Victoria stood, pulling Natasha up with her.
“Tash, I meant for you to catch her, not beat her to death,” Victoria laughed.
“A few months away from the job, and you let Barbie get away from you... Pathetic,” Natasha teased.
“Girl, you try running with these melons and no bra,” Victoria defended, groping her breasts.
As they started walking in the direction of Victoria’s cottage, she mumbled. “I wanted to kick her ass.”
“Too slow.” Natasha quipped, inducing Victoria’s laughter.
Natasha continued to tease Victoria until they arrived at her cottage. They sat on the porch swing and Victoria explained to Natasha why she’d chased Caroline in the first place. Victoria watched as Natasha’s expression went from shock to concern. Victoria was well aware of the dangers of being the object of a maniac’s obsession and she was worried about her family’s safety.
Victoria was still the subject to Natasha’s teasing when Jack, with Jasmine in his arms, strolled up the walkway and onto the porch. He seemed taken aback by Victoria and Natasha’s appearance. Natasha was covered in dirt and grass, while Victoria sat next to her, wearing his oversized underclothes.
“Hey, ladies. What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Natasha and Victoria answered in unison.
“Really? Nothing? I just witnessed a battered and bruised Caroline running across the grounds. Now, let me ask... Did either of you have anything to do with that?”
Victoria pointed to Natasha, and Natasha gaped at Victoria, shocked that her friend had ratted her out. Jack shook his head and walked into the cottage.
Natasha lifted herself from the swing, rolled her eyes, and mumbled, “bitch,” before walking off the porch.
“Okay girl, see you tomorrow.” Victoria shouted at Natasha’s back before entering her cottage. She had to fill Jack in on the night’s events. She definitely needed Jack to understand exactly how unstable Caroline was.
CHAPTER 22
NATASHA
“So... Tell me about your weekend.”
Natasha looked across the desk at her psychologist, and wondered if she should be truthful. Dr. Cross was an impeccably dressed, very attractive, middle-aged, down to earth, intelligent, and intuitive black woman that could see through Natasha’s bullshit from a mile away. Figuring that she could only be helped if she was honest, she decided to come clean.
“I lost it again. I had an emotional breakdown and cursed Gianni out. Then I beat the hell out of a woman for spitting on me,” Natasha admitted.
Dr. Cross asked, squinting her eyes, “A woman spit on you?”
“Yes.”
“She in the hospital?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then you did good,” Dr. Cross said, shaking her head. “Um um. Honey, I don’t do spitting.” She responded, with a look of disgust on her face. “Tell me what happened with Gianni.”
In Natasha’s opinion, Dr. Cross was entirely too focused on her relationship with Gianni.
“Doc, what’s this fascination that you have with Gianni?”
“No, Natasha my fascination is with you and why you run from any potential relationships that you might come across. I suspect that you run because of the neglect that you suffered in your aunt’s house? Or, is it the fact that you may never have children?”
Dr. Cross didn’t hold any punches.
“Well, it may be all of the above. But I have agreed to another date with Gianni. He’s picking me up Friday. He won’t tell me where we’re going. Just said that it’s gonna be fun.”
“Sounds like a good start, fun. I think I like this free-spirited Gianni for you. Have you ever thought of bringing him to one of your sessions?”
“No. Damn, we’ve only been on one date.”
“Do you ever plan to let him in? Or do you think that he doesn’t care enough to want to be a part of your life, and ultimately, your healing?”
“I really don’t know what he wants from me, Doc,” Natasha answered, lowering her head.
“No, Natasha. You will raise your head and be assured that that man wants you, and he will still want you when you open up and come clean to him. And, you’d better do it soon, since you say that he’s the type to investigate a woman. Trust me, you want to be the one to tell him who Natasha Walker is.”
Natasha nodded, hoping that Dr. Cross was right. “Maybe I’ll talk to him after our date.”
