(NOTE: Contains explicit language and adult themes suitable for ages 16+)
© K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
CHAPTER ONE
Angel Harrington
“If you think you’re lonely now, wait until tonight, girl.”
Bobby Womack’s voice crooned through the speakers while echoing against the bare walls in Angel’s living room. The lyrics were a complete understatement, and an insult to her ears. She quickly scoffed and changed the Pandora station on her phone while looking around at all of the boxes and totes that surrounded her one-bedroom loft in Los Angeles. For the money she paid monthly for 627 square feet, she could’ve had a damn mansion back in Atlanta. That was one of the reasons she was happy to move back to her hometown, ‘The A.’ But, for every happy reason, she had two more filled with doubt. Angel hadn’t stepped foot in the Big Peach in the past seven years for more than a couple days at a time to pay respect to her father at his gravesite on his birthday. She was his baby girl. She knew she owed him that much and more for providing the life for her that he did. At eighteen years old, she accepted a full ride on her father’s dime to the University of Southern California, and traded in the souped-up Mercury Capris on rims and niggas with more gold in their mouths than money, for sun, sand and a fresh start at a new life in the sunny state of California.
“I am your man, but only when you’re lonely.”
Angel rolled her honey brown eyes again as she listened to Ginuwine’s melodic voice sing one of his 90’s throwback jams. If anybody knew what lonely was, it was her and her nine-inch black vibrator that she liked to call “Black Magic.” She swiped over to her period tracker app and groaned. She didn’t even know why she even bothered to torture herself with tracking things like that. It was a constant reminder that she wasn’t having sex, doing the do, hooking up, getting busy or any other word that meant getting fucked. To her, there was no big need to track something that came faithfully every 28 days. It had been over a year since she’d been dicked down something proper, and as much as she enjoyed the back to back orgasms her favorite toy provided on a nightly basis, she was long overdue for the real thing.
Before the thoughts had time to settle inside her mind, she pulled out the pocket vibrator from her purse and flung herself back onto the couch, laid her head against the cushions and parted her velvety smooth thighs. She could feel her body jerking forward as soon as the vibrations touched her most sensitive spot.
“Mmm, shit,” she groaned.
Angel started to rub the toy against her clit in slow circles while pulling on her erect nipples. If she was going to cum, she needed to settle her mind and think about something. Someone. Somewhere. “Chris Brown…no, Michael B. Jordan…mmm, yeah, fuck,” she thought to herself. The louder the toy buzzed, the quicker she rubbed. Harder. Faster. Her body tensed as she released, and against her better judgment, Michael B. Jordan’s face had been replaced with that of Saint, her bad boy ex. Before she knew it, her thoughts were flooded with images of her past, and how he used to put it on her morning, noon, and night. Angel sighed loudly and got up to take a shower. It had been years since she’d seen Saint, and with her upcoming move back to Atlanta, seeing him had her more shook than she’d even realized. As much as Angel hated to admit it, her pussy was still stuck on him. He was the best she’d ever had.
From the moment Angel laid eyes on Saint Phillips, she knew that he was going to break every piece of her heart. In some way, shape, or form, pain would come from the two of them being together, but she was young and cared more about the thrill of being with a bad boy than she did about the consequences that would stem from it. After all, Saint wasn’t hard to love. His barrel-chested, six-foot frame made him a sight for sore eyes on his worst day. If she closed her eyes real tight, she could even remember how smooth his tattooed, caramel skin felt against hers, or the way he looked at her with his cocoa brown eyes. She sometimes wondered if he still looked as good as she remembered. It would be much easier for her to share a city with a man who didn’t make her go weak at the knees every time she saw him.
Angel pushed each and every thought of him to the side before stepping into the shower, in hopes that she could cleanse both her body and mind. Saint was no good for her back then, and even though the two were hopefully both older and wiser than when she left, Angel was sure things hadn’t changed much. If there was one thing she knew, it was that men never changed. They only pretended to change for a moment of time until they got what they wanted. They never stuck around long enough to get what they truly needed. Her left foot popped out from behind the multi-colored shower curtain and hit the bath mat, followed by her right. She’d only gotten the chance to dry off half of her body before her phone vibrated against the bathroom counter.
“Hello?” she answered on the third ring.
“Baby,” Malik greeted her.
As much as she tried not to smile, she couldn’t help it. “What did I tell you about calling me that?”
“I don’t care what you say or where you go, you my baby,” he replied.
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just got out of the shower.”
“Perfect. I’m on my way over to get you dirty.”
Angel chuckled. “Funny, but no. You know I’m on this celibate thing right now.”
“And I also know you’re about to pack up and move over 2,000 miles away.”
“It’s only five hours by plane,” she reminded him.
He sucked his teeth. “Yeah, trust me, I know. Why you think I’ve been saving up all my frequent flyer miles?”
“Oh, all that for lil’ ole me?” she asked, flirting with him.
“You know how I feel about you, Angel. Quit playin’ with me.”
Angel sighed as she wrapped her towel tightly around her hourglass-shaped body while holding the phone between her cheek and shoulder. “I do know how you feel, but you know that I’ve made it clear about where I’m at and what I want.”
“You know everything you want I can give it to you. You just too stubborn to let me.”
