Between the Sheets (9781476775807) Read online

  I laugh, then quickly compose myself as I pick up the phone. “This is Marika Kennedy speaking,” I say, trying to maintain every ounce of professionalism while feigning ignorance.

  “Yaaass, bitch,” Jasmine says in her horrible attempt at sounding ratchet. She pops what sounds like chewing gum in my ear. “This is Lollipop. But you can call me Miss Lipz ’cause they real big ‘n’ juicy. And I know you had better be ready to publish my book. I wanna see Cum Stains in everyone’s hands ’cause you know like I know, cum is good for the soul.”

  I crack up laughing. “Jasmine, girl, I can’t with you. Your ass is every bit of a damn fool.”

  She joins in my laughter. “Girl, I couldn’t help myself. I was on Amazon this morning looking for a few good books to one-click on this Kindle and my mouth dropped at some of the ridiculous titles. I saw some really crazy shit titled Gorilla Pussy and one called Ratchet Bitch Riding It Raw. Oh and some mess called Miss Shitty. Like, really? What the hell is the reading world coming to?”

  I laugh. “Ohmigod, no. But I’m not surprised. You should see some of the manuscripts titled with ridiculousness that come across some of my editors’ desks. All I can say is: welcome to the digital world, where everyone wants to be in print, hoping to be the next Zane or E.L James.”

  She grunts. “Mmph. Well, good luck with that. It’ll never happen. Not with garbage like that. Anyway, I need something good to read for this flight to San Francisco. Please give me some titles of some books that I can actually stomach. Please and thank you.”

  I chuckle, then give her the names of a few titles from some of my imprints (Sweet & Juicy, Drop It Like It’s Hot, Lick it Slow, Fire & Desire, and Wet Heat). Then I rattle off a few titles I’m familiar with from off the list of other publishing houses.

  She thanks me. Then asks me if I’m familiar with the author Allison Hobbs. “Girl, who isn’t,” I say in a tone full of admiration of one of the hottest female authors of erotic fiction. “We’ve been trying to steal her from her current publisher since the release of her book Pure Paradise. And that’s been some years ago.”

  “Well, honey, I just finished reading her book Munch. And, girrrrl, let me tell you. My kitty throbbed the whole time. Mmph. That’s all I’m going to say. Stevie didn’t read the book, but baaaaaaaby…he sure reaped the benefits. I wore that man out. By the time I finished draining him, cock dust was the only thing shooting out of that man.”

  I crack up laughing. “Omigod! Not cock dust! I’ve heard it all now. Jasmine, your behind is crazy, girl.”

  She chuckles. “Honey, that man loves it when I have a book in my hand. First thing he wants to know is, ‘is that one of your freaky books?’ A nod of the head and by the end of the night he’s sitting up in bed with his erection in his hand, smiling.”

  “Hahahahahahaha. Girl, I can’t with y’all.” I open a drawer and retrieve some tissue from a box to dab under my eyes. Laughing at Jasmine has my eyes tearing. “So what’s been going on? How are the twins?”

  “Ugh!” she grunts. “Hormonal. I swear they’re going to drive me to drink syrup and pop mollies.”

  I laugh. She has fifteen-year-old twin daughters who give her a run for her money. Jasmine’s a jewelry designer and her husband, Stevie, is a multimillionaire entertainment attorney for some pretty high-profile celebrities here in New York and L.A. So her daughters, Amina and Amira, are afforded a fabulous life. Yet they’re fascinated with the street life and thugs.

  “Girrrrl, I’m serious.” She sighs heavily into the phone. “Amina was arrested for underage drinking two weekends ago. And last weekend I spent my entire night in the emergency room with Amira’s ass.”

  I gasp. “Oh, no. What happened? Is she okay?”

  She sucks her teeth. “Well, she will be after her jaw heals and the stitches come out of her face.” My eyes almost pop out of my head as she tells me Amira and some boy she met on Facebook was caught having sex in his bed by his girlfriend.

  “Whaaat? Omigod, no!”

  “Girl, yes. Some crazy little ghetto-trash named Clitina—or some damn project mess like that—and some other hood-rat girl she was with, hit her in the face with a wrench, then sliced her face open.” I’m speechless. “We live way up here in Mendham Township, okay? But this little Grown Ass finds some way to trek her fast-ass into the slums of Irvington. I’m too through.” I ask what happened to the girls who assaulted her. “Oh, honey, we pressed charges on those two little trifling bitches.”

