Sex in the Hood Saga Read Free Page A

put the whole room on freeze-frame. “An’ you bof gon’ get a up close an’ personal introduction to ma favorite brotha, Prince.”

Chapter 2
    Babylon Street was jumping as Duke screeched his ivory convertible Porsche between TV trucks, Escalades and hoopties. Folks packed the porches in every direction, dancing, barbecuing, and talking about this mixed rich bitch from TV who was moving into their hood. Whether they loved her or hated her, they couldn’t touch her. Duke had big, bad Barriors standing guard on every corner, just like they did for school kids and grandmothers and anybody else who hired Babylon’s protection services.
    Now, all eyes were on Miss Green’s crumbling little wood-sided house with faded, peeling blue paint, a sagging porch, and dirt for a front yard. A media mob was already camped out on the cracked front sidewalk. A strip of dirt stretched between them and the curb, where Pound Dog sat inside a black Hummer. TV trucks were parked in front and in back of the big vehicle that was holding the hottest spot in the hood right now.
    â€œIt’s on,” Beamer said into his cell phone.
    In a flash, the Hummer pulled out and Duke pulled in, just in time to watch his Duchess get dropped by fate right into his lap.
    â€œTell me I ain’t the baddest ma’fucka in the galaxy,” Duke said, loving how his voice was vibrating as deep as the funky electric beat of his Bang Squad CD. “Ain’t no otha ma’fucka got his own theme song to rock wit’. Jamal finally finish cuttin’ Duchess’ jus’ in time.” Duke’s diamond “D” ring sparkled as his enormous left hand fell from the polished teakwood steering wheel to the tentpole in his white linen pants. “Damn, Timbo ain’t neva been this cocked. An’ I ain’t even seen her in person yet. This bitch gon’ rule.”
    â€œNo joke, Massa Duke,” Beamer said, pulling a thin gold box from the dash. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d ask what you been smokin’.”
    â€œB, why you think TV here?” Duke nodded toward reporters and cameramen who were running around like ants, jockeying for a spot on the three-foot swath of dirt between his gold rims and the sidewalk. “’Cause e’rybody wanna see the mos’ wild, whack give-you-a-heart-attack love story ev’a!”
    â€œShe gon’ look at you an’ run!” Beamer laughed then shouted to the media mob. “Yo! We security. Y’all can’t block us.”
    A white female reporter cut her eyes at him and shook her head, but she got out of the way anyway. So did the big black dude with the camera on his shoulder, and some other reporters with notebooks and tape recorders.
    â€œYou definitely on pussy patrol now,” Beamer said, nodding across the street where Sha’ante and her hoochie crew were blasting “Move Bitch Get Out Da Way” from the porch of their second story flat. They were also smirking down at the news trucks raising their poles to broadcast live from this urban warzone where the rat-tat-tat of gunfire was as common as sirens and screaming.
    â€œMedia on one side,” Beamer said, “and them blown-out hoes across the street at Sha’ante house, plottin’ a bitch hunt.”
    â€œHell no.” Duke stiffened with the overwhelming need to protect his Duchess. Sweat prickled down his solid muscles that he had pumped tougher in the gym with the Barriors this morning. He glanced up at those jealous, hard-ass hoes then he looked down at the silver metal nestled between his leather bucket seat and the center console. “Let a bitch try.”
    Above, the rhythmic beat of helicopter blades stirred up frenzied noise and movement amongst the kids on bikes by the weed-clogged lot next door, the dark faces crammimg every inch of porches on crumbling Cape Cod-style cribs, and the brothas and bitches parked in