“C’mon,” Tuck said, opening her car door. He placed his hand on the small of her back and led her to his apartment.
When Candice and Tuck reached the door of his apartment, he opened the locks with shaky hands, his mind completely clouded by desire. He was in violation of every rule he’d ever learned as an undercover. This apartment was supposed to be off-limits to anybody who could trace it back to him.
As they walked inside of the dark space, Tuck didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Turning Candice around in his arms, he grabbed her face and kissed her deeply again.
This time, Candice felt fireworks in her pants. She grabbed him around the neck like an experienced woman.
Tuck slid one hand under her shirt and unclasped her bra, and Candice’s firm breasts spilled out of captivity. He caressed them gently, causing her to whimper. His hands felt electric on her flesh. He lifted her shirt over her head, bent forward, and placed his mouth on her areola, and she sighed contentedly, the heat of his mouth sending heated sparks all over her body.
Tuck was grunting, his breath heavy and ragged. He moved his head up and kissed her deeply again, with greater urgency this time. Bending his knees, he hoisted her off the floor.
Candice clutched his head and pulled him closer. She just let her legs dangle and wrapped her arms around his neck for leverage. Tuck used his strong arms to open her legs so she could straddle him. Then she buried her face in his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, locking them together at his back.
Tuck carried her into the bedroom and placed her gently down on the bed. He clicked on a bedside lamp.
Candice kept her eyes closed. She swallowed the lump of uncertainty and fear lodged in her throat.
Tuck quickly swept his wire and undercover cell phone into the nightstand drawer. He scanned the room to make sure nothing else could expose his real identity. He returned his attention to Candice, slowly unbuttoning her pants as she lay on the bed.
Candice was shaking all over. She started to feel some reservations about taking this any further. She was supposed to be on a mission, killing off the enemy, not sleeping with them.
She thought briefly about her uncle Rock and what he would think about her current situation. She knew he would be beside himself if he knew what she was doing.
With a small rebellious smile, Candice helped Tuck pull her pants off.
Tuck was in awe of Candice’s beautiful skin and tight, athletic legs. His hot stare made her feel selfconscious and embarrassed.
Candice moved her hands to cover her most private of places.
“I want to look at you,” Tuck whispered sexily as he pulled his pants and boxers off.
She moved her hands covering her neatly trimmed triangle, turning her head to the side. She couldn’t look at him directly. She had only ever seen a penis in the porn magazines she bought behind Uncle Rock’s back to aid her when she explored her own body.
“Relax. I won’t hurt you,” Tuck said softly. He rolled on a condom and lay next to her on the bed. He could feel her body shaking. He looked at her face, stroking her hair softly. “You can trust me,” he whispered.
The words just came before Tuck could even think about them. He didn’t even trust himself. He couldn’t tell her his real name and certainly couldn’t mention that he was a married father of two. He couldn’t tell her he was an undercover federal agent that was too dumb to get a handle on his emotions before he brought her to his house.
“I want you, Candy.”
Tuck moved in close, the scent of his cologne wafting to the back of her throat. I don’t know what you want me to do. I’ve never done this before. Candice stared expectantly at him, not knowing where to even begin. She wanted to believe that, for the first time in four years, she could trust someone other than Uncle Rock. No more tough-girl “cleaner in training.” Right now, she was just a teenage girl ready to give it up for the first time.
Tuck kissed her passionately again. He moved his hot mouth from her lips and licked his way down her neck to her breasts. Grabbing each globe with his hands, he moved his tongue back and forth over each nipple until they were both rock hard. Tuck licked the pointed ridges of her areola until she lost her breath.
Diving farther down, he licked across her stomach, stopping to kiss her belly button. Candice’s body was on fire. She moaned softly into the pillow, even though she wanted to scream out loud. She had never experienced such sensations in her life. Her nerve endings were supersensitive to his touch.
Tuck stopped abruptly, gazed down into her tortured face, and smiled. Using his knee to make a space for himself between her trembling legs, he coaxed her to relax. His own excitement was making him breathless. He grabbed his manhood and placed it gently against Candice’s moist flesh. She jumped. Her legs were quaking against his hips. He bore down gently, assuming it was simply a case of the nerves.
“Ahh,” she whimpered, grabbing a handful of the skin on his back. She felt a flash of fire between her legs.
Tuck pushed with a bit more force, using the ridge of his dick to make entry.
“Ssss!” Candice winced, a single teardrop escaping from the corner of her eye. The flash of fire had turned into an all-out explosion of pain.
Tuck furrowed his eyebrows, realizing only too late the significance of her body’s resistance. Candice was a virgin. He suddenly felt an overpowering surge of protectiveness for her, exhilarated to know that she had chosen him to be her first. He pushed harder against her saturated labia.
“Ahhh!” Candice screamed out again, part in agony, part in ecstasy.
Tuck had broken through her barrier. Candice’s tight muscles gripped his shaft like a vise. The pressure felt so good. Tuck moved deeper into her folds.
Candice held on to his back, digging her nails deeper into his skin. The burning sensation was overpowering, but so was the intense pressure against her clitoris.
