by N'Tyse
“Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant and how do I even know if the baby is mine?”
“I can’t believe you would even say that. Ty, we were together for two years.”
“And yeah, you seem to be forgetting why we broke up. I caught you with my cousin, remember? That baby could be his, for all I know.” Robin showed no emotion either way. Tyriq told her to go home and he would call her. He needed to be alone.
• • •
Outside Robin got into a tan Cadillac. “I saw Lyric and her friends leaving. She bought your act,” Vince said to her.
“Yep, hook, line and sinker. And so did Tyriq; he is all confused. Now can I have my first half of my money, please?” Vince handed the girl five one hundred-dollar bills, as she knocked on her fake stomach and laughed. It would be the easiest grand she’d ever made.
Vince dropped her off and then headed to Lyric’s house. He sat in his car and waited until her friends left. Knocking on the door, he waited.
“I guess you’re here to gloat,” she told him as she opened the door and walked away. She grabbed her glass and walked into the family room. She didn’t want him to see her cry. She laid her head back on the couch pillow. Vince looked at her and saw how hurt she was. For a few minutes, he actually felt bad about what he was doing. He walked over to the couch and sat next to her.
“I told you he wasn’t good enough for you.” Lifting her head up, Lyric slapped him. “How dare you come here just to see me hurt. Why are you so bent on making my life a living hell? You don’t want me back because you love me; you want me back because you can’t have me. And your precious ego can’t take that.”
“Lyric, calm down so we can talk. I know you are upset. But what can that boy do for you, that me as a real man can’t? You are wasting your time with him. Seriously, you can do better.” Neither heard Tyriq when he came in.
“And I guess the better that she supposedly can do, is with you?” they heard him say as they both turned toward his voice.
“How did you get in here, breaking and entering? How, huh?” Vince said, walking to where Tyriq stood. He was now in his face.
“Nah, I didn’t need to do that, my WOMAN gave me a key,” he told him, showing him the key ring. Vince looked surprised as he glanced toward Lyric.
“Tyriq, what are you doing here? I need some time to think, please. Matter of fact. Why don’t you both just leave?” she said to both men. Tyriq and Vince glared at one another, sizing the other up.
“Lyric, I will leave after I say what I came here to. I drove around after you left and I went to see my cousin. See, when Robin and I broke up, it was because I caught her with him. So I asked him about the baby she is carrying. Funny thing is this, my cousin said he was just with Robin the other day and she was nowhere near seven months’ pregnant.”
“What do you mean?” Lyric said, confused by what he’d said. She walked to where they stood.
“I have a picture of them together at a party the other day,” he said, showing her the photo on his phone. “I asked him to take me over there. So my cousin and I went to her house and just that quick, she wasn’t pregnant. After my cousin threatened to leave her alone, she told us everything, how you came looking for her and paid her to be a part of your scheme,” he directed at Vince. “See, what you fail to realize is even though she cheated on me, she does have some feelings for my cousin. She ain’t going to risk losing him for you.”
Feeling like the situation was slipping from him, Vince chimed in. “This doesn’t change anything; you’re still got a lot to learn about Lyric. You can’t handle a woman like her; you’re under her caliber,” he said to Tyriq. Lyric still hadn’t said anything as she handed the phone back to Tyriq.
Tyriq lifted her face up to his. “You told me just two weeks ago that we had to fight him together. This is his way of breaking us down. Don’t let him tear what we are building together. You gave him that control once before; don’t give it back to him. I love you, Lyric, and you know I would never do anything to hurt you. You are what makes my life complete. If there is anyone that doesn’t deserve you, it’s him. Not me,” Tyriq said, pleading to Lyric. She turned her back to both men, trying to understand what she’d just seen and heard.
Vince grabbed her by the arm. “Baby, you are not going to fall for that bull crap he is telling you. So what if I did hire that girl; I needed you to see you don’t belong with him. I know I made mistakes in the past, but I know now that I can’t live my life without you. Give us another chance.”
