Bi-Sensual

by Nikki- Michelle

  Now he looked like he wanted to fight me. If I hadn’t known his mannerisms and the way he spoke when he was angry, I would have thought he was fine. Demi’s poker face was strong.

  “Because I want both of you at the same time,” I admitted.

  Demi stopped rubbing oil on his skin and turned his gaze to me. “What?” he asked.

  “You heard me.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I could be, but that’s what I want.”

  Demi chuckled and shook his head. “I’m never going to be enough for you, huh?”

  “You’ve never asked me this question when we shared men. Why is it a relevant question now?”

  I wanted him to admit it. Wanted him to admit that it was because Mona was a woman. Not once in the history of our relationship had he balked at the thought of us sharing men. He never answered my question, though. We passed a few more angry words between us. When the argument got too heated, and we turned into opponents instead of lovers, I stopped talking. He got dressed and left for work.

  Soon after, I did the same.

  Mona

  Front Page News on Moreland Avenue was packed. While the rain had stopped, it was still a bit cloudy out. The café/bar had a New Orleans flare. There was an upbeat vibe to the place, but it had a warm, casual ambiance. While we were in Atlanta, Front Page News made me feel like I was in New Orleans.

  I was outside on the patio, surrounded by abundant shrubbery and a fountain that gave me the relaxed feeling of being in nature. My laptop was on the black wrought-iron table. I’d been around Atlanta for most of the day. From Little Five Points to Clayton County, back around to Atlantic Station, then to Underground Atlanta and back to Moreland. I’d put miles on the rental, taken notes and photos to use for my next story setting.

  On the side of the table was a basket of lemon-pepper chicken strips and fries. Next to it was an empty basket that had once held the same thing. I kept looking at the time on my watch. He said he would be here in ten minutes. Fifteen minutes had passed. I was about to call him when I heard the hostess greet someone.

  I looked up and couldn’t hide the smile that had replaced the frown on my face. Elliot had walked in. He was dressed in black slacks that were having a hard time hiding his bulge, and a polo-style shirt that hugged the muscles in his arms and chest. I couldn’t help but smile. There was no smile on his brown face, though. His almond-shaped eyes, thick brows, and long lashes made women and men stop and stare. He didn’t have his leather carrying bag today. Just his phone was attached to his belt buckle.

  When he licked his lips, I licked mine. Didn’t know why. I’d always told him I was jealous of the fullness of his lips. But what he did with those lips when he kissed me anywhere on my body always got me heated. I waved a hand so he could see me. He finally cracked something of a smile.

  I stood. The skinny jeans I had on hugged my hips. Ankle-high combat boots adorned my feet, and a white wife beater was my shirt of choice. The bra I had on put my breasts front and center. A gray hoodie was tied around my waist. I looked more like a college student than a professional writer.

  Elliot walked around to where I was and hugged me. A close, personal hug. He hugged me the way a man hugged the woman he called his own. Maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. Either way, I hugged him back like he belonged to me.

  “How are you?” he asked once he had pulled back.

  I gave a one-armed shrug. “I’m okay.”

  He held my chair for me to sit back down. Then did the same.

  “I ordered your favorite,” I said, pointing to the fresh food in the basket. “Just had them bring it out.”

  Elliot and I had been to Front Page News many times before when I visited. He almost always ordered the same thing, rarely deviated from it.

  “Thank you. Starving too.”

  He reached over, cupped my chin, and kissed me. Wasn’t a simple peck. A kiss was never simple with Elliot. He gave the kinds of kisses that made people wonder what was going to happen next. The kind of kiss Stringer Bell from The Wire gave ole girl in that pink velour tracksuit. As always, I held his other hand. Used it to stave off the electricity he sent jolting through me.

  Once he had his fill, he sat back, blessed his food, and then started to eat. I thought back to our conversation last night. Even though I’d hung up on him, when he later texted and asked me to meet him at Front Page News, I didn’t hesitate.

