by Kiki Swinson
At long last, the pressure against her windpipe loosened and she was able to slip away. She choked on her first sip of air and stumbled against the trunk of her car.
“Please . . . don’t shoot,” Ajet begged.
She turned and saw this big-eyed muthafucka with his hand up and trembling like a leaf. “Please, Blake. Tell him.”
“Tell him what—that you didn’t just try to kill me?”
Eli clicked off the safety.
“What?” Ajet tried laughing the shit off. “We were talking. We were just having a simple misunderstanding . . . that’s all.”
Blake straightened up, but with one hand still pressed against her sore neck. “I know you don’t think my ass is about to save you.”
“I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t going to kill you or nothing. I swear. I just maybe . . . wanted to scare you a lil bit.” Tears raced down his face while he blew a few snot bubbles. “I don’t want to die. Please. Don’t kill me.”
She couldn’t believe this shit. Her gaze shifted to Eli. The murderous look on the brothah’s face caused her heart to skip a beat. However, when his inky black eyes shifted to her, the last thing Blake felt was danger.
“Are you all right?” Eli asked in a velvet tone that fucked with her already-weak legs.
“I’m cool,” she lied.
He nodded and then returned his attention to where his huge cannon was planted at the back of Ajet’s head. “Want me to waste this muthafucka?”
Ajet dropped to his knees and burst into tears. “Please, please don’t. I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again. I’ll do whatever you want. Just please . . . please, don’t kill me.”
Blake had never seen no shit like this before. “How do I know that you won’t hire some more goons to come after me like you did last night?”
Elijah’s face twisted.
“I won’t. I swear.”
And there it was. This muthafucka just confessed.
“You son of a bitch!” She rushed his ass and gave him a good two-piece that rocked his head around his shoulders. Instead of taking the shit like a man, this spoiled mama’s boy curled into a fetal position—but that didn’t stop Blake from trying to stomp his ass into the ground. “Fuck you, muthafucka. Fuck! You!”
Ajet whimpered and cried while trying to dodge her spiked heel.
She went at his ass with everything she had. After a good two-minute workout, Eli grabbed her by the waist and dragged her away.
“Okay. That’s enough.”
“No! That muthafucka tried to kill me! Twice!”
“I know. I know,” Eli growled. “We’ll take care of his ass at another time. Right now we gotta bounce.”
“What? No. We—”
“Look around,” he hissed. “We got an audience.”
Her gaze shot around, and sure enough, couples were staring at the scene with their mouths open.
“He attacked me!” Blake shouted with the need to set things straight. “Tell them, asshole!” She delivered a kick that burst open his nose.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” Ajet cried.
“C’mon. You’ve made your point. Let’s go.”
“Fuck that. I want that muthafucka dead. You hear me? Shoot him!”
Shaking his head, Eli picked her up as if she weighed nothing.
“No. Goddammit. Shoot him!” When Eli ignored her, she searched his waist for a gun. He had to have one tucked there somewhere. She didn’t get close before she was shoved into the passenger seat of the car. “How fuckin’ dare—”
He slammed the door in her face. By the time she got over her shock, Eli was dropping into the seat behind the wheel.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like?” he asked, tossing over her purse and then jamming the key into the ignition. “I’m getting us out of here before someone calls the police.”
“Let them!”
The car’s engine roared to life.
“When are you going to learn that the police aren’t your friends?”
“You mean that they’re not your friends. What? Is your picture plastered all over some Most Wanted poster? Is that it?”
Eli shifted the car into reverse. “Ah. There’s a brain in that beautiful head of yours after all. I was beginning to worry.”
“Fuck you.”
“But that mouth.” He shook his head, shifted into drive, and then rammed his foot down on the accelerator, leaving Ajet to choke on their smoke as they peeled out.
10
“You need me,” Eli boasted, cutting a look over at her. “Admit it.”
“Humph!” Blake rolled her eyes and ground her teeth into a fine powder. The car was charged with so much anger, lust, and resentment that she was percolating in her seat. It was the second time in twenty-four hours that the dangerous stranger had saved her life, and she was not used to being indebted to anyone.
“Pride is a tough bitch going down,” he added, reading her thoughts like an open library book.
“Speaking from experience?”
“Always.” His full lips curled into that cocky smile that had her stomach twisting like crazy. She squirmed in her seat while trying to focus her attention on anything other than him. That shit wasn’t easy. Elijah Hardwick was all man. There’s so much testosterone rolling off him that her clit was as hard as a dick, and she was ready to bust a nut at any given moment.
“How’s your neck?”
Until now, she hadn’t realized she was still rubbing it. “It’s fine.”
Eli laughed. “You really are a bad liar.” He pulled over to the side of the road and hit the interior light. “Let me take a look.”
Alarm bells went off in her head. She didn’t know if she could handle his ass touching her. She might do something she’d regret—like jump his fucking bones and ride that damn anaconda she saw stretching down his leg until she blacked the fuck out. As his hands approached, she shrank back like a bitch.
