Her Pleasure

by Niobia Bryant

  She pressed her left hand to her belly and the sight of her engagement ring against reminded him of their family to come. The life he never had as a kid he would have as an adult. He pressed his hand over his heart, knowing his grandfather was proud in heaven. “Let’s set a date,” he said.

  Her hand dropped from her belly. “Right now?” Jaime asked.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Why now?” she countered.

  “Why not now?” he volleyed back.

  Jaime leaned her naked body against the door frame. “Luc, I’m tired and I really would like to wash. Can we do this . . . tomorrow over dinner?” she asked. “I’ll cook and we’ll sit down and get to it. Okay?”

  “I would like a date before the baby is born,” he suggested as he turned to leave the room.

  “You and my mother both,” she muttered before disappearing into the bathroom.

  He paused at the doorway and looked back at her skirt on the floor. Moments later the steam from the shower swirled out of the doorway. Luc believed in his gut instincts. He relied on it. His success was in large part to it.

  And something was wrong.

  Of that he was sure.

  * * *

  “You’ve made a mistake.”

  “Regardless of anything. I will always love you, Jaime.”

  “You are everything, Jaime. Every fucking thing.”

  “Jaime. Jaime?”

  She had been staring out the window of her office, but she cut her eyes over without shifting position, to see her lead design consultant, Madison, looking at her with a curious and concerned expression. “What?” she asked, clearing her throat and picking up the stylus to her iPad.

  “Jaime, the wood floors ordered for the Connecticut house is wrong and you signed for its delivery,” Madison explained, leaning over to sit her tablet in front of her.

  She frowned at her signature on the invoice and then at the amount. “Shit,” she swore.

  “This isn’t like you,” Madison said. “Everything okay?”

  I’m just pregnant and not quite sure who the father is. My life is fucking Paternity Court right now.

  But she wouldn’t dare to reveal that. Even the new Jaime had boundaries.

  No secrets. Just boundaries.

  “I was crazily distracted, and I goofed,” Jaime admitted, reminded of the day her focus was on her pregnancy and the week she slept with both Graham in Grenada and Luc at home.

  “Do me a favor, call the distributor to see if we can be granted some favor and swap out for the right materials,” Jaime said.

  Madison nodded. “And if not? This was a custom order.”

  Shit.

  “See what you can do for me. Get me some info and I will call the client, cop to my mistake, and persuade them not to fire us for fucking up the timeline,” she said.

  “On it,” Madison said, giving her a consoling look as she stood and left the office.

  “My life is a fucking mess. Deadass,” she said, imitating Aria’s Newark accent.

  Releasing a lengthy breath, she dropped her stylus and scratched her eyebrow with the tip of her almond-shaped fingernail. She needed her friends. To talk to them. Confide in them. Be berated and judged by them. But in the end, they would help her navigate the shit.

  She pressed the intercom.

  “Yes,” Katie said.

  “Get me Aria and Renee on the line,” Jaime said, pushing back in her chair as she rose to her stiletto covered feet.

  I want to be happy with my pregnancy.

  Turning, she looked out the window.

  “You have another call on the line. Should I put that through first?” Katie asked via the intercom.

  “Who is it?” Jaime asked, hoping it wasn’t the Rogans about their house in Connecticut.

  “Graham Walker.”

  Jaime looked back over her shoulder. A shimmy of awareness floated over her and her heart’s beat changed in an instant. “Put him through and hold the calls with the ladies,” she said, looking down at her engagement ring.

  “Okay.”

  “I will always love you, Jaime.”

  She turned to her desk and eyed the flashing light on her phone. “What could he want?” she wondered aloud in a whisper.

  There’s only one way to find out.

  Clearing her throat, she picked up the headset. “Jaime Pine,” she said in her most professional voice as she rolled her eyes at herself.

  Just last night you were tempted to beg him to make you cum.

  “Yes, I know, Jaime. I called you,” Graham said, his voice deep and throaty.

  “How did you get my number?” she asked as she retook her seat and pretended not to be affected by the closeness of his voice to her ear.

