Chasing Bliss (35 page)

He took his lips away from hers, but not too far. “I think we should stop. We got a tent full of
people not so far away.”

“I don’t care, Chase.”

He knew the look in her eye, and he wanted to please her. He smiled at her and took her hand.
“Time to ditch the party.”

Bliss grinned at him like he was a bad boy. “We can’t do that.”

“Yes we
can.
”

They walked back to the tent, and Chase picked up his half-empty glass and grabbed a fork off
the nearest table, clinking against the glass to get everyone’s attention. He stepped on the platform
where the deejay was and made his request and then he spoke into the mike. “Me and Bliss would
like to thank y’all for comin’ so far to help us celebrate our marriage. It’s getting late, and I’m
dyin’ to be alone with my wife.” The crowd snickered and cheered, and Chase smiled. “That’s
right. That’s why we’re leaving. We got music, we got food, and we got plenty of liquor, so y’all
keep partying and sendin’ us your blessings until it all runs out. We’re gonna dance with y’all one
more time!”

He stepped down from the platform and took Bliss into his arms as Mint Condition started
singing “Pretty Brown Eyes.” Chase was a good dancer, and so was Bliss. He twirled her around
the room much better than Corey had. Their guests clapped and shouted their approval. Chase
dipped her near the end of the song and came back up kissing her. They stopped dancing and
stood right in the middle of the floor, kissing like no one else was there. Everyone started clapping
again.

Chase stepped away from her but kept holding her hand. “Okay. That’s all you get to see. We’ll
see you in the morning.”

They left quickly, and Chase picked her up when they got out of the elevator.

“Chase, you don’t have to do that.” Bliss giggled.

“Sure I do. The key card’s in my pocket.”

Bliss opened the door, and Chase carried her into the bedroom. He put Bliss on the bed,
unbuttoned his shirt, and took off his pants. Bliss made a move to take her dress off, but Chase
stopped her. He pushed her dress up and slid her panties off. Bliss looked at him strangely when
he put them in his shirt pocket. Chase put his hands on her knees and parted her thighs. “It’s a
memento. You save your dress, and I’ll save your panties.”

Bliss laughed. “You are so bad, Chase. I love it!”

He kissed the inside of her thigh, and she trembled. Chase raised an eyebrow. “You like that?”

“Oh yes,” she answered with a shudder.

“Then you’ll really like this,” he whispered and put his mouth on the most tender part of her
body. Bliss cried out, and when she arched her back, Chase put his hands underneath her and had a
vivid flashback of licking the top off her ice cream. He worked on her just like that—like she was
the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.

Bliss put her hands in his hair as her hips moved in rhythm with his tongue. Her texture changed
as she did that little screamy thing she always did when she came. He felt the softest part of her
throbbing against his mouth, and the feel of it was so erotic he got chills and shuddered himself.
He had to have her; he simply couldn’t wait any longer.

Chase moaned when he slid into her. She was so soft, hot, and slippery it took his breath away.
He had one knee on either side of her, and he gasped when she brought her legs together. It was a
smooth and exquisite pleasure. He wasn’t stroking her like he usually did; instead, it was a sweetly
spicy, slow grind. He didn’t want to stop. He could have made love to her for hours.

Bliss shifted and parted her thighs, allowing Chase to slip in even further. She gripped his bi
ceps and brought her hips up, grinding as hard as she could. They stared into each other’s eyes.
Small, passionate sounds that weren’t quite words rushed breathlessly through their lips. Bliss’s
hands dropped to his ass and pulled him in, making him drop the grind and start pumping. Bliss
bore down on him and sucked him in like a vacuum.

She screamed his name, and all Chase’s muscles weakened at once, as all the blood in his body
seemed to drop to one place. He pounded into her helplessly as his arms trembled and Bliss rained
down on him, squeezing her body around him, warm and slick.

He dropped his head and came hard, taking great pleasure in every thrust, relishing the fact
that Bliss was his wife and he was filling her up with himself and loving her like he’d never loved
another person. Chase kissed her long and deep, and just when he thought he was spent, they
started all over again.

Chapter 21

I
f he could have turned back the hands of time, Cyrus might have thought about doing a
lot of things differently. He never would have opened that godforsaken club, and he never
would have asked—let alone damned near begged—Chase to kill Wolf. If time were retractable,
he wouldn’t have to worry about Chase greasing Wolf because he never would have fucked with
him in the first place. The sad fact is that you couldn’t go back. It’s very rare that anybody gets a
do-over, and Cyrus thought that was too damn bad.

