CHAPTER 14
O
ne of the houseboys took us upstairs to our rooms. I was kinda anxious ’cause it hadn’t been a good hour yet and Bunni was already actin’ ig’nant. We each got our own rooms, which were really two big suites that had a connecting door. They were laid the hell out with the kind of prime, quality shit that I had only seen in pictures of the most upscale five-star hotels.
Bunni’s ass was awestruck. Our rooms were separated by some pretty French doors, and she ran straight through my suite and dove face-first on the four-poster king-sized bed in her room.
“Look at this shit!” She got on her knees, then stood up on the bed and started jumping up and down like a little kid.
“Calm ya ass down!” I told her. “Don’t be acting like you never saw a bed before, Bunni. Damn.”
I was fussin’ at Bunni, but on the real I was open too. I’d seen a lot of nice houses in magazines, but I had never been inside a real live mansion before, and everything in here was just like I had imagined it would be in my dreams.
All the furniture went together. The bed actually matched the dressers and the night tables, and everything had been polished until it glowed. The carpet was fuckin’ luscious. The spreads matched the sheets, the blankets, and the drapes. The set-up was completely perfect, and it was exactly what I had always wanted.
I was tiptoeing around my room scared to touch anything, while next door Bunni was wildin’ out like she was back in the hood.
“Mink! Girl, did you see the bathroom? Check out that shower! These mofos are
rich
! Even the toilet seat is beast!”
Our suitcases were delivered to our rooms by a couple of servants, and they brought up a tray with fruit, cookies, doughnuts, and cake too. Me and Bunni decided to take a shower and change into some different clothes. We went to our own bathrooms, and when we were done we met back in my room to pick out our outfits for the barbeque.
Of course Bunni was bent on showing off that camel toe. She chose a pair of white satin jeggings that rode low on her curvy hips and stopped right below her knees. The pants showed every bit of her bomb-ass shape, including her monkey, and she set them off with a silver and black belt, a lime-green tank, and some matching jewelry. She sprayed her locks down with water and scrunched them around with her hands, then pushed her hair back with a cute lime-green headband. She put on some mascara and lipstick, and she was set.
I tried to approach my gear with a little bit more thought. I knew my choice in clothes could be weird and over the top, and since I was tryna make a good impression I suppressed my natural desires and decided to play it safe and sexy. I wanted to give the Dominions a hint of what I was packing, but not the whole thing. I chose a stark-white halter dress that Peaches had boosted from Neiman Marcus. It was cut low enough in the front to show a little cleavage, but not so low that my rack was jumpin’ out atcha.
The dress tied behind my neck and exploded in a V down my back. It fit kinda loose, but the tapered waist made it clear that I had a big ass without making my booty look ghetto. I decided to wear a platinum-white wig that was bobbed in the front and long in the back. It was so white it matched my dress perfectly, and when I added some dangling Jerome Berrion chrome earrings and a pair of matching chrome snake bracelets that wrapped around my arms almost up to my elbows, everything came together just right.
Or almost just right.
Something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I dug into my jewelry bag and took out a sparkly diamond necklace that looked like a doughnut. It dangled on a thick silver chain, and it looked real dope when I fastened it around my neck.
Hell yeah. I grinned as I looked in the mirror. My shit was set.
I was itchin’ to get up in the crowd that had started to gather in the Dominions’ huge backyard, and I went to get Bunni outta her room so we could bust up on the scene and start us a little trouble. Bunni’s joint was trashed. She had left shit everywhere, just like she did when she was back in New York in her own damn crib.
“Girl, ain’t you gonna pick some of that stuff up off the floor?” I shook my head. “You gonna have these rich people thinking we cluckin’ like chickens.”
Bunni checked her hair in the streak-free mirror and shrugged. “Shut up, Mink. As long as we get that loot I don’t give a damn what these people think.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded. Bunni was known to sabotage shit when she got too salty, and I didn’t put it past her to fuck up our grand entrance just because she was mad at me. I needed Bunni to be down in order to pull this off, and Bunni knew it, so I bit my tongue and followed my girl downstairs.
