The Pleasure Trap

by Niobia Bryant

Pleasure wiped his mouth and square jaw with his hand before he leaned forward and extended it across the table. “Are you denying you had feelings for me, Jaime?” he asked, his voice warm and deep. Charming. Alluring. Pulling her in. “As you sit there still mad about something you shouldn’t care about if I meant nothing to you?”

  Jaime eyed his hand but never reached for it. “Are you done selling dick or am I supposed to set aside days where it’s okay for you to fuck other women?” she asked, her tone snide.

  Pleasure turned his hand down on the table before making a fist and lightly knocking it against the tabletop before he withdrew his hand. “I’m—”

  Her hand slashed the air as she leaned forward. “I’m supposed to believe that your ass reappears after two years and suddenly you want to start a relationship with me—and only me—thus giving up your splendid variety of two or three different pussies a week?”

  “I’m—”

  “I don’t believe that . . . and neither do you,” she said, rising to her feet. “And we never will.”

  She turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Pleasure sitting there with his unspoken words still lingering on his lips.

  “I’m done,” he finally was able to say in answer to her question, but she was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Jaime

  Two Weeks Later

  “All of the women over this decade of my life have been a need to affirm that what happened to me—”

  “What happened to you, Pleasure. Name it. Defuse it.”

  Pleasure sat up straight on the sofa and placed his ankle on the knee of the opposite leg. He clasped his hand around the striped socks he wore as his mouth dried at the thought of giving name to his violation. He licked his lips as he looked over at Dr. Templeton and released a short puff of air. “I was molested,” he said, surprised as his emotions surged up and nearly choked him. “I was violated. I was hurt. I was touched. I was abused.”

  Dr. Templeton nodded in approval.

  Pleasure fought hard not to cry and he was glad that at least this early in his therapy the doctor didn’t press him to do so. That day would come, he knew that, but at least it wasn’t that day.

  “Finish your earlier thought,” the psychologist gently nudged him.

  “All of the women over this decade of my life,” he repeated, “has been my need to make sure that being molested didn’t turn me gay.”

  “For all these years, Pleasure, you have been stuck in the same age and same mind-set created by the abuse, and it dictated the actions that you took as a man.” Dr. Templeton eyed him over the rim of his glasses. “The work that we will do is to heal that little boy who is still present inside you and move you to a place where he doesn’t dictate your life any longer.”

  Pleasure smoothed his sweaty palms down the length of the tailored slacks he wore with a matching silk shirt open at the collar. This was just his second session, and although there was a stigma in the African American community about seeking counseling or even life coaching he knew he had to finally face the demon of his abuse to live his best life possible. That was just as important to him as his money, his clothes, and his lifestyle.

  “I think, Pleasure, that a very important step, Pleasure, in you adjusting to a new way of thinking, Pleasure, is addressing your need to be addressed as—”

  “Pleasure,” he finished dryly as he eyed the therapist across the divide between them.

  Dr. Templeton shrugged and held up his hands. “It’s not your name given to you by a mother who loved you, but by a woman who introduced you to drugs and later sold you as a whore. If I’m remembering your story correctly from our first session?”

  Pleasure nodded. Last week had been all about revealing every detail of his life.

  “So, Pleasure, why shackle yourself with it, Pleasure?”

  “It sounds really creepy when you say it,” Pleasure told him.

  “I was hoping so.”

  Pleasure smiled. “It sounds better coming from the lips of ladies.”

  “What ladies?” Dr. Templeton asked. “You’re still celibate, right?”

  Pleasure smiled again. “Okay, Dr. Templeton, let me reintroduce myself to you. I am Graham. Graham Walker.”

  The elderly white man leaned forward and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Graham,” he said.

  He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward as well to capture the man’s hand with his own. “Nice to meet you.”

  It was Graham’s turn for a surprise visit.

  He had just stepped out of the shower and wrapped a thick towel around his waist when his doorbell sounded. Who the hell is that?

  Graham rarely got visitors and liked it that way. He doubted his parents had driven in from Bedford for a visit, but he firmly believed anybody was capable of anything. Removing the wrap he used to protect his dreads when he showered, he slipped his feet into black suede slippers and made his way out of his bedroom and down the long hall to the front door.

  He checked the peephole and then opened the door as his heart beat furiously. Jaime stood there all in white with a takeout bag in her hand. “I thought I owed you dinner since we didn’t get to finish the other one,” she said, tilting her head adorably to the side as she enjoyed a leisurely up-and-down look of his body.

  “I finished mine,” he quipped before giving her a hint of a smile.

  “No, you didn’t, that’s how I was able to follow you and find out where you lived,” she said, leaning this way and that to look past him inside the apartment.

  “You stalking me?” he asked, stepping back to open the door wider.

  She made a face like “Negro, please.” “You hunted me down after two years. You stalking me?” she shot back.

  “Come in.”

  Jaime took a step and then paused. “I am not crossing this threshold until you promise me that none of your tricks have been here,” she said.

  “Come in,” he said again.

