Stealing Candy

Z
ANE PRESENTS

STEALING
CANDY

A
LSO BY
A
LLISON
H
OBBS

The Sorceress

Pure Paradise

Disciplined

One Taste

Big Juicy Lips

The Climax

A Bona Fide Gold Digger

The Enchantress

Double Dippin’

Dangerously In Love

Insatiable

Pandora’s Box

Z
ANE PRESENTS

ALLISON
HOBBS

Strebor Books
P.O. Box 6505
Largo, MD 20792
http://www.streborbooks.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2010 by Allison Hobbs

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address Strebor Books, P.O. Box 6505, Largo, MD 20792.

ISBN 978-1-59309-280-1
LCCN 2010925102
eISBN 978-1-4391-6911-7

First Strebor Books trade paperback edition July 2010

Cover design:
www.mariondesigns.com
Cover photograph: © Keith Saunders/Marion Designs

1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Manufactured in the United States of America

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]

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.

This book is for Keenan Hobbs

To all my readers, I am honored to present you with this novel… lucky Number 13!

Keith Saunders of Marion Designs, I thank you for another sensual, beautiful, and eye-catching cover.

Deb Schuler, I appreciate having your interior design inside each of my novels.

Leona Romich, thanks for all the wonderful reviews. I was so touched when I found out that you buy my books without even reading the back cover.

Kyndal Hobbs, my precious daughter…I am so proud of you.

Denise Doward, Sister/Friend, so glad we’ve reconnected. You are a class act.

Sonia Wells, thoughtful and kind. Thank you for always looking out.

Charmaine Parker, your showing up at my
Pure Paradise
release party last summer was a big surprise. Spending the weekend in New York with you and Zane was so much fun.

Karen Dempsey Hammond, forty years of friendship…Do I need to say more?

Zane, I think we got one! I am so pleased with this novel. Thank you for sprinkling your magic on the pages!

CHAPTER 1

As quietly as she could, Gianna unlocked two rusted deadbolts and slipped out the back door.

She took in the surroundings. Empty soda cans, beer bottles, cellophane wrappers, and other miscellaneous debris cluttered the yard.

Four cinder blocks were stacked against a crumbling redbrick exterior wall. The cinder blocks were covered with a grease-tarnished oven rack—a crude, homemade barbecue grill where her meals had been prepared.

The aftertaste of her captor’s secretions, intermingled with the flavor of charred chicken, lingered on her tongue. The bitter taste in her mouth, the bruised skin around her eye, and the welts on her legs were cruel reminders of what she’d endured.

As if she’d been oxygen-deprived, Gianna breathed in deeply. The air she gulped in was polluted by smells of poverty: rotting garbage, smoldering charcoal, burning bits of meat, and the stench of urine that wafted from alleyways.

Ordinarily, these rancid odors would have repelled her, but not now. She took another deep breath of sour air and smiled. Though putrid, the air she inhaled represented sweet freedom.

A stray cat shot across the litter-strewn yard, startling Gianna. That moment of fear was a reminder that there was no time to bask in her freedom. Her life was at stake.

She trotted quickly down a gravelly backstreet. The concrete was disfigured by cracks, and numerous crater-like potholes.

She looked around as she moved forward. Where was she? Still
in Jersey? No. While she was blindfolded, she’d heard that man named Jimmy asking Bullet if he had money to pay the tolls.

She could be anywhere: New York; Delaware; Pennsylvania. Only God knew. She’d only seen dilapidated neighborhoods such as this one in the movies or on TV.

There weren’t any people in sight. Only boarded-up houses that were scarcely protected by rusted metal gates.

Gianna wasn’t fooled by the desolate environment. Like the house where she’d been held hostage, these seemingly abandoned houses were probably occupied by unsavory characters, engaging in all manners of heinous crimes.

A shiver of fear encouraged her to increase her speed, but running in four-inch wedge sandals and a skimpy, tight skirt wasn’t easy. Desperate to put distance between her and the house of torture, she hitched up the restrictive skirt.

With the tight fabric encircling her waist, her naked, brown backside and semen-slimed pubic hair were displayed.

