Bi-Sensual

by Nikki- Michelle

  Malcolm stopped talking, but we heard a door slam on the other end of the line.

  Nicole exhaled loudly. “I won’t have that man around my son, Elliot, and you shouldn’t want him around, either. I don’t want my son exposed to his kind of lifestyle.”

  I frowned. Nicole was in denial like hell. For her to refer to Demitri’s lifestyle, as if he was the one forcing Elliot into the relationship, baffled the shit out of me.

  “I’m a bisexual man, Nicole,” Elliot said.

  Nicole made a sound on the other end of the line that said she was fit to be sick. “But you had to be with him? Him, of all people? It wasn’t enough to hurt me? You had to keep rubbing it in my face?”

  “That has nothing to do with your son,” Demitri said.

  Both Elliot and I whipped our heads around to glare at him. He and I were supposed to remain silent. I could tell he was annoyed, just like Elliot and I were, but the look on Demitri’s face actually scared me. His arms were crossed over his chest. Lips turned downward in a scowl that caused hives to form on my skin. His posture was stiff and rigid. Those gray eyes had darkened so that it was almost as if they were black. Clearly, his disdain for Nicole was on a level that I didn’t understand. Then again, I hadn’t been the one who had had to leave a whole state because she had put a hit out on me. I wasn’t the one who had almost been sent to prison for defending myself against what I was sure was more of a hate crime than it was a case of those men defending their sister.

  I mouthed to Demitri, “Shhh. Let him handle it.”

  Demitri’s response was to flash a cold smile—if it could even be called a smile—and turn his head away.

  “Who is that?” Nicole asked. “Is that him? Are you calling me with him around you?”

  “Nicole, my son. Can we stick to Jacques please?” Elliot asked.

  “There won’t be any more talks as long as he is around. You can bet your life on that,” she snapped.

  Before Elliot could say another word, the line went dead. She’d hung up on him.

  Mona

  The next day came and went rather quickly. Elliot and Demi left to go to work. I stayed locked in my hotel room, writing. An e-mail from my agent alerted me to the fact that the publishing house was excited about my next story. I had no idea why. To me, all I’d written was a bunch of gibberish. However, if they liked what I had so far, I’d finish the first draft. By the third draft, it would probably be to my liking.

  Before Elliot and Demitri left, we’d all engaged in an act of congress so nasty, it would make those in the porn industry blush. I’d never been with two men together before. I didn’t know watching two men engage in sexual activity could turn me on. Not up close and personal. I’d been proven wrong.

  I’d watched Demitri give Elliot head and break his wannabe “always in control” ass down to his bare minimums. I’d been so enthralled with watching the way Demitri worked his mouth, tongue, and teeth—yes, his teeth—that I came all over myself and didn’t even realize it. It was almost as if I was in a trance. I’d never be able to compete when it came to giving Elliot head. Not with the way Demitri’s tongue wrapped around it and sucked Elliot’s soul from his body.

  By the time Demitri was done, Elliot looked to be a shell of a man. A husk of his former self. He was shivering and shaking. Hands gripping the chair to the point where I thought he was going to rip the expensive hand-sewn fabric from it. His toes were flexing, arching, and pointing. He winced. Stuttered and stammered, demanding that Demitri get the fuck away from him. That part made me laugh. Made Demitri smirk in all his cockiness.

  I smiled, thinking about it. As the day progressed, so did my writing. I did pretty good. Was trying to hit the “twenty thousand words written” mark before Elliot and Demitri came back over. I had another book signing at Nubian Bookstore over in Morrow. It was right down the street from the Barnes & Noble I’d done a signing at before, but it would be a disservice to my community for me not to support my own.

  The evening rolled around and found us sharing dinner at the Sun Dial. It was a restaurant and bar that sat atop the Westin Peachtree Plaza. The place rotated and afforded diners a 360-degree view of the city. We’d gotten dressed up in our best and then had headed out. The experience was a good one. To have dinner above the city while the place rotated was something I hadn’t done before.