  Jaime let her foot dangle in the air above the threshold as she eyed him.

  “You’re the first woman to come inside my apartment, Jaime,” he reassured her with truth.

  She set the foot down and stepped inside. “Wow. This is really nice. Good dick has its privileges,” she said as she handed him the bag.

  He paused on his way to the kitchen. “Not funny, Jaime,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I said good dick.”

  He looked across the span of the kitchen to watch Jaime slowly take in his apartment. Graham had always been a very private person with his clientele, and he allowed himself a moment to see if it bothered him to have Jaime invade his space unannounced.

  It didn’t. It didn’t at all.

  Opening the cabinets, he removed plates and tall glasses. “Is this your parents?” she called out to him.

  Looking up from placing the Chinese food she’d purchased onto the plates, he saw her peering at the eight-by-ten wedding photo of his parents that he kept on his mantel. “Yes, it is,” he finally said, walking back into the living room with dishes in hand.

  “Your father is gorgeous,” she said, turning away from the fireplace to look at him. Her eyes dipped to the towel draped around his hips and the outline of his dick against the thick cotton as he stood there.

  “Should I get dressed?” he asked, pointing down the hall toward his master suite with one of the plates.

  “Definitely not,” she answered, coming over to take a seat on the sofa.

  “You sure about that?” Graham asked with a cocky smile. “You look distracted.”

  With one last long look, Jaime turned away. “I’m sure.”

  Graham went to retrieve the glasses of wine he’d poured, and when he walked back into the living room, he spotted five cheap-looking cell phones lined up on the table between their plates. “You selling wireless service or something?”

  Jaime set her purse down on the sofa between them. “Over the last two weeks I have called you from each of these five phones wi
th five different numbers—numerous times—on your dick hotline to see if you were still open for business,” she admitted.

  “Oh really?” Graham asked.

  She held up her hands before smoothing her bangs away from her face. “I sure did.”

  “And what did you discover?” he asked, his heart pounding with hope.

  “You never answered,” she said.

  “That’s funny you used the words ‘never answered,’ because when you asked me in the restaurant if I was able to give up the business, I never answered then either,” he said. “You never gave me a chance.”

  “Pleasure—”

  “Graham,” he corrected her.

  Her eyes warmed over at that. “Okay, Graham, are you done selling dick?” she asked.

  He stood up and walked to his bedroom to retrieve his trick phone from its spot in his top dresser drawer. He held it clutched tightly in his hand and looked down at his past as he slowly walked back to the living room. He powered it on for the first time in two weeks. Picking up one of her throwaway cells, he dialed his trick phone.

  “Mr. Lover Lover . . .”

  Graham ended the calls on both and then proceeded to rip each of the phones in half with ease, dropping each sign of destruction to the mink area rug on the floor.

  “The answer to your question that night is the same as it is today, Jaime,” he said. “I’m done. I’m finished with all of that. I want to try and see if all those feelings for you I was running from are exactly what I need. I’m a grown-ass man and I am ready for grown-ass love . . . with you.”

  She stood up. “Am I crazy because I want to try to see if it can be as good out of the bed as it is in the bed between us?” she asked, coming over to stand before him.

  “Am I crazy to trust a woman who cheated on her husband with me?” he countered.

  Jaime reached for his towel and snatched it away to stroke the length of his dick. “So this dick is all mine?” she asked as she rubbed the smooth tip with her thumb.

  Graham’s eyes heated. “All yours,” he promised her.

  Six Months Later

  “So I get to formally meet the friends,” Graham said as he and Jaime stepped out onto the porch of her home. “I am coming out of your closet and I’m not even gay.”

  Jaime eyed him in his suit as she locked the door and turned to stand at his side. “Considering that the last time we ventured out we ran into one of your ex clients who acted like she didn’t see me sitting at that table in the restaurant with you,” she said, reaching up to smooth his lapel as they descended the stairs and crossed the street to the home of her best friends, Aria and Kingston Livewell.

  “My past was never a secret to you, Jaime,” Graham reminded her.

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want constant reminders of it either.”

  They climbed the stairs and Graham rang the doorbell as he eyed her. “You look good, baby,” he told her, loving the bright red one-shoulder dress she wore like a second skin.

  “Wait until you see what I have on underneath.” Pressing a hand to his chest, she lifted on the toes of her already high stilettos to taste his mouth.

  He touched her lower back and rubbed it. “Do you want to make it to this party?” he asked deep in his throat.

  “Hi, you two.”

  They stared at each other heatedly for a few more moments before turning away with secretive smiles to face Aria standing at the door in a multicolored jumpsuit interwoven with gold thread. She reached for each of their hands and pulled them inside to kiss their cheeks.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said. “Come on in.”

  “Nice to see you again, Pleas—um, Graham,” she said, correcting herself.

  Graham remembered her from that day in Jaime’s town house when he’d offered her and another woman one of his business cards.

  “Hey, Jaime,” another woman said as she walked up.

  And there she is. Graham eyed the tall woman in her mid-forties, with a short natural haircut that reminded him of Assefa’s, now standing before them as well.

