His lean face filled with annoyance as he clenched his jaw.
“I don’t owe you my pussy for this trip or this engagement ring,” she continued, her voice barely above a whisper but still clear with her intent to establish her rights within their relationship. “Even when I tell you during sex that it’s yours . . . it’s still mine.”
“Yo, Jaime,” he began.
She continued to stroke him to hardness inside his shorts. “Now you want to eat whatever the chef cooked for lunch or you wanna eat me and help keep me in the mood?”
Luc flexed his broad shoulders as he looked away into the water and then back at her. “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you,” he promised before he snatched her hand from his dick and then picked her up.
She snuggled her face against his neck and sucked away his sweat, wrapping her legs around his waist as he walked them across the deck and down the stairs. She missed the heat of his hard dick in her hand and longed to have it inside her.
“Hold lunch,” Luc said to someone before he opened the door to their cabin and entered, locking the door with a nudge of his foot.
He dropped her onto the middle of the bed before working his shorts off to kick away with his foot.
Graham’s dick is curved.
No. No. No, she thought as she pressed her eyes closed.
All weekend long her thoughts betrayed Luc. Comparing him to Graham in every way. Height. Weight. Length of dick. Stroke maneuvers. Amount of sweat. Kisses. Nipple licking. The climax face. Clit strokes. All of it.
In bed and out.
Laughs. Taste in clothes. Music choice. Politics.
Anything. Everything.
Focus, Jaime. Focus. This is Luc. You love him. You love fucking him. Focus!
Luc undressed her.
Graham would taste every part of my body he exposed. Focus!
She spread her legs as he climbed onto the bed between them. Her clit throbbed with life as he opened her plump lips and licked the swollen flesh. She arched her back and dug her fingernails into his shoulders as she cried out. “Luc,” she gasped as she rotated her hips.
But that wasn’t real.
Between her guilt at letting the spirit of Graham invade their sex and her anger at not being able to control the direction of her thoughts, Jaime’s desire had faded. Sex with Graham had opened the door to feelings she thought she had long since left behind. That drawing of her kicked the door wide open.
Shit.
It was wrong to judge one man against the other. Luc was everything she could wish for in a mate: loving, sexy, stable, passionate, loyal, and kind. And now everything felt shadowed by memories of Graham.
And this man she loved deserved more than that.
Focus, Jaime. Get your shit together.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Even with her grand speech of having control over her body she went through the motions, pretended to climax, and then turned over onto her knees so that she could bury her face into a pillow as Luc entered her swift and hard. She pretended to moan and clutch the sheets. She talked dirty. She clutched her walls against his tool with each of his deep thrusts. And when she was ready for the performance to end, she took the lead and worked her hips back and forth to pull down on his hardness.
That was a guaranteed quick nut, and she was soon rewarded with his.
Luc flattened their bodies onto the bed with him lying on her back and his dick still inside her. “Am I too heavy?” he asked.
“No,” she rushed to say, grabbing his arm to keep him there. With her. On her. In her.
Everything had changed and she knew she had to fix it to save her relationship.
The question was: How?
* * *
“Baby. We’re home.”
At Luc’s nudging, Jaime awakened with her head leaning against his shoulder in the rear of the car service SUV. Rapidly blinking with a grunt, she saw their apartment building. Last she remembered they had boarded the private jet at the airport in Miami. “Damn, I blacked out,” she joked.
Luc chuckled. “The boat must have worn you out. I had to carry you off the plane,” he said as she raised her head and he looked outside the window to make sure traffic was clear before he opened the door.
The familiar sounds of New York traffic flooded the interior of the car before Luc exited and solidly closed the door behind him.
Working the kinks from her neck and shoulders, she gathered her designer tote and shades from the seat as the driver raised the rear door to remove their luggage and Luc came around the vehicle to open her door and hold out his hand. She gave him a little smile as she slid her hand in his hand and accepted his help down onto the sidewalk. As he moved to take their rolling luggage, she looked up at the rays of the sun glinting off the glass of the towering buildings.
“I’m glad we came back early enough to rest up for work tomorrow,” she said as they entered the building together.
“Let’s order in something to eat,” he said as they crossed the marbled floor to the elevator.
“Cool,” she said, eyeing their reflection in the polished elevator doors.
She and Luc looked good together. Young, polished, and stylish, surrounded by wealth and affluence in the heart of Manhattan, fresh from a weekend trip aboard a yacht and a jet. The woman she saw was a successful professional with a thriving business and staff who respected and relied on her. A woman in control of her destiny, standing just as tall and equal to her man.
So different from her suburban life as the perfect wife in Richmond Hills.
She felt emotional at the thought of her growth. Her reemergence. Her claim over her own life.
The doors opened and the image disappeared. Her resolve to stay true to her own wants, needs, and desires did not.
Inside their condo, she immediately stepped out of the heels she wore with a white sundress. She pressed her bare feet to the hardwood floors and raised her arms wide to playfully turn, causing the skirt to rise like a parasol around her waist and expose the sheer white thong she wore. “It’s good to be home,” she said.