She shrugged. “Maybe so. I never claimed to be easy to deal with.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“I’m just doing my own thing,” she told him.
“You’ve been doing your thing since I met you how many years ago?”
“I know, Malik. I’m finally getting to a place where I’m good with me and just being alone in this world. You know I don’t have a family like you do.”
“I know, and I don’t fault you for that shit. Just don’t forget about a nigga all the way over there, aight?”
“I could never forget about you. You were my first real friend out here.”
“There you go with that friend shit again,” he said, with a twinge of bitterness in his voice.
On paper, Malik was great. He was everything Angel or any woman in her right mind could’ve ever wanted in a man. He was on the straight and narrow, worked a nine-to-five job that gave him pay stubs the IRS would never question. He had the time to spend with her instead of being too busy wrapped up in the game. The only problem was, he just wasn’t bad enough for her. As much as Angel kept telling herself that she’d outgrown her bad boy phase, she found herself turning down every suitor that didn’t have that hood appeal in him. She didn’t know if it was because of how she was raised, or what, but Destiny’s Child said it best: if his status ain’t hood, I ain’t checkin’ for ‘em. Malik was a catch. He just wasn’t on Saint’s level. She craved a boss.
“Hey, I’m getting a call. I’ll text you when I land in Atlanta tomorrow, okay?” Angel told him.
“Yeah, okay. Have a safe flight, Angel.”
“Thank you.”
Malik ended the call before she’d gotten the chance to hang up, which told her that he was in his feelings. Unfortunately for him, Angel didn’t have the time to deal with it. It killed her that she couldn’t give herself to him the way he wanted her to, but she had to stay true to herself. Angel’s mind and body knew what and who they wanted.
Angel and Saint first met when they were seventeen years old. He had been a corner boy for her father’s drug cartel since he was sixteen, but by the time they crossed each other’s paths, he had already started moving up in the ranks of the Harrington Cartel. She knew Saint was bad news from the moment she laid eyes on him. At first, she was thrilled to be chased by him and loved being kept on the edge of her seat every time she was near him.
The Harrington bloodline created the Harrington Cartel, which was the first black drug cartel in the south. Angel’s father was the connect that pumped drugs through Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Louisiana and Virginia. To most of the south, he was one of the most feared ghosts because few had gotten the privilege of seeing his face before death or learning his government name. From the corner hustlers to the big time dealers, he was known as “Big Town,” but to Angel, he was simply known as Daddy. Her father always told her that although he had chosen to place a façade over his street life, he didn’t want his daughter living that life or being with a nigga who did. This is the life I’ve chosen. It’s not something I want for my Angel,he would say to her. Angel’s mother passed away when she was only four years old, so her father’s word was what she lived and died by.
After almost an entire year of sneaking around under her father’s nose, Saint and Angel finally came clean about their forbidden romance to him. After witnessing the pure love the two had for each other, Big Town gave them his blessing with the caveat that if Saint ever broke his daughter’s heart, he would rip his out of his chest and feed it to his hounds.
A year later, Big Town’s poor health caught up with him before the streets did. After he was diagnosed with cancer, Angel foolishly thought that everything having to do with the streets would magically cease to exist. But a business that big didn’t sleep and never died. As long as there were drugs on the streets, there would be fiends trying to suck, fuck and swallow for their next hit. Which meant there would always be money to make. Big Town didn’t want his daughter to see him as anything less than the strong man he’d always been. He knew he was the only parent she’d ever truly known, and he wanted to do right by his late wife and his daughter. He knew that getting an education would be more beneficial to her than loving a boy ever could be, so he told her that it had always been his dream for her to go off to college and make something of herself.
Angel spent many nights talking to Saint until she was blue in the face about how they could finally be free to leave Atlanta for good. She could go to class in the daytime and work in the evenings, while he found himself a full-time job. She was ready to fall deeper in love with him, but he was young, and wasn’t ready to leave the street life alone for her or anyone. She had fallen in love with a man who had become a monster in the streets, and coming up under her father only made him more of a menace.
The night before Big Town passed away, he named Saint as his successor, which meant Angel would be going off to college alone. She never imagined that Saint would become her father’s right hand and take over his empire after his death. He’d done the one thing she never thought he’d do; choose the streets over her, and that was something she couldn’t accept. Her father had pulled the thread that started to unravel their young romance, and Saint cut the tie all together. With a heavy heart, Angel packed her bags in hopes that being over five hours away from Saint would ultimately break her connection to him. She refused to cope with losing the only parent she had left and Saint’s decision to remain a key player in the streets.
Over the years, she let her grief transform her into a different person. Not only was she mourning the loss of her father, but the heartbreak that stemmed from the realization that she would never have a normal relationship with Saint. Even with thousands of miles in between them, Angel still wondered if things would’ve been different between them if her father had still been alive, but she was too stubborn to find out. In her eyes, Saint robbed her of her happily ever after to build his own status. He chose the streets over love and she would never forgive him for that. It only proved her father’s words were true all along. She didn’t need a man in her life with his hand in the streets. Angel had more to offer than being just the trophy wife or girlfriend of another Atlanta dope boy. All she had to do was stay true to what her mind knew better than her heart; Saint Phillips was off limits.