Kiss the Ring

by Meesha Mink

Naeema turned and spared a few moments to smooth wrinkles from the sofa and fluff up the throw pillows before heading back into the kitchen. She was setting a bag of chips next to the saucer holding the sandwich when Brandon strolled into the kitchen with his book in hand. He took his seat and she bent a bit to press a kiss to his temple. “You know you’re the best thing God could have ever blessed me with?” she asked.

  Brandon nodded and glanced up at her with a smile before taking a big bite of his sandwich.

  She turned to open the cabinet over the sink that she kept filled with snacks.

  “Too bad this bullshit is phony as fuck, Ma.”

  Naeema’s body went stiff as hell as she looked over her shoulder at her son in surprise. She gasped to find him standing behind her silently. She screamed out and pressed her back to the sink at the sight of the blood seeping from a crack in his skull. His thin neck was ripped open by a jagged slash. Tire tracks covered his clothing. His eyes were bloodshot. His bones were broken and protruding through his skin. His body jerked roughly and he coughed up blood that spurted from his mouth and neck, spraying against her face and shirt.

  “No!” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut as she turned to run toward the door leading into the small backyard.

  The stench of his blood got stronger in the air and she knew he was behind her. Closer.

  “No, Brandon. No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she fought to open the door.

  “You never loved me,” he said, his voice gurgling from the blood filling his throat. “You never wanted me.”

  Her tears and fears caused her shoulders to shake as she felt her legs give out from beneath her as she slid down to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  “It’s all your fault.”

  “I fucked up. Forgive me. Please,” she begged, her voice barely above a harsh whisper.

  “You ain’t shit . . . Na-ee-ma,” he said with snide emphasis.

  She covered her face with her hands as his blood began to drip down onto the top of her head and he leveled his mangled body over her . . .

  “Hey, Na, wake up. What’s wrong?”

  Naeema shook her head and struggled between the world of her nightmare and a sleep-fueled reality as she was awakened.

  “Na . . . why you cryin’?”

  She opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp. Her face was wet with her tears and her heart still pounded hard as fuck in her chest. She wiped her face and pulled her knees to her chest, pressing her exposed breasts against her thighs as she wrapped her arms around her legs. The darkness of the house only did a little bit to cut the summer heat and she could feel the dampness of both her and Tank’s skin when he sat up in bed beside her.

  “What’s goin’ on with you, yo?” he asked.

  Licking her lips she turned her head atop her knees and reached for the remote to turn the television on. The light from it gleamed against their bodies while the sound of the local news filled the air. “I’m good,” she lied, knowing she couldn’t tell her husband that a dream that started out with her faking the funk like she was Michelle Obama or some shit spiraled into a nightmare about her son—a child she never told him or anyone else in her life about.

  “You ain’t shit, Na-ee-ma.”

  He was right.

  Tank took the remote and put the television on mute before he wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders and pulled her body on his as he lay back down. She pressed her face into his neck and took a deep inhale of the scent of his cologne. She could so easily get lost in him and the madness that was their love. So fucking easy. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  When Naeema got dressed to hit the clubs that night back in 2006, the last thing she had been looking for was love. Drinks? Weed and Ecstasy pills? Good music? Cute dudes? Dancing? Some fun with her girls? Hell yes to all of that. Still, the first sight of the sexy man at the door of Club Infinity with SECURITY written across his shirt had her gone . . . especially when she saw that the fly motherfucker was feeling her too.

  He flirted. She flirted back.

  She didn’t even go inside the club at all that night. She chilled with him, giving zero fucks about the other dudes eyeing how good she looked in the off-shoulder latex dress she wore like a second skin against her curves. Even when her friends had left the club early to make a diner run, Naeema had stayed behind with the sexy bouncer and part-time celebrity security guard until the club shut down.

  Naeema went home with him too. No sex, just good conversation . . . but all that talking went out the window on the second night. And they both went in. Nothing left undone. Their conversations were cool—sometimes deep and thoughtful, other times playful and fun—but it was the sex that fucked them both up.