  “Renee Thorne, this is Graham Walker. Graham—”

  The woman gave him a cool, assessing smile as she extended her hand. “We’ve met,” she said.

  Graham eyed her critically as he took her hand in his. He knew women. After learning to home in on their needs and wants, his instincts were sharp. And he was clear that Renee had no use for him.

  The husbands of Jaime’s friends came forward and introductions were made before they all walked into the spacious den together.

  The dinner party was already in full swing, and six additional couples were lounging in the den and adjoining kitchen enjoying cocktails and light appetizers. Contemporary jazz music played in the background and everything was very civilized and polite.

  “Where’s my godchild?” Jaime asked of Aria’s toddler daughter, Neru.

  “With my mother for the weekend,” she answered with a wiggle of her hips. “I packed her little hyper behind up with a quickness and had Kingston drop her off.”

  Renee laughed. “Trust me, as a mother of two grown children, you learn to enjoy having the kids you adore out of your house,” she said.

  “Baby talk,” Kingston said. “Fellas, right this way.”

  Graham followed him and Renee’s husband, Davin, to the bar set up in the corner with a young white man in a red vest and black tie serving. “Seltzer water and lime, please,” he said, turning to look around the room.

  He didn’t miss the look the men shared, and Graham instantly wondered just what they knew about him. Married couples and those in long-term relationships were infamous for making their pillow talk about another couple’s business.

  As they began to discuss the latest sports highlights, he looked about the room, stiffening when he noticed a tall and slender brown-skinned redhead across the room staring at him. She lifted her glass of wine to him in a silent toast. Graham couldn’t place her, but instinctively he knew she had to be one of his clients. Probably a one-timer that I forgot.

  Offering her a forced smile, he accepted the drink the bartender offered him and looked over the rim at Jaime as he sipped. Being amongst her friends and neighbors as well as in the same environment as one of the women from his roster of clients did not bode well.

  The last six months had really been good between them. The sex was still explosive and hot. They talked and laughed with each other. They discussed politics and current events. They had a lot of things in common, and those things they differed on, they fought hard to convert the other.

  Those good times were only broken up by intense arguments following moments when he drew the lingering stare of a woman and Jaime instantly assumed the woman either wanted him or had him. The argument was on from there. He had to admit that it wasn’t him Jaime didn’t trust. It was the other women. She absolutely refused not to be recognized and respected as his woman.

  And even though her quick attitude seemed insufferable when they were in the thick of the storm, he found that he loved that about her as well. She wanted no one else to possess him. Know him. Have him.

  He loved her.

  Graham Walker was in love. Glancing back at her again, he smiled into his drink. I love her.

  “Hi there. Long time no see,” the redhead said with a conspiratorial wink as she walked past him to stand at the bar. “White wine spritzer, please.”

  Oh boy.

  Once her drink was handed to her, she gave him another hot look before crossing the room to take her spot by her husband’s side again.

  Graham frowned into his drink and looked at Kingston and Davin as they shared another glance. “Is there something the two of you want to get off your chest?” he asked.

  “There sure is,” Kingston said, surprising Davin, who choked on the frosted glass of beer he was drinking. “Right this way.”

  More than curious, Graham followed the men until they reached Kingston’s office.

  “Did my wife... hire y
ou?” Kingston asked as soon as he shut the door.

  “No,” he answered simply, before turning to Davin. “And yours either.”

  They both looked relieved.

  “Those three are thick as thieves, and when Aria mentioned what you do—”

  “Used to do,” Graham corrected him smoothly.

  “It’s been nagging me. That’s all,” Kingston said, dropping down into the chair behind his desk. “Aria and I had a rough patch a year ago and... I just needed to know.”

  “Me too, man,” Davin added. “You’re strutting around here and all the women are sneaking glances and licking lips and all kind of shit when their husbands aren’t looking.”

  Graham actually smiled. “Understood . . . with me strutting and all.”

  The men all laughed.

  “We better get back before we’re missed,” Kingston said, rising to guide them back out of the office and down the stairs.

  When they reached the bottom of the steps, the redhead was just walking out of the guest bathroom. She stepped in Graham’s path before he could follow the men back into the den. “I definitely need to give you a call and make an appointment,” she said.

  “I’m out of business,” he said, attempting to sidestep her.

  “Hello,” Jaime said, walking up to them to place her hand on the small of Graham’s back.

  The redhead did not miss the subtle hint. She instantly stepped back. “Cheers to you,” she said, raising her drink in a salute before she walked away with one last look at Graham over her bare shoulder.

  “You are determined nobody else gets this dick, aren’t you?” he asked before taking another sip of his seltzer.

  “Glad you know it,” she said, taking the glass to have her own sip before she walked over to rejoin her friends.

  Graham hated to check his watch when they hadn’t even been there for a solid ten minutes, but the crowd of mostly forty-something couples was not his speed. He had outgrown the steady bass of the club, but sitting around discussing the latest TV shows or the newest wonders at their jobs was a mindfuck for him—and not in a good way.