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Authors: NOIRE,Kiki Swinson

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BOOK: Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

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“I know it is, baby. You graduated from Fashion Industry, right? I don’t know what’s stopping you from getting with a manufacturer and starting your own fashion line.”

She frowned. “Money, honey. Time and money. I wanna run my own business so damned
bad,
Noble. I know I can do it too. I’ve got the fashion sense and the creative eye to design for the modern woman. People are always asking me where I buy my clothes, and they can hardly believe it when I tell them I sketch and sew all my stuff myself. If I didn’t have to grind a nine-to-five every day I’d have time to really let my creative side loose and put my own stuff on the market for Fashion Week. But”—she sighed and gave Noble a puppy dog look—“when a girl has to pay her own bills, then a girl has to work a damn job.”

Noble nodded. He pulled her close and kissed her forehead.

“I hear you, baby. But check this out. I’ma have to cut our time a little bit short today, okay?”

“Why?” Zsa Zsa pouted. “You promised to spend the day with me!”

Noble nodded, admiring her smooth skin and the exotic slant of her eyes. He didn’t like disappointing her, but Zsa was even finer when she got mad.

“I know I did, and I’m sorry. But something came up, and I’ve got a little dude I need to check out for a minute.”

“Oh, is it one of the little boys you mentor?”

Noble thought for a second before answering.

He didn’t make a habit of lying to any of his women. They knew full well that their relationships weren’t exclusive, and he was always having to remind Zsa Zsa of that. But still ... he wasn’t about to tell her that he was leaving her to rush over to Malisha’s house to make sure lil’ Trey got to his music lesson.

“Yeah. I need to spend some time with a little boy,” Noble said, keeping it simple. Out of all his chicks, Zsa baby was the sharpest. She could pick up a loose thread and roll herself a whole ball of yarn. Noble knew the less he told her, the less explaining he would have to do.

“But I’m gonna make it up to you,” he said, his voice dropping low as he pulled her into his arms.

“How?” she asked, a slick smile teasing her lips.

“If you’re free tonight I’d like to take you out to dinner. Plus, I saw something at a lingerie booth back there that I think will look damn good on you. How about I get it boxed up and bring it with me when I pick you up tonight?” Noble had also seen a diamond-studded thong that would look hot on Kiki, and he planned to get one of those boxed up too.

Zsa Zsa licked her lips. She knew what time it was, and a long night with Noble Browne was just what she needed. Since she lived with her aunt, she knew they would end up staying at Noble’s crib, and she had been dying to get up in that joint and finish a few things she had started.

“Sounds good, baby,” she giggled. Anticipating the dick down she was guaranteed to get, and scheming on the little caper she planned to pull once he was fast asleep, was gonna keep her mind busy for the rest of the day. “Yeah, baby. That sounds real good.”

N
ot only had Noble cut his date short with Zsa Zsa, if he planned to make it over to the projects for the community meeting with Sissy, then he was gonna have to dip out early on Malisha too.

“Trey did real good with his music lesson today,” Noble told her as he strapped the four-year-old into the custom car seat that he had commissioned an old friend from college to design. He’d been driving Malisha and Trey to two of the boy’s three music lessons every week, and he loved spending time with them. “He’s making progress, baby. For real. I can see it.”

Malisha smiled.

Just watching the way Noble handled her baby made her heart feel warm. Besides Jamel, there’d been no other man in the boy’s life to give him a masculine touch, or to care for him like a son.

“I just hope I can keep the lessons going,” Malisha stated. “They’re kinda expensive, but without them he’ll just go back into a shell.”

Noble nodded. “I hear you. You’ve gotta keep him playing that piano. It’s crazy how he just knows how to hit the right notes like that. The boy might be some kinda musical prodigy.”

But I can’t afford to keep paying for the lessons!
Malisha wanted to scream in his face. But of course she didn’t. Just like her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask her friends for help after Jamel died, that same pride wouldn’t allow her to ask Noble for any money. Now if he offered her some cash, that would be a whole different story. But Malisha wasn’t about to ask nobody for shit. She was just trying to hold on until something good happened. And the best thing that could happen right now would be for Noble’s birthday to hurry up and get here so he could tell her that she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Yeah, she knew there were some other chicks out there checking for him too, but Malisha just couldn’t believe somebody else would be a better fit for him. She had asked Noble to tell her exactly what he was looking for in a woman. If she just knew that, it would be easy. She would become his dream. His ideal girl.

But Noble had played her to the left. He ran her some shit about how he would know exactly what he was looking for the moment he found it. Well, what the hell was he waiting on? Some kind of sign? A vivid rainbow, a four-leaf clover, or the finger of God to point him in the right girl’s direction?

