He laughed. “Turn around.”
Aria whirled and dropped her cell phone in surprise at Kingston standing at the front door. “What are you doing here?” she asked, rushing across the tiled floor toward him.
“I’m pulling one of your ‘incognegro’ moves, doubling back to catch your lover up in here,” he said, a smile on his handsome face as he reached out and pulled her body close to his muscular frame.
Aria smiled softly and allowed her curves to melt against him, loving him and needing him. “Ha, ha, ha,” she said, pressing her mouth to his to kiss him passionately as she began to undress him.
“Whoa,” Kingston said as a button from his shirt flew and hit the wall.
“Oh, it’s on,” she promised into his open mouth, grabbing his shirt front before she jerked it down his arms to fling behind her.
Kingston’s eyes flashed hotly before he rushed out of his slacks and boxers.
Aria eyed him, her hands easing down his flat abdomen to grasp his dick possessively. “I’m ready to milk this with my hand, my titties, my pussy . . . my mouth,” she whispered to him, loving how it hardened in her hand.
“Damn,” Kingston swore.
“Aria,” Jaime called out from the kitchen.
Both Aria and Kingston’s eyes widened as Jaime strolled into the foyer. Kingston quickly snatched up his discarded pants to hide his dick as Aria turned, standing in front of him.
Jaime’s expression was priceless as she diverted her eyes up to the ceiling. “Um, hello, Kingston.”
“Hi, Jaime. It’s good to see you,” he said politely.
Jaime cleared her throat. “I wish I could say the same in this moment—”
Aria giggled.
“Okay, so I’ll wake Renee up on my way out,” she said, turning with a brief wave to walk back into the kitchen and out the patio door.
Aria turned and faced her husband, her heart filled with love for him as he easily swung her up over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom.
The sounds of their laughter and loving soon echoed throughout their home.
Jessa Bell
For me, my face is everything. It represents me. So the fact that I wasn’t pleased at the kiwi-sized lump on my forehead is a fucking understatement. In the few hours since that bitch attacked me, it had only gotten worse.
I brushed back my soft bangs to lightly stroke the lump with my fingertips. “Stupid trick,” I swore, thinking of the embarrassing scene Aria had caused in the restaurant.
I understood their anger; I just didn’t give a fuck about it. Still, Aria was an intelligent woman, but that street edge was there and I knew it. I should have expected nothing less and had my guard up.
Click.
At the sound of the front door latch, I looked up in the mirror just as my lover walked into my bedroom. “My guard up and my locks changed,” I thought as he walked over to stand behind me. I was naked and fresh from a shower, but I didn’t bother to cover my body from his eyes. He had already seen and tasted everything on me.
I paused, waiting for that familiar thrill I got from his call, his touch, his very presence. I had loved this man. I had given up a lot to have him, but his lies and not following through on our plans had caused my love to fade.
“So if he loved you, if he chose you, if he couldn’t get enough of you . . . then why the hell ain’t he with you.”
I flinched as Aria’s mocking words came back to me. There was truth there. A truth that pained me deeply. The man I loved didn’t love me enough. I’d made the right decision. I had moved on. We were over.
I stroked him with my eyes, not missing his troubled expression or the thin red scratch down the side of his face. “Can I assume Aria ran back like the little hood rat she is to tell Jaime about us?” I asked, calmly smoothing my bangs back down into place even though I felt my nervousness rise.
He nodded as he continued to stare at me with the most intensely dark eyes.
Turning on the padded bench to face him, I tilted my head up. “If you’re this disturbed—or whatever it is you are—about Jaime, then why did you tie my life up for all this time with promises you had no intention of keeping? Why did you lie to me, Eric?”
His jaw clenched. “She is my wife,” he stressed.
I smiled softly. Sadly. Perhaps even bitterly. His words tore my heart and my soul to shreds. “And I was the friend and then the love of your life. Remember?”
“I do love you, Jessa, and you know it. ”
I shook my head, looking away from him. “Not enough because you never really were here in this relationship with me. I was falling in love with a storyline, with lies, with a man who knew he had no intention of leaving his wife.”
