Session 33

Chapter two

I was standing tall in a cheap hotel room. My Jordans still laced, jeans bunched around my ankles, shirt pushed up under my chin. My knees were pressed against the edge of the mattress, fingers digging into soft, sweat-slicked thighs. This was my ritual. Friday night. No strings. No complications. Just fucking.

Keisha was moaning—louder than necessary—but I didn’t care, as long as she didn’t say the wrong thing. She arched her back, throwing herself against me, her ass rippling with each thrust. Praising me.

“Oooh, Cass! That’s it, baby. Right there. Fuck me harder!”

Keisha wasn’t special. She was my fallback. She’s who I call when I can’t find anybody in the club worth fucking or when I didn’t feel like dealing with new energy.

“Oooh, shit, Cass, that's my spot. Fuck me faster, baby. Harder!”

There were plenty of Keishas. They came in all forms—women I met at the club, the grocery store, sometimes even on the street.

The routine was always the same. Take her to a hotel—never home. Fuck her hard and fast, pull her hair, slap her ass, pull the condom off, and nut on her back. At the end of the night, I’d send her home with a few extra dollars in her pocket, then rinse and repeat the next week. I don’t love or respect the females I deal with. Why should I respect them when they don’t respect themselves?

“Cassius, I’m ’bout to cum, don’t stop,” Keisha groaned.

I didn’t stop. I picked up my pace, ignoring her nails digging into my skin, ignoring the faint sheen of sweat dripping down my temples. I pounded into her faster until I felt her walls gripping me. My balls tightened. That was my cue.

Pulling out, I flipped her over. I snatched my condom off.

“Open your mouth!” I demanded, and she complied.

She grinned, licking her lips, then dropped to her knees. She fluttered her eyelashes at me. Keisha was pretty as fuck—looked like the thick sister who sings with her less-thick sister. With my heart pounding and my stomach muscles tight, my hand stroked my dick from root to tip until I was spilling on her face, her lips, even inside her mouth. It was the closest she’d probably ever get to a pearl necklace.

She moaned like it was a gift and purred, “Damn, daddy, you taste good.” Her words came out silky, like my cum.

I grunted, stepping back as she wiped her mouth with her fingers and sucked them clean.

I got a sick satisfaction from watching her swallow my babies. She wasn’t ashamed.

A second later, she strutted to the bathroom. The shower turned on. Before she came out, I got dressed. After leaving two hundred dollars on the dresser, I stepped out into the night, the chill barely touching me.

I got in my car, my hands gripping the steering wheel. Not tired yet, I thought about heading to Tampa, maybe hitting a strip club. Maybe I’d pay a stripper’s rent tonight. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford it.

I’m rich.

My moms and pops won the Florida lotto when I was ten. Even though they had millions, they didn’t run from their upbringing. We lived in a big ten-bedroom, five-bath house two blocks from the trailer park my moms grew up in and three blocks away from the projects my daddy was born in. The same people they grew up with were the same people I grew up with. I saw some shit no young boy should ever see, and it molded me into the thirty-year-old I am today.

I don’t take no losses. My temper’s quick, and I don’t trust easy either. My parents’ situation taught me that. My daddy did the right thing when he found out my mother was pregnant with me and married her. She had no loyalty, though. Half of it was his fault—he was still trying to hustle and make a name for himself, despite the money he had. I think he just liked the thrill of being in the streets. He left Momma without attention too long, and she ended up fucking his friends.

For years, he didn’t see it. And then one day… he did. He came home. She was buck naked with his best friend. He shot her, Uncle Curtis, and then himself—leaving me alone.

The kind of upbringing I had toughens you, sharpens your edges, but it doesn’t prepare you to come home from college for spring break and find everybody you loved dead. They’d been in that house for more than a week.

I found out that day that ugly truths make broken men.

My childhood home, the one bought with all that lotto money, had become a tomb.

I could’ve sold that house, but I didn’t. It was all I had left of them, even if walking through it felt like dragging chains across concrete.

After they were gone, I didn’t have time to grieve. I had to figure out how to move in a world where I couldn’t trust anyone but myself.

Now the world was my kingdom, where I played hard and ruled supreme. I ran my shit like a dictatorship.

As I pulled into the parking lot, a bouncer glanced at my car, then leaned down to peer through the window. A smirk spread across his face when he recognized me.

“Back again?” he chuckled.

I glanced at the entrance of the club, then back at him.

“Nah.” My voice was flat as I shifted into reverse and made a tight U-turn out of the lot.

As I headed home, I felt the weight of the silence that was always there creeping in again. Maybe it was the house. Maybe it was me. Either way, I didn’t feel like a king tonight.