Best Black Women's Erotica Read online

Suddenly, Martine opened her eyes. She wanted to see Reid’s face when he answered. He was gazing at her, smiling. “Should I do that, Martine? Should I give you my money?”

  “Keep your money,” Martine said. “You can’t buy what you want from me.”

  “Why you gon’ buy de cow fo’, you get de milk fo’ free?” Reid said, and this time it was Martine who gave his shoulder a slap. Afterward, Reid’s voice grew reflective. “No, my money goes to my perfect little precious boys. Life will be good to them.”

  There was silence again. Whether it was because of the pot or the warm water, or both, Martine felt her spirit floating inside herself, untroubled. Reid, seeing her thoughts, reached over to stroke her chin with the ball of his thumb. His eyes sank into hers. Those eyes she knew like her own. They were not the eyes of a stranger.

  “I love it here,” Maya said, her voice sounding far away, a pattering. “This is the best home I’ve ever had. Have I told you that before, Reid?”

  “To you, any home is the best you’ve ever had,” Reid said, still gazing at Martine. She saw the silent, private plea to her in his face.

  “No, I mean it this time. This one is the best,” Maya went on.

  “Me, too,” Martine said. Relieved, Reid swallowed her with his gentle mouth.

  It took Martine some time to realize that the fingers plying her nipples beneath the water were not Reid’s. Maya’s fingertips squeezed harder than Reid’s, to the brink of pain, but Martine discovered that she didn’t mind. Somehow, that seemed just right.

  Maya’s tongue and fingers were the instruments of a poetess, Martine decided. Martine had never been touched by a woman this way, had never been curious about it, but Maya’s mastery made her a being beyond gender. She did not kiss Martine, offering only touch, not intimacy, which was fine. While Maya made Martine squirm and cry out from the most unexpected motions—a palm pressing against Maya’s submerged belly while a wiggling finger gently penetrated her vagina, or the sensation of a tongue teasing at her clitoris beneath the warm water, making flesh and fluid nearly one and the same—Reid kissed her with his healing lips, whispering vows that were even more satisfying to Martine than the unseen hands squeezing and caressing her nakedness, washing her.

  Four hands, each of them with its own mind. One voice in her ear, the voice she heard in her dreams.

  “You okay in there?” Reid asked, knocking gently on her doorjamb. She hadn’t seen him standing there watching her. He was shirtless, wearing nearly translucent white drawstring pants, with a small white hand towel draped across his shoulders. He was still lovely to her, but that was all. Tonight, she didn’t long for Reid’s presence in the bed beside her.

  “Should I be?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Fine. Then I’m okay,” she said, and smiled.

  Martine heard a sharp clink of metal, then Maya stuck her head in the doorway, more than a foot lower than Reid’s. “Hey, there,” Maya said, grinning mischievously. “Reid’s getting me a late-night cup of tea. Want anything?” Martine was not even surprised to see that Maya’s tiny wrists were bound in front of her in thick iron handcuffs that shone in the light in a way that made Martine think they must be very cold.

  “Do you wear those all night?” Martine asked.

  “Only if I don’t want to be put in my room. Reid lets me sleep in his bed with these.”

  “Where’d you get those, Reid?”

  “Lincoln Road Mall,” Reid said. “I’ll take you sometime.”

  “No thanks,” Martine said, smiling. “They don’t have my size.”

  Reid winked at her. “Precisely. I’m the one who’s shackled where you’re concerned, not vice-versa. Good night.”

  “Good night, you two,” Martine said to them. “Be good.”

  She watched them walk away, Maya shuffling because her ankles were bound, Reid tenderly holding her elbow, helping her keep her balance. Something about the image struck Martine as profoundly moving. She was more tired than she could remember being in a long time, but she didn’t reach up to turn off her bedside lamp right away. She wanted to wait for the sound of metal dragging across the hallway tiles as Reid and Maya walked back past her room to where they would sleep. She wanted to see them together again.