  I shake my head.

  “Anyway, girl. I didn’t call you with my family drama.”

  “Oh, it’s no bother. That’s what girls are for. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  “Yeah, direct me to the nearest drug dealer.”

  I laugh.

  “Anyway, I’m going to be in the city one day next week. Hopefully we can meet for lunch or an early dinner.”

  I smile. Tell her I’d love that. I glance at the time. It’s already a quarter to eleven. I tell Jasmine I have to get ready for a meeting. We exchange a few more words before hanging up.

  I get up from my desk as my private line rings.

  “Hello, this is Marika.”

  “Yo, what’s up sexy?”

  I smile, sitting back in my chair. “You.” I lick my lips. “You miss me already?”

  “Always, baby. You already know.” His voice vibrates through me. I press my legs together, feeling a sweet throb slowly pulsing in my pussy.

  “Mmm. I love the sound of that. And as bad as I’d love to have dirty phone sex with you, I spent the last twenty minutes on the phone with Jasmine. And I have a meeting in”—I glance at the time in the upper-right corner of my desktop—“less than ten minutes.”

  He chuckles. “Nah, we good, baby. It’s a lil’ hectic here for all that right now, anyway. I just wanna make sure you don’t have anything planned for us this weekend.”

  I swivel in my chair, glancing out the huge window, taking in the spectacular view of Times Square. “No. Nothing’s planned. Why, what’s up?”

  “I just got off the phone with our pilot. We’re going to L.A.,” he says coolly. But there’s a hint of wicked amusement in his tone.

  “Oh, is that so,” I say coyly, running a hand through my curls. “And what kind of devilish fun is happening in the City of Angels this weekend?”

  “An invite-only party in Beverly Hills. It just came via courier. I’ll give you all the details later.”

  I grin, sliding my warm tongue over my glossed lips as a slow heat rolls up into the center of my pussy. An invitation-only party only meant one thing: a weekend of scandalous seduction. One full of hot, dirty fucking. And whatever happens in L.A. stays in L.A.

  I ask what time we leave. He tells me our flight is tonight.

  8:30 p.m.

  “Mmm. I can’t wait.”

  “Me, either, baby.”

  FIVE

  Marcel

  “Yo, what’s good, pussy,” my boy Carlos says, knocking on the door as I’m hanging up the phone with Marika. I could almost smell my baby’s pussy juices percolating when I told her we’d be leaving tonight for this mansion freak party out in Beverly Hills.

  Carlos steps into my office wearing a black leather biker jacket over a black mesh pullover with a pair of ripped, faded jeans and black riding boots. Swag on ten, his whole getup is from the Ralph Lauren Black Label collection. That’s all this muhfucka rocks, that or the Purple Label.

  He’s a straight-up pretty boy. A mix of Native American, Italian, and African, his exotic looks have always had chicks falling at his big-ass feet. And I’m not gonna front on his dick game ’cause dude stays baggin’ mad pussy with his green eyes and all that coal-black, wavy hair, which he wears in his signature ponytail.

  We’ve been boys since junior high. But all through high school we were thick as thieves, hugging the block, turning up at all the hot parties, and fucking all the baddest chicks. Then we graduated. He went off to Morehouse on a track an
d academic scholarship. And I went to Howard to play for the Bison on a basketball scholarship.

  Aside from pledging the same frat and having the same taste in women, we are polar opposites. His family’s caked up. Mine lived check to check. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology and a minor in neuroscience. I graduated magna cum laude with a degree in communications and radio broadcasting.

  Yet, I’m the one actually doing something with my degree. This niggah decided in his second year at Harvard to drop out of medical school to pursue a career singing and modeling. Garnered by the gossip rags around the globe as an international playboy, he’s been linked to several Hollywood starlets, a few R&B songstresses, and several supermodels in Paris and New York. Still, I keep telling his ass chicks ain’t checkin’ for his kind like that anymore. But the muhfucka still thinks red-skinned niggahs are on top.