“I don’t want to lose you, Jessa.”
“And I wanted to be loved and cherished, not placated, Eric.”
He raised his hands and pressed them against my bare shoulders. I shivered at his touch.
From that one moment our awareness of each other changed; Eric’s touch or look warmed me. Our chemistry—that unseen connection between two people—had always been intense. Emotional. Electrifying. Undeniable.
At first our lovemaking was awkward as if he were a virgin, but I had taught him well and in time the physical caught up with our chemistry. And yes, there was added thrill because we were sneaking. Hiding. Catching quick fucks here and there. Sharing a look as we both sat among our friends with our privates still damp from each other’s juices.
Even now that my heart was broken under the weight of his lies and my trust in him destroyed, my clit throbbed with new life as my nipples hardened in tight chocolate buds. As his hands eased down to stroke my breasts I felt my head drifting backward and a gasp of pleasure escaping through my open lips. No, Jessa.
I jumped up to my feet, brushing his hands away. “It’s over, Eric,” I told him sharply.
“No, it’s not.” Eric reached out and grabbed my upper arms. “I’m not losing you, too.”
My brows furrowed at his words and the tight feel of his hands on me. “Let me go, Eric.”
He jerked my body close to his and wrapped his arms around me tightly as he pressed kisses to my face, neck, and shoulders. “Don’t leave me, ” he whispered in a voice that disturbed me. “I need you, Jessa.”
I could barely breathe because he was holding me so tightly. I fought him to be freed as I felt my panic rising.
“Please give me my pussy. Please,” he begged.
I kicked at his shins and tried to knee him in the nuts as he whirled me and then pushed me down onto the bed stuck under his weight. “Eric,” I shouted in shock.
“I had to fuck Jaime, but I want to fuck you, Jessa. Fuck me. I need some pussy. I need your pussy,” he moaned in my ear before he ground his hard dick against my stomach.
I felt repulsed that he was aroused by his forcefulness with me. I felt helpless and out of control. At a disadvantage. Afraid. Eric had never been this way with me. Never.
“I can’t lose you, too. I can’t. ” He shifted his hand down between us and I heard his zipper just seconds before I felt the smooth tip of his dick stroke my pussy lips. “I can’t. ”
“GET. THE. FUCK. OFF. ME!” I bit down hard on his cheek. He hollered out and rolled off of me. I was free. Thinking fast I raced across the room and grabbed my car keys. There was a can of pepper spray on it. Ironically, Eric had purchased it for me after my husband died. I never imagined I would have to use it on him like a stranger in the street.
“Get out, Eric. I mean it. Get out. Right now or I will fuck you up real good with this shit. I mean it.” I held my hand out with my index finger poised and ready over the dispenser.
He rose to his feet, his hand pressed to his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jessa. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me,” he said, the crazed look gone from his eyes as he stepped in my direction.
What the hell?
“Just get out, Eric. Please get out, ” I begged, the fight leaving me as te
ars of frustration, anger, and hurt rose.
Long after he finally took his leave, I double-locked my front door and wept like a baby.
Chapter 7
“Nah. I’m good.”
Jaime pulled her cell phone from her face in total shock. She couldn’t believe Pleasure had turned down her offer to redesign a room in his apartment for him. Son of a bitch. That Negro shot me down.
“Listen, I know the only thing you’re concerned with is my pussy and purse, but I’m trying to get back into interior design and I need a portfolio of before and after photos.” Jaime wiped the sweat from her brow with her hand. “I need your help, Pleasure.”
He fell silent.
Jaime walked out the front door to sit down on her couch. “All I need is a week and a five-hundred-dollar budget to do one room. Trust me, I’m as good at design as you are at dick laying.”
“To be honest, Jaime, I’ve never had any of y’all at my apartment,” he said. “I consider that separate from my, uh, business.”