  Waiting, she fell asleep herself. Then, for no particular reason, she snapped to alertness with a gasp. She glanced at the clock and realized that twenty or twenty-five minutes had passed. Had Reid and Maya come back through the hall? She didn’t think so. She was a light sleeper, and she would have heard them.

  Somehow, she was certain that too much time had passed. She remembered she was still a little stoned, because her chest was constricting and suddenly she didn’t seem to have any sensation in her fingertips or toes. It took her a long time to realize she was only afraid. Anxiety attacks were another problem she had with dope, she remembered.

  Martine sat up, wrapping her kimono around her nakedness. She found her worn leather sandals and put them on; she never walked on floor tiles barefoot, a lesson from her mother. Men want dainty feet, her mother had told her. She’d heeded her mother’s lessons, or most of them, and none of them had prepared her for Reid. What Reid wanted, apparently, was much more than dainty feet. There was no way her mother could have predicted that for Martine when she was a college student on spring break, when Reid came home with her and kept her family laughing with his funny stories and sly smiles. She and her mother could see some of who he would be, but not everything. They hadn’t seen Maya.

  Reid’s house felt much larger and more foreign at night, when most of the lights were off. He only spent a few months a year here, so he’d never put up photographs or imposed much evidence of his own tastes, not like his house in LA. The blandness of the hallway seemed to stretch forever. But there, at the end of the hall, Martine could see the fluorescent light glaring from the kitchen, no doubt bouncing off the shiny floor, the white appliances, the white countertop. The light offended her eyes.

  And she heard something, too. The sound of quiet weeping.

  Martine never had to actually walk inside the kitchen. She only had to walk close enough to see Maya kneeling on the floor through the entryway, her handcuffed wrists held up so she could rub her face. Martine was close enough to see a single strawberry on the floor, nestled beside Maya’s bare, grimy foot. Maya walked without shoes, Martine realized.

  “You said you didn’t do anything to the strawberries,” Martine said. Her voice was gravel, as if she were asleep.

  Startled, Maya looked up at her. Her tear-damp face was no longer brown, but bright red. She was a woman in agony, Martine realized, and in this way they were really no different.

  “I didn’t. Not all of them. Just...one. I couldn’t...help...” She was sobbing, incomprehensible for a moment. “I thought he...threw them...out...”

  “Is that what you really thought?”

  Abruptly, Maya stopped sobbing. She gazed up at Martine as if she were noticing her for the first time and had somehow decided tears and explanations weren’t necessary for her. “Well, anyway,” Maya said, drawing in a long, clogged sniff to clear out her nose, “I’m going to stop. I really am. Just like I said.”

  Without saying anything else, not realizing she was capable of making the decision to do anything, Martine turned around and began to walk toward the foyer, toward the waiting front door. She wasn’t shuffling as Maya had been earlier. Her steps were steady and quick.

  “Even if you call a doctor, it’s too late!” Maya shrieked after her. “You hear me? It works real quick. I’ve done this lots of times before. Five times, not four! This makes six!”

  The chain-lock on the front door always stuck because it had been splattered with thick paint some time ago, and Reid usually had to show Martine how to jostle the pin just right to free it, so she could get out of his house. But Reid wasn’t here standing over her as he usually did; Reid was lying somewhere on the kitchen floor while a crazy woman cried over him.

&nb
sp; And Martine was determined, more than she’d ever been about anything, that she was going to unlock the door and open it, even if her fingers got bloodied and it took all night.

  Lifestyles

  Aya de León

  Three condoms sit in the bottom of my bag, ripening. One black, one white, one mint-flavored. Lifestyles.

  “Hey, we’re getting old in here,” they whine. “Our biological clocks are ticking.”

  The black condom has a little red bow tie on the wrapper that says “Tuxedo,” and has a superiority complex.

  “Excuse me, Miss Thing. How did I end up down here in some nasty purse?”

  “It’s not a purse, it’s a book bag.”

