I knew he was in the final stretch. His stomach was flexing and I could feel him swelling in my hand and in my mouth, when I started vibrating. Not a small vibrating, but I almost shot up off him and backed back down. He’d gone and bought a big-ass dildo. I mean like one that I would have gone and bought myself if he was gonna be gone on a long business trip. I tried to scoot back on it because it was feeling super nice and then “pop.”
Oh no, he didn’t. I know we’d had the ass discussion. It was off limits.
My ass was plugged and it was vibrating and my clit was still vibrating, and it wasn’t bad it was just so much vibrating that I couldn’t tell if I liked it all at once. So I licked my pinky and slid it in. See how much he liked it. One second I was holding the dick and voila it went from being magically delicious to feeling magically delicious.
“Oh, you wanna play in asses?” He roared, “You forget that I’m the nigga?”
Each word was accented with a pussy-clenching, sheet-tangling, mattress-shifting, power pump that slid me across the bed. It was the worst best punishment ever.
“Damn! Yes, you are. I’m sorry.” I moaned and whined.
Devon stroked my pussy with the determination of a man with OCD methodically stroking a cat. They’d be long and rhythmically deep. I agreed with him, apologized, and probably thanked him in advance until he’d find those bittersweet spots that’d make my legs tremble. All I could do at that point was hold on and then everything stopped. Exasperated, I clawed his thighs with my nails. Devon grabbed my wrists and leaned forward, pinning them above my head. He kissed me and I moaned against his lips, wiggling my hips, trying to get him to move.
“Tell me what you want,” he directed.
When I merely frowned up at him not answering, he pulsed in between my legs, making my walls clench in reflex and my eyes cross. Devon made me aware that no matter what happened on a day-to-day basis, when we got down to us, man to woman, skin to skin, it was okay to want or even like for someone else to be in control. I didn’t have to pretend to be unbreakable or invincible. Although sometimes I just liked pretending so he’d try to break me.
“I want you. I don’t want anybody but you, baby,” I whispered helplessly. I was lost and loving every bit of it.
“Good, now you’ve earned your bath and when you’re done maybe I’ll give you the present I bought you.” He grinned and I wondered what the hell he was up to. It was too damn early for a ring. It’d better not be a damn ring. I watched his thigh muscles flex as he kneeled to adjust the water and turn on the jets in the tub. Trey was with Denise so I knew he was in good hands, but I didn’t know about this whole surprise business. I hated surprises. People never seemed to give you exactly what you wanted or expected. The room was beyond nice; it was on some all out honeymoon suite type shit. At the moment the last thing I wanted to do was have a Twix moment on this nigga because he’d popped out a promise, engagement, or even a damn friendship ring.
Devon brought me a glass of moscato once I’d eased myself into the water. He’d remembered that I didn’t really like champagne. I was so nervous I downed the glass. You definitely shouldn’t drink in hot tubs it makes the smallest amount of alcohol go straight to your head.
“Okay, no peeking. I promise you’ll love me for it.” He handed me a damp wash cloth.
Laying it over my eyes I put my head back with a sigh. The jets were loud so I strained to hear what he was doing. A glass touched my lips and I took a sip rolling my eyes at his attempt to get me drunk. Okay, more moscato. He pressed up against me removing the washcloth. I was instantly teleported back to the hospital. My heart had to have skipped at least five solid beats. She was right there pressed up against me, the girl with Lataya’s eyes. The back of the Jacuzzi scraped my back and water splashed everywhere as I panicked and tried to climb out. I was scared to take my eyes off of her to see where Devon was. Her hand quickly flew up covering my mouth and she smiled shaking her head at me.
Where was Devon did he set me up? Was he hurt?
Chapter 26
Twisted Sister
“Hi, Michelle. Did you miss me?” she asked.
It was Honey’s voice, I was dead certain of that but it wasn’t her face. I squinted at her like a Monet but aside from her eyes I just couldn’t see the baby-faced bitch I knew. Devon moaned from somewhere behind me, it sounded like the bed. Honey grinned at the sound.
