She arches her back and I feel her coming, feel the tightening around me and watch the way sweat beads on her lip and on her forehead and dots her breasts. She thrusts crazily, and her eyes fly open.
“Now, Colt-baby. Now, come now.”
Who can disobey an order like that? Not me. I let go. Thunder hammers in my veins and I let myself thrust hard and wild. And India, bold and perfect, takes each pounding thrust with a whimpering encouraging grunt, still touching herself. Shit, she’s coming again. The girl has a hair trigger. Her pussy tightening around my throbbing cock as she comes is all it takes.
I lean over her and bury one hand in her curls and shamelessly pull, mash my mouth to hers as I come with an explosive shout.
She moans long and high, as if the sensation of me coming inside her like this gives her sexual pleasure. Moaning with me, writhing with me, milking it out of me. Taking all I have and demanding more.
Both of us spent, she pushes on my chest until I’m lying down, and she curls up almost entirely on top of me. Her hair tickles my nose. It makes me grin like an idiot, for some reason.
A long, long, comfortable silence. We’re both drowsy.
No words are necessary; we both fall asleep.
* * *
“Colt?” Her voice is small, hesitant. “What happened? With Lil B. Tell me what happened.”
We’re awake, still naked, still in her bed, still tangled up together.
I let out a breath. This is not what I was expecting her to say, but I decide that being open and honest with her is more important than anything else. “It’s not pretty. Do you really want to hear this?”
“Just tell me.”
“The kid was just crossing the street. Right at the edge of Bishop turf. This car just…sped up, swerved, and nailed him. Sent him flying. He was dead the second his head hit the curb, head split open like a fuckin’ melon. So Split guns it, takes off after the fuckers, you know? We caught ’em no problem. Split got lucky, popped off a few shots and hit their back tires. Then he pulled out another gun and gave it to me. I—I didn’t want it. But I couldn’t back down. I’d never shot a pistol before. It felt so heavy, for something so small. It all happened in a blur, after that. I remember guns going off, I remember a Mets hat, someone shooting at me. I remember being hit in the shoulder and almost being hit in the face.” I touch the healing scar along my temple. “My gun went off and I—I shot him. It was over before I knew what happened. I remember—blood. Blood everywhere. The car was red with it—the hood where they hit Lil B, the windshield, the seats, the dashboard. And then I realized I had just shot someone.”
I’m finally dealing with what happened, and I don’t like it. But, in another way, it feels good to talk about it.
“But they shot you first.”
“Yeah. But I still killed someone.” I choke. I hold back the panic, the freak-out building inside me.
But she knows, though, India knows what I’m feeling. Her face is on my chest, her hands move in gentle circles, touching my scar, my face, brushing my hair away. “You had to. You had no choice.”
I can’t speak. I try. But I can’t. I can’t breathe.
“Colt?”
I shake my head and try to push her away, physically and metaphorically. I try to sit up but she’s not having it. “No way, Colt.” She pushes me back down to the bed. She’s strong. She sits on me. Her hair is wild around her shoulders and her eyes are wet with tears. “I’m here. It’s okay. I get it. It’s not okay, but it’s okay.”
“India—”
“It’s okay not to be okay. When Isaac died, Cleo told me the same thing. It’s okay not to be okay.”
“Guilt sucks.”
“Yeah.” She rests her palms on my chest, staring into the middle distance. I can tell she’s dealing with her own memories of the past and then she speaks, almost to herself. “Isaac, he was mad at me. When him and Split went out that day we was arguing about him getting in trouble. Getting hurt. Us girls, we know all we can do is accept you men as you are. You’re gonna do what you gotta do to stay alive, and we get it, but it don’t mean we like it. It’s why I didn’t want to get involved with any more Bishops, or anyone else from a gang. I want more. I don’t want to have to worry. And I don’t want to fight with my man about worrying, neither. I keep thinking that if I’d just…said something different, kept him at home, somehow. I don’t know. Maybe—he’d still be here.”