Malisha was terrified that something bad would happen to Noble before he was able to marry her. Jamel had died without any life insurance, and she and Trey had been left ass-out. They’d be ass-out again if Noble messed around and got hit by a damn truck or slipped on a banana peel or something while he was out there playing in traffic all day! That job of his was dangerous, and until Malisha had his signature on a marriage license she was gonna worry about his health and well-being and have a whole lotta sleepless nights!

Things had been far less stressful when she had married Jamel. She’d found out she was pregnant on a Wednesday, and by the following Monday they’d had their little low-key wedding planned. Malisha wasn’t looking to have no grand, outlandish wedding with Noble, even though she knew he had crazy money and could afford it.

With a three-story brownstone all to himself, and those two luxury vehicles parked outside his crib, Noble was doing more than okay for himself. Matter fact, he was doing so good that Malisha’s friends had wondered if he was a dirty cop or taking kickbacks or something under the table. Of course she had never mentioned Noble’s huge stash of gold, but Malisha
was
quick to tell everybody that she had never seen a speck of grime on his personality, and that she’d never once caught Noble in a lie.

Nah, as far as Malisha could tell, Noble Browne was exactly the man he presented himself to be. He was strong and dedicated and sexy as hell. Getting past his leg was becoming a little bit easier. They didn’t have sex very often, but when they did, Noble’s back was so strong and he dicked her with such deep tenderness and passion that Malisha just closed her eyes and refused to think about his missing leg.

Noble had a pair of working man’s hands, and Malisha loved the way it felt when he ran his rough hands up and down her body. He said she had the prettiest skin in the world, and he loved to massage her and touch her everywhere. And Malisha was all for it. She knew she was alive when Noble’s coarse hands moved all over her flesh. Her nipples would tingle as he stroked her thighs, and her pussy would fill up with all the pent up juices stored inside her that were just dying to flow.

Malisha had a round, fluffy ass and she didn’t mind letting Noble hit it from the back the way he liked it. But when he asked her how she wanted it, she always wanted him in her mouth. There was something real sexy about the way a man’s dick felt nestled against her tongue, and Malisha had always wondered if she was a freak for enjoying head so much.

And Noble had a lot of head to enjoy too. That dick! Oh, that dick!

Not only was it thick and rugged, the control Noble had over that thing was amazing. It was like a well-trained pet. It did whatever he told it to do, and lasted as long as he wanted it to.

Malisha had surprised him by going down on him one night as they lay in bed together. She had planned to hold herself back, but something just came over her as they twisted and turned, rubbing against each other. They had gotten all worked up by their foreplay and she just had to get a taste of what he was holding.

And for real, as soon as the fat head of his pole touched the tender spot at the back of her throat, Malisha knew she had struck gold. His dick was delicious. The sweetest she had ever tasted. She tightened her lips around his shaft, as the throbbing veins vibrated against her skin turning her straight the fuck out.

Malisha had slurped that thang half to death. She didn’t even blink when Noble lost his head and grabbed her cheeks and started mouth-fucking her. He pounded that dick deep into her mouth like he was really in her pussy. He had even flipped her over on her back and hovered over her, shaking the bed with his frantic thrusts as Malisha opened her mouth wide and invited him to get all down in her throat.

She had lain there in pure bliss, squeezing her legs together and sending sweet sparks through her clit as his heavy balls banged against her chin. And the moment she felt his hot cum skeet out and scald her tender throat, Malisha had lost it too. Crushing her clit between her thighs, she reached up and clenched his ass and thrust him so far down her throat that she was forced to breathe through her nose.

Malisha gave him up reluctantly when he finally slipped his limp dick out of her mouth. She licked her lips and sighed as his delicious taste lingered on her tongue. Yeah, all chicks knew how much a man liked getting him some head. But Malisha was one of the rare chicks who liked giving it just as much.

She sighed as she remembered feeling so thoroughly well-fucked when her pussy had never even been penetrated. There was more than one way to skin a cat. And she could tell by the way Noble had shook and moaned long after she was through sucking that her cat had been well-skinned.

V
an Dyke Projects hadn’t changed much over the years. Noble had known better than to roll up in the cut flossin his Corvette, so he’d cruised into Brownsville on a hog motorcycle he’d refurbished while recovering from his amputation.

