“Where is there to eat around here?” Duchess asked, sliding into his passenger’s seat. Henry closed the door, leaning over it.
“Vee ain’t hip to Grammomma Green ghetto-style cuisine,” Henry said with a laugh.
“I’d be as wide as this car if I ate things that are fried and smothered beyond recognition,” she said as Duke slid into the driver’s seat. “No wonder there’s epidemic obesity and diabetes in the black community.”
“Baby girl got the socio-economic analysis of our inner city plight down like a mug,” Duke said, speaking in exaggerated proper English. He had learned it by studying the newscasters on TV.
Shocked amusement flashed in her eyes.
“Perhaps, Miss Winston,” he added, “we can discuss some statistics to illustrate your point over our evening meal. I want you to dine like a queen.”
Henry laughed. “Quit, dog. Soundin’ like a white boy.” Her eyes blazed, making him feel like he was about to burst into flames.
“Anywhere you wanna go, baby girl. D-town your oyster tonight.”
An’ I’m yo’ dessert.
Chapter 9
Now that Duke was with Lily White, Beamer had the freedom to meet Milan at a hotel room. As he walked down the hallway, he thought about how to focus on his coup. And what better partner in crime than Milan, who wanted exactly what he wanted: money, power, and Babylon. Being a ’round the way girl at heart, Milan was smart and sexy enough to pull it off right under Duke’s nose. Plus, he was so caught up with that suburban creampuff who would no doubt crumble after a day in the hood, Duke wasn’t good for anything right now. This hostile takeover was going to be a done deal before it even started.
Check it out, world. We the new Duke an’ Duchess.
“Damn, you gotta be the finest female in D-town,” Beamer said as she opened the door of the Presidential Suite.
“You’re early.”
“Naw, you said six.” He flipped up his watch. Six on the nose. “The Swiss Army don’t lie.”
The disapproval in her light brown eyes made his blood bang through his veins like rattling pipes. Maybe she was mad because she was standing there in a dark green silk robe. She must have been butt-naked underneath because her titties looked like two of those little dum-dum lollipops poking at him, tempting him to take a lick. How could a bitch so small have such big nipples? And damn, her toenails looked like more candy, all shiny pink and curled into the plush white carpet. “Why Duke ain’t on you twenty-fo’/ seven, I jus’ don’ know.”
“You would know better than anyone,” she said with those intelligent, analytical eyes. They looked like they were moving back and forth with little quick movements from one of Beamer’s eyes to the other. Like she was looking in each eye, real close, to see what he was thinking.
No chance. I got this.
See, Milan was slick, having them meet at this fancy hotel in the suburbs, far away from all those nosy-ass, jealous niggas in the hood who would love to see them both shot for doing what would look like a triple taboo booty call. But it was all about business right now for the future bosses of Babylon.
Future boss, really. Milan thought it would be a partnership, but Beamer was going to be the new sheriff in D-town. She would take her proper place for a female, at his side, doing what he told her to do. Nothing like what Duke was talking about with Victoria Winston, wanting to share the power with the woman he hoped would someday be his baby momma.
“What’s the password?” Milan said, crinkling her little nose that was more pointed than Lily White’s. Her big, light brown eyes looked devious and delicious. Her straight, dark hair was bouncing off her shoulders as her bitch-stare dissolved into a smile. “Say it or you can’t come in and play.”
“Damn, you look sexy,” Beamer said playfully, stopping in the threshold. His dick was so hard, it felt like it was going to rocket-launch straight at her, even though Chanel had just given him the supreme dick-suck over at the party on Chicago Boulevard.
“Wrong answer.” Milan screwed up her face like he was stupid.
“Bonnie an’ Clyde,” he said with a more serious tone.
She closed the door. A lock clicked, a bolt slid. “Milan, if you gon’ change it, let me know first.” Silence.
He knocked. “Milan?”
An old white man in a hotel uniform walked past. Then he turned around, came back and asked, “May I help you, sir?”
