Dirty

Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Unagh and Ronan, who bring me more joy than I ever imagined possible, and as ever and always, to DPF, because the rest of the world gets to peek inside my head, but you actually have to live with me. I love you all!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been written without the

support and friendship of the following:

Natalie Damschroder and Lauren Dane, who read my book

and held my hand through all of Elle’s adventures

(and who told me they loved Dan);

Scissors and Piston, my fellow Maverick Authors:

long live the Power of the Three!;

CPRW, the most fantastic and supportive

group of writers I’m honored to know;

Kelly, Sal and the rest of the Manor crew for the hours

and hours of entertainment, and to Jena for the cowboy hat

dancing and delicious emo angst! *MWAH*

The staff and owners of Mary Catherine’s Bakery in

Annville. Thanks for the space to sit, the coffee to drink

and the encouraging words.

Special thanks to Mary Louise Schwartz of the Belfrey

Literary Agency for believing in me, and to Susan Pezzack

for giving me the chance to share this book with the world.

And to all of my family and friends who supported me,

but most particularly my mother, Emily, for supporting

my dreams since childhood, my father, Don, for helping to

shape the person I’ve become and my sister, Whitney, for

being not just my sister but my best friend.

Chapter 01

This is what happened.

I met him at the candy store. He turned around and smiled at me. I was surprised enough to smile back.

This was not a children’s candy store. This was Sweet Heaven, an upscale, gourmet candy store. No cheap lollipops or chalky chocolate kisses, but the kind of place you went to buy expensive, imported truffles for your boss’s wife because you felt guilty for fucking him when you were both at a conference in Milwaukee.

He was buying jellybeans, black only. He looked at the bag in my hand, candy-coated chocolate. Also in one color.

“You know what they say about the green ones.” The rakish tilt of his lips tried to charm me, and I resisted.

“St. Patrick’s Day?” Which was why I was buying them.

He shook his head. “No. The green ones make you horny.”

I’d been hit on plenty of times, mostly by men with little finesse who thought what was between their legs made up for what they lacked between their ears. Sometimes I went home with one of them anyway, just because it felt good to want and be wanted, even if it was mostly fake and they usually disappointed.

“That’s an urban legend made up by adolescent boys with wish-fulfillment issues.”

His lips tilted further. His smile was his best asset, brilliant and shining in a face made up of otherwise regular features. He had hair the color of wet sand and cloudy blue-green eyes; both attractive, but when paired with the smile…breathtaking.

“Very good answer,” he said.

He held out his hand. When I took it, he pulled me closer, step by hesitant step, until he could lean close and whisper in my ear. His hot breath gusted along my skin, and I shivered. “Do you like licorice?”

I did, and I do, and he tugged me around the corner to reach inside a bin filled with small black rectangles. It had a label with a picture of a kangaroo on the front.

“Try this.” He lifted a piece to my lips and I opened for him although the sign clearly said No Samples. “It’s from Australia.”

The licorice smoothed on my tongue. Soft, fragrant, sticky in a way that made me run my tongue along my teeth. I tasted his fingers from where they’d brushed my lips. He smiled.

“I know a little place,” he said, and I let him take me there.

The Slaughtered Lamb. A gruesome name for a nice little faux-British pub tucked down an alley in the center of downtown Harrisburg. Compared to the trendy dance clubs and upscale restaurants that had revitalized the area, the Lamb seemed out of place and all the more delightful for it.

He sat us at the bar, away from the college students singing karaoke in the corner. The stools wobbled, and I had to hold tight to the bar. I ordered a margarita.

“No.” The shake of his head had me raising a brow. “You want whiskey.”

“I’ve never had whiskey.”

“A virgin.” On another man the comment would have come off smarmy, earned a roll of the eyes and an automatic addition to the “not with James Dean’s prick” file.

On him, it worked.

“A virgin,” I agreed, the word tasting unfamiliar on my tongue as though I hadn’t used it in a very long time.

He ordered us both shots of Jameson Irish Whiskey, and he drank his back as one should do with shots, in one gulp. I am no stranger to drinking, even if I’d never had whiskey, and I matched him without a grimace. There’s a reason it’s also known as firewater, but after the initial burn the taste of it spread across my tongue and reminded me of the smell of burning leaves. Cozy. Warm. A little romantic, even.

His gaze brightened. “I like the way you put that down the back of your throat.”

I was instantly, immediately, insanely aroused.

“Another?” said the ’tender.

“Another,” my companion agreed. To me he said, “Very good.”

The compliment pleased me, and I wasn’t sure why impressing him had become so important.

We drank there for a while, and the whiskey hit me harder than I thought it would. Or perhaps the company made me giddy enough to giggle at his subtle but charming observations about the people around us.

