Dirty

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I want you to drink that shot.”

I did without a second protest. It burned in my gut and shot liquid fire through every vein. He hadn’t moved anything but his hand, which now lingered at my lower back, keeping me tight against him though the crowd at the bar had eased a bit and there was no longer a need for us to remain so close together.

“Take down your hair.”

A command, but voiced as a request, and I reached to undo the clip holding it on top of my head. Released, it tumbled over my shoulders and halfway down my back. It brushed his face, still so close to mine.

“Dance with me.”

He pulled back to look into my eyes, his smile less bemused and his gaze brighter. Hungrier. He didn’t move his hand.

“Is that…what you want?” My hesitation sounded coy, and I hadn’t meant it to. I’d meant to sound sultry, to play the game.

He nodded, solemn. His eyes stared into mine, hard, and I could see nothing else. Could feel nothing else but the spots on my body where his body touched.

“That’s what I want.”

I gave him what he wanted. The dance floor, even more crowded than the bar, left little room for maneuvering, but most people weren’t really dancing. Bouncing up and down in time to the rhythm, maybe, and wiggling, but not dancing.

He took me by the hand, fingers laced, and put us in the center of the dance floor. One step, and he drew me close to him. Another, and his hands fit my waist like they’d been made to match my curves. Three steps and his thigh slid between mine. These points of connection grounded me, kept me tethered.

There could be no talking here, for even a shout would’ve been difficult to hear above the pounding throb of the music. The bass thumped its pulse in the pit of my stomach, the hollow of my throat, my wrists, between my thighs. The crowd surged around us like the ocean against rocks, parting and retreating to return in the next instant, surrounding us. It pressed in on us as the song changed and brought more dancers onto the floor.

He wasn’t smiling anymore, like this was serious business. Like he could see nothing else around us, like his world had narrowed to only me. I shivered at the look.

When he put his other hand on my side, up high, just under my breast, I startled but had no place to go. No retreat. I looked up, into his eyes, those light-and-dark eyes, and lost myself in them.

We moved together, and my hand slid from his shoulder to cup the back of his neck. The edges of his sandy hair tickled my knuckles. The heat of his hand branded me through my blouse. Heat flared, too, in my belly where it rubbed against his groin.

It had been a long, long time since I’d danced with anyone, an eternity since I’d had a man’s hands on me, since I’d seen my own desire reflected in another’s gaze. It stole my breath and drew my tongue out to lick my lips. The motion caught his attention the way a cat will watch a mouse.

His hand slid up my back to tangle in my hair, tip my head back, bare my throat to his mouth as he bent to slide his lips along my skin. I felt myself gasp but couldn’t hear it. He pulled me closer, and I gave in to his whim.

The crowd had become one body moving to the music’s sensual beat. One entity with us in the center of it, pressed so close I could no longer be certain where I ended and he began. His hand slid up to embrace my breast through my blouse. I blinked and saw nothing but his face shadowed with blue and green, the colors pulsing in time to the rhythm.

Nobody watched us. Nobody saw. We had become part of something bigger and yet remained separate from it. The couple next to us kissed, their tongues tangling as their hands stroked and kneaded each other. The dance floor had become an orgy of lust. I smelled it, tasted it, saw it reflected in his eyes and knew he saw it in mine. The song changed again, blending into the previous one without break.

Bodies all around us pressed us together. Sweat slid down my spine and shone on his forehead. Everything had become heat and beat.

His cock pressed hard against my belly. The sensation parted my lips in silent reaction, and his gaze watched my mouth again, his expression tense, as though he was in pain.

It wasn’t pain that thinned his mouth. I knew it by the way his jaw tightened when another surge of the crowd rocked me against his body. The hand on my ass splayed, then stroked upward to reach the small of my back, then down again to caress and press me against his erection.

I was lost. Lost in his eyes, in his touch, in the pounding pulse of music and lust. Lost in my own desire, which I’d denied for so long and now could no longer fight.

