8. Patience #3
I clear my throat. “Let them go, please. D-don’t hurt them.” I grab the back of Turk’s neck and make him look at me. He searches my eyes before his smirk appears.
“C’mon, Dub. Let these niggas live to fight another day,” he says, still staring at me.
Nutty kisses his teeth. “Yeah, aight. You niggas still need to go back to yo side. Expeditiously.” He starts backing up towards his car, which is parked haphazardly in front of Royce’s Bentley that I drove.
“Fox, the fuck–”
“Ay, don’t address her ever. Get in the car, Patience.”
I swallow and look at Trippy, then PC. Countless memories assault my mind’s eye, and I blink away tears. “Whoever you think I am, I’m not her.” I plead as much as I can through my eyes to PC, but he just gazes at me, face blank.
I get in the car and buckle my seatbelt. Royce gets in and skirts off before his ass even hits the seat.
I brace myself for the interrogation, but it doesn’t come.
His phone’s ringing off the hook but he just silences it, before turning it off completely.
It’s a thirty minute drive back to his house, but we don’t go there.
We go to a rundown mechanic shop and park inside the gate.
He gets out, and opens the door for me, grabbing my wrist and pulling me out.
We go inside the office, to the back, to a door on the far right. Down some stairs to a basement, then down another flight of stairs. We go through a tunnel and then up two flights of stairs into the car lot that was across the street.
Ty’s at the reception desk leaning over when he notices us. He smirks before straightening up. I can’t see Royce’s face, but the aura coming off him is something I’ve never felt before. And damn me for thinking it’s sexy at a time like this.
“Turk wassup–”
“I parked a car across the street I need stripped then I need another one with a different plate shipped here. Black this time. Gimme a loaner until then.”
Ty nods and goes to his office. Royce doesn’t let go of my wrist at all, and Ty’s back a minute later, handing him keys. He winks at me, but doesn’t say anything.
“It’s the blue Alfa Romero right there.”
“Good looking.”
Royce drags me to the car, putting me in the passenger seat and buckling me in before getting inside and again skirting off. This time straight home.
We get home in record time. He’s out before I can blink, dragging me up the stairs and into the living room.
He flicks his wrist, turning me so my back hits the elevator door, and he's on me. I smell that intoxicating cologne of his, the mint and weed on his breath, the oil in his locs.
“Who was them niggas, Patience?”
I gulp like a fish, switching between his right and left eye.
Finally, his smirk appears, though there’s nothing funny about it, I know. And honestly, fear and arousal fight in my body. This side of Royce… ugh.
I’m feral.
This isn’t the time, I tell my pussy. She screams she doesn’t care!
“Paypay, I’m trying so hard to let you tell me your story on your own. I coulda been cracked the code, but I’m trusting you. Trying to. But you becoming a liability, quickly.”
“There’s nothing to crack, Royce. That’s why you waiting on me to tell.”
He bites that bottom lip and takes a step back, making me miss his warmth. “Nut gone call a meeting. And unless you give me something, I’m gone tell them you running from Cochise, and then we gone run through East Kenton and put a bullet through them niggas skulls.”
“You wouldn’t.” Terror, pure unadulterated terror grips me as I plant my hands on the door behind me.
“See, princess, when you act like that, it makes me feel like you fucked one of them niggas.”
If only you knew.
Royce steps back into my space, this time resting a strong hand at the base of my neck. He slides slowly up my throat, squeezing gently, angling my head as he leans down. Our lips are centimeters apart.
“You fucked one of them niggas, princess? Huh? You gave that pussy away?”
I shake my head as much as he lets me. My nipples chafe against my bra as we breathe in each other’s air. His gaze shifts down to my lips, and I lick them, daring him to take what he wants.
“Not until you let me in.” He says, reading my mind.
“Please, Royce.” I feel a tear roll down my cheek. “Just let me go. It's easier that way. Me and the baby can just–”
He squeezes my neck once to shut me up. “You and this baby not going nowhere, so dead that. You want me to go against my brothers? Keep ‘em in the dark? If it means you stay where you belong, then fasho. But you staying right the fuck here, aight?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to bare my soul.
To tell him why it’s not safe for him, why I have to get far away from him.
How these feelings I have are unfurling faster than I can comprehend.
How I’m no good for him. How one night in June, when we locked eyes and he came inside of me, he ruined me for any other man.
How this baby I’m growing inside of me is just as much his as mine and Autumn’s.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it all. But I just swallow, and nod.
“Okay.”