Luc paused in shifting through the mail to look up at her. His eyes darkened as he unceremoniously dropped the stack back onto the side table. With two long steps, he was beside her and picking her body up against his. She wrapped her arms and legs around his neck and waist as his hands cupped her buttocks beneath the skirt.
“I thought we were hungry,” Jaime said, as he walked them to the rear of the condo to the owner’s suite.
“Hungry. Horny. Same difference,” he said as he pressed delicious kisses to the valley of her breasts exposed by the V-neck of the dress.
“Let me help you,” she said, sliding the straps down and exposing fast hardening nipples to his clever tongue.
“Hmmmmm,” he moaned as he circled each brown tip.
She looked over across the distance of the spacious room and she froze as she eyed Graham’s framed sketch of her on the wall above their bed. Her stomach tightened. Her eyes were wide. Her heart beat fast. And hard.
As Luc sat down on the edge of their large bed with his mouth greedily licking at one of her nipples Jaime kept her eyes on herself in the sketch. “Luc, how did that picture get here?” she asked.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Nice surprise? I had it shipped here and hung while we were in Miami,” he said, before turning back to reclaim her nipple.
But her thoughts were elsewhere. For her, as she stared at the strokes of Graham’s charcoal against the paper to recreate her image, she felt an energy glide over her body. A thrill.
A dirty little secret.
She rubbed Luc’s back and pressed kisses to his brow as she kept her eyes sealed on the drawing—this representation of a past she shared with this other man. Her Graham. Her pleasure.
In truth, it was intriguing. Invigorating.
Her desire came on in a rush. Her nipples hardened. Her clit throbbed. Her belly warmed. Her juices made her wet. Ready.
Luc slid his long fingers beneath her panties.
“Rip ’em,” she whispered in his ear as she felt plugged into a new energy source.
He did with a grunt.
“Fuck me,” she whispered near his ear with a hot lick of his lobe that caused him to shiver as she eyed the drawing of Graham’s and saw the love he once had for her sketched in her eyes.
Her gasp was deep—from the very pit of her belly—when Luc raised her and entered her wetness to fill her.
“Aaaah,” he cried out against her throat. “Damn it’s wet.”
Wetter than ever. Hotter than before.
She could believe it. For her, Luc was there in body but so was Graham in spirit. And she rode them slowly, inch by inch, to the most explosive climax ever.
Chapter 6
“I have to speak my truth.”
Graham clasped his hands in the space between his knees where he sat in the circle of people at the Bedford Community Center. Their chatter died down to silence and twelve sets of eyes landed on him. He cleared his throat before bending slightly at the waist to pick up his bottle of water.
“Stop stalling, Graham,” Olive said teasingly with an encouraging smile.
He returned the smile of the full-figured woman with a milk-white complexion. She, along with the majority of the people gathered there with him, had become a family of sorts. They had helped each other to embrace the reality of their addiction and then fought to not let it control or overcome their lives. This group of people he proudly led was his salvation and they deserved the truth.
“I am Graham Walker, and I am a sex addict in recovery. . . for six weeks,” he finished, glancing down at the polished wood floors before looking back up at them.
Some eyes were filled with surprise and many more with understanding.
Just last week he had proclaimed himself in recovery for over five years.
“I’ve avoided admitting that to you, which is a lie of omission,” Graham acknowledged. “I apologize to you all for it. This is a system built on truth and trust. I violated both of those. Forgive me. I was ashamed of my relapse.”
“Talk about it.”
Graham eyed Bob, a tall and thin man of sixty with long salt and pepper hair, a kind face, and wise eyes, who ran the group when his travels kept him from doing so. “I happened upon a woman from my past whom I hadn’t seen in years but thought about often,” he said, glancing up at the overhead bright lighting. “Someone I loved but couldn’t be with because of my past as a stripper and consort. But here she was suddenly. Just as beautiful, sexy, and her eyes filled with just as much desire for me as I had for her. I fought it, but I couldn’t resist having her again.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head at the stark memory of being deeply planted inside Jaime once again. “But my issue with it was whether it was my attraction for her or just pure horniness once the door to my desire was opened,” he continued with a deep breath. “At that moment I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit about anything but sexing her. Pleasing her. I needed it.”
“Whoo,” Olive exclaimed, fanning herself with her hand.
“You okay, Olive?” he asked with a hint of a smile. She was always the most raucous in the group. With her came lots of levity.
“Continue,” she said, crossing her legs.
“Thanks,” he replied.
Graham chewed on his bottom lip as he gathered his thoughts. “I fought hard to overcome my past and not repeat it. Hopefully, by being honest tonight with you and myself I can get back on track.”
They applauded him and he nodded in thanks.
“I think I was the last to speak, but would anyone else care to share anything?” Graham asked.
Everyone remained silent. A few shook their heads.
“Then let us all stay strengthened this week in our fight to maintain control over our minds, our bodies, and our lives,” he said, closing out their weekly session.
As everyone folded their chairs to place them back on the racks lining the wall, Graham focused on grabbing the oversized rolling garbage can and gathering up the trash from their refreshment table.
Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .
“Night, Graham,” several of the SA members called to him before leaving.
