Sex in the Hood Saga

by White Chocolate

  A huge, hot hand stroked circles on her back. It was as if he were smoothing over her jagged emotions. His hand on her back, rubbing in slow, gentle circles, reminded her of the way her mom used to tuck her in bed and tell stories while she rubbed her back. “Let it out, baby girl.” Duke’s deep voice was like a cozy blanket over her senses. “I got cha back. I always got cha back, baby girl.”

  Victoria’s every cell trembled as she expelled a week’s worth of anger, anguish, and anxiety. She was breathing violently, loudly sucking down lungfuls of air then heaving forward as her lungs flung it out just as quickly. Was she hyperventilating?

  I gotta get a grip on myself before Duke drops me off at the mental ward at Detroit Receiving Hospital. Wouldn’t that make a hot news story! Never! I will make it. And I’ll be bigger and better than anyone ever imagined. So much so, they won’t even know it’s me.

  How? She was as clueless about the world as Duke said she was. Green. Naïve. Totally unprepared to make her way in what looked like a wicked world. But she knew, deep down, she could do it. Duke would help her. She would figure out a way to make it happen so that she would be untouchable if things came crashing down like they did for Daddy. Whether he was right or wrong.

  “Duke,” Victoria whispered, rising. Her face felt hot, wet and swollen, just like her pussy. “I have to tell you something.”

  His eyes glowed with tenderness as he said, “My station is tuned to all Duchess, all the time. Ev’a since I firs’ seen you on the news last week.”

  “Well I got a news flash, and I can already hear you saying ‘ridiculous.’”

  He smiled.

  “I have like, a sex curse. It could hurt you.”

  “A curse,” he said playfully. “You mean like a witch? You already put me under a spell.”

  “Stop laughing!” she shouted to stop another sob from exploding up, out, at him. “You and the whole world think I’m a stupid little girl who—”

  He grabbed her wrist. His touch made her gasp. If only she could press up to his chest, let him wrap his arms around her trembling body, and just sleep in the soft, sleek protection of this sexy panther named Duke Johnson.

  “Ooooh, them eyes stormin’, like lightnin’ shootin’ at me.”

  And they’ll strike you down if I’m not careful.

  A fresh, hard sob made Victoria burst into tears. Her whole body was shaking, hurting with sadness, fear, extreme sleepiness. She was crying like a baby. She couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. Didn’t care what he thought. She bent at the waist, cupping her face in her hands as her knuckles pressed into the soft velour covering her knees.

  What if she just gave up? What if she just gave in? She could let her sex-crazed body take over her mind, let her circumstances take over her life, let her curiosity run free into the darker side of her heritage. Her first grade school picture in Gramma Green’s living room flashed in her thoughts.

  My roots really are here, on the black side. The white side doesn’t want me, never has. I could see Daddy’s relatives in the next car and wouldn’t know they were my own blood.

  But the delicious smelling man leaning over to stroke the back of her head, with the soft, soothing lullaby voice and the warmth she felt without opening her eyes, was all she had right now. It felt like more than she’d ever had outside of her mother’s lap and Daddy’s hugs and guidance to groom her into an intelligent person in business and in life.

  But how can that be? Duke and I are opposites. Or are we?

  Sobs made her whole body tremble under his gentle stroke on her back. The overwhelming grief and anger and unknowing of the moment swirled in her head.

  “It’s a’ight, baby girl,” Duke whispered into her hair. I’d be scared, too, if I was fallin’ in love with some big black dude from the hood. An’ come to find out the feds was after me too? Shoot, you deserve to go off. In full effect.”

  “If you knew the truth, you wouldn’t touch me.” She sobbed, feeling light-headed. “My curse could hurt both of us. Plus if I work for you, those blood-thirsty investigators—”

  “Would never find you.”

  She raised up, staring at him through tear-blurred eyes. “This is so bizarre I feel dizzy. The job you have in mind would only get me in more trouble, whatever you do at your so-called company. Whoever you are!”

  “Yo’ stomach full?” he asked softly.