“No,” Beamer said, his heart beating faster. If he were to get kicked out of the hotel, he would not be able to talk with Milan about their plan. And it wasn’t like he had a lot of time, either, because if Lily White were telling Duke to kiss his black ass right now, the first thing he would do would be to call Beamer to handle the business that Duke had put on hold to chase some almost-white pussy.
“My fiancée mus’ be ’sleep,” Beamer told the hotel man. “I’ll call her cell phone.”
Beamer turned so the man could see the cell phone clipped to his jeans pocket. Otherwise, the man might think he was pulling a gun, then he would call the cops, and the next thing he knew, Duke would be riding up to ask why Beamer was at a hotel with his female. With sweaty palms, Beamer flipped open his red, white, and blue Pistons phone. He scrolled down his missed calls—the whole screen said MILAN from top to bottom. Six times. Every time she called him that day, Beamer followed Duke’s orders to let it ring. Otherwise, she would just be asking too many questions about who they were with and where they were. But now she was playing let-it-ring.
The white man stepped close, stared down hard, and asked with a snooty tone, “Do you have a room key, sir?” Adding the “sir” on to a sentence that was spit out with so much disrespect was like adding insult to injury because it was so false.
“She’ll answer,” Beamer said calmly, but his insides were spinning. She did not answer.
The hotel man knocked on the door. “Madame, are you there?”
Dang, why Milan playin’ me? Beamer knew better than anybody what kind of tricks Milan had played on Duke. It was crazy shit that nobody but a devious bitch could come up with, like crashing her brand new Benz into a pole, with the kids in the back seat, just so Duke would come home early from the trip to the Superbowl in Jacksonville. If she were that mad thinking he was fucking around with a couple chicks, Milan would lose her mind if she knew the truth. Duke had been down there fucking a whole team of cheerleaders by the hotel pool.
“Let me try one more time.” Beamer dialed again. “She must be ’sleep.” The man’s hostile stare—which Beamer did not look up into—felt like fire on his cheeks. The man had his arms all crossed, breathing in hard, acting like he was going to let his stress make like an army and attack his damn heart, all over a nigga in the hallway who was trying to get with his girl.
“Sir, I’m going to have to escort you to the lobby.”
“A’ight.”
A few minutes later, the man was on the phone behind the polished wood reception desk. “Ms. Henderson, a young man claiming to be your fiance is trying to reach you.”
A lady next to him, who wished she were still as fine as she might have been twenty years ago, turned her skinny ass that looked like a board under her St. John skirt. She pulled her Prada purse up against her half-starved-looking body and looked at Beamer like he was crud in an old, dirty shower. The bad way she was looking at Beamer only made the already angry hotel dude cut his eyes harder.
“Darling,” the bitch said to her husband, “aren’t there hotels down in Detroit for people like him?”
The hotel guy cleared his throat. Then he coughed, as if he were going to keel over if Milan said no and he had to sweep Beamer’s ghetto ass out of this snobby lobby.
“Darling!” the wife-bitch said in a way like she was used to being ignored.
Her husband, a clean-cut white man with brown hair and a dark blue suit, looked up from handing over his credit card to the receptionist who was checking them in. The man turned red. His eyes got big as golf balls. In fact
, his eyes were now as big as his own balls, which Beamer had seen slapping against three Sluts’ asses Friday night at a Babylon freak party. That one was three times bigger than the one they had attended today on Chicago Boulevard. It was all white men, all in from out of town, trying to get their freak on in the Motor City during some kind of automotive executives’ convention.
This guy here, with his snooty-ass wife, was the host. He had requested three flavors of ass: licorice black, chocolate brown, and coffee with cream Beamer smiled. He couldn’t help it, because the image in his head of this dude’s wife walking in on her husband with his head bobbing between two blue-black thighs would have given her cardiac arrest her damn self.
Ain’t this some shit! That dude was the one who had given Beamer the bulging bag of Benjamins when he and Duke stopped by as planned. That scene was some crazy-ass shit, filling up the whole penthouse of one of D-town’s most exclusive apartment towers. All white men. All black Sluts. Barriors doing protection, with all the right people on notice so no shit could go down to jack up the operation.
