Dangerously In Love (13 page)

H
is work day had been a bitch. He was dog-ass tired and his back hurt from sleeping on the couch. Reed would have loved to just go home, ignore Dayna, and climb into his unmade bed. But he couldn’t. He’d committed himself to an eight o’ clock meeting at the Hilton hotel with Chris Miller and a few other investors.

He was expected to arrive with a twenty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check in hand. Now that was a joke, because all Reed was bringing was a new angle to stall his monetary contribution to the real estate investment deal.

He’d start things off by offering to pay for the first round of drinks. Then after everyone had mellowed a bit, he’d cap their heads up with some game so smooth, they’d be toasting him and paying for the rest of his drinks. Yeah, he had it like that—the smoothness. Some people called it charm, some called it charisma. Whatever it was, he had it and knew how to lay it on thick. As a child, he’d used the smoothness to get what he wanted from his mother, neighbors, teachers, and friends, and later in life; he found the smoothness to be particularly effective with women. He could talk a broad into damn near anything.

Realizing that he’d need some cash to buy that first round of drinks, Reed drove to an ATM machine on Stenton Avenue. He stepped up to the ATM, tapped in the PIN number and the amount of money he wanted.

Impatiently, Reed patted his foot waiting for the transaction to complete. Instead of hearing the sound the machine made when it kicked out cash, he heard an unfamiliar beep. He gazed up. A message in red popped up on the screen:
You have exceeded the daily limit
.

Huh? There had to be a mistake. Dayna had plenty of money in the savings account. He swiped the card again and tried to get money out of the checking account. Again, no cash. Just the same stupid message.

Reed’s stomach clutched. He wouldn’t have any money until payday and that was a week away. On the verge of storming inside the bank to demand an explanation, Reed’s mind flashed to the scene he’d made in the guest room that morning.

Dayna was such an immature, vengeful bitch; she had withdrawn the money from both accounts. Moreover, since both accounts were in her name only, there wasn’t much he could do.

After the wedding, she’d suggested joint accounts, but when she mentioned that she wanted him to fill out paperwork that would have his paycheck automatically deposited into the accounts, he vehemently refused. He wasn’t about to turn his paycheck over to Dayna so she could dole out gas and lunch money. Fuck that! He controlled his own money.

And he liked having access to her money as well.

Dayna wasn’t a very secretive person. She left her bank statements in her top dresser drawer. After opening them, she must have just given the statements a cursory glance because she had never asked him about his constant withdrawals from her savings account. The bank card he’d been using was sent as an extra and dumb-ass Dayna had never noticed it was missing. Once he had the card in his possession, figuring out her PIN number was easy. It was their wedding date. He laughed out loud at his wife’s stupidity. But the laughter was cut off when his mind returned to the present predicament he faced. The bitch had found out what he’d been doing and had cut his cash stream off.

He had no money and no idea of how to get any. With increasing anxiety, he walked to his car and pondered the gravity of his circumstances. He sat in the driver’s seat staring at nothing. As much as he hated to, he had to admit that he’d played himself with Dayna. He shouldn’t have allowed her to provoke him like that. Now she’d trumped him by cutting off his access to cash.

He pulled out his CDs, but nothing looked appealing so he turned the radio on to WJJZ, the smooth jazz station. He needed something soothing to help him think. Larry Carlton’s
Sleepwalk
was playing and like magic, an image of Buttercup appeared. He checked the time—six-thirty. Good. If she’d followed his instructions, she should have been working for at least a couple of hours.

With his spirit bolstered, he cruised along Stenton Avenue and made a right on Mount Pleasant. Traffic ran smoothly and twenty minutes later Reed was opening the door to The Honey Club.

“Ten dollars, man,” the big dude who collected the entrance fee said.

“Yo, bro, I’m not staying. I just want to speak to Buttercup.” Reed wanted to step around the big man, but dude was blocking his path. While the doorman tried to figure out if Reed’s request was permissible, a grinning Buttercup was already rushing toward Reed.

“Hey, baby,” she said with an excited grin. “Whatchu doin’ here so early?”

“I’m dealing with some issues,” Reed whispered and pulled Buttercup to the side. Out of earshot of the doorman, Reed continued. “Yeah, as I was saying…the black stripe on the back of my debit card got scratched and I can’t get a new card for three days. So I just swung by to see if you could let me hold a couple of dollars.”

Buttercup had already started digging in her purse and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills. “It’s still early and that’s all I made so far. Is it enough?”

Reed was disappointed, but he didn’t show it. He was hoping to get at least sixty dollars. “Yeah, baby. That’s more than enough,” he said with a strained smile. He took the money, gave her a quick kiss on the lips, and promised to come back and pick her up at ten o’clock.

The more he thought about it, the less sense it made to waste his time bullshitting Chris Miller. Until he was actually holding the cashier’s check, he’d just duck the brother as well as all the other members of the club. The hell if he was going to waste his money buying drinks for a room full of dickheads.

Therefore, instead of going to the Hilton, Reed decided to spend his money at Lizzard’s. Yeah, he hadn’t seen Sensation in a while. He knew he didn’t have enough to get with her after work, but he could afford a couple of beers while feasting his eyes on her.

Merely looking at Sensation’s fine, phat ass would get his dick erect with a hardness that would last until Buttercup got off from work. Thinking about Sensation, he’d be able to bone Buttercup for a couple of hours. Then he’d go home feeling good enough to ignore Dayna and her stupid ploy to bully him into submission. Shit, moving out of their bedroom and threatening to get a divorce wasn’t going to keep him locked up in the house with her boring ass.