  “I could’ve found something to eat—”

  The tenderness in his eyes hardened. He had a scolding tone when he said, “An’ I coulda lef’ yo’ white ass in yo’ Grammomma house wit’ roaches, pit bulls an’ yo’ dyke-ass cousin. I coulda let that dog attack yo’ pretty face. I coulda let you go hungry. So, go back tonight and think about exactly who I am. Duke Johnson the hand that feed you. So don’t bite.”

  “I already did,” she said with a sassy tone. She sat up straight, staring hard-as-nails right back into his beautiful onyx eyes. “I bit you on your neck. And you loved it. Now, what crime did you say they got me on?”

  Disbelief flashed in Duke’s gaze. Then he said, “A BWB.”

  “What in the world is that?”

  “Breathing While Black.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Ain’t no gray area in them white ma’fuckas’ eyes. One drop of nigga blood, you black. So now, to them cock-suckin’, sell-they-own-momma-up-the-river FBI cats, you black. And they wanna get cha, ’cause they couldn’t get cha daddy. He gone. Stay wit’ me, baby girl, an’ they’ll neva fin’ Victoria Winston. She jus’ changed her name to The Duchess.”

  Duke screeched into traffic. She laid her head back, staring up at the darkening sky. Suddenly, a rhyme spun in her mind. She recited it with spoken word rhythm. “I’m so confused, bein’ used as a news scandal muse.”

  Duke turned. His eyes sparkled with intrigue.

  “Don’t know where to go, feelin’ so sad, so mad, so bad, ’cause the life I had,” she looked closer into his eyes, “went up in gun smoke. A cruel joke, like a yoke around my neck. What the heck am I doin’, thrown into the hood? Am I no good? Misunderstood?”

  “Yeah, baby. Rap that.” Duke smiled, touching the stereo. A deep bass beat by Bang Squad played under her poem.

  “Now I’m black, catchin’ flack, with a lack of money. It’s not funny. My life was honey, now it’s—” She hit the radio. “That music is distracting.”

  “You rappin’. Tha’s all rap is, rhymes wit’ music.”

  “I suppose you want me to put pasties on my boobs and say vulgar things about sex. I’m a poet, not a rapper chick.”

  “A flower by another title still a flower,” Duke said, trying to remember what he learned in eighth grade English.

  “Ugh, get it right or don’t say it.’ A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”’

  “You a’ight, baby girl,” Duke said with a laugh.

  She laid her head back, yawning like she could sleep for three days, but soon as he turned onto Babylon, she turned white as a ghost. Her pretty hands gripped the sides of her seat. She shook her head, fear flashing in her eyes. Her chest was rising up and down quickly like niggas had a tendency to do when Duke pulled them aside and evaluated their performance at Babylon.

  Duke ached at the sight of Duchess looking so scared.

  Ain’t no way I’m gon’ let her back up in Miss Green house. She mine now.

  Chapter 19

  Beamer’s whole body shook as he sped down the Lodge Freeway after leaving Milan’s hotel room. He had to get back to Babylon with a good excuse for why he didn’t answer his phone when Duke called twice. Doing that once was enough to get jacked. But twice?

  ’Cause I was fuckin’ his girl?

  If Milan still was Duke’s girl. She wasn’t officially, because Duke was probably on Lily White right now, getting her hooked on his power and his dick. But with Duke being so super-mack, the unstated rule was “once his lady, always his lady.” This made her off limits for anybody else to take a taste. Or a fuck. Or sche
me an overthrow.

  “What I’ma do?” Beamer cried into the loud beat of Tupac inside the black Hummer. It was Babylon’s Hummer, of course. Beamer wouldn’t have shit if Duke hadn’t given him life two years ago.

  Fo’ real.

  “I mus’ have a death wish. Nineteen years old, plottin’ my own murder.”

  By bein’ stupid. Clownin’ wit’ my job, my life.

  He’d been writing out the instructions with his own nut. Why hadn’t he known Milan couldn’t be trusted, that trying to work with her was like trusting Judas? Impossible. He was thinking with his dick that was why. What could he do now? He could tell Milan that he wanted out, but she would bust on him, no joke. If he tried to tell Duke it was a set-up, boss man would ask why he was in a hotel room with her in the first place. He could confess to Duke what happened. Beamer let that conversation play out in his head, but he felt like he had an audience: all the ghosts of too many other dead motherfuckers who also jacked up their own lives and got themselves killed. They were proof that nobody could fuck around on Duke and get away with it.

