by London Starr
I reached for the pills. King moved his hand back.
“Come closer, Ajoni,” he whispered with a devious glint in his eyes and a smile on his mouth. Once I noticed his thick lips, I could not stop staring at them. My stomach started to do flips. Before I could figure out what the hell that was all about, he raised his hand with the soda and I flinched. Not one more man was going to punch me that night and get away with it.
“If you hit me, King, I’m going to cut your balls off when you least expect it,” I promised.
He nodded and retorted, “If I hit you, you should cut my balls off.”
I became a little bit more confused after he said that. Who the hell agrees to be castrated?
“Ajoni, you need to take the pills. I have some food for you to eat in case you can’t take medicine on an empty stomach.” Why in the hell was he prepared for that?
“You knew Leek and X would hurt me, didn’t you?” I asked in disbelief.
His smile disappeared and he shook his head. “No baby. No man is supposed to touch you. Raw just got back with this stuff before you woke up.” I heard his explanation, but I was wondering if his smile was going to come back. He had a beautiful one with white straight teeth, and I hated to see it go away strangely, but his smile fading was the least of my problems. I had a dull ache in my head and jaw that was getting worse.
“It’s not your place to decide who touches me, King,” I spewed as I got close enough to reach out and take the pills and bottle from his hand. I tossed the pills in my mouth, then my head back. King stepped forward just as I turned the bottle up to drink from it. The candlelight glistened off the muscles in his chest and caught my eye. His eyes dropped to my throat. The pills stopped somewhere between my tonsils and my esophagus, as if they knew their movements were being tracked by him and were suddenly afraid to move any further. I nearly choked on them.
Somehow, I managed to get the pills down before saying, “Can you give me three feet please?” His closeness was messing with my body big time. I was here to be jumped in, not be seduced by a kingpin that would cut his mama’s head off if she fucked over him on something.
“No, I can’t, Ajoni. What I’m going to do is give you some Chinese food. What do you like to eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” I said plainly, wondering who could or would eat at a time like this.
King reached for the zipper of my jacket and began to pull it down slowly. The grinding of the metal teeth played havoc with my nerves that was already shot to hell. I took a deep breath, trying to prepare to be jumped in finally, and made the mistake of breathing in his scent again. I got a head rush; he smelled so damn good for a psychotic drug dealer. I become even more afraid of him, in a different way.
After he unzipped my jacket halfway, he stopped and asked, “You sure you’re not hungry?”
Since I was not ready to become Queen nor would I ever be, I jumped on the chance to postpone it. “I can eat.”
He released my zipper and pointed to the table at the back of the room with burning candles in the middle of it and two cushioned wood chairs facing each other. Brown sacks with Chinese lettering on them sat on one side of the table. Chinese food is a delicacy to a girl with junkies for parents. My mouth began to water, and I really could eat suddenly, so I turned and walked toward the table with King following behind me. That was nerve wracking as hell when I did not know what he would do next.
Then he asked, “Which side do you want to sit on?” Instead of answering him, I moved to the left, intending to take a seat and watch his every move until he dropped his guard. As soon as he did, I planned to be out of there. I would worry about how to get past the rest of the Kings when I got to them.
King trailed me to my side of the table, when I expected him to go to other. I reached for the back of the chair to pull it out for myself, but his hand dropped down on mine before I could. Lightning bolted up my arm and gave me a mini-heart attack. His touch not was as unpleasant as it should have been, and that was shocking enough to make me try to snatch my fingers from beneath his. He applied pressure keeping them trapped on the back of the chair, but not enough to hurt me. I glanced up at him.
He smiled again. “I got this. Step back, sweetheart.” My mouth dropped open; I was shocked a thug was being a gentleman. The next time I tried to retrieve my fingers, they slid from under his easily. I stepped back. He sat down in the chair.
