Playing Hard To Get
Read Playing Hard To Get Online
Authors: Grace Octavia
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LAYING
H
ARD TO
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ET
Also by Grace Octavia
Something She Can Feel
His First Wife
Take Her Man
Published by Dafina Books
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LAYING
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ARD TO
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Grace Octavia
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
All copyrighted material within is
Attributor Protected.
For every beautiful black man
who has ever driven
any woman crazy:
Thanks.
And for my first “Malik”:
Orpheus “Malik” Williams,
the most pro-black teen Westbury ever knew.
So happy you’re still committed to your people
Acknowledgments
First, I have to thank the Creator for seeing in me a soul that could be trusted with words and stories and secrets. This is one powerful gift and I remain humbled by the grace that allows me to share it. I am thankful that I have a God who sits high and looks low. Where others might see a frail human, my God sees my heart.
But even with divine providence from the Creator, no man is an island and no writer can exist with only her laptop and a power cord. That said, I have to thank my family, friends, literary friends, my community, and my readers around the world for lifting me up and believing in my vision for what I do. I am an artist of letters. I take that very seriously and I thank you for each and every time that you support this art thing.
To the unstoppable cheering squad at Kensington, including my editor, Mercedes Fernandez—who has been there since book one, I thank all of you for your continued support and patience.
To my agent, Tracy Sherrod, my grandmother and number one supporter, Julia Reid, and all of the other sisterfriends who I caught trying to single-handedly sell all of my books at Wal-Mart, your passionate support keeps me going when I am down to those last 200 words!
To the outlets who support writers and the publishing industry, and reviewers who have taken time to peek at my work—RAWSISTAZ, Urban Reviewers, APOOO,
Essence
magazine,
Booklist, The Romantic Times,
etc.—I pray I continue to give you works that invigorate your literary experience.
Lastly, I must thank and speak to every person who has ever done anything toward achieving revolutionary change in their life. Be it cutting off all of your hair and going natural, paying off your credit, going back to school, or starting your own business. Know that to reach your brilliant self, sometimes you have to peel back the layers of what you’re used to looking at and just peek inside at a new, lovely you.
I wrote the story myself. It’s all about a girl who
lost her reputation but never missed it.
—Mae West
3T Diva Dictionary
Afro-disiac: 1. A “love jones” or strong desire to be
with a natural brother or sister that’s
sure to change everything in its path.
2. When Tamia meets Malik.
Contents
1
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…
—Jacques in William Shakespeare’s
As You Like It
A
nd on this luxurious, $5 million stage, nestled on the twenty-second floor of the desirous address of One Central Park West, known to the world as Trump Towers, is an astute and determined player, a woman who, it would seem to anyone watching, was preparing for the role of her life.
No, she wasn’t making good on girlhood dreams of winning an Oscar or Emmy. Nonetheless, her starring role was just as riveting, just as compelling. Simply put, the angelically divine black beauty was attempting what other tired women had been trying to do at every other place in the world for as long as time existed—go to bed without having sex.
So, in the privacy of her bathroom, beneath a $10,000 Kalco chandelier that cast a sinister light over her freshly permed
and then
pressed hair, Tamia Dinkins slid an unnecessarily thick, overnight, extra-long, winged, and superabsorbent pad into the crotch of her aqua lace panties.
“Urggh,” she groaned at the prehistoric, uncomfortable weight and width of the thing between her thighs. It was so ridiculous and Tamia wondered how she ever, ever concealed these things beneath her acid-washed jeans and EnVogue-tight miniskirts when she’d gotten her period in junior high school. Happily, because of nature and the intelligent folks at Playtex, she’d outgrown these little mattresses now; however, that didn’t stop her from putting one on. Charleston, her ongoing leading male for the past six months, was in the bedroom. He’d been out there waiting nearly every night for two months, and quite frankly, Tamia was tired of how comfortable Charleston seemed to be getting with coming to her place, having acrobatic sex, slipping into a coma, and waking in the morning only to leave and return hours later to do it all again. And while the leading lady kept telling herself that she needed time and space to think about things with Charleston and where they were going, really she just wanted a night alone. She’d watch some tacky old R&B music videos, have a glass of overpriced Chardonnay, and think about nothing until the morning.