“Yes, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Yeah,” Natasha mumble. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Before you go, let me say this... Put forth some effort with this man. From the way you speak of him, he might be the one strong enough to understand your chaotic life. Gianni might be your chance at love. Natasha, have you ever been in love?”
Natasha lowered her head and shook her negative answer.
“Well, beautiful one. It’s your turn. Seduce that man and make him yours. You can do it. You’re young, smart, gorgeous, and you got one hell of a figure. And with that being said, our times up. See you next week?”
Dr. Cross closed her notebook and stood. Natasha rose from her seat and walked toward the door. “Next week,” she confirmed, before walking out of the office. When she walked through the building and out the door, she was immediately confronted by the brightness of the sun. Although it was a beautiful spring morning, it was Monday and Natasha hated Mondays. The beginning of the work week was almost always determined by the fallout over the weekend and the rise in temperature coincided with the rising death toll. An inevitably dreadful roll call was definitely in Natasha’s near future.
***********************
Natasha sat in roll call, and as expected, Sgt. Banner was ranting about the number of homicides over the weekend. He was actually acting as if they’d gone out and shot the victim’s themselves. Natasha rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, wishing she had the power to heat seal his lips shut. But since she couldn’t tap into her super powers, the asshole kept talking.
“Apparently, someone shot up a lockdown on the south side. Two people dead. Walker, are you still in contact with that hoe?”
Natasha fought the urge to roll her eyes. “If you mean Tammy, yes. We text every day. And she’s not a hoe,” Natasha added.
“They all hoes,” he snickered.
In Natasha’s eyes, Sgt. Banner was utterly repulsive and every word that escaped his drunken lips was offensive.
He was totally unfazed by Natasha’s obvious animosity toward him. “When’s the next lockdown?”
“Thursday.”
“Consider yourself there. Get that girl to get you in the door,” he ordered. “We need to find out who’s behind this shit. But, until then, you’ll be doing street prostitution on Madison Ave,” he added with a snide smirk as if he were handing down a punishment.
In a way, he was. Working in Prostitution could be degrading, especially when the supervisors talk to you and treat you as if they were pimping you for real; something Sgt. Banner was notorious for. Natasha sat quietly through the rest of the roll call, wondering how Victoria had put up with his snarky and disrespectful comments for so many years. He had already given Natasha over a hundred “whoosah” moments. Years of therapy had helped to suppress the anger that built in Natasha, giving some the misconception that she was a shy pushover. But Sgt. Banner was constantly clawing and scratching at that shield.
After the team was dismissed from roll call, Natasha walked over Deon and Steve, who were in the middle of an intense conversation.
Since she was sure that they were talking about her, she didn’t mind interfering. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“We’ll talk in the car,” Steve answered. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”
As Steve walked away, she asked Deon, “What’s wrong with him?”
“The same thing that’s wrong with all of us. These lockdowns…They are dangerous.”
“Deon, our entire occupat
ion is dangerous. Now, I may not be experienced in prostitution, but I am an experienced undercover officer. Trust me, I know when to call it,” Natasha attempted to reassure him. “I gotta get ready. I’ll see you out there.”
Natasha walked out of the office and down the hall, toward the locker room. Halfway down the hall, Commander Grey stepped out of his office. He glanced up at Natasha but quickly looked away, before ducking back into his office. The pasty old bastard actually acted as if the Ebola Virus was walking in his direction. Natasha stayed on course, not even pretending to be affected by the cold and unfriendly attitudes of the bosses. Right or wrong, they all stuck together. She entered the locker room to dirty herself up enough to be solicited by miscreants on Madison Avenue.
*************************
“Why do you have such a dangerous job, when you don’t need to work at all?”
Gianni’s question lingered in Natasha’s mind as she made an attempt at a “hoe” strut down Madison Avenue.