Needlessly to say, I was pissed off about that and thought to myself, ‘This Negro ain’t no damn gentleman,’ as I turned to walk to the other side of the table. Hands wrapped around my waist before I could take my first step in that direction, picked me up like I weighed no more than a sack of feathers, and hauled me backwards into a hard lap. I yelped loudly when I realized whose lap I was sitting in, and grew afraid of him again. King laughed out loud behind me. I rotated around just to be sure he was really laughing at me, as his deep laughter peeled a layer of my fear away like an onion.
To this day, I still do not know how he did that. It could have been because the only time I heard him laugh before then was when I was beating the shit out of somebody, and the sound was shocking enough to make me think he just might not hurt me.
“Ajoni, I wasn’t just talking about you when I asked what side you wanted to sit on. What do you want to eat, sweetheart?”
“Whatever you have is fine,” I answered while staring at the chiseled planes of his face. I could not have looked away even if someone else turned my head. I was beginning to see a side of King that I did not know he had.
It was fascinating to the naïve girl I was back then.
“No, it’s not fine, Ajoni. What you want is what you get.”
“Except for leaving,” I stated matter of fact.
I may have been naïve, but I was not stupid.
“Except for leaving,” he mimics. I tried to be disappointed that I really would have to sleep with King before this night was over, but I was more interested in examining the man that was under me.
“If I don’t have what you want to eat here, someone will go get it for you,” he mentioned suddenly.
I cringed. “So your boys can spit in my food as payback? I’ll eat whatever you eat.” There was no way in hell I wanted X and Leek bringing me anything after King brought his wrath down on their heads for me. He is brutal when it suits him, and that is what I feared most about him.
King reached behind me and dragged the sacks to the edge of the tabletop.
I wanted to know more about him, so I asked, “What’s your real name?”
“Calen Kingsley,” he answered with no hesitation then deposited something in front of my mouth. “Open for me,” he ordered softly, but it did not sound like an order. I was too surprised that he was about to feed me from his hand to disobey him. He slid the food between my lips. My tongue grazed his fingertips. He snatched them out of my mouth so fast he almost took the meat back, then closed his eyes and groaned, as if he was dying. A lump began to grow below the globes of my ass and I knew he most certainly was not dying.
A pulsing began between my thighs. I had only experienced that sensation whenever I saw Jordan, but he was nowhere to be seen. My body was reacting to Calen’s, and that scared me shitless. I stopped chewing the greasy meat, and began to wonder when the hell I became attracted to Mecca’s kingpin. I had watched him run my block like it was his kingdom for the last four years and never thought of him once as someone I could date; he still was not.
King was someone you did not deal with unless you had already said goodbye to your loved ones, and he had no future. I wanted a future, knew better than to tie mine to his, and needed to get back to my mother. But the sensation between my thighs was not worried about the future and wanted something from Calen right then, so I swallowed the food then tipped my head down and touched my lips to his boldly. It was not like Jordan would be my first time, I had to get home before someone realized I wasn’t there, and I need this throbbing to stop.
After kiss
ing King, I learned what it really meant to have your senses blown wide open by skin-to-skin contact and that I could take a man by surprise as well. He opened his mouth beneath mine. I did the same. His thick tongue slipped between my lips. My stomach hollowed out. The pulsing between my thighs worsened as my blood thickened in my veins. King applied a gentle suction to the tip of my tongue and made a wave of heat swim through me.
Suddenly, it was too damn hot and I could not breathe comfortably. I pulled my mouth back from his, and placed my hands on his chest, which made me even hotter, then rested my forehead on his. I was in trouble of the worst kind; sensual and it has only one cure, but I did not have the nerve to ask Calen to give me what I wanted, so I waited for the feelings taking over my body to pass.
“Ajoni,” he whispered and dropped his hands on my thigh and the small of my back. “What’s wrong, baby.”
“I want you, Calen. That’s what’s wrong,” I answered truthfully, too far gone to think clearly, or I would have lied to him.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You have no future. In two or three more years, you will be in jail or hell. That’s the lifespan of a kingpin. You will have had a good run though, but I don’t want to go down with you.”
