Envy (8 page)

Heads started shaking.

A chorus of, “Nah, man, I don’t remember her. Yo, I ain’t never seen that girl before. Me neither, I wasn’t even there that night, and Nah, she don’t even look familiar,” rang out in the room.

“Good,” Flex said, ignoring the smell of blood, shit, and hot brains that rose from Cee’s body and filled the air. He set the pistol down on the end table. “I didn’t think so.”

Doc’s eyes went to Cee-Low’s body, then quickly swept the room. 

The Divine Nine was back down to eight.

Flex unwrapped his steak bagel and took a big bite. “Yo, Stamp, run upstairs and tell Mr. Williams to give you a body bag ’cause we gonna need to do another double-stack. Everybody else…” he chewed with his mouth open and waved his breakfast sandwich in the air. “Let’s get back to business.”

CHAPTER 12

It felt like forever since the last time I had eaten me some McDonald’s, and I had just bitten into the toasted bagel and was feening on the taste of salty steak and cheese when I heard the gunshot.

My heart thumped twice and I dove straight under the table.

 “Don’t kill us,” I whispered, my eyes squeezed tight as I pulled my knees up to protect my stomach. “Please…don’t…”

I was gripped in fear. Frozen in place. Tiny fingers of terror dug into the pit of my stomach as I found myself stretched out on the floor of my bridal suite once again. I lay there for hours it seemed like. Blacking out and coming to. Twisting and turning in agony. The scent of gunpowder stung my nose, and a hot pellet of lead burned like hell as it bored deep into my belly. Gripping my middle, I moaned loudly and called out for Gino.

“Juicy! Juicy! What’s the matter, baby? What happened to you, girl?”

I opened my eyes.

It was Flex.

He was kneeling over me, and he looked more worried than I had ever seen him look in my life.

Oh, Gino,
I thought as reality hit me. And then my tears came. They were tears of pain, but they were tears of relief too.

“Juicy! What happened?” Flex pleaded. He rolled me over onto my back and his eyes scanned my body from head to toe. “Are you hurt? Was there something wrong with the food?
What the hell happened to your stomach?
”

I raised my head slightly and saw that my pajama top had ridden up over my navel. My bullet wound, and the scar I’d gotten from my operation, looked red and angry, just an ugly reminder of all the drama that I had been through.

Flex slid his arm under my shoulders and scooted closer until my head and neck were resting on his thighs. His hand was warm and gentle as he placed it on my belly and traced my scar with his fingers.

“Oh, Juicy,” he cried big tears as he held me in his arms and rocked me tenderly like a baby. I held him too. Flex mighta had his issues, but he was the closest thing I had to a family, and there was no denying that he had always loved me. We held each other close and for the first time in a long time I felt safe.

“Oh, baby,” he moaned, lowering me to the floor as he stretched out beside me. “Who did this to you, ma?” he asked, patting my stomach with his lips on my ear. “Tell me, baby. Tell Flex what happened.”

“Somebody shot me,” I said miserably. “I got shot.”

$$$$$

For the longest time I lay in Flex’s arms accepting all the comfort he had to give.

“Ain’t nobody never gonna hurt you again,” he whispered, clutching me to his chest as we both sniffed and cried. “I swear to God, Juicy. Won’t no fuckin’ body ever so much as
touch
you girl. You ain’t never gotta worry again. I can promise you that.”

I buried my face in his chest as he stroked my hair. I was gripped in grief over my family, but I was also grateful for Flex’s friendship and his love.

I’m not sure when I realized that something had changed, but at some point it did.

Flex was still stroking my hair and whispering words of comfort, but now he was pressing against me too. His dick was hard. I could feel it throbbing through his pants, and moments later he began moving his hips. Thrusting. Grinding. Poking his wood into me with a persistent, steady rhythm. 

“Flex,” I said softly, bringing my arms up to push him away.

“Shhhh…” he said, gripping me tighter. He covered my lips with his and began tonguing me down. His hand left my hair and slid over my shoulder, down the small of my back, over my ass, and between my cheeks. He moaned into my mouth and palmed my ass, drawing me into his body as he pushed at me with his dick.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Juicy,” he whispered, planting soft kisses on my cheek, chin, and neck. “I love you baby. I could never hurt you.”

He dipped his head lower and snagged my top in his teeth, pulling it down over my titties. I gasped as his lips covered my nipple, sucking it deeply into his mouth, but my reaction was from surprise, not from pleasure.

“Flex…wait…” I leaned back and tried to break our contact. For a chick who had always been hot in the ass and who had craved sex like it was crack, I felt absolutely nothing as his tongue flicked back and forth across my hard nipple. His pushed his knee between my legs and started dry fucking me with long, slow strokes, but still, my pussy was parched and I felt nothing.

In all the months since Gino had been gone, my pussy hadn’t popped not one time. It was like my womanhood, the sexual part of me, had died right along with my man. 

