National bestselling author Niobia Bryant serves up a scorchingly sexy and scandalous new Mistress series installment about finding love, reigniting passion, keeping secrets—and way too many incendiary lies … After surviving a shattering betrayal by a former friend, Jaime Pine has every reason to celebrate. Stronger and savvier after her "perfect" marriage crashedand-burned, Jaime now has Luc, a billionaire music mogul willing to give her everything, including a dazzling career, and what looks like a forever happily-everafter. Until a no-limits island vacation with her best friends turns up the last person Jaime ever expected to see again … Unforgettable Graham Walker, aka "Pleasure," is an ex-escort skilled at mindblowing sex. But now, after coming to terms with his own troubled past, Graham is a changed man. And Jaime finds him more irresistible than ever. Yet after one last no-holds-barred night together and a connection that can't be denied, Jaime decides to finally put Graham in the past and move on with her new life as planned. She accepts Luc's proposal of marriage—and then discovers she's pregnant. Torn and confused, Jaime spins a desperate web of half-truths and lies-ofomission to protect both men—and herself—as she struggles to choose her path. But when her secrets explode in public, the choice is made for her. Can she deal with her mistakes honestly and do what's best for everyone involved?
Release date:
June 29, 2021
Publisher:
Kensington Books
Print pages:
320
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
For that, Jaime was grateful. And happy. Maybe for the first time.
Thank God.
She took a sip of her rum punch as she looked out at the idyllic turquoise waters of the Grand Anse Beach in Grenada. The West Indies island, northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, with its white sand, warm climate, and scenic views was the perfect backdrop for the luxury boutique all-inclusive beach resort. As she moved to lean her bikini-clad body in the open doorway of the beachside suite, she smiled at her two friends in the distance on chaise lounges, soaking up the sun and enjoying beachside room service from beautiful Grenadians with skin bronzed by melanin and the Caribbean sun. They had only been on the island a few hours and already the drinks were plentiful and the food divine—she was instantly addicted to crab backs, the island’s creamy version of stuffed crab shells. The amenities of the Black-owned boutique beach resort were specially crafted to make you feel pampered, have fun, and explore. The island was brimming with history and culture. The music. The vibes. Beauty and light.
I love it here.
And I love him for sending me and my friends here.
Allowing herself another sip of the sweet concoction made with dark rum that was native to the country, Jaime smiled into her drink as her belly warmed at the thought of him. Her man. Her lover. Her love. Not her everything. Not her completion. They came together as two whole beings looking to add value to each other’s lives. That real shit. Grown folk shit.
For the first time, she loved and was loved back without complications. No drama or suspicions. No games. It was all good.
So damn good.
Jaime bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes with a little grunt as she remembered the heated hours they shared in his king-sized bed last night before she and her friends boarded his private jet for their week-long girl’s trip.
Shit, I almost overslept this morning.
Memories of his head buried between her thick brown thighs led her to fan her warm neck with a little sigh.
Life was damn good.
The past—the last ten years or better—was more of a footnote in her life and not the sum of it. For that she was glad. Now she could think back on her marriage, destroyed by a lack of love, respect, good sex, and trust, without a wild range of emotions. The anger had faded—at herself for not knowing she was worthy of more, at her mother for teaching her that her husband should be her everything as if a god, and at the men in her life for exploiting her weaknesses.
No more.
That silly message Jessa Bell sent was meant to taunt and torment, but it ended up being Jaime’s salvation. That day had led to a reckoning and in time she hadn’t cared which husband was guilty when faced with the truth hidden by her seemingly perfect marriage to Eric Hall, Junior.
Perfect bullshit.
For her the marriage was over regardless—his possible guilt as the lover to one of her best friends was irrelevant. She hadn’t even maintained her own fidelity. Just once. But once was enough. Especially with the one she chose to give her the pleasure her husband was ill-equipped—psychologically and physically—to do. So, by the end of that day, she packed a bag and moved out.
And then the real fun began.
Needing a diversion from that small but indelible chapter of her life during her post-Eric days, Jaime pushed off the door frame to turn and walk inside the den with the ends of her sheer pastel cover-up slightly floating in the air behind her. The décor of off-white with splashes of beachy colors was calming, but it was her cell phone on which she was focused. Setting the crystal goblet on the Sedona redwood sofa table, she dug her device out of her monogrammed designer tote.
“Jaime!”
She turned with her phone in hand as Aria came to a stop in the wide entryway with the stone terrace and beach as her backdrop. “What’s taking you so long?” she asked, pushing her rose-gold aviator shades atop her massive afro shaped curls.