“You will be mine Ajoni, until the day one of us dies,” he replied gruffly, suddenly angry.
“No, I—” ‘Won’t’ never made it out of my mouth. Calen had raised his mouth to mine before I could finish. The heat wave came back for me, and sucked the air out of my lungs that time. I opened my mouth to tell him I was burning up. His tongue slid between my lips, glided across mine, and sent an electric current straight through me to the tunnel between my thighs. The pulsing that was already pounding my walls upgraded to a jackhammer. I moaned; was in real pain.
Calen’s hands moved to my waist. He stood up, plastered my front to his, and began walking away from the table while swirling his tongue in and out of my mouth. I wrapped my arms around his wide neck and waited for him to do whatever he wanted to next, which was lay me softly down on the bed and take his mouth from mine before he finished pulling the zipper of my jacket down all the way then spreading it open with his hands.
I watched him reach for the button on my black jeans that was one size too small, then he tugged them down my thighs, but he was moving too damn slow. I sat up, pulled the jacket off, and hauled my yellow T-shirt with bleach spots over my head then unhooked my white bra that was shredding along the seams.
He stood up, stepped back, and reached for the button of his jeans that was balancing on his lean hips, giving a sneak peek of his royal blue briefs. When his jeans and underwear hit the floor, he stepped out of his boots that he never laced up. Shit started to get real for me—I was really about to sleep with a kingpin that would kill me if I made him angry in just the right way. That was not my main concern though.
His erection was curving against the first set of six packs I had ever seen on a man without a television screen being in the way. It was too long and too thick for me to believe that I could hold it with just one of my hands. I started to think that I had bitten off more than I could chew with him, again. He was just too much man, so much more than Jordan.
“Ajoni,” Calen called me softly.
I looked up into his face.
“I won’t hurt you.” But I knew that was a lie; everyone’s first time hurt, or so the few girls that I hung with from time to time had told me.
“I can’t—”
“Yes you can, sweetheart. You were made for this. Every woman is. Lie back and I’ll show you.”
I wanted to believe him, trust him. I had to; was not going to get out of here until he got what he wanted from me anyway. On a deeper level, I wanted him to have it, so I searched that deeper level inside me for some strength or false courage; whichever I found first would have to do to get me through this.
I laid back on the bed in only my white, simple underwear with my heart threatening to jump out of my chest.
Calen moved to stand over me. “Slide back, baby,” he demanded with his jet-black eyes skimming over my small breasts. His stare caused my nipples to harden even more. I scooted backwards just to get his eyes off of them, and to make the excruciating tightening feeling stop—it literally hurt so good.
He dropped one knee between my legs, then the other, tunneled his fingertips into the slit of my closed thighs, and pushed them apart, exposing the soaked nook of my underwear. He then palmed my crotch. The heel of his hand rubbed against my clit and sent waves of agonizing pleasure through me.
My knees rose in the air before I even knew they were doing it, giving him more access to the space between my legs that was aching for more strokes from Calen’s fingers. He reached for the waistband of my underwear instead and slid them down my legs. I closed my knees in the air so he could pull my panties completely off. When he had, I dropped my feet to the bed on each side of his body. He dropped over me, bracing his weight on huge hands on each side of my head.
“Kiss me, Ajoni.”
I did not hesitate to plant my hands on each side of his head and drag his lips down to mine. Kissing him was fast becoming my favorite pastime. Then one of his hands vanished from beside my head and began fondling the lips between my thighs.
“So fucking wet,” he groaned the words against my mouth then his fingers were replaced with what felt like the blunt tip of a telephone pole, pushing at the entrance of my body. I did not think it would fit, and tensed up just as he was plunging inside me. Small traces of pain and pleasure sliced through my tunnel. I cried out. He buried himself in my body, then stopped moving.