At the moment, he had a lot to think about. For one thing, it was looking very seriously like
Khalid might die. That fuck J.T. had been right, as much as Cyrus hated to admit it. Cyrus knew he
should have at least dropped Khalid at a hospital, even if he couldn’t stay with him. Unfortunately,
that was not what happened. Khadijah told Cyrus she would call the police on him if he didn’t get
the fuck out her apartment after he shot Chase. Cyrus had called her bluff, and she’d called 911.
Cyrus got the fuck out of there quick, thanks to that crazy bitch.

From what he could gather, Khadijah had let Monty take a look at Khalid at his own insistence.
Khadijah didn’t want to get the cops involved, so she’d relented, against her better judgment.
Monty got the bullet out, but two days later, Khalid’s shoulder was running pus, and he had a fever
of 104.

Khadijah didn’t actually take him to the hospital until
another
two days later, when she could
no longer stand the stench from the wound. Cyrus had taken his chances and poked his head out
long enough to go check for him at the hospital. The nigga’s skin had a serious gray tinge to it. He
was in the ICU hooked up to four different machines, with a drip in each arm. It didn’t look good
for his boy.

Cyrus was in deep trouble. He had so many people looking for him that he was afraid to make
a move. Naturally, the cops were still looking for him because of the nightmare at the club. That
was bad, but Cyrus was used to evading the law, and he was good at it. The truly horrible thing he
had to deal with was avoiding Fabian Gregory.

When Cyrus and Khalid hit Wolf’s drug spot, they’d done it with no idea that Wolf and Fabian
had ties. There was no way on God’s green Earth that Cyrus would have knowingly fucked with
Fabian, even indirectly. Fabian was based in Coney Island, and he had that shit on lock. He also
sold ecstasy, crystal meth, heroin, and coke to all the good white folks from Gravesend to Dyker
Heights.

Fabian was obviously the reason Wolf had upped his drug game to include the heroin and ecstasy
Cyrus and Khalid had stepped to him about in the first place. Fabian was a true Teflon kingpin:
Nobody
fucked with him on the street. Only the Mafia rose up, and that was only occasionally
because Fabian usually kept them satisfied with a cut. Fabian had run his game so long that the
NYPD had grown tired of trying to knock him. He was even fucking the Feds up at every turn.

After the shoot-‘em-up at Eternal, Cyrus laid low and put his ear to the ground. When Khadijah
threw his ass out, Cyrus cashed in a favor with his old boy Rome’s cousin Freddie out in Canarsie.
Freddie let Cyrus hole up in his basement for two grand in cash and three grand in coke
. Some
fucking favor.

Cyrus tried to reach out and get a hold of Chase and Corey, but it was like those two assholes
had fallen off the planet. He couldn’t find them anywhere, and no one had seen them. Corey’s
phone rang and then went to voicemail, but Chase’s went
straight
to voicemail.

He was shocked when he was watching the news a day later and heard the story about the
gruesome murder of drug dealer Warren “Wolf” Jenkins. The reporter didn’t go into great detail,
but she said the body was horribly mutilated, and the police had no leads as to who the suspected
killer might be. Cyrus wasn’t worried about them finding Smoke: That was the one thing about
Chase he put all his confidence in. Chase was thorough, and he didn’t leave a trace.

The news of Wolf’s demise had Cyrus ecstatic at first. It had taken Chase long enough to grease
that fool. But his delight didn’t last long, and he had to cut his happy dance short when he found
out about Wolf’s tie to Fabian Gregory. One of his foot soldiers came by to bring him some money
and the bad news—a kid named Darryl that everybody referred to as Swing. Swing handed Cyrus
$10,000 and told him Wolf was Fabian’s son and that Chase had fucked up royally.

“How can that be?” Cyrus had wondered aloud. The time difference made no sense. Fabian
would have had to have been a very young father, screwing pretty early in life. Then Cyrus thought
about it again and understood exactly how could it
could
be true. Swing had informed Cyrus that
Fabian was “scouring the streets” for his ass. He knew Khalid and Cyrus were behind the death of
his child, and he’d put the word out that he wanted them both dead on sight.

Khalid was in the hospital, probably dying, and the end of it all, Cyrus would most likely be
dead too. For once, he honestly couldn’t see a way out. Cyrus wasn’t that afraid of dying, but he
had a score to settle before he did.
All of this is Chase’s fault. He’s just an arrogant lunatic who refuses to
listen—a stubborn, defiant, ungrateful bastard who fucked my life up just by being fucking born
. He hated
Chase with the blackest part of his black heart.

