Never Keeping Secrets (3 page)

“Why didn't you ask me for the money?”

“I'm good, Corey,” she lied.

He worked hard and put in forty to fifty hours a week. He always had her back. He was a good man. A hardworking man. She didn't want to put extra pressure on him to make up for her fucked up finances.

The old Keesha couldn't imagine being in a relationship with a man who couldn't take care of her and that's how she knew she had grown up some. And that she loved him.

Keesha looked back at him and she smiled at him, loving every bit of his dark and delicious frame. Like hers, his complexion was that deep and smooth chocolate like Hershey's Kisses. He was just a couple of inches taller than her but she felt comfort and strength in his embraces. His smile was infectious and his eyes always bright with humor.

She loved him. She really did. Her heart pounded with it.

“We'll worry about all that in the morning,” Corey said, coming over to stand beside her and stroke her inner thigh. “Let's go back to bed.”

Keesha tilted her head back against the window as she looked up into his face. She smiled at the heat she saw in his eyes. Licking her lips, she turned on the sill and pressed her feet and her hands to the edge as she spread her knees before him.

Corey's eyes dipped down as he took his dick into one of his hands and stroked the long length of it. He massaged her moist clit with the other. “Right here?” he asked, looking up briefly at the backdrop of the streets through the window as Keesha leaned forward to lick one of his nipples with the tip of her tongue.

“Right now.”

Those were words Latoya James wished her fiancé, Taquan, had never let leave his lips or even enter his thoughts. But he did. Hours earlier he dropped all of that weight on her shoulders as they strolled out of church after Bible study.

But his words were still on her mind and keeping her from sleep.

She kicked the sheet off her legs and sat up on the edge of the bed, running her slender fingers through her scalp to the trimmed ends of her shoulder-length hair. The walls of the stylishly decorated bedroom felt like they were closing in on her. She glanced at the clock.

It was almost four in the morning.

“Dammit,” she swore and then waved her hands in frustration at herself for swearing.

And Latoya should know. After years of growing up in a family with very strict religious beliefs she had learned early to play across the line separating sinning and being saved. For years she lived a double life of the good daughter for her parents and the wild child with her friends—and that was long after she was supposedly grown and should've been able to stand in the shoes of the woman she wanted to be. If anything, all of the lying and sneaking pushed her so far over the edge of sinning and away from her church upbringing that she felt lost to the woman in the mirror.

And her sins were many.

Losing her virginity in her teens and carrying on a secret affair with the minister of the church . . .
in
the church.

And that was just the beginning of it all. It was a very slippery slope when nothing mattered but what you wanted.

Lying and sneaking.

Abortions.

Secret boyfriends.

Falsely accusing the father of her child of rape.

And then selling false stories about the platinum-selling rap star to the tabloids to ensure he backed off his fight to snatch custody of their daughter away from her.

Purposefully trying to seduce Taquan to break his vow of celibacy during the first weeks of their relationship had been the act to make her check herself and fall on her knees before the altar. She had sworn in that moment to forge a closer relationship with God and to live by His word.

Latoya glanced over her shoulder to make sure her one-year-old daughter, Tiffany, was still asleep in her mahogany crib. Looking at the way her daughter pouted her heart-shaped mouth even in her sleep, brought a soft smile to her lips as she left the room and walked down the hall to the spacious living room of the apartment she shared with Danielle and Keesha.

Everything about the apartment spoke of comfort and luxury. Hardwood floors. High ceilings. Plush furnishings. Style. Substance. Completely away from any of their lives growing up in Newark.

And completely out of any of our budgets
.

There was a hefty rent to go along with it.
No wonder Danielle used to run through men like they were her personal ATMs. How else could she afford the rent alone?

Latoya felt guilty at the judgment she cast on her friend. Judgment fed by the man she loved. And too much pillow talk about her friends had fed his dislike of them. And all the pillow talk had been easy because they needed to fill the gap left by their celibacy.

But she hadn't laid out all of her own secrets to him and had no plans to do so.

