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Authors: Niobia Bryant

BOOK: Mistress, Inc.
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Now this some new shit,
Jessa thought, welcoming that familiar rise of intensity and anticipation as she felt her nut rising fast. She allowed herself to give in to the pleasure. To get lost ... and somehow found all at once. And when she finally felt the first explosion, she enjoyed the ride. She felt some of the stress and tension of the last week leave her. She felt renewed—rejuvenated—and ready for war.
Ten minutes later, on legs still slightly wobbly, Jessa came downstairs with fifty crisp one hundred dollar bills in the pocket of the white velour suit she now wore. When she went upstairs to quickly change and to retrieve his fee, she had looked out her balcony to check the status of the repast at Jaime’s house.
Her timing couldn’t have been better.
Jessa tilted her head as she looked at him. “Another hundred for a sneak peak at the dick. I am
dying
with curiosity.”
Pleasure smirked as he looked directly in her eyes and jerked his pants down. “No charge,” he assured her with a smile.
Jessa’s eyes shifted down to see one of the thickest and longest dicks she’d ever come across. Her eyes widened and she swallowed over a lump in her throat. “Ooh. Ummmm. And ... and ... and
that’s
not even hard. Right?” she asked, completely unsure.
Eric was average sized, but Pleasure’s dick made him look juvenile in comparison.
Pleasure chuckled as he bent down to ease his pants back up. “You got my number,” he told her.
“Listen, I have to get the rest of your money,” she lied, already walking to the door to open it wide. “You can walk with me right down the street if you’re nervous I’m gonna skip out on you.”
Pleasure shrugged and walked out of the house ahead of her. “I can wait at my truck for you to get back,” he told her, laid back.
Jessa closed the door and smiled up at him. “Thanks. Be right back,” she told him, hurrying off down the street.
The sun was just beginning to set and the skies were darkening. Jessa’s heart was beating fast and she was glad that most of the residents on this block of Richmond Hills were at Jaime’s house. Not a sole was outside to see her walk up onto the porch.
She could hear the mingled voices of the people filling the living room.
Smiling like a cat, Jessa pulled the small remote from her pocket and edged just close enough to the window to point it toward the DVD player. She hit Play and the large flat screen hung over the fireplace filled with the image of Jaime getting fucked—and well—by Pleasure in the back room of the strip club where he worked.
Eric’s private detective was
damn
good for discovering that the owner of the club privately videotaped the activities in his back rooms. Money talks, and the detective walked away with the DVD.
Jessa knew making a copy of it would come in handy one day ... just like sneaking into Jaime’s house to load the DVD into her player while she was at the funeral playing the bereaved wife.
Bitch, please.
Jessa allowed herself one last peak as the voices and loud cries of surprise and shock echoed outside. The sight of Pleasure’s big dick sliding in and out of Jaime from behind looked like hardcore porn on the screen.
Jessa laughed and dropped the remote she took earlier onto the porch as she turned and descended the steps to stand in the street outside Jaime’s home. The front door opened and people began filing out like schoolchildren during a fire drill.
Embarrass me?
Jessa thought.
No, bitch. Take that.
Several people eyed her in shock, reprimand, and even anger. Women snatched their husband’s arm and pulled them away from her like she could fuck them with her eyes.
Jessa ignored them and kept her eyes locked on the front door.
I ain’t done yet.
She turned and motioned up the street for Pleasure to head her way. Seconds later, the headlights of his truck turned on and he backed out of her driveway.
“What the hell do you want, Jessa?”
She turned and looked up at Renee standing on the top step glaring down at her. Jessa briefly took in some of the neighbors standing in a crowd across the street before she turned and took in the tall and curvaceous frame of her one-time best friend, then rolled her eyes. “Save some of that anger for your husband’s white baby mama,” Jessa drawled sarcastically. “Or are you too drunk to realize that I’m not her.”
