Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (Many Cultures, One World) (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: Miss Threet, King Brody, Puerto Rican (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“Urban erotica has never been hotter!”
–Nikki Turner, author of Black Widow

Have you ever been betrayed by those you love? Violated in the worst kind of way? And no matter how hard you tried to fight your way out of a trick bag, no matter how tall you tried to walk, did the cold streets of life lead you right back to your grimy destiny?

The bestselling author of G-Spot and Candy Licker, Noire pens the intense tale of Eva Patterson, a tragic daughter of the ghetto who finds peril on the streets of New York. With an abusive mother and a heroin monkey on her back, Eva experiences a series of traumatizing events, forcing her to flee her Brooklyn tenement and seek refuge with her beloved cousin Fiyah in Harlem.

But fate is not done wreaking havoc in Eva’s life yet. Poised on the brink of progress, Eva meets King Brody, a vicious Harlem drug lord who runs Bricks, the hottest rap club in town. Unbeknownst to Eva, her cousin Fiyah’s thirst for glory leads him to cut a killer deal with Brody. A trade-off is arranged: Fiyah gets a recording contract–and Brody gets Eva.

The problem is, Eva already has a man: Ice Mello Williams, a hot Harlem rapper who has a bitter feud going with Fiyah and is determined to seize his recording contract.

Torn between the man she loves and a violent kingpin, Eva becomes an unwilling pawn in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Can Fiyah and Mello help her elude the sadistic jaws of Brody, or will she end up losing her life in his brutal trap?

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Brooklyn housing projects were deserted as Eva
Patterson took a shortcut through the buildings, trying
not to get drenched in the pouring rain. It was unusually
cold for early fall, and all she had on was the corduroy
skirt and Salvation Army sweater she’d been wearing
when Rasheena kicked her out of their tenement apartment, but the temperature was the last thing on her mind as her eyes scanned the crime- ridden buildings in search of a safe place to go.

“Sheena, please . . .” Their neighbor Iris had butt in on
the earlier drama as Rasheena cursed her daughter out
like she was a grown woman. Iris had puffed out her
cheeks and held her breath between tokes of weed. “Stunt, stop
fuckin’ trippin’. Eva’s a good girl. And young as she is, I know
you ain’t . . . putting her out in the . . . street this time of . . .
night.”

It was a GreyGoose night, and Rasheena drunk was somebody
altogether different than Rasheena high. The high Rasheena
would have been sitting in a corner somewhere. Getting her nod
on and leaving Eva the hell alone.The drunk Rasheena had stood
over her daughter giving her a grimy look that said Eva could kiss
her ass.

“What?!?” Rasheena had turned to Iris. “Fourteen is grown!

Sheeit . . . my ass was on the ave gettin’ tricked when I was
twelve. Who the fuck took care of me?”

Rasheena slurped a mouthful of Goose straight from the
bottle, then chased it with a long swig of cranberry juice and
explained. “Look, I. If you lie you steal, and Eva is a thief. A
goddamn thief. There’s two things I ain’t ’bout to watch in my
own goddamn house. My duji and my dick! Ya feel me? Eva
grown enough to fuck with my man and dabble in my shit?
Then she grown enough to let the doorknob hit’er in the ass on
the way out!”

“Well damnnn,” Iris toked the blunt and muttered under
her breath. “Y’all the ones who got her started on that shit in
the first place . . .”

Eva had just sat there crying inside and looking forty instead
of fourteen. She had tried to dip in Rasheena’s stash, but she’d
been sick all day and couldn’t go out and make no money. Eva
hated stealing from her mother. These days she hated taking
anything from anybody, but she had a hungry monkey on her
back. And Iris had it right. Eva wasn’t responsible for putting
herself on the gutter path to drug abuse, but neither did she
have what it took to get off of it. She hadn’t gotten a hit all day,
and just thinking about having to get out on those cold streets
was enough to bring her jones down even harder.

“Don’t worry I got you,” Eva’s stepfather Jahden put his hand
up to his mouth and whispered. He winked and grinned as Eva
slunk into the tiny room she’d once shared with her cousin
Fuego, whose street- translated name was Fiyah. Eva missed her
cousin real bad. But Fiyah’s mother had gotten out of rehab a
couple of years earlier and he’d gone back to Harlem to live
with her. Even with all the grimy things they’d done together
Fiyah was down for her through thick and thin, and Eva
wished she could have escaped to Harlem with him.

“And don’t you take a damn thing outta here that I bought
you!” Rasheena screamed from the kitchen. Eva sighed. The
only thing she was interested in taking from the room was the
most important thing.

Her works.

