Dirty Read online

  It seemed obvious to me, but Dan shook his head. “I don’t see that about you at all.”

  “You don’t?” I sat back from him. The wine was wearing off. “Tell me, Dan. What do you see?”

  He smiled and looked me up and down. “I see a woman who’s smart and sexy as hell.”

  He laughed at the look I gave him. “Elle, I mean it. Sure, you’re a little…reserved. But you’re not uptight. Especially not with a couple glasses of wine in you.”

  I waited a moment before answering. “Have you ever listened to a sound so long you’ve forgotten you were hearing it until it stopped?”

  “Sure.” His hand tightened on mine a bit. “Cicadas, the year they came out. They were so loud they sounded like a spaceship landing, but after a while it just became background noise until nighttime, when they stopped and I realized they weren’t still buzzing.”

  I nodded. “White noise. That’s the inside of my head. All the time. I’m never not thinking about something. I just…keep going and going, all the time.”

  I tried to gauge his reaction, but Dan didn’t seem put off by this little revelation of weirdness. I amended my statement. “Almost all the time.”

  His thumb stroked my skin. “What makes it stop?”

  “Drinking.”

  “That stops a lot of people from thinking.”

  I looked down at our hands, clasped with such intimacy. “And fucking.”

  “Sex makes you stop thinking so much?”

  And counting, I thought but didn’t say aloud. I nodded. “There had to be a reason why there were seventy-eight men, don’t you think?”

  He stayed silent while I studied our hands. I didn’t want to look up at him, afraid the eyes that had encouraged me to speak would be filled with scorn.

  “Come with me.” He stood and pulled me up along with him.

  My heart pounded, but I followed him to his bedroom.

  “Sit down on the bed.”

  I did that, too.

  He went to his dresser and pulled out a bandanna. He folded it, once, twice, and again, then placed it over my eyes and tied it behind my head. Instant darkness. A sliver of light below it. I let out a nervous laugh he didn’t join.

  Then, I waited.

  Nothing happened. I heard him moving around the room, the soft shuffle of something that might have been him taking off his clothes, or maybe not. The drawer slid shut with a muffled clunk. He didn’t speak.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, my mouth slowly going dry with anticipation and anxiety. I didn’t move. My entire life was about control, except here, in this one place. This time. With this man.

  I felt his hands on the hem of my skirt, pushing it up over my thighs. The bed dipped with his weight as he settled next to me. I straightened my back, and he put a hand on my shoulder, holding me still. His hand moved over my thigh, between my legs. His fingertips brushed my panties. Then he didn’t move again.

  Without sight, my other senses had heightened. I could smell his cologne and the wine he’d drunk. Hear the puff and blow of his breath. Feel it on my neck. I sat stiff and straight, muscles tense with waiting.

  “Dan?”

  “Shh.”

  I swallowed. The hand between my legs traveled up to unbutton my blouse and ease it off my shoulders. Cooler air caressed me. My nipples spiked. He took off my bra, too. His hands held my breasts. His thumbs circled my rock-hard nipples, and a moment later I cried out when I felt heat and wetness surround one.

  His mouth. He suckled my nipple, still holding the other with his hand. I drew in breath after shallow breath. He moved gentle lips along the slope of my breast to capture the other nipple and suck that, too.

  His hands roamed my skin. He unbuttoned my skirt and pulled the zipper at the side. He lifted me a little to take it off. Then I felt him between my legs, his hands on my thighs again while his mouth found my nipple. He pushed my legs wide apart. I tensed.

  “Are you still thinking?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded breathy and a little hoarse.

  “Let’s see if I can help you with that.”

  The little bit of humor loosened my muscles. His fingers whispered up my inner thighs. He teased the hollows high up on the insides, and I shivered. Beneath the blindfold, my eyes closed. My head fell back. I supported my weight on my hands.

  When he touched between my legs, at last, I jumped a little. He stroked me through the lace, then pulled the panties off. His comforter felt silky and cool on my bare skin.

  “Are you cold?”

  I shook my head. His hands moved over my body again, up my thighs and over my hips, my belly, my breasts, up to my shoulders to encircle my throat with gentle pressure.

  “You’re shivering.”

  I licked my lips. “It’s…the way you’re touching me…”

  His breath stroked my skin, and a moment later his mouth fastened on my throat, just over my pulse. I tipped my head back further. He nipped and nuzzled me. His hand went back between my legs. His fingers slid against me, then inside me, and I moaned.

  “I love the noises you make when you get turned on.” He murmured this directly in my ear as his moving hand urged another moan from my throat. “I love the way you get so wet for me, right away. I’ve never had a woman respond to me the way you do.”

  His fingers moved inside and against me and in moments I trembled on the edge of orgasm. Dan teased me, moving slow, his mouth tracing erotic patterns on my skin. He backed off, leaving me gasping. He touched me again, feathering strokes with a fingertip countered by firmer circles. My back arched.

  He left me for a moment and came back. His fingers pushed the insides of my thighs and I felt his breath again. This time, not upon my neck, but against my belly.

  Every muscle in my body went stiff, and I sat up. “No.”

  He rubbed soothing hands along my legs. “Relax. It’s all right.”

  “No, Dan. I need to know that if I say no, you’ll stop. I need to know that.” I sat up, pushing away from him.

  I put my hand to the bandanna to take it from my eyes. He put his hand over mine to stop me. We stayed like that a moment until, trembling, I put my hand down at my side. His shadow moved across my face, blocking out the sliver of light for a moment.

  “Elle. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. I promise.”

  I nodded. After a few moments he went back to what he’d been doing before, but it took me a while to relax into his touch again. He took his time. Moved slow. Easy. He murmured sweet words into my ear and nuzzled my skin while he stroked his hands over all parts of me. He eased me toward arousal with his fingertips and lips. His tongue painted calligraphy on my collarbone until at last he urged a sigh from me. Then a gasp.

  Everything went away but him. It was glory, it was joy, it was pleasure, oblivion, infinity. It was sex, but there was intimacy too, a frightening thing I shied from but couldn’t force myself to refuse.

  When I came, I said his name. I sobbed a breath, and said it again. He pressed his hand against the pulse of my orgasm and held me as it flooded my body.

  “What is it about you?” He whispered in my ear while my body still twitched. “I can’t get enough of it.”

  My breath rattled in my throat like stones skipping on water. I had no words to give him. No explanation. I didn’t understand it, myself. It scared me, but then so do roller coasters, and I ride them anyway, too.

  New habits are as easy to gain as old ones are difficult to break. Dan became a habit slowly, a tiny step at a time, inch by figurative inch. If we didn’t see each other, we talked on the phone. He sent me funny text messages and e-mails, and IM’d me late at night with inoffensively lewd innuendos that made me laugh and sigh in equal amounts.The sex was fantastic. Varied. Eager. Exciting and slowly familiar, which was something I craved and feared at the same time. I had told him I would go as far as he would take me. It had been a bit of braggadocio, maybe, that statement. Dan took me to places I’d never been, had