Renee’s eyes glittered with anger. “You don’t want to fuck with me, Jessa,” she warned, her voice hard.
Jessa spared her another bored glance. “I’d be careful with the threats; you’re facing enough charges, aren’t you?”
Renee’s discovery that her husband of over twenty years had an affair with a woman who eventually had his child drove Renee to the bottle, and when the woman came to Richmond Hills to confront her, she almost drove her vehicle into the woman in a drunken stupor, landing herself in jail and with a court battle to fight. Renee was free, but Jackson wasn’t back in their home, and so Jessa assumed the word on the street was correct that she wasn’t going to forgive him and try to rebuild their marriage.
Who gives a flying fuck?
“What’s going on, Renee?”
Jessa shifted her eyes to Aria as she stepped on the porch as well. Their gazes locked and Jessa didn’t back down. They had been friends since college, but now it was clear they were enemies ... and that was fine by Jessa.
Unlike Renee’s, Aria’s husband, Kingston, was back in his place as the king of the castle. Jessa’s eyes darted down to Aria’s stomach. She heard that Aria was pregnant. There was a time she probably would have been the godmother.
Fuck her and her whole crew, including the one she’s breeding.
Jessa pulled her cell phone out when Aria came down a step. “Please don’t violate your restraining order and get your happy-to-be-pregnant ass thrown in jail.”
Aria balled her hands into fists and glared Jessa down before she climbed back up on the step. “You ain’t shit,” Aria said.
“Being married to a doctor don’t change a damn thing about all that tricking you use to do, Miss Queen of Ain’t Shit.”
Jessa felt like she was on a roll. She loved putting these women in their place. When her husband died, every woman in Richmond Hills looked at her like she was the sexy widow on the loose looking to replace her dead husband. . . including her three friends. They never said it, but she could see the doubt in their eyes whenever they came upon her with their husband.
“Did y’all enjoy the show?” she asked, just as Pleasure finally pulled to a stop behind her.
Things couldn’t get any sweeter when Jaime finally stepped out onto the porch. She didn’t miss the way Jaime’s eyes widened at the sight of Pleasure’s truck.
“One second,” Jessa said playfully, holding up her finger before she turned and handed the wad of money to Pleasure through the open passenger window.
He took the money and then looked beyond Jessa at Jaime.
“Thank you so much; it was worth every penny,” Jessa said, her voice purposefully loud.
“That’s the man in the video!” one of the neighbors exclaimed.
Pleasure frowned and looked out his open driver’s side window at the people loitering in the streets still dressed in the funeral black. “What the fuck is going on?” he mumbled.
Jessa blew him a kiss and turned to face her enemies. “Looks like we have the same taste in men. He was worth every cent for me. Was he worth it for you?” Jessa asked Jaime.
“Hey, don’t call my phone no more,” Pleasure said, raising his windows.
Jessa shrugged and waved her hand to dismiss him just before he pulled off with a squeal of his tires.
“You’re pathetic, Jessa,” Jaime said, her newly cut weave swinging just above her shoulder.
The weave addict is trying to kick cold turkey.
“No, I am not the one to play with. That’s who I am,” Jessa told her, before she turned to face their neighbors. “Still feeling sorry for the widow. Please don’t be fooled.”
One by one, the neighbors shook their head or waved their hands at her dismissively before turning to head back to their homes. Jessa’s face filled with confusion. “Hypocrites!” Jessa yelled at them, the veins in her throat straining as her heart beat wildly. “All of you are nothing but hypocrites. To hell with you!”
One by one, the doors to homes opened and closed behind her neighbors. She whirled and Jaime’s porch was clear.
Jessa was left alone in the street ... like worthless trash.
Like the little girl left behind by her mother. A mother who never came back for her.
Tears of frustration filled her eyes as she stormed up the street to her home. She slammed the door hard enough to make her entire 3,000 square foot home shake. “Damn,” she swore in a fierce whisper, sliding down the door until she sat on the floor and then pressed her knees to her chest.