  Hell naw, I ain’t goin’ out like that. Especially over some ma’fuckin pussy. Beamer slammed his foot down on the accelerator. He had to get back to Babylon and fast.

  Chapter 20

  No, I can’t faint. Victoria focused hard on the garbage heaps, rusting cars, and abandoned houses on Babylon Street. The surrealness of it, like the set of one of those futuristic movies about a city destroyed by war, made it harder to hold onto her consciousness.

  I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m awake . . .

  She felt like she was about to faint, like that time last year when Brian told her she had a fat ass and she didn’t eat for nearly a week. Right now, she felt the same as she did back then, when an ear-ringing blackness rumbled into her brain. She closed her eyes and slept until her sister Melanie shook her awake, forced her to drink orange juice and eat a good meal.

  “Duke,” she said. Her voice sounded like it was at the end of a tunnel, echoing back at her.

  Celeste, help me. Give me some strength.

  “Baby girl, you white as snow right now. I’ma take you in, let you sleep.”

  She shook her head. Panic was transforming her insides into a live electrical wire, buzzing and sparking and jolting her senses. “Check this out,” he said, pulling up to a ten-story warehouse building with big wooden double doors, sandblasted brick and new paned windows. The sidewalk was clear of the broken glass that glittered everywhere else.

  “When I was growin’ up right there”—Duke pointed to a neat Cape Cod-style house next door—“this buildin’ was abandoned. All the windows was broken out.” He was talking fast. Somehow Victoria knew he was trying to keep her conscious.

  “Crackheads used to smoke up in here, an’ a girl got raped while she was walkin’ to school. Man, I was ’bout to kill a nigga when that shit happened.”

  Victoria strained to hear him over the constant scream of sirens, the bass beat of rap music, loud voices, and old cars rumbling past. The noise, at least, was helping to push back that dark cloud in her head that was trying to knock her out.

  Duke turned toward the building on their right. “So I built my own Trump Tower. Me, Prince, an’ Knight was visitin’ some associates on the East Coast. Soon as we seen that shit on Fifth Ave, took my vision to another level.”

  The empty lot next door and the boarded up, graffitti covered house beside that made Victoria want to ask why he’d build a palace in the ghetto. But she didn’t have the energy.

  “This home base, baby. I’m a leader. E’rybody ’round here look up to Duke and the Johnson brothers. Right now, though, I’m solo, rulin’ like a king.”

  The deep drone of a military style chant made Victoria glance to the right. Her mouth dropped open.

  Jogging toward the car, up the almost dark street, was a column of shirtless men in black-white-gray camouflage pants and black combat boots. Their skin glistened with sweat over muscles rippling in a mosaic of colors: jet black, cinnamon, nutmeg, oatmeal, redwood, Cocoa, and cream as white as hers. Some were bald, some had huge, wild afros, others had tiny braids, loose and bouncing or curving against their heads.

  There were dozens. Yeah, four columns of twelve. As they jogged past the car, each man let out a deep call to Duke that vibrated through Victoria’s chest.

  “Babylon!”

  They accented the last syllable, “Babylon!” with a sort of upward swing on the end, like a call out with the greatest pride. The word was also tattooed in small scroll across each of their right pecks.

  Victoria stared with wide eyes. If she had stepped out of her former life and into this spot without the past week’s events, she would faint from fear. She still felt like she could. This was just part of her wild-and-getting-wilder Alice in Ghettoland experience.

  Maybe if I live through this I can write a book and use it to pay for college.

  It looked like an NFL team was coming at her, and it was making Celeste absolutely roar.

  Oh my God. Those guys are like letting off a cloud of sex power. If I go anywhere near that—

  At the academy, there were two black guys on the football team, and Victoria’s pussy would cream as she watched them run in those little tights. That’s why she loved watching Lions games at Ford Field from the private suite Daddy’s business paid for. All the clients and friends thought it was cute that Dan’s daughter had such passion for the game of football. Little did they know that all her staring through the binoculars let her ogle those athletic asses, their curving hamstrings, and their super-strong quads as they ran and tackled.