I saw the shift in his gaze and knew the exact moment when he recognized my reaction. If he’d smiled smugly or leered, I’d have fled. Instead, his eyes narrowed slightly, and his expression became a mixture of determination and helpless admiration. He looked at me as though he didn’t care if the song ever stopped or if he never looked at another woman again.

His hand slid down my hip to my thigh. His fingers caught the hem of my skirt, inching it up as we danced, until he could slip his hand beneath it. He cupped me, the heel of his hand pressed against my clit on the outside of my panties.

The crowd moved us, so he no longer had to. The hand on my rear kept me secured close to him. Another shift of the crowd, and his fingers moved to dip inside the lacy edge of my panties and find my slick heat.

His eyes widened so slightly only someone staring into them as I was could have noticed. His lips parted in an unheard gasp or groan. My body jerked as his flesh came in direct contact with mine, and a groan tore from my throat.

His fingers teased my folds before gliding up to caress my clit. If not for the support of his hand and the crowd crushing us on all sides, I’d have stumbled. The touch speared straight to my core. My fingers gripped his shoulder in a sudden, tight hold, and his gaze flicked there as he winced. I’d hurt him but could do nothing about it. Every stroke he gave my clit made my fingers dig involuntarily into him.

Now he looked determined, admiring and quizzical, but the last passed in a moment as he circled my tight nub and watched the reaction I couldn’t hide. Now he looked… honored, was the only way I could think to describe it, if I could do any thinking at all, which was becoming impossible.

Everything had become this man. His hand. His eyes. His cock, still pressing on my hip and now throbbing, hard, hot. He licked his lips, and my clit pulsed in immediate response beneath his fingers.

He tangled his fingers in my hair again, massaging the base of my skull and keeping me from moving away. We danced, each movement rocking me against his hand until in moments I was on the edge.

I’d been feeling this way for weeks. Breathless, aching, body burning for release, unable to focus on anything but the pleasure building between my legs. My nipples tightened, and his gaze fell to my breasts.

It was impossible to see his face flush, not with the flashing blue and green neon coating everyone in science-fiction shadows, but I knew he was burning, as I was.

This was incredible, impossible, and at last I put my hand on his chest to push him away. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t let some stranger get me off on the dance floor, not like this, I didn’t do this…

But I was going to. Oh, yes, I was going to come, right there. Right then. I was going to come on his hand like we were the only two people in the world, and it didn’t matter if anyone saw me, I was tipping over the edge so hard and so fast I thought I might faint from the pleasure.

His breath blew hot against my skin as he nuzzled my ear, whispering something I shouldn’t have been able to hear but was unable to ignore.

“Let go.”

I shattered, biting my lip to stifle the cry that tore from my throat. My pulse pounded in my ears and throat while my clit spasmed over and over, each beat of climax pulling another low moan from me.

His arm tightened around me, holding me close as I rode his hand, body shuddering and jerking. He kissed my jaw and the side of my neck. He stopped his fingers moving and cupped me again, perfectly, keeping the pressure there without working my oversensitized flesh into pain.

I tried to breathe and at first could not. I tried again, my body limp and languid and sated, and found not only breath but along with it the scent of him. I thought I would never again see blue and green neon without remembering the way he smelled.

It seemed to me everyone around us would know what had just happened, but if anyone did they showed no sign of it. The crowd moved and swayed in its own orgasmic rush, intent on finishing whatever piece of ecstasy its members were knitting for themselves.

The man I was with put a finger to my chin and lifted it until I looked up. He bent to kiss me. I turned my face at the last second so his mouth landed on my cheek and not my mouth. My pulse pounded in my throat.

“Okay,” I thought he said, though the music made it impossible to hear him.

“Hey, watch where the fuck you’re going!”

“The fuck you’re going, asshole!”

Two dancers had collided, their faces red with exertion and slick with sweat. Fists upraised, they began the steps of another sort of dance, one that would lead to bloodshed and broken teeth.

My partner took me by the elbow and steered me away, out of the crowd on the dance floor and through the one in the rest of the bar. He led me to a small booth. I looked around for Marcy and Wayne and saw they’d moved to the bar, both of them laughing and kissing.