Reed paid for a Corona. “What time is Sensation going onstage?”

The bartender turned his back to Reed and then turned around quickly, banging a chilled bottle on the counter. “She got canned,” the man said smugly.

“She got what?” Reed felt panicked.

“Canned,” the bartender repeated in a monotone.

“She doesn’t work here anymore?” Reed glanced around anxiously as if expecting Sensation to appear from the shadows.

“I didn’t stutter.”

Reed immediately lost his taste for the weak beer and pushed it away from him. He wanted his money back. He also wanted to bitch slap the bartender for looking so damn pleased at his delivery of such bad news.

“Well, where’s she working now?” Reed asked, distressed. He felt too desperate to try to conceal the urgency in his voice.

“How would I know?” the bartender said, and then turned his attention away from Reed and cracked a smile at a suit-wearing white patron who’d just taken a seat next to Reed. “Fuckin’ faggot,” Reed muttered and then chugged down the Corona. Without giving Reed and his quest to find Sensation another thought, the bartender turned around and became engrossed in mixing a martini for the suit.

Reed glared at the bartender’s back, scooped up his change from the counter, and rose from the barstool. No tip for the obnoxious bartender. Plowing through a sea of smiling faces and humongous bogus tits, Reed stomped toward the exit sign.

He was feeling too cranky to drive all over the city looking for Sensation. Hell, he couldn’t afford to look for Sensation. He shook his head at how fucked up his situation was. Gripping the steering wheel in anger, he drove to a deli and bought a six-pack of Old English. His private name for the malt liquor was “fire water” because it brought out the worst in him.

At the moment, with less than thirty dollars to his name, he had a right to bring out the beast in himself.

Dayna had put him in a hell of a quandary. The roof over his head was precarious at best; it was just a matter of time before her father figured out some legal loophole to have him evicted from his own home. And thanks to Dayna, his cash flow was cut off without warning, forcing him to have to rely on a drugged-out hooker for a little bit of chump change.

Yes, his wife was going to pay dearly for the unnecessary strain she was putting him through. If she thought she was going to strip him down to bare bones and suffer no repercussions, then she had sadly underestimated him. Sure, she had a master’s degree while he had only a high school education, but by no means did those letters behind her name make her smarter than he was.

He snapped open a can of Old English, took a swig. He could feel the fire water coursing through his system, causing his mind to race with hateful thoughts. He didn’t know how or when he would exact his revenge, but he knew with certainty that the penalty his wife would have to pay for her transgressions would be steep and life altering.

Three empty beer cans filled the waste bag in his Lexus to capacity. It gave his vehicle a cluttered appearance that was unacceptable. He drove around aimlessly for a few minutes until he happened upon an area that looked squalid enough that three crushed beer cans would fit perfectly with the setting.

After aiming and firing each can out of the window with the power and precision of a major league star pitcher, Reed pulled over to park on a small desolate street and snapped open the fourth can of beer.

Getting his bearings, he realized he was on Delancy Street, just a few blocks from Buttercup’s crib. Images of freaky sex infiltrated his thoughts. He felt instant sexual tension that made his penis rise up and press against his slacks in a manner that screamed for immediate relief. But Buttercup was still at work. Damn! He rubbed his groin lightly, as if trying to pacify it into deflating.

Reed couldn’t think straight with an engorged dick. His mind scrambled for alternative activities that would take his mind off his predicament until Buttercup got off, but nothing he thought of took away the dull ache.

He didn’t want any more beer, he didn’t want to chill with his PBP brothers, and the thought of going from one titty bar to the next to get a cheap lap dance gave him little consolation.

He wanted some pussy. Wet pussy was the only thing that would calm the beast inside.

The blood flow in the shaft of his penis caused Reed to feel disoriented. He wasn’t even aware of starting the car. In fact, he had no conscious memory of pulling off and parking in front of Dottie’s Hair Salon. He felt his fist pounding on the dusty door and later he had a faint recollection of the gnarled hand that admitted him. But in his current state, he was acting on pure animal instinct. There was nothing human about the urges he felt.

“How much do you charge, Dottie?” Reed asked, breathing hard.

“Did you bring me a bag of snuff?” The old woman was dressed in the same robe. It hadn’t been washed and there were additional stains and congealed substances.

“I left your snuff in my car. I’ll get it when we’re finished,” Reed heard himself say.

With the promise of a bag of snuff, the unwashed and senile old woman willingly lay down on the hard plastic couch and slowly opened her wrinkled thighs. The sight she offered was hideous and her parted legs emitted a foul scent. Remarkably, this revolting combination was giving Reed a brutal hard-on.

Like an animal in heat, Reed humped against her odiferous and hairless vagina. With fingers that trembled with depraved passion, he peeled open her paper-thin labia. There was not a drop of moisture inside the atrophied and extremely small vaginal opening.

Reed hawked up spit and smeared it inside the withered vulva and plunged into the tightest and most vile pussy he’d ever penetrated. This sexual encounter was an act of sheer insanity; he knew it but couldn’t stop himself.

Dottie cried out in pain, and then whimpered for a while, but that did not deter Reed from forcing himself as deeply as possible inside this bizarre batch of pussy. After a few moments, Dottie’s whimpers changed to sounds of pleasure, and then escalated to orgasmic shrieks.