  Now, Victoria crossed her arms to hide the fact that she was panting so hard. Her chest was rising and falling as hard as it had when she kissed Duke.

  “Baby girl, you safe. Chill. This my army. My Black Warriors. The women, they B’Amazons.” Duke was beaming as the men thundered past. As he nodded proudly, his diamond ring sparkled when his hand fell to his lap.

  The cloud of testosterone exploding from Duke and all those men made Victoria melt into the bucket seat. All she could think about was sex, but not in a way that she’d ever experienced. The only frame of reference for sex she had were memories of Brian’s erections. Movies with love scenes. Suddenly Victoria was overwhelmed with curiosity at what it would be like to do it with Duke, and all these men.

  “Huu-uuut!” A deep female voice called.

  Victoria turned around. More soldiers were coming.

  Women! They were wearing fatigues, boots, and tank tops. Their heads were adorned with braids, ponytails, bald heads, and afros. Their skin represented every hue from pinky white to black satin, and it glistened with a super sexy sheen of sweat.

  Their faces were so beautiful. One reminded Victoria of the black Barbie dolls her mother bought when she was five. Daddy had taken them away after Mommy died, just like he stopped bringing her to Gramma Green’s house for visits with the black side of her family. Not because they were black, he said, but because this part of town was “treacherous and crime-infested” and “a bad influence.”

  Now Victoria felt a burning pang of resentment that she’d been shielded from this part of her roots. Who, in her past privileged life, would believe this sight? It was surreal even as she stared through her own fatigued eyes.

  She felt a jolt of sex energy as the women jogged past. It was impossible not to feel a prickle on her skin or a hardening sensation in her tingling nipples or a hot gush in her pussy, because those women were like Amazon goddesses. They radiated nothing but power, strength, confidence, and sex.

  As the women, they ranged in age from about thirteen up to a woman with silver hair-jogged past, they charged the air with sex. They looked so powerful, confident, and strong. She watched the way their nipples were poking through tight tank tops. Each had BABYLON tattooed on chiseled biceps, triceps, and deltoids.

  They followed the men through the field, around the back of Duke’s building. He drove the other wa
y, down an alley. A huge door opened. A futuristic, neon blue light glowed from the opening as Duke wheeled inside.

  The enormous garage could hold a football field. The three-story-high ceiling was a silver network of exposed pipes and whirring fans. Brick walls displayed airbrushed murals of ghetto fabulous city scenes in vivid cobalt blue, magenta, and bright yellow. A giant sign, made from neon blue block letters, said BABYLON across the left wall.

  It shined on the silver floor, which was made of metal tire tread. It seemed to stretch forever as Duke drove past rows and rows of black Navigators, Hummers, and Escalades. A yellow H2, a cobalt blue Corvette and a baby blue Bentley were also on display. To the right was a set-up worthy of an authentic rock or rap concert hall: a grand, black stage with enormous speakers. The far corner looked like a nightclub with a long bar and sleek silver stools. Behind that, a mirrored wall held endless glass shelves of liquors.

  Victoria looked up and back as the garage door closed. Near it, a spiral staircase, also made of that silver tire-tread metal, led up to a balcony furnished with cobalt blue plush couches and silver tables. A glass elevator connected the garage floor to the balcony and upper floors.

  All those male and female soldiers were inside now, their chants echoing through the cavernous garage. They were filing up an industrial-looking staircase that led somewhere beyond the elevator. Motors revved, drowning out their chants. Lights glowed on four Navigators. The vehicles filed out.

  Victoria felt dizzy. Awed. What the hell kind of operation was this? Was this legal? What were all these people doing here? And what in the world did Duke want her to do here?

  “Duke,” she said, turning to him. “What—”

  A blue light flashed through his white linen shirt. Duke stopped the car in the center of the garage. He raised the bottom of his shirt, reaching for one of two phones clipped to his waistband.