Diamonds and Pearl Read online

  Diamonds closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s nothing, Vita. I just got a lot on my mind. This crown I’ve chosen to wear seems to get heavier by the day,” he said honestly.

  “Then stop trying to carry it on your own.” She ran her hands over his shoulders and brought them to rest on his chest. Vita stared into his black eyes, feeling the familiar beat of his heart in her palm. She tried to convey just how much she loved him and how far she was willing to go if he would only let her. Diamonds had made it clear to her long ago that what they had could never be more than what it was, but she couldn’t help how she felt. He was her first love. With this in mind, she leaned in and kissed him.

  Intimacy had been the furthest thing from Diamonds’s mind when Vita had come into the room, but when she started, he didn’t stop her. The heat from her body against him pulled his busy mind from the million things he was trying to sort out and made him focus on the beautiful woman on his lap. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her back. His tongue explored her mouth and found it fresh and clean like she had just brushed her teeth. He felt his cock swell in his jeans, and from the way Vita’s eyes popped open, she must’ve felt it too.

  “I see at least part of you still recognizes who the fuck I am.” Vita smiled devilishly, sliding off his lap and onto her knees. “Don’t worry about nothing, baby.” She undid his belt. “Mama gonna get all that evil up out you.”

  While he watched Vita tug his thick, throbbing cock from his jeans, he heard Hank’s warning in the back of his mind. For a moment guilt tried to set in, and he thought about telling her to stop, but when he felt Vita’s hot mouth wrap around his dick, the guilt faded into euphoria. She took him into her mouth a little at a time, every so often popping his penis out and running her tongue around the head. When she had his member good and slick, she opened the secret compartment in the back of her throat and took him in balls deep. Diamonds wanted to squeal like a schoolgirl, but he couldn’t lose his cool in front of her. One thing Diamonds always appreciated about Vita was how seriously she took whatever she set out to do. Whether it was busting her gun in a firefight or sucking cock, she gave it her all. She was sucking him off so good that her mouth started to feel like a pussy.

  Vita took his cock like a champ as Diamonds plowed his huge cock into her throat. Between pumps, she would grab him by the hips and force him to the back of her throat while running her tongue over his balls. Diamonds had gripped the sides of her head and was pumping into her mouth so furiously that she couldn’t come up for air. Vita felt like she was coming close to blacking out, but she wouldn’t stop him. Her need to please the man she loved took precedence over everything, including her own well-being. She was determined to remind Diamonds why he had chosen her in the first place. When she ran her hands down his stomach and felt the muscles tighten, she knew he was about to blow his load, but she wasn’t done with him yet. With a popping sound, she pulled his dick from her mouth and squeezed the top of it hard enough to make him wince. “If you think you’re gonna get yours before I get mine, you’ve got another think coming.” She climbed back onto his lap.

  Diamonds’s eyes rolled to the back of his head when he felt Vita’s warm box settle over his penis. She was tight, but not tight enough to where he had to force it. Her pussy fit over his dick like a glove. He wrapped one arm around her small waist and leaned forward, her hanging slightly off him, so he could dictate the pace. He jammed himself into her slow and steady, savoring her. He smiled inwardly when he looked down and saw the white buildup of foam that had formed around his cock, knowing she was reaching her happy place.

  All Vita could do was bite down on her lips and curse under her breath as Diamonds stabbed into her womb over and over. He was fucking her so good that she was torn between kissing him and killing him. She had been with other men over the course of their on-again-off-again relationship, but none of them slung pipe quite like Diamonds. She thought of the girl at the bar she’d caught him talking to and the way his face had lit up in her presence, and it made her angry all over again. Sharing his dick, no matter how painful, she could deal with. But the thought of him taking it away from her altogether brought on a temporary moment of insanity.