  After we finished dinner, I grabbed the tab, much to Elliot’s chagrin. By the time he realized what I’d done, it was too late for him to do anything about it. Demitri even gave me a blank stare, as if I’d done something wrong by not allowing him to pick up the tab, either. Said I should have allowed either he or Elliot to pay the tab. But Elliot was the one who made a bigger fuss. I knew he was on a teacher’s salary, and even though he was good with money as far as saving it and budgeting, there was no need for him to put a four-figure hole in his pocket to satisfy his ego.

  That didn’t stop us from having a good time, though. The plan had been to go out and have more fun, maybe find a club to dance the night away. But after that last mess we’d found ourselves in at a local club, we decided to head back to my hotel.

  The night was long, and even with shadows of Nicole dancing around Elliot’s head, Demitri and I managed to take him away from it all. When we were done with him, he was fast asleep. A light snore was the only indication that we hadn’t fucked him to death.

  I stared into Demitri’s eyes as we lay in bed. Elliot was to my right. Demitri on my left. My mind was on what Demitri had done to me earlier. After all the sexing, touching, kissing, and hugging, Elliot had made it clear to us that we were never to try that shit when he wasn’t around. However, he’d told us that after we’d already crossed that line.

  Being with Demitri was good. Damn good. I couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t front like I hadn’t enjoyed every minute of it. I wanted to do it again. As Demitri’s gray eyes danced over my face in the moonlit room, I couldn’t help but think about how his hands had felt when he touched me. How his fingers had felt as they slid in and out of my love. It was only then that I understood why Demitri was home for Elliot.

  I loved Elliot’s kisses, but Demitri’s kisses made me forget Elliot didn’t love me. Demitri’s kisses took me away from time and space. Shit made me feel as if I was floating in the air and only he had the power to bring me back down. Yeah, I could see why Elliot had cheated on Nicole if Demitri had come bearing those kinds of gifts.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” I whispered to Demitri.

  “Can’t sleep,” was his reply.

  “Why?”

  “Shit on my mind.”

  “Like what?”

  He closed his eyes, stifled a yawn, then said, “Old stuff. Stuff I can’t change. Stuff I want to change. Things I wish I hadn’t done. People I wish I hadn’t betrayed.”

  His yawn was contagious. I covered my mouth to hide mine. “Are you talking about Nicole? You’re not the reason she’s keeping his son away from him. That’s her excuse to be an asshole.”

  “She’s bitter.”

  My eye twitched. I hated for black women to be reduced to our emotions. Hated for people to fuck us over, then blame us for the emotional state they left us in. And although I believed Nicole shouldn’t allow her hurt to cloud her judgment when it came to Elliot being in his son’s life, she was still justified in her anger.

  “Wouldn’t you be bitter and angry if someone played with your heart and emotions the way you and Elliot did to her?” I asked.

  He glanced around, like he was thinking about it. “I mean, it’s been how long, though?” he countered.

  “You don’t get to dictate when a woman has to let go of the trauma you inflicted upon her.”

  Demitri’s brows furrowed. “Trauma?”

  “Yes, to be hurt, to be cheated on, is traumatic for some of us. Especially when we really and truly love someone unconditionally.”

  “If she’d loved him unconditionally, she wouldn’t have tried to ruin him.”

&
nbsp; “And if he had loved her the same, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “He did love her. He was willing to let me go to get her back.”

  “He didn’t love her enough not to have to ‘get her back’ in the first place. Furthermore, you don’t get to define what love is for someone else. We all love differently. My love ain’t your love, and your love isn’t mine.”

  Demitri’s gaze was unblinking. I had no idea what was going on in his head, but I knew I wanted to know more about him. He was a mystery to me. All we’d done was have some soul-stirring sex. All I knew about Demitri was what Elliot had told me. Dopamine and oxytocin had me in my feelings. Made me want to know about the man. Had my reward centers as active as ever.

