Playing Hard To Get

  PLAYING HARD TO GET

  Also by Grace Octavia

  Something She Can Feel

  His First Wife

  Take Her Man

  Published by Dafina Books

  PLAYING HARD TO GET

  Grace Octavia

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  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

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  A Reading Group Guide

  Discussion Questions

  1

  All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…

  —Jacques in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It

  And 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 Bi
bles 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.

  But really that didn’t matter. Men like Charleston seldom carried their good looks on their shoulders. They had everything they needed to be considered “handsome, striking, and especially sexy” in their pockets. A self-made millionaire, Charleston started his good looks when he won his first medical malpractice lawsuit, right out of Dartmouth Law. His clients, five transplant patients who’d contracted HIV due to receiving infected organs from the same untested donor, were awarded $25 million each. His cut was 30 percent.

  “Is that a pad?” Charleston asked, stilling grinding into Tamia. “You have your period?”

  “Yeah.” Tamia thought she sounded convincing…at least confident. “I guess we can’t…we can’t have sex.” She raised her eyebrows matter-of-factly and shrugged her shoulders, ready for Charleston to get his 225-pound, overly exercised body off of hers.

  “That’s weird—I could’ve sworn you had it two weeks ago.”

  Tamia was silent. Saying anything wrong here could get her into trouble two weeks later when she really did get her period.

  “Well, what day is it?” he asked.

  “What?” She was sure he couldn’t mean what she already knew he did.

  “Is it the first day? Because we had sex two days ago.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Are you bleeding heavily or lightly?” Charleston tried to maneuver his hand into the top of her night pants, but Tamia flicked it away. “Let me check.”

  “Yuck,” she protested, pulling away from him. “I don’t do that. We’ve never had sex on my period.”

  “Stop being such a prude. Some women love having sex on their period,” Charleston said, looking down at his penis. “We can put a towel down.”

  “Let’s not do that and say we did.” Tamia pulled away from him and groaned, finding her way to her side of the bed as he sat with a surprised look. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was he that desperate that he’d put his hand on her pad? Yeah, she’d had sex while on her period before, but things had changed since she was young and horny, living in a boxy walk-up in Alphabet City as she starved her way through NYU Law and dreamed of the life she now had. Now they were lying on $400 white Egyptian cotton sheets and the concierge would be there to pick up the laundry in the morning. She was one of seven black owners in the entire building and four were basketball players. The last thing she needed was the cleaners talking about how they’d found blood on her sheets. Tamia sucked her teeth at the thought before reminding herself that there would be no blood on the sheets. She didn’t really have her period. Her performance was so convincing, she’d convinced herself.

  Now she wanted nothing more than to ask Charleston to leave. In five minutes, he’d managed to run past the finish line in a race to get on her nerves. But then she remembered one important detail that kept her from completely losing herself in a rage—this important detail was what she’d remember sixty days later when she was standing bald and draped in a sari with a delinquent notice from the bank in her hand. Charleston, in all of his doggedness, had been paying her $10,000 monthly mortgage.

  

  After years of countless “nos,” rejected young boys with rock-hard penises eventually became rejected grown men with rock-hard penises. And most of these men, Charleston and his well-accounted-for ego excluded, learned to take this denial of sex with a shrug and walk to a private place where he and his private part could find icy water or Vaseline and a Playboy magazine.

  Somehow, this kind of acceptance never found Reverend Dr. Kyle Hall. Maybe it was because the Morehouse alum and third-generation preacher had been a virgin when he’d met his bride at a country club just three years earlier and had never really suffered sexual rejection like most of his comrades. Maybe it was because the thirty-two-year-old had grown to love every consuming aspect of the deed he’d successfully sequestered himself from for so long. Maybe it was because Kyle’s brown skin and markedly handsome features drew looks and silent promises of adventure from nearly all of the saved women he’d come across each day. Regardless, of all of these “maybes,” Kyle thought, lying in bed as he touched his still-rigid penis and watched Troy sleep in the same stately position he’d found her in when he’d come out of the bathroom naked, the “maybe” that mattered the most was that he was madly attracted to his wife. While it hadn’t been that long since they’d been together, most people would be surprised that the feeling he’d felt when a puffy-eyed and newly single Troy marched into the dining room at the country club where he was sharing lunch with her parents, had never left him. Her smooth, supple skin haunted him when they were apart for only hours. Her eyes, almond and darting like a doe’s, were visible in his mind, calling him into her, even when she was saying no.

  And just as he had so many nights before, Kyle heard Troy say no to him and his hairless, coconut-candied body again. And it hurt just as much as it had the first time she’d turned him down. Seemingly ignoring his nudity as he got into the bed beside her, Troy asked if he would pray with her and before the young reverend could answer, she started a loud and long prayer thanking God for his only “forgotten son.” Kyle didn’t have the energy to correct his wife. Instead, his mind was focused on the fact that he wasn’t getting any sex. He kept thinking, if only he could get her to feel this thing he’d had in him—what made him shave his entire body and pour coconut oil to be licked and rubbed off all before he’d even thought of bedtime prayer—he’d be fine. But when he reached for Troy with his one free
hand, risking another sexual denial, it was made rather clear that she wasn’t feeling anything. The Bible that was hiding her vagina fell to the floor after a sleeping Troy grunted at Kyle’s touch. She turned her torso toward the window and started a deep, mannish snore that wouldn’t stop for another three hours when Troy awoke, sweating and searching for her Bible, so she could escape to the prayer closet to pray the incubus and succubus demons away.

  This was because, like her awake husband, Troy had sex on the brain. And while she’d struggled so hard to hide it when she was awake, at rest and between clouded thoughts and montages of the past, Troy was captive to her desires.

  “Oh, Reverend, you give it to me so good,” Troy whispered into Kyle’s ear as he sat back in the big black leather chair behind his desk at the church. In reality, the chair sat on all fours, but in the dream, it swiveled around in circles as she plopped down harder and harder in her husband’s lap. Papers went flying. The phone was ringing. Knocks shook the door. Troy and Kyle didn’t stop. “Oh, Reverend! Oh, Reverend!”

  Without transition, the sexy scene went from the magically swiveling chair to the long brown couch where Kyle counseled most of the worshippers at the Harlem sanctuary he headed. There, a naked Troy sat center, her legs just inches apart, her husband seated on the floor in front of her. While he never wore a priest’s white collar, now it sat crisp and immaculate at his neck. The rest of him was naked and quite hairy.

  “I know this is what you like, Sister Troy,” Kyle said, pushing her legs open. “I’m gonna make you scream. I’m gonna make you praise the Lord.”

  He lined her thighs with primitive bites and then snapped his neck back at her middle. He licked and pulled. Troy’s body was a bubble being blown to its limits. A wave of pleasure so strong it stiffened her spine forced her legs together taut around the holy man’s neck. She grabbed his head and pulled it closer to her.