New York City had been hot and sticky, but the Texas heat was dry as dust. Me and Bunni walked down the grand staircase and went out back. A lot of people had already shown up and they were already sitting at tables with big umbrellas and being served colorful drinks by a staff of waiters and waitresses in fancy uniforms.
We walked down the stone path to the pool area where mad little kids was running around laughing and spraying each other with water guns. The music was blasting and teenagers were getting their swag on. A sweet hickory scent was in the air, and three split-barrel barbeque grills were smoking Texas-style.
“Mink.” Selah stood up to welcome us. She was sitting at a table that was covered by an umbrella so damn big it looked like a flying saucer. “Nice dress. Come on over here so I can introduce you and Bunni to some of my family.”
She led us over to a long table where a bunch of people sat around grubbing.
“Everybody, this is Mink LaRue and her friend Bunni. They’re visiting us from New York. Mink and Bunni, everybody here is family. They’re either part of the Ducane clan from Brooklyn, where I grew up, or they’re Dominions from Houston where my husband Viceroy was raised. Either way, they love to eat and they came to party!”
Uh-huh. I knew it! I laughed inside as I checked out her crew and listened to some of their convo. All that Oreo-ass bougie shit she had put out in them online video clips was a real front. These folks were hood-rich. They had money out the ass, but the street was in their blood. Most of them looked deep-ghetto, and they were getting busy playing spades and bones, and a few thug-lookin’ fools were shooting Cee-Low up against a big chest full of ice and making that “
ahht
!” sound every time the dice rolled over and hit the ground.
I smiled real cool and shook everybody’s hand as we were introduced. A few of the older women hugged me and complimented me on my diamond doughnut. I recognized some of the closer members of the family, and I was able to match a lot of faces to the names I had already read about on the Internet and memorized.
“This is my oldest son, Barron,” Selah said as we walked up to a dude who looked like a younger version of that buff chocolate nigga Terrell Owens. Dude was even finer in person than he had looked in his pictures. His body was beastly, the kinda cut-up physique you expected to see on a star football player. He got up to shake my hand and we caught a whiff of each other’s flow. I wasn’t surprised when he put his arm around Selah and pulled her close to him like I was some kinda ghetto vampire out to suck his mama’s blood.
“Unh!” Bunni grunted behind me. “Nigga fine!” she whispered with her lips damn-near on my neck. “Get ’em! Get ’em! Shit, y’all ain’t related! Y’all was both
adopted
!”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I gave him a soft smile. I had read all about Barron Dominion and I wasn’t tryna throw no suspicious vibes his way.
GQ
had done a spread on him, and I knew he was the tight-ass lawyer type. I had seen pictures of him on the Internet with his skinny, snow-bunny girlfriend, and I damn sure wasn’t surprised. He was the oldest of the Dominion children, and like Bunni said, he had been adopted just like Sable.
“And your name is again?” Barron barked as he shook my hand real loose like I had cooties on my fingers. I wasn’t even pressed. This nigga probably already knew just as much about me as I did about him.
“My name is Mink,” I repeated. “Mink LaRue.” I turned and smiled at Bunni. “And this is my best friend, Bunni Baines.”
Barron looked at us like he wanted to throw both of our gutta asses on the hot grill and drown us in barbeque sauce. “Yeah. Uh-huh.” He sized me up with his sexy dark eyes. “Good to meet you too.”
Selah grabbed my hand and walked us around the pool and picnic areas so we could meet the rest of the crew. Little kids was running around everywhere. Black ones, white ones, and Asian ones too. It looked like Selah and Viceroy had a whole lotta family and friends, and between the Dominions and the Ducanes, the whole rich-ass posse was getting it in.
