In the Ring: A Dario Caivano Novel Read online

  I was disappointed, but trying not to let it show. I had run upstairs to make sure that my whole outfit was ready for later. I hadn’t even been gone for that long.

  “I thought it went for twelve rounds,” I whined. “It’s only the tenth.”

  “Mom, I told you to never leave the TV when Dario’s fighting! Never! Because he’s unpredictable. He took him out early! I knew it! That fool Jaime has been talking crazy for months so Dario had to legit show him who’s boss! Can we call him?!” Rai asked excitedly.

  I stared at Dario on the screen in awe. I had never been a fan of boxing and his fight was the first I’d ever seen. But I might as well have been there because whenever Rai watched a Caivano or Mayweather fight, he reported back to me blow-by-blow. I was glad that I got to see as much as I did too because he was a sight to see in all his manliness. He struck with purpose and took no prisoners. I enjoyed watching him do his thing. The man had a body to die for—that chest, those arms, that package. It was everything and nothing short of a turn on seeing him in his element.

  “Dang! I wish we could’ve been there, Ma!”

  “Yeah; me too, baby. But I have to be at the club tonight. That’s why you’re going to spend the night at Grandma’s house.”

  “I know, and I don’t want to. It’s already late, Ma. I can watch myself.”

  “Not yet you can’t, mister. And I’ll be gone really late tonight. We have a few celebrities coming and you know I like to be there for that.”

  “I know,” he sulked. But then he managed to perk right back up minutes later when Dario began interacting with ringside reporters.

  As he talked, he smiled a lot which I liked because his eyes lit up.

  “I dedicate every fight to my cousin, Lucas,” he said, through his smile. I watched as he subconsciously rubbed his hand down his tattoo. “It’s all for him.”

  I wanted to be able to put my arms around him and hug him as tight as I could manage, kissing his hurt away.

  “So, what are you doing tonight?” one reporter asked. “Taking in the Vegas life and celebrating?”

  Dario looked directly into the camera, stared for a few seconds and then responded, “Nope, I’m headed back to the Bay Area immediately after this. All the celebrating I need to do is there.”

  Anybody on the outside looking in would’ve accused me of blushing like a damn schoolgirl at his words, but I couldn’t help my body’s reaction. Luckily, Rai was too busy waiting for the sportscaster’s commentary to start, to pay attention to me.

  Once Dario was off screen and right about eleven-thirty, I headed upstairs to get ready for the club.

  When I walked into Suite 713, Tupac was blasting throughout, and the dance floor was packed to capacity, as Ambitionz Az A Ridah played in the deepest bass the DJ could find. The beat vibrated through my body, and I couldn’t help but walk to the beat while dancing inside my head. I can’t even lie. A good beat always had me wanting to get on the dance floor bad, but business called.

  Jaden, my DJ, spotted me and flashed the bright light on me and waved while I was making my way to greet a few people. I threw both my hands up to acknowledge the gesture and smiled big. “Boss Lady in the house!” he yelled out over the microphone.

  After I made a few rounds to various spots around Suite 713, I headed to the Diamond VIP room to see how my elite customers were doing.

  As soon as I walked in I noticed French Montana right away. He looked the same as he did on television—tall, light-skinned and wavy hair with a larger than life smile. Of course he was surrounded by entourage that included, but certainly wasn’t limited to, about five women clinging shamelessly to his personal space. He donned plenty of bling on his wrists, his ears, and around his neck. I could see it all sparkling loudly . . . even from my vantage point.

  From the very first time until now, whenever celebrities frequent my club, the euphoria is something I can’t explain. Going from a college girl with a kid, to a woman with her own club and doing big things in business, was no small feat, but I was always humbled by it. It took a lot to get on the radar of the masses to become a well-known, reputable spot. It took even more to remain on their radar and so far, Suite 713 seemed to have staying power and I couldn’t be more proud of its success.

  “What’s up, sis?” I heard before I could make my way across the room to greet French. I quickly jerked around to the familiar voice and was less than excited to come face-to-face with Rochelle. “Hey girl, heyyy!” she said with a slick smile on her face that I wanted to slap to the back of her neck.

