Dirty Read online

  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 h