No time for modesty. Pressing onward at full speed, she rounded a corner, sprinting past messy yards and vacant storefronts. Her frantic eyes sought law-abiding citizens. Adults who would be outraged when they found out what that grown man named Bullet had done to her.

Someone had to help her contact her parents.

Every few seconds, she looked over her shoulder.

Had he discovered she was gone? She swallowed down a hard knot of fear. Bullet had threatened to cut up her face…disfigure her for life if she tried to escape.

It seemed like she’d been running up and down narrow back-streets for at least a half-mile, and she hadn’t encountered a single soul. Jerking her head backward, she anxiously looked over her shoulder once again.

Bullet wasn’t pursuing her. Her ordeal was almost over. Immense relief washed over her. She was safe. Free!

But where was she? And how long had she been gone? A week? Gianna had no idea. It was the last Saturday in May when she’d been brought to the abandoned house, bound and blindfolded. What day was it now?

She slowed her pace, looking for a street sign…a landmark… something that would reveal her location. From the looks of the ramshackle houses and decaying streets, she might as well have been in a war-torn country or on another planet.

She felt like she was a million miles away from her family’s well-tended beach house. Light years away from her parents’ love.

The neighborhood was a desolate place. House after forsaken house declared itself unoccupied by the boards that covered the windows. Some windows were without boards, gapped open like wide mouths screaming in anguish.

She pressed forward, searching for a populated street. She yearned to hear the roar of heavy traffic…the sight of a police car.

Continuing her trek, she rounded another corner. A trio of boys were at the end of what appeared to be another deserted block. Though their backs were turned to her, she could tell they were teenagers.

Their style of clothes, the way they moved, the sound of their voices, told her that they were close to her age.
Thank you, God!

Certain she’d found salvation, tears of gratitude formed as she dashed toward the boys. Trying to look as presentable as possible, she pulled her skirt from around her waist, tugging on it until it covered her bare behind.

“Hello!” She waved and trotted toward them. “Hello! I need help! Please!”

The boys spun around and regarded her with annoyed expressions.
The shortest member of the group reached toward the waistband of his jeans, exposing the butt of a gun.

“Yo, shawty, don’t be creeping up on us like that. You tryna get yourself shot?” His voice was gruff.

“Excuse me. I really need help,” she said, using a placating tone. These weren’t ordinary teenagers. They were street tough and mean-looking.

She cleared her throat and spoke in a polite voice. “Would you mind telling me where I am? And um…today’s date?”

Looking for a trace of kindness, she searched the boys’ faces. She was met with pairs of eyes that took in her torn top and short, tight skirt. Eyes that were alit with vulgar desires.

“You don’t know where you are? What you been smoking? Must have been some of that bubonic chronic,” a taller boy jeered.

She was prepared to explain her circumstances—how she’d been abducted, beaten, and molested—but decided not to. Instincts told her that these hardened teens didn’t care.

The third boy, who was wearing beige cargo pants, scowled at her. “You in Killadelphia, dummy!”

“Where?” she asked meekly. “Killa…where?”

“You retarded or something? You in Philly. Damn!” Cargo Pants spat, offended by her ignorance.

“Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?” Gianna began turning in a complete circle, big brown eyes panning the impoverished area as if the Liberty Bell might pop up and validate the boy’s claim.

Philadelphia was only about two and a half hours from the beach house in New Jersey.

“Yo, I got something that’ll bring you back down to earth,” Cargo Pants said with a chortle. Studying Gianna while wearing a leering grin, he rubbed his groin.

“Take a walk with me to the crib…” He nodded over at one of
the boarded-up houses. “It’ll only take a few minutes for me to bring you back down to earth.”

She took a faltering step backward.

“Ah, you tellin’ on yourself, man,” the short boy accused with a snort. “You ain’t nothing but a two-minute trick!”

“Nah, it ain’t even like that. I can stroke for hours, but I ain’t got time to knock that back out the way I usually do. I’m on my grind, yo. Hustle hard or starve…y’ah mean?”

“Man, you know it’s dead out here. Go ’head and smash that real quick,” the short boy suggested.