“It will stop, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry. I did not know you were so damn tight.” But the pain had already faded, leaving behind the feeling of being too full with his body possessing mine, and I had gotten my first taste of what it meant to be with a man. I liked how it felt when I clenched around him as he slid inside me for the first time, so I tightened my muscles again then unclenched them. He groaned above me and withdrew, rubbing against my walls that held his pole too damn snugly. Intense pleasure exploded inside me that felt even better than squeezing him, and I wanted to feel it again. The words ‘Don’t stop, Calen’ fell out of my mouth easily.
***
I did not know then that I would say them happily for hours afterward as he drove in and out of me over and over again, etching his possession of me and his name on my mind and body. I smile to myself as the plane dips below me, putting pressure on my ears, making me think about the pressure that started to build in my core soon after Calen began to make love to me. I had no idea what the hell was happening to my body until I came for him, and would two more times before he was through that night. Calen would never be far from my mind afterwards, even eight years later.
Anjuwan Kalynn Mitchell would become the best part of us that I could keep close forever, because I am sure I will never see Calen Kingsley again, thanks to Larkin. It took me nine months exactly, and the birth of our daughter to figure out that it was not King that told me things about him after we made love, showing me the soft sides of him while we had pillow talk. Nor was King the one that I convinced to let me go home.
It was Calen who got out of the bed, put my clothes on himself, dug ten thousand dollars out of the floor of the warehouse and gave it to me just because I was his, then took me home and kissed me goodnight for ten minutes before I got out of his truck. It is Calen who I fell in love with that night, and then snitched on, but it is King that I am terrified of finding me and my family when he gets out of prison.
“Lawd, child, what is on your mind?” the old lady asks suddenly, worriedly, in true a Southern accent that I only hear when my mother’s speak now.
I glance over at her standing in the aisle and looking down at me.
She shakes her head. “One minute you’re smiling then you frowning. Honey, whatever it is that’s got you all mixed up, get off this plane and fix it,” she stresses before walking away. I k
now instantly that she has been trying to get my attention for awhile, but the memories of Calen and King always grip me tightly. I catch hell getting loose every time.
I get out of my seat while extracting my cell phone from my purse to text Natalie Harold and let her know that my plane has landed. As I exit the glass doors of the airport not knowing how long I will have to wait on the sidewalk for someone to pick me up, a white Escalade that looks a lot like King’s truck pulls up to the curb in front of me.
My blood stops flowing as I begin to worry that I have been set up, but the truck looks old and unlike anything King would drive; his vehicles were always immaculate with twenty-two inch rims and music blasting from the speakers that used to shake the whole block when he rode by; then the passenger window rolls down.
“Ms. Mitchell,” a black woman with horn-rimmed glasses and her hair pulled back into a ponytail calls out.
“Natalie Harold,” I inquire warily. She nods her head, then reaches over the passenger’s seat and opens the door before picking up a yellow manila envelope off the seat. I assume it contains my father’s release paperwork, but I look over at Natalie first before getting in to see if she seems familiar from the old hood. She does not and nothing about her white blouse and black slacks seem suspicious.
Satisfied that I am not walking into a setup, I take the envelope from her hand, get in the passenger seat, and buckle up. Natalie smiles at me then drives away from the curb, and picks up her cell phone laying in one of two cup holders between the seats.
I open the envelope and pull the paperwork out as she dials out on her phone, then put it to her ear. The top sheet of the paperwork is blank, so I flip to the next page. It is blank too; so is the third page and fourth, fifth, sixth…
I realize that I could flip all day and would not find anything about my father or anyone else in this stack of printer paper. My father never asked anyone to call me, and Seeri was right; his altercation in Mecca County had been faked. Jonny could already be dead for all I know, but someone wanted me in Mecca. I want to know who and look over at Natalie, intending to beat her ass and kill her for some answers if I have to, just as someone sits up in the backseat.