Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever (8 page)

Mrs. Naven continues to clear our dishes away as Tristan takes my hand, and we leave the kitchen.

As we pass through the dining area, he says, “Will you come with me to my office?”

“Yes.” I sound breathy, as though I’ve walked a considerable distance, but I know it’s just my reaction to him. In silence, I walk with him back up the stairs, down the hallway past the bedroom where we slept—together—past several more closed doors until we get to the end of the hall. He opens the door into a corner office which rivals the one in his office building.

He touches the back of a cozy chair, which has a twin with a small table between them. I sink gratefully into it; I am so overwhelmed. What on earth could he want with me?

My Fairy Hoochie Mama sits in a stuffed chair, with her hands folded as if in prayer, steepled under her bony chin. My Triple-G has a concerned look on her face and paces back and forth.

Tristan goes to his desk and takes what looks like my blue faux Prada bag out of a drawer. With it, he brings the binder that contains our business plan, and another binder which is much more expensive than ours. He returns, sits in the chair opposite me, and hands me my purse. I check to see if all my stuff is still there, then roll my eyes at myself, because I realize, there isn’t a damned thing in that bag a gazillionaire would want. Tristan watches me, bemused.

Then I pay closer attention to the bag. “Um, this isn’t my bag.”

“Yes, it is,” he says. “Darryl noticed the one you had was—how might I put this delicately—not of sufficient quality.”

“Sufficient for what?”

“A woman of your beauty and strength. Please take the handbag as a gift from me, and as an apology.”

“An apology for?”

“Accosting you in my office last week. I was out of line. Had you been of a mind to, you could certainly have capitalized on that.”

“An apology alone would have been sufficient, Tristan. As it happens now, I owe you an apology, so I guess that would make us even.”

“Why do you owe me an apology?”

“For not thanking you earlier for keeping whoever drugged me from having their wicked way with me.”

“Speaking of which . . .” He rises to get his Smartphone out of his pocket. “My head of security sent me a couple of multimedia stills of the culprit.” He hands me his phone.

“Wait. Is
Wicked
yours?”

“Yes, I own a controlling interest in it.”

So that explains why he has access to all the security footage. I scan the pictures on his phone.

“That bastard!” I explode. I scan through the pictures that clearly show Byron McCaskill aka Blake dropping something in my drink when Princess Danai and I were preoccupied just
before
Tristan showed up. “I. Am. Going. To. Kill. Him.”
I grind out.

“If I don’t get to him first,” Tristan says through clenched teeth. His moods are so damned mercurial, and deadly.

His anger makes me nervous. How do I know he doesn’t have Mob ties? “Um, I didn’t mean I would literally kill him. You don’t either, do you?”

“At the very least, he deserves to go to jail, Keisha. My security chief has already sent a copy of these to the Chicago PD, together with the results of your blood test.”

“Tristan that will ruin his life.”

“He was all set to ruin yours.”

“I’d like to see him suffer some, but I don’t want to send him to jail. It’s hard enough for a black man in this world.” I realize how feeble that sounds, but even though Byron attempted a serious crime against me, I can’t bring myself to be the one to send him to jail. I have brothers who’ve been profiled and mistreated by law enforcement. But how do I explain that to a filthy rich fucker like Tristan for whom the world bends over backwards?

“The authorities have the evidence. Whether you choose to press charges is entirely up to you, but I encourage you to do so.”

I point to the business plan. “So, you’ve changed your mind about our business arrangement?”

“Yes and no,” he says.

Here we go again. I roll my eyes and purse my lips on the ready to bless him out. “Don’t tell me you’ve all of a sudden gotten a raging case of Romnesia.”

His forehead creases. “Romnesia?”

“The Romney flip-flop, or rich man’s amnesia.”

“No, but do I have a counter offer for you.”

“Okay, let’s hear it?”

“You’re certainly in a hurry to be introduced to a world that could change your life forever,” he says in a castigating tone. “Believe me, once you hear what I propose you may insist I go fuck myself and leave you the hell alone.”

“Are you a serial killer, or some shit, Mr. White?”

“Oh, it’s Mr. White now again, is it? After the intimacies we’ve shared?”

My face gets hot even though I know all we did was sleep in the same bed. “Tristan! C’mon, stop playing with my emotions here.”

“All right,” he says. “But first I must insist that you sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.”

“Why?”

“Because once I introduce you to my world, you can’t share what you know about me with anyone.”

I frown. Well, so much for thinking he wanted in my panties. He wants me to sign a fucking NDA because he’s probably going to share some financial secrets of the megarich with me, and he doesn’t want me and Jada to steal his shit. Some may think the existence of the Illuminati is a conspiracy theory, but not me. Okay, I can deal with that.

I extend my hand to take the document and pen. “I’ll sign.”

He cocks his head to one side and looks at me with something like reverence. “You’re one of the most fearless women I’ve ever met, Keisha.”

“Yeah, yeah.” What I don’t tell him is that I was profoundly
afraid during my childhood.
I promised myself, I wouldn’t be when I became a woman.

He pulls a document out of his expensive binder and hands it to me. “Please read it through and sign at the bottom, and I’ll countersign.”

I take the document and read the top of it, scan the rest and sign it at the bottom.

When I look back at Tristan, his mouth is in a tight line. “You should read more thoroughly when you’re signing contracts. Not every business person in this world is honest.”

“What’re you gonna do, sue me? Most of our money went to refurbishing of the building. The small amount of capital KSR has left is like pocket change to you.”