  She moved into his three-bedroom house a month later and two years after that they flew to the Bahamas and got married. It lasted close to six years before she packed her shit and left. The fire in their marriage was just as heated in the bedroom as it was when they argued about dumb shit.

  It had been about a year since she left, and besides occasional fuck fests, they were living separate lives. They only thing ever drama-free between them was sex.

  Rolling away from his body she quickly moved to straddle his hips.

  Tank brought his hands up to cup her hips, his eyes taking in her full breasts, flat stomach, and bald pussy. He shifted his hand to stroke his thumb against his name tattooed against the smooth skin of her mound.

  Naeema shook her head in shame. “You had my head all fucked up back then when I got this,” she said, sucking in what little gut she had to look down at it.

  “This good dick had you fucked up,” he bragged, his voice deep.

  “True,” she agreed, bringing her legs up to press her ankles against the sides of his head.

  Tank quickly grabbed her calves when her ankles tightened. “You wouldn’t know how to do it even if you wanted to,” he taunted her, giving her a slow wink as he opened his hands to free her and then spread his arms wide as if daring her to try.

  He was right. Even if she had the skill to straight snap his neck with her ankles, she could never do anything to hurt Tank. First, because he had a black belt in martial arts and what few maneuvers she knew he’d taught her, and second, because she loved him. She reached down to stroke the tip of his dick that was pressed between her thighs. She instantly felt his heat and then his hardness. Tank moaned and closed his eyes in pleasure, rolling his hips to stroke his dick upward.

  Quickly she raised one leg and brought it down sharply toward his nose. Just millimeters before the blow landed he captured her heel in one of his large hands. “It’s levels to this young girl . . .” he rapped, imitating Meek Mill.

  He turned his head on the pillow and sucked her smooth heel as he kept his eyes locked on her.

  Naeema arched her back and cried out a little. Achilles’ heel was his weakness and it was hers too. It was a weird-ass hot spot and Tank was the only man to ever find it and exploit it. “Shit,” she swore as her nipples tightened and goose bumps raced across her caramel skin like crazy.

  As soon as his grip weakened, she freed her foot and quickly rolled her body off his to the floor and tumbled away before jumping up to her feet with a solid THUD.

  Tank had the nerve to laugh at her as he clapped his hands.

  Bam-bam-bam.

  Naeema motioned with her finger for him to be quiet as Sarge rang his ghetto bell from below to let them know they were fucking with his peace. Tank made a face as he rose from the bed and raised his leg like he was about to stomp on the floor.

  “Don’t you fuck with it, Tank,” she said, coming across the room to push against him and knock him back against the bed.

  Being playful, he lightly plucked one of her taut nipples before he flipped her like a pancake onto her stomach and then slipped his arms and legs around her. She felt his smooth chest hairs against her back and the hair around his dick tickling her ass as he pressed her into the bed beneath his weight. �
�He lucky his crazy ass even up in here,” Tank said, his cool breath fanning against the side of her face.

  Tank didn’t mean that shit.

  One of the reasons she let Sarge stay was because she’d asked Tank to use his connects at the Newark Police Department to run a background check on the vet to make sure he was straight.

  “Now tell me why you’re havin’ nightmares about that murdered kid,” he demanded, his voice now low and husky and sexy as shit.

  Naeema stiffened before she could catch herself. “What?” she asked, turning her head to avoid him licking circles against her cheek.

  “You asked me to pull strings to get his file and now you’re having nightmares and screamin’ out his name in your sleep and shit,” Tank said, his body dwarfing hers by close to a foot in height and thirty pounds in weight.

  As much as they argued because they both were hotheaded and jealous as hell, her son was the one thing Naeema never revealed about herself to Tank. They never lied to each other. She closed her eyes and licked her lips. “I guess just looking at all those photos from the crime scene been fucking with me. You know I ain’t used to that shit,” she said, skimming the truth.