“No, India, you can’t—”
She cuts me off with a violent gesture. “I know, okay? I know! But I still think about it. So I get the guilt, a little. Not the same, but…yeah, guilt sucks.”
“I’m a part of the Bishops, sort of. Not a full member, but still…”
She laughs, and it’s rueful. “I know. That ain’t slipped my notice. But I’m involved, now.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. I love that, how her hair flies when she shakes her head. “Boy, you shut up with that ‘sorry’ mess. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew. But you’re different. You can be more. I believe that. You’re gonna be more, Colt.”
“So will you. It’ll be different. I’ll be different.”
“I know.”
The moment is fraught with meaning: Be more. Do more. Be different.
Don’t end up dead. Like Isaac. Like Lil B. Like I almost was.
India rummages around in the bedside table and comes up with a tiny pinner joint in a Zip-Loc baggie. She lights it, takes a deep drag, leans close to me, kiss-close, and shotguns the smoke into my mouth. We kiss and breathe and taste the THC as it runs through us. Another drag, and this time she inhales and holds it. Then she hands me the joint, and then lifts my flaccid cock to her mouth, taking it in. Mouths it. Exhales through her nose while working me erect with her soft warm mouth. She takes the joint again and tokes while stroking me with her hand, eyes on me, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
It doesn’t take long before I’m rock hard and aching. She keeps the smoke in her mouth and takes me deep into her throat, smoke trickling from her nostrils. She backs away and exhales the rest, goes back down to my cock. I smoke and watch her, watch her hair move, groan with the bliss of her mouth on me.
“India, enough—”
She sits up, snatches the joint from me, takes a hard drag, her eyes on me as she works her way back down. She pushes against me, so I’m laying down, making it clear how this is going to go. She blows smoke out through her mouth and nose, smoke curling around her face and my erection, and then there’s only her mouth on me, sliding up and down. Fist twisting around my base, pumping and stroking and cupping my balls, no slowing now, no mercy, only her tongue sliding against the side of my shaft, her lips on the glans, sucking hard.
I can’t hold back; I don’t dare.
I grab a fistful of that fucking gorgeous hair, and she moans an affirmative, glances up at me as she bobs up and down, up and down. She puts her hand over mine and shows me that she wants me to pull. God, this girl. I pull hard. Jerk at her hair, thrust gently at first and then harder and harder, pulling at her hair, her head.
She moans encouraging noises—mmmhhhmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmhhhmmmm—as I lose control. I fuck. It’s an unstoppable force within me, and she’s taking it and acting like she loves it.
I tug twice, then, short sharp tugs to tell her I’m close. She backs away until her lips are around the thick head, just in time. I unleash with a shout, and she takes it. All of it, milking it out of me until I’m faint and limp and breathless.
And then she flops down beside me, takes the still-smoldering joint from my fingers, and finishes it.
It’s a few seconds before I can formulate a thought. “Jesus, India.”
“Yeah? Good?”
“Good? Honey…if I wasn’t in love already, I sure as hell am now.”
She stills suddenly. “You—what?”
I realize what I said. It just sort of popped out on its own. But it’s true and it’s irrev
ocable.
“I—um.”
She relaxes. “You can take it back. Heat of the moment and all that.”
I roll onto my elbow and fix my eyes on hers. “No. You can’t take words back. And I don’t.”
Tears prick her eyes. “Don’t, Colt. Don’t play me.”
“I’m not.” I thumb a tear. “It’s crazy…but I don’t take it back.”
“It was just a blow job. I’ll suck that fine-ass cock of yours anytime you want. You don’t have to tell me you love me for that.”
“I’ll totally take you up on the blow jobs. That was fucking incredible. But…” I trail off, start over. “I never believed in love at first sight. Until I met you.”
She laughs and rolls into me. Kisses my chest. “Boy, you stole that line from a movie.”
“Sure did. Don’t know which one, but I did. It’s a good line and has the additional benefit of being true.”
“Smooth,” she says, laughing.
