Pride (3 page)

“Was it another nightmare?” His voice was deep with sleep but tight with worry.

“Yes.” I wiped my tears on my pillow and took a deep breath and then blew it out real slow. “But I’m okay, baby. I’m straight.”

I had started having nightmares about G right after we escaped from Harlem and moved to L.A. It made Gino uncomfortable to know that his father was still taking up space in my head.

“That niggah was chasin’ you again, huh?”

I shrugged. My nightmares were always about me running down the streets of Harlem with G hot on my tail. The details sometimes changed a little bit from dream to dream, but in the end it was always the same: I had betrayed the great Granite McKay and he wanted me dead.

Gino pulled me toward him until I was snuggled in his strong arms. I melted against his warm, chocolate skin and he held me close as our hearts beat to one solid rhythm.

Gino was G’s son in a whole lot of ways. He was hardbody and street certified, but he wasn’t grimy like G, and he didn’t hate women like his father did. Gino loved me, and I was crazy in love with him. He was one-hundred-percent down for me, and I was grateful for that.

But way down deep in my heart I still didn’t feel safe, no matter how far away we had run. It wasn’t that I didn’t think my man could handle his. Gino was from Brooklyn and he could scrap with the best of them. He would die for me. I knew he would. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow G was going to find a way to come back from the dead and kill us both.

Gino felt me trembling and got upset. “Yo, I can’t have you walking around here scared every day, Juicy. G is long gone. What went down in Harlem is over. You’re safe now, sugar. I’m here, and I got you. We left the past in the past, and we’re building us a whole new life. Your nightmare is over, so cut all that dreaming shit out, baby girl. I don’t wanna hear nothing else about G, a’ight?”

I nodded, but it was easier for Gino to say all that than it was for my mind and my heart to believe it. Gino hadn’t been through what I had been through. He hadn’t seen what I had seen. I was the one who had been fucked and beaten and chained to a bed with strange men shooting cum in my hair down in that dark, scary Dungeon. I was the one who had watched my baby brother murder G, and then stand next to me and blow his own brains out. True, Gino had gotten some too, but I had gotten the worst of it. I guess that was only right since I was the violator and the cheater. The dick-crazy young chicken who had been scandalous enough to love both a father and his only son.

“Look, Juicy. Maybe you should go talk to somebody,” Gino said quietly, his voice a little gentler. “You know, somebody who can get up in your head and help you figure some of this shit out.”

I shrugged quickly. He was talking about taking me to see a shrink, but I wasn’t interested in that at all. My grandmother had been born and raised in the Deep South. She’d taught me all about evil hags and restless spirits. G was just mad and haunting me from the grave, and there wasn’t a damn thing a doctor could do about it.

Gino sat up and leaned against the headboard, then pulled me up next to him. His chest was ripped with muscles and he held me tightly in his arms. “Listen, we’ve got a topnotch health plan through The Organization, Juicy. Ain’t no shame in getting help when you need it, baby.”

I shook my head. Gino just didn’t get it. He might know a lot about architecture and all that college stuff, but he didn’t know shit about prophecy. Couldn’t no doctor with a bunch of fancy degrees save me from what was coming after me. My dreams were pure-dee prophecy and I knew it. They were a divine forecast of what was yet to come. Grandmother had sworn by the saying
warning before destruction
and lately warning bells had been ringing loud enough to make me go deaf in both my ears.

Gino got frustrated. “So, you just gonna lay up here shook and scared every goddamn night?”

I grabbed my pillow and folded it in half, then slid it behind my head. I knew Gino loved me, but he just couldn’t deal with all the places my mind took me when I closed my eyes to go to sleep. He was right though. Coming out to the West Coast was supposed to be about building us a better future. A better life.

And aside from my nightmares, things had been going really good for me and Gino. For the first time in my life I was running free, like a regular young girl. Me and Gino did all the fun things that couples our age were supposed to do. We went to the movies, roller-skating, bike riding, and Gino even took me out on the golf course with him so I could learn how to swing a club. Our love was chill and easy because we really liked being together, and even after all the drama we had gone through in New York, our relationship was still strong.

In fact, we were so tight that Gino had just put a ring on my finger, and before you knew it I would be Mrs. McKay for real.

Mrs. Gino McKay.

And if that wasn’t enough to rock the universe, in about five months we were gonna have us a cute little…Fear came rushing down on me again. I turned my back on Gino because I didn’t want him to see how bad I was shaking.

“Yo, for real, Juice-baby…you gotta get some help,” he said, peeping my tears. And then I heard a warning in his voice. “Cause I ain’t tryna go through no more of that other shit we just went through, a’ight?”

I closed my eyes in embarrassment. He was talking about me getting high in the Compton beauty shop where I sold my JuicyOriginal dresses.

“It’s not even like that,” I mumbled as my hand moved under the covers and rested on my tight stomach. “I haven’t smoked weed in a long time, Gino. And I’m never gonna smoke it again.”

“How do I know that, Juicy? That niggah G is in your head again, and you still running back and forth selling stuff in Compton every day. You can’t be sure about what you will or won’t go back to doing again.”

I didn’t like the way Gino was doubting me, but I couldn’t even get mad at him. Getting high was new for me. I had tried to be slick with my little puff-puff game, but Gino was too hood for that. He had caught on real quick when I started coming home with red eyes and a dumb look on my face.