  “Who is he?” he asked, shifting their bodies so they now lay on their sides with his body still like a claw around hers.

  She was trapped and immobile but the pressure of his body against hers was sexy and comfortable all at once. She let herself have that moment when she didn’t have shit to do but let Tank hold her. Tell him.

  He brought one hand over to lightly stroke her nipple. She moaned.

  Tell him.

  He sucked her neck just below her ear. She shivered.

  Tell him.

  As much as she wanted someone to lift some of the burden of her grief and anger from her shoulders, she couldn’t fuck with him looking at her different because she was one of them chicks that didn’t choose to raise her child. In those four years between handing her baby over to Ms. JuJu and meeting Tank, her life hadn’t amounted to shit. Partying and bullshit mostly.

  She let being a mother come second to that?

  “You ain’t shit, Na-ee-ma.”

  Her body went weak with grief. Just straight limp. “Let me go, Tank,” she pleaded softly.

  He did in an instant. “What’s up with you, Na?” he asked as she rolled away from him, curled her body into a tight ball, and pressed her face into one of the pillows on the bed.

  She heard him but she was too busy trying to get her shit together. Trying to keep from becoming a crying mess. Trying and fucking failing like crazy.

  Naeema opened her eyes as he gripped her upper arms and lifted her up to face him as he now stood on the side of the bed. “Just go home, Tank. I’ll holler at you later,” she said, looking over his shoulder to avoid his eyes as she tried to shrug out of his grasp.

  He shook her a little in frustration. “Who is this little boy?”

  Her anger came with a quickness and she broke out of his grasp and mushed his hard chest with both of her hands to step down off the bed and move past him. Again she knew he let her get away with that. “Just leave it the fuck alone, Tank—”

  “Hold up one sec, yo.”

  She looked on as Tank flipped the covers to find the remote before he turned up the volume on the television.

  “The weekend shooting of ten-year-old Olivia Hawkins brings the city’s murder rate for the year to fifteen . . .”

  As Tank turned the volume back down on the television, Naeema turned away from the picture of the slain little girl still on the screen. Her son was one of the dead counted in that number.

  “Another unsolved murder,” she muttered.

  “Just like Brandon?” he asked pointedly.

  She avoided answering him as she picked up his football jersey that she wore earlier and slid it on. “Listening to the news makes it seem like a war zone out there.”

  Tank sat down on the bed. “That’s true as hell.”

  “It’s too many young-ass cock-strong motherfuckers roaming the street that don’t give a fuck about life. Theirs or anybody else’s,” she said, thinking of Bas and the way he moved through life like he owned the world.

  She flinched at the memory of him shooting that gun without even looking back to see where his bullets landed. Somebody like that could have easily run a young boy over to kill him. Or order his goon to do it.

  In the time since she’d been around them she hadn’t found a reason for any of them to want Brandon dead. Not yet. She just had to push a little harder. Helping on that bank robbery would give her a closer in with Bas and hopefully she’d be more than Vivica’s cute friend that he flirted with.

  “The mayor supposed to hire more police,” Tank said.

  Naeema twisted her mouth as she climbed on the bed behind him and pressed her titties against his back and settled her chin atop his head. “Them motherfuckers ain’t to be trusted.”

  “Good thing because then you wouldn’t have that file you wanted, right?” he reminded her, leaning forward to look back at her.

  “So there ain’t no dirty-ass cops, Tank?” Naeema asked with attitude.

  “Fuck yeah it is,” he assured her. “Come on now. I ain’t no lame, Na. There’s good and bad in everything and the streets ain’t safe, because not every police give a fuck. These kids gotta make better decisions about how they movin’ through these streets.”

  “Like Olivia?” she shot back, mentioning the little girl just discussed in the news story.

  “You know that ain’t what the fuck I mean. Olivia and Brandon are two different scenarios.”

  Naeema sat back on her haunches and eyed him hard. “So Brandon deserved to die?” she asked him in a cold voice even as the heat of her anger burned her belly.