  Still, I gotta say, he’s jet-setting and doing big things. And, although his pops was pissed at him for not becoming a surgeon, like himself and his grandfather, he’s finally come around. I gotta give it to dude. He stepped out on faith and followed his dreams. Now, two R&B albums in, several appearances in commercials and film, and a six-figure modeling contract with a major fashion designer, he’s posted up on large billboards in his drawz and his face stays plastered on the cover of one magazine or another.

  “Oh, shit, ugly muhfucka.” I laugh, getting up from my desk, smiling. He’s been over in Europe touring and doing some modeling gig for the last six months so it’s been a minute since we’ve linked up. We give each other dap, then embrace in a brotherly hug. The scent of his expensive cologne floats around the space between us. “What up? When’d ya stinkin’-ass get back in the States?”

  He joins in my laughter. “Yeah, aiight, muhfucka. I got ya ugly all right with ya chocolate Morris Chestnut-lookin’ass. Big bubblehead muhfucka.” I laugh as he pulls back one of the leather chairs situated in front of my desk and takes a seat. He removes his black Aviator shades. “I got in last week, bruh.”

  I raise a brow, pulling out the other chair and taking a seat. “And you just checkin’ me now? Funny-style ass. You coulda at least shot me a text to let me know you touched down. Damn, muhfucka.”

  He rubs his manicured goatee, framed around full lips. “Nah, man. You know how it is, fam. You right, though. My bad. I got back, chilled with the family for a minute, then had to break my sidepieces off with some of this good wood.” He frowns, shaking his head. “Wait. Hold up. Why the fuck am I explaining myself to you? I got back when I got back. I’m here now. What, you want my autograph?”

  “Yeah, muhfucka. You can sign over one of them damn checks you collecting.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, yeah. You’re the one making all the paper. So what’s good? How’s that sexy-ass wife of yours? You ever mess that up, I’ma be snatchin’ that up. I’ll do sloppy seconds for a life with that fine woman.”

  I grin. “Yeah, aiight. Never that. Marika is good, man. You should stop down ‘n’ check for her on your way out. She’d love that.”

  “I just might. I see life’s still treating you right. How’s the radio show going?”

  “Yeah, man. Radio show is still poppin’. You know the freaks love them some Creepin’ ‘n’ Freakin’ After Dark.”

  He shakes his head. “You the only cat I know on the radio melting panties off asses without dropping one damn album or singing one bar. Ya ugly ass can’t even hold a note.”

  I laugh. “Man, what can I say? It’s the voice, my dude. The freaks love me. But, yeah, life’s definitely good.”

  He nods his head, smiling and taking in the ice in my lobes and dripping around my neck and wrist. “I see, I see.” He inhales a deep breath. “Smells like fresh money all up in this piece.”

  “Nah, nah. I’m broke, niggah. You the one doin’ it big, playa.”

  “Yeah, okay. The lies you tell, muhfucka.”

  I laugh.

  But truth is, I’m that cat getting it. But bragging isn’t what I do. Nah. I learned a long time ago that humility gets you a whole lot further in life than bravado ever will.

  Watching my moms wake up every morning—not ever missing a day of work, rain, sleet ‘n’ snow—with a smile on her face as she left outta the brownstone we shared with my grandmother, aunt and three cousins in Brooklyn, to scrub toilets for rich white folks out in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, then go clean office buildings at night so she could afford to send me to the best private schools the city had to offer taught me a lot about having an impeccable work ethic. About doing whatever it is you need to do to make it.

  On everything, Moms was hard on me because my pops wasn’t around, thanks to a bullet taking his life when I was five. But she had a mission. She was determined to make sure I had a shot at something much greater than what the hood could ever offer me. And she was dead-ass when she’d threaten to beat the hoodlum, the ruffian, the thug, and anything else that represented the streets out of me anytime I let my pants drop off my waist, or she heard me using slang. Other times she’d threaten to ship me off to Martinique to live with one of my pops’ six brothers, or over to Grenada with her family. Becoming a statistic wasn’t an option. Prison. Gangs. The streets. All not an option, if I valued my life.

  “I’ll kill you dead, first, before I ever let the streets have you.”

  Real shit, everything that I am, everything that I’ve become, is because of my moms. I owe her everything. She was the poster girl for how to make nothing outta something without looking for a handout. And that’s exactly what I did to get to where I’m at today. On top. And I didn’t have to lie, scheme, fuck, bribe, or murder my way up to get here.