His Aunt Cathy lived on the tenth floor of a fourteen-story project building. A public library sat on one side of the building, and every few minutes the El train passed by on the other side of the building. Noble looked around as he entered the lobby. His perfected swagger gave no hint to the prosthetic leg he walked on, nor to the heightened sense of alert he was on, but his street senses could pick up foul shit in the environment like a fine-tuned radar. Not only had Noble grown up hanging out in crime holes like this, he’d done a lot of undercover work in the projects too, and he knew that in this hood, every unfamiliar face walking the streets was prey.

Noble paused outside his aunt’s door. Sissy lived in the apartment adjacent to Aunt Cathy’s, and Noble could reach out and knock on both doors at the same time. But when his aunt’s door opened to his knock, it was Sissy who greeted him.

“You made it!” she said, her pretty dimples going deep in her cheeks as she stepped back to let him in.

“Yeah,” Noble said. He took a deep breath as he entered a home he had once loved and enjoyed.

The passage of time was obvious, and Aunt Cathy hadn’t kept up with any type of fashion. Everything was neat and clean. The living room sofa was the same one Noble remembered from his youth, and had been preserved with plastic slipcovers. The old hi-fi sat next to it, and a heavy wooden table was pushed against the wall. Above it was a large framed photo that Noble hadn’t seen in years.

It was his mother.

“Your aunt is in the kitchen,” Sissy said, and led the way.

Noble followed with old memories making his chest tight. Aunt Cathy and his mother had been adopted sisters. They were a year apart in age, and neither one of them had known their real families, so they had been very close to each other. Noble had been too young when his mother died to remember anything about her, but between his father and Aunt Cathy they had kept her close and familiar in Noble’s heart.

The woman sitting at the kitchen table brought a huge smile to Noble’s face.

“Is that my peanut?” she shrieked at the sight of the six-foot-six boy that she had helped raise to be a man. “Is that my
peanut
? Is that my boy?”

“Is that my tauntie?” Noble chanted, playing their old familiar game as he dropped to his good knee and took her in his arms. “Is that my
tauntie
? Is that my girl?”

Tears were in both their eyes as they embraced and the old woman smacked kisses all over Noble’s face.

Sissy stood quietly off to the side while Noble and his aunt hugged and got caught up. When Noble finally sat down at the table she served him and his aunt some cookies she had baked and a glass of iced tea.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been by in a while, Tauntie,” Noble said. He didn’t tell her that the undercover work he had done in this hood woulda put her in harm’s way had he been seen coming to her crib, but his aunt brushed his apology away. “I know I should have called.”

“Don’t never be sorry about nothing, Peanut. You hear? Besides, my phone done been cut off a few times so you couldn’t have reached me anyway. We can’t do nothing about what’s lost. We just gotta make good use of what we have today.”

Noble hung out with his aunt while he and Sissy waited for the community meeting to start. His aunt had always been a feisty thing, and as an adult Noble could really appreciate all the time and care she had taken with him over the years. Bam had never remarried. He’d remained dedicated to the bond he’d had with his wife, and he had never once been with a woman in Noble’s presence. Tauntie had been the only female in young Noble’s life, and it was her who had told him about the circumstances of his mother’s death.

Noble watched the way Sissy moved around his aunt’s kitchen. He could tell she was comfortable and knew exactly where everything was.

“Looks like Sissy is a lot of help, Tauntie. I’m glad you haven’t been over here all by yourself.”

His aunt nodded. “Yes, that girl is a wonder. She’s always into something in here. Cooking, cleaning up, making sure all my bills get paid. She’s so good, it done got to the point where I can’t find nothing. And she does the same thing for the rest of the old folks in the building. She’s like a little manager. Just done took over for us. Bless her heart.”

Noble looked at Sissy with mad respect and appreciation in his eyes. She was still young and beautiful. She didn’t have to be stuck up in these projects fooling around with no old people, but she did it anyway. He could still see a trace of the sexy young vixen from high school in her eyes, but there was also a mature, foxy woman with a good heart in there too. A woman Noble wanted to spend a little quality time with and get to know better.

The community meeting was over an hour away, and Noble had wanted to do some grocery shopping for his aunt while he was there. Sissy showed him where his aunt kept her shopping cart, and Noble took it from the closet and headed out to shop on Livonia Avenue. Noble had gotten a grocery list from his tauntie, and Sissy had a list of her own for herself and her uncle.

“Do you remember Yardley Green from Marcus Garvey? He owns that store down the block called Green’s Groceries?” Sissy asked as they walked.

“Oh yeah,” Noble nodded quickly. “Yard’s my boy. We went to school together. I used to chill at his store all the time when I was out here working undercover. Yard used to look out for me a lot when I was working narcotics. He was one of the few dudes around here that I could always trust.”

“Oh, I didn’t know y’all was tight like that.”

