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  “Go inside, Celestine,” Eryq sniffed. “If words like nigga and motherfucker represent the extent of your arsenal, then you’ll never defeat me in a war of words.”

  He closed his apartment door and immediately forgot about Celestine.

  Eryq could be an arrogant prick, and he knew it. Eryq could fuck like a god, and the devil was in him knowing this as well, and knowing that Rosalind knew it. Turning that arrogance on the general public and then racing home with him to reap the bedroom benefits of the resultant altercations was the best vehicle Rosalind had yet discovered for reconciling the two. It was also the most effective form of precoital masturbation she’d ever known. Nothing brought the heat like watching her lover fight for her as if she were a prize to be won, as if her orgasms were spoils of war to be earned upon battlefields of her covert choosing. Knowing this to be a fool’s fantasy, one more befitting a prepubescent, did nothing to diminish Rosalind’s arousal at the mere thought. Their time spent together was as much her indulgence as it was his victory lap, one to be savored in any and every manner she and her victorious warrior saw fit to choose. That was the game’s first, final, and only rule.

  “So what do you tell people when they ask you about meeting men the way you met me?” Eryq asked her the following evening after lovemaking.

  “Those who have to ask wouldn’t understand it,” she assured him. “Those evolved enough to grasp the concept aren’t blind. They know what this is. They know what we are.”

  “All right, then. By your estimation, what are we?”

  Rosalind grinned at him. “Sugar, any way you spin it, we’re playas. Of a greater game.”

  “Eryq might be an asshole, but I cum hard every time,” she would later tell her husband by cell phone. “Behave and tonight I’ll let you hear us fuck.”

  She kept her word. Eryq came without suspecting anything.

  Every so often, his guilt overwhelmed him.

  “Hello?” The cracked, listless female voice sounded smaller than Eryq had known it to be in the past.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, hoping the term of affection sounded less strange to her ear than it felt leaving his tongue. The five months since their last face-to-face encounter might as well have been five decades for the awkwardness he felt now.

  “Hey. What do you want?”

  It was the one question to which Eryq had failed to rehearse a satisfactory answer. “I don’t know. I guess I just miss you a little.”

  “We agreed not to speak.”

  “I just…wanted to hear your voice for a minute,” he admitted, cursing his weakness.

  “Well, time’s up. Good-bye, Eryq.”

  “Ananya, wait, please? I have some things to say.” He’d anticipated that this conversation would not go easily. That hadn’t kept him from hoping it might.

  “So do I. You knew what toll this arrangement would take on what we had. You knew what it would mean, but at the same time, you wanted what you wanted, and that’s always been the bottom line, hasn’t it? Do whatever it takes to satisfy your wants and needs and damn the consequences.”

  “Listen, I didn’t call you looking for a fight,” he began.

  A peal of her laughter belched forth without any lilt of humor. “Sorry. It’s just that, if you think it over, that’s kind of funny. Given the circumstances. Anyway, you want to tell me important things, then show up next month at the place and do what you have to do. You remember where the place is.”

  “Yeah, I remember where it is.”

  “Great. Right now I’ve got to go freshen my lipstick and climb back between Alphonse’s legs. That man likes him his brown sugar, don’t you know. Unlike some men I know, black women are still good enough for him.”

  Eryq cursed the unbidden visual that accompanied Ananya’s closing remark, one involving her caramel-colored perfection mashed beneath a hairy Mediterranean club member named Alphonse. It seemed that for everything that had changed between Eryq and Ananya, one thing remained constant: his wife was still peerless and unrivaled when it came to twisting the fucking knife.

  “You don’t care who suffers, so long as it’s dark meat you’re riding, do you?” Eryq asked, storming naked into their bedroom one month later. They were to visit the club that evening, where Eryq would participate in one of the quarterly tournaments responsible for bringing him and Rosalind together.

  “Where is all this coming from?” she asked, noting the strangeness of his facial expression. It was that of a man who didn’t know where he was or how he’d come to be there. Damn Ananya for always knowing how best to push his buttons.