  I took her in head to toe and was actually impressed with her outfit. Not that she couldn’t dress. If nothing else the girl was always fitted. But it seemed that she was more toned down tonight for some reason. I would expect that she would be all hoochied out with the makeup of the room, which by all accounts were rappers and industry people.

  “What’s up?” I asked, nonchalantly, and hoped that those would be the only words I needed to speak to her.

  “I saw you look me up and down; what’s that about?” she asked, smiling wickedly. “This dress is fittin’ a sistah right, ain’t it?”

  “Let me go and speak to my customers, Rochelle.”

  I tried to push past her. I didn’t want to talk to her in my place of business because our conversations always took a sharp left turn. I didn’t even have the urge to ask her how the fuck she managed to get into VIP with this particular crowd. But I had an idea how it happened.

  “I’m your customer too,” she spat, stepping into my path.

  “Rochelle, move. You’ve already been acknowledged.”

  “Why you such a bitch?”

  I laughed a little bit and moved close to her face so that she could hear what I was about to say to her. “Rochelle, this ain’t what you want, okay? Mama ain’t here to get in the way and my security acts on my order. So, fall back.”

  “Or what, sis?”

  “You don’t want to find out, Rochelle. Mainly because if I have to stoop to a hood level up in my establishment, I’m probably gonna beat you within inches of your life just because you put my reputation on the line. So, listen, we can do one of two things. You move the fuck out my way and stay in your lane for the rest of the time you’re here. Or, I can get yo’ ass escorted out right now in front of your friends. It’s your call . . . but it needs to be a quick call.”

  She took a few steps back, sucked her teeth and looked me up and down in disgust.

  “What’s it gonna be?” I challenged.

  We stared each other down. When she didn’t immediately respond, I moved to take a step toward her but stopped when I felt a soft hand rub along my back. Slightly startled, I snatched around and was met with Dario’s mesmerizing glare.

  CHAPTER 24

  Dario

  Chanel seemed a bit startled when she turned around. But when she realized it was me, her face lit up and opened into her beautiful smile. “Hey baby,” she greeted.

  At the word, ‘baby’, escaping from between her lips, my dick nudged a few notches. It always happened like that. For the two months that I’ve been dating her, all it took was for her to look at me a certain way, or speak a damn word a certain way.

  I noticed the girl that Chanel appeared to be in some kind of heated exchange with scurry off, but I wasn’t concerned with that as long as it didn’t pose a threat to my girl. I stared down into her eyes, admiring how pretty she looked with her hair pulled into a tight ponytail that hung down her back. She had on a pair of heels that added about five inches to her normal height of five-four and some change. She had on a black dress that dipped very low at the cleavage, and a diamond necklace that I had gifted her with for our one month anniversary. The rest of the dress sheathed her in sheer perfection. The material was obedient as hell, hugging her like it was assigned to that task while I wasn’t around to do it. I wanted to be inside of her bad as hell.

  I was tempted to pull Chanel into my arms, pick her up and carry her out of the r
oom, but of course I refrained since we were in a room full of people and she was technically “at work.” But after a few minutes, I said, ‘Fuck it’ and while I didn’t swoop her up and carry her off somewhere, I did wrap my arms around her and kissed her long and hard.

  When we pulled apart, my dick was rock solid. “Come on,” Chanel said, grabbing ahold of my hand and leading me out of the VIP room.

  After we entered Chanel’s office and closed the door, I carried her over to the desk near the window where the street lights were shining through. With her dress lifted above her waist and thong pulled to the side, I entered her with paced strokes. Her pussy was so wet that I had landed on the verge of busting several times. But I couldn’t let that happen. There was no way. She felt too good bouncing up and down on my erection.

  “Aaahhh, shit! Mmph! Mmph!”

  While Chanel hummed against my mouth, my palm found its way around her thigh. I wanted her as close as I could get her so that I could feed her every inch of me. I needed to feel the depths of her.

  “Why . . . do . . . you feel soooo damn . . . good?! Ohhh my God!”