Her gaze shifted about the beautiful grand foyer and inadvertently landed on the entrance to the living room.
Pow!
Memories of the night came flooding back to her. Jessa flinched and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t erase the memory of all the blood or the sight of the back of Eric’s head blown away.
Tears raced down her cheeks. She didn’t feel any of the victory she thought she would claim. There was no redemption in her revenge, and everything she claimed that night in the hospital with the chaplain at her side had gone out of the window.
“God forgive me,” Jessa whispered, her lips trembling as more tears fell and more emotions that she couldn’t quite name welled up in her chest. “Lord, please ...
please
don’t give up on me.”
Chapter 3
T
he sounds of construction from the first level of her home had forced Jessa to rise early and spend the majority of her morning on the large balcony surrounding her master suite. The noise was a major distraction, but ever stepping into her living room again with it looking like it did when she almost died was a definite no-no.
She’d even paid the hefty price for them to get started on the project on a Sunday. She couldn’t go another day avoiding looking in or going near the room at all costs. In her mind, that room was nonexistent, but she knew that couldn’t last forever. And since she had no intention of leaving Richmond Hills again, she had to make sure the home she loved
stayed
the home she loved.
Thus the contractors taking over her first floor. Her wish to have everything about that room changed was coming true. Money talked and Jessa paid her interior decorator, Keegan Connor, well enough to make sure bullshit walked. The room had been stripped bare—the flooring, the furnishings, the fireplace, and the fixtures. Everything. Gone. And hopefully the memories along with it. In a week the room would be completely redone.
Jessa sighed as she tried to focus her attention on the leather-bound Bible in her lap. She was trying to strengthen her ties to the Lord and believed that she
had
to turn to Him because she had no one else. No parents. No husband. Not even the man she thought she loved. No friends.
“ ‘Just me, myself, and I—that’s all I got in the end,’ ” Jessa sang the Beyoncé hook softly.
But then her eyes fell on the Bible.
The chaplain said that God never leaves you.
Biting her full lips, she shifted her eyes up to the skies. Jessa had never been one to mull over the lack or abundance of friends. Never. But she felt her desolation. She felt her vulnerability. She felt like a leper in her community. She had never been the type of woman—the type of person—to give a fuck.
Being six years old and standing there as your mother walked out of your life, climbed into a car with one of her men, and drove away never to be seen again had a way of hardening a heart. Top that with the inconsistent phone calls filled with lies of coming back for her and then the calls dwindling down to the point she stopped having hope it was her mother when her grandmother’s phone would ring. She just wanted her to come and take her away from what she considered to be a nightmare.
When you lose your love for your own mother that you once cherished and almost worshipped, it was hard to give a flying fuck about anyone else. Especially when you’re afraid to love. Afraid to have it taken away. Afraid to be betrayed by it.
Her mother left.
Her father made one brief appearance in her life.
Her grandmother passed away in her sleep, but she had never been overly affectionate of the grandchild she felt she got “stuck” with.
Marc, with his insistent love, his devotion, his affections, and his supportive ways had broken through her shell, and he was the first man—the first person—she had risked her heart on ... and then he died. She was left again with a broken heart.
No one knew it, but his death pushed her right back to that place as a child when she had protected her heart and her feelings at all costs. Going back to truly not giving a fuck about anyone else had felt like home to her. It placed her feet on solid ground again.
Now almost dying had changed her again ... and maybe not for the better.
Closing the Bible, Jessa rose to her feet and stood at the railing of the balcony with a nice summer breeze blowing her black silk robe against the curves of her body. She would give the world to have Marc here with her, at her side, his hand on her hip, his lips on her neck. Loving her. Loving her like nothing she had ever known before ... or felt like she would know again.