I mean, I had been a real live professional masturbator, and I hadn’t rubbed my own titties or touched myself down there not one single time. I hadn’t even looked at or thought about none of the nasty stories I’d written in my Juicy Journal. My sex thing was just gone, and it didn’t matter how much Flex humped on me with his big, hard dick. I just couldn’t feel it.

“Flex, I can’t…”

He
shhh’d
me again as his thrusts got harder and more frantic.

Flex musta been one of them premature comers. He was panting real hard now and I could tell he was about to blow a nut right in his drawers.

“C’mon, Flex,” I said, trying to push him off of me. “We can’t be doing this shit.”

“I got protection, baby,” he whispered like a real amateur. “I ain’t gonna get you pregnant.”

I probably would have lay there and let Flex hump me half to death just out of pure exhaustion and gratitude, but I knew I had to stop the madness when he ran me that old lame junior high school line.

“Just lemme put the head in, Juicy. Just the head, okay?”

That was it.

“
Flex!
” I practically screamed in his ear. “Get the fuck up offa me!”

It was like somebody had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over us. Flex froze for a second, and then he pushed himself up on both arms and looked down at me and sneered.

“What? I can’t touch you, Juicy? A niggah like me ain’t good enough to touch you or something?”

That crazy look was back in his eyes, and I remembered the gunshot that had sent me flying under the table in the first place.

“C’mon now. You done fucked plenty of other niggahs, Juicy. So why you don’t wanna give me none? Huh? What?” he said and thrust his fingers between my legs. “Your pussy too good? Or is something wrong with me?”

I pushed his hand away and shook my head real fast.

“No! I ain’t saying nothing is wrong with you, boy! It’s me, not you.”

“
Boy?”
his eyes narrowed as he leaned back on his knees and started unbuckling his belt. The way he went at that belt did something to me. It put me right back in G’s ass-dicking mode, and for the first time I felt fear. Real fear. I remembered how Flex had pushed a dude named Macaroni off the roof of our building when we were kids. They had locked his ass up behind that shit, and when he finally got out there was something real mean and crazy about little Fletcher.

“You still think I’m a fuckin’ kid, don’t you, Juicy? You think you fuckin’ with a little boy, huh?”

“That’s not what I’m not saying,” I blurted out real fast as he extracted his dick from his drawers and gripped it in his hand like a snake. Flex had a monster package on him. It was almost fatter than his thigh, and just as long too, but that shit still didn’t impress me.

“You think you can handle this shit, Juicy? Huh? Can you fuck with this?”

I shook my head.

“No, Flex. I can’t fuck with it. I’m just not ready for all that.”

Immediately his whole face changed.

“Awww,
shit!
” He bent over me with a look of deep regret in his eyes. Once again his voice was tender as he took my face in his hands.

“I’m sorry, Juicy. Damn! I’m sorry. I don’t be thinking sometimes. Of course you ain’t ready. You been hurt…” he scooted back, then dipped his head down and kissed my stomach. “You got all these fuckin’ scars and shit…I shoulda known better. It’s too soon, right? Is that what it is, Juicy? Is it just too soon?”

The look on his face was full of hope. Crazy hope, but it was still hope.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s too soon for me, Flex. A lot of stuff went down in my life and I just need a little time to get my head right.”

I lay there as he stuffed his dick back inside his pants. He fixed his clothes, and then he pulled me to my feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. The sadness in his eyes told me that he really meant it. “I can wait for you, Juicy. I can wait.”

I nodded and tried to turn away, but before I could take a step he grabbed my wrist and jerked me real close to him.

“Hey,” he said softly, breathing in my face. “Whatever happened to that curly-haired niggah you ran outta New York with? G’s son. What was his name again?”

My jaw felt frozen as I muttered, “Gino.”

“Yeah, Gino. What ever happened to that cat?”

I shrugged and bit down on my lip before answering. “He got shot too. He died.”

Flex gave me a strange look, and then he squeezed my wrist slightly and let me go. I was walking toward the bedroom when I heard him mutter something cold under his breath.

He said, “Good for that muh’fucka.”

CHAPTER 13

Trey Jackson was choosey about who he banged. He had an example to set for his boys at The Crossover Community Center, so he made it his business to take everything in his life very seriously, and that included sex.

“Yummm…” he moaned deep in his throat as his date for the night sucked up a hickey on the upper region of his groin.

Raising his head slightly to watch her work, Trey ran his big hand through her curls and palmed the back of her skull like it was a basketball.

He exhaled through his mouth as Debbie’s small teeth raked across his inner thigh and her nose nudged the underside of his balls. The girl had a head game on her that was almost indescribable, which was why Trey had found it hard to turn her down when she showed up at his door begging to get some pipe laid.

Debbie was a well-loved teacher at a high school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but she could be clingy and envious, and quick to throw down crazy accusations when she couldn’t get shit exactly her way. That kind of jealousy was just part of her nature, so sometimes Trey had to be stingy with his dick and only allow her to bounce on it every now and then.