  “You get any work done?” he asked between bites of his food.

  I shook my head. “Not really. Got a lot of good photos of landmarks, stuff like that.”

  “What’s this story about?”

  I shrugged. “To be honest, I really don’t know yet.” I laughed a bit.

  He shook his head, a light smile on his face. “Your signing is tomorrow, right?” he asked.

  I smiled. He always kept up with my schedule. It made me feel important to him. Special even. “Yeah. At the Barnes & Noble on Mount Zion Road in Morrow.”

  His smile faltered a little. Then, as if I hadn’t seen it almost disappear, it was back like it had never left. “You bring the trinkets and gifts for the readers I got you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Was scared baggage claim would lose my shit. You know how Delta is. I’ll end up in Mexico, and my bags in the Dominican Republic.”

  It was an exaggeration, but not by much. Elliot had designed some things that I could put on mugs, pens, and tote bags and had them delivered to me. He was always one to encourage me and push me beyond my limit. He made sure that I remembered I was only as good as my last book. He’d turned into my biggest cheerleader.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked.

  I told him.

  He shook his head. Told me what he thought I should wear. “This is a sexy book, erotica. You should ooze sexiness, not schoolmarm. Wear that black skirt I like, the tall stiletto pumps I bought, and a blouse that accentuates your breasts. Pull your hair back into a bun and wear your glasses. That way you’re sexy and you can still have that schoolteacher look you’re going for.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Wear a plum color on your lips too. I love the way they look in plum. Wing-tipped eyes. No. You’ll have your glasses on, so something simple. Pearl earrings. Your diamond bracelet—”

  “Didn’t bring that bracelet with me,” I said, cutting in.

  He stopped eating to look at me. “Why not?”

  I scratched between a couple of my braids and sat back. “Rushed out and left it on my dresser back home.”

  He gave me a slow blink. One that asked me if I had lost my mind. I looked at the necklace around his neck. It had been my gift to him, and the bracelet had been his gift to me.

  “I’m joking, El. I have it.”

  When he’d purchased the bracelet for me, his only request was that I never leave home without it, even if I didn’t wear it every day. He never took his necklace off for that reason as well.

  Elliot grunted and went back to eating. “Stop fucking with me like that. Don’t be antagonistic for shits and giggles,” he fussed after he’d eaten a chicken strip.

  I rolled my eyes. “Anything else?” I asked to break the tension.

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sometimes you slouch when sitting. So stand as much as you can. Move when you’re talking. Speak with authority, so even if you feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about, your audience will feel you do. Laugh often. Smile more. And don’t alienate your lesbian audience. You do that a lot.”

  I frowned. Moved around in my seat because his words made me uncomfortable. “I don’t,” I said in my own defense.

  “You do. Don’t alienate lesbian and bisexual women. You’ll lose money. Speak to them in the audience. Ask if you have any in attendance. Ask them their thoughts on the book.”

  “Why, El? I don’t write about bisexual or lesbian women.”

  His eyes gave me a once-over. “You should.”


  I got ready to ask what he meant by that. But I didn’t get a chance to. He changed the subject.

  “I want you to meet Demitri,” he said.

  I sank back in my chair, swallowed down the bile that damn near rose to my throat. I turned my lips downward but didn’t say anything. I had no desire to meet the man he had at home. Didn’t even know why he would suggest such an asinine thing.

  “I love him. I care about you. It would help if you two got to meet one another,” he said.

  My spirits sank. He loved him. Only cared for me. My eyes started to burn. I wanted to pick up my laptop, shove it inside my laptop bag, and get the fuck out of Dodge. But I didn’t.

  “What purpose would meeting him serve?” I asked.

  “It would make me happy.”

  “Okay. It would make you happy. But what do I get out of this?”

  “Remember what we talked about before?”