  Diamonds was just getting into his groove when Vita popped off his lap unexpectedly, leaving his dick bobbing back and forth like a spring. When he saw the crazed look in her eyes, he was taken aback—for a minute he thought she might attack him. Instead Vita turned her back to him, planted her hands on the ground, and placed her legs on the arms of the chair. Stretched out like the letter Y, she lowered herself back onto him and showed him a side of her he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  Vita felt his hands trying to grab onto her ass to get her to slow down, which only made her throw it harder. Diamonds prided himself on always being in control, and she intended to strip him of that. She bounced on his lap ferociously, not caring if she broke his dick off while trying to get hers. “I’m ’bout to nut.… I’m ’bout to nut,” she heard him say, panting breathlessly behind her. But when he tried to push her off to release himself, Vita put all her weight on Diamonds and made him explode inside her. She continued to grind back and forth on his lap until she felt his dick start to go soft and was sure she got every drop of his joy juice.

  “What the fuck, Vita?” Diamonds cursed, and shoved her off him. He jumped to his feet, dick swinging and dripping.

  Vita rolled onto her back and gave him a lazy smile. “What you tripping off? Ain’t like this is the first time you nutted in me, and I ain’t popped up pregnant yet.”

  “Spiteful bitch!” he growled. He knew Vita making him bust inside her was payback for him being all up on Pearl. She could be vindictive as hell when she set her mind to it. He cursed himself for not heeding Hank’s warning and keeping his dick out of her. Needing to put some distance between himself and Vita before he was tempted to slap the shit out of her, Diamonds grabbed the parcel from the arm of the recliner and retreated to the card table on the other side of the room.

  “What you doing?” Vita strolled over as if she hadn’t done anything wrong. She was still naked, sashaying to try to entice him, but he was too mad to bite … at least not again.

  “Trying to keep from kicking your ass.” He was rummaging through the drawers of the card table, looking for something. “You know I ain’t trying to bring no babies into this fucked-up life.”

  “Neither am I, so don’t flatter yourself, nigga!” she spat. “You know, for as much as you talk shit about not wanting to bring babies into this, it don’t seem to stop you from running up in me raw or dumping off inside me when your ass is too drunk to pull out. You kill me with your double standards.”

  Diamonds brandished the hammer he had found in the drawer. “I’m gonna kill you with this if you keep testing me.”

  “The day you raise your hand to me will be the day when you had better learn to sleep with one eye open,” Vita warned. “The reason you think you can do and say what the fuck you want to me is because I let you. Your ass done got comfortable, thinking I ain’t going nowhere, but one day I’m going to surprise you.”

  “Do whatever you gotta do, Vita. I ain’t gonna lose no sleep,” Diamonds told her, giving a dismissive shrug. This only made her angrier.

  “You know, I don’t even know why I’m surprised at how shitty you’re acting toward me, since you do it every time we get to a new city. Vita’s pussy is good enough for you to pound on whenever you’re horny, until you get to sniffing around a new bitch,” Vita accused.

  “Go ahead with that shit.” He made a dismissive gesture. He didn’t want to admit it, but Vita knew him better than he thought.

  “Do you love her?” Vita asked unexpectedly.

  The question caught Diamonds off guard. “Who?”

  “You know who: little Ms. Fine I caught you with at the bar.”

  Diamonds gave her a dumbfounded look. “I ain’t about to answer that shit,” he said.

  “You ain’t denying i
t either,” she shot back.

  “Vita, you don’t even know that girl. What’s your problem with her?”

  “My problem is, tonight I saw you look at a total stranger the way I’ve always prayed you’d look at me,” she said emotionally.

  Hearing the hurt in her voice stung Diamonds, and he felt low. Not because he had hurt her feelings, but because she was so dangerously close to the truth. For as foolish as it was, all he had been able to think about since their meeting was Pearl, a girl he barely knew. To spare his pride and Vita’s feelings, he opened his mouth to spin a lie, but his ringing cell phone saved him the trouble. “Talk,” he answered the call. “Can it wait? I ain’t been to sleep yet.” He listened for a while longer before his face soured at whatever was being said on the other end. “A’ight, I’ll be there.” He ended the call and placed the cell phone on the table, next to the parcel.

