Built

Kink
Amie Stuart

Down and Dirty
Jami Alden

Rock Solid
Bonnie Edwards

I
was in hell. The black and gold hell that was Glorious Creations, and escape was at the top of my list.

I flipped the thermostat on, praying this time it would work. Repairing the salon’s older-than-dirt air conditioner had meant spending most of the morning in the thick Houston heat, but I’d damn sure rather be out there than in here with all these women.

Four of the seven barber chairs were occupied, plus the two old women under the dryer and a couple more getting their nails done. I could feel all of them staring at me as I moved around to close the front door. Posters in the reception area settled into place on the walls, and the sound of female chatter immediately picked up.

I turned toward the break room, ready to make my escape when an elderly woman with snow-white hair lifted the dryer.

“D’Angelo, how’s your mama doing?” She was tiny, with almost wrinkle-free skin that made guessing her age pretty much impossible. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

I barely slowed my pace to answer. “She’s fine, ma’am.”

“D’Angelo—”

My aunt would have my ass if I was rude to her customers. I bit back a sigh and stopped directly under a vent, letting cool air wash over me. The woman sat up a little straighter and gave me a smile meant to charm. I did likewise and waited to see what she wanted. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I want you to have my grandbabies,” she announced—loudly.

I stared at her, a “fuck no” lodged somewhere in my throat, while every woman in the salon cackled or expressed their own desire for me to father their child or grandchild. If I had a nickel for every time some woman, old or young, had said the same damn thing to me, I’d be a rich man.

Rubbing the whiskers on my chin, I turned and glanced at my aunt in the mirror. Apparently, not shaving wasn’t the deterrent I’d hoped it would be. Aunt Glo shrugged, a smile on her face.
What the hell could I say?
“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I’m surprised anyone wants his babies with that fuzzy head of his,” my cousin Vivi practically shouted from the far end of the shop. She stood behind her chair, in the middle of a weave, her own tiny braids held back from her face by a rubber band. Vivi was a looker, she knew she was a looker and made sure anyone within a fifty-mile radius knew it too.

“Nothing a haircut and a shave wouldn’t cure,” a busty blonde announced from her nail station.

I’d noticed her on an earlier trip from the A/C unit, located out back, to the thermostat by the front door. But then, how could I miss her?

She tucked her long, tanned legs underneath her seat and winked at me. Her tiny pink bandana-print skirt barely covered her ass and matched a pair of painfully high-heeled shoes the same color. Pink and blue and blonde; in her own way, she was as out of place in the salon’s black and gold surroundings as me.

My aunt sauntered over and planted a kiss on my sweaty cheek. “You should put that poor woman out of her misery,” she said. One penciled-in eyebrow crested, dipped, and crested again while she spoke.

“Her granddaughter would scare a Rottweiler,” I murmured.

She snorted with laughter and rubbed my cheek. “You so pretty, D’Angelo,” she teased in a singsongy voice. “That’s what they
all
say about
you
.”

“I know.” I sighed in resignation. I wasn’t conceited; I’d heard all my life how
pretty
I was, and I hated it. Not that my brothers were ugly—far from it—but my light skin and green eyes had always attracted a lot of attention, and not always the good kind. I got down to the business at hand. “You need a new compressor, Aunt Glo.”

She waved off my bad news and turned her back to me, prepared to finish up a wrap on the woman in her barber chair. “Come see me Saturday morning for a haircut, young man.”

Bubble gum and rubber bands would probably have been just as effective as anything I could do with a wrench and a prayer, but Aunt Glo was cheap. We’d just have to baby it along until Dad could convince her to shell out some real dough for that compressor.

“Thanks for waking me up, Aunt Glo.” Looked like I’d just have to wait until Sunday to catch up on my sleep.

I settled in the chair, coffee clutched in one hand, as my aunt whipped a silver cape out, covering my jeans and T-shirt.

“My pleasure.” Smiling serenely in the face of my sleepy glare, she dug out a wide-tooth comb and her clippers.

I lurched forward and turned to look at her. “Just a trim—please.”

“Trim my ass, boy. You’re not gettin’ out of my chair until you let me do something with that nappy-ass head of yours. Now turn back around.”

My hair wasn’t nappy, just curly, but Aunt Glo wasn’t a woman you argued with. Sighing, I did as she’d instructed.

“If you’re a good boy, I’ll give you a manicure when she’s done.”

“Che-rise!” My aunt’s shout ended on a laugh. “Girl, you are shameless!”

“I was just kidding,” Cherise drawled from her spot behind us.

Smiling to myself, I turned to face the mirror again, focusing on the blonde in my line of sight. Today her hair was pulled up in a funky ponytail like something out of
I Dream of Jeanie
. Even though her ass was covered by a pair of capris and her cleavage was hidden by a sleeveless turtleneck, she still looked hot enough to make me need to adjust my jeans.