  I sighed. “I remember, El. I also told you then I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

  He wanted me and Demitri in the same room, in the same bed, at the same damn time.

  “Yes, but you said you would think about it.”

  “I did. But we talked about a lot of things that night.”

  Elliot put a few fries in his mouth. Wiped his fingers with a napkin, then said, “I know. One of those things was me, you, and him all together. All at once.”

  I chuckled and shook my head, a frown on my face. There wasn’t a thing that was funny, but I chuckled. “No. You’re crazy. No.”

  That was all I could say. I was seething on the inside. My feelings were a bit hurt. For as many times as I’d told Elliot I loved him, he still only “cared” for me. What a trip back down to reality. Yet he wanted me to do something that made him happy? He didn’t even love me. He’d lost his rabid-ass mind if he thought I was going to be in some threesome with him and the man he had at home. Out of his fucking mind.

  Elliot watched me. Kept his coffee-brown eyes on mine like I was a test and he wanted to be sure he got none of the answers wrong. “Talk to me, Mona. Don’t close yourself off like that. Tell me how you’re feeling,” he said.

  “You only care for me? After three years of friendship and two years of whatever the hell we’re doing? You only care for me, and yet you want me to step outside of my comfort zone to help you live out your fantasy?”

  “Mona—”

  “You said you love him and only care for me.”

  “I’ve been with him for a long time. We’ve seen and done a lot of things together. He followed me to Atlanta when we left New York. Left everything behind to come with me. We have history and time. He’s earned my love.”

  That shut me down. Demi had earned his love, and all I had earned was his attention and affection. Oh, and his dick, obviously.

  “And you’re insinuating I haven’t?”

  “Not what I said.”

  “But you want me to do this for you because it would make you happy?” I asked. “You ask the people you love to do things like this. Not people you only care about.”

  “You’re important to me, Mona. I wouldn’t still be here if you weren’t. It’s more than sex between us, and you know it.”

  “It’s just not love,” I said, trying to make sure I understood.

  He took a deep breath and then sat back. He didn’t answer me. I was kind of glad he didn’t. Didn’t know how I would have reacted if he had said the wrong thing.

  I said, “You say ditto anytime I text ‘I love you.’”

  “Because it is possible I can love you and not be in love with you.”

  I didn’t know I was crying until I wiped my eyes. For as tough as I thought I was, it was pretty easy to hurt my feelings if I allowed the person to get close to me. I had to listen to what was not being said, and that shit stung like two thousand watts of electricity.

  I rolled my eyes, sighed heavily, but I didn’t respond to him. I pretended something on my laptop was more important. I could feel him watching me, but I didn’t look up. I started typing. I didn’t know what else to say to him. Didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. I typed out a paragraph to my story. I didn’t even know what I was typing. I just typed what I was feeling. My incoherent thoughts.

  I couldn’t even explain how much my insides were aching. I took a deep breath to reel in my emotions. I should have known better. Should have fucking known better than to fall in love with a man who belonged to someone else. Out of all the mistakes I’d made in life, that had never been one of them. Until Elliot. I hated him. With everything in me, I hated him.

  We left Front Page News thirty minutes later. I didn’t even put up a fight when he told me he had to go home. I was actually happy he didn’t come back to the hotel with me. I knew how the night would have ended if he had. No matter how mad I would have been at him, one kiss, one look, one touch and I would have ended up on my back, knees pressed behind my ears, with Elliot so deep inside of me, I wouldn’t have known where I ended and he began.

  Elliot used every part of his body to bring me pleasure, from his mouth to his fingernails. Yes, his fingernails. Elliot had the longest nails I’d seen on a man. He used those to rake up and down my skin, bringing alive nerve endings I didn’t know I had. He’d make me lie on my back, and then he’d drag his nails up and down my inner thighs, up to my yoni, then my mound. He even knew how to flick his nails across my clitoris and not make it painful. He would ease his nails over my navel and up my stomach.