Jessa lowered her head to her chin as the first feel of tears wet the front of her robe. She turned and rushed into her bedroom and then across, moving to her dressing room to drop her robe and quickly pull on a charcoal gray 1940s-inspired fitted dress with a severe A-line hem that came just below her knees. Light makeup. Jewelry. A subtle spray of perfume and then a quick twist of her jet-black hair up into a loose top knot. As the sound of construction continued around her, Jessa was glad to grab her shades, keys, and Birkin and flee the house.
Behind the wheel of her Jag, she drove out of the cul-de-sac, avoiding the sight of Aria and her handsome husband, Kingston, enjoying their Sunday morning on their porch together. The sight of them being affectionate in front of their sprawling home was the epitome of the American dream: love and success.
Things she would never have with Marc and foolishly thought she could re-create with Eric. She could admit now that in her jealousy of Aria’s life, she wanted to destroy it. She wanted to peel back the lies in their relationship so that she didn’t feel so lost without Marc. And that’s part of the reasons she included Aria—the closest friend to her of all three—in that text. She wanted to shake Aria’s happiness up because she couldn’t stand to see her have it.
What kind of person am I, Lord? Just how fucked up—messed up—am I?
Jessa slowed the Jag as she waited for the electronic wrought-iron gate to open. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, anxious to be on her way. She turned on some music, glad when the sounds of a classic Luther Vandross song filled the interior of the car, because she was anxious to be free of her thoughts, free from self-reflection.
As soon as the gate opened, she zoomed ahead, forcing her body to relax as she drove. It took only two additional songs for her to reach the Heavenly Rest Cemetery. Jessa followed the curving path leading to a beautiful weeping willow tree. After parking, she climbed from the car and was careful not to walk directly over anyone’s grave as she came up to her husband’s plot.
She pressed a kiss to her fingertips before pressing them to his headstone. She smiled a bit as she looked down at his portrait etched onto the black granite. She moved to take a seat on the granite bench at the foot of his plot. There were many days after his death that she found solace sitting here in silence and remembering the goodness of him and his love for her.
But it had been years since her last visit. Trying to fill her life up with Eric had occupied her time.
Marc, I was a fool to think he could replace you.
Jessa licked her gloss-free lips as she wrung her hands together struggling to find the words. “One of the things that made me love you was how you believed in me. How you saw the good in me when I didn’t even see it in myself. Everyone hates me and ... I guess I understand, but do you hate me, Marc?” she asked, her voice breaking to even below a whisper as new tears fell.
“This is the most I’ve cried since you passed away,” she admitted with a half laugh as she used the sides of her hands to wipe away her tears. “I don’t know if it was Eric trying to send me to you up there or PMS or ... or ... hell, I don’t know. I just know I’m sick of crying. Remember how it makes my eyes and face puffy, like I lost a round to a boxer.”
Jessa fell silent and she wiped her hands on her dress as she eyed the sketch of him on the headstone. “I never allowed myself to think how you would feel about me getting involved with Eric. A piece of me was so pissed at you for leaving me. You know I
hated
those motorcycles. I gave every last one away after you died ... but I guess you know that.”
She blinked away more tears.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you—or even Jaime—back then. I just knew I wanted to be happy. I wanted not to be alone again. I wanted to be loved.” Jessa dropped her head in her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Aw shit. I’m crying again.”
She jumped to her feet and made sure to walk along the edge of his grave to press another kiss to her fingertips before pressing them to his lips on the picture. She turned and made her way back to her car with just one last look back at his grave over her shoulder before she climbed behind the wheel and drove away.
Jessa fingered the bruises that had all but disappeared from her neck. They had been bright and bold against her caramel complexion. Her own badge of shame similar to the scarlet letter pinned to the bodice of Hester Prynne.
Forcing her fingers away from her neck, she steered the vehicle back toward Richmond Hills but passed the entrance to the subdivision to drive three blocks to turn into the gated parking lot of the church. Although Eric had been buried at his family’s Catholic church, something about sitting in the parking lot in her car and watching the people enter the Methodist church reminded her too much of what happened just two days ago at the funeral.
