Kissed By The Trillest Thug

Chapter 1

Maliah Browne

“What are you looking at, Harry Potter?”

I placed my hand on my hip and then rolled my eyes at my older brother. He rubbed the scar that had been on his forehead since he was a little boy.

“Dad is gonna flip when he finds out that you snuck ya ass out of here.”

“Well, how is he going to find out?” I closed my room window back, took off my jacket, and tossed it on the ottoman at the foot of my bed before taking a seat.

The smell of clean linen invaded my nose.

It was the signature Air Wick scent for my room.

I crossed my arms over my breasts and then stared at my brother before opening my mouth again. “Are you going to rat me out?”

I watched MJ chew his apple just like how our father does. He just stared at me while he casually turned the green object in his hand and used his straight white teeth to bite another side. The act caused this hard crunching noise to fill the space between us. His sharp jawline flexed as he chewed.

“Are you?” I asked again.

“Na… Maylee will though, so you better put on some pajamas or your robe or something before she…”

“Ooooo, I’m telling Daddy.”

“See, I told you,” MJ said with a devilish smirk as he stepped aside to give me room. I ran past him at full speed to chase our little sister.

“Daaa…”

I jumped on Maylee’s back and put my hand over her mouth as we both tumbled to the floor.

“What do you want? Huh?” I asked hastily.

I removed my hand from her mouth just enough for her to answer my question.

“Let me wear your Dior bag to school tomorrow.”

“Let you do what?”

She had to be tripping. Dad and Mom didn’t buy her designer clothes because she mistreated her regular clothes.

“Daaaa…” she started until I covered her mouth again.

“What the hell are y’all doing?”

Both Maylee and I looked up to find our mother standing in the doorway of our parents’ room.

Her red silk robe was wrapped tightly around her curvy frame.

My mother had brown skin with full cheeks and naturally arched eyebrows.

Her almond-shaped brown eyes stared down at us as her arms crossed over her breasts.

I knew that she had her long natural hair up in a wrap by the silk scarf she had tied securely on her head.

“You better not put one speck on my bag,” I whispered in Maylee’s ear.

“Nothing, Mama, we were just playing around,” she quickly said.

“Playing around at one in the morning is crazy. Y’all better cut that shit out before y’all wake up y’all father.”

“Too late.”

The room door opened wider. There stood my father, standing directly behind my mother.

Malik Renmen Browne’s tall, robust frame hovered over her.

I could tell that he had just woken up because his eyes were barely open, plus he used the back of his tatted hand to wipe his eyes.

The light from the hall hit him at an angle that displayed his deep chocolate skin.

His spade-shaped nose flared a bit, so I could tell that he was furious.

“Y’all asses in trouble now,” MJ said as he carelessly walked past us and down the hall toward his room. He was still eating that damn apple on his stroll.

“Malik Junior…” MJ turned around at the sound of our father’s deep voice, “Watch your mouth.”

“Sorry, Pops.”

He closed his room door, leaving Maylee and me in the hall to deal with our parents’ wrath.

“First of all, get y’all asses off the floor.”

Both Maylee and I stood and then gave our mother our undivided attention.

“There’s no running in this house, and damn sure not at one in the morning.”

I was listening to my mother speak, but my eyes were fixed on my father. His bushy brows were dented in anger as he looked at my attire. My mother was giving Maylee the stare down, trying to break her. Being the baby, she was loose at the lips sometimes.

“Maylee, get to talki—”

“Maliah, why are you fully dressed?” My father cut my mother off.

“I, umm.”

I couldn’t just lie to my father as quickly as I could lie to my mother.

It was no secret that I was his pride and joy, so I hated disappointing him.

Before my older brother came into our lives and before I was born, my mother and father had a baby.

One that had passed, and then years later, I came along.

The stress of being their official first child was sometimes too much to bear.

“She was trying on clothes for school tomorrow when I busted into her room and started messing with her.”

Maylee was quick on her damn feet. Ms. Goody Two-Shoes was learning her way around being deceitful, so I knew that she was undoubtedly getting older. My parents stood there in silence for a little moment. Two pairs of eyes kept switching from me to Maylee.

“I don’t like that belly out shit. Pick a different shirt.”

“Okay, Daddy,” I said as I tried to pull my crop top down a bit.