  Before Elliot, I had had no idea that the area just underneath my breasts was an erogenous zone. Any woman with big titties knew what I was talking about. Our breasts sat on the upper part of our abdomen. That spot just underneath, where sweat pooled on the hottest days of the summer if we didn’t wear the right bra? Yes, Elliot used his nails to bring me stimulation there like never before.

  I thought about how he would have pulled out of my wetness, then dipped down to suck my clit, and this made me wipe imaginary sweat from my forehead. It would have driven me fucking mad, but I wouldn’t have asked him to stop. Just when I was about to have that clitoral orgasm, he would have come back up and reminded me that his dick was the star of the show. Elliot was the only man who was able to give me a clitoral and vaginal orgasm all at once. As crazy as it sounded, I resented him for that shit, too.

  * * *

  The next day, my signing was in full swing. I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t humbled by the support. The turnout was so big, they had to move me from the front area over to the café in order for all the readers to fit inside the store. Even though I’d tossed and turned most of the night before, thinking about Elliot, mad about being in love with a man who didn’t love me, I still dressed the way he suggested. I’d pulled my long, pencil-thin braids back into a bun. Wore the pearl earrings, the diamond bracelet, and the pumps. Took my contacts out and wore my glasses.

  I even asked if there were lesbian and bisexual women in the audience. The number of hands that shot in the air shocked me. So much so that my eyes widened and I laughed. It was an uncomfortable laugh. One that showed that I wasn’t expecting that high number.

  “Well, okay,” I said.

  The audience laughed with me.

  “I had no idea,” I said.

  One woman said, “Girl, yeah, we’re in here. We tend to run into the same problem bisexual men do.”

  “Amen,” another woman added. “Most people think I’m straight but just going through a phase.”

  “And some think I’m gay and just confused. They think I date women just to hide in a closet. They don’t understand when I say I’m bisexual. They can’t wrap their minds around the fact I’m attracted to men and women,” someone else said.

  A few of the brothers nodded. I recognized some of them from Facebook. Atlanta and New York were my largest markets when it came to men who read my book. Elliot had made me look that up. Had said it would be smart to know where most of my readers came from. He had been right. I’d passed
that info on to my agent, who had passed it on to the publisher. My biggest turnouts when it came to live signings were in New York and Atlanta. California came in third.

  A brother raised his hand. He was handsome as hell. His locs were braided back into six neat cornrows. He had a nice athletic build. Beautiful brown eyes sparkled at me. He had that whole metrosexual thing down to the letter. He was a light-skinned man whose eyes smiled even when he didn’t.

  I pointed to him. “Do you have a question?”

  “Not really a question. I just wanted to thank you for pointing out in your book how it’s possible for a bisexual man to be faithful to a woman. Not one woman I’ve ever dated thought I could. They just assumed I’d leave them or cheat on them with a man. So thank you for that.”

  Most of the audience clapped, while others nodded. And, surprisingly, a few of the bisexual sisters looked skeptical.

  “You’re welcome. I kind of wanted to change the narrative when it comes to the way we view bisexual black men,” I said.

  “So would you date a bisexual brother?” a reader in the back asked. She had a quirked brow and a smirk on her pretty face.

  I smiled. “If he was open and honest up front, I would,” I said. “I’ve no problems with his sexuality if he doesn’t.”

  The light-skinned brother kept watching me. He watched me the way a man watched a woman he was interested in. He was a pretty boy, and although I wasn’t really into those types, I did appreciate his interest.

  I signed a few more books. Actually, the manager was ecstatic, because every book the store had ordered was sold. I stuck around and posed for pictures. I spoke candidly to a few people in the audience who wanted to know about my next book and when it would be released.

  After a while, the crowd thinned. I ordered a white chocolate mocha and then started to put my laptop away.

  “Excuse me.”

  I looked up, and the light-skinned brother was standing there.

  I smiled. I was tired, but I smiled. “Yes?”