  “Everything cool?” Vita asked, momentarily forgetting about the argument. When Diamonds got off the phone, he appeared to be in an even fouler mood than he had already been in.

  “Yeah, I gotta go handle some shit. It seems King Wetback wants to meet the man responsible for handling his little problem,” Diamonds told her.

  “About fucking time. If you ask me, we should’ve met the nigga before we did the job. I’ll round up the troops,” Vita said, and headed for the door.

  “Don’t bother. He wants to meet me alone.”

  Vita’s head whipped around. “Alone? What for?”

  Diamonds shrugged. “You know these old-school niggas are hella suspicious of new faces, even ones who commit murder for them.”

  A worried expression crossed Vita’s face. “I don’t like this, Diamonds. We don’t know these Spanish niggas like that. You could be walking into a setup.”

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it. Eddie ain’t no fool. After what we did to Pana and his whole team, he knows that if anything were to happen to me, you and the boys would rain hell down on his bean-eating ass. And I won’t be alone; TJ will be there too.”

  Vita snorted. “Shit, if he’s who you’re taking with you for backup, then you might as well be alone. He ain’t the most useful muthafucka I’ve met.”

  “Cut the boy some slack, Vita. Not everybody got the stomach for what we do. TJ may have his faults, but if it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have been able to get into position so quickly when we rolled into town.”

  “Yeah, he’s good at making deals. I’ll give him that. But the boy needs to stay in his lane. That shit he pulled earlier could’ve compromised us.”

  “But it didn’t,” Diamonds countered. “In any event, I don’t think it’s a mistake TJ will be making again anytime soon,” he added, to assure her.

  “You better hope not, because blood or not, I’ll take that bigmouthed nigga out the game myself,” Vita promised. “And, speaking of mistakes, what’s with you showing mercy earlier? I think you leaving that old man and his brat alive are invitations to disaster. We should’ve let both of their asses burn along with the bar instead of pulling them out. If they’re dead, then they ain’t liabilities.”

  “And if they’re dead, Pops can’t sign over the deed to what’s left of that property,” Diamonds said, enlightening her. “The lawyer is gonna pay a call on him this morning, and I want you to go with him. The fact that we’re holding his kid hostage at the storage unit should be enough insurance for Pops to keep up his end of the bargain, but seeing you will remind him of what will happen if he doesn’t.”

  “Sounds like you’ve pretty much got it mapped out, but there’s one thing you haven’t considered. Even if Pops does sign over his property, what’s to stop him from blowing the whistle on us after he gets his kid back, bringing the wrath of every boss in New York down on our heads?”

  Diamonds laughed. “V, you of all people should know me better than that.” He unwrapped the newspaper he’d taken from the refrigerator. Lying in the center of the bloodstained wrapping was a cow’s tongue. “When I’m done, the last thing you’ll have to worry about is a nigga speaking ill of this crew.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Long after Diamonds had dropped Buda off, anger still burned in Buda’s chest. The only reason he had gone along with Diamonds to that shit hole bar was because he knew it would present him the opportunity to bust some heads. Diamonds had claimed they were only going to try to negotiate with Pops, but because Buda knew Diamonds, he also knew it would turn physical. Diamonds dealt with people who didn’t submit to his will by putting his hands on them or making them disappear. This was the reason he and Buda had been clashing so often lately. Buda was no yes-man, and Diamonds couldn’t deal with that.

  Back in the day, Buda and Diamonds had been more like brothers than he and John-Boy. They could come to each other in times of trouble, love or war, but it seemed like their relationship had changed since they’d left New Orleans. Diamonds had become distant and had started treating him more like one of the other soldiers rather than the man he had trusted enough to appoint his second-in-command. Buda had been ten toes down since the beginning and was always the first to step up when the situation called for it. Diamonds had a knack for overlooking the good things he did and focusing on the bad. Granted, Buda knew his drinking was becoming an issue, but none of them were without their vices, including Diamonds.

