Kiss the Ring (6 page)

As much as she wanted someone to lift some of the burden of her grief and anger from her shoulders, she couldn't fuck with him looking at her different because she was one of them chicks that didn't choose to raise her child. In those four years between handing her baby over to Ms. JuJu and meeting Tank, her life hadn't amounted to shit. Partying and bullshit mostly.

She let being a mother come second to that?

“You ain't shit,
Na-ee-ma
.”

Her body went weak with grief. Just straight limp. “Let me go, Tank,” she pleaded softly.

He did in an instant. “What's up with you, Na?” he asked as she rolled away from him, curled her body into a tight ball, and pressed her face into one of the pillows on the bed.

She heard him but she was too busy trying to get her shit together. Trying to keep from becoming a crying mess. Trying and fucking failing like crazy.

Naeema opened her eyes as he gripped her upper arms and lifted her up to face him as he now stood on the side of the bed. “Just go home, Tank. I'll holler at you later,” she said, looking over his shoulder to avoid his eyes as she tried to shrug out of his grasp.

He shook her a little in frustration. “Who is this little boy?”

Her anger came with a quickness and she broke out of his grasp and mushed his hard chest with both of her hands to step down off the bed and move past him. Again she
knew he let her get away with that. “Just leave it the fuck alone, Tank—”

“Hold up one sec, yo.”

She looked on as Tank flipped the covers to find the remote before he turned up the volume on the television.

“The weekend shooting of ten-year-old Olivia Hawkins brings the city's murder rate for the year to fifteen . . .”

As Tank turned the volume back down on the television, Naeema turned away from the picture of the slain little girl still on the screen. Her son was one of the dead counted in that number.

“Another unsolved murder,” she muttered.

“Just like Brandon?” he asked pointedly.

She avoided answering him as she picked up his football jersey that she wore earlier and slid it on. “Listening to the news makes it seem like a war zone out there.”

Tank sat down on the bed. “That's true as hell.”

“It's too many young-ass cock-strong motherfuckers roaming the street that don't give a fuck about life. Theirs or anybody else's,” she said, thinking of Bas and the way he moved through life like he owned the world.

She flinched at the memory of him shooting that gun without even looking back to see where his bullets landed. Somebody like that could have easily run a young boy over to kill him.
Or order his goon to do it.

In the time since she'd been around them she hadn't found a reason for any of them to want Brandon dead. Not yet. She just had to push a little harder. Helping on that bank robbery would give her a closer in with Bas and hopefully she'd be more than Vivica's cute friend that he flirted with.

“The mayor supposed to hire more police,” Tank said.

Naeema twisted her mouth as she climbed on the bed behind him and pressed her titties against his back and settled her chin atop his head. “Them motherfuckers ain't to be trusted.”

“Good thing because then you wouldn't have that file you wanted, right?” he reminded her, leaning forward to look back at her.

“So there ain't no dirty-ass cops, Tank?” Naeema asked with attitude.

“Fuck yeah it is,” he assured her. “Come on now. I ain't no lame, Na. There's good and bad in everything and the streets ain't safe, because not every police give a fuck. These kids gotta make better decisions about how they movin' through these streets.”

“Like Olivia?” she shot back, mentioning the little girl just discussed in the news story.

“You know that ain't what the fuck I mean. Olivia and Brandon are two different scenarios.”

Naeema sat back on her haunches and eyed him hard. “So Brandon deserved to die?” she asked him in a cold voice even as the heat of her anger burned her belly.

“Fuck no and if you tell me what this is all about I'll help you find out what happened.”

Naeema forced herself to chill as she climbed off the bed. She knew everything Tank said was the realest shit ever. She knew firsthand that her son was in thick with a band of thieves. He wasn't completely an innocent like Olivia and so many others. Still, he didn't deserve to die.

“If you just let me know anything I can do, yo, to help you out you know I will,” he said, pointedly looking around at her crazy living situation. “
An-y-thing
.”

Naeema shrugged. “I'm good.”

Tank opened his arms wide as he stared at her. “It's hot as a
motherfucka
in here. I think a mouse just ran across my foot being a rude little bastard. And who knows what the fuck
he
got goin' on downstairs.”

Naeema bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

“Yo, I'm serious as a heart attack. Let me at least put air in this bitch and call a fuckin' exterminator,” he said.

Another point of contention in their marriage was Tank being the neat freak and Naeema caring far less whether everything was in its proper place. “What's the purpose of me jettin' if you still taking care of me?”

Tank shook his head. “But I can come thru and fuck you when you ask for that, right?”

“I didn't ask,” she countered, pointing one of her long stiletto-shaped nails at him.

“No, you ordered—”

“And you obeyed,” she teased.

At Tank's continued silence Naeema looked over her shoulder at him. His dark eyes rested on her. She rolled her eyes and moved past him to pull her pipe out of the box in the drawer. She turned on the lamp sitting on the corner of the dresser, giving the room more light before she packed it with new loud. “Want some?” she asked before she lit it.

“From that?” he balked.

“Yours is bigger, daddy,” she assured him in a soft voice before she licked the tip and took a toke.

“Nah, I'm good,” Tank said.

“But I'll make it better,” she said, pushing him back down on the bed with her free hand before she sat on his lap.

Tank's hands came up to rest on her buttocks beneath the jersey. Naeema took a long toke as she swiveled her hips in tight little circles and looked him directly in those sexy fucking eyes she loved. He lightly slapped her ass as she felt his dick get harder and brush against her thigh as it grew.

