Lust Read Online Free Page A

coming at me from so many different directions that it was a miracle I was still breathing and living above ground. I felt like a hunted animal. Between Flex and the G-Spot crew, I was liable to get shot from behind and slumped at any moment.
    “Don’t cry,” Dread told me gently. I could tell he really felt sorry for me, and he wasn’t tryna holla at me neither. “Here,” he passed me a slip of paper. His phone number was written on it and he told me to call him if I ever needed him.
    When Shay came back to my cubicle she asked Dread to step outside so we could talk in private. She smiled as she told me she had found a site that had a bed available for me.
    “It’s not a domestic violence shelter though,” she said and shrugged. “It’s just a regular shelter for the homeless, and you can stay there for ten days, okay?”
    “Where is it?” I asked suspiciously. I wasn’t taking my ass nowhere near Manhattan, and I damn sure wasn’t stepping foot within ten miles of Three Brothers Funeral Home in Spanish Harlem.
    “Oh, the shelter is right here in Brooklyn,” she said, pushing me some papers to sign.
    “Brooklyn?” I twisted my lips up at first, and then I shrugged. Why not? Shit, Manhattan was an island, and that meant if I stayed in Brooklyn there would be a body of water between me and Flex. Besides, the deck was stacked real high against me, and right now I wasn’t the kind of beggar who could afford to be choosey. Better Brooklyn than the damn cemetery.
    Besides, all I needed was a little bit of time. I could survive in Crooklyn for a few days while I made some calls and got me a plane ticket. And as soon as all that came through I was getting the hell outta the shiesty-ass Empire State for good.
    “Cool,” I told Shay as I stood up and got ready to crutch down the hall behind her. I slid the curtain back and gave Dread a big hug and thanked him again for saving my black ass.
    We broke out in our separate directions, and the only thing left for me to do was go cop a squat in the social worker’s office while I waited for a ride to the shelter. “Yeah,” I said under my breath. “Brooklyn’ll be cool.”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    “I got you, baby,” Ace said as he cradled Salida in his big arms and carried her up the stairs to her apartment. He unlocked the door, then flicked the light switch up with his shoulder and followed the thin stream of light past the neat kitchen and toward Salida’s plush bedroom.
    Him and Truth had sat up in Harlem Hospital with her for mad hours, but Ace hadn’t been worried about the time on the clock. His whole body had sagged with relief when the doctors told him Salida had been real lucky. She’d bruised her hip and had suffered a mild concussion when her head hit the sidewalk, but other than that she had escaped without serious injury from the hit-and-run car accident.
    “The driver just kept going, huh?” The doctor asked as he wrote Salida a prescription for painkillers and filled out some forms on his clipboard. “Did you get a good look at the car? You should probably file a police report.”
    Ace had shaken his head as he got behind Salida’s wheelchair and held his hand out for the prescription.
    “Nah, we ain’t filing no reports with nobody,” he’d said with his voice cold and deadly. “Trust me, I already got this, Doc,” he said, as his mind replayed the actions of everybody who had been within three steps of the G-Spot that night, to include his manz Pluto. “Word up, Doc. This shit is gonna get handled.”
     
    $$$$$
     
    And now that he had gotten Salida home and safely in her bed, handling some bizz was heavy on Ace’s mind. He had grilled Truth over and over again about what had happened out there in that dark alley, and each time the young’un had come up with the same story: an unfamiliar car had roared down the sidewalk and clipped Salida, taking her legs out as it knocked her high up in the air.
    Truth swore to God that he