The booth had a half-circle bench. He let me slide into it first, then took the place beside me. My heartbeat had begun to slow, my legs to firm, my breath to no longer catch in my throat. From the waitress who appeared beside us I ordered a sparkling water with lime. He ordered the same.

I could not look at him, though moments before I had been unable to look away. Heat that had nothing to do with the room temperature crept up my chest and throat, along my cheeks and the back of my neck.

I had done things in the past that would have made a hooker proud, but always in privacy. Never in public, and never with anyone whose name I didn’t know. Strangers to me, yes, with nothing but a few hours acquaintance to recommend them, but even when I gave them a false name I always learned theirs.

He said nothing until after the waitress had brought our drinks and we had both sipped. I wanted to press the cool glass to my forehead, but refrained. I sat stiffly on the edge of the faux-leather bench, acutely aware of the closeness of his arm to mine and how he could have, but did not touch me.

“What is this?” he asked.

Back here the music muffled his voice but didn’t drown it out. He didn’t have to shout for me to hear him. He didn’t have to lean forward to murmur in my ear.

I said nothing for a moment, uncertain how to answer. He reached for me. I thought he meant to touch my face, or put his arm around my shoulder, and I stiffened. His hand caressed my hair from crown to ends, brushing it off my shoulders to hang down my back and expose my profile to him.

“What’s your name?”

Such a simple question, the sort asked at cocktail parties and in parks, an international query you might hear anywhere. Not out of place in a bar like this, where names, vital statistics and phone numbers were exchanged between singles the way women will exchange recipes for pound cake. Recipes for love.

“Elle.”

He waited before answering, long enough that I broke and looked at him. He smiled at me. His fingers twisted a strand of my hair.

“I’m Dan.”

He held out his hand. Socially groomed to take it, I did. He curled his fingers around mine, held it tight, drew me closer.

“Pleasure to meet you, Elle.

“Thanks for the drink. I should go.”

But I didn’t. I looked up at him. He looked at me.

“What is this?” he asked, voice pitched low but still audible.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head, and my hair fell forward again, over my shoulders.

“Do you want to know?” He moved closer.

Now we sat thigh to thigh, his hand still enclosing mine. The heat from his body seeped through my clothes, but I shivered.

I knew arousal. I knew desire. Lust. This was something else, all three and something different, too. This was tumbling headfirst down the rabbit hole, this was standing on the edge of the cliff and preparing to leap, this was nothing and everything all at once.

“Yes,” I whispered, sure he couldn’t hear me. “I want to know.”

He took my hand and slipped it beneath the table, into his lap. I’m sure I gasped like a virgin, though I was anything but. He placed my palm flat on the bulge of his erection. He didn’t do anything so crass as to move my hand, not even to rub it against him. He leaned forward to speak into my ear, my hand on his straining cock and his covering it lightly.

“I’ve known you forever, haven’t I?”

I could only nod in reply and close my eyes. I curved my hand over him. His trousers were smooth under my fingers and beneath them I felt the outline of him. I moved my hand and he twitched. His other hand slid around under my hair, his thumb pressing the pulse on the side of my neck. His mouth brushed my earlobe, his voice tight, low, thick with need.

“Who are you?” He asked me. “Some kind of angel? Or a devil, maybe…?”

I turned my head to bring my mouth close to his ear. “I don’t believe in angels or devils.”

I stroked him slowly, infinitesimally, a gentle curve and straightening of my fingertips undetectable to anyone watching. He got harder. Hotter. I traced the line of his cock, then lower, my hand cradling the softer bulge below.

His hand tightened on my neck. “You look like a goddess when you come, did you know that?”

Sex makes bumble-tongued fools even out of the most eloquent, but the beauty of it is that it also tunes our ears to hear the meaning of words that, spoken under other circumstances, would make us laugh or cry or frown.

“I’m not a goddess.”

“Not a goddess. Not an angel. Not a devil.” His breath, whiskey-scented, washed over me. The wetness of his tongue caressed my earlobe, making me shiver again. “Are you a ghost? Because you can’t be real.”