The woman in the business suit in the corner was an off-duty call girl. The man in the leather jacket, a mortician. My companion wove stories about everyone around us including our good-natured bartender, whom he said had the look of a retired gumdrop farmer.

“Gumdrops don’t come from farms.” I leaned forward to touch his tie, which featured a pattern that upon first glance appeared to be the normal sort of dots and crosses many men wore. I, however, had noticed the dots and crosses were tiny skulls and crossbones.

“No?” He seemed disappointed I wouldn’t play along.

“No.” I tugged his tie and looked up into the blue-green eyes that had begun vying with his smile for best feature. “They’re harvested in the wild.”

He guffawed, tilting his head back with the force of it. I envied him the free and easy way he gave in to the impulse to laugh. I’d have been afraid people would stare.

“And you,” he said at last. His gaze pinned me, held me in place. “What are you?”

“Gumdrop poacher,” I whispered through whiskey-numb lips.

He reached to twirl a strand of hair that had fallen free from my long French braid. “You don’t look that dangerous, to me.”

We looked at each other, two strangers, and shared a smile, and I thought how long it had been since I’d done that. “Want to walk me home?”

He did.

He didn’t attempt to make love to me that night, which didn’t surprise me. He didn’t try to fuck me, either, which did. He didn’t even kiss me, though I hesitated before putting my keys in the door and smiled and chatted with him before saying good-night.

He hadn’t asked for my name. Not even my number. Just left me buzzing from whiskey on my doorstep. I watched him walk down the street, jingling the change in his pocket. He faded into the darkness between the streetlamps, and then I went inside.

I thought about him the next morning in the shower while I washed the scent of smoke from my hair. I thought about him while I shaved my legs, my pits, the curling dark hair between my legs. When I brushed my teeth I caught sight of my face in the mirror and tried to imagine seeing my eyes as he had.

Blue with flecks of white and gold visible upon closer observation. A feature many men praised, perhaps because telling a woman she has pretty eyes is a safe way of judging whether they can next move on to putting a hand on her thigh. He hadn’t mentioned them. He hadn’t, actually, complimented me on anything other than the way I’d drunk the whiskey.

I thought about him as I dressed for work. Plain white panties, comfortable in cut and fabric. Matching bra, a hint of lace, enough to make it pretty but designed to support my breasts rather than flaunt them. A black skirt cut just above the knee. A white blouse with buttons. Black and white, as always, to make the choices easier and because something about the pure simplicity of black and white soothes me.

I thought about him on the ride to work, my headphones tucked inside my ears to discourage random conversation from strangers. The shield of modern times. The ride was no longer than it ever had been, nor shorter, and I counted the stops the way I always did and gave the bus driver the same smile.

“Have a good day, Miss Kavanagh.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

I thought of him, too, as I climbed the cement steps to my office and pushed through the doors precisely five minutes before I was due in my office.

“You’re late today,” said Harvey Willard, the security guard. “An entire minute.”

“Blame the bus,” I told him with a grin I knew would make him blush, though the blame was not upon the bus but upon my distracted gait that had made me slow.

Up the elevator, down the hall, through my door, to my desk. Not one thing was different, but everything had changed. Not even the columns of numbers in front of me could wrest my mind from the puzzle he’d presented.

I didn’t know his name. Hadn’t given him mine. I’d thought it would be easy, two strangers looking to fill a mutual need. A standard seduction. One that didn’t need names to complicate it.

I didn’t like men knowing my name, anyway. It gave them a sense of power over me they didn’t deserve, as if by gasping out my name when they jerked and spasmed they could cement the moment in place and time. If I had to give a name, I gave them a false one, and when they shouted it out in come-hoarse voices it never failed to make me smile.

I wasn’t smiling today. I was distracted, disgruntled, discombobulated… I’d have been disenchanted if I’d ever been enchanted to begin with.

I worked the problem in my mind like I’d figure a calculation. Separate the equations, decipher the individual components, add the pieces that made sense and divide them by the parts that didn’t. By lunchtime I still hadn’t been able to relegate him to a memory.

“Hot date last night?” Marcy Peters, she of the big hair and tiny skirts, asked. Marcy is the sort of woman who will always refer to herself as a girl, who wears white pumps with too-tight jeans, whose blouses always show a little too much cleavage.

She poured herself another cup of coffee. I had tea. We sat at the small lunchroom table and peeled open sandwiches delivered from the deli, hers tuna and mine, as usual, turkey on wheat.

“As always” came my reply, and we laughed, two women bound in friendship not from qualities in common or mutual interests but because our alliance forms the cage that protects us from the sharks with whom we work.

Marcy fends off the sharks with a blunt and unassuming, forthright presentation of her femininity. Of herself as woman all-powerful, all-intriguing, all-encompassing. She is blond and buxom and not above using her attributes to get what she wants.