“Oops, I might have drugged y’alls wine a little bit. See after Rah oh, wait, they think you shot me, huh? Hmm, wonder how that happened? Well, either way it hurt like a mothafucka. I was tryin’ to get a refill on my oxy when I’m in the E.R. and I overhear a nurse on her break talkin’ all quiet to who? Your boo, Dr. Harrington on the phone. He’s telling her how he’s tryin’ to find a girlfriend for his girlfriend.” Honey explained.
I was starting to feel sluggish and woozy as she talked. So she was Devon’s damn surprise. Ugh. He had the worst taste in surprises; I didn’t want or need a woman in our relationship.
“Honey? If it’s even you. Why would you hurt him, he hasn’t done anything to you?”
She didn’t answer me, she slowly backed away taking enough bubbles with her to cover her body. She was staring at me the entire time. My eyes were starting to feel lazy, not sleepy, just lazy.
“Michelle? I’m not gonna kill you. You’ll wish you were dead by the time I’m finished though. When you an’ Larissa decided how and what would happen to everybody around you, it was like playin’ God and shit right? You ever tried china white? I think we gonna stay here until you love china white more than you love life.”
What the fuck was china white? I tried to think of every damn drug I’d ever heard of or seen Ris do or deal with. Honey climbed out of the Jacuzzi gracing me with a view of her full bare ass. She had a stripper’s ass, and then there they were on her left shoulder the letters Honey. It was definitely her. A new surge of adrenaline and fear coursed through me and I tried to get up off the seat before she came back from wherever she was. Devon was laid out across the bed, I could barely see his chest rising and falling. There wasn’t anything close that I could use for a weapon except . . .
Grabbing the champagne flute I slipped it into the water and snapped the cup off the stem against the edge. I’d accidentally broken enough of those things doing dishes to be a wine glass breaking pro. I ran my thumb across the jagged glass pick I’d created. It could work. Honey came sashaying back from the direction of the bathroom.
“Just in case you wanna’ try some sneaky shit. I brought my l’ila friend,” she announced with a fake accent and a giggle waving a small gun. “Now, come here.”
I refused to let the only weapon I had go, it was no match for a gun but she wouldn’t have that gun in her hand forever. My legs felt like rubber as I tried to stand up. I used my imbalance as a reason to turn my back to her and I slid the washcloth over my glass shank. She walked over just as I managed to climb up and sit on the edge of the tub, guess I was moving too slow for her.
“Look at me, Michelle. It’s time to start your new life,” she instructed.
I refused, scared she was about to stick the barrel of the gun to my forehead or in between my lips. I sat there naked and shivering shaking my head no. She pointed the gun at me and my nostrils flared as I weighed my options. Reluctantly I did as told and she blew some kind of powder into my face. I coughed and gasped for air, rubbing my eyes and blinking. She started speaking but her voice sounded like she was in a different room and it was strange but I felt happy as fuck. Like there was nothing wrong at all. I couldn’t remember where I was or why but I honestly didn’t care, everything was good.
“That was scopolamine or devil’s breath. You won’t remember none of this. Now, we are going to have ourselves some fun.”
I watched everything from somewhere inside my body. It was like I wasn’t in control of what I was doing; I just gladly did as I was told. Honey scampered away and came back. She laid out all these syringes, pills and powd
ers in front of me and I smiled down at them. She laughed at me and I laughed with her.
“We are gonna play a game. We’ll start with the pills you’ll work your way up until you get to the syringes. There’s one for you and your boo, Krokodile. It’s paint thinner, kinda like heroine tears your skin to shit so we’ll save it for last. Um, this should be heroine, or it’s morphine I don’t remember. But, when your man wakes up you’ll pick a needle, walk over like nothing’s wrong and give him a shot. Okay?” she asked.
“Alrighty. But, what do I win?” I asked.
“You win a fucked up drug habit, and we’ll ride to your bank and you’ll withdraw some money for me after that you’ll go get your son so I can take him with me. He won’t want to be with your broke drugged up ass now will he? Isn’t that how everyone thought about me?”