  “Fuck . . .” I moaned, as I moved us from the area near the window to a nearby wall.

  I leveraged Chanel’s thighs, securing her against the wall’s backing. “Mmpff, mmpff,” I grunted as the sensation of waves attacked my sac and travelled at the speed of light to the tip of my dick in a massive explosion. We came together in a chorus of moans.

  I came prepared. I really did. I had condoms with me, but somehow, just like before, we had managed to bypass that part. It was the eagerness on both our parts to be together. And as our orgasms hit us, we reached a point of no return.

  “Nothing is supposed to feel that damn good,” I told her after we were both reassembled. “Come here,” I instructed, pulling her between my legs while I was leaned against her desk. “But you . . . you feel amazing.”

  “So do you.” She rubbed her hands up and down my chest. “And I’m so glad you’re back, Dario. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw you talking to me through the television.”

  “You saw that, huh?”

  “I did and I was blushing like a schoolgirl too. You sure know how to make a girl feel special—in every way. You’re gonna make me fall hard.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “I do too as long as my heart is safe with you.”

  “Your entire existence is safe with me. And so is Rai’s.”

  She threw her head back and looked up at the ceiling momentarily before looking back at me. “That sounded so beautiful. I mean, really beautiful.” She pulled my face to hers and lightly kissed me on the lips. “How about you come home with me tonight, and then we wake up together in the morning?”

  “Wow. Now, I think that sounds like the best plan ever.” I palmed both of her perfectly round mounds and drew her even closer to me, then placed a series of kisses on her lips. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Rochelle Ellison’s house, Pleasanton, CA

  Rochelle bumped and grinded her hips to the beat of Joe’s All the things, as she admired herself in the full length mirror of her large bedroom. With the night she’d just had, she should’ve been pissed, but she was as happy as a bird. Nothing could steal her joy now. Nothing and nobody—not even her bitch-ass sister, Chanel. She moved her face close to the mirror to inspect the dark specks behind her light brown eyes. Those gold-colored orbs were Rochelle’s prized possession and what she swore set her apart from other women. Yeah, she had the same color eyes as her sister, but Rochelle has always felt she looked better. In her eyes, Chanel was a goody two-shoes and too busy living in that life to even pay attention to all the potential she had.

  Rochelle, on the other hand, habitually kept busy with a new man. She prided herself on getting whatever man she wanted and being able to keep him—until they were disposable. She had always had boys and men falling at her feet from the time she was fourteen years old. Now, at thirty-one, her steam was still going strong. There was just one person that refused to bow to the power of her pussy. But that was all about to change.

  She pulled back from the mirror and teased her eighteen inch body waves so that they would frame her face a bit more. After loosening the string to her frost pink chemise and ensuring that the shimmer she’d spread across her cleavage was all good, Rochelle smiled big.

  “Any minute now, baby,” she purred. The excitement of her lover arriving had her pussy throbbing like a set of drums. She wanted him badly and couldn’t wait to wrap her thick brown legs around his waist while he fucked her crazy.

  Hurry up, boy, I’m horny as fuck.

  At the sound of the key in her door, Rochelle couldn’t stop herself from chuckling. She was giddy as hell. He’d always had that effect on her. She rushed to grab the remote to restart Joe’s song. It’s what she wanted him to hear when he entered.

  “What are you laughing at?” Tyler asked, as he glided through the front door, laid his key down and progressed toward her, wasting no time unbuckling his pants.

  “You know how excited you get me.”

  “Shit, I’m excited too. Look at my dick, girl.”

  “I don’t just wanna look at it. I’m trying to show you that if you fuck with me, you’ll always get anything your women won’t do. I don’t care how many of them you have; they won’t ever measure up to what I can give you . . . to what I’m willing to give you.”

  Rochelle was going in for that top bid. She refrained before because she knew that his emotions were tied up in stuck-up-ass Chanel, so she played her position. But now the stakes . . . fuck . . . the stakes. Yeah, she was ready.

  “Is that right? You know my appetite is insatiable. I require a lot.”