But it had been the nightmares that had me doing all sorts of crazy things. All that constant running from G in my sleep, and those murderous memories of Dicey and Jimmy that wouldn’t leave me alone.

I thought about the baby that had been growing in my stomach for the past four months. I’d only recently found out I was pregnant, and I planned to surprise Gino with the good news on our wedding day.

“For real,” I said firmly. I reached out and slipped my fingers between his. “I’m done with all that, baby. I swear I am.” I wanted to say more, but I didn’t wanna ruin his surprise. “You’re just gonna have to trust me, baby. Just trust me.”

I could tell he still had his doubts, although I couldn’t believe he hadn’t already figured it out. The thing was, I didn’t look pregnant. Even though my hips had spread and my butt was banging like a hammer, my stomach was barely bulging.

But I couldn’t wait to see the look on Gino’s face when I told him. I knew my man would be beaming with pride when he found out his seed had been deeply planted. I knew Gino would be the right kind of father to our tyke. The kind of father that neither one of us had ever had.

But what about me? With a junkie mama like Cara, and a mental-case like James Joseph for a daddy, what kind of mother was I gonna be? I thought about how Grandmother had tried to bring me and Jimmy up with morals and common sense. It didn’t work. Her body wasn’t even cold yet when I ran off with G and shit all over the life lessons she had worked so hard to instill in me.

As Gino stroked my hair and rubbed my back, I closed my eyes and wished Grandmother was here to help me shake off the doom I felt rising inside.

I really needed her right now. I needed a hot cup of her milk-and-honey tea, and a warm slice of her sweet potato pie. I needed that old lady to pull out her crooked-tooth comb and scratch my scalp until I fell asleep sitting between her wise old legs.

I hated that I’d been so damned hard-headed, and that our lives had turned out so wrong despite all that praying and ass-whipping she used to do. Grandmother had been sanctified and saved by grace. She had put herself in Jesus’ hands.

But my destiny was still chasing me. It was moving toward me like a raging storm.
Warning before destruction
. Yeah, no matter what Gino said my nightmare wasn’t over. Somebody was still gonna catch a bad one. And since Jimmy was dead and gone, that somebody had to be me.

CHAPTER 3

The morning sun flooded our bedroom with its warm golden rays, and I felt Gino’s tongue probing my lips before I could open my eyes. At first all I could think about was how nasty he was to be playing around in my morning breath, but then a spark of heat flushed through me that had nothing to do with the rising sun.

“Stop…” I whined, twisting away from him. The sheets were nice and warm from our night-time body heat, and I stretched my legs for a quick second, and then pushed my head under my pillow.

“C’mere, girl,” he said, cupping my hip and pulling me closer so I could feel his wood poking me in the ass. All traces of my nightmare were gone as I squeezed my eyes tighter and giggled, then rolled over and brought my knees up between us.

“C’mon now,” Gino said as he humped on me and tried to pull my panties down. “I gave you a little sumpthin’ yesterday, so now it’s your turn to give me a lil sumpthin’ today.”

I smirked like I didn’t know what time it was.

“Oh, it’s like that? You gave me some dick last night so now I gotta give you some coochie this morning, huh?”

“That’s right,” Gino whispered as he moved on me. “Lemme get a lil snacky snack…” he said as his fingers crept between my legs.

“Cut it out…” I tried to pretend that I wasn’t itching to bounce up and down on that thick chocolate pole that was sticking out from his boxers. “Why are you always feeling on me anyway?”

I moaned as his strong hands cupped my ass and squeezed my cheeks before sliding between my crack and massaging my pussy. “Stop, Gino….”

I was acting stuck-up, but I loved every minute of it and Gino knew it. I was one of those extra-sexual chicks. I had been focused on my clitoris and craving sex from the time I was thirteen-years-old. Now that I had a real man in my bed, if I didn’t get my hips rocked at least every other day then I just didn’t feel right.

Back when I was with G sex had always been an act of desperation. He was a thirty-second man, and I used to be so ashamed of myself for humping him like a dog as I tried to get me a quick nut.

But with Gino, sex was everything I had ever dreamed it could be. Instead of masturbating all the time and writing my deepest fantasies in my Juicy Journal, my man kept me busy trying to think up fun and freaky sexcapades so we could act them out together. G might have busted my cherry, but until Gino made love to me, I was truly still a virgin.

And there were absolutely no sexual no-no’s in Gino’s book either. He was bold and creative with his mash game, and anything I wanted to try, any position, any flava, he was all for it. Fuck a Naughty Girls party! Me and Gino loved to shop together for all kinds of interesting sex toys, and at night we read real nasty books to each other while we played in bed. And right now he was about to tear our bed up as he played in my wet pussy like a horny teenager with a foot-long hard-on.

“Ga’head and touch it,” he pushed my hand down on his dick as I moaned and sighed and licked my lips. “You know you like it.”

Gino was in his prime. He could go morning, noon, and night. He cupped my big titties as we slid around in the silk sheets that smelled like sweet after-sex and rose-scented powder. My nipples tingled and grew hard under his caress. “You like this shit, don’t you, Juicy?” He rubbed the head of his throbbing dick on my hot thigh, and it was so hard it felt amazing. “Ga’head, baby girl. Tell me how much you like it…”

I told him all right. In fact, I got to moaning in a foreign language as he licked my aching nipples and then dove under the covers and stuck his warm tongue in my navel.