Now that was something to wake up to.

“Don’t even think about it, boy,” Aunt Glo practically growled.

“’Bout what?” I knew damned good and well who and what she was talking about. The first tug of the comb at the top of my head made me wish I hadn’t given in quite so easily about getting a haircut, though.

“You know what!” She pulled again, harder this time for emphasis, almost driving the vision of Cherise giving me something more than a manicure right out of my head.

I could practically hear my aunt’s foot tapping as I tried to take a sip of my coffee. “She talked to me first, Aunt Glo.”

“Boy, I worked hard to get that girl out here.” She scowled at me through the mirror. “Including
five
trips to Baytown to see her, and I sure don’t need you mucking things up.”

“Would I do something like that?” I bit back a grin, then winced, praying she’d finish torturing me soon.

“What are you into now, D’Angelo?” Vivi asked, appearing at my elbow. The smell of warm sugar and grease from her bag of donuts teased me as she sank into the empty barber chair beside us. She popped a donut hole in her mouth.

“You could share those,” I said.

“Cherise,” Aunt Glo hissed again, interrupting my bid for breakfast.

“Oh,
no
!” One eyebrow shot up as Vivi leaned forward and crumpled the now-empty bag. “You don’t want to hit that.”

“That was rude,” I said, pointing to the bag she was holding. It looked like breakfast would have to wait too.

“Who said I wanted to mess with her?” I whispered, hoping Cherise couldn’t hear us from where she sat just a few feet away.

“
That
”—Vivi tilted her head in Cherise’s general direction—“is bi-sexin-
all
!”

I nearly dropped my cup of coffee before I regrouped and took another look at Cherise. “She’s bisexual?”

“I don’t care what she’s doing as long as she’s here when she needs to be here and paying me my money on time.” Aunt Glo’s voice was low and firm as she added, “And neither should you.”

“You’re full of shit, Vivi,” I muttered.

“Go ask her yourself,” she challenged, arms crossed over her tiny chest. Vivi’s smirk and the knowing look in her pale brown eyes convinced me she might be telling the truth.

I slid into the chair across from Cherise, still unsure if Vivi had been yanking my chain or not. Up close her eyes were a clear, pale blue with just a little gray to them. Despite the curves, the full lips, and the occasional freckle, I got the feeling she was more spice than sugar. My eyes drifted a bit, finally landing in the vicinity of her hidden cleavage.
Dayum! No woman should be that fine.

Her lips twisted into the tiniest smirk. She knew exactly what I’d been doing. “You don’t exactly look like the manicure type.”

“It’s been a while,” I lied with a shrug.

“Cherise, he’s trouble with a capital
T
,” my aunt said loud enough so every woman in the salon heard.

Ignoring her, I said, “Funny, Vivi sorta said the same thing about you.”

“I’m sure she did.” Her lips thinned briefly. “Your hair looks nice.”

I ran a hand over my too-short hair and thanked her, feeling a little self-conscious. At least she hadn’t said I was pretty.

“So…D’Angelo.” She crossed her arms, resting them on the table, her blue eyes twinkling.

Cherise might end up being the first blonde I ever dated, but she wouldn’t be the first white woman. Now, before you go throwing rocks at me, you have to know my mom’s Puerto Rican and my dad’s black. I was raised in a middle-class home where the fact that we were mixed was just that. A fact. And at twenty-seven, I’d dated all kinds of women. So far, the only person who’d put up a fuss about it had been Vivi, which was no huge surprise.

Of course, first I had to get Cherise to go out with me.

“D. Everyone calls me D,” I said, offering her my hand.

“Nice to meet you…D.” She took it, her soft skin and strong fingers registering somewhere in the vicinity of my dick. “I have a client due in ten minutes, and you look like you’d take a lot longer than ten minutes.”

I bit my lip but couldn’t hold back my laughter. “Maybe some other time, then?” Standing, I crossed to my aunt’s work station, pulled a twenty from my wallet, and dropped it next to her cell phone.

Aunt Glo stepped out of the break room and leaned against the door frame, her arms crossed over her gargantuan chest. It stuck out from her round little body like a shelf, all of her accentuated by a vivid turquoise top that gaped open at her chest. “Give my best to your mama and daddy, D’Angelo.”

That was my cue to leave. Like I said, she wasn’t a woman you argued with. “Yes, ma’am.” From the corner of my eye, I watched Cherise head up front, the globes of her heart-shaped ass swinging from side to side. I felt as if I’d been sniffing relaxer…or air-conditioning coolant.