  “And you deserve a lot.”

  “Damn, that’s how you feel?” he panted, lust filling his eager eyes.

  “Yep, one-hundred percent. But don’t act like you don’t know that shit,” she said, dropping to her knees. A devilish smile etched across her pretty face before she instructed, “Bring him here so I can wet that pretty fucker up . . . and down.”

  And that’s exactly what she proceeded to do when she clamped her palms around his ass cheeks, and sucked him all the way into the depths of her mouth. Rochelle was a pro at what she did and there were a number of men in her wake who could attest to it. She had a method of sucking cock that she referred to as ‘clucking’ due to it resembling the way chickens jerk their necks. She clucked her way around his shaft with a fierce suction game, taking him to the back of her throat with each swallow.

  Standing in the middle of the floor in Rochelle’s bedroom, Tyler was out of his mind as he sought to maintain some form of control of his failing limbs. With nothing to hold on to in his quest to refrain from yelling out this woman’s name, he grabbed onto the only thing that he could so stand through the turbulence—her hair. “F-f-f-fuuuck, R-R-Ro . . . chelle, fuuuck, fuuuck,” he grunted while Rochelle showed his manhood absolutely no mercy. She sucked him back to the tip of her tonsils, over and over with no signs of slowing down.

  She smiled against Tyler’s thick cock when she heard the inconsistency of his moans. They were all over the place and she knew it was because it felt so good his ass didn’t know what sound to make. Rochelle knew that she gobbled dome like no other and had no problem that it was what she was known for. And she didn’t give a fuck because it was how she had her home, the most up-to-date fashions, two nice vehicles and a nicely stacked bank account.

  But no amount of money could take the place of what she really wanted.

  Rochelle slid her tongue across Tyler’s slit after having swallowed all traces of future life. “How was that, baby?” she asked him, knowing full well what the answer was.

  “Shit . . .” He stopped at a single word because until he managed to catch his breath, it was all he had to offer. He plopped down onto her bed with a firm thud. “You . . . already . . . know the goddamn answer to that shit.”r />
  “I’m just checking.” She met him bedside, and let the frost pink material slide from her and onto the floor. She looked down at him, then allowed her eyes to roam to his baby-maker. “Yes, Zaddy, he’s perking up already,” she said, excitement in her eyes. “I’m about to ride the shit out this chocolate bull.”

  When Rochelle mounted him, Tyler was much too weak to protest as she moved her tongue across his lips, and then descended upon his mouth. That was quick, she said to herself when she felt him coming alive from beneath her. She took that opportunity to straddle him, taking a few inches at a time until her cove had fully taken him hostage. With Case, Mary J, and Foxy Brown collaborating on Touch me Tease me, in the background, Rochelle went to work surfboarding the wave, atop her one and only obsession.

  A short while later while they lay in silence listening to music, Tyler spoke. “You know you need to go and take one of those morning-after pills tomorrow, right? We don’t need no mistakes happenin’.”

  Rochelle rolled her eyes hard and smacked her lips. “That shit felt too motherfuckin’ good to be labeled a mistake. Fuck that. Your moans and groans said that much, and I know I curled all ten of your fuckin’ toes.”

  “Don’t play. I mean what I said.”

  “Would it be so bad, Tyler?” she asked, propping up on one elbow and looking over at him. “I mean, would it be so damn bad?”

  “Yeah, it would be. Don’t start with that, man. You already know what this is, Rochelle.”

  “Why are you still so stuck on stupid for that girl?” Rochelle asked, flying into a mini rage. “You know that she ain’t checkin’ for you.”

  “Your jealousy for your sister is old, Rochelle.”

  “Jealous? Of her? You are trippin’,” she pouted. “She don’t have shit for me to be jealous of. If I wanted that life I could have it. The only thing I want from that life . . . is you and you all up on some dumb shit and not seeing what you got in front of you. I played the sideline long enough. Through all of your bitches, I’ve been right there! Shit, I was right there before and after her dumb ass cut you loose! That was all me not giving a fuck and accepting you for who you are!”