  “Google.”

  “Right,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you, Jaime.”

  She felt what could only be excitement. “Graham—”

  “Over these years. Since Grenada. And all last night,” he continued. “I don’t know what to do about that. I’m pretty fucked up right now.”

  “Just ignore it,” she said, even though she couldn’t.

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to. Our past won’t let have us have a future, remember?” she reminded him.

  “But I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

  She wrinkled her brows and sat up straighter. “Huh?”

  “I love you, Jaime. On some real shit. I love you.”

  Jaime tingled as she looked up to the ceiling and shook her head, denying his feelings and her own as she twisted her engagement ring around her finger.

  “I miss talking to you. Seeing you. Kissing you. Sharing with you. Laughing with you. Traveling with you. Loving you. I miss it,” he stressed with raw and real emotions that were clear. “What if Grenada wasn’t just a coincidence. What if . . .”

  It was meant to be.

  She pressed a hand to her belly.

  What if we made a child?

  “Look, I don’t know. Maybe I’m living off the past and making assumptions on what could or should be. Maybe my head is up in my ass or the clouds about this, but I have been trying to get over you since Grenada and I am failing like a motherfucker.”

  Same.

  The line went silent as she released breaths meant to ease the turmoil rising in her.

  “Jaime, last night drove me crazy.”

  She pressed her thighs together hoping to ease the bloom of her clit as she remembered how he left her so hot and bothered that Luc had benefitted from her desire. She looked down at her ring.

  Forgive me.

  “I want to see you again,” Graham admitted. “Look, let’s have dinner. I can cook the jambalaya you used to like.”

  “At your place?” she retorted. “How would that help your celibacy?”

  He chuckled.

  She tingled all over some more. Graham made her feel giddy and light.

  “Okay, dinner wherever you choose,” he offered. “No strings.”

  “How can there be when you’re anti-sex?” she mused.

  “I’m not anti-sex. I’m anti-casual and reckless sex,” he explained.

  Like Grenada.

  She spun in her chair, twisting the phone cord around her body, as she looked at her reflection in the glass and saw the excitement at having Graham back in her life in any way. It wasn’t right. But she couldn’t explain why he made her feel the way he did.

  Fuuuuck.

  Because she also had Luc and he made her feel things as well.

  Forgive me.

  But the woman in the reflection was not ready to say goodbye to Graham Walker. Not yet.

  “Jaime.”

  She winced and hung her head as her torture played out across her face and a tear fell because it was wrong—so very wrong—but it didn’t feel that way.

  “Dinner,” she agreed.

  “Tomorrow at eight?”

  “At the Red Rooster
in Harlem,” she said.

  “Jaime.”

  “Yes?” she said, closing her eyes as she pressed her phone closer to her ear.

  “I love you.”

  “I believe that,” she whispered.

  Click.

  Chapter 9

  Two weeks later

  Jaime eyed Renee and then Aria as she cleared her throat.

  These are my confessions . . .

  “I’m pregnant!” she announced with bright eyes.

  They both showed surprise, shock, and then joy before they exclaimed and jumped up from the patio lounges to come toward her.

  Jaime took a quick inhale. “And I’m not sure who the father is,” she exhaled.

  They both froze mid-step.

  “Oh shit!” Aria gasped with shocked eyes.

  Renee flailed her arms and knocked her glass of ice water onto the patio. “What!” she exclaimed.

  Jaime closed her eyes to avoid their stares. When silence reigned, she dared to look at them. They had reclaimed their seats and looked unsure of how to react. “It’s either Luc or . . .”

  Renee and Aria shared a brief look before they both leaned forward.

  “Graham,” she finished.

  “Oh, helllllll no!” Aria exclaimed, throwing both of her hands up in the air dramatically.

  Renee’s shoulders slumped, but her face was unreadable. “Jaime,” she said with disappointment.

  Get it all out.

  “When we were in Grenada—”

  “Grenada!” they exclaimed in unison.

