Dirty Read online

  “Sure. I’d like to dance.” I let him take my hand, and by the time we got to the small square of wooden parquet the hotel had arranged for dancing, the music had changed.

  “You all might remember this one.” The dj cued up the next song. “From what I heard, it was y’all’s prom theme.”

  “Oh, boy,” I murmured as a late eighties love ballad came on. “Hold me back, I might cry.”

  Steve laughed and pulled me into a competent dance position a little too close to be casual but nowhere near what his fiancée was doing with Dan. We danced in silence for a few moments. The colored lights flashing on his face made shadows. His hand drifted a little lower, less on my lower back and more on my upper ass. I glanced at his arm, then back up at his face. He was smiling.

  I looked at Dan. He smirked over Ceci’s shoulder. Ceci, however, was not smiling. “If looks could kill” might be an old and clichéd turn of phrase, but it was true. It didn’t seem to matter what she was doing with my date. Only what I was doing with hers. Or more appropriately, what he was doing with me, since I wasn’t doing anything but not telling him to stop.

  Another slow song came on. Steve drew me a little closer. I smelled his cologne, though I couldn’t identify it.

  “Smart women are so sexy,” he murmured in my ear.

  Steve had long legs, broad shoulders, white teeth and even features. He smelled good. He danced well. His hands were big enough to splat across my entire ass, something I was quickly discovering.

  I didn’t want to be dancing with Steve.

  I looked over at Dan. He might have been holding a rag doll, for all the attention he paid the woman in his arms. Our eyes met. The song ended, and Dan left Ceci standing there while he came over to take my hand from Steve’s.

  “Pardon me,” he said pleasantly. His eyes never left mine. “I think this dance is mine.”

  He took me in my arms without another word, without looking away, and held me close to him. My head fit perfectly on his shoulder, one of his hands at the small of my back and the other holding mine. He pressed his lips to my hair.

  “Mine,” he murmured, and we danced until the music changed again, became faster and no longer suited to slow dancing.

  Then he took me by the hand and led me from the room, past a scowling Steve tossing back a shot of something at the bar, and an arm-crossed, pouting Ceci next to him. Dan took me down the hall, pushed open a door, led me inside the coatroom.

  I didn’t have time to ask him what he wanted, but then, I didn’t have to ask. In May there were no coats to cushion me as he pushed me back. Only the jangle of metal on metal as he set the hangers swinging, and my gasp as he slid a hand beneath my dress and found me already wet for him.

  “He wanted you.” He fastened his mouth on my neck, just at the curve of my shoulder. “He wanted you so bad, Elle.”

  He stroked my clit with his thumb through my panties, then put his whole hand inside them. His palm pressed me, his fingers playing with my slickness. He put a finger inside me, and I muffled my cry with my hand, not caring if I smeared my lipstick.

  “Would you have gone with him?” He asked in my ear, his hot breath blowing a loose strand of my hair.

  I turned to look at him. “Tonight?”

  “If he’d asked you.”

  “No.”

  His fingertip found my clitoris again and circled it, making my hips push forward. “You wouldn’t?”

  “No.” My fingernails dug into the shoulders of his tux. “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?” His other hand came up to caress my breast.

  I pushed him away a little bit to look into his face. “Because I’m with you tonight.”

  He looked into my eyes, and his hand stilled for a moment before he started moving it again. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you. You’re always ready for me.”

  An arrogant statement, but he made it seem like I’d given him a gift. He stroked me, made me shudder, then put my hand on the front of his fly.

  “I’m ready for you, too.” He smiled and moved my hand up down, stroking him through the fabric.

  I looked automatically toward the door, which could have opened at any moment. “This turns you on. Sex in public.”

  He barely paused. “Sex anywhere.”

  I might have been indiscriminate when it came to choosing my partners before I’d met him, but until I’d met Dan, I’d never fucked in public. This would make three times. Thrice a charm. Or maybe our luck would run out this time, and we’d be caught.

  I couldn’t decide if the thought excited me or not. His touch did. His hands and mouth did. The way he looked at me did. And the way he said my name.

  “Elle,” he whispered. “I want you.”

  His touch skated me closer to the edge, and I wanted him, too. “My purse.”

  He nipped my neck, then looked up at me. “You really are always ready, aren’t you?”

  “I believe in being careful.”

  He shook his head a little, as though my answer amused him, but it took only a minute for him to put the condom on and slide my panties down to my thighs.

  “Put your hands up. Grab the bar.”

  I grabbed the bar. It was cold. My fingers curled around it without effort, the tips of my nails meeting my palms.

  He thrust inside me without resistance, his sole noise a grunt. His hands gripped my hips, lifted my leg to wrap around his waist. I grabbed the bar harder. My nails dug into my skin, but even that little pain wasn’t a distraction to the pleasure of his cock filling me. He put his hands under my ass, holding me up as he moved.

  It must’ve looked awkward, but I was spared the sight of it. No mirrors reflected the way he fucked me, nothing to show our faces twisted in lust. I looked at him as he looked up at me, and he slammed inside me so hard it moved my entire body.

  I couldn’t hold on to him. If I let go of the bars, we’d both fall. I couldn’t move, either, balanced so precariously. It was all Dan, his job, his skill, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he moved.

  I’ve said it before. I’m not small, and he’s not large. Yet that didn’t seem to matter now. He moved inside me without effort, his pubic bone hitting me in just the right place, over and over again, so he didn’t have to slide a hand between us.

  My orgasm surprised me more than it did him. I didn’t think I’d come that way, skirt around my waist, hands numb from gripping a cold steel bar, heart pounding in anticipation of the door opening and our illicit behavior being discovered.

  I came with a low, small cry, my eyes open and watching him, and he smiled. I closed my eyes immediately after, turned my head, but he didn’t like that.

  “Don’t look away from me,” he whispered, voice hoarse and breath short from exertion and arousal. “I love to watch your eyes.”

  There was no good reason for me to do as he said, not then, not ever. I want to make that very clear. No matter what Dan asked of me, I always had the ability to say no. I simply didn’t take it.

  I had the ability to refuse, and I did not.

  I opened my eyes and looked into his, blazing with passion. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? Do eyes really blaze with passion? Can they?

  Yes. I don’t know who said the eyes are windows to the soul, but I believe it. I saw passion there. And enjoyment. And as always, that hint of disbelief, like even though he was doing this he couldn’t quite believe it.

  I knew how he felt.

  He fucked me harder. I adjusted my grip on the bars. The ring I wore on my right hand clattered on the metal. The hangers jangled. Our breathing sounded very loud.

  His thrusts grew ragged, and beads of sweat formed on his brow. He bit his lip, shifting my weight and sinking into me one last time with a low grunt that brought a smile to my lips. It might be nice to be elegant and eloquent at the moment of orgasm, but most of us aren’t. I watched his eyes flutter and the line of his throat as he swallowed hard. He put his face against my chest, bared by the gown’s déco