“Get your hands off her.”
“Or what! What you think you can do to me, young buck. I am only going to take so much of this from you. You don’t know nothing about me,” Vince said as he let go of Lyric and got into Tyriq’s face. Lyric stepped between them trying to diffuse the scene.
“Vince, I told you we are over and who I choose to be with is none of your business.”
“But!”
“No buts, stooping this low even for you is a stretch. It’s time for you to go and don’t come back here, ever!” she told him as she headed toward her front door. When she opened it, a very pregnant Angela was standing there. “Ang . . . Angela, what are you doing at my house?” she said, startled at her appearance.
“I was about to knock, but I heard the arguing in here. I guess I don’t have to ask is Vincent here,” the woman said as she lined her eyes with Vince. “You told me you were over her. Now I hear you want her back. I guess this is what I deserve for betraying Lyric, but I just can’t believe you,” Angela said through heavy sobs and tears, holding her stomach. Vince came rushing over to her.
“Angela, how did you know I was here?”
“I followed you to Intense and saw you with that pregnant girl and then followed you over here. I have been sitting in my car for the past hour trying to convince myself that you weren’t cheating on me with Lyric,” she said, as she winced with pain and Vince took her by the arm to steady her.
“Are you okay?” Lyric asked.
“I . . . I don’t know. I have been having sharp pains for the last few hours.”
“Vince, she needs to get to the hospital now,” Lyric told Vince who was beginning to look panicked. They all heard her gasp as blood began to pool on the floor.
“Tyriq, call an ambulance!” she told him as Angela looked down at the blood. She grabbed her stomach and a look of pure fear came over her face and then she began to fall back as Vince caught her. Lyric ran to get a blanket and covered her and held Angela’s hand until the ambulance got there.
• • •
In the hospital waiting room, Tyriq and Lyric sat close together and Vince sat on the opposite side of the room. He wasn’t allowed to go back because Angela had to be taken into surgery. The baby was in distress. After about an hour, the doctor came out and called Vince’s name. He stood up.
“You have a beautiful baby boy, but unfortunately, Angela didn’t survive the birth. She went into shock and lost a lot of blood. We tried to stop the bleeding, but with the delivery complications, we could not save her. I am sorry,” the doctor told him.
Vince stood there stunned as the doctor walked away. The nurse came up and told him he could see his son. Vince looked over at Lyric and Tyriq and felt this whole night was his karma. He couldn’t raise that child; that baby deserved better than him.
“Do you want me to go back with you?” Lyric asked, when Vince still didn’t move from the spot he was in. She saw the tears on his face.
“I’m sorry for trying to break you two up,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t raise a child. I didn’t even want the baby in the first place and now I have lost Angela. I can’t do this,” he said to them both. He started pacing and they could see he was hurt over Angela’s death. Tyriq looked at Vince and then at Lyric. Taking her by the hand, they walked over to Vince.
“Man, that’s your son in there. He needs you now that his mother is gone. You can do it,” Tyriq told
him. Vince looked at him as if his words were trying to register. He was hollow and that was how he felt. He shook his head.
“No, you two go see your new son. I will call my lawyer and have the papers drawn up. You two will make far better parents than I ever could,” Vince said. They both looked at him shocked.
“Vince?” Lyric said, looking at him. She couldn’t have just heard him. He was going to give them his and Angela’s baby?
“You know I never wanted kids and I would rather know he is taken care of in a good home than have him going into the system. My mind is made up,” he said, putting his hand up to end the conversation. He walked down the hall, after asking the nurse if he could see Angela’s body. They watched him as he went into a room. The nurse came over to the couple.
“Ma’am, I was told by Mr. Washington that you were going to be the baby’s legal parents?” she asked Lyric for clarity. She looked over at Tyriq who had tears in his eyes, as he nodded. Guess that made it official; she had never expected all this to happen. They followed the nurse to the baby nursery, and they both smiled at the beautiful baby boy they were shown, agreeing they would name him Trey.