Their hood relatives from Houston had turned out by the vanload. There was a crew of thuggish-lookin’ teenagers chillin’ over on the other side of the tables listening to the kinda music that made pole professionals like me and Bunni wanna strip outta our clothes and make it rain all up in the joint.
Selah introduced us to Barron’s fiancée, Carla, who was real pretty and real friendly. She said hi and gave me a simple little white girl smile, and something about that smile made me like her right away. I figured most of the clear folks running around were probably her family members, and I spotted an older white woman who I could tell was her mother.
Then Selah took us over to meet her two real kids. Her son, Grayson, who everybody called Jock, and her daughter, Fallon. They were the two youngest Dominions, and even though one was seventeen and the other was eighteen, both of them were about to be seniors in high school.
I checked out the son, with his Viceroy-lookin’ self. I’d smoked enough weed to know a dro-head when I saw one, and Jock looked high as hell. He was tall and cute and pressed out in his gear just like the young’uns who slung rock on the corners in Harlem. He was adorned in hood shine and sagging, and his fitted was turned around backward over a red doo-rag. Jock didn’t really pay me no attention, but he zeroed in on Bunni’s camel toe right off the bat, and them smoked-out eyes of his stayed on her twat the whole time we was being introduced.
Fallon was a hot seventeen-year-old Texas beauty queen, and she was chillin’ with about four of her teeny-bopper girlfriends. They were styling some skimpy bikinis for the thugs across the way, and giggling as they profiled their hot little bodies.
Mami was a rich little bitch, so I didn’t know if she was gonna have her ass on her shoulders or what, and as soon as we were introduced she let me know how she was rollin’ right off the bat.
“Mink, this is Fallon. Fallon, this is Mink.”
“
Mink
?” She put her hands on her curvy hips. Her titties were high and tight in her hot pink bikini, and a cute gold charm dangled from her belly button. I could tell Miss Thang was spoiled and used to being the only chick in the house, but we was about to see about all that. She turned her little nose up at me, and then smirked as her eyes swept over me from head to toe. “Oh, yeah. Pilar told me about you.” She tossed her long hair and turned away from us, giving me her ass like I was straight dismissed. I looked at her young behind like, damn! I mean, I wasn’t expecting her to jump up and down with no long-lost big sister love, but her prissy ass didn’t have to diss me like that neither!
“Mink, this is my niece, Pilar,” Selah said as we walked on for a second, then paused beside a chick who was stretched out on a lounge chair with an open book covering her face. She had on a skimpy tangerine-colored bikini and her light-brown skin was slick and shiny with baby oil. I peeped her package and had to admit the chick was holding in all areas.
“Hey Pilar,” Selah said. “Sit up, baby. I want you to meet Mink LaRue and her friend, Bunita. They’re visiting us from New York.”
At the sound of Selah’s voice the girl slid the book off her face. She was a few years older than me and real pretty. She blinked a few times and then sat up.
My antenna was up and I busted her groove right away. This bitch was just like Fallon. Stank.
“So what did y’all
really
come down here for?” She skipped all over the bullshit and grilled me and Bunni like she was a psychic who had just peeped our game.
I grinned at her like, bring it baby, bring it! I was
so
used to birds stepping to me. We checked each other like two hot battle bitches. My eyes were honey-hazel and Pilar’s were stormy gray. Uh-huh. Shiesty was sure nuff up on shiesty. I had done the project stare-down with the best of them and I wasn’t about to look away first. If this trick wanted some ass, she was gonna have to bring some too. She was giving me the bizz and I was handing her that shit right back.
Selah stepped in and tried to smooth our little nonverbal thang over.
“Mink, Pilar is my only niece and she’s really more like a daughter. My brother Digger is her father, and you’ll get a chance to meet him when him and Pilar’s boyfriend, Ray, come back from playing golf.”
I nodded and gave Pilar a real slick smile as we walked away. This little country chicken must didn’t know! We bit tender bitches like her for breakfast up in Harlem.