  But if it weren’t for the fact that my face has been plastered in Vibe, XXL, and The Source—to name a few, you would never know that I’m President of MK Records, and one of the most powerful cats in the music industry. Let Maxim and Black Enterprise magazines and BET tell it. I’m one of the Top Ten Hottest hip-hop and R&B moguls in the game. But, uh, without saying much more. Let’s just say—with looks, swag, money stacked, numerous rental properties, a roster of some of the hottest artists in the game on my label, and a bangin’-ass wife—I stay winning.

  “Yeah, aiight, muhfucka,” he says, laughing. “You’re an entertainment mogul. Your name rings bells in the industry, niggah. So save that broke shit for them lames who don’t know you.”

  Carlos cracks me the fuck up, for real, for real. As articulate and polished as he is, you’d never know he wasn’t bred in the hood by the way he talks behind closed doors. He has more hood swag than some of the muhfuckas who are actually from the streets.

  “Aiight, aiight…” I run a hand up over the top of my head, caressing the deep spin of my waves. “We ain’t gotta broadcast the shit. I’m sayin’ though. What’s good with you? How long you in the States, this time? And when you getting ya ass back up in the lab to drop some heat?”

  He nods his head. “Man, funny you should ask ’cause I was just thinking on my way over here that it’s time to get back in the studio and make this money. I’m ready. I’ma be here for at least the next six months.”

  “Oh, aiight, aiight. That’s what’s up. I got this producer I think you should link up with. This young cat out in Queens; he’s got some sick tracks.”

  He gives me a quizzical look. “So what you saying, bruh? You tryna sign me?”

  “Are you ready to grind hard?”

  Now I’m not gonna front like I wasn’t feeling some kinda way when Carlos signed a two-album deal with another label, but I understood his desire to sign with a major label. At the time, MK Records—the M is for Marcel and the K is for my last name, of course—was just starting out back then and didn’t have the kind of star power on its roster that it has now. So I respected his hustle. Still, I kinda wanted to hate on him on the low until his debut song, “Lick Her Slow,” dropped and spent weeks on the charts. I knew then he had mad talent. Then when his second single, “Love Box,” peaked at numb
er 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the R&B charts, I knew dude was about to shut shit down. That joint blew up all the R&B and hip-hop stations and his album Dirty lil Secrets was not only nominated for both American Music Awards and Grammy Awards, but it also sold over 2.5 million copies.

  So on some realness, I couldn’t hate. But after his sophomore album, Ballz on Fire—which took two years for him to finish because of his modeling obligations—went flat, the label dropped him like a bad habit.

  He shakes his head. “Whoa, hold up. Are you shittin’ me? Or are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, muhfucka. What you think? I’m dead-ass. You been outta the game for a minute, but it’s time for you to hop back in ‘n’ resuscitate R and B.”

  I can’t even front. Right now, the only thing I’m hearing is cash registers ringing in my ears. And all I’m seeing are dollar signs swimming behind my pupils. Carlos is the complete package. He’s not only a talented songwriter and singer. Dude is a gifted pianist. And he has mad sex appeal. All of his songs are raw, sexual and sensual about many of his sexapades around the globe and the things he’s said and done to get a chick to drop them drawz. And today, like never before, sex sells…lots of it. Straight like that. And this freaky muhfucka has enough heat to turn up the streets.

  Carlos reaches his hand out for some dap, grinning. “Then let’s make music, baby.”

  “Yo, that’s what I’m talking ’bout,” I say, giving him dap. “ ’Bout damn time you got your mind right ‘n’ brought ya yellow ass on over to the MK family. Let’s go get this paper, bruh.”

  He laughs, glancing at his watch. “You already know. Let’s drop some hot shit ‘n’ get these streets talking.”

  “And them drawz droppin’,” I add, laughing along with him. I rise from my seat. Tell him to have his manager get at me.

  He stands, too. “Aiight, cool, cool. I’ma ’bout to head out.” We give each other dap, then our frat handshake, followed by a big-ass hug, which kinda takes me by surprise; especially since his body is pressed into mine a lil’ closer than usual. “You’ve always been my boy,” he says, beaming. “And I got nothing but love for you, man.”