Read Online Ride or Die by Solomon Jones - Free Book Online

Keisha nodded.
    Jamal walked her through the living room and out the front door. Keisha turned right and saw people straggling up Dauphin Street, walking away from the botched protest. She turned left and saw a deserted Susquehanna Avenue.
    A second later, the Buick’s back door was flung open for them, and Jamal pushed her inside. When he got in behind her and closed the door, it was like a cold breeze blew in with them.
    She shivered, knowing that what she felt was a sense of dread. As the driver pulled away and the car disappeared into North Philadelphia’s maze of tiny streets, she watched Jamal dial the number on his cell phone again.

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    The call connected just as the statuesque brown-skinned woman took her seat on the Acela Express that was departing New York’s Penn Station. She tried to answer, but she lost the signal as the train entered the tunnel.
    A business-class regular on the train that shuttled between New York and Philadelphia, she was something more than a cog in the machine that was the Nichols empire. She was the linchpin, and a beautiful one at that.
    Everywhere she went, with her flawless skin, smoldering eyes, and curves that twentysomethings envied, she drew stares from every man within eyeshot. Today was no different.
    Her champagne-colored silk blouse, revealing just the hint of cleavage, was the perfect complement to her bone-colored miniskirt and matching jacket. She wore no stockings with her open-toed, high-heeled sandals. And her crossed legs were covered with smooth skin stretched tight over muscle that she’d earned with countless trips to the gym.
    Nola Langston carried her forty-four years well. And though her work as a buyer for a high-end department store took her around the world and paid for the endless pampering that helped to maintain her stunning looks, she had never been the type to settle for a lot. She wanted it all. And she got most of it from Frank Nichols.
    She’d been seeing him for over a year, and despite his mistrust of nearly everyone, she had touched him in a way that few women ever had, partly because he wanted more from her than she was willing to give, but also because she was smarter than any man he’d ever known.
    With an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton
School and a fashion industry pedigree that few Philadelphians could match, she was a model-turned-businesswoman who’d helped Nichols to start several legitimate ventures under a fictitious name. His Internet cafés and coffee shops near Temple’s campus were her ideas, as were his vending machines in and around the department stores of Center City.
    She’d nearly doubled his income in less than a year, and made almost half of it legal. In the process, she’d given herself to him in ways that she’d never imagined she would, ways that transcended the physical. She’d become a go-between for all manner of communications, delivering his messages in cryptic words, via cell phone.
    She’d also become his lover. And on mornings like this, when she was aboard the train and thinking anxiously of seeing him again, she often closed her eyes and imagined his lips on hers.
    She thought of his moist tongue, probing every crevice of her body, and she blushed as the thought made its way from her head to her thighs. Crossing her legs tightly, she hoped that the thought wouldn’t overflow in a liquid gush.
    Nola wanted more than just his body, after all. And she couldn’t allow the fringe benefits of being Frank Nichols’s lover to keep her from attaining her ultimate goal.
    Still, it was nice to have someone who understood her desires and could fulfill them. Until she could get him where she wanted him, she would enjoy the ride. And she would make sure that he did, too.
    When the train emerged from the tunnel, she took her cell phone from her purse and dialed his number to let him know she was returning early from her business trip.