Tuck moved in and out of her body carefully, her juices soaking his throbbing pole. “You feel so good,” he grunted in her ear.
Candice felt goose bumps on her skin. The longer he stayed inside of her, the better it felt. She instinctively began to move her hips in sync with Tuck’s. Soon their bodies moved together in perfect rhythm.
Candice felt her body getting closer to a release, the “good feeling,” as she called it. The feeling she experienced only when she masturbated long enough. “Oh God!” she called out, almost at climax.
Tuck bore down deeper, putting the pressure of his hairy pubis on her swollen clit and grinding gently. It was all she could take. Candice cried out in sheer pleasure. Her head jerked up and down on the pillow as the orgasm ripped through her loins, causing her body to buck against Tuck’s.
“Yeah,” Tuck grunted, moving faster now.
Candice’s release juices gave him more ease to move inside of her. The small pains shooting through her pussy were nothing compared to the explosion deep inside. When her body was done cumming, she felt Tuck climax as well.
Tuck gently removed his wet member from Candice, flopping down on the bed with his face up to the ceiling.
A cold feeling of guilt and shame came over Candice. She was terrified that Tuck would immediately dismiss her after their encounter. That was the lesson she’d learned from all of Uncle Rock’s lectures over the years. She covered her ears with her hands, trying to block out her uncle’s words. She turned onto her side with her back toward Tuck and drew her knees up into her body until she was almost in a fetal position.
“Hey,” Tuck sang softly, touching her shoulder.
Candice didn’t respond.
Noticing her unresponsiveness, Tuck flipped onto his side and propped himself up on one arm. “Candy, are you okay?” he asked, his voice louder and more serious now.
Candice was rocking slightly. She couldn’t make the feelings go away.
Tuck realized he had taken advantage of her at a vulnerable time, but he wanted to make it clear to her that he wasn’t just some dirty older
man that would treat her like shit afterward. He also didn’t know how to tell her he wasn’t the thug drug dealer she believed him to be.
Candice was so disappointed in herself. She jumped out of the bed and began frantically searching for her clothes.
“Wait, Candy, don’t go,” Tuck pleaded, rising from the bed as well.
Candice already had her clothes gathered up, and she was whirling around, looking for the bathroom.
“Just stay for the rest of the night,” he begged, putting his hands up to try to stop her.
Candice brushed past him roughly. She didn’t want him to see her this weak. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She repeated the words in her head over and over again.
“It’s on your left,” Tuck called out at her back.
He sat down on the end of the bed in just his boxers. He placed his head in his hands and closed his eyes. It was all a mistake. It was all too much. First, his wife and Brubaker, then one of the main targets on his case might have murdered his girlfriend, and now he was falling for a girl he knew nothing about.
Tuck stayed in the same position until he heard Candice attempting to get out of the maze of locks on his door. He quickly slipped into his jeans and threw a wife-beater over his head. He was stopped dead in his stride.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he screeched, his hands raised high above his head.
Candice stood in a shooter’s stance, her arms extended in front of her. She gripped her Glock 22 with the thumb-over-thumb grip, just as she’d been taught. Tears streamed down her face. The gun shook as her hands trembled.
“Candy. I’m not your enemy. I swear. I just wanted to be there for you. We can talk about this.” Tuck swallowed hard.
Candice squeezed her eyes tight to fight away the tears clouding her vision. She wanted to believe him, but he was a close friend of the man who killed her father. A fact she had lost sight of a few hours earlier.
“Why did you lock me in here? Let me the fuck out of here,” Candice gritted through tears.
“Let me help you open the door. I’m not trying to keep you here against your will,” Tuck explained, his tone pacifying.
Candice lowered the gun slightly but kept it at the high ready, where she could return to the proper shooting position within a fraction of a second.
Tuck observed her stance, her grip, and her use of the high ready, and he immediately became suspicious. She had definitely had some professional training. He made a mental note to himself to learn from whom or where she’d acquired those skills.
He walked over to the door slowly, retrieved the keys from a small bowl, and used several keys to open the locks. He never understood why the government put those fucking lock-you-inside locks on undercover apartments anyway.
When the door was finally ready to be opened, Tuck stepped back carefully. “It’s open. You’re free to go.”
Candice quickly stuffed her gun back into her oversized bag and rushed through the door. The door slammed behind her.
With his back against the cold steel of the door, Tuck slid down to the floor.
Candice did the same on the opposite side of the door.
Tuck sat on the floor for a few minutes. Candy was an enigma. Until the incident with the gun, he hadn’t realized just how little he knew about her. He rushed into his bedroom and yanked open his nightstand drawer. He pulled out his government laptop and his system key code token.
Tuck pecked on the keys feverishly until he was logged into the system. He had already recorded Candy’s plate number in his head when he had helped her into her car by the hospital. He’d done it out of instinct, rather than an actual need to know.
He punched the letters and numbers into the query screen. He drummed his fingers on the keyboard anxiously as the system worked to retrieve the information. Finally, the screen popped up. He received one hit. He double-clicked on the hit. The name JOSEPH BARTON flashed across the screen. Tuck read the name, drawing a blank. Maybe it’s her father’s car. Certainly, no one that he knew in the drug game carried that name. Tuck pecked at a few more keys. An address came up, along with a date of birth and an entire criminal history. Things were not looking good.