  “Fuck no and if you tell me what this is all about I’ll help you find out what happened.”

  Naeema forced herself to chill as she climbed off the bed. She knew everything Tank said was the realest shit ever. She knew firsthand that her son was in thick with a band of thieves. He wasn’t completely an innocent like Olivia and so many others. Still, he didn’t deserve to die.

  “If you just let me know anything I can do, yo, to help you out you know I will,” he said, pointedly looking around at her crazy living situation. “An-y-thing.”

  Naeema shrugged. “I’m good.”

  Tank opened his arms wide as he stared at her. “It’s hot as a motherfucka in here. I think a mouse just ran across my foot being a rude little bastard. And who knows what the fuck he got goin’ on downstairs.”

  Naeema bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

  “Yo, I’m serious as a heart attack. Let me at least put air in this bitch and call a fuckin’ exterminator,” he said.

  Another point of contention in their marriage was Tank being the neat freak and Naeema caring far less whether everything was in its proper place. “What’s the purpose of me jettin’ if you still taking care of me?”

  Tank shook his head. “But I can come thru and fuck you when you ask for that, right?”

  “I didn’t ask,” she countered, pointing one of her long stiletto-shaped nails at him.

  “No, you ordered—”

  “And you obeyed,” she teased.

  At Tank’s continued silence Naeema looked over her shoulder at him. His dark eyes rested on her. She rolled her eyes and moved past him to pull her pipe out of the box in the drawer. She turned on the lamp sitting on the corner of the dresser, giving the room more light before she packed it with new loud. “Want some?” she asked before she lit it.

  “From that?” he balked.

  “Yours is bigger, daddy,” she assured him in a soft voice before she licked the tip and took a toke.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Tank said.

  “But I’ll make it better,” she said, pushing him back down on the bed with her free hand before she sat on his lap.

  Tank’s hands came up to rest on her buttocks beneath the jersey. Naeema took a lon
g toke as she swiveled her hips in tight little circles and looked him directly in those sexy fucking eyes she loved. He lightly slapped her ass as she felt his dick get harder and brush against her thigh as it grew.

  Cupping the back of his head with one hand she pursed her lips and exhaled a stream of thick weed smoke. He eased his hands around to massage her soft inner thighs as he opened his mouth and inhaled. “This that good,” she promised him in a whisper.

  “The weed or the pussy?” he asked, freeing the smoke to swirl densely in the air between their mouths.

  “Both.”

  Naeema took another toke as Tank raised the jersey. “Hmmmmmm,” she moaned, stroking his hard dick with her hand as she held the smoke in her lungs.

  His tongue felt feather light and hot against her hard nipples before he sucked one deeply into his mouth.

  “Shit,” Naeema swore as her clit swelled and throbbed with its own pulse.

  “Give me some,” he moaned against the deep hot valley between her breasts as he wrapped his arms around her.

  “The weed or the pussy?” she asked, letting her head fall back as she released the last of the smoke up into the air in one long stream that floated up to the ceiling.

  “Both.”

  She took one last strong toke before reaching down to set the pipe on the floor. She rose up on her knees and held his thick curving dick straight up to lower her pussy down onto it slowly. She paused with just the smooth tip inside her and worked her walls to clasp and release it a few times before sliding down the full length of him with a tiny circle of her hips.

  “You a bad bitch,” Tank told her, his eyes hot as he stared at her.

  Naeema held his fine face in her hands and tilted it back before she blew a slow and steady stream of smoke into his nose as she worked her hips to ride his dick.

  “The baddest bitch,” he swore.

  Pushing his upper body down on the bed, she sat straight up and pulled the jersey over her head to fling across the room before she pressed her hands into his hard chest and leaned forward just enough to lift her hips and slide her pussy back up to his hot tip before she slammed it back down again.

  “Damn,” Tank swore, pressing his hips up off the bed as he formed his lips into an O.