  “I’m talking,” he said, tossing the comforter and sheets from the unmade bed, “about you and your husband joining the club, coming there looking specifically for a big, dumb Negro.” Eryq climbed onto her with a deadness behind his eyes usually reserved for men to whom he was about to hand a thrashing.

  “Your husband never had to fight for you,” he told her, shredding the nightshirt she wore, “and when he finally did, he lost. He lost you to a big, bald-headed nigger with a big, black dick for you to spin on. Isn’t that how you planned it? So how does the rest of the fantasy play out? When do we get to the rough stuff?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rosalind insisted, pulling away from Eryq’s advance.

  “Is this what it’s all about? Is it this right here?” he asked, grasping his cock at its base and dragging her toward him. “Is it all about this? Come on, sister! Admit it! Admit it!” He punctuated each demand by slamming his naked body down to spear her sex and drive the air from Rosalind’s lungs. Pelvic lunges of mounting savagery ground her protests into odes to his cock delivered through chattering teeth.

  “You’re a fine one to question anyone’s motives,” Rosalind told Eryq a short time later, bouncing wildly astride his hardness. “You think anyone believes you don’t attend every event hoping to spy a new piece of Caucasian or Latin or Asian ass waltz in on the arm of some man who you can’t wait to take apart? Don’t crucify me just because you lust as much as I did for experiences neither of us had ever had, and I’m the only one of us honest enough to admit it to myself.”

  “Fuck you,” Eryq grunted.

  “Yes, you are, and you’ve loved every minute of the past six months, haven’t you, shithead? We were only supposed to have three, but you’ve so relished playing schoolyard bully under the guise of defending your white queen’s ‘honor.’ Don’t lie that you haven’t. I’ve loved it, too. Having a strong, able lover fight for me and win. I’ve exploited the hell out of it.” They rolled. Rosalind found herself on her stomach.

  Lord Eryq’s helmet kissed Rosalind’s lubed anal pore. His unceremonious entry, the curl of his spittle-flecked lips, the mounting depth of his lunges, testified to his growing disdain for this woman who was not Ananya. Not to be outdone, Rosalind punched her fingernails through Eryq’s mattress and flung herself backward against his crotch, affirming the mutuality of the sentiment.

  “Nothing’s ever made your ‘big, black dick’ as hard as that, has it?” she shrieked, feeling Eryq collapse fully onto her, rutting riotously. “Handing down beatings to any unenlightened soul who you thought didn’t understand us as a couple!”

  They came together in ecstatic agony, each one’s orgasm fueling the other as they lay clinging to one another like first-time lovers fearful of being swept apart by the tempests ravaging their flesh.

  “What are we, by my estimation?” Rosalind gasped, echoing his question from weeks ago as they lay panting. “Sugar, we’re a good old-fashioned grudge fuck waiting to happen.”

  The “club” had changed locations three times since its inception two years ago. Tonight found it underground, in the basement of an abandoned warehouse on the east side of town near the river.

  Membership was by invitation only. The first rule of the club was that there was no club. The club was a myth fashioned by church shills to smear the swinger’s lifestyle. The club was an urban legend inve
nted by sex-hungry teenage boys. The club was anything that kept news of its existence from leaking to the wrong person and bringing it under suspicion of the unenlightened.

  Eryq and Rosalind descended into the club’s arena, a gymnasium-size room with poor lighting. Posted signs directed ladies to one side of this room, where folding chairs awaited, and men to the other. To the ladies, an open bar offered assorted libations. Eryq fingered the plastic disk in his back pocket, the one bearing Rosalind’s name.

  Their host, a middle-aged African-American gentleman wearing a graying beard and a simple turtleneck and blazer, took the stage to open the evening. By this time, nearly a hundred married couples stood present. A lot of these, Eryq noticed, were new meat. When the host spoke, he was brief, because tiresome rule recitations took time away from the main attraction.