A
s the only unmarried son within cooking-for distance, my mom insisted I eat dinner with them on the weekends. Considering I wasn’t the world’s greatest cook, I didn’t put up much of a protest.

But tonight I escaped as soon as good manners, and Mom, would allow and headed to my best friend’s for a night of beer and the type of advice I could only get from Kevin.

He might live in a questionable neighborhood and his car might not be new, but all the women at the club told me he was fine. Usually while they were crying on my shoulder about getting dumped. Kevin lived simple to keep the female predators off his back and still managed to get more pussy than a tomcat.

Most women thought Kevin was the womanizer and I was the nice guy. Truth be told, I was just a nicer womanizer than Kev.

Outside his tiny apartment, someone drove by, their bass rattling the windows. On the coffee table in front of us sat an open bag of chips, at least a half dozen empty beer bottles, and a jar of picante sauce. On the thirty-seven-inch television in front of us, the Astros were getting their asses kicked. Kevin couldn’t cook either, so I’d given him the care package from my mom. Not that Mom would ever find out where her care package ended up. She didn’t like Kevin much.

“We can still hit the bar if you feel like it,” he offered, handing me a fresh beer.

“Nah,” I said thoughtfully, “maybe later.” Once he sat down again, I made myself bring up the subject that had been bugging me since I’d met Cherise on Thursday. “Yo, Kev?”

“Huh.” He grabbed the remote and muted the television. It wasn’t like we were paying a whole hell of a lot of attention anyway.

I laughed self-consciously. “There’s this chick up at Aunt Glo’s—”

“She hot enough to piss Vivi off?” he asked, laughing along with me. Kevin had been in love with Vivi since high school. She didn’t feel the same. And she didn’t like competition.

“Blond, blue-eyed, and built like a brick shithouse.” I nodded.

“Then go for it.”

I’d dated a lot of women—black women, Mexican women, even a Korean girl, but…“There’s just…she’s kind of a freak.”

“Huh? What exactly do you mean by ‘freak’? ’Cause you know there’s freaks and then there’s
freaks
!” He sat up on the fake leather couch, then we both laughed when it made a farting noise. Blame it on the beers.

“Vivi says she likes women.” I took another swig of my beer.

“You got the hots for a lesbo?”

“Nah, uh-uh”—I waved the beer bottle—“she likes men too. She’s…bisexual.”

“I know men who would pay to have that problem.” He burped, then continued, never missing a beat. “Here’s how I see it. You got your uptight hos like Vivi. Wouldn’t know a good fuck if it walked up to her and said, ‘How do you do’.”

More laughter sent beer through my nose.

“
Then
you got your regular, garden-variety skank hos looking for a welfare ticket. Or a daddy for their six dozen kids. Bitches will lie every fucking time about the birth control or get your ass so drunk you forget it.” Kevin punctuated the high points with his beer bottle. “Last, but not least, you got the hos that just can’t make up their mind. Dick. Pussy. Dick. Pussy. Like your chick…”

“Cherise.”

“Cherise…You sure she’s white? ’Cause that doesn’t sound like a white girl’s name.”

“She’s fuckin’ got
blond
hair,” I reminded him, laughing.

“Doesn’t mean shit. She could be mixed…like you.”

“Just trust me on this.” I shook my head and reached for another chip.

“I’m surprised Vivi hasn’t run her ass off.”

“Me too.”

“So, you gonna get you some bisexual ho pussy, huh?”

I nearly choked on my chip, coughing and ending up with hot sauce burning my throat. Kevin stood up and reached in the space under the television stand. He fumbled around for a few minutes before holding up three DVD cases.

“Your assignment, if you should choose to accept it, is to watch these porno movies. All girl, all the time. And don’t forget to return them when you’re done.”

I raised my head and glanced in the bathroom mirror.

Fuck shaving
.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone out in the middle of the week, but after blowing off the bar on Saturday night, Kevin had given me shit until I’d finally caved. Only to end up hooked up with some Wednesday Night Special I’d regretted almost as soon as we got back to her place.

Freaks I could handle, no problem, but
she
had four kids. A one-night stand wasn’t what she’d been looking for. Definitely one of Kevin’s garden-variety hos.

I settled for brushing my teeth and a quick, chilly shower to help clear my head, then headed for the shop where I swapped my car for the work van.

Aunt Glo had gone in at the crack of dawn’s ass to do paperwork and discovered there was no getting out of that new compressor I mentioned the previous week. I couldn’t complain too much, not after spending the last five or six days looking for an excuse to go back to the salon.

I stuck my head in the back door, ready to give Aunt Glo shit for holding out for so long only to stop dead in my tracks at the sight of Cherise in shorts, flip-flops, and a tank top. She was folding towels, a mountain of white stacked on the dryer in front of her.