The laughter turns to moaning, though, as I kiss my way down her body, laving at her nipples until they’re hard, and then down, nipping at her thighs, licking the crease of her slit, licking harder and harder until my tongue-tip prods through those lower lips. Lick until she’s writhing, slide a finger into her, alternating curling and licking. Smear juices, lap them up. And when she’s desperate with the need to come, I give it to her, hard and fast and unrelenting. Lick and flick and thrust fingers in and out until she just about tears my hair out with the wild force of her orgasm. I suck her clit between my teeth and then let it go, flick and flick and flick it until she comes a second time.
Again and again. I lose track, and I’m sure she does too. There is no limit, it seems. And she’s more gorgeous every single time.
“Stop, Colt-baby, stop. I can’t take any more.” She pulls me up, pulls my face to her breasts and holds me there.
The day goes by as we sleep, curled around each other.
Chapter 10: Body Count
I don’t know why or how, but being with India gets better every single day. We’ve been together for six months now, and I love her more than ever. We’re hot and heavy all the time and it makes some people sick to death, but we just can’t stop. Callie did indeed kick my ass. I let her, but I also made sure she knows I’ll never give up on India.
She’s worth it, and more.
Callie came to accept us, and me.
India and I talk a lot about the future, and we start to make plans, real plans. She’s applying to go to cosmetology school next semester and she’s really excited about it, which makes me happy. She doesn’t know it, but I have a plan I haven’t told her about: I want us to get a place together, our own place. I start looking…outside the hood. We do talk about moving in to our own place, but it hasn’t happened so far and I want to keep it like that, so when I find the right place, she’ll get the surprise of her life.
I can’t wait.
In order to make enough money that I can afford the new apartment while still saving toward a down payment on a garage, I return to what I know: I run with Split and the Bishops, and we work a pretty lucrative pot trade. I’m not real proud of the fact that I’m still on the street, or about how I’m making my money, but it’s cash and it’ll buy me what I want. Split knows my goal—about the garage anyway—and he knows my plan is to leave the gang eventually. Funnily enough, he supports the idea, and I think I even see a bit of envy in his eyes the few times we talk about it. Split doesn’t have that option, not really. As a side business, and to start building a clientele base, I’ve been making extra cash helping people with their cars, fixing, tuning, customizing.
I’m still staying with India, at her mom’s place, and I pitch in with food and rent. We honestly have a decent amount of privacy, as her mom is always either gone or sleeping because she works a lot of late and double shifts. We’ve talked a few times, but she keeps to herself. Old hurt bleeds in her eyes, and something about me makes it worse. Something about India’s father, probably. I’ve only heard bits and pieces of that story—a love between a black woman and a Korean immigrant here on a temporary visa, in a time when such things were still fairly taboo. Shit, it still is, to some people. India was just a kid when his visa ran out; he had no choice but to leave, and they never saw him again. India never knew him. She grew up half-Korean in an all-black neighborhood, and learned to be tougher than everyone else because of it. Girls can be ten times more cruel than boys, is all India will say on the subject.
Good things never last forever.
Not for me, at least.
Starts out like any old day. I’m over at the basketball court with a few of the Bishops I’m closest to, playing some pick-up ball. I’m bricking shot after shot, because I suck at basketball, but it’s what you do on a lazy Sunday afternoon in the hood. I’m about to finally nail a shot when Split tenses, straightens. Everybody goes hyper-alert. Then T-Shawn ambles over to the bench, slips on his shirt and, not-so-surreptitiously, shoves his piece into his jeans. Split is like a live wire, humming with restrained violence. Mo, tall, skinny, always unpredictable, is looking around and I can see the tension in his eyes. Lil Shady, a small, aggressive, angry brother with a wild hair up his ass, ready to rumble at all times, stands with his head up, watching, waiting. He’s always accusing me of trying to steal his girl, despite the fact that I’ve got my own, not to mention I don’t even like his girl. Red is there, too, big, wide, slow, always dropping rhymes and talking about ‘making it’.
Six guys come swaggering onto the court. They spread out, hands in pockets, heads tipped back, eyes glittering in the sun. They’re new, think they’re tough. But they don’t know who they’re fucking with.