  “Welcome, guys and dolls,” he sang, “to this evening’s main event: ‘Come Out Swinging,’ where we don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things, at least not on-premises. If you’re here, then you know the drill. Fellas, the object is simple: fight to the last man and leave with his tag in your hand. Make sure that your most recent swapmate’s full name is legible on the plastic disk hidden on your person. Remember, three months is a long time to go with some other dude balling your baby, so either defend these with your life or surrender your sexy wife. And as always, the rule stating that no weapons of any kind are to be used or misused will be strictly enforced. Gentlemen, you may begin.”

  A maelstrom of fists and feet. With their wives watching, every husband present threw himself into a bare-knuckle brawl in which he engaged every three months; one that would determine, by his successful capture of an opponent’s plastic disk, whose wife he would spend the next three months making love to.

  Their host spoke again as blood and sweat flew. “Don’t forget that our next social will be Turnabout Night. That’s right, sisters, it’ll be your chance to fight for your right to hard lays as only your neighbors’ husbands can deliver them, so come out swinging.”

  Eryq located Alphonse and dove at him, prepared to bring Ananya home to stay.

  Emma’s Triangle

  Tigress Healy

  My friends think I’m nuts but that’s not it. I just have different morals than folks. I believe in the old-fashioned way of doing things. Holding men accountable for their actions. To me that don’t mean treating their fuckups with anger and violence. It means figuring out how to exploit them.

  See, I’m fifty-three years old, which more than qualifies me to be grown. I got a few gray hairs to testify to my wisdom, two grandbabies, and a long, black dildo named Harry—see what I mean? And I ain’t never been a dumb woman. How the kids say? “No, never that!” So when that young girl came knocking on my door talking ’bout she twenty-two years old and pregnant by my husband, I had to let the bitch in, if nothing other than to see if she was smoking crack!

  Had to be.

  But I understood. To a young, struggling girl, ain’t nothing like an older man—specially if he gray. I remember those feelings. Feeling like older men were more handsome and mature ’cause they wore business suits and nice cologne (which by the way don’t apply to James). Thought they had lots of money ’cause they were established (again, not James). Felt like they were intriguing ’cause their world was different than mine.

  Chile, boo! If that girl really knew James Leonard, she woulda known that first of all, he’s gassy, and two, he got gout on his big toe. Flares up every six months in time for us to have sex. Even fucking with his socks on, that shit is nasty. Heard it come from being lazy. Well, that sound about right. And far as having money, I can’t say it enough— James Leonard ain’t got none. The other day, Social Security called here talking ’bout how he owe them a check! But the girlfriends don’t know these things. Got they head too far in the clouds.

  Jordan Eller, what she call herself, the girl who knocked on my door. Pretty girl, too. Long, bronze hair, light skin, got them hazel eyes, good eyes. Big-chested and big ass. Thick legs. Earring in her tongue. Knew right away she been fucking longer than me, which I thought was interesting, so I let her in. Hospitable as I am, I offered her a glass of homemade lemonade, but she declined. I suppose she thought I was trying to poison her, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Far as I was concerned, if I could get her to stick around, she could take over my wifely duties. Then me and Harry could run off into the Caribbean sunset.

  So, sitting on my couch, we get to talking and she tells me how she used to be a teen runaway but now that she’s legal she works for an escort service that don’t pay much (in other words, she a ho). That’s where she met James. Sucked his dick for fifteen dollars, and I was mad as hell. After all those years of marriage and commitment, I been sucking his dick for free? I coulda saved up for a vacation for Harry and me if hada been charging James properly.

  Anyhow, one day James bought her a gift of flowers and she fucked him on the spot wit’ no condom. Ended up getting pregnant. Said she didn’t believe in abortion ’cause she got morals plus she didn’t wanna expose her fetus to the dicks of different men. Problem was, if she got out “the business” as she called it, she wouldn’t have money to take care of it—“it” being the little bastard child she was carrying. Said she was scared and confused and needing James’s advice. Said she got the address from his credit-card billing information.

  “Well, he ain’t here, baby. Probably getting his dick sucked again. Where’s your family?” I asked, being as compassionate as I could.