  With all the pent-up aggression he had going on, there was no way Buda was going home. His first mind was to take a taxi to his car and hit different strip clubs until he got lucky, but he’d been drinking and had a pistol on him. He’d be ripe for the plucking for some overzealous cop. It was best that he took a cab to wherever he planned on going rather than risk spending the weekend in lockup.

  It was then that he remembered he had a chick who didn’t live too far from where Diamonds had dropped him off. Of all the women he had spread out all over the city, she was the one he could call anytime of the day or night, and she’d be down for whatever he wanted to do and then some. He’d been knocking the bottom out of her for a few weeks and couldn’t get enough of what she had between her legs. He whipped out his phone and scrolled until he saw the name GOOD PUSSY and hit send. She picked up on the second ring, and a sultry voice came over the line.

  “Well, hello, stranger. I haven’t heard from you in a while. I was beginning to think you stopped fucking with me.”

  “Never that, sweetheart. Shit, just been hectic, so I ain’t had a lot of playtime, ya know?”

  “Sho ya right. Get that money, big daddy,” she said, stroking his ego.

  Buda got to the point. “So what’s up? You home? I got an itch I need scratched.”

  “No, I’m not home, but I’m not far, either. I’m out having drinks with some people. You remember the place you met me at, right?”

  “Yeah.” He recalled the after-hours gambling spot where he’d first laid eyes on the object of his affection. “What are the chances that if I swing through there, you’ll cut your company loose and we can get into some grown folk’s action?”

  “Slide through and find out,” she teased, and ended the call.

  * * *

  Eight minutes later Buda was climbing out of a taxi on 118th and Lexington. At that hour of the night there weren’t many people out, except drug addicts and people looking to gain entrance to Hades. Hades was located in the back of a storefront that doubled as a small bakery during the day. It was a spot where you could go when the regular clubs had closed down but you wanted to keep the party going. Buda had discovered the dive through a pill dealer he knew, during one of his all-night benders. To that day it was still the most fun he’d ever had in New York City.

  Buda knew he would be subjected to getting searched like everyone else, so he stashed his pistol under a trash can on the corner. He hated moving around without his gun, especially when he was alone. That was all the more reason for him to get in and get out. Outside there were a couple of girls standing around, waiting their turn to be allowed inside and trying not to look su
spicious. It was kind of hard to do, considering they were hanging out on a known drug block, wearing heels and short skirts. Anyone who saw them knew that they were either looking for a good time or selling pussy. Their thirsty eyes latched onto Buda as he bypassed the line and marched through the small entrance.

  Before he could cross the threshold, he was greeted by a monstrosity of a man who stood at least six foot five and had a large block head and a scar that resembled a lightning bolt across his forehead. He bore a striking resemblance to the Mary Shelley character he had been nicknamed after, Frankenstein. He stood between Buda and the rear door that led to the lounge and scowled at him from under thick bushy eyebrows.

  “Sup? I was here the other night with Boogie,” Buda said in an attempt to jog Frankenstein’s memory.

  “Boogie ain’t here,” Frankenstein told him in a voice that sounded like two stones grinding together. “If you plan on going inside, it’ll be a fifty-dollar cover.”

  When Buda had first come there with Boogie, they were whisked inside with no hassle, but now Frankenstein was acting like he didn’t know him. Buda didn’t want to seem like a petty nigga for arguing with him, so he dug into his pocket and paid the cover. Frankenstein gave him a thorough searching before standing aside and allowing him to pass through the back door.

  Hades wasn’t a lounge, a club, or a bar. It was a storeroom that had been gutted and filled with some small tables, a few chairs, a sectional couch, and a bar that looked like someone had ordered it from a Fingerhut catalog. Though it might not have been much to look at, it had a reputation amongst underworld circles. For all intents and purposes, Hades was pretty much just what the name described it to be: a place where you could entertain your vices. Girls, gambling, cheap liquor … they had it all.