Elijah’s face twisted, but then a second later his cocky smile glided wider. “What? You’re going to act like a big baby now? A few minutes ago you were demanding that I put a bullet in someone’s head in front of witnesses.”
“Yeah. And you couldn’t do me that simple favor,” she pouted.
His black gaze locked onto her. “There’s a right way to do things and there’s a wrong way.”
The look he gave her was both deadly and sexy. She didn’t even have to check her panties to know that they were completely soaked.
“Tell you what,” Eli said, leaning toward her and flooding her senses with his scent. “If you really want me to erase that muthafucka, just say the word and that white nigga won’t see the sun. I promise you.”
Her breath tripped up in her lungs while two things hit her at once: one, she had never ordered anyone to be killed before, and two, if Ajet was out of the picture, her leverage at the studio would go up in smoke. It was one thing to be pissed but was a whole ’nother thing to bite the hand that fed you.
Eli cocked his head. “Well? What’s it gonna be, baby girl?”
“I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
“Scared to take your gangster training wheels off?”
“I’m not scared,” she lied defensively. His sexy lips twitched again, and she wanted to smack the smile off his face—either that or fuck his brain out. Blake was having a hard time deciding which.
“Uh-huh. Just what I thought.”
“Whatever.” Blake rolled her eyes with attitude to try and cover the fact that she punked out on ordering her first hit.
Still laughing, Eli crooked a finger at her. “C’mon. Let me take a look at your neck.”
“Why? Are you a doctor now?”
He laughed. “You don’t believe in cuttin’ a nigga a break, do you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Let me guess. Some nigga done you dirty and now the rest of us muthafuckas got to pay for it?”
“Get the hell on w
ith that shit,” she said, cutting her eyes away and folding her arms underneath her breasts.
Eli’s laughter filled the entire car. “I swear, all you females are the same.”
“No. The. Fuck. You. Didn’t.” She rolled her eyes up and down his frame.
“Look. I keep it one hundred at all times. If you can’t handle the truth, then it’s best not to come around me.” He shut off the light. “Personally, I don’t have time for bitter bitches. Life is too fuckin’ short.”
“Bitter?” Her head damn near snapped off her neck. “How come every time a woman roadblocks a nigga’s weak-ass game, she gotta be bitter? Did you ever think that maybe you’re the problem?”
Eli laughed. “I hear you talkin’, baby girl, but you ain’t saying shit.”
“Whatever.”
“Does that mean that you’re not going to tell me who old dude was? Did he cheat on you?”
“It’s none of your damn business,” she snapped, and then realized that she’d walked right into his trap.
“I knew it.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you weren’t the boss’s daughter . . .”
While the sentence hung in the air, some really freaky, nasty shit floated across her head. “Wait. Come with it. If I wasn’t Mafia Don’s daughter . . . what?”
“Nothing.” His lips twitched again.
“And I’m supposed to be the bad liar?” She rolled her eyes. “Who would have thought that a big nigga like you is actually afraid of—”
“Ain’t nobody said shit about my ass being afraid of no damn body,” Eli growled with an intensity that scared her. “Elijah Hardwick ain’t afraid of no man. You feel me?”
“Right. Because you do everything my father tells you to do.” She folded her arms. “I’m confused. Does that make you his boy, his bitch, what?” Judging by his body language, her words were like lighting a bundle of dynamite.
“I’ve never hit a woman before.” His eyes glistened dangerously. “Don’t be the first.”
Blake’s heart stopped beating.
His dark eyes looked like bottomless black holes.
She struggled to swallow the knot in her throat. “What-ever.”
A few long seconds passed before Eli nodded and eased back into his seat, but there was still a tension between them that a chainsaw couldn’t slice through. “It’s about respect,” he qualified. “And more than anything, I respect Mafia Don—for shit you can’t even wrap your bougie mind around. I owe that man my life—and for that I agreed to come out here to La-La Land to babysit your ungrateful ass.”
“Ungrateful?”
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect a lil more gratitude from someone whose life constantly needs saving—from her own shit as well as from her father’s.”
If she kept grinding her teeth, she was going to need dentures before the week was out.
His right brow lifted. “Well?”
“Well what?”
Eli shook his head. “Whatever, baby girl. You do you.” He eased the car back onto the road and headed out to her crib. The whole time, he did this sexy gangsta lean with one hand on the steering wheel that caused her to keep checking him out from the corner of her eyes.
Blake pretended like she didn’t give a damn what the fuck he was doing or thinking. But the truth was, she was aware of every breath his ass took. If her clit was a dick, it would be sticking straight up—Lord knew it was hard and thumping against her panties.
By the time they rolled back up to her place, she was angry and horny.
“We need to talk,” Eli announced, following her into the house.
The last thing she wanted to do was talk. “Later. I’m not in the mood.” Blake kept marching toward the staircase. She needed to put as much distance between them as possible. However, she didn’t get so much as a foot on the staircase before her arm was almost wrenched out of its socket and she was jammed up against the wall.