  Jaime nodded. “Graham happened to be at the resort painting a mural, and well, things—sex—happened.”

  “Oh. Okay. I was the only one not getting dick in Grenada,” Aria declared, looking from one friend to the other.

  Renee shook her head before she stood up and walked into the house to return with a small brush and dustpan. “Anything else?” she asked as she bent down to clean up the shards of glass.

  “Graham and I have been back in touch for the last couple of weeks.”

  Renee hung her head for a few moments before looking back at Jaime over her shoulder in her squatting position.

  Aria opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no words came.

  Sometimes silence was able to convey more than words.

  “What are we supposed to do with all of this, Jaime?” Renee asked as she slowly rose to her feet, leaving the dustpan and brush on the ground. “What do you want us to say about this . . . this . . . ?”

  “Living breathing Maury Povich level of drama,” Aria supplied before scratching her scalp.

  “Aria,” Renee said with a serious tone even as she continued to look down at Jaime. “Where are you with all of this, Jaime?”

  Jaime pressed a hand to her still flat belly. “Regardless of the father, this is my baby and I’m going to be a mother and I’m happy about that,” she said softly.

  Renee’s expression changed and she offered the hint of a smile. “When are you due?” she asked, coming over to sit beside her outstretched legs on the patio.

  “April.”

  “An Aries,” Aria offered. “And it figures your child would have a diamond as its stone.”

  They all laughed.

  “Right,” Jaime agreed.

  “And what do you want? A girl or a boy?” Renee asked as she reached for Jaime’s hand to clasp with her own.

  “A girl,” she said, picturing a plump, brown cherub who looks like...

  Me? Luc? Or Graham?

  “Of course,” Aria drawled, coming to sit on the other side of her legs on the patio lounge.

  “And who do you want to be with silly, silly girl?” Renee asked.

  “Luc or Graham?” Aria added.

  Jaime licked the dryness from her mouth as she looked at one friend and then the other. “One is my past and the other is my future but right now both feed a different hunger in me . . . and I know it’s wrong. I know after what Eric did to me with Jessa that it’s bizarre and crazy for me to do the same to Luc—who loves me, but I . . . I . . .”

  “You what, Jaime?” Renee urged. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Fucking up her life,” Aria supplied.

  Jaime leaned back against the lounge and closed her eyes. Soon her belly would swell with life and she would have to face her secrets.

  “What do they know?” Renee asked.

  “They know I love them,” she offered, with her eyes still closed as she gave in to a fantasy where she continued to have the best of both worlds.

  Aria sucked air between her teeth. “Cut the bullshit, Jaime,” she snapped.

  Jaime winced.

  She’s right.

  “Luc doesn’t know anything about Graham and Graham doesn’t know about Luc or the baby,” she admitted.

  “Jaime,” Renee admonished.

  “Damn girl. You lying here. Lying there. You lying everywhere,” Aria stressed.

  I am.

  She opened her eyes and eased her knees up to her chest.

  “Who do you hope is the father?” Renee asked.

  She pictured Luc holding their baby and then Graham doing the same.

  With a shake of her head, she pushed aside her thoughts of both.

  “The answer should be the man you are going to marry,” Aria said.

  Jaime eyed her. “Right. Yes. In a perfect world it will be Luc’s child,” she said.

  “Are you going to have a DNA test?” Renee asked, rising to finish cleaning up the glass.

  Another question I’m not ready to answer.

  Renee paused in the doorway. “Cut it off with Pleasure and build your life with Luc, Jaime,” she advised before entering the house.

  She looked to Aria who gave her a helpless one-shoulder shrug.

  “If nothing else, everything that happened with Jessa Bell taught me that everything done in the dark comes to the light,” Aria said. “Everything. Every time.”

  Jaime gave her a nod as she looked off at the gentle movement of the water in the pool.

  Everything. Every time.

  “Now let me get this right, Ma’am.”

  Jaime stood at the podium and nodded as she looked up at Lauren Lake sitting on the bench with her gavel in hand and makeup flawless per usual.