Jaime propped her elbows on her knees. “So you never had a girlfriend, a date, a booty call over to your apartment ?” she asked in disbelief, her eyes shifting to take in her next-door neighbor, Lucas Neal, climbing out of his Ford Expedition with a chubby girl of eight or nine years of age.
“I didn’t say my girl doesn’t come over,” he stressed, like Jaime was slow to understand.
“Oh. Okay.” Jaime smiled and waved at her portly neighbor even though she felt embarrassed to be classed in with the rest of Pleasure’s “dick divas.” She had never been to his apartment and had no clue where he lived. His dick she could spot in a lineup, but she knew nada about him. Not even his real name.
She wasn’t shit but a female john and he was her trick. Jaime frowned at the truth of their “relationship.”
“What’s your real name, Pleasure?” she asked.
“You finally ask me that?” Pleasure chuckled deeply. “It’s Mikel.”
“So you have a girlfriend?” she asked, hating the sting of jealousy she felt.
“Does it matter?”
Yes. “Does she know you dealing dick?” Jaime asked smugly.
“Does your husband know you my best client?” he volleyed back.
Jaime sat up straighter. “Fuck you, Pleasure.”
“Your dime. My time. Tell me when and where. You know how we get down.”
Jaime’s mind flashed back to just last night when he’d rubbed her naked body with oil and then pressed her to the wall while he fucked her from behind. Each hard thrust of his dick had pressed her body against the wall. Intense. Bizarre. Sexy as fuck.
“Fuck you and that rat trap you probably living in,” she snapped, sick of his cocky bravado as she slapped her phone closed.
She sat her cell phone on the brick step beside her, hating that her pussy was warm and moist at the memory of the way he’d fucked her like she was the only pussy in his life.
“Bullshit,” she swore.
Your thing with Pleasure is what it is, she thought. Stop trying to make it more. Stop trying to pretend like it’s more.
Jaime closed her eyes and tilted her head back to allow the summer rays to warm her face. Sitting on a stoop outside her rented town house was a long way from lounging in their spacious backyard that resembled an outdoor living room with its stone fireplace, pavers, and high-end patio furniture.
Everything was different. She was no snob really, but everything about her life was a long way from her upbringing and from the life Eric had given them in Richmond Hills.
Truth be told, there were parts of her life she wanted back. The expensive weaves, spa days, shopping at only the finest stores, her home, her leisure.
Eric was a bastard in the days following their divorce, but he always had been a good provider. Always.
If I want that life I have to do it for myself. “My marriage is over, my parents have damn near disowned me, and I pay the man in my life for sex and attention,” she muttered about the truth of her life.
Just me, myself, and I.
Bzzzzzz.
Jaime looked down at her cell phone. A picture text came in. She opened it. It was from Pleasure. She paused and licked her lips instantly thinking it was a dick shot and liking the idea. A lot. That nigga got me sprung.
Jaime opened the text and her eyes widened at the picture of a stylish upscale living room. Large windows. Sleek leather furniture. Tiled floor. Fur rug. Flat screen on the wall. Fireplace with lit glass beneath it.
Her eyes dropped down to the words below the picture:
BUSINESS IS BOOMING. RAT TRAP
MY ASS. LOL.
“What the hell?” Jaime snapped, thinking if that one room was really his and was any indication of the rest of his crib that dick-slinging motherfucking stripper was living better than she.
She’d pictured him struggling and enjoying any time he spent at her shit to keep from being at home. “Dayum,” she said. “Oh hell no, I have got to get back on point. I have to.”
Jaime climbed to her feet, sliding her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans before she brushed any debris from her behind. Her eyes were locked on Lucas’s front door as she jogged down the few steps and crossed the lawn into his yard.
The front door opened before she’d stepped one foot onto his step. That surprised her and she paused. “Uh, hi, Lucas,” Jaime said with much hesitation as she looked up at his round, bearded face.
Lucas smiled, his eyes bright and friendly as he stepped out onto the stoop. He looked surprised as well. “I was just headed back out. Well, we were headed back out, but you’re a nice surprise.”