In reply, I took his hand and put it on my chest, over the place my heart had begun its triple-thumping once more. “I’m real.”

His thumb passed over my nipple, which tightened. His hand covered my breast, but he didn’t fondle me. He held it against me, and I knew he could feel the beat of my heart.

Then he took his hand away and took mine from its place on his crotch. He moved back in his seat a little. His hair had fallen tousled over his forehead. His face was somber, eyes bright with reflected neon.

He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a business card. He put it on the table between us, then pushed it in front of me.

“The next time I watch you come,” he said, “I want to be inside you.”

Then he got up from the table and left me there, alone.

Chapter 03

“Daniel Stewart.” His name, embossed in fine black script upon heavy, cream-colored card stock. Expensive, elegant, without a hint of the whimsy he’d shown me in Sweet Heaven. So much and so little to be learned from a business card.

I waited a week before I called him.

“Next time,” he’d said, as if there could be no doubt there would be a next time.

That easy confidence set me back, but more than that was the realization I wanted there to be a next time. I wanted to see him again, wanted to feel his hands on me, wanted to come with him inside me, as he’d said.

I wanted all those things, and the wanting frightened me. Knowing his name, where he worked, glimpsing that part of his life from something so intimately anonymous as his business card, all of it had me tossing and turning each night in my bed. Solace came from my hand, a finger gently circling my clit as I imagined his face and the scent of him. I came hard, alone, gasping and unfulfilled, and knew there would be a next time, just as he’d said, even though it took me seven days to give in.

His secretary took the call and passed it on. I imagined a tone of smugness, curiosity, jealousy. Was he fucking his secretary? Did she imagine me as a client, colleague, sister, lover? She asked only my name and if Mr. Stewart would know what this call was in regard to, and when I answered yes, she put me through without hesitation.

“Elle.” His voice, warm, like honey dripping into tea. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Were you?”

My own office door was closed. I sat back in my chair, the curling cord of my ancient phone tangled in my fingers. I closed my eyes.

“I was.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” he said, his voice sending a slow shiver of delight down my spine, “that you weren’t going to call me.”

That made me smile a little. Surely he’d had no doubts? “You knew I would.”

“I didn’t.” I heard an answering smile in his tone and pictured the upcurve of his mouth. “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

“I haven’t.”

“So you’ll be coming to meet me for lunch today.”

The assumption was no more forward than what he’d said when he handed me his card, and there was no sense in playing coy. “Yes.”

“Good.”

He gave me directions to a restaurant, though I knew how to get there. I wrote anyway, my pen making smooth marks that belied the unsteadiness of my hand. I hung up the phone, uncertain of how the conversation had ended, and looked to see that I had written his name, over and over, in handwriting that looked like it belonged to a stranger.

“Daniel Stewart. Daniel Stewart. Daniel Stewart.”

La Belle Fleur had a pretentious name but good food, nonetheless, and was central between both our offices. It took me fifteen minutes to get there in a cab. I’d told my secretary to reschedule my afternoon appointments.

“Miss Kavanagh?” The maître d’ smiled as I pushed through the double glass doors and into the small foyer. “You’re meeting Mr. Stewart?”

I must’ve looked surprised, because he cast his eyes around the small, wood-paneled area and lowered his voice as though he were revealing the chef’s recipe for a secret sauce. “He described you perfectly. And told me to expect you.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “I see.”

He beamed, a small, spare man with a head of perfectly groomed hair and a tiny mustache to match. “Right this way.”

I’d eaten at La Belle Fleur dozens of times. Clients liked its nice atmosphere and good bar. Colleagues chose it because the food was decent and reasonably priced, despite the fancy decor. I saw several faces I recognized, and I smiled and nodded as I passed.

Every step I took was a triumph over my shaking legs.Dan’s name echoed in my head as I followed the maître d’ through the maze of white-cloth-covered tables toward a smaller back room, the doorway half-hidden by an embroidered screen for privacy.

“Mr. Stewart has booked a table in our Jolie room.”