What if they have seen my face and heard my story and don’t even let me in?
What if the sermon is on wayward women who covet thy neighbor’s husband?
Jessa gasped at an image of every woman in the church rising to their feet and pointing to her as they shouted, “Mistress,” “Whore,” “Jezebel!” Especially since a lot of the Richmond Hills community attended the church.
Jessa hated the fear she felt, and she hated even more when she steered her car out of the church’s parking lot. The old Jessa would have walked in with her head held high and dared a soul to challenge her.
Not wanting to return to the house and the noise, Jessa steered her Jag toward the Terrace Room. She hadn’t really eaten in the days since the attack.
Maybe the smell of food will make me hungry,
she thought as she pulled up to the valet station of the chateau-styled 1930s home that had been converted into a restaurant.
She hadn’t been there since the day she met with Aria and got into the altercation that left her on the floor with a knot on her forehead from the cell phone the bitch threw at her. Climbing from the car with her Birkin, Jessa gave Andre, the valet, a warm smile that he returned before he climbed behind the wheel of the Jag and pulled off.
She eased her shades up onto the top of her head as she walked up the brick steps into the restaurant. Her steps faltered as the eyes of Kilpatrick, the restaurant’s maître d’, shifted from hers. Or rather he averted them from hers.
Jessa instantly felt regret for coming here. She was still being judged—and now by the staff that once respected her. Refusing to let him or anyone else see her sweat, she inched her chin higher and stepped up to the wooden podium where he stood.
“Table for one,” Jessa said, her husky voice cool.
Kilpatrick nodded his bald head and retrieved a leather-bound menu. “Um, yes, ma’am. Right this way,” he said, his usual cool composure gone as he appeared flustered in her presence. “Ms. Bell?”
Jessa looked up at him with her eyebrow cocked high. “Yes?”
Kilpatrick licked his thin lips and stepped closer to her. “There won’t be any repeat altercation like your last visit?”
Jessa felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. The man was worried about an embarrassing scene and not the scandal called her life—well, not entirely. She just remembered that he had politely asked that both she and Aria refrain from having “a dining experience at the Terrace Room.”
“I can assure you, Kilpatrick, no drama. Just breakfast,” Jessa replied.
“No guests?”
“No, Kilpatrick,” she stressed. “No guests.”
He smiled at her and turned. “Right this way.”
Jessa followed the tall and slender white man farther into the beautiful interior filled with the bright light streaming through the many windows and the French country décor that spoke of both comfort and elegance.
She spotted Councilman Weathers and his wife as she passed. Jessa had volunteered to work during his literacy campaign last year. She opened her mouth to speak, but when the councilman’s wife frowned at her, Jessa almost ate her words.
“Hello, Councilman Weathers,” Jessa said in a husky voice with a soft smile as she passed their table.
The tall and distinguished politician with silver-flecked hair nodded his hair at her. “How are you feeling, Ms. Bell? Ow!”
Jessa watched as his wife glared at him, and she knew from his grunt that the woman probably kicked him under the table. She kept her eyes locked on the back of Kilpatrick’s head, ignoring the stares and whispers of those around her.
He held her seat for her and Jessa offered him a polite smile over her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, handing her the menu. “And I’m glad to see you are doing well, ma’am. Truly.”
“Thank you, Kilpatrick,” she said, hating that even a moment of kindness from a maître d’ mattered so much to her in that moment.
Jessa lowered her menu and found nearly five sets of eyes on her. They looked away as she met each of their gazes. The waiter came and she ordered an egg-white omelet with chicken sausage and fresh fruit on the side.
I need a diversion,
Jessa thought.
She noticed a handsome man at the bar eyeing her before he raised his glass to her in a silent salute.
Not
that
type of diversion,
she thought, giving him a polite smile.

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