I prefer a more discreet approach.

Marcy laughed at my response because the Elle Kavanagh she knows does not go on dates, hot or otherwise. The Elle Kavanagh of her acquaintance, junior vice president of corporate accounting, makes the cliché of the lady-librarian-with-spectacles-and-bun look like Lady Godiva.

Marcy doesn’t know anything about me, or my life outside the walls of Triple Smith and Brown.

“You hear the news about the Flynn account?” This was Marcy’s idea of lunchtime conversation. Gossip about other employees.

“No,” I said to appease her and because she always did manage to dig up the best stories.

“Mr. Flynn’s secretary sent the wrong files over to Bob, who’s handling the account, right?”

“All right.”

Glee danced in Marcy’s eyes. “Apparently, she e-mailed Mr. Flynn’s private expense account, not the corporate one.”

“It has to get better.”

“Apparently, Mr. Flynn likes to keep track of how many hundred-dollar hookers and bootleg cigars he buys!” She wriggled in her seat.

“Bad news for Mr. Flynn’s secretary, I guess.”

Marcy grinned. “She’s been blowing Bob on the side. He didn’t tell Mr. Flynn.”

“Bob Hoover?” That was unexpected news.

“Yeah. Can you believe it?”

“I guess I can believe anything of anybody,” I told her honestly. “Most people are far less discriminating about who they take to bed than you’d think.”

“Oh, really?” She gave me a ferrety look of interest. “And you’d know this because…?”

“Pure conjecture.” I pushed away from the table and threw away my trash.

Marcy didn’t look disappointed, only more intrigued. “Uh-huh.”

I gave her a sweet and bland smile, and left her alone to meditate on my mysterious sex life.

The fact is, people are far less discriminating in who they fuck than anyone wants to admit. Appearance, intelligence, a sense of humor, wealth, power…not everyone has these qualities, and fewer have more than one. But here’s the truth. Fat, ugly and stupid people get laid, too, the media just doesn’t report on it like they do when the lovers are gorgeous film stars. Men don’t need to be clobbered over the head with the sight of your tits to know you’re looking for action. Even pent-up librarian types can get fucked with their panties around their ankles and a brick wall scraping bloody welts on their backs.

At least, this one can.

Or at least I’d been able to three years ago, which was the last time I’d gone out looking. I hadn’t been looking for action at Sweet Heaven, merely jonesing for chocolate. So why, then, had I let him take me away? Why had I asked him to walk me home and been so disappointed when he left me on the doorstep with nothing but a wave?

That I hadn’t been looking to find someone that day only exacerbated my private torture. If I’d found him in a bar instead of Sweet Heaven, if my hair had been loose about my shoulders, if my blouse had been unbuttoned, would he have asked to come inside my door? Come inside my body? Would he have kissed me on the stoop, his hands slipping around my waist and pulling me against him tight?

I would never know.

I thought of him all that day and all the next, and the wanting of him grew and grew in my mind like pouring water into a vase filled with stones. Thinking of him consumed my waking moments and seeped into my dreams, leading to sweaty nights amongst tangled sheets.

I studied my face incessantly, wondering what he had seen that day to take me from the candy store and to the pub, but not to bed. Had I failed somehow? Had I said some wrong thing, revealed some flaw, laughed too loudly or not quickly enough at his humor?

I knew I was obsessing. That’s what I did. Turned things over and over in my brain to pick them apart from every angle. Analyzed and calculated and pondered.

I could not forget the way his breath smelled when he leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Do you like licorice?”

I could not forget the warmth of his hand on mine when he congratulated me for downing that first shot of whiskey.

I could not forget the flash of his blue-green eyes or the small but perfect cleft in his chin or the faint freckles on the bridge of his nose and forehead or his voice and laugh, the slow deep honey of it that had made me want to lean against him and rub myself on him the way cats do, purring.

The last time I picked up a man in a bar and let him take me home, he’d ejaculated all over my skirt and cried beer-scented tears all over my face. Then he’d called me names and demanded I pay him back for the drinks he’d bought me. It had been one last bad encounter in a string of them. Boys who didn’t know what to do with their pricks, older men who thought two seconds of fingering counted as foreplay, sweet-faced lads who turned into abusive bastards the moment the doors locked behind them.

Celibacy had become the better option. A challenge I set myself that became habit. The day I’d met him in Sweet Heaven it had been three years, two months, a week and three days since I’d had sex.

Now, with thoughts of him on my mind, that nameless stranger, I couldn’t stop thinking of sex. A man I passed on the street could catch my gaze and my cunt would clench like fingers closing on a flower. My nipples rubbed with constant friction against my bras. My panties tugged incