The Pleasure Trap

by Niobia Bryant

  The sketch of the garden outside his room at the rehab facility. It was as rough and as unrecognizable as he was in the first days of detox.

  A few different fruit bowls. A charcoal portrait of his mother during her visit. The park across from his Tarrytown apartment. A recollection from memories of his first lover, Essie. A rendition of his father surrounded by the many faces of the women who flitted in and out of his life. A sketch of Quinn before the reveal of love.

  People. Places. Things.

  They all had meaning. They all had been a release.

  Graham sat before his easel and picked up one of his pencils. The point was dull and rounded, but it beat a blank. Opening the pad, he tried to remember the last time he had touched a page. The last time he had released all of the emotions simmering inside him as he stripped and fucked his way to avoid it all.

  Taking a deep breath, he began to free hand, following his instincts and hoping the skill from all the art classes with Quinn came back to him like riding a bike. As a picture formed before him he forged ahead, his confidence boosted by his anxiety finally fading away.

  As time passed, his body became more relaxed and his grip on the pencil loosened. At times, he nodded in approval, and at other times he would bite down on his bottom lip in concentration or annoyance as he fixed an error. He sat back more than once with his head tilted this way or that as he studied his work.

  The light against the paper brightened and Pleasure looked up, amazed to see that morning had come and the sun was shining bright. He hadn’t noticed when day reigned over night.

  Rising from his seat, he stretched his arms high, rolled his neck, and lifted his weight up onto his toes as the kinks of sitting all night finally registered. He eyed the sketch, impressed by his detail and confused by its subject as he looked into the face of Lionel at eleven as it loomed from a closet over a peacefully sleeping boy of six.

  It had been years since his . . . violation had come to turn his dreams into nightmares. He didn’t know what seemingly minute comment, touch, or act had subconsciously pushed his feelings about it all to the forefront. Nevertheless, it had shaken him to the core last night because he wanted to forget. He wanted to move beyond it. He wanted not to care. He wanted not to want to kill Lionel.

  He wanted it not to be such of a huge part of what formed his manhood.

  He wanted all of those things. Wanted them badly. He didn’t succeed.

  “Why?” he asked, fighting the surge of tears that rose in him.

  “Why?” he repeated, his anger and confusion and shame rising.

  “Why?” he roared, reeling back to punch the face in the sketch with all his might.

  His fist tore the page in half and dented the dense pages of the pad as the easel tumbled back against the wall. Fighting the urge to spit on it, he turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Pleasure, what are you doing here? Where have you been for the last month? What’s going on?” Assefa asked as he breezed past her into her house.

  Pleasure turned and eyed her intently as she pushed the door closed. Before she could finish that simple task, he took two large strides across the room, lifted her, and pressed her against the polished wood.

  “Pleasure,” she gasped just before he moved his hands to the sides of her face and kissed her fiercely until she gripped at his shoulders, drawing the shoulders of his V-neck T-shirt into her fists.

  The moan he released was filled with passion and torture. It had been years since he kissed a woman. Years.

  He sucked her tongue deeply before lightly biting her chin, then pressed heated kisses down the column of her neck to her pounding pulse point as he jerked her skirt up around her waist and ripped her sheer, delicate panties from her body with one strong tug.

  Pleasure knew his urgency could be frightening for her but he couldn’t control himself.

  He bent low enough to hoist her legs up onto his shoulders and pressed her thighs apart to open her pussy lips and expose her clit to him. To his tongue. To his lips.

  Assefa gasped and bit her bottom lip at the feel of him sucking her clit at a steady pace. She pressed the back of her head against the door and arched her back, bringing her hands up to thread through his dreads, massage his scalp, and press his face deeper between her thighs. “Shit, shit, shit,” she swore in heated whispers as her entire body came alive.

  Pleasure was relentless as he felt her bud swell and warm against his lips. Spreading her legs wider until her knees touched the door and her buttocks lifted up off it slightly, he sucked away between intermittent feather-light licks even as Assefa brought her hands up to press against his forehead to free herself from the sweet agony of his tongue on her sensitive post-climax clit.

  “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ah-ah,” she cried out. “Oooh, ooooh, oh-eee. Hmmm. Yes. Yessssssssss! No-no-no-no. Yessssss.”

  Pleasure roughly pushed her legs off his shoulders and stepped back slightly to let her shivering body slide down the door into his arms. He set her on her feet and she stumbled a bit, disoriented from the high of cumming. With another kiss to her lips, he began to undress her the way she’d schooled him all those weeks ago—with lingering kisses and caresses to her neck and nape, twin rounded shoulders, her collarbones and pulse points. The sweet and warm valley between the swells of her breasts. And then each of her taut brown nipples.

  Assefa sighed, cried, moaned, or just dug her fingernails into his hard flesh with each new spot.

  The sounds of her pushed him until every piece and pulse of her body was explored, pampered, and revealed and she stood before him naked and shivering with stoked desire.

  “Pleasure,” she sighed almost in surprise as her chest rose and fell with her labored breaths.

  He too exhaled deeply out of his mouth as he stood before her as if he was ready to go to war. He needed her. He needed to be in her. He needed these moments. He needed it . . . and he needed it now.

  She stepped up to lightly bite his chin and reach for the edge of his shirt, but Pleasure swiped her hands away. Assefa reached for the waistband of his sweatpants this time and eyed him defiantly with one brow arched as she jerked his pants down around his muscled thighs.

  A challenge. Two strong wills. Two lovers built to please.

  She stroked his hardness before bending to her knees and taking him into her mouth.

  Pleasure’s entire body went still at the first feel of her sucking his dick. With a sharp intake of breath, he thrust his hips forward and grasped the back of her head as he fucked her mouth. His butt clenched with his tiny thrusts forward.

  Assefa wrenched her head free of his tight grip and leaned back to look up at him as she rose. She opened her mouth to speak but Pleasure pushed her roughly against the door and kissed her again until whatever words of protest she thought about forming dissipated in the heat they’d created.

  He picked her up again and hoisted her over his shoulder with a sound slap to her buttocks as he turned to lay her down on the floor right atop the edge of the area rug showing beneath her living room sofa. She brought her hands up high above her head and lifted one leg onto the back of the chair as she spread the other wide.

  Pleasure shook his head. He wanted her in his way. Not hers. I’m in control here.

  He pressed his thick tip inside her as he reached for her legs and wrapped them around his neck. Tightly gripping her thighs, he clenched his jaw at the feel of her as he filled her heat with his thick width . . . inch by inch, until nearly all of him was planted deeply within her.

  Assefa’s mouth opened a bit with a hot little gasp that was only just the beginning.

  Pleasure was on a mission to prove something to himself and to her.

  He flung her legs away roughly and began to make love to her passionately and slightly aggressively. He combined many of his wicked dance moves along with the attentiveness she’d taught him to make love to her fiercely. At times slow and deep. Other times fast and deeper. But alw
ays . . . always with pleasing her uppermost in his mind.

  Time sped by as he continued to pick up the pace of his thrusts. He shifted her body from one position to another. Beneath him. Riding him. On their sides. And a dozen more. Each more pleasing than the last. Each sending her into a mind-blowing climax that made her cries and moans fill the air. He lost count of how many times he felt her walls tighten around him as she came.

  And he wasn’t done with her yet.

  “Yes,” she cried out shakily, her full lips quivering.

  “You love the way I fuck the shit out of you, don’t you?” he asked her, massaging her breasts and teasing her nipples, both of her legs up on one of his strong shoulders while he continued to rotate his abs and hips to send his dick around her walls in tight, delicious circles.

  Assefa nodded several times.

  “Don’t I?” he demanded again.