Jaime slightly shook her head in wonder that Aria’s slim-thick body in a tiger print bikini had carried two children—a ten-year-old and a six-year-old. Unlike her, Jaime had not. And unlike her, Jaime wasn’t altogether sure she wanted children.
The mark her mother, Virginia Osten-Pine, left on her life—with all her rules of being a proper lady and wife based on societal pressures, religious zeal, and the judgments of others—had led Jaime into a marriage severely lacking in warmth, love, and respect while pretending otherwise. The abuse wasn’t physical, but allowing a man to not only make her feel less than in private and then standing at her side while she smiled and pretended otherwise in public was abuse all its own. It was a highly functioning lie and less than she—or anyone—deserved.
She hadn’t known how it felt to live her truth in those days.
For the first time in years, she longed for a cigarette and licked her lips to help curb the urge.
“Nothing,” Jaime finally answered her, still holding her phone as she shifted her temporary waist-length braids behind her back before grabbing her drink and crossing the space to step out into the Grenadian heat.
“This is paradise,” Aria said, replacing her shades before she spread her arms wide and tilted her head back as they crossed the terrace and walked under the brief shade of a towering palm tree.
“Yes, it is,” Jaime agreed as a cooling wind caressed her body.
“I needed this,” Aria sighed.
Jaime eyed her, knowing her friend spoke the truth. Of the three marriages tested by the silly message of a vixen, Aria and Kingston’s had survived. Not even the serious financial woes of Kingston opening a second medical practice six years ago had shaken their foundation irrevocably. As far as she knew things were better. But she could only know what she was told.
She opened her mouth to ask if all was well on the home front but paused, wanting to be sure the question was from true concern and not just curiosity. Daily she checked to make sure the selfishness and pettiness of her past were gone. In the past, she used to be so miserable she took joy in others’ pain and plight to feel better about her own mess. “Everything okay?” she asked.
Aria’s pause was noticeable.
Jaime assumed she too was assessing whether shadows of the old Jaime lingered.
“Just some work stuff,” Aria said, sounding vague.
Jaime forced herself to release the annoyance that rose at the thought of her friend still not trusting her after so many years. I left the stain, and I must allow time for it to fade.
Aria used to be a freelance writer who had snagged interviews with celebrities for top African-American magazines, but after her debut fiction novel failed to thrive—no matter how brilliantly written—her option for another book was not picked up and the couple’s money troubles led to her taking on work as an editor of a successful magazine that transitioned to a digital-only platform. So many times, she had admitted that her desire to write was fading in response to the duties of her full-time job.
“Well appreciate the break from it all... even my godchildren,” Jaime said with a smile.
Aria slightly nodded her head in agreement. “You owe your guy one helluva blowie,” she said with a wink just as they reached Renee lounging on a citron chaise lounge with her eyes closed as she luxuriated in the sun that was deepening her already caramel complexion to golden and made her ultrashort hair glow like a halo.
“Swallow and all,” Renee agreed, briefly opening one eye to look up at them.
“Cum up and then clean up,” Aria added with her signature brash and bold style.
The old Jaime would have blushed in shock and embarrassment. Felt disrespected even.
She’s long gone.
“Done and done,” Jaime admitted as she removed her sheer wrap and lay it over the back of the orange lounge chair. She removed her gold metallic slides and dug her toes into the heated white sand for a few moments before claiming her seat and crossing her ankles.
“Don’t make me miss Kingston,” Aria said with a little moan as she stretched her form across the middle chaise.
“And both of you stop rubbing your men in my lonely face,” Renee said. “My shower head does not match up.”
Aria gave her a consoling pout. “It’s consistent as fuck though,” she offered.
Renee smiled broadly. “There’s that. For its purposes, it never disappoints.”
Jaime glanced over at her, ever amazed that although Renee was older than them by almost a decade, she didn’t look it except for the flashes of silver in her close-shaven hair. Although she wore a more modest one piece and had a slight pudge in the middle, she was still a stunner. She knew if her friend wanted to claim a man—whether as a lover or more—finding one was no issue. After two failed marriages where her heart was broken by infidelity, Jaime could understand Renee’s reluctance to try love again.
Been there. Done that.
“I understand protecting your heart, but other body parts?” Jaime asked.
“Let that thing live before it dies, girl,” Aria added, picking up her glass of rum punch from the clear serving table beside each lounge.
Jaime chuckled as she looked up and down the length of the beach. The stretch of it near the resort was more private but still, people lounged nearby relishing the clear turquoise waters with blue skies and emerald green hills in the distance. “And what better place than heaven on earth,” she said as she eyed a tall, muscled man walking out of the water. “Look at what God has created.”
The women all eyed him. This stranger with skin as dark as blackberries that glistened from the sun and water dripping down every hard contour of his body barely covered by white trunks that came to his muscled thighs. The wet material clung to his inches, leaving no doubt he was built to please.