Jaime felt relief that he wasn’t sitting his ass in the window looking at her, but the look of interest in his eyes made her pause. “We?” she asked, shifting her eyes to the girl stepping past him onto the porch.
“This is my daughter, Kellie,” he said, placing his hand warmly on his daughter’s shoulder.
Jaime gave her a smile before looking back at Lucas. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m an interior designer and I’m starting my own business—”
“Who’s getting towed?” Lucas said, looking past Jaime as he stepped down a step.
Jaime turned and her face filled with first surprise and then confusion at the tow truck parking on the street in front of her Volvo. A tall and slender pock-faced man climbed down from the passenger seat with a clipboard in hand, and headed up the walk to her front door. Her heart pounded like crazy. Her stomach was nothing but anxiety. She made her way across to her own front yard, almost tripping over herself with her quick steps. “Excuse me. Helloooo. Excuse me,” she called out to him. He looked over at her. “Hi. Yeah, can I . . . can I help you?”
“Ms. Hall?” the tall man asked, referring to a notepad on his clipboard.
“Yes,” she said, shifting past him to look over as a big burly, red-haired driver climbed down out of his truck and began hooking it up to her vehicle. Jaime looked around at her neighbors taking in the spectacle. What the hell?
“This car is registered to Eric Hall and he has authorized us to repossess the vehicle,” he said, with a Southern twang that was way more Tennessee than New Jersey.
“What?” Jaime snapped, snatching the paperwork.
“Yes, ma’am,” he assured her, pointing out the name of the finance company and the paperwork showing Eric as the sole name on the vehicle registration and insurance. “But he’s my husband.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to speak to the vehicle owner about that,” Pock-Face stressed, his you’ll sounding more like jewel.
“Is everything okay, Jaime?” Lucas asked from behind her.
The old Jaime came out of hiding as she felt the curious eyes of her neighbors on her. In that moment, as she felt embarrassment warming her neck and cheeks, the cloak felt familiar.
She put on a smile as fake as cubic zirconias to diamonds as she turned to face him. “I’m having car trouble and was afraid to drive
it so I’m getting it towed to my mechanic,” she lied with well-practiced ease.
Lucas’ eyes shifted past her as he nodded in understanding. “Smart move, you don’t want to cause more damage.”
“Right,” she said, turning from him to watch as the men loaded up her Volvo. Soon they were pulling away loudly with her Volvo securely attached.
Inside she seethed. Her hatred of Eric was growing.
“Hey, Jaime, I was wondering: would you like to come over for dinner one night?” Lucas asked.
Jaime closed her eyes as irritation was added to the stack of emotions building inside of her. No need to take it out on him. “Sure, but right now I need to call my . . . uh . . . mechanic,” she said, her teeth and gums hurting from smiling so hugely. So brightly. So falsely.
“I’ll walk over later and we’ll plan the night and everything,” he offered, his face bright and filled with hope.
“Sure, okay, yeah,” she said, distracted and unable to hide it.
It took everything in her to walk into her house calmly under his watchful gaze. As soon as her front door closed behind her, Jaime yanked her cell phone from her back pocket and dialed Eric’s number. So many questions bombarded her that she felt dizzy. She leaned back against the door heavily.
“Hello, Mrs. Hall,” Eric said, his voice slightly mocking.
“Eric, what the hell are you doing? How dare you—after everything I’ve done for you and the bullshit I’ve taken from you and the front I put on for you—how dare you repossess my fucking car!” she roared, her voice climbing steadily until her throat ached.
“I’m confused, wife,” he said coldly. “You don’t want me, which I assumed meant you don’t want the things that I have and can still do for you. It’s a package deal.”
Jaime massaged her forehead with her fingertips as she found just enough strength to pace in her small foyer. “You are unbelievable.”
“No. I am your husband. And if you want to move out of that shithole you’re in and back into our beautiful home, and not flit around town in a luxury vehicle without a penny to your name to pay the note . . . then come home. Simple. It’s a package deal,” he repeated.
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