  “Yes,” she whispered harshly.

  He sucked her calf and brought his hands down to lift her buttocks up off the floor. “What’s my name?”

  “Pleasure.”

  “And what do I give?” he asked her, his eyes locked on her face.

  “Pleasure.”

  The student had become the teacher.

  Pressing her onto her back, Pleasure pressed his hands against the floor and did push-ups in her pussy, ending each extension of his arms with a deep dip inside her tightness until she was clutching him with her arms and legs and crying out as she came again. He rode the wave with her until he too felt as if his entire body lit with fire as he climaxed.

  Assefa pressed kisses to his shoulder as he gave her one last thrust that made his entire body weak. He dropped his head to her shoulder. “Pleasure, that was so good,” she said, languorously raising her hands above her head to clap. “You finally got it. That was the best I ever had.”

  Pleasure allowed himself those desired moments to recollect himself before he finally raised onto his elbows and looked down into her eyes, his softening dick still inside her. “The very best?” he asked, his heart pounding in his chest.

  Assefa nodded. “The very best,” she emphasized, her hands now on his broad shoulders.

  He nodded and took one deep breath before he rose to his feet, pulling his dick free from her. “Then our time together has come to an end,” he said as he looked about the room for his discarded clothing.

  “Our what? What? Huh?” she asked, still on her back on the floor.

  Pleasure glanced at her as he quickly dressed. “This one is on me because it’s over, Assefa,” he said.

  She sat up. “No, it isn’t,” she insisted.

  He opened the door and looked down at her one last time, appreciating her body and everything she’d taught him with it. “I don’t want to play the game with you of topping myself. Let another man take my crown... one day,” he told her cockily.

  Assefa looked surprised and even a little hurt, but then her face filled with as much bravado and cockiness as he gave her. “You’ll be back,” she said confidently.

  Pleasure shrugged as if that was a possibility, but he knew as he turned and walked out onto the porch that he would never return... or answer another of her calls.

  Interlude

  Present Day

  His eyes fluttered open. He winced at the brightness of the sun beaming through the many windows of his top-floor apartment. In between slow and labored blinks, he finally focused on the view of the New York skyline. Day two of the bullshit.

  Life was moving on at a frenetic pace outside his apartment while his was on pause at the hands of a lunatic from his past. He couldn’t deny his fear or shame. He was a man of size and strength, and a woman had overcome him.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He shifted his frame in the chair and he winced. His body was a mass of tightness and aches. He didn’t know whether to be thankful that he was still alive or not.

  “Good morning, Pleasure.”

  Shaking his dreads back from his face, he watched her walk into the living room from the hall leading from the kitchen carrying a plate and a glass of apple juice. She had changed clothes but was still all in black with the mask in place. When she neared him he could smell the scent of his special blend of handmade soap clinging to her skin.

  “I loved sleeping in your bed last night,” she said, her eyes locked on him. “I just wished you could have snuggled up with me in it, but you were so tired that I decided not to disturb your sleep.”

  “Sleep?” he snapped. “You drugged me.”

  “I used to hate getting drugged too,” she said, pausing to oddly rotate her shoulders as she shook her head.

  “Where, in the psych hospital?” he asked, frowning deeply.

  “Yes,” she answered simply—almost pleasantly—to his sarcasm. “I know you must be hungry, so I made you breakfast.”

  The revelation of her lack of sanity didn’t surprise him.

  “Are you going to loosen the ties so that I can eat?” he asked.

  Sitting the plate and the glass on the floor by his feet, she pulled one of his heavy dining room chairs up to sit before him. “No, I’m going to feed you, silly. Don’t you want me to feed you?”

  He looked down at the plate of grits, egg whites, and turkey bacon. It looked edible enough, but he ignored the ravenous growling of his stomach. “I’m not hungry,” he said in a hard voice.