Jahden grabbed her thin arm as she headed out the front
door.

“Hold on, baby. I said I got you.” A mid- level drug dealer,
Jahden specialized in pushing smack while most trap boys were
busy trading that rock. His hand slid around Eva’s narrow
shoulders then fell to the small of her back. Eva stiffened as his
fingers crept down the lump of her ass and massaged her
cheeks. A cold sweat broke out all over her skin. If my real father
was here Jah wouldn’t be touching me like this, she cried inside.
This nasty pervert woulda been bodied by now. Eva bit her
tongue, trying not to throw up. Jahden liked to cold sex her.
He would do things to her that Eva’s young body just wasn’t
ready to handle. There was no end to his twisted demands, and
earlier in the day he had forced Eva to sit on the floor and
watch him fuck Rasheena from the back while Rasheena got in
Iris’s pussy at the same time.

“Check me out, Eva baby!” he had panted as his ass cheeks
gyrated and pumped like a steam engine. Eva shuddered. Her
mother was rotating her head in circles and lapping nookie
juice like that shit came in thirty- one flavors. Jahden laughed at
the look of revulsion on Eva’s face, then screamed on her as she
closed her eyes and tried to escape the horrible scene playing
out in front of her. “Bitch open ya goddamn eyes! You betta be
a student and pay attention, dammit!”

Eva had just sat there and cried. She was traumatized and
sickened. She wanted to stick a knife in Jahden’s neck. The
same way he’d stuck a fearsome needle in her neck a year ago
and turned her into the scared, humiliated shell she was today.
Although Rasheena had starved her child almost to skin and
bones and done things to Eva that even the lowest dog- mother
would never consider, Jahden was the real reason her life was so
fucked up and Eva hated him for it. Every other day she’d
promise herself that she’d kick dope cold turkey before she let
him rape her or get her high again, but her greatest fear had become
her greatest joy, and Eva was helpless.

Rasheena, who had held Eva down the first time Jahden shot
her up, and who had then stood by and watched as her boy -
friend busted her young daughter’s cherry, had been acting real
jealous. She got mad whenever it looked like Jahden would
rather fuck Eva than fuck her, and she put her foot down and
demanded that from that day on Eva had to pay for her skag
with cold hard gwap just like every other fiend- head customer.
Desperate, young Eva had taken to the streets to earn her
drug money the only way she knew how. On her knees and on
her back. She’d been beaten by strange men, raped, stabbed,
and almost strangled. She had cried out to God for help, begging
to know what she had done to deserve such a dark, treacherous
life. But as usual, there were no answers for Eva. There
was only more destitution and misery. Only fear and more
pain. And right now, standing next to Jahden while he rubbed
all over her ass, she was hurting. Real bad. Hurting and scared.
Seeing the disgust on her face Jahden grinned and reached in
his shirt pocket. He passed her a tiny foil- wrapped package and
squeezed her fingers when she tried to take it.

“I got what you need, baby girl.” He cupped his dick and
licked his lips. “See how cool I am? Tonight I’ma let you get it
for free.”

Eva burned with rage, but he was right. She feared what he
had, but she needed it too. She snatched it greedily and fled.

Downstairs, Eva’s nose was runny and her entire body
ached. A deep pain gripped her as she was leaving her building,
and it wasn’t just from anger or from her mother’s cruel behavior.

Rasheena had once been a top clothing model for a highly
successful designer, but these days she was a common needle
fiend who put her man, her drink, and her drugs way ahead of
her only child. She had also been an extremely beautiful and
intelligent black woman who could have gone far in life. Tall
and shapely, with skin the color of brown sugar, she had wide
eyes, stunning lips, and hips like sweet chocolate milkshakes.
Back in the day she used to be known as the finest chick in
Brownsville, but a fast life and a series of grimy men had
proven more than Rasheena could handle. She’d traded her exotic
beauty for one too many heroin trips, and these days she
scrambled with the low- life Jahden because he not only paid
her rent, but he also kept her head right.

Having a junkie for a mother was bad enough, but the
drunken rages Rasheena flew into always cut Eva deep. Juiced,
Rasheena would wrap an extension cord around her fist and
whip her daughter until Eva’s skin split open and she passed
out from the pain. Eva’s starving body was a canvas of thick,
ugly scars and fresh bruises that she’d picked until they were
oozing, infected sores. Her stomach, ass, and back would be so
cut open that her wounds bled through and pussed over and
glued her undergarments to her skin. Her arms and legs had
their fair share of crisscrossed cuts and welts too, but Rasheena
had learned to chill on those areas after the school social worker
got on her case and told her she’d make sure her black ass got
locked up the next time she saw Eva with a fresh belt mark.

