugar, yet four skittles in one bite drowned the senses. Therefore, the exact number of three served as the perfect harmony of candy goodness.

Chomping on the candy to calm my nervousness, I asked, “So you’ll be quiet and stand on the other side of this door?”

“Yes.”

“And do you want me to tell you some more jokes?” I grinned.

“No. We probably shouldn’t talk.”

“Come on, Fuji.”

“I can’t, MJ.” He’d given me the little nickname after we bonded over our love for Michael Jackson. “Noah doesn’t play. I watched him skin a man for two hours, once.”

Uh. Did he say skin? Like. . .cut flesh off of someone?

A chill ran through me, but I tried to play it off. “Hey, I watched the Fifty Shades of Grey movie. I would’ve gladly switched places with you.”

“Fifty what?” He appeared confused. I guessed that he’d never heard of the film. “Anyway, I don’t piss off guys that skin people.”

I saluted him. “That’s a great motto to live by.”

“Sorry, MJ.”

“No worries.”

He shut the door behind him. Silent minutes passed. I should’ve dealt with it, but I couldn’t.

Finishing the skittles, I yelled through the door. “This is boring!”

Fuji laughed. “Around here, boredom is a good thing.”

I turned away from the closed door and walked around the room. “Is Noah married?”

Maybe I could yell for help and someone else in the house will hear me.

“Is the boss married?” Fuji said. “Yes, but more like he’s married to the streets.”

I muttered, “How poetic.”

Like the rest of Noah’s place, luxurious swag dripped from every corner. A queen sized bed sat in this bedroom. I touched the softest mattress I’d ever stroked in my life. The sheets and comforter were chocolate with a sparkling gold design of butterflies outlining the edges. Another monster television hung on the walls complete with speakers above it.

Where the hell is the remote?

I searched around and gave up looking for it.

“Does he have a girlfriend?” I yelled out.

“No, just bitches.”

“Just bitches,” I whispered. “He’s a modern day Romeo.”

The carpet was white and super soft. On the walls, paintings hung and added an erotic appeal—a few displayed wet naked women rubbing their bodies against a very lucky man. Others showcased breasts. The big one over the bed portrayed an opened-mouthed beauty with her thighs spread and her sex available for all eyes to see.

I headed back over to the door and knocked. “Eh.”

“Yes?” Fuji asked.

“What’s Noah’s last name?”

He replied on the other side, “It’s probably better if you didn’t know.”

Great. This day has been a big, bad joke.

Not that my situation was funny. Jokes had structure. Elements that had to be included. The set-up served as the beginning. It was to gain the audience’s trust. The fewer amount of words in a set-up the better. Next came the punch line. The critical part of the joke. The moment where everyone was supposed to laugh. It was the surprise at the end. The thing that twisted the mind and caused a chuckle to rush out of one’s throat.

This situation was madness with no structure, just a punch line that kept slapping me in the face, over and over.

A comedienne stumbles into a room of gangsters and is kidnapped and forced to stay in the gangster’s apartment against her will, until finally he stabs or shoots her. Ha. Ha. Ha. Yeah. I’ve got to get the hell out of here! But how?

My nerves frazzled, but I breathed through it. One couldn’t just walk in fear during a fucked up situation. I had to be calm and focus on a way out. I had to continue befriending Fuji. The man could help me somehow. He wasn’t that bad. I sat down on the ground and leaned my back against the door. “Hey, did I ever tell you about how I became a comedienne?”

“Are you a comedienne?” he said. “It looked like earlier was the first time you ever got on stage.”

“Eh! Everybody’s a critic.”

“You look more like a college girl that smokes lots of weed.”

Well, isn’t he an observant guy.

“I am a college girl. English major to be exact. I actually missed a big exam today to make this audition.” My grades struggled. I should’ve already had my degree, but I didn’t focus on anything but writing jokes.

“English major. So you’re a book nerd?” Fuji asked.

“My mom’s a history teacher. She taught at Briar Park Middle School.”

“That’s a rough school. I know a lot of crazies that went there.”

“Anyway, I always had a thing for words. Mom shoveled British literature down my throat when I was younger. On nights I didn’t have homework, she provided extra assignments—things that she believed I needed to know before I became a woman—Maya Angelou poems, the Civil Rights movement, Gandhi’s life story. Stuff like that.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Watching a man get skinned alive might’ve been more fun.” My stomach turned.

Gain his trust. Make him laugh. Be his friend. And then get the hell out of here before Noah skins me alive.

“So I graduated from high school,” I said. “Of course, I decided to study English, even though the very idea of looking at commas and periods all day gives me chills. Semesters go by. I’m a decent student. The words grow on me. By my junior year, I’m smoking weed though, and you know how that gets. You roll a nice fat joint, put it between your lips, light, and smoke, and then suddenly, you’re hoping to find your passion in life.”

“All I do is get high,” Fuji said. “Weed never made me want to find my passion. You must smoke that white people shit?”

I grinned. “Either way, I decided after smoking a rather big blunt of white people shit that I was going to be a spoken word artist. I never had a problem being on stage. I did theater back in the day. Weeks go by and I throw some poetry together. In my mind, these poems are amazing bodies of work.”

“No way. I can’t see you as a poet, either.”

“You’re just flooding me with compliments, Fuji. Anyway, so I show up at my first open mic. I’m in character. I’m wearing a headdress with feathers on my head. I’m calling myself The Merry Moon Goddess. And I decide to perform my first poem which I believe is a masterpiece.”

“What was it about?”

“It was an erotic poem with. . .food product metaphors. For example,” I got into that rhythmic tone that I’d used that night. “So I start off, ‘Your coffee cock! Long roasted and brewed at the mushroomed tip. Coffee cock! So hot and steamy, boiling over. My cup runneth over, coffee cock! You keep me up all night. I’m dehydrated off of you. I’m creaming. Frothing, in fact. I’m Irish Creaming over that coffee cock. I’m Cinnamon Hazelnut and even French Vanilla-ing all up and down on that coffee cock—’”