“Well amen to that,” Renee sighed with a slight bite of her bottom lip.
“Let him bless you,” Aria said.
Jaime picked up her phone and let them enjoy the show. She had enough dick in her life.
Good dick, too.
She took a few selfies and posted them to Instagram just as her notification for a new email sounded off. Hoping it wasn’t one of her staff at her interior design firm interrupting her vacation, she opened it.
A new Google alert.
“Let me see if this cougar can catch some tender meat,” Renee said.
“I know that’s right,” Aria cheered her on. “Walk to the water and I’ll see if he’s looking.”
“Jezebel,” Jaime muttered, feeling her entire body tense as she opened and read the news story.
“What’s wrong?” Aria asked her.
Jaime forced her body to relax as she rotated her shoulders and glanced over at Renee pausing in her walk to stretch her Amazon-like figure. “Jessa,” she muttered, trying not to clench her teeth at the very thought of the woman they’d foolishly thought was a friend.
“Oh, that Jezebel,” Aria sighed. “What that bitch up to these days?”
“Falling on her feet once again,” Jaime said. “She just married Horatio Montgomery.”
“The businessman?” Aria asked.
“The millionaire businessman,” Jaime amended. “That evil cat has nine lives. Maybe ninety-nine.”
“And how, may I ask, do you know about this?” Aria asked, reaching to take Jaime’s phone from her hand to read through the news story. “I thought you deleted the google alert on her name.”
Jaime released a heavy breath. “It hasn’t gone off in five or six years,” she said, by way of avoiding answering the question.
“And now we have info that offers absolutely nothing to our lives,” Aria said handing the device back. “Delete it, Jaime. Let’s move on from Jessa. Let’s never speak her name again. Let’s pretend she doesn’t even exist.”
“For so long my life has been entwined with hers,” Jaime explained. “And in the past every time I thought we were done with her, the bitch would pop back up out of the blue. I wanted to stay ready.”
“Fuck her,” Aria stressed. “Fuck her life. Fuck her soul. Fuck every bit of that bitch from her red bottoms to the tips of her red fingernails. Fuuuuuck her.”
Jaime smiled. It was hard not to. Aria’s funny was constant.
“Fuck her,” Jaime agreed as she deleted the Google alert. “No more Jessa.”
Aria raised her glass of rum punch. “Absolutely no more,” she said.
Jaime lifted her glass as well to toast to that.
They fell silent and looked on as Renee entered the water and then swam to emerge in the direct line of vision of the chocolate angel. She had his attention as she glanced at him before walking over to them with water dripping down her body.
“Got ’em?” Renee asked them as she stretched some more for good measure.
“Got ’em,” Aria confirmed.
Renee glanced back over her shoulder and gave him a smile at finding his eyes on her. Smooth as hell, she picked up a towel and began to slowly dry the wetness from her body, keeping his attention.
“A brother that fine has to have a woman,” Aria said.
Behind the cover of her shades, Jaime shifted her gaze to Renee whose hunger for him—or maybe any man—was clear. “Other people’s dick is off the menu,” she reminded her, thinking of the mess her friend got herself into years ago when she cheated on her husband with her ex-husband who was newly married to his pregnant side chick. Some Maury and Jerry Springer blended kind of a mess.
“Excuse me, Ms. Pine.”
All three women looked up at the uniformed woman now standing beside Jaime’s lounger. She was the concierge assigned to their suite and her smile was bright with her white teeth against her caramel complexion and crimson red lips. “I knocked on the door but when I didn’t get an answer, I decided to try the beach,” she said with her island accent. “I figured you might be limin’ on the beach.”
“Liming?” Jaime asked.
“Relaxin’,” the woman explained of the island lingo.
Jaime eyed the wooden name tag pinned to the white polo shirt she wore with white shorts. “How can I help you, Charmaine?” she asked.
“I have a message for you,” she said before extending her arm and handing over a thick manila envelope.
“Thank you,” Jaime said, already knowing that it could only be from one person.
The woman gave them one last charming smile before she left them.
“Open the door,” she read to herself.
Wait? What?
She sat up and swiveled on the chair to look past the serene patio shrouded by tropical flowers and potted plants to the inside of the spacious suite at the intricately carved wooden front doors. Was he on the other side?
Her heart raced as she rose and pressed her bare feet into the depths of the hot sand as she quickly ate up the distance.
“Jaime, what’s wrong?” Renee called behind her.
She ran across the beach with ease to grab both of the bronzed handles to turn and fling the doors wide open. “Oh,” she said in a breath, moving quickly from disappointment to surprise at the four strangers standing there.