Beamer would bet that freaky automotive man’s wife was not getting her freak on. That bitch looked like she hadn’t had any dick since Kennedy was president.
Sandpaper pussy bitch. Damn, I wonder if Duke hittin’ it wit’ Lily White. Wonder if she as juicy as she look . . . an’ if she gon’ stick wit’ Duke like he want. Not after me an’ Milan get through . . . an’ take ova Babylon.
“Yes, Ms. Henderson,” the hotel dude looked relieved.
“He’s—”
“Barb,” the woman’s freaky-ass automotive executive husband said, trying to nod real cool at Beamer. It wasn’t necessary, since the husband already knew Babylon’s strict code of confidentiality, which Duke had gone over with him at their first meeting. Normally, Duke did not handle the details like that. Milan did all of that, but with monster deals, Duke had his hands all over them, just to make sure all the dollars got delivered to the right place.
Right now, the man was talking to his wife like she was a child. “Barb, you really should keep up on the kids’ music. That young man is one of the most famous R&B artists in America.”
“Wha’z up!” Beamer pointed real quick. The hotel dude smiled.
“In fact,” the freaky husband said, “we used his latest hit in our ad for the Sports Coupe ZX. It’s been airing around the globe for three weeks now.”
The woman turned as pink as her lipstick. She pivoted toward the receptionist, talking about the spa. At the same time, her husband nodded, flashing a look that said, “Can’t wait to see ya at the next pussy party.” Then he looked at the hotel dude and said, “Your hotel should feel honored to have a man of this stature patronizing your establishment. I feel privileged just to shake your hand. Your talent is phenomenal.” His eyes flashed something real sneaky, like he wanted to ask, “Where da party at?” As if he were going to put his wife to bed and come creeping up to a suite full of black pussy.
Beamer cracked up. He patted the auto-freak on the back. “Thanks, man. I ’preciate yo’ props.”
The hotel dude was all flustered, hurrying around the corner of the counter so fast, he bumped himself in the hip. He took Beamer’s arm, leading him to the elevator. “I’m so sorry about the inconvenience, sir. We get all kinds of riff-raff here and make sometimes aggressive efforts to filter out those who don’t belong. We have a very particular clientele.”
“It’s a’ight.”
“May I offer you and Ms. Henderson a bottle of champagne to make up for the misunderstanding?” The elevator stopped and the doors opened.
“We already got the Cristal on ice,” Beamer said, knocking on Milan’s door. She opened it instantly, flashing a smile and holding out her arms.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry. I was in the shower,” she said all sweet, pressing her hard nipples into Beamer’s chest.
“If there’s anything you need,” the hotel dude said as he walked away, “please don’t hesitate to ring me.”
Milan pulled him inside, closed, and locked the door. The high-ceilling suite was all white, from the leather couch and matching chairs to the marble fireplace, the chaise facing it and the TV in a glass-and-silver cabinet holding plants and books.
“Oooh, Peanut, you look delicious tonight,” Milan said, posing on the chaise. Beamer was sure that if she took that robe off, she’d look just like a centerfold, no joke. Her sexy playmate attitude rattled Beamer inside. It felt like steam was shooting out of his ears.
“I know I’m delicious,” Beamer said playfully, “but no joke, Bonnie an’ Clyde don’t need no romantic distractions.”
“Bonnie and Clyde,” she said in her white girl way of talking. “Damn, why you gotta say e’ry letter?”
“I know it’s a crime to sound intelligent where you come from—”
“We grew up around the block from each other, Michelle Henderson.” He sucked his teeth, wishing her big brown eyes and her still-hard nipples were not so distracting. He wanted to talk about their coup, but his dick was trying to talk louder. He needed to tone down her attitude before they got down to business.
“You could blow them airs up e’rybody else ass, but wit’ me, you gotta keep it real. Michelle Henderson always gon’ be a hood rat. I don’t care if you havin’ tea wit’ the queen o’ England. You from the hood in D-town, so keep it real wit’ yo’ boy.”