She turned and gave me a tired look, her curls already looking limp, and it was just after 8:00
AM
. “Sugar, please get that damn thing fixed.” Sugar came out sounding like ‘sugah.’ A very different sound from my mother’s Puerto Rican accent.

Replacing my auntie’s air compressor took most of the morning. Once I’d finished up and refilled it with coolant and tested the system, I packed up my gear.

I stood at the thermostat, my shirt stuck to my back, eyeing Cherise and guzzling Gatorade.

I’d never in a million years considered dating a woman who
dated other women
. What exactly did a bisexual woman do anyway? Where did they meet other women? How the hell did it all work, and could I really do this? More importantly, did I really want to do this?

By the time the place began to cool down (the way it should have if Aunt Glo had let me fix it right the first time), Cherise was finished with her client, and I was finished with my job. Time to head back out into the heat. But not until after I caught her eye and gave her a long, lingering look. Despite the possible complications and my own reservations, I was interested. Real interested, and I wanted her to know it.

I stood reloading my tools into the van when the back door slammed. Turning, I smiled at the sight of Cherise heading my way.

“You’re too pretty to be a boy.”

My shoulders tightened at the word
pretty
. I hated being called pretty. Growing up, being the lightest-skinned kid in the neighborhood had gotten me beaten up more than once. Usually while my brothers watched. “I haven’t been a boy in a long-ass time.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners in obvious amusement.

I slammed the sliding door, pleased that she’d followed me outside, despite the unintentional insult. “You think that’s funny? Calling me pretty? Calling me a boy?”

“Baby boy, I’ve seen more in my thirty years than you can imagine.”

“So I heard,” I said, smirking. I shoved my hands in my pockets and leaned against the side of the van.

“What
exactly
did you hear?” Her closed face and the arms she crossed over her lush chest told me that maybe I’d crossed some sort of invisible line.

“That you like women?” I answered, almost embarrassed to even say it.

“I like men too—all kinds.” She slowly moved closer, her hips swaying, her shoes slapping against the pavement. “That bother you?”

“No,” I lied. I forced my breathing to remain even and steady as her hand rested on my belly before slowly sliding higher until it stopped at my left pec. Just over my heart. Could she feel it? Did she know the effect she had on me? My cock swelled, strangling slightly on my briefs and jeans.

“I don’t believe you, D’Angelo.”

“It’s D,” I corrected with a nod. No one but my parents called me D’Angelo (which rhymed with
tangelo
if you said it just right).

“They give you a middle name, D?”

My eyes focused on her full, pink mouth, I licked my parched lips and answered, “William.”

“So how come you don’t go by Will?”

I shrugged and watched her from behind my sunglasses, wondering why my name was so important. “Dunno.”

“You think you can handle me…
D
?” she asked, switching gears. She gave my pec a squeeze and my dick responded.

“Why don’t you go out with me Saturday night and we’ll find out?” I wanted to reach up under the edge of her shorts and see if she was as turned on as I was, but the white steel door that led into the back of the shop reminded me that any minute now my auntie could come out and check on me, check to see if I’d left, haggle over the huge-ass bill I’d dropped on her desk, whatever.

If Aunt Glo—or worse, my mom—found out I was even thinking about messing around with Cherise, I’d be in deep shit. Really,
really
deep shit. It was trouble I didn’t need, but the kind of trouble I couldn’t resist.

“What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?” She was skeptical. Her hand drifted between the buttons of my work shirt, tickling my chest even through the wife-beater I wore underneath. “Gone down on a girl?”

“Yeah,” I said with a snort.

“
That’s
the freakiest thing you’ve done?” Her arched eyebrow left me feeling inadequate, and I didn’t like it.

“I’ve never gotten any complaints,” I said defensively.

“But did you
like
it?”

“It was okay.” I didn’t hate it, just figured it was all part of the process.

“You should love it. You should love
everything
you do to a woman.”

The weight of her words settled low in my gut, and I stayed silent, unsure of how to respond. The early-afternoon sun beat down on us, making my skin slick with sweat and reminding me I had a schedule to keep. I dug for my keys, stalling while I searched for the right words that would get her to go out with me.

“Would you fuck another woman for me?”

“Yeah.” So maybe I was lying, but damned if I wasn’t willing to try. I’d never talked about sex like this with a woman. “So how does the whole bisexual thing work?”

I winced at her howl of laugher.

“However the hell I want it to, honey,” she said, letting her hand fall to her side. “You don’t want to play with me.”

Oh, yes, I did. “Yeah, I do.”

She shook her head, lips pursed.

“Yeah, I do,” I insisted, nodding my head vigorously. I was in way over my head and drowning fast.

“Then meet me at the diner on the corner at nine tonight…and don’t be late.”