Another note was pressed into her hand. She opened it quickly. “Friends to cherish you. A chef to nourish you. A mixologist to relax you. A musician to serenade you. A massage to spoil you,” she read in a whisper. “My love? All for you.”
This man. This man. This man.
Jaime’s heart continued to pound as she clutched the note, pressing her thumb against his bold and slashing initial while she watched them all unpack their supplies. The chef and bartender claimed the kitchen. The masseuse and guitarist set up on the patio.
Jaime walked back to the beach, finding only Aria. “We have a pampering suite set up inside,” she said, proud of yet another treat from her man. “Where’s Renee?”
Aria began gathering her things. “Clearing out the cobwebs,” she said, looking past Jaime’s shoulder.
She glanced back and then her mouth dropped to see Renee and her chocolate angel frolicking in the water together. Her eyes widened when he pulled her body close to pick up against his as she wrapped her arms and legs around him. “That happened quickly,” she drawled, walking back to the villa.
“Horny is as horny does, girl,” Aria said.
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.
Jaime smiled as she picked up her phone and the screen was filled with the face of the man she loved. She answered the FaceTime call as she moved away from Aria for privacy. “Hey you,” she said.
“I had a break in between meetings and thought I’d check on you,” he said, his voice deep and delicious.
She held the phone up away from her face and then panned it up and down her body as she posed for him, pausing at the spots he loved the best. “Just getting some sun,” she said.
“Damn. That’s one hell of a bathing suit, Jaime,” he said.
“When browning, the more skin exposed the better,” she advised him.
“And making me wish I was there,” he said, his voice swelling with his desire as his brown eyes seemed to darken in color.
“To do what?” she asked, turning as she eyed a couple walking up behind her hand in hand.
“Make us cum,” he countered.
As she flooded with warmth, Jaime gave him a look that was more playful than scolding. “Don’t let being horny get you in trouble while I’m away,” she said, tapping a coffin-shaped glossy nail against the screen.
“You never have to worry about that,” he assured with a serious expression.
And she knew his words were real.
Since she met Luc Sinclair a little over a year ago, he had been nothing but a man of his word...
It took weeks of working together for him to wear her down and he had been right. He had never made her regret it. Not once.
Not like Graham . . .
One year later, without hearing from him, Jaime had still held out hope they would both heal the wounds of their pasts and reconnect, until Jessa, in a drunken rage, cruelly revealed that Graham and she had slept together that very day. That had been five years ago.
No, he’s not Graham to me. Not anymore. He’s Pleasure. Always been Pleasure. And always will be Pleasure ’til the day his treacherous heart stops. I was a fool to ever think he loved me.
“Jaime, what’s wrong?” Luc asked.
She focused on his face on her phone and offered him a smile. “Not a thing. I’m headed in to enjoy my surprise,” she said, walking back over to Aria.
He chuckled and smiled. “Perfect. Call me when you’re done?” he asked.
With a soft wink, she ended the call.
“Was that Luc?” Aria asked as they made their way toward the private terrace.
Jaime gave her a look that said: “Who else?”
There was no one else for her.
Not anymore.
“Jaime.”
“Huh?” she asked in a whisper as she was lightly shaken from sleep.
“Ja-mie!” the voice urgently whispered to her again.
“What?” she snapped, lifting her head from the plush pillows to open her eyes. Aria was barely visible in the darkness. “What time is it?”
“If you would wake up and listen, it’s clearly dicking down time,” Aria whispered.
“What!” Jaime exclaimed with a frown.
“Ssssshhhh!”
What little she could see of Aria faded into the darkness. Jaime sat up and reached for the lamp.
“No, don’t turn the light on!” Aria exclaimed in a whisper. “Come over here.”
She rolled her eyes and flung back the covers. “Over where, you nut? It’s pitch dark,” she snapped in annoyance.
“Ssssshhhh!”
Jaime pressed her feet against the warm wood floor as she just made out Aria’s figure by the door to the left of the bed. Her queen-sized bed faced glass doors leading to the beach, but the curtains were drawn. She reached out and patted her nightstand for her phone to turn on the flashlight. She had barely taken a few steps when muffled cries sounded off.
“Yessssss. Yes! Yes! Yessssssssssssssssss!”
Jaime’s mouth fell open in surprise. “What in the entire hell was that?” she asked in a harsh whisper as she swung the beam of light onto her friend’s face.
Aria’s eyes were wide with shock and glee. “That is somebody—some man—fucking the hell out of Renee,” she said, before widening her eyes even more and cringing comically.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
“Well damn,” Jaime exclaimed at what had to be the headboard—or maybe just somebody’s head—banging against the wall.
A d. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