Two years later…
“Are you ready?” Nicole asked Lyric as she looked at her in the mirror. “You are absolutely glowing,” she told her best friend. Donna and Erin walked into the room.
Trey ran to her, screaming “Mommie,” and she reached down and kissed him, careful not to mess up her makeup. Erin came over to her and she kissed two-month-old Tyriq Jr. on the cheek.
“Ladies, thank you for all the help for this day. I couldn’t have done it without you all.”
“Well, it’s not every day our best friend marries a Grammy-winning R&B artist,” Donna said and they all laughed.
At the grand reopening, the A&M rep loved Tyriq and signed him immediately. Their lives had taken off. Her friends had helped her with Trey after she’d told them all that had happened that night at her house and the hospital. She and Tyriq were even better together and she fell even more in love with him. He could have chosen to walk. Instead, he embraced having an instant family that neither one of them created. Tyriq showed her he was way more than his age and she was so glad when he stayed with her and became Trey’s father. They never heard from Vince, he never came to see the baby and she didn’t have a way to reach him but through the lawyer who made the adoption legal. He sent her money for his care, which they opened an account for and never touched.
Today she was marrying the man who’d changed her life at her own divorce party. Her life was complete and she couldn’t be happier. “Places, everyone,” her coordinator yelled as she broke into her thoughts, lightly wiping her eyes. Trey and Tyriq Jr. were taken out and she headed to get into place. She could see Tyriq standing at the altar. The ladies walked down the aisle. Nicole held TJ and Trey was the ring bearer. Nicole handed TJ to her mother when she reached the front. Now it was her cue and Tyriq’s voice filled the church. He looked so fine, smiling as she walked toward him. He sang to his bride as she and her father walked down the aisle. She overheard someone in the audience ask how they met.
The woman told her, “Girl, can you believe it, at her own divorce party.”
• • •
Intertwining old-school romance and erotica, Nicola Motley (Jada Pearl) is set to bring you a stand-out reading experience from the normal approach on contemporary fiction. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Jada Pearl started writing when she was thirteen years old. She always had a strong passion for stories, so much so that she began working in the Detroit Public Library and soaked in all the books she read. Her love for writing was reinforced when she hosted a Romantic Readers of Michigan meeting. Being around other authors and learning how they developed their craft, she knew there was nothing more that she wanted to do.
When she isn’t penning, Jada Pearl spends her time with family, friends, setting up workshops for the community to learn computer skills, and working as a Payroll Specialist. She currently resides in Southfield, MI.
VICTORIA
A RIDE ON THE CAROUSEL
It had been a long and grueling day at the office. I wanted nothing more than to kick off my red, Valentino studded pumps, snatch off this tight-ass dress, and fuck his young naïve heart right out of his chest. In fact, that was exactly what I was going to do, especially after having to console my mourning pussy for the past six hours as he eye-fucked me from across the room. Oh yes, he was definitely going to pay for my sexual misery before we left this building tonight.
I casually glanced over my right shoulder again, and as I suspected, Sergio was staring right back at me with those maple-colored bedroom eyes and full luscious butter-fucking-finger-licking lips. Talk about a well-endowed sex god. Lord have mercy! I worshipped that pussy-splitting dick and floor-mopping tantalizing tongue of his. Too bad I could never admit that out loud. Especially not to him. As the youngsters say nowadays, his ass might start “feeling” himself, and I definitely couldn’t have that. I learned from the last one that emotional attachments always threatened the flow of business, and God forbid it dare attempt to threaten my twenty-two-year marriage. My husband, Larry Howard, and I, didn’t always see eye-to-eye. We went through the typical marital trials and tribulations, but he was the sweet love of my life. I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he. And while our unorthodox relationship permitted me to have my cake and eat it too, I would never allow my fetish and high sex drive to destroy what we’ve built.