“Babe, what are you doing in there?” Tamia heard Charleston excitedly calling from the bedroom. He was probably already naked, his arms and legs spread out on her silk bedspread like a honeydusted cobweb.
“I’m coming,” she said. She hoped he’d noticed the Midol tablets she’d conveniently left on the nightstand.
On another stage, not too far from the last, in the pricey and historic Hamilton Heights enclave in Harlem, Tamia’s best friend was preparing for a less than convincing performance to achieve the same goal. Somewhere between Friday-night Bible study and walking into her refurbished brownstone, First Lady Troy Helene Hall decided that her husband, the good Reverend Dr. Kyle Hall, who’d come into her life like a prince in a fairy tale, wasn’t getting any either. In fact, it had now been exactly a month since Troy and Kyle had shared more than prayers in their antique Thomas Day bed. And even then, it had been a Valentine’s Day “treat” (Troy actually said this).
Trying her best to escape a diva past filled with enough Chanel and Lauren to solidify her top ranking among any circle of purified BAPs, a newly sanctified and debatably saved Troy prided herself on being less dubious and creative in her method of withholding sex than Tamia. She knew about the old “I’m on my period” maxi pad trick but thought no good Christian wife had any business lying to her husband like that. She thought that if she didn’t want to have sex, she didn’t have to have sex. It was that simple.
“No sex,” Troy rehearsed telling Kyle as she laid in bed, dressed in a white cotton smock that, combined with her smooth fawn skin and flaxen hair, made her look like an eighteenth-century house girl. Worse, beneath the frock, she had on the biggest, most raggedy, stretched-out, and faded panties she could find in the back of her drawer.
Her knees tight and her hands crossed above a Bible that rested atop her vagina, Troy waited in bed for Kyle to come out of the bathroom so they could pray and go to sleep in peace. But when the reverend did open the bathroom door, Troy wished she’d had on that superabsorbent maxi pad. Standing inside of the crowned rectangle that separated their underused bed from their underused spa tub, was her husband. Nude and oiled to a shine, he had a silver ring clasping his erect penis.
On the third stage, the player needed no pads or Bibles for her theatrical run, for it was a one-woman show. Alone in a California king-size bed that came to her Alpine, New Jersey, mansion with special measurements to provide a comfortable sleep for her superstar basketball-playing husband, Tasha LaRoche had only two props—a waterproof, neon green vibrator that rested in its normal place beside her in the bed and a cell phone she held to her ear.
“You’re so damn sexy, baby. I want you right now,” a stern yet mischievous voice insisted through the phone. It was her husband. Lionel was in Miami, getting ready to play the Heat the next night in a March matchup.
“Yeah, Daddy. I want you, too,” Tasha said with her voice as breathy and childlike as a porn star’s. Her nearly sable skin blushed with fever as she imagined her husband’s big, chocolate hands grabbing for her. Lionel knew how to handle a woman. He was forceful and demanding, yet still careful and comforting. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m going to get you on the bed and kiss every inch of your body, slowly, until you beg me to get on top of you.”
“Yes,” Tasha moaned, imagining her husband’s lips brushing against her breasts. Without opening her eyes, she reached for the other prop and pulled it to her. “I want you inside of me right now.”
“I’m coming, baby, but first I have to get you ready. I have to move my lips down below your navel—”
“Oh, yes, Lionel. Yes!” Tasha slid the vibrator between her legs and clicked. A swift pulse buzzed beneath the sheet.
“And then I’m going to—”
“Yes!” Tasha pushed the insides of her pelvis toward the little toy and waited to hear her husband’s next command. “What are you going to…? Lionel? Hello?”
Silence.
After being tackled to her bed by a nude man with five moving limbs, Tamia thought that maybe Charleston had been on the wrestling team at Dartmouth. With her legs cocked back to her sides and his middle pushed hard into her, she wondered how and when he’d managed to manipulate her body in such a way. And she was still in her nightclothes.
Charleston was a decent-looking man. He had clear, brown skin and nice teeth. He kept his bald head shaved and his ears clean. His eyes weren’t crossed and he didn’t have shaving bumps (Tamia’s deal breakers).
Presentable
was a good word, Tamia thought the first time she saw him. He looked like someone any woman wouldn’t mind taking somewhere and claiming. However, even with this, there was nothing about Charleston that made him handsome or striking or especially sexy.