Chase had signed Cyrus’s death certificate by killing Wolf, and Cyrus had a feeling Chase
probably knew Wolf was Fabian’s son when he killed him. He was certain Chase was probably
trying to get rid of Cyrus without having to do the deed himself. If Cyrus had to die over this shit,
he wasn’t going quietly. Chase had fucked his life up, and payback would be a real bitch.
It’s time
for that nigga to take his medicine for his bad judgment.

Cyrus’s cell phone rang just as he finished getting dressed. He looked at it and smiled malignantly:
It was soft-ass Corey. Cyrus took his time answering it but picked it up before it went to voicemail.
“Hey, Corey!” he said, his voice dripping with false good cheer.

There was a heartbeat of silence and then Corey answered, “Um…hey, Cyrus. Where you at?”

Cyrus laughed humorlessly. “I got an even better question, Corey. Where the fuck you been for
almost three weeks?”

There was a pause from Corey that was so long, Cyrus thought he’d hung up.

“Your punk ass still there?” he asked.

Corey sighed heavily. “Yeah, I’m still here, Cyrus. I didn’t call you so you could ream me out.
You need to chill with that shit, Cyrus—for real.”

Cyrus frowned and gripped the phone harder. “Who you talkin’ to, Corey? You raisin’ up?”

“Nah, nah, Cyrus. I don’t raise up. You treat me bad enough. Raisin’ up would just make it
worse, wouldn’t it?”

Cyrus smiled. “Well, you see where it almost got Chase. I wouldn’t advise it.”

Corey sighed again. “You want to get somethin’ to eat? I kind of need to talk to you.”

“About what? About how you always disappear with Chase and leave my ass swingin’ in the
wind?” Cyrus could almost see Corey shaking his head.

“Nobody left you swingin’ in the wind, Cyrus.”

“No? Then why am I
here by myself
, Corey?”

There was one last stagnant break in conversation before Corey asked again, “You want to get
somethin’ to eat or not?”

Cyrus raised an eyebrow.
No, this little nigga didn’t just put some bass in his voice.
Cyrus was suddenly
real eager to see him. He was going to put his foot in his ass. “Yeah, sure, Corey. Sounds good.”

“Okay, then meet me at—”

Cyrus cut him off. “I ain’t meetin’ you nowhere. If you want to break bread with me, you’re
gonna have to come get me.”

“Damn, Cyrus. The streets are hot like
that
?”

“Hotter than that, Corey,” Cyrus said and gave him the address.

******

Corey didn’t show his late ass up until dusk. He blew his horn, and Cyrus came out with a
serious attitude. He was already mad at his brother, and him showing up late just fanned the flames
of his discontentment. Cyrus ran his eyes over the block before he decided it was safe and got in.
He let Corey have it as soon as the door was closed. “You’re fuckin’ late, Corey. You don’t ask
somebody for their time, then show up late. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Corey, to his surprise, looked at him sideways. “What the fuck is wrong with
you
, Cyrus? Why
you comin’ at me like that? All I wanted to do was talk to you and try to get somethin’ to eat. You
gotta make a big fuckin’ deal outta every little thing.”

Cyrus’s jaw dropped in shock. “
What?
”

He wasn’t used to Corey talking to him like that. Corey usually took low on every level with
him, just to keep the peace. “You heard me, Cyrus. That’s all you do—bitch and moan just like a
goddamned woman. I’m tired of that shit. From now on, I ain’t interested in hearin’ all that, unless
I’m gonna be gettin’ some ass when it’s over.”

Cyrus stared at Corey, driving the Lexus
his
money had bought, with his face screwed up. “You
been spendin’ a little too much time with Chase.”

Corey shrugged. “Whatever, Cyrus.”

Cyrus’s eyebrow went back up. “Whatever? I ain’t lettin’ you talk to me like that, Corey “

Corey stopped at the light and turned his head Cyrus’s way. “What are you gonna do, Cyrus?
Shoot me?”

Cyrus smiled at him tightly. “Keep it up, Corey, and I just might. Where the hell you been?”

“I was out of the country.”

Cyrus smirked. “Doin’ what?”

Corey shrugged. “Nothin’. Chillin’.”

Cyrus couldn’t believe he was talking to Corey. The boy’s newfound backbone and nonchalance
was unsettling.
What the hell does he mean, he was chillin’? He was somewhere chilling and doing nothing
while I been up here tryina fend for my damn himself? Fuck that!
“You got some balls on you, Corey.
Was Chase with you?”

Again came that sideways look from Corey. “Why you askin’ about Chase? What do you
care?”

Cyrus smiled. “He’s my brother, Corey.”