Four Johns down, Natasha was already praying for the night to end. She had no problem admitting that prostitution just wasn’t her shtick. Nevertheless, she was apparently attractive enough to make horny men pull to the curb and solicit her for sexual gratification. But, if Natasha was to be honest, harmony was her true love. The alleviation of narcotics was her calling, but music was her passion.
Natasha would have to deal with her life choices later, because a pink Cadillac pulled curbside in front of her.
Yes. Really. A pink Cadillac.
Natasha mumbled under her breath, before walking over to the pimp mobile, “Are you fucking serious?”
The driver’s side window was lowered and a twenty-something year old, with a mouth full of gold teeth, yelled, “Bitch! This my corner! If you wanna work my corner, you gone work for me.”
Natasha instantly wanted to bitch slap the ghetto motherfucker. He actually had the nerve to think that a woman should work on her knees and back and hand her hard earned money over to his leaching ass. But instead, she smiled and responded.
“I don’t work for anybody. I’m self-employed, and I can’t see myself changing that no
time soon.”
The leach was obviously angered, because he bolted from his automobile and ran toward Natasha. He backed her into the brick wall of the building behind her. Natasha knew that an ass whooping was in his immediate
future. She attempted a straight face that reflected fear, but she was all too happy knowing that “pink caddy pimp” was about to get the shit beat out of him.
Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha peeked Steve, casually walking across the street as if he were an average passerby. Granted, a really big and angry looking passerby, but a passerby none the less.
“Hoe, I own Madison. If you ain’t working fa me, yo ass ain’t working.” Yuck mouth said, entirely too close to Natasha, invading her personal space.
“Man, fuck you!” Natasha taunted, totally ready to get a work out, kicking the shit out of the low-level pimp.
The pimp was obviously enraged because he balled his fist and hurled it toward Natasha’s face. She instinctively ducked, causing Goldie’s fist to contact the brick wall. Hearing the crack of his knuckles against brick, Natasha knew that more than one bone was broken in his hand. Pinky winced and clutched his hand, oblivious to the fact that a pissed off Marine was approaching his rear. He looked as if he was going to cry like a baby, but Natasha wasn’t given enough time to find out before Steve’s fist made contact with the side of the whoremonger’s head, repeatedly. Frankie and Miguel hopped out of an enforcement vehicle and ran over to assist in the administering of justice. As Pimp Daddy cried like a little bitch from the beat down that he brought on himself, Natasha walked over to Deon, who was on camera phone patrol.
Natasha chuckled, “Did you hear that fool?”
“Yeah, as soon as he said that shit Steve turned the recorder off.” Deon said, surveying the area so that the big bad Chicago Police didn’t show up on the ten o’clock news.
The pimp screamed like a teenage girl in a bad horror movie as the enforcement team tuned him up, a punishment befitting a bully. Natasha could hear sirens a few blocks away, someone must have called the police and reported a man being beaten. Two squad cars sped around the corner and pulled in front of the commotion. Deon waved and pointed to the dash camera on the police vehicle. The officers inside the car nodded and drove away.
Natasha turned to see the pimp being handcuffed. He was yanked from the ground and being dragged to the wagon, where he can join his brethren. She walked across the street, to Steve’s car, and sat in the passenger seat. When the pimp was tossed in the wagon, Natasha assumed that the scene would calm. But she couldn’t have been more wrong, because she heard the sound of screeching tires, coming from halfway down the block. She turned to see a white van that was moving at a high rate of speed, and heading in her direction. The driver obviously didn’t have control of the vehicle. The van recklessly weaved in out of traffic, sideswiping parked cars along its way. Natasha found herself in the direct path of the speeding van. She checked to see if the key was in the ignition, it wasn’t. She wouldn’t have had time to move the car anyway. The van quickly advanced on her. In a split second decision, Natasha opened the door and leaped from the vehicle, just as it plowed into Steve’s car. She hit the ground
hard, slid across gravel and skidded to a halt. Natasha scrambled to get away from the collision, ignoring the burning pain shooting through her shoulder. She faintly heard Deon and Steve yelling her name, and she could see them running toward her. She crawled a safe distance and fell back against the ground. Inhaling deep breaths, Natasha closed her eyes and attempted to slow her heart rate.