“Joseph Barton, aka ‘Rock,’” Tuck read aloud. He scrolled down on the screen. “DEA notes Barton’s connection to Eric ‘Easy’ Hardaway.”
There was a note in the system about surveillance tapes showing them together. If Hardaway made a deal with the DEA, where the hell does Candy fit into all this? More importantly, why is she driving the car of a man who is connected to Junior’s former dead boss, Eric Hardaway?
Tuck needed to learn more about Easy Hardaway’s biographic history. He knew his wife and kids had been murdered. But what was the connection to Candy and Barton? And more importantly, to the government?
He tried punching in Easy’s full given name: ERIC DANE HARDAWAY. He was waiting for the computer to return the information when suddenly his screen started flashing a red warning banner. YOU NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO THIS SYSTEM, the screen flashed over and over again, the words so bright, they were almost neon.
Tuck jumped back from the computer like it was a poisonous snake. Suddenly, he felt something buzz on his desk. His cell phone was ringing. He looked at the screen and picked up the line.
“Yo, son, what’s good? Yeah, I need to tell you some bad news,” Tuck said, breathless like he’d been running fast. He surveyed his apartment, feeling like he was being watched. He half listened to the caller, becoming increasingly paranoid by the minute. He didn’t know what to make of these latest developments.
One thing he was certain of was Brubaker and the undercover recovery team would be coming after him sooner rather than later.
Chapter 11
“In breaking news today, police have recovered the remains of a twelve-year-old Harlem boy who went missing from his school. The boy, whose name is being withheld because of his age, is the younger brother of alleged drug dealer and known gang member Phillip Beltrand. A police spokesperson for the NYPD said the day after the boy went missing, his severed finger was mailed to Beltrand’s barbershop in Harlem with a small card attached. Police would not comment on what the card said or what it means.
“Police also confirmed that a day after the finger was received, the boy’s decapitated head was found in a McDonald’s bathroom on 125th Street. Police have commented on the eerie similarities between this case and an older case where the young brother of a known drug dealer was decapitated and his head left in a Mc-Donald’s bathroom. Police say it is too early in the investigation to determine if the two cases are related.”
Junior squeezed his remote so tight, the battery cover popped off. He threw the remote across the room. It was official now. Phil’s brother was dead. There was no more hope of finding him with just a missing finger. The boy was dead—tortured and dead. Junior’s insides roiled. He was at war with the uptown crew now, whether he liked it or not.
Phil had contacted Junior when his brother’s severed finger had arrived at the barbershop with the bloody note attached. He was livid, threatening death and destruction for Junior, Broady, and anybody else in their crew who got in the way.
When Junior got Phil to calm down a bit, Phil told him that the note had been written on a small blue card, and one side of the card said:
To y’all Brooklyn niggas. I’m sending these flowers to let y’all know how I get down. Take this one as a warning. Niggas get it how they live. - Phil.
Phil vehemently denied sending the note. He explained to Junior that he had sent a bleeding heart arrangement to Razor’s funeral, but his note had merely offered his condolences.
Phil and Junior reached the conclusion together that somebody wanted the note to look like it had come from Phil. Junior silently concluded that Broady must’ve gotten the note from Razor’s funeral.
Phil told Junior the other side of the card said:
Take this one as more than a warning. We at war, nigga. - Junior.
Again, s
omebody wanted the note on the flip side of the card to look like it had come from Junior, in response to Phil’s “sympathy note.”
Junior had given Phil his sworn word that he had not sent the note or harmed a hair on his little brother’s head. The conversation got eerily quiet after that. Phil and Junior both knew who the likely culprit was. As a result, war was inevitable.
Broady was a wanted man on the streets of Harlem and Brooklyn. Whether Junior or Phil got to him first would be another matter.
Junior still wrestled with whether or not he should offer Broady his protection or simply take him out of the equation for good, a decision he would make once he located Broady.
Until the news story broke, Junior had held out hope that Phil’s brother would be returned alive. He had scoured the streets for Broady. He had even sent Tuck to monitor Broady’s house for a while, in case he returned.
Junior picked up his weapon off the coffee table and slid it into his waistband. He dialed Tuck’s number. “Yo, did you find that nigga yet?” he asked.
“What you mean, Shana is dead? What? What the fuck, nigga! Get off this jack and come meet me!” Junior growled into the phone.
Junior knew right away that Phil had put the hit on Shana. Broady didn’t have the heart to shoot her.
In the streets, when there was a war, family and bitches were the quickest way to bring a rival to his knees. Junior pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t know how everything had unraveled so fast. It was like a bad omen had suddenly descended upon him and his entire crew. But his first priority was to find his brother. Shit was getting critical.
Brad Brubaker sat in his old beater, waiting. This time he would be the one to show up early for the meeting. Although a different type of meeting, he chose the same deserted gas station off I-95 in Delaware. He wore dark shades, a pair of raggedy jeans, and a Georgetown Hoyas T-shirt.
Hard Candy Page 16
