Chapter 5
Naomi “Nae” Carter
“I was the one who didn’t hate him.”
Ares had been chasing me since he was seventeen. Back then, everybody called him Lil Ghost, walking around in a black hoodie with his father’s dimples and his mother’s eyes, trying to look harder than he was.
I was twenty-three years old, a hood girl from Compton with clippers in my hand and rent due every first of the month for my one-bedroom roach motel apartment. I owned nothing but a chair in the back of my uncle’s dusty barbershop and a mouth crazy enough to keep grown men from testing me.
Ares would come in, sit in my chair, and flirt in French like he had a chance.
I’d laugh, push him off, and tell him to come back when he had hair on his chest. But even then…
There was something about him. Something in his eyes told me he wasn’t like the rest of these boys.
Still, I stayed away from him. That wasn’t my thing.
For years, I treated him like a little brother.
I poured his liquor when he was too young to buy it, let him crash on my couch when he couldn’t drive to his next destination, listened when he pillow-talked about the girls he was chasing, the way he wanted to run Obsidian Records, the legacy he swore he’d build.
I knew every version of Ares. The angry teenager. The grieving son. The hustler with too many secrets. The boss in the making.
And somewhere along the line, he stopped being Lil Ghost in a hoodie and became a man I couldn’t ignore.
He invested in me before anybody else believed in me.
He put money into my first shop, then my second, never asking for a dime back, never asking for pussy.
Bought me jewelry, cars, and anything I wanted.
I told myself it was his way of taking care of me, paying me back for being there when nobody else was. But I knew the truth.
He wanted me. Always had.
And last year… I gave in and fucked him on his thirty-second birthday.
Not because of the money. Not because of the pressure.
But because one day I looked up, and the boy in my chair was gone.
In his place was a man with mafia in his blood, French on his tongue, and a look in his eyes that said he’d already claimed me. I was just too stubborn to admit it.
I was a short, BBW woman, loud as hell, always ready to fight the bullies who thought they could push me. I wasn’t the kind of woman people pictured next to a billionaire mafia heir. But Ares didn’t want a picture. He wanted authenticity.
And the truth was that I wanted his realness too, and he gave it to me.
Now I was waiting for him to arrive for his three-week cut.
The shop was closed, lights low, just the faint buzz of the neon sign outside that read Royal Fade.
It was late. Way too late for a billionaire to be sitting in a hood barbershop, but that’s how Ares liked it. Quiet. No cameras. Just him and me.
I watched a Rolls-Royce pull in front of my shop, and he stepped out of the back. He walked in with a bouquet of roses in one hand, a bag from Van Cleef & Arpels in the other.
“You’re being nice today. You ain’t been around since I made you look good for Forbes,” I said, arching a brow.
“Had to make it up to you,” he said, setting them on my station.
I laughed, shaking my head, motioning for him to sit. He dropped into the chair, leaned back, eyes on me while I draped the cape around him.
“You know I only trust you with this,” he said low. “Ain’t nobody else touching my line.”
“Mm-hm.” I brushed the clippers across his fade. “Not even your other little girlfriends?”
He smirked, dimples cutting deep. “They can touch me everywhere else. This? This is yours.”
I washed his hair, gave him a facial, and faded him to the Gods. By the time I finished his cut, he was watching me in the mirror. He stood, turned, and pinned me against my own station.
“You still see me as Lil Ghost?” he whispered against my neck.
I swallowed hard. “No, not in a long time.”
His mouth crashed into mine, rough, hungry. I gasped as his hands slid down, lifting me onto the counter like I weighed nothing.
“Tu es belle,” he murmured in French against my skin. I didn’t understand the words, but the way his voice dropped made my thighs part without a thought.
He slid down to his knees, big hands spreading me wide, his tongue greedy and unrelenting on my pussy. I grabbed the mirror for balance, moaning as he ate me like he’d been starving for years.
“I’m about to cum, Ares…” I gasped, grinding against his mouth.
He pulled back, lips glistening, eyes dark. “Say my name again.”
“Ares,” I whispered.
He smirked, unbuckling his belt. “Nah. Say Ghost.”
“Ghost…” I moaned as he pushed me down to my knees.
I wrapped my lips around him when I got his pants down, sucking slowly, teasing, letting spit trail down his manhood while his hand tangled in my hair.
“Putain,” he groaned, hips bucking. Fuck…
I bobbed deeper, gagging slightly, but he pulled me off, lifting me like I weighed nothing, bending me over the station. I reached into my purse and handed him a condom. I wasn’t one of the girls who had raw sex, no matter how much I loved a man.
The mirror reflected us. I was flushed and messy, him behind me, suit jacket off.
He leaned over, lips at my ear, voice low and lethal.
“N’oublie jamais que tu es à moi.” Never forget you’re mine.
When Ares left that night, he told me he was going to France for a few weeks, and I would be the first person he would see when he came back… and I held him to that promise.