Latoya grimaced as she made her way to the kitchen, opening the glass-front refrigerator to pull out a bottle of water. The coolness of the liquid felt good going down her throat as the heat of her dilemma burned her stomach. She turned and leaned back against the small granite-topped island as she looked down at her engagement ring.

Taquan was going to be her husband. The head of their family. And his role as a husband could not be denied. It was clearly written in The Word:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

But her friends had been there through it all. Loving her. Helping to heal her. Making sure they had her back when she felt left behind by everyone and anything else. They were in the delivery room with her during her labor. Not even her parents, who chose to believe the lies of their minister over her truths about his sexual relationship with her. Her friends had never forsaken her. Never. And now she was supposed to present them her back and shun them because they weren't saved?

Taquan loved to quote that verse to her. He felt it was the backbone of his argument. She couldn't lie; it was a good one. Who could dispute the Bible? The Word? Their salvation?

Finishing her water, she quietly moved throughout the darkness of the apartment to her bedroom. Tiffany was awake and softly whispering baby talk to herself as she bent her legs to play with her chubby toes.

Latoya smiled as she walked around the bed to look down into her daughter's crib.

“Ma-Ma,” she said, sounding like she missed her and was tickled pink for her return.

Latoya's heart swelled with love as she leaned over and pressed her lips against a chubby cheek. “Why are you up, Tiffy-Boo?” she asked, reaching down to quickly check if her diaper was wet.

Tiffany giggled as she reached up to lightly pat her mother's cheek. “Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma.”

Latoya was startled by the sudden ringing of her cell phone. Her heart raced and pounded as she moved back around the bed to pick it up from the nightstand. She had several missed calls and a few texts from Taquan. “No wonder my baby woke up,” she said, pressing the button to answer the call. “Hey Taq—”

“Come downstairs.”

Latoya frowned at her fiancé's abruptness as she tossed the phone on the bed, pulled her pale pink robe over her nightie and then moved to scoop Tiffany up into her arms. Thankfully, her little one snuggled her head against Latoya's shoulder and she knew it wouldn't be long before she was back asleep. “Thank God,” she mouthed, rubbing comforting circles onto her daughter's back.

She came to the double doors of Danielle's master suite at the end of the hall. She knocked twice softly before opening the door and saying a prayer that Danielle didn't have company. Their friend was on a man sabbatical but . . .

Latoya felt relief that she was snuggled in the middle of her queen-sized bed alone.

“Someone
better
be dead.”

Latoya paused on her path to Danielle's bedside at the sound of the muffled words. She was a light sleeper. Like her behind was afraid she was going to miss something while she dozed.

“Let your goddaughter sleep with you,” Latoya whispered, coming to stand by the opposite side of the bed.

Danielle lifted her silk scarf-covered head from her pillow and lifted one corner of her black satin eye mask as she looked over her shoulder. “She has two other godmothers,” she drawled playfully, her voice filled with sleep.

“But you're her favorite,” Latoya said smoothly, already pulling back the crisp thousand-count sheets to ease her gently snoring daughter onto the bed.

“Bitch, please,” Danielle said in disbelief as she rolled over onto her side on the bed and gently shooed Latoya's hands away as she pulled the sheets up to cover Tiffany's plump frame. She took over massaging circles onto Tiffany's back, sending her deeper and deeper into sleep. “You are so full of shit.”

Although she knew Danielle was joking, Latoya still bristled at the use of profanity. The old Latoya who played it loose with her salvation wouldn't have cared, but the woman of God she was now had asked her friends several times to refrain from all the cussing and carrying on around her.

She bit her bottom lip to literally keep from reminding Danielle about it, especially around Tiffany. There were many times just in the last few weeks that she found herself cringing in her friends' company.

Just before she left the room, Latoya gave her daughter and Danielle one last glance over her shoulder. She moved down the hall and through the living room to leave the apartment. Her slipper-covered feet slapping against the hardwood floors echoed in the quiet of the long hall to the elevator.