Noble nodded again. “Yeah, we tight as hell. We hang out almost every weekend. Remember, me, Yard, and Pap was a crew back in high school. We called ourselves ‘Three the Hard Way.’ Yard’s about to get married soon. He just called me up and invited me to his bachelor party.”

Sissy cut her eyes at him. “Bachelor party? Yeah, I knew he was getting married, but he didn’t tell me about no bachelor party!”

Noble laughed. “That’s ’cause you’re not invited!”

Sissy laughed with him, then said, “Well, I work the cash register at Yard’s store a couple of nights a week, so that’s where I usually shop.” Sissy shook her head as they strolled down the street looking like a couple. “Yard has the lowest prices around here, but his products just ain’t all that great.”

“What’s wrong with my man’s stuff?”

Sissy shrugged. “Nothing’s wrong with it, it’s just that he doesn’t have the biggest or the freshest selection around here. I mean, the milk and bread and eggs and stuff like that are okay, but you know you can’t get no decent fresh fruits or good cuts of meat in no corner store.”

“So let’s go where the selection is bigger. Let’s hit that supermarket over by the Chinese restaurant,” Noble suggested. And then he asked as they crossed the street, “Other than going to nursing school and working for Yard, what else have you been doing with yourself? I know you’re working at the hospital now, and running things for everybody in the building, but what do you do when you’re not doing all that?”

Sissy shrugged. “I do stuff.... I like to read. I hang out with a few of my girls. Do you remember Val Boykins from Jeff?”

Noble nodded casually. Val was hot. He’d actually gotten some of that back in the day.

“Well, her sister Shannie is still around, and me and her are real cool. We chill together a lot.”

Noble remembered Shannie too. She had been one of them real hard-looking chicks who threw her rap down on other females and walked around holding her imaginary nuts.

“What else you do?” he asked. “Are you with somebody? You got a man?”

Sissy looked up at him with the niggah-please face. “I ain’t got time for no man. Besides, I don’t need no man. Men always seem to get me in trouble.”

And then she switched it up.

“How about you? I know you must have a woman somewhere. You always had a bunch of girls running behind you back in high school. I’m sure that hasn’t changed.”

“Nah,” Noble said, defending himself. “High school and now are two different things. All of us have lived some and learned some. We ain’t the same now as we were back then.”

Sissy quickly agreed. “You’re right about that. I can’t believe all the wild shit I did in high school. I was outta control. Just wild. And stupid as hell too. But like you said, we’re all different now. So,” she said, bringing her question back home, “where’s your girlfriend?”

Noble kept it tight.

“I don’t have just a girlfriend. There are a few women that I have deep feelings for, but I’m not looking for a girlfriend. I’m trying to find a wife.”

Sissy stopped in her tracks.

“A wife? You’re getting married?”

Noble laughed. “Yeah, one day. My pops is sick. I wanna get married and have a tyke while he’s still around.”

“So, when’s the big day?”

“I don’t know that yet,” Noble admitted. “But I’m gonna propose to somebody on my birthday. That’s the day I’ll get engaged.”

“Wow,” she said. “When’s your birthday?”

“Next month,” Noble answered. “On the fifteenth.”

At the cash register, he let Sissy put her stuff up on the belt first. But before the cashier could finish ringing her up, Noble had slid the grocery separator to the side and told the young girl to ring up everything together so he could pay for it.

“Thanks,” Sissy said to him as they walked slowly down the sidewalk passing Tilden Projects. “I appreciate it, but you didn’t have to buy my stuff.”

Noble nodded as he pulled the cart behind him. A slight smile was playing on his lips as he watched her walk beside him. Sissy was fine. Her waist was tight, and the jeans she wore couldn’t hide what the girl was holding. Her package looked good. Not like a hot teenager, but like a fully-grown woman.

“It’s no big thing,” Noble said, shrugging it off. The few dollars he’d spent in the store didn’t come close to matching up with what Sissy had been doing for people like his aunt. Noble was grateful to her, and he wanted to do her a solid in some kinda way too.

“Hey,” he said suddenly. “I know the community meeting is about to start soon, but are you busy later on tonight? Can I take you to dinner?”

Sissy shook her head. “Sorry, after the meeting I’m getting with some people from the neighborhood watch team. I’ll be sitting in the lobby from five to seven.”

“Can I sit down there with you?”

Sissy laughed. “No. You have to be a team member to take a shift.”

“Cool. I’ll join the team, and we can go to dinner when we’re done. Who do I need to talk to? Where do I sign up. Who’s in charge?”

Sissy laughed again and put her warm hand on his arm. “Who’s in charge, Noble? Why, that would be me.”

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