  “Whatever. Girl, you need to clean this mess out. Old scraps of tissue. Dust. Some kind of crumbs, and just general filthiness. Chile, don’t you ever vacuum in here?”

  “I’m really busy. It’s not high on my priority list, okay?”

  “Well, pencil in into your date book, girlfriend. This state of affairs is not acceptable. I am the high-end condom. A cut above. You need to keep me in a red silk box on the bedside table with some soft jazz in the background. Yeah.”

  “Sorry. I don’t have those kind of accommodations.”

  “Well then, take me back to the basket at your job. I must’ve gotten picked up by the wrong person, and some other second-rate condom is living out my destiny. This is a downright switched-at-birth tragedy.”

  “You know,” I tell him, “the Yoruba say that we pick our destinies before birth.”

  “Don’t give me none of that voodoo-hoodoo mumbo jumbo. Just take me back, okay?”

  The white one says, “I don’t think she’s gonna go for that.”

  “Well, then could you at least clean up the bag?” the black one asks.

  “I’ll put it on my to-do list,” I say.

  “Like that’s gonna help,” the black one gripes.

  The mint one pipes up: “Our best chance out of here is for her to use us.”

  “Oh, right,” the white one says. “Getting laid is probably on her to-do list right below ‘clean out the bag.’ ”

  “The problem,” the black one says, “is that Miss Honey is way too picky.”

  “Too picky?” I say. “These are dangerous times.”

  “Don’t worry,” the white one says, his voice thick with nonoxynol-9, “we’ll protect you.”

  The mint one says, “What about that firefighter you dated back in December?”

  “He never called back.”

  “Well, why don’t you call him?”

  “I did. He was a blocked artist.”

  “If you like artists so much, why don’t you call that painter you dated a few months ago?” the black one says. “He was fine.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, “but he left after a few dates to sleep with someone else.”

  “That’s ’cause you wouldn’t give it up.”

  “Oh, well,” I say. “That shows he was only after one thing.”

  The mint one says, “He wasn’t only after one thang. He was after a lot of thangs, sugar. But the sex thang was a really important thang.”

  I suspect she is right. But I don’t want to give an inch on this. “Whatever,” I say.

  “She’s impossible,” the white one complains.

  The black one says, “What about the brother who took you to dinner the other night?”

  “Hold up,” I say. “Get it right. We each paid for our own meal.”

  “Okay, have it your way,” the black one says. “What about him?”

  “He wasn’t interested in my work or my writing. That’s the main thing, here. I have a destiny to fulfill, and…”

  “Our point exactly! We have destinies, too.” The black one, the white one, and Ms. Mint were in agreement.

  “Look,” I said, “I can’t just shackle myself to some guy who isn’t about anything.”

  “Speaking of shackles,” the mint one says, “I heard a story today about a ribbed condom at a sex club. You want to talk about action…”

  “Hey!” I say. “Will you please keep it down in there. I’m trying to write.”

  “Just tryin’ to inspire you,” the mint one says in mock innocence.

  “Save it,” I tell them.

  “That’s the problem,” the black one says.

  “Okay, that’s it!” I exclaim. “I can’t concentrate at all.” I take them to the bathroom and seal them in a Ziploc safer-sex kit. Then I close the bathroom door. Finally. Peace and quiet.

  Meanwhile, back in the kit…

  “Oh, my stars!” the mint one exclaims upon meeting my dental dam. “Will you look at who we have here?”

  The black one says, “Well, maybe that explains why we’ve all been stuck in the bottom of a book bag. Miss Thing has her real gear here. And look at her trying to front. Wining and dining with alla those boys. Didn’t mess wid none of ’em’cause they’re not even on the menu.”

  “Ha!” said the dental dam. “I wish. I got less chance than you all of seeing any action. I got a shorter shelf life. Christ! I’m not even packaged. Besides, it’s not about sexual preference. She’s just too damn picky.”

  “I was just telling Miss Thing that, wasn’t I?” the black condom said.