“Yes, that is how we thought.” I giggled like we were discussing an episode of Love and Hip Hop and not my son.
“Okay, let’s do some pills or something my ass gettin’ bored as fuck.”
Honey took two and handed me two; I did what she did and swallowed them drinking from the moscato bottle nearby. She threw a robe at me and I slid it over my body enjoying the feel of the cotton gliding over my skin. Devon moaned over on the bed so I did as instructed and reached down picking up a syringe filled with this brownish tinged fluid. I watched him in the setting sun and waiting excited to have a mission. Honey swayed on her feet and I giggled at her. Devon shifted and I rushed toward him smiling, he was waking up and Honey took off in the direction of the bathroom.
“Don’t worry. I think this one is the cracker bill . . . crocodile . . . heroine. This one is heroine.” I called out to her straddling Devon.
He opened his eyes as the needle jabbed into the skin of his neck, I started to press the end of the syringe smiling brightly all the while.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I told him, just as I was instructed.
Frowning, he swatted me off of him with a growl.
“What the hell are you doing?” He touched his fingers to his neck.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I couldn’t think of anything else to say it was as if I needed a script.
Devon rushed past me toward the bathroom and I followed behind him.
“Aww, what the fuck?” he cursed.
I looked around him, Honey was on her knees in front of the toilet. Well, more like her head was in the toilet. From the looks of it the pills she’d taken didn’t mix well with whatever was in the bottle of moscato. She went to vomit, passed out, hitting her head on the way down, she drowned with her face in the toilet bowl.
I had the worst headache of my life the next day. We didn’t say anything to the police about her drugging me. Devon carefully put everything in her bag and luckily for her they didn’t mention any of that in their reports to the media. It looked like an accident and they left it at that. I remembered bits and pieces of what she’d said and I’d laid him out decent for finding a random female to come through in the first place.
As an apology Devon finally let me have my way and he agreed to let me do teeniest bit of redecorating in his “asylum” portion of the hospital. I told him that after having firsthand experience as an actual guest and an actual million-dollar broker, I was beyond qualified to help make the place a little more antidepressant.
“Devon, I’m not even crazy and I wanted to kill myself after only a week up in here.” I laughed.
“That is sea-foam green and it’s statistically relaxing,” he retorted.
“Mmm hmm, just like your ‘statistically dramatic’ date that almost put you in the ER? Humph, relaxing my ass.”
My first order of business was repainting and redoing the floors. No more of that putrid green, period. We were putting lounge chairs and couches in the visiting areas; no more of that sitting in the cafeteria shit. You treat people like children in a mess hall and they’d act that way. Plain and simple. I’d found some nice landscape portraits of fields and flowers, dreamy stuff that depressed people would feel uplifted looking at. Overseeing the process was a headache as always. I had to keep the patients quarantined to one area, work in another, and keep Devon calm.
“Ms. Michelle?” one of the painters called out. “All this needs to be redone; the wall is chipping.”
I wouldn’t be able to get that kind of job past Devon. He’d have a fit. Maybe if we did it in pieces. This old place should have been redecorated and primped ages ago. I gave the painter the go-ahead, telling Devon’s ass take the day off; his pacing combined with the, spot, and corner checking was getting on every last one of our nerves. I was pretty sure I caught him with a leveler over a picture.
We’d found a nice place that would take Reena and we decided to split the cost of her stay equally. On nicer days they let their patients go outdoors for a few hours and I’d decided to personally see if she was settling in okay before we left her in their care. Devon walked with me. Reena was sitting on one of the cement benches beside the rosebushes this place had. I wanted to nudge or punch him and say “see, they have rosebushes.” Men don’t know anything about what the hell would cheer up a depressed anybody.
“Reena, it’s your lucky day,” one of the nurses called out from the hospital entrance waving. “Your sister is here to see you.”
She approached us, wearing a dramatically huge black Kentucky Derby straw hat, and I shielded my eyes, smiling brightly. The sun was glimmering off all these gold bangles, bands, rings, and such.