  “Miss Ma’am, I don’t have no family. Like I said, I ran away when I was young.”

  “Call me Emma, chile, and I understand. I’ve fucked other women’s husbands in my time. Never got pregnant by them but I guess I was just lucky.”

  Jordan’s face turned rosy like she was embarrassed of what I said, but with my husband’s baby growing in her stomach, it was too late for that. Shoulda been embarrassed before she opened them legs.

  “Where you live now?” I asked.

  “In a women’s shelter. It’s filthy and it has bedbugs but that’s all I can afford, and I can only stay there two more days.”

  “Been to the doctor yet?”

  “Only the emergency room to confirm the pregnancy, but not for prenatal care ’cause I can’t afford it. Homeless women ain’t eligible for Medicaid. Well, they don’t come out and say you ain’t eligible, but they make it too hard for you to qualify. You ain’t mad at me, Miss Emma, is you? ’Cause you ain’t acting like you mad.”

  “Nah, girl. How can I be mad at a professional ho? If I was, it would only be jealousy. Every woman wants to be a ho at some point in her life. I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, look here, chile. Since you went and got yourself knocked up, why don’t you come live with us? That way me and James can make sure your needs is met.”

  “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “Why you care if I don’t? I’m fine wit’ it just as long as you be a good wife to him so I can snuggle up to Harry.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My boyfriend! We in a very serious relationship. But don’t concern yourself wit’ dat. Just know that you and your baby will be fine. You need a ride back to the shelter to get your stuff?”

  “No, ma’am. I ain’t really got no stuff.”

  “Well then, go on and use my phone to cancel that ho job you got ’cause you don’t need it no more. It’s time for you to be a real woman, not a ho. There’s a guest room down the hall and to the right. You can stay in there tonight and the nights you ain’t wit’ James. On the nights you are wit’ him, I’ll stay in there. And just so you know, I want dinner ready every night by seven. Be sure to make my steak medium-rare.”

  That’s how it started. I believed I was doing the right thing—helping the less fortunate in the community, giving a baby a future, and making time for me and Harry.

  The first night I heard them fucking, I couldn’t believe Jame
s could make a woman feel so good. I had told them they didn’t have to hide their sex ’cause sex made labor and delivery easier, plus, I wasn’t gonna hide what I was doing wit’ Harry. Even though I knew I had said that, hearing them bump ’n’ grind took me by surprise. The bed was shaking, Jordan was moaning, and James was grunting so loud and gutturally that I actually got horny. I left the guest room and shuffled to the bedroom to see for myself. I only had to push the door open a tad to see in. The scent of steamy sex got to me immediately. In an instant, my pussy was wet. I stood frozen in my spot and watched.

  James’s black ass was kneeling on the bed holding Jordan’s yella legs open like a V. His long, thick dick plunged in and out of her oozing pussy. The expression on his face said he knew he was dicking her good. She moaned and purred as she rubbed her clit and pulled her nipples. Her titties shook and shimmied like Saturday Night Fever as he pumped into her. He bent over, sucked her nipples, and smacked her ass without ever losing rhythm.

  “Oh, Jamie, baby, fuck me hard, baby,” Jordan moaned.

  “You like that, huh? You like Daddy’s big dick in you?”

  “Yeah, Daddy. I love your huge cock in my wet pussy.”

  “Aw, shit!” he said, slamming his pelvis into hers.

  “Fuck me! Fuck me!” she yelled, massaging his nipples. She pushed him back to assume the doggie-style position. Opened her pussy lips wide and said, “Here, Daddy, fuck this juicy pussy.”

  “Shit,” James moaned, as his balls smacked against her ass. His grimace revealed that he felt good to the core. He reached under and rubbed her clit.

  “Fuck me, Daddy,” she cried, backing her twat into his meat.

  “Yes! Call me Daddy,” he said, taking long, deliberate strokes. “I love fucking this sloppy pussy!”

  The bastard was showing off, fucking her with no hands. Had ’em laced behind his head like he was riding a bike.