  She froze in her motion to sit in the chair. “You always was an unappreciative motherfucker,” she said, her voice cold and tight and angry. “Nothing I did was ever good enough.”

  He watched silently as she picked up the plate and stirred the grits before scooping up a good bit onto the fork.

  “And now here we go again with the same bullshit,” she said, the fork hitting against the plate with her agitated movements.

  He pressed his lips closed when she lifted the fork to his mouth.

  “Eat, Pleasure,” she warned him, poking his lips with the prongs of the fork as she kept pressing it against his mouth.

  Some of the steaming grits fell onto his thigh and clung to his skin, scorching him. Still he did not waver and kept his eyes locked on her and his mouth closed. I’m not going to help this crazy bitch spoon-feed me only God knows what.

  She inched forward on the chair and reached behind her to remove her sheathed knife from her waistband. “You going to be thankful for this meal I cooked or not?” she asked, pressing the edge of the knife against his cheek.

  He didn’t trust her any further than he could see her with his hands tied behind his back. The cold of the knife was all too real and he wasn’t confident she wouldn’t snap and slice or stab him.

  What the fuck did I do to deserve this shit?

  Fearing for his life and wanting to stall what she swore was the inevitable, he opened his mouth. He could tell from her eyes that she smiled behind her mask.

  Chapter 16

  Smyth

  2009

  For the last hour of his life Pleasure had rushed. In driving. In parking. In walking through the halls to reach the door he now stood before. The rushing stopped. He stood before it as if frozen in time. Frozen by fear of just what he would find on the other side.

  God, please . . .

  Pleasure lightly patted the door twice before he pushed it open and stepped inside the room only to pause again at the sight of his father lying in the hospital bed connected to monitors with an oxygen mask on his face and his eyes closed.

  “Hey, Graham.”

  He shifted his eyes over to where his mother sat in a bedside chair. She was smiling but her eyes were slightly red and puffy. He glanced at his father again as he moved across the room to bend down and press a kiss to her brow.

  “How is he?” he asked, leaning against the wide ledge of the window.

  “He did have a heart attack, but he’s stable now,” Cara said, reaching over to rub Tylar’s hand.

  Pleasure nodded.

  “He’s just sleeping, Graham,” she said, reachin
g back to grab his hand with her other one.

  He nodded again.

  It was hard for a man to swallow, facing his father’s mortality.

  “He’s young and strong and he will be fine,” she said.

  Pleasure looked down at her because her words now sounded like she was trying to convince herself and not just him. He squeezed her hand a bit tighter.

  “I’m going to see if the doctor is ready to update us,” she said, rising to leave the room.

  Pleasure stepped closer to the bed and watched the steady rise and fall of his father’s chest as he slept. Futilely, he eyed the different monitors, wishing he knew what they all meant.

  The door opened and he looked up as a petite nurse with reddish brown twists wearing dark blue scrubs entered the room with an IV bag in her hand. He gave her a cordial smile as he stepped back from the bed. She looked up at him and did a double take before leaning back a little as she eyed him.

  Pleasure shifted where he stood under her appraisal.

  “Oh my God. I recognize you,” she said, sitting the bag on the bedside table as she glanced at him. “I took home one of your flyers from the bachelorette party and my husband had me sleeping on the couch for a smooth week.”

  Pleasure sharply looked down at his father’s face and was glad he was still sleeping.

  She swapped out the empty bag for the new one, giving him glances as she did. “He’s mad but he could use a stripper lesson,” she said, before leaving the room with a little wave and a quick up-and-down look at Pleasure’s tall, muscled frame and good looks.

  He was glad to see her go.

  The door opened again and his mother entered with a soft, reassuring smile. “The doctor will be in to talk to us in a little bit,” she said, reclaiming her seat.

  “What exactly happened?” he asked, more for distraction’s sake than anything else.

  Cara shifted uncomfortably in her seat and wiped her brows in a decidedly nervous gesture. “We were . . . we . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”