  So I said, “Enough about Elliot and Nicole. Tell me something about you.”

  He used his finger to poke at my nipple. “What do you want to know?”

  “Um . . . who were you before Elliot? Did you have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

  As he talked, he massaged my breasts, groped them. Pulled at my nipples. Demitri was a bit of a sadist. The kind who didn’t really want to hurt anyone, but whose dick got hard off of seeing a flinch or a wince at whatever discomfort they were inflicting on a person.

  “Girlfriend. Met her when we were teenagers,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “I cheated on her. Broke her heart.”

  “Clearly, you and Elliot have that problem in common.”

  I moaned when he let his fingers trail my nipple, then winced to stifle a groan when he pinched it. I watched the slick grin that adorned his features.

  “Unlike Elliot, mine wasn’t intentional.”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  He kissed my neck. Sucked on it, then spoke low in my ear. “I was an escort.”

  I jerked my head back, then gawked at him. Demitri liked to rattle my cage a lot, so I needed to see if that was what he was doing. But judging by the serious look on his face, I knew he wasn’t. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “I was doing it since about fifteen up, until she found out.”

  If my eyes could have gotten any wider, they would have popped out of my head. I asked Demitri about his parents. He told me his mother had gotten killed by a gully queen.

  “A what?” I asked.

  “It’s what we called gay male whores who dress like women back home. They thought my mama was trying to encroach on their territory. But she was just looking for someone. One of the gully queen think she lie, so him slice her neck.”

  “Jesus . . .”

  That was all I could say. I wanted to ask more questions, but Demitri stopped me. Told me he’d said enough about that. So he went back to the story of him being an escort.

  “You were an escort?” I asked again, just to be sure I’d heard him right the first time.

  “You heard of rent-a-dreads, right?”

  “Yes. Thought that was more of a Jamaica thing.”

  “It’s a Caribbean thing.”

  “How long were you with your girlfriend again?”

  “We started dating when we were sixteen.”

  “And when did you two break up?”

  “I was twenty-four. She was twenty-three. Her birthday was a month after mine.”

  “So how in hell were you able to keep that a secret for so long?”

  “She wasn’t from Grenada. We met when her family came for vacation. As time went on, sometimes I’d come to the States to visit her. She came out every summer with her family. Once we got in college, she came out during the summer and other holidays when she could. I was premed, and she was doing her thing in the States for her undergrad degree. We had plans.”

  As he spoke, there was passion in his voice. He had stopped fondling me and had turned to lie his back. One arm was thrown behind his head, and the other covered his manhood. Memories danced behind his eyes.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “She came to visit, but I wasn’t available to her like normal. Had to make money if I wanted to keep paying for my education, and I had to make sure I took care of my siblings too. She got suspicious. Followed me and my client to my place. Shit hit the fan after that. She was done. Didn’t want to see me. Didn’t want to talk to me. Nothing. I tried everything to get back with her. Told her the truth about everything. Told her how long I’d been escorting. Told her it wasn’t just with women. She flipped the fuck out on me. Had never seen her that way before.”

  He took a deep breath, like just talking about it tired him out. My head was spinning. For the life of me, I didn’t understand why a child had to sell sex to survive. An adult choosing to do so, I had no issue with. But children and adults being forced into the sex trade bothered me. Angered me. While Elliot had told me about some of the things Demitri had gone through, he had never told me about this part.

  “Does Elliot know all this?” I asked.

  “He knows. It’s rare that we keep secrets from one another. I mean, I’ve done some not so savory shit that sent him over the edge a couple of times. But, for the most part, he knows me, same as I know him.”

  Demitri kept talking. Told me how he had followed his ex to the States. Tried unsuccessfully to get her to take him back. Pretty soon, things turned hostile between the two. He quit med school. Said he didn’t have the motivation to go anymore after his ex left him. But then, there was a bright spot.