He takes the NDA, signs his name and places it on his desk. When he returns, he looks nervous. Oh my goodness, I didn’t think anything could make this man nervous. He offers me his hand, I take it, and he doesn’t release it as he leads me to the room across from his office. He takes out his keys and unlocks the door.

He steps aside and allows me to enter the room before him. For a few seconds, the room is dark, then he flicks a switch and floods the room with light. I feel as if I’ve all of a sudden been transported into the movie
Pulp Fiction
, and like Ving Rhames’ character, I’m about to be strapped to one of the contraptions in this room, with a red rubber ball in my mouth and be fucked in the ass—hard.  For the second time after meeting Tristan White,
fight or flight kicks in, and
I turn tail and run like a motherfucker.

~*~

51

I only get a few feet away before a set of strong arms grab me and pull me against his body. I struggle to get away, but he holds me fast.

“Keisha, please don’t run from me again,” he implores. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I go slack in his arms and calm down. He turns me to face him and looks deep into my eyes, and I can see the truth there.

“I know this is a lot for you to digest all at once.”

“You think?”

“Will you let me explain?” He asks.

I nod, and he leads me back to the threshold of the room.

My eyes are drawn to the black satin sheets on the bed, adorned by a black, antique wrought-iron headboard, raised on a pedestal in the middle of the room. My Triple-G cowers in a corner, her tiny eyes bulging out like a cartoon character. This disproves my theory that black women don’t cower, but I don’t have to tell White that. My Fairy Hoochie Mama tumbles from one end of the room to the other, like a mini gymnast doing a floor exercise.

We are surrounded by a room full of devices, I would assume are familiar to him, yet unfamiliar to me—walls of whips, chains, ropes, floggers, canes, vibrators and every other kinky sex toy imaginable. He also has a shitload of those metal loop things mountain climbers use to connect rope, every size shape and variety either hanging from the ceiling or displayed on the walls. There are several other pieces of furniture, if that’s what one calls them, which are used to enhance torturous sex play.

That song, “S&M” by Rihanna begins playing in my mind, “sticks and stones may break my bones . . . ”
I. Don’t. Think. So.
Tristan White may be channeling Chris Brown, but I am no Robyn Fenty.

I look around. For all intents and purposes, we’re in a fucking dungeon; a goddamned torture chamber; a scene that I never thought I would be introduced to in a million years.

“What the fuck?” Are the first and only words I can manage.

“This is my lifestyle, my preference for sexual expression.”

“Is this normal?”

“What is normal? What’s normal for one may be abnormal for another.”

“Maybe I chose the wrong words. Is this shit healthy?”

Tristan looks as if I’ve struck him. “Sexual expression between consenting adults becomes unhealthy only when it’s repressed.”

“You might have a point,” I concede. “But I don’t have any repressed sexual expressions that I’m just dying to experience right now.” I move further into the room.

“Do you have any questions?” He asks, following me in and closing the door.

“So, you’re a sadist, and this is the proposition? You want to bring me in here, and do God knows what to me?”

“No, I’m not a sadist, although I have some leanings in that direction. I’m so much more. I’m a Dominant in search of a submissive and I believe you are she.”

“Is that what I would be called? Or is it ‘slave’?” I turn on him with righteous indignation. “How can you approach me about something like this? I’m a black woman with too much pride in my heritage to step back into history two-hundred fucking years. Last I heard, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in case you don’t remember that little detail.”

“Keisha, this scene isn’t meant to be demeaning to you or your ethnicity. A Dom/sub relationship is predicated on trust, and the goal is pleasure not punishment. I’d like you to do it for our mutual pleasure.”

“Say what?” I massage my temples with my first two fingers on both hands. “How is this supposed to benefit me?”

“I’m prepared to front all the money for Kente Studio Records with a hefty bonus, in exchange for your agreement to be my submissive.”

“And here I thought you just wanted to have regular sex with me.”

“I do want to have regular sex with you, but not just vanilla all the time.”

“It comes in flavors?”

“In my world, there’s plain old vanilla and then
everything
else.”

“Then you buy that whole Descartes thing that pain and pleasure are part of a continuum?”

“I do.”

“I don’t. Maybe rich people who have everything they could ever dream of have a need to conquer this one final frontier. Well, I’m not the Starship Enterprise, and I don’t want any part of this kinky shit.” I wave my arms around the room. Then my eye lands on a vibrator that looks damned appealing. “Well, maybe this,” I say. “I think I have one like it.”

Tristan flashes me a weary smile. “I had you pegged as adventurous, fearless, a risk-taker. Was I wrong about you?”

He looks so disappointed, I kind of want to fuck him right now, and show him there are no hard feelings. Reverse pun intended.

For some inexplicable reason, I can’t bear the thought that I’ve let this beautiful man down.

“I want you, Keisha.”

Those four words are my undoing. I crash into him. His arms go around me, and our mouths connect, followed by hips fusing, and my legs winding around him. There are definitely hard feelings now. Throbbing, hard feelings, touching me right there.

He finds the bed without looking, and we fall, our lips still locked, bodies writhing, hungry to create the glorious friction we experienced for a few seconds last week. We kiss forever, while our hands explore as much as they can of each other with clothes impeding our progress.

Tristan hauls us both further up onto the bed, and kneeling, we lock lips again while anxious fingers begin to remove clothing. We only stop kissing long enough to raise arms and remove tops, then we fall onto the bed again. I can feel the heaviness of his need pressing against my belly, but only for a few fleeting seconds. Immediately, his pants and boxers are gone, and I’m eager to be naked myself, because if he doesn’t enter me soon, I fear I’m going to spontaneously combust.