He gave them a hand wave as he reached for his phone and answered. “I’m on the way,” he said before she could speak.
The call ended.
He chuckled and finished cleaning up before he left the red brick building and locked it with the key that had been entrusted to him years ago. Looking around at the quiet streets of one of New York’s suburban towns, he put his keys in the pocket of his running shorts and placed his Air Pods in his ears to fill them with Jay-Z’s “4:44” before he took off at a run. This sprint from the community center after their weekly meetings always reminded him of his nightly runs where he called the town of Bedford, New York home.
First his careers—selling dick, and then art—led him all over the world. He’d seen and experienced more culture than he ever dreamed about through his struggles in life. And he loved the times he would rent a loft in a European country or connect with the history of his ancestors somewhere on the African continent. Graham was most at peace in other lands. His creativity soared.
He slowed to a jog on the tree-lined street and lightly tapped the rear of his shiny blacked-out SUV parked on the street where he’d left it to run to the community center. He glanced up at the two-story French colonial-style house with wrought iron railings. He continued across the mowed lawn to take the steps of the brick wraparound porch two at a time to ring the doorbell.
It was here that he felt most at home.
The door opened and he was blessed with the warmth of his mother’s smile.
“I thought you were headed back to Brooklyn without stopping by,” Cara said, as she stepped back to let him enter. “And I made lasagna, too.”
Graham hugged his mother before touching the gray hair at her temples with a wink. “You’ll be sixty this year,” he reminded her.
She playfully slapped his hands away. “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness,” she said. “Proverbs 16:31.”
His mother always had just the right Bible quote on the tip of her tongue, ready to slide in any and every conversation. Once he had resented her and the religion she loved. He’d felt unprotected by the walls of her church and her God. What used to be a source of tension between them for years he now accepted as her way of finding and keeping her place in the world. “Where’s Pops?” he asked.
“Outside with that motorcycle,” she said.
Graham immediately headed through the kitchen and over to the side door to open it. His father knelt on the other side of the Harley Davidson he purchased after his heart attack over a decade ago. Just the top of his silvery hair was visible and the clank of metal on metal battled with the raspy soulful voice of Teddy Pendergrass singing “Love T.K.O.” playing from his phone.
It was while he was in the hospital recovering from the attack that a nurse unknowingly revealed to his father that Graham was the stripper known as “Pleasure.” Tylar, a reformed lady’s man, whose affairs had led to his parents’ divorce, had advised him to make the money dancing while he could, and then to move on. Their relationship, and how freely they talked to one another, would shock most people, be it worked for them. No one, outside of his therapist, knew him better than his father from whom he inherited his towering height, good looks, and love for women. Not even Graham losing his virginity to one of his father’s many girlfriends—Essie Nunes—as a teenager had come between them. Tylar Walker used to see women as expendable receptacles for his nut.
Thank God he changed.
Since his parents re-wed twelve years ago, Tylar was proud to let people know the old dog happily sat on the porch and watch the cars go by. He had come on in. Tylar and Cara had found their happily ever after. As he leaned in the doorway and listened to his
father sing along to R&B classics while he tinkered with his ride, Graham remembered advice his father gave him from what they thought was going to be his deathbed:
“Love over sex always wins at this game called life.”
A marked difference from the advice of his whoring days.
Love.
“Takes a fool to lose twice. And start all over again,” Graham mouthed along with his father and Teddy, thinking of Jaime and wishing he didn’t feel so foolish.
* * *
“Congrats on selling the house.”
Seated at a round table in the center of the crowded high-end soul food restaurant with Aria, Kingston, and Renee, Jaime smiled at Luc over the rim of her glass as she took a deep sip of sparkling water. “Thank you,” she said to Kingston.
“So, when’s the wedding date?”
Jaime froze but forced her body to relax before anyone caught it. “We haven’t set it yet,” she answered Renee.
Luc shifted in his seat when two pairs of feminine eyes landed on him. “I’m ready. It’s on your girl,” he said in that deep voice of his.
“Damn right, get that pressure off of you,” Kingston said.
The eyes shifted to Jaime.
She ignored them and motioned to their waiter. “More sparkling water,” she said when he reached the table.
“Anyone else need anything?” the young man asked with his eyes constantly going back to Luc, who was oblivious as he and Kingston discussed last night’s baseball game.
“No, we’re all good,” Jaime said, not quite sure if he was gay or a fan of Luc’s many top-charting rap, pop, or R&B artists. “Thank you.”
The server walked away.
She turned her head to find the two sets of eyes still on her. “What?” she asked with a frown.
“The wedding?” Renee reminded her as she smoothed her hand over her close-shaven head, looking stunning with oversized jewel tone earrings and a satiny emerald V-neck pantsuit.
“As soon as we decide, I’ll let y’all know,” Jaime said, leaning back in her chair to give the waiter room to set a fresh glass of ice and a small bottle of sparkling water on the table.
Aria reached with her fork to pierce a piece of Kingston’s perfectly cooked, medium-rare steak. The cost was her husband leaning over to press a kiss to her neck. She looked as delectable as the meal in the bodycon print dress she wore with her curly afro in full floss mode.
Her Pleasure Page 8