  He said he talked her into being open to the possibility of them getting back together. Things were good until she met her new man. The new man got her attention. The new man wasn’t a liar and a male whore. She left Demitri completely alone for the new man, for a while, anyway. He said he didn’t understand how she could walk away from all their history and into the arms of another man like it was nothing.

  They’d planned their whole lives out. He was to be a trauma surgeon, and she was to be a doctor in her field. He had proposed marriage to her. They were to have a family. He was to move to the States and live the American dream. But once his ex met another man, she threw it all to hell. He told me he was angry that she could just walk away so easily after hearing his whole life story. After hearing how he had been forced to do things he didn’t really want to in order for him and his siblings to survive.

  “How’d you move past it?” I asked.

  He turned his head to look at me. “I didn’t. I never did. Depression was my companion for a long time . . . until the day I met Elliot.”

  I didn’t think I’d feel anything for Demitri other than in terms of what he could do to my body, but after hearing how he had taken on the mantle of taking care of his siblings after his father went to prison touched me in a way I hadn’t expected. To hear that the woman he loved couldn’t handle his truth and then left him heartbroken also showed me another side of him. Demitri loved easily, but he also loved hard. So while there was an asshole quality to the man, there was also a gentle side. One I wouldn’t have guessed existed when I met him.

  Elliot stirred on the side of the bed. I’d been so caught up in what Demitri was saying that I’d forgotten Elliot was sleeping right next to us. Demitri yawned, then got up to go drain his snake. I walked into the kitchen to get a bottle of water. I was drained. Tired as hell from our freak fest and now exhausted from hearing Demitri’s backstory.

  I looked at my laptop. Had a good mind to sit down and write. But I was too fatigued to do so. I looked up as Demitri walked in to get some water. I took in his physique. I could never get tired of looking at him. If a woman ever wanted to pay a man for sex, it would be him. Judging by his skills, he was the kind people would pay top dollar for. I bet white women drooled all over themselves to get a piece of him.

  A black man with gray eyes, a body that made one’s mouth water, and a big black cock. There was no doubt in my mind, he came highly requested. Like always when my mind was all over the place, I stood at the big floor-to-ceiling window of the suite. Just like
days before, rain was falling on Atlanta.

  “It always rains like this around this time of the year,” Demitri said, as if he were reading my mind.

  He stood stark naked next to me. We gave the Atlanta skyline a full view of our nudity. And just like me, it didn’t seem to bother him one bit.

  “Yeah? Been raining since I got here,” I said. “Thought maybe I’d brought the rain here with me,” I joked.

  Demitri grunted. “Guy I know at the police station said no reports of an assault had come in.”

  I nodded. Grateful he was even looking out for me that way. Lord knew I didn’t need to be arrested and charged with a crime. Even though those homophobic motherfuckers had deserved everything Demitri and I had given them, I still didn’t want to be behind bars.

  “Thank you for looking out for me,” I told him.

  He finished his bottle of water before answering. “You’re welcome.”

  I looked up at him. His eyes were trained on the horizon. The full moon—it was in Capricorn—glared down at us.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I will be.”

  “You still miss her, don’t you?”

  “Every fucking day.”

  “You’ve moved on, though.”

  “I did. Love Elliot more than can be expressed. However, from time to time, I still think about—” He stopped abruptly, like saying her name would cause him too much pain.

  I finished my water, then looked down at the traffic below. Wondered where everyone was going at that time of night. Wondered if there were lovers sneaking around to see their lovers. Wondered who was creeping and who wasn’t.

  Demitri walked into the bedroom, then came back out to the dining table. Took one of the cannoli I’d purchased earlier from the bag, then bit into it. I watched the way his mouth closed around it. Reminded me of the way his lips had wrapped around the head of Elliot’s manhood earlier. That thought made me zero in on his pleasure stick. I giggled inwardly at my silliness. The veins in that thing fascinated me. Thick and long. Wrapped around his entire shaft, like they were trying to show me directions to Orgasmville.