  “You were dating this man?”

  The judge pointed at Luc sitting in a chair to the left of her.

  Jaime nodded.

  “And then you had sex with this man?”

  Her finger swung to Graham sitting in a chair to the right of her.

  The studio audience of Paternity Court all gasped in shock.

  Jaime looked over her shoulder to glare at them.

  Luc jumped to his feet. “We’re engaged, Your Honor.”

  Graham jumped up as well. “She never told me that.”

  Jaime looked from one to the other.

  “Sounds like you need us when you’re done here.”

  She looked at the bench and her eyes bugged out of her head when Lauren Lake’s head spun and became the faces of the Cutlers from Couples Court.

  “The fuck!” Jaime exclaimed.

  “We’re waiting for you,” the Cutlers exclaimed before the heads spun again.

  “Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve!”

  Jaime turned and all the faces of the audience had transformed into the bald-headed host of the Steve Wilkos Show.

  “Turn around and get these results, Ma’am.”

  She pivoted again to find Lauren Lake’s head back in place as she shook a manila envelope in her hand. “I have the DNA results . . . but y’all know I am revealing nothing until after a commercial. Right?”

  The audience applauded and agreed knowingly.

  “Right!”

  “Yup!”

  “We know that shit!”

  Luc wrapped his arm around her waist. “Jaime.”

  She looked up at him.

  “Jaime,” Graham said as he held her hand, entwining their fingers.


  She looked over at him.

  “You could have gotten your results on my show, Jaime!”

  Cringing she looked at the television screen next to the bench at Maury holding a beautiful brown baby with pink bows. “Mama,” she cooed.

  “Maury! Maury! Maury!” the studio audience chanted loudly.

  Lauren Lake banged her gavel. “Not on my show, Povich.”

  “Jaime?” Luc tugged at her waist.

  “Jaime?” Graham squeezed her hand.

  “Mama.”

  “Maury! Maury! Maury!”

  “Jaime?”

  “Jaime?”

  “And the results are—”

  Jaime released a high-pitched scream just as her head exploded into fragments . . .

  She awakened from the nightmare with a cry and sat up straight in bed cloaked by darkness, looking around in alarm. Luc’s side of the bed was empty. She reached out and grabbed his pillow to snatch to her chest and bury her face into the softness, wishing he were there and not at the studio.

  That was the craziest dream ever. I don’t even watch talk shows. The fuck?

  Guilt was a hell of a thing.

  And so is my messy ass life.

  She reached over to turn on the sconce on the wall on her side of the bed before she flung the sheets back and sat on the side in her eggplant satin slip. She picked up her phone and started to send Luc a sexy text to motivate him to come home, but decided against it. Instead, she opened up the app where some of her text messages were delivered—those she would never want Luc to pick up her phone and see.

  She scrolled through old texts Graham had sent her over the last two weeks.

  G: I CANT FORGET THE WAY YOU LOOKED IN THE DRESS YOU WORE TONIGHT. I CANT SLEEP BECAUSE OF IT. THINKING OF YOU IN AND OUT OF IT. DAMN.

  That had been a form-fitting yellow sundress she wore to that first dinner. Even when she pulled the dress on her body and eyed herself in the mirror, she had imagined just what he would think of it. The look in his eyes as she walked across the restaurant to reach where he sat had not disappointed.

  Even then, weeks later, the dark hunger in his eyes made her shiver still.

  G: THANK YOU FOR GOING TO THE MUSEUM WITH ME. ENJOYING YOU ENJOYING ART MADE IT DOPE AS HELL FOR ME. IVE BEEN THERE A DOZEN TIMES BUT NEVER SAW IT THE WAY I DID THROUGH YOUR EYES.

  She smiled, remembering the moment he came up behind her as she studied African artifacts to regale her with details of a particular item’s history or little-known details he knew from his position on the museum’s board. She had been amazed at the growth in him from the man she first met in a hotel room to strip down for horny women at a bachelorette party and earning a living by selling himself to women hungry for his touch and his skill.