Cupping the back of his head with one hand she pursed her lips and exhaled a stream of thick weed smoke. He eased his hands around to massage her soft inner thighs as he opened his mouth and inhaled. “This that good,” she promised him in a whisper.

“The weed or the pussy?” he asked, freeing the smoke to swirl densely in the air between their mouths.

“Both.”

Naeema took another toke as Tank raised the jersey. “Hmmmmmm,” she moaned, stroking his hard dick with her hand as she held the smoke in her lungs.

His tongue felt feather light and hot against her hard nipples before he sucked one deeply into his mouth.

“Shit,” Naeema swore as her clit swelled and throbbed with its own pulse.

“Give me some,” he moaned against the deep hot valley between her breasts as he wrapped his arms around her.

“The weed or the pussy?” she asked, letting her head fall back as she released the last of the smoke up into the air in one long stream that floated up to the ceiling.

“Both.”

She took one last strong toke before reaching down to set the pipe on the floor. She rose up on her knees and held his thick curving dick straight up to lower her pussy down onto it slowly. She paused with just the smooth tip inside
her and worked her walls to clasp and release it a few times before sliding down the full length of him with a tiny circle of her hips.

“You a bad bitch,” Tank told her, his eyes hot as he stared at her.

Naeema held his fine face in her hands and tilted it back before she blew a slow and steady stream of smoke into his nose as she worked her hips to ride his dick.

“The baddest bitch,” he swore.

Pushing his upper body down on the bed, she sat straight up and pulled the jersey over her head to fling across the room before she pressed her hands into his hard chest and leaned forward just enough to lift her hips and slide her pussy back up to his hot tip before she slammed it back down again.

“Damn,” Tank swore, pressing his hips up off the bed as he formed his lips into an O.

The weed was kicking in and she smiled with a little laugh as she enjoyed the base of his dick stroking against her clit and rode him with a slow up-and-down motion, finishing with a tight spin of her hips. The thickness of him pressed against her. The curve of his dick caused the tip to stroke her walls. The feel of his hands massaging her nipples pushed her over the edge.

“I'm staying the night and in the morning I want some more of this pussy.” He pulled her upper body down to suck at her nipples again before reaching behind her buttocks to massage the small space between her pussy and ass with his thumb.

Naeema cried out as her walls tightened against the rock-hard length of him. “You big-dick motherfucker,” she
moaned, biting her lip, and she picked up the pace to ride him harder and faster as she felt a strong nut building.

“Make me cum,” he breathed hotly against her damp nipples. “Make this dick cum.”

And she did, crying out hoarsely, feeling a million different explosions go off inside her as she came with him. She rode the dick through it all even while it felt like the room was spinning around them.

Tank's body went stiff from head to toe as she felt each jolt of his dick when he filled her with his nut. She slowed the ride, squeezing her walls to draw every bit of his seed from him, and peered down at him as he made crazy sexy faces.

He puckered his lips and she instantly bent down to kiss him.

It had been months since they last made love and nothing about it had cooled off. She felt her love for him rise up in her and she forced herself to slide off his now limp dick, lying on her side with her back to him, shivering from the aftereffects and forcing herself not to say those three words.

4

N
aeema awoke with a start, lifting her head from the pillow as she looked around. The living room was empty. She looked to her right, surprised to find the other side of the bed empty too. Turning over, she sat up and the sheet fell to her waist, exposing her breasts.

She knew Tank was gone and not just in the bathroom or downstairs fucking with Sarge. Sometime during the night he had hauled ass and not even woken her.
Guess he changed his mind on some early-morning pussy . . . or he's getting it somewhere else.

Refusing to let herself get riled the hell up with jealousy, she kicked off her sheets and again grabbed the jersey from the floor to pull on before she headed to the kitchen. She washed her hands in the sink and opened the fridge. That motherfucker looked like hunger, desperation, and a complete lack of food stamps. A carton of milk she knew was sour as Coko's breath and an old takeout container of fried chicken and fries she had last week were lonely as hell on them empty shelves.

She had been spending so much time with MMC—the Make Money Crew—and Vivica that she hadn't been around to cook. “Or carry my ass to work,” she mumbled, turning to look out the window over the kitchen sink.

“The fuck is this?” she asked aloud coming closer to the sink to peek through the curtain at Sarge sitting next to a litup grill in the backyard.

Naeema rushed into the living room to pull on a pair of her old Jordans before heading back through the kitchen and out the back door. She almost forgot half the bricks from one of the bottom steps were gone and had to catch herself before she tripped.

“Careful,” Sarge called over, the summer sun making his silver hair shiny as hell. Or she figured it could be sweat soaking his scalp from being dressed in his army fatigues. Long-sleeved shirt and all. Like his ass was still on duty and ready to salute a general or some shit.

Just crazy.

“Sarge, what you doin'?” she asked, coming to stand beside him.

She looked down at the pot of beans bubbling away on the mini charcoal grill and pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation.

“I'm cooking,” he said, leaning forward to use the small spoon he held to stir the pot.

Naeema released a heavy breath. “You can cook in the house, Sarge,” she said, looking over into the backyard of her neighbors to see if they were witness to the fuck shit as well.

“It was too hot in that basement for the grill today.”

“
Today
? Huh? What?” she asked, making an incredulous face. “No . . . no . . . no. You can cook on the stove in the kitchen.”