“Who in the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
Eli mean-mugged her so hard that she wondered who was supposed to protect her from his ass.
“You really think that I’m some punk muthafucka you can pop the fuck off to, don’t you?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Well, let me correct you on a few thangs, baby girl. That ain’t how this shit here is going to go down. I’m a fuckin’ man, and I’m going to be respected as such.”
“Or what?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to stop them.
A black cloud blanketed his face before the nigga wrapped one arm around her waist, picked her up, and marched with her tucked under his arm toward the living room. When it finally registered that she was staring at the floor and at his feet, she kicked and screamed, “Are you crazy? Put me down!”
“Not until we get that mouth of yours under control,” Eli growled.
“Fuck you! Get out of my house!” Blake pounded on his steel thigh but hurt her hands in the process. Next thing she knew, Eli dropped down onto her couch and stretched her across his lap. She still didn’t get what he was up to until that first whack across her ass.
Blake screamed as though a blowtorch had been lit under her—mainly because that’s exactly what the fuck it felt like.
WHACK!
“What the fuck are you doing? STOP!” She thrashed around, trying to scramble off his lap, but it was like being locked down by steel bars. Her ass wasn’t going anywhere.
Whack!
Shit. My entire ass is on fire. “Stop!”
“Apologize.”
“Fuck you!”
Whack!
“Aaargh!” Her eyes burned as water poured out of them, fucking up her vision.
“I said, apologize.” WHACK!
“Let me go! Let. Me—”
Whack!
The pain was now radiating up her back and down her legs. I can’t take any more of this shit. She had never had a spanking in her entire life. The shit was beyond humiliating.
Whack!
“All right!” Blake panted like she had run around the world in sixty seconds. She wasn’t going to be able to sit down for a week.
“All right, what?” Eli growled behind her.
She hesitated as her brain scrambled for another way out of this shit.
“A hard head makes a sore ass.” He lifted his hand again.
“All right. I’m sorry,” she barked as her pride shattered into a million pieces across his lap—but he didn’t let her go.
“Are you going to control that smart mouth of yours?” he asked.
What choice do I have? “Y-yes.”
“Is that a promise?”
She heard the amusement in his voice, and her humiliation expanded until her face was as hot and sore as her ass.
“I can’t hear you,” he teased, lifting his hand again.
“Yes, dammit!”
With a loud chuckle, he released her. She scrambled so fast that she lost her balance and tumbled onto the floor, causing the pain in her ass to explode.
Eli’s head rocked back with laughter.
“I’m so glad this shit amuses you,” Blake spat, struggling to get up.
“Would it make you feel any better if I told you that spanking you hurts me more than it hurts you?” He jutted out his hand as an offer to help her up.
She ignored it and climbed up from the floor on her own.
He shrugged with a big ol’ smile. “Suit yourself.” He stood. “Now that we’ve come to an understanding about your attitude, let’s address some of the other issues. For example, no more Houdini bullshit. If I have to chase you around town again, tryna figure out how to sit will be the last thing on your mind. You feel me?”
Blake was too angry to speak, so she nodded.
“Good.” He puffed out his chest, entirely too pleased with himself. “From here on out, think of me as your shadow. Where you go, I go. Understand?”
She nodded again.
11
It looked like tearing Ms. Thang’s ass up was just what the doctor ordered. For the past thirty days, things churned like butter. While Blake wheeled and dealed with the big shakers in town, Elijah played bodyguard in the background though clearly he made a lot of her Armani-clad business partners nervous, but so far nobody tried to flex since he left Ajet Austin choking on exhaust fumes.
It’s a good thing, Eli guessed. Few niggas would complain of having to follow Blake’s fine ass around town, but he wasn’t the ordinary nigga. He could see himself getting used to the West Coast’s laid-back style. And he sure wouldn’t mind making some of the long green he saw floating around Beverly Hills.
True, he was used to being in the eye of the storm and fighting his way out. It kept the mind active and the reflexes sharp. But seeing how things rolled out here, he could be open to changing shit up one day.
Life without gangbanging. What would that shit be like?
Today, they were back on a movie set where a client was acting like a stone-cold bitch. He had lost count of how many times they had been out there to see this muthafucka. Don’t get it twisted—he wouldn’t want to be slobbering on some nigga on camera either, but all the whining was working his nerves.
“Nigga, just quit if you don’t want to do this shit,” Elijah blurted out after Blake spent another hour yelling and threatening this muthafucka.
Wendell’s eyes bugged out as he shot a look over at him.
“Don’t pay him any attention,” Blake said, giving Eli the shut- the-fuck-up look. “Nobody is quitting anything. Wendell here is going to stop bitching and stack this paper.”
Elijah rolled his eyes but checked his commentary. Good thing, too, because Blake really let him have it when they returned to the car.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing back there?” she raged as they slid into the backseat of the car of the day: a white Maybach 62.
“Looked like you needed some help.” He shrugged.
Her head nearly rotated off her shoulders. “Did I ask you for help?”
“Nah. But it seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.”