I extended my hand.
Let me find out Mona can clean up?
When she gripped it in a firm handshake I immediately snapped it back as she pulled off that hat.
“What in the hell? What the kind of bullshit is this? What are you doing here?” I huffed at her.
All the patients who were outside, started screaming or skipping and singing at the sound of my outburst. One of them even had the nerve to start skipping around us singing ring around the damn roses.
I grabbed Shiree’s ass around the neck and held her in a straight-up choke hold. All the gold bangles on her wrist clanged in protest as she waved wildly, flaying her arms, trying to grab me. I wasn’t about to get played or taken down by her or anyone else. Not after Honey came and zombie voodoo blasted me in the damn face at the hotel and especially not after I’d just seen Shiree’s ass cozied up with Big Baby and Honey. Then the heffa had the nerve, Rah said he was in love with her ass, too. Oh, no, we were not having this conversation any other way than how I had her ass.
Devon was telling me to calm down, the orderlies were trying to get me to calm down, Shiree was trying to get out my damn arms.
“You had the nerve date him or whatever after me and then show up here? You set Ris up? You probably set Honey up that day at the restaurant didn’t you?”
“I wanted to pay my respects to Ms. White; it ain’t got shit to do with you,” Shiree squeaked from under my arm.
Hearing her name Reena floated over like the world wasn’t in chaos all around her. “Michelle, where you been, girl? I ever tell you how I met Rasheed daddy?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes and tightened my grip. “Yes, you have,” I snapped. Nobody was trying to hear that mess right now, especially not me.
“No, I always skip the beginning. Let me tell you the beginning, baby.”
Chapter 27
Summer, 1986
“Look, how many times do I have to tell you to leave my damn son alone?”
“But it’s his baby, I swear. I wouldn’t lie about something like this.” I pleaded pathetically but she wasn’t trying to hear a word I had to say.
This definitely wasn’t what I was hoping for given my circumstances. I’d caught two busses and walked Lord knows how many blocks just to get over here. The sun felt like it was damn near sitting on the back of my neck the entire way and I only had enough cash on me for bus fare back. I’d stared some poor little Jamaican dude down so hard he’d actually backed up into his shop out of the doorway. Shit, my mi
nd wasn’t even on the cash register; if I stole anything up out of there it’d be beef patties and an ice-cold Ting soda.
“I swear, if your little trifling hoing ass isn’t wobbling off my porch in the next three seconds I’ll go get Big Bertha. She ain’t as nice and she’s way louder than I am.”
I hurried up and got my “nine and some change, sweaty, hot, an’ ready to burst” pregnant behind up out of there. Mrs. Tessa did not play when it came to three things: her son, the lottery, or her shotgun also known as Big Bertha.
I’d met Ray when he was interning up at the free clinic on Twenty-eighth Street. No, I was not up in there for no crazy shit. I was actually volunteering. All the crazy shit happened after that. My sister Mona and I had been on our own for nearly as long as l could remember. Our oldest sister, Mirna, had gotten all sanctified leaving us to do for ourselves. She’d been putting in overtime turning out this deacon’s son and once she’d gotten him on lockdown she acted like she ain’t want anything to do with any us anymore. She packed all her stuff and moved out to be with him, turning her nose up at us like we was beyond God’s reach in the process. Mona did what she had to in order to keep us decent and to keep the roof over our heads. Sometimes that meant doing things that some folk might consider immoral or scandalous but it made do.
See, our momma had left us for Mr. Johnson. No, not a man named Johnson, but the Johnson or should I just be obvious and say she left us for some dick? Mona had broken it down to me once but at the time I was too young to understand. It was around ten or eleven at night on my seventh birthday. I had a habit of crawling up under the bathroom sink whenever I was upset. There are some things you never forget, they stay with you, and the feeling stays with you for a lifetime. Like the first time I ever smelled a full pack of crayons, Christmas Day. But every box smells like Christmas after that. Everything from the night of my seventh birthday is still fresh in my head too.
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