  Glancing at my watch, I see it’s time to go to work. I shut off the computer and jump into the shower. While washing my hair I hear a familiar voice, smell mint on its breath. “You know, sugar, a good lookin’ woman like yourself has no call to be showering alone…”

  “Give it up, will you!” I say.

  “Just our point,” the mint one says.

  Latex is on a mission.

  Mergers and Acquisitions

  Zane

  Three months. Three long cruel months of migraine-inducing meetings and sleepless nights spent doing research. I don’t know what compelled me to even agree to the madness in the first place. I take that back. I know exactly why I agreed. I did it for the recognition. I did it for the promotion. I did it for the money.

  When I first started at Jones, Baker, and Kibblehouse five years ago in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department, I was the only black face anywhere in sight. Since then, a few others have started but none of them have attained my level of success.

  When Charles Baker came to me and implored me to negotiate the merger with Hammonton Enterprises, my first reaction was to ask him if he had lost his damn mind. Once he assured me that a positive result would undoubtedly get me considered for the vice-president position in the department, my entire attitude changed. Michael Young had recently left to start his own e-commerce company, trying to get in on the Internet craze, so the position was wide open. Frankly, I felt I deserved it without having to prove myself any further but you can’t knock the hustle so I accepted the challenge.

  I knew the merger wouldn’t be easy. Roy Hammonton was infamous for his shrewd business practices. The mere thought of losing the controlling reins of his corporation probably made him age ten years overnight. I spent five days reading articles and other readily available information about the man, determined to step into the initial meeting and tantalize him so much that he would hand over the keys to the kingdom without any drama. I should have known better.

  As it turned out, Roy Hammonton wasn’t the problem. His son Martin was the real thorn in my side. I despised him from the moment I laid eyes on him. He looked so sure of himself, so determined, so much like me. I don’t like it when the playing field is even. If I can’t win, then I don’t want to play. That’s the Lourdes Mitchell way.

  The first meeting was horrid. I left the office that night and headed straight to the closest bar I could find. After four Cosmopolitan martinis and far too many sick and totally unfunny jokes from the bartender, I dragged myself outside, took a cab, went home, and passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  I woke up the next morning rejuvenated, focused, and more determined than ever. I set my sights on Martin and learned everything from the name of
his tailor to his favorite cologne. Not because I had a personal interest in him. I’m just an avid believer that one should always know the habits of one’s enemies.

  The second meeting a week later was just as bad, but I refused to turn to the bottle again. Instead, I went to the gym and took three cardio-karate classes in a row. I had to limp up out of that bitch, go home, and soak in a tub of ice water. After I got out of the tub, I called on the services of my former lover Dawson. He wasn’t the best lover but he gave the most hellified massages. He came over and rubbed my ass to sleep.

  Three months later the agony was still in full swing. Martin had taken over the negotiations completely. Charles and the rest of the people on my side had given up as well. It was down to the two of us. The stubborn ones.

  “You do realize I’ll never agree to these terms?” he asked me, pacing around the conference room table for the fifty-eleventh time.

  I decided to get up and stretch my legs as well. “I’ll never agree to your terms either. They’re ludicrous.”

  “I’m so sick of this.”

  I leered at him and issued a comeback. “I’m sick of you.”

  “This can’t go on forever,” he stated, as if I didn’t already know that shit.

  “Well then, agree to our terms so I can go home and get some sleep for a change.”

  He laughed at me, the bastard. “You really think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

  “If the shoe fits.” I sat back down, took a manila folder off of the increasingly larger stack, and opened it. “If you come down by 5 percent, I’ll convince the partners to go for it.”

  “You need to stop taking those ginseng tablets, Lourdes,” he responded. “They’re clouding your common sense. Maybe if you come up 10 percent, we can do some business.”

  I don’t like it when people, men in particular, try to step to me like that. “I don’t need the ginseng tablets to realize that I’m more of a man than you’ll ever be.”

  “But you’re a woman.”

  “Exactly,” I replied snidely. “I’m a woman and still more of a man than you’ll ever be.”