Latoya's curiosity over Taquan's sudden late-night appearance was piqued. It wasn't like him to be out and about that time of the night and if he made the drive to Livingston she knew it was more than a desire to see her smiling face. These days they barely kissed heavily because they were afraid they would slip back to the days they would masturbate in front of each other.

The image of Taquan jacking off as she lay in the middle of the bed pressing a vibrator against her clit flashed. Latoya swallowed over a lump in her throat and fanned herself a bit as she forced the temptation away.

“No sex until marriage. No sex until marriage,” she repeated softly to herself as the doors to the elevator slid open. She stepped forward.

“Fuck me harder, Frank.”

“Fuck back, Mindy.”

Latoya moved backwards with her eyes wide and her mouth even wider at the sight of a young blond woman bent over with her dress wrapped around her waist getting furiously filled with the dick of the man standing behind her. The smell of their sex and the sounds of their moans were in the air. Their motion was steady and fast. Each thrust sent his long reddish balls and her breasts swinging back and forth. The smack of flesh echoed like claps.

Frank was killing it and they didn't even see Latoya standing there. Shocked by them. Watching them. Turned on by them. It felt like she was at the taping of a bad porno flick.

Latoya's heart pounded . . . and so did her clit. She gasped in surprise at herself getting aroused. Frank and the nameless blonde both looked over at her but they didn't stop. Or look away. He bit his sweaty lip and pounded away harder.

Latoya was grateful when the elevators doors finally closed and the freaky moment came to an end. “Sweet Jesus,” she sighed, finally feeling like her feet were unglued from the spot in which she stood.

Truth be told, Latoya's biggest fight with her spirituality was her celibacy. It was hard listening to the girls talk about their sexual adventures when she was clutching nothing but her Bible at night.

Big dick this.

Hard dick that.

Dick. Dick. Dick. Dick.

Here a dick. There a dick. Everywhere a dick dick.

Latoya sighed in frustration as she turned and fled for the stairwell, her robe fluttering out behind her like a cape as she descended the steps. Floor after floor after floor. She never stopped. Never even paused. By the time she jerked open the door to the lobby her heart was pounding so hard that she felt like it was punching to free itself from her chest.

Latoya could see through the wide glass doors that Taquan was parked outside the building. She slowed her steps and forced herself to calm down as she walked across the tiled floor, left the building, and climbed into the passenger seat of Taquan's black SUV.

His caramel handsome face instantly filled with disapproval. “You're roaming the building in your nightclothes?” he asked. “That's not appropriate, Toya.”

Her eyes flittered over the sweatsuit he wore. The lights from the overhang of the apartment lit the cross dangling from the end of his gold chain.

She thought of the interlude she witnessed in the elevator and she was filled with guilt because in that moment she wished it was her getting chopped down. She missed sex. She missed masturbation to relieve the pressure of not having sex. It didn't help that she knew Taquan was blessed.

Her eyes dipped down to his crotch and she could just make out the imprint of his penis against the top of his thigh.

“Father, forgive me,” she mouthed quietly, shifting her eyes back up to his face.

“I've been thinking about what we talked about earlier,” he began.

“Me too,” she admitted.

“I realized I was asking too much of you without offering a real solution to the problem,” he said, reaching over to stroke the back of her hand.

Latoya's brow wrinkled a bit in confusion.

“You live with your friends and it just doesn't make sense for you to distance yourself while you're still living under the same roof as them—”

“I'm not moving back in with my parents,” she protested. “I mean, we're cool now, but I am
never
—”

“Latoya.”

“I guess I could get my own place,” she said, as if thinking aloud to herself.

“Marry me.”

“I would have to find a place, buy furniture, be ready to take on a household of bills—”

Taquan reached up and lightly grasped her chin, turning her head towards him. “Marry. Me,” he repeated with emphasis.

Latoya frowned. “We're already engaged,” she said, raising her hand to show him the engagement ring on her left hand.

He shook his head as he leaned forward to taste her lips. “No, marry me now. I don't want to wait for the big wedding next year. I want you as my wife and in my life now. And then you and Tiffany can move in with me.”