She stood, stepping toward him with that fake-sophisticated walk that she’d been perpetrating ever since she went to the fashion shows in New York. Every time she took a step, she would put one foot directly in front of the other, to make her hips sway, sashay, or straight-up switch. It made her look sexy as hell with those titties bouncing, the satin flowing around her, and her lips opening as she came at him.
“I learned to keep it real at my prestigious prep school,” she said, poking his chest with a fingernail. “Private school taught me that in the real world, you have to know how to—” Her lips got real tight and her hard nipples looked like they were going to cut holes in that robe as she said, “Speak like a white person.”
“You trippin’, Michelle.”
“My name is Milan. Obviously you need training before you’re ready to embark on our plan.”
“I don’t need shit but some cooperation from yo’ ass. You might be in charge o’ the Squad by day, but when you an’ me is workin’ this deal, you gon’ call me Boss.”
She threw her head back, laughing. “As if I would bow down to your dim-witted mumblings.”
Damn, how could somebody look so sexy while they were being so mean? Beamer’s whole body was shaking as he thought about pulling open that robe, laying her on that lounge chair and fucking her until she started talking like she used to. Something about her made him feel weak as hell, like a nigga could think tough all he wanted, and say it, but when he looked in those eyes, he turned to grits inside.
She clawed her fingernails over his cheek, stopping to tickle his lip. “If you think it’s cool to dumb yourself down to the lowest common denominator of every hoodlum you know, then I’m going to smarten you up until you’re intelligent enough to partner with me on our Duke Deal of the day.”
All of a sudden, something in her eyes made Beamer remember when they were eight, she sweet-talked him into going to the corner store and stealing some Blow Pops for her. “I’ll kiss you if you get me three green apple ones,” she said. But when he came out and delivered the goods, she was sitting on the porch with Duke, so Beamer gave each of them a sucker and kept one for himself. Never did get his kiss.
Right now, the way she was cracking up just looking at him—and he hadn’t said squat—it was making him feel retarded. It made hot energy, like steam, blow through him, making him want to punch something.
“You know, Peanut, there are two kinds of people in the world: leaders who make decisions, and imbeciles who wouldn’t know how or what to think if it weren’t for the leaders thinking for them. Duke and I, we’re the leaders. And you, sorry l
ittle punk, happen to fall in the second category. Now, here’s my plan that you’re going to help me execute.”
“Aw, hell no!” Beamer shouted, balling his fists. “You nothin’ but a trick! Fulla tricks!”
She looked at him with excited eyes. Her lips poked out the way models always look in pictures like they were about to kiss their own picture.
“What the fuck you doin’?” he asked, sounding much more angry than he had intended. “I coulda got arrested up in this snobby-ass joint. The suburbs ain’t no place to play.”
“You didn’t get the password right, Peanut. And if you’re going to do business with me, I need you to pay attention to the details. Now, what is the password?”
“Don’t fuck wit’ me.”
She tossed back her head, making that straight hair bounce all over the place. She leaned on one hip, spreading her fingers out on her thighs to press the fabric down. The robe fell open wider on her chest.
Damn, if I could fuck her jus’ once . . .
Beamer’s dick was ramming up against his jeans. Benzo wasn’t even this hard when Chanel was sucking it this afternoon. Something about Milan’s bitchy drill sergeant way of talking made Benzo iron hard.
If he closed his eyes, she would sound white, but looking at the way she jerked her neck when she talked, there was no question she was a sista when she said, “I’ll fuck with you every second of every day, you stupid motherfucker, until you can concentrate on business.”
He stomped closer. Their bodies were almost touching. “Don’t call me a stupid motherfucker, you bougie wannabe, two-timin’ bitch.”
She craned her neck forward. Her eyes grew bigger as she said, “You don’t have the balls to make this happen with me.”
Beamer stared hard into her eyes. His right hand yanked open the top button on his jeans, which he pulled hard enough to unzip. He whipped out his big dick in his right hand and cradled his balls in his left hand.
Sex in the Hood Saga Page 7