It actually wasn’t until my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer that our sex life took a backseat. The only option was to have a radical prostatectomy performed to remove his prostate. The surgery was a success, but the side effects left us hopeless. He was no longer able to maintain an erection. It was a very stressful time for us and I felt completely helpless. Helpless and selfish, because the reality of it all was that I still had my needs. I loved sex more than I loved my next breath, so being deprived of the very thing that invigorated me, had me resenting Larry at times. It wasn’t fair and I couldn’t understand why it had to happen to us.
When Larry finally realized and came to grips with the fact that our sexless marriage was starting to have more of an impact on our relationship as a whole, we had a heart-to-heart and discussed how we both felt. We put it all out there. He admitted his darkest feelings and I slowly began to shed my emotions. I was worried he would hate me for feeling the way I did. Hate me for defending my sexual needs. He heard me out and immediately confessed he had been thinking about trying something a little different. I was usually the open-minded one, so it was damn shocking when he proposed the unthinkable. He suggested we try an open-marriage lifestyle, well, actually his words were “swing off the chandelier.” Boy, did that conversation get hot real fast. He had my undivided attention at that point. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “You can carry on a strictly sexual relationship with any man you want, whenever you want. There’s only one condition. I don’t ever want to hear about it.” I bucked my eyes in shock and asked if he’d lost his mind. I mean seriously, I thought my husband was playing some kind of joke on me. All this was coming from a man who went to church every Sunday, who didn’t use profanity, who turned the channel whenever a sex scene would play out in a movie, and who avoided public displays of affection; yet here he was talking about lending me out to another man. It just didn’t make any sense.
Our conversation eventually led us to a place of understanding. I could tell he wasn’t overly thrilled at the idea he had proposed, but that he was doing everything in his power to save our marriage and to keep me happy. I could only imagine how much of a mental struggle it was for him. It was obvious he had suggested something that went against everything he believed in, but it was seemingly the only solution to the emptiness we felt.
Being the doting wife I’ve always been for the past twenty-two years, not once had I taken my husband for granted or made him feel any less of a man because of his predicament. I cheris
hed and respected our arrangement and I constantly reassured him that he could quiet his worries because I would never leave him. Who and what I did outside of our bedroom never left my lips, but at times, I felt I was in way too deep. Deeper than I would ever concede.
When I agreed to represent Mr. Sergio Champagne and his exquisite artwork eleven months ago, I immediately laid down the law of the land. I figured if Sergio could adhere to my program, he and the others I had recruited as my side lover long before him, would prove to be the perfect solution for other married couples who were in a similar situation as mine; and I was more than happy to facilitate the process, all for a hefty fee of course. I had been right on the money about everything. A discreet division of my art gallery, Generation Studios, was soon born, which I aptly called Next Generation. My husband didn’t even know about it. Of course, he would have likely shut down the idea of creating such a place where people could go to hook up. I liked to think of it as my own private community. It was an elite, membership-only swingers club and escort agency that catered primarily to married couples over the age of forty. It served a greater purpose than just sex. We were resurrecting marriages.
Occasionally, I would get the single cougar applicant who was extremely interested in joining the club and taking part in our kinky festivities. I would only allow those women in by referral. At the end of the day, I saw no problem in extending my services and expanding my reach, after all, I did have the finest and biggest dick slangers in Texas under my tutelage. So it was really only a matter of time before they sought me out. As a sex agent with an astounding reputation, I acquired the best of the best. The even greater part about it was that I got to sample all of the inventory first.
Out of the eleven young studs I currently represented, Sergio was my youngest and highest-ranking dick distributor. I profited a great deal off his sexual instruments, which was even more of the reason why I had to keep our personal shit intact. I hated the clingy type and that had been a problem with two of my past playmates. If they weren’t pussy whipped, they were merely searching for that motherly figure to supply them with the attention they never received growing up. I had to quickly remind them that I was not trying to audition for Mommy’s role. That was the only, and I do mean only drawback to fucking and representing men half my age.