“Why do you have such a dangerous job, when you don’t need to work at all?” Gianni’s question plagued her subconscious.
Before Natasha could contemplate an answer, Deon was kneeling over her. “Tasha, you ok?”
She could hear chatter from the radio and inquisitive pedestrians.
“Tasha!” Deon yelled, ready to panic.
Natasha opened her eyes and focused on Deon’s worried face.
“I’m good,” she grunted, slowly lifting herself from the ground, with Deon’s assistance.
Natasha wiped dirt and rocks from her body while her team watched sympathetically. Suddenly feeling self–conscious, she forced a smile. “What the hell?” She chuckled, waving toward the object of her near death experience.
Natasha and her team slowly approached the van. The enforcement officers, with weapons drawn, opened the rear double doors, revealing eight women that were huddled together in fear. The women were dirty, half–dressed, and barely legal, if legal at all. They were shackled to each other and seemingly terrified. The women pleaded frantically in a language that wasn’t English. Natasha looked to her team and they were apparently as stunned as she was to see a van full of imprisoned women.
After Natasha’s adrenaline rush subsided, she finally found her voice long enough to whisper, “Human trafficking.”
GIANNI
Gianni sat next to Luca, staring into his whiskey. Hearing, but not hearing his cousin rant about a contractor’s bid to build an upscale Parisian restaurant in Chicago’s Gold Coast area. Normally business would be Gianni’s only concern, but Natasha had ownership of his thoughts. She had agreed to give him another shot, and Gianni had a date planned that would assure that running away from him would not be as easy as the last time. Extremes are what Gianni was reduced to. A man without fear of love and commitment, but fearful of unfulfilled destinies, was a
man willing to go to extremes. After all, he did live in the city of love and there was no running from his feelings. But Natasha was all together different. Thursday would mark a short break in business dealings, and he planned to leave Paris and return to Chicago...To her.
CHAPTER 23
VICTORIA
“Um hmm! Yes, baby,” Victoria moaned. Jack roughly sucked her nipple int
o his mouth as she rounded her hips onto his lap. She could feel his balls every time she slid her saturated pussy down on Jack’s hard as steel dick. The sensation of the sweet torturous manipulations of her nipples, and the feeling of being completely filled by him, served as an unbearable pleasure that threatened to send Victoria flying over the edge of ecstasy. Jack firmly gripped Victoria’s hips and aggressively surged upward, proving that he was in control, regardless of Victoria’s position on top. Victoria bounced up and down on Jack’s lap, gripping him within her slick folds and mastering a rhythm that had him muttering words that were indecipherable. So incredibly close to climactic bliss, Victoria’s entire body trembled with desperation for release.
“So fucking tight. This pussy is so good,” Jack groaned. He tightened his grip on her ass and held her still. He rocked Victoria back and forth on his lap, allowing his dick to vigorously massaged her G–spot.
“Oh God, Jack. Oh baby! I’m cumming.” Victoria wheezed.
“I’m cumming with you, baby,” he growled, slamming into her.
Jack had given Victoria the release that her body begged for, in the form of an orgasm that rocked her very core.
Victoria collapsed against Jack, dropping her head on his broad shoulders. She attempted to catch her breath and gather enough strength to climb from his lap.
“This is the best first day on the job that I have ever had,” she said breathlessly.
Jack laughed and kissed the crook of her neck, before lifting her from his lap and assisting her to her feet. Victoria reached to retrieve her panties from Jack’s desk, but he snatched them away from her reach.
“I’m just gonna hold on to these.”
Victoria narrowed her eyes, stepped around his desk, and walked into the bathroom.
Beautiful Prey 2: The Storm Series (BWWM Romance) Page 14
