The Pleasure Trap
by Niobia Bryant
Introduced in Niobia Bryant's bestselling Mistress series, Graham “Pleasure” Walker is the ultimate irresistible temptation, and he's always in control. Until now…
Pleasure is his name, one that women whisper—and scream—with desire. As a popular exotic dancer and top escort, he strokes his clients' deepest longings and fulfills their every sexy fantasy. His climb has taken him from the streets' most lethal ride-or-die ladies to the even more dangerous world of wealthy, powerful women. All along, he believed leveraging his chiseled body for a life of luxury would help him outrun his tormented childhood and bitter distrust.
Now a mysterious woman has him at her mercy, determined to punish him for reasons he doesn't understand. Saving his own life means Pleasure must figure out which of the women from his past has a deadly obsession, brought on by either the insatiable passions he ignited, or the pain he caused. When a long-buried secret arises, will he be able to survive, or will facing it completely destroy him?
RT Book Reviews on THE PLEASURE TRAP
“The Pleasure Trap is another testament to Bryant’s awesome imagination. She takes us inside the head of Pleasure as he transitions from tricking for a madam to scheduling his own appointments. Shockingly, this installment opens with him drugged and bound in his own home. He’s literally tied to his past as we struggle with him to learn why and by whom. Flashing back to his relationships, we are swept off our feet during the climatic reveal.” –RT Book Reviews, 4.5 Stars
BOOK EXCERPT: THE PLEASURE TRAP
WHAP!
“Wake up, Pleasure.”
The sting of the slap delivered to his cheek roused Graham “Pleasure” Walker to consciousness, but just barely. He moaned as he shook his head to clear it. His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth. He could barely lift his eyelids, and his eyes burned behind them. He tried to shift his body into a more comfortable position, but grunted in pain at the tight binds around his wrists and ankles.
He was tied but he felt like he was floating above the ground.
WHAP!
“Wake your fine behind up. We got business to tend to.”
He winced and tried to brace himself to hit the floor but then remembered he was bound to a chair. One of his leather dining room chairs.
Unable to hold his head up, he let his chin drop to his chest as he blinked and shook his head slowly, waiting for more clarity. When his vision focused a bit more, he was looking down at his limp penis lying across his right thigh.
I’m naked?
He looked up and shifted his eyes to look around as much as he could at the living room of his Jersey City penthouse apartment. The rich black and charcoal gray décor. The floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Hudson River and displayed the New York skyline across the water. However, it felt almost surreal as he struggled to remember just how he came to be naked and tied to a chair.
Think, man, think.
His thoughts were clouded. He couldn’t get a firm grasp on anything.
What’s wrong with me?
His eyes drifted closed and his body slackened, but the ties at his wrists and ankles kept him in the chair.
“Do you remember me, Pleasure?”
A firm hand roughly grabbed his chin and jerked his face up. He opened his eyes to a woman dressed in all black with her face covered by a black ski mask and her hands in leather gloves. He shook his head yet again to clear it.
WHAP.
He winced from the pain. She’d used the back of her hand that time and her knuckles dug into his cheek with the blow.
“Well, I remember you,” she said snidely into his ear, from behind him now.
She lightly bit one of his broad shoulders. Slowly she deepened the bite.
“Damn,” he swore sharply, his tall and muscled frame jerking.
She laughed and smacked the back of his head before coming around him with her hand trailing across his chest. “Not bad at all for a man-whore,” she said, leaving him.
He eyed her as she moved about his living room and touched things that apparently caught her eye. Who is she? What does she want?
He closed his eyes as he let his head hang back, trying to match her frame or her voice or her movements to one of the many wealthy women who’d paid to be sexually pleasured by him. He’d put many miles on his body screwing women and had charged well for his skill. Very well. Over the years, his clients numbered well into the hundreds. Some were regulars; others were one-night stands he’d easily forgotten as he transitioned from exotic dancer to dick-for-hire.
Woman after woman, trick after trick, he had asked them all the same thing as he would slay them with his sex game and get a rush from the looks on their faces as he looked down at them with each stroke.
“Who am I?”
“Pleasure.”
“And what am I giving you?”
“Pleasure.”
But none of them knew him. He was a stranger to them. And that was just the way he liked it.
“You haven’t done badly for yourself over the years,” she said from across the room.
He slowly turned his head to eye her standing before his fireplace. In between slow blinks, he saw her pick up a picture frame from his mantel.
He blinked again.
She looked at it and laughed bitterly.
He blinked again.
She took a small step back to hold it high in the air.
He blinked again.
She viciously flung it into the unlit fireplace. “Screw you and her,” she spat as she flew across the room like she was rabid, to snatch up his chin again.
He fought hard to snatch his face away from her pinching grip. He tried and failed. He had no strength.
She grabbed him by the neck, pressing her fingers deeply into him until he struggled to breathe. “Just as fine as ever,” she whispered into his face, laughing maniacally before she pressed a kiss to his mouth and then released him with a rough jerk.
“Who are you?” he asked, his throat dry and pained.
That earned him a gut punch that made his body instinctively try to curl into a ball. The restraints kept him locked in place as a deep, throbbing ache in the firm muscle of his thigh finally caused him to wince. The pain brought back the memory of being struck from behind in the hall and painfully pierced with a needle as he unlocked and opened his apartment door.
“Damn,” she swore, hating the thought of that. “How dare you forget me? After all these years? After everything I should have meant to you?” she stressed.
What?
The majority of the women in his thirty years of life were his clients—there were so few he would consider more to him than that.
He struggled to open his eyes as he felt her hands on his thighs and then wrapping around his privates. He couldn’t lie about the fear that spread through him. What now?
“Don’t,” he said, his voice as weak as his body.
Moments later he felt her mouth surround his tip, licking it before she took his soft inches into her mouth. He took no pleasure in her work. His still-sluggish thoughts were busy trying to figure out who she was and how to get free.
“Don’t worry, you’re not going to die…yet,” she said, her threat whispered against the damp flesh of his hardness.
His head dropped back. The tips of his long and slender dreads scratched his back as he fought hard to figure out just who the hell she was…
( Continued... )
© 2014 All rights reserved. Book excerpt reprinted by permission of the author, Niobia Bryant. Do not reproduce, copy or use without the author's written permission. This excerpt is used for promotional purposes only.
The Pleasure Trap by Niobia Bryant
Link: http://amzn.com/B00JVW6GOM
Meet the Author
Niobia Bryant is a national bestselling/award-winning novelist of both romance and mainstream fiction. She also writes urban fiction as Meesha Mink. She's had more than thirty works of fiction published since 2000 and her books have been released in audiobook, book club, large print and library editions. Twice she has won, and once was nominated, for Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Multicultural Romance. Currently she is published by Kensington/ Dafina and Simon & Schuster/ Touchstone. Her books have appeared in such national print and online publications as Essence Magazine, The New York Post, The Star Ledger, USA Today, Dallas Morning News, Upscale, Smooth, Juicy, The Library Journal, Black Hair Magazine UK, Huffington Post, AllHipHop.com and Parle Magazine. Her book, Message from a Mistress, was just optioned for film adaptation and Kiss the Ring was named one of The Library Journal's Best Books of 2014 in the category of African-American fiction.
Intimate Conversation with Niobia Bryant
Niobia Bryant is the national bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty-five “Sexy, Funny & Oh So Real” novels. It’s been more than a decade since her first romance book, Admission of Love, was published in 2000; in that time she has ventured into also writing in the genres of commercial fiction, urban fiction (as Meesha Mink) and young adult fiction (as Simone Bryant). Bryant’s books have consistently received top reviews for her skill at storytelling and character development; hit national bestseller lists; been released as audiobooks, book club feature selections, large print and library editions; and garnered award nominations/wins.
Her romances, “Make You Mine” and “Red Hot” won for the 2009 and 2013 Romantic Times Best African-American Romance Awards, respectively. Two of her books, “Real Wifeys: On The Grind” and “Mistress No More”, simultaneously made the list of Black Expressions’ Best Books of 2011 . Her books have appeared in such national print and online publications as Essence Magazine, The New York Post, USA Today, Upscale, Smooth Magazine, Juicy Magazine, The Library Journal, Black Hair Magazine UK, and Parle Magazine. In 2014 she plans to re-release her out of print romance novels via her own e-book publishing company, Infinite Ink.
Bryant was educated in the Newark Public Schools system and then attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey to earn both a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a Bachelor of Arts in Social and Behavioral Science with an accompanying Psychology minor.
Currently the Newark, NJ native lives in South Carolina and writes full-time. Listen to her BAN Radio interview: http://tobtr.com/s/6975581
BPM: What projects are you working on at the present?
Currently I am working on the next book in my new Queen series written under pseudonym of Meesha Mink. Also the film adaptation of my book, Message from a Mistress, is currently in pre-production and I am excited about visiting the set once they began filming in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, Message from a Mistress, is the beginning of the Mistress series and the first book in which Pleasure makes an appearance.?
BPM: Where do your book ideas come from? Are your books plot-driven or character-driven? Why?
I have always been a prolific reader and so the books I write are the books I would want to find on bookshelves as purely a reader. Also for me, the books are character driven but I do want to deliver as unique a story as possible--which is not easy with the amount of book written in the past and currently. For me, it has to be about an author's voice, their delivery and their characters to make sure a story is unique.
BPM: What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
The readers really seemed to enjoy the character Pleasure from the Mistress series because he is the ultimate irresistible temptation, but I wanted the readers to know more about Pleasure than his sexual prowess. One of my intentions with the books was seeing how the past—whether by choice or circumstance—can affect how a person is shaped and formed—who they decide become in life. Pleasure’s ride was a not fun one but I think there’s a lesson to be learned to maybe think twice before judging someone life choices. Perhaps take that extra moment to wonder who and what in the course of their life got them to the point of deciding to be a stripper, to be a prostitute, etc. Not everyone’s road to adulthood—or even beyond-- is a smooth one.
BPM: Give us some insight into your main characters or speakers. What makes each one so special?
I think what the readers will come to discover about Pleasure in this book is that he truly has persevered over some troubling life experiences--some at his own doing, but a few that were not. I think beyond a desire to meet a man like Pleasure in real life they will develop an empathy for him and his story, particularly as he begins to shift his thinking on his life. He is a very complex, strong-willed man who appears to not have a heart but this book will actually show him in love, just adding another layer to his complexity. Being able to come from his point-of-view (POV) in the book enables me to reveal more on what he thinks, what he feels, and not just what he shows.
BPM: How can readers discover more about you and your work? Share all of your social media links.
I love to hear from readers and encourage them to join me on my Facebook fan page: Niobia Bryant | Meesha Mink. Also there is lots of info on me and books on my website: www.NIOBIABRYANT.com.
The Pleasure Trap by Niobia Bryant
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Niobia-Bryant-ebook/dp/B00JVW6GOM
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