“Where did you even get that shit from?” he asked.

My eyes rolled over in my mother’s direction because she had let me get it from the mall. Although I found it hard to talk to her at times, she was way better than bringing anything up to my dad. Quickly, she spoke.

“Y’all have school tomorrow, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” both Maylee and I said in unison to our parents.

“Where the hell did the shirt come from?” my father asked with confusion in his eyes. My mother gently kissed his lips just before closing the door to their room.

“Add in that Dior headband too, sissy,” Maylee whispered.

I rolled my eyes as she followed me into my room. I handed her the bag and matching headband that she had requested.

“Nice doing business with you,” she said with a wide grin on her face.

“Whatever, brace face.”

I slammed my door and then sighed. I made a mental note to do a better job when it came to sneaking back into the house.

Maylee had been blackmailing me out of my clothes for the last month, and I was cutting it close with being caught every time.

My phone vibrating in the back pocket of my jeans broke me from my thoughts.

Trigga: You good?

I flicked my room light on and off to let my boyfriend know that I had made it in safely before texting him back.

Me: I’m okay, sorry, almost got caught

Trigga: Maybe it’s time to tell your peeps.

I was eighteen years old, and I had no desire to tell my parents that I had a boyfriend. They were super protective, so sneaking out had become the norm just so that I could get some time with Tahari.

Me: I know, I will

I pushed my curtain out of the way and peeked through my blinds.

I squinted to see his car finally pulling away.

Looking at our massive front yard, I couldn’t believe that I had climbed over the gate, run across the grass, climbed up the vine ladder on the side of the house, and scaled the roof to my room.

My mom and dad had known each other since my mom was my age.

I needed my parents to understand that I was in love.

Tahari was everything to me. In so many ways, he reminded me of the love I saw my dad give my mother.

Tahari was rough around the edges, but his heart was golden.

He used to go to my school and was in the grade above me.

Unfortunately, he never got the chance to graduate because something had happened with his father.

Still, we kept in touch after he left, and flirty texts turned into a full-blown relationship.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a moment, just stuck in thought.

Sneaking around was getting tiresome for sure.

I sighed out loud before peeling the clothes off my body and then putting them into the dirty clothes bin.

Once I put on my pajamas, I stood in front of my full-length mirror while I tied my hair up, and then really looked at myself.

The two-piece pajama set from Victoria’s Secret hugged my curves.

I was built just like my mother, thick in all the places that mattered.

I sighed and then watched how my pouty, full lips poked out a bit.

Once I was satisfied with the way my hair was securely tied up, I got comfortable in my bed. There was a light knock on my door.

“Come in.”

I’m sure it was my dad. He could smell a lie on anyone’s breath, but instead of being faced with what I thought would be a lifetime sentence of being grounded, my dad’s replica, MJ, stood in my doorway.

“Oh, good. You’re still alive. I thought Pops was about to kill y’all.”

“Shut up!” I said as I threw a pillow off my bed at him. The basketball player in him caught it midair.

“No, seriously.” He stepped all the way into my room and then sat on the edge of the bed. He tossed the pillow back at me before he spoke, “You should try talking to Ma. She’s not as hard to speak to as you think.”

MJ was my stepbrother and was a year older than me.

Mom and Dad found out about him almost ten years into their marriage.

I was nine at the time, and Maylee was four.

It seemed to me that MJ and my mom had a stronger bond than she and I.

When I was younger, she used to tell me that she needed to love him a little harder because he didn’t have a mother of his own.

His mom died in a car accident, which is how he ended up with us.

“Mali, are you listening to me?”

He broke me from my thoughts.

“Yeah, bro. I’ll try talking to her tomorrow when I get in from school.”

“Aight, watch, you gone see. Now, when you break the boyfriend news to Pops, God bless you, sissy.”

I sucked my teeth because he was right. Although Maylee was the baby, in my father’s eyes, I was. I don’t know if it was because I was the first child he had a hand in raising or what. Dad loved MJ a little differently because he was a boy. He had freedom, and the shackles weren’t placed on him.

“I’ll tell you what…” MJ stated as he stood from my bed to make his exit, “If ya goofy ass was at Uncle Ty’s house jumping fences, those guards on his lawn would have lit you the fuck up.”