I wait beside Split as they trade insults, spit venom, the usual shit-talking that leads up to beef. Except, in this case, it’s an excuse to start a turf war. I stay out of it, like I usually do in these circumstances. My job is to be backup. Jump in if I’m needed. I’m the exception; still an outsider, and anyone not in the inner core of the Bishops doesn’t really accept me. Members of other gangs certainly don’t. They’d shoot me on sight, just for being who I am, and for being here.
Shit goes south in an instant—a knife blade flashes, and suddenly this turf war is real.
I can only watch it happen. Everyone is paired off, fighting, one-to-one. We’re winning, too.
And then the fucker T-Shawn is pounding on rolls away, digs in his pocket, flicks open a black three-inch blade and shoves it into T-Shawn’s throat…twice.
Blood sprays.
T-Shawn falls onto his back, and I hear the most fucking awful sound: gurgling, wet bubbling gasping for breath.
I toss aside the little punk who came over to scrap with me, level him with an elbow. I’m across the court in an instant, and I’ve got the fucker in my hands.
I shove him to the ground, sit astride him—I can feel myself doing this, but somehow it’s not me. It’s just happening, my body on autopilot. I know as it happens I’ll never wash this blood off my hands. I’m smashing his head against the concrete, over and over and over, until my hands are red and my face is wet and sticky, and hands are pulling me away.
The rest of the enemy fuckers are gone, they ran off, leaving their dead friend on the court with us.
Colt Calloway, body count: two.
T is on the ground. I grab him, pulling him into my arms. He’s bleeding everywhere, and the gasping gurgling is fading, and I can tell he’s slipping away.
“T…” I rasp. “Come on, man.”
Split is impassive, but I see the cracks in his expression. No one says a damn thing, we all just watch as T-Shawn bleeds out, and goes silent. It all happened in a few seconds—there was nothing anyone could do.
Except prepare for the next time because, sure as shit, there will be a next time.
* * *
And, sure enough, a week later it’s Lil Shady. Bad shit. Him and me had just smoked a blunt at his place, and then we left to go our own ways. Then, an ho
ur later, the door slams open at the pad of the guy I’m doing some mechanic work for. Mo and Split have Shady, carrying him. He’s gone already. Limp, head lolling, blood dripping nasty from a hole in his skull.
Who’ll be next? Me? Split? Mo? Red?
T-Shawn is gone, and now Shady?
Fuck.
India and I talk that night for a long time. Then we go to bed and it’s rough and hard, and then it’s sweet, and she holds me, like she did after T died. Like she does every night, but she holds me especially tight that night.
Before sleep claims me, I decide to wrap things up with Split tomorrow.
India and I are getting the hell out of here.
* * *
The next day I get up early, and when India wakes up I tell her to pack her things, that I’ll be back around lunchtime to collect her. I’m going to go see Split and then India and I are heading over to Brooklyn. I’ve got enough saved; we’ll find a place.
It’s time to start over.
I see India’s face light up when she hears my plan—she’s as ready for this as I am.
I’m passing the basketball court, and I see a rumble in progress—it’s the same fucking rival gang. They’re using bats, chains, and fists. It’s wild and gnarly for a few minutes, but then it breaks up on its own. Sort of. Some guys scatter, others go after them. Split and me are left alone, and there are still a good half dozen of the other guys piling out of cars, coming for us, pulling pieces as they swagger toward us.
“Shit.” Split pushes me. “Go, dog. Go! Run, motherfucker!”
If Split says run, you know it’s bad. We run. Like dogs, we run. The six guys chase us down alleys and side streets. Something cracks behind us, and the windshield of a parked car shatters. Bullets thunk into quarter panels and into the asphalt. The road dead-ends at a chain link fence around a vacant lot. Split—lighter, smaller, more nimble—scrambles up and over it like a goddamn monkey. I make it halfway up when I feel something tug at my sleeve, and then hear an angry buzz past my ear, followed by a snap. Too damn close. Pistols crack a split second later.
Falling for Colton (Falling #5) Page 16