It was hard for Eva to admit that she would rather see her
mother mainline heroin than guzzle vodka and gin, but that
was the way it was with Rasheena. Besides, Eva understood
duji. She respected that shit. Liquor was something else
though. A smack head could find any old corner and cop a
quiet nod, but a drunk usually got loud and abusive. Drunks
liked to bully the weak, and that was Rasheena to a tee.

Eva dodged rain puddles and hunched her narrow shoulders
against the cold. It was after midnight, and the sixteen- story
concrete towers of Howard Houses Projects were a mixture of
illumination and darkness. Rain curled Eva’s silky hair and
drenched her down to her bruised skin. Shivering, she tightened
her grip on the tiny package she’d gotten from ...

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: One World/Ballantine (January 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345508785
• ISBN-13: 978-0345508782
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #129,414 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Same Ole, Same Ole....., February 9, 2009

By	Jenae Richards (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

How ironic! I read this book more than a week ago, but am only just ready to post my review, and then when I come here I found out that Miss
Natassha Denise Jenkins posted almost the exact review I was going to write!
Another irony is that I find the book was given 5 stars, by the author Shay. She's a new author, and I found her book, Raw: An Erotic Street Tale, EXCELLENT, so I was kinda surprised to see that she was so enthusiastic about this book. But then when I thought about it, it makes sense. She's raved before about other Noire books and mentioned that she's a big Noire fan. In fact, her writing style is quite similar to Noire's, and like Noire, she uses a pseudonym. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe both of them are from New York City. Hmmmm.....
But back to THIS BOOK.....
Hittin' the Brick was well-written like all of of Noire's books, but I get so tired of the main character being such a damn victim, like she's not in control of her own fate. Being forced, in a way, into a bad relationship. Being horribly abused. Ugh!
I mean, the first two....G-Spot and Candy Licker, okay....but all of her books!
No, I'm sorry. This is the last Noire book for me even though I started out a fan. I mean why should I read another one? It seems to me if you've read one you've read them all.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Noire Has Done Better, February 6, 2009

By	N. Jenkins "Miss Read A Lot!" (N.C) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Now don't get me wrong, it was a good book. A page turner, I read the book in less then two days while at work. But the thing is it was JUST a GOOD book, short of being a masterpiece like her beginning works G-Spot and Candy Licker. My expectations for Noire have been set high, extremely high, and she fell below that.

But when it came to this book, it was nothing new or spectacular. And without giving away the story, they are becoming repetitive, VERY repetitive and predictable. There's always a girl and sometimes boy: (Juicy, Candy, Egypt and Hood, Carmesha and Thug, Saucy and of course Eva) and their siblings and they experience a horrible up bringing. They all are generally left alone in the world, experiencing first hand absent parents, severe physical abuse and drugs in their childhoods. They all struggle to make it out of the hood (Juicy=dancing, Candy=singing, Egypt=school, Hood=Rap, Carmesha=hair, Thug= B-Ball, Saucy and Eva= Modeling) but regardless the streets get them.
All the girls, except Saucy, catch the eye of a BIG drug kingpin and suffer abuse at the hand of that kingpin. They are deeply in love with someone, but have a problem enjoying their love in the face of their problems. Ultimately the kingpin, has a downfall and his own relative has a hand in it, there is a big fight/physical assault of the girl (or Boy in Thugs and Hoods case), the sibling, and the lover, that leaves them with life scars (both physical and mental), and changed if not dead.
My point is I knew the storyline before I read it. The names changed but the story remains the same. This book is becoming a movie, or so Noire said. I would seem to me that her earlier works would have been one conjoined movie (since they all are interlinked: G-Spot, Candy Licker, Thug-A-Licious, Thong on Fire), now that would have been WORTH IT!! I don't know about this one.
Noire is a GREAT urban erotic writer; she just needs a little bit more variety. I think it is safe to say that I too was disappointed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Similar To Others, March 13, 2009

By	ClassyLady2717 "ClassyLady" (Right Here) - See all my reviews

While I love Noire as an author and have enjoyed her other books I never really read them in order I am just reading Candy licker but I did read Gspot, thug a licious and thong on fire I have to say while the circumstance around this character were different it was pretty musch the same. They are all young blk women who are seemingly beautiful at the start of the book they have very high confidence, towards the middle it diminishes a bit closer to the end they start to gain it back but not before they are raped, beaten, mutilated or killed.

When I read the excerpt for this one I thought it owuld be a little different it was a LITTLE bit different but not much.

Kinda like how Gspot is almost Identical to Candy Licker.