And there he was, Daniel Stewart, at a small table in the corner. He stood when I came into the room. Today he wore a dark-blue suit, a pale-blue shirt and a tie with a hula girl imprinted on it. He didn’t approach me, made no move to touch me, not an awkward social half hug nor a handshake, and I found myself both grateful and disappointed.

“Hello.”

Foolish to feel shy after what he’d done to me at the Blue Swan, more foolish still when I knew I’d let him do it again in a heartbeat. We stared at each other across the elegantly set table, until the maître d’ cleared his throat to draw my attention to the chair he’d pulled out for me, and I sat. Then we stared a few more moments until at last he spoke.

“I wasn’t sure you’d show up.”

I dropped my gaze and studied every bead of condensation on my water glass before I looked up at him. “I wasn’t sure I would, either.”

“I’ll have a glass of merlot,” Dan said as the waiter appeared. “The lady will have a glass of the cabernet. We’ll both have steak salads with the house dressing and fries.”

Then he sat back in his chair again and looked at me as though he were waiting for something. I had an idea of what it was. I sipped my water before I gave it to him.

“Should I be flattered or offended at your assumption you know what I wanted?”

“I know what you want, Elle.” His smile, slow and easy, spread across his face. It reached his eyes. It made me smile back at him.

“Do you?” I knew this game, had played it before. I always won. They never knew what I wanted.

Dan nodded, his eyes moving over my face as though memorizing every line and curve. Then, without leaning closer or lowering his voice, he said as though discussing the weather, “You want me to put you up against a wall.”

I looked at him, my fingers tightening on the wet sides of my glass. Slippery. Cold. It would have felt delicious to put them to my forehead, or the base of my throat, against the heat rising along my skin. I kept them on the glass. I swallowed, throat dry, but didn’t drink.

There was no sense in denying it, but I would have, had he said the words with a leer or even if he’d moved closer to create a sense of intimacy.

“After lunch” was all he said, and I knew in that moment I had, at last, met my match.

We spoke over our food, sipping our wine. He asked me questions about myself. He had an easy way of drawing out information, a subtle use of interest and follow-up to make it easy to give him what he wanted. He didn’t push, didn’t pressure, didn’t judge. He asked about my education, my job, my hobbies, and I answered. He didn’t speak again of what I might or might not want him to do to me. It didn’t matter.

By the end of the hour, I was so turned on, the simple act of crossing my legs made me shiver at the way my panties pulled across my clit. My nipples rose rock hard inside the satin and lace of my bra, which shielded them from poking through my shirt but stimulated them mercilessly. I was so wet my thighs slid across each other. My hands shook with wanting, and I fisted them on the table-cloth to keep him from seeing.

“Now,” he said at last, when the waiter had taken away our dishes and left the check. “You’re going to go to the ladies’ room.”

His eyes kept me locked in place; after a moment, I nodded. “Yes.”

Dan smiled. “I’m going to pay the check.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll wait for me, because that’s what you want.”

Again, I answered yes, the word nearly unintelligible from the hoarseness of my voice. I got up from the table, for a moment unsure if my legs would hold me. I steadied myself with a hand on the back of my chair. I laid my napkin on the table. I took my purse, and I went down the short hall toward the ladies’ room.

It wasn’t empty when I went in. I smiled at the woman who smiled at me, but my face must have shown some sort of strain because she gave me an odd glance and hurried through washing her hands. I washed mine, too, for something to do while I waited.

My heart hammered, the beat of it loud in my ears. I splashed water on my cheeks, my throat, the insides of my wrists. I placed my hands flat upon the sink and looked at my flushed face in the mirror.

This is the face of a woman about to get fucked, I thought, deliberately harsh to make it all seem real. He’s going to come in here and fuck you, Elle. My pulse leaped until I fancied I could see it in the hollow of my throat.

I looked into my own eyes, the pupils dilated so wide the black almost overtook the normal blue gray. What was I doing here? I watched my tongue snake across my lips, wetting them, and I imagined his tongue tasting me. I moaned involuntarily, low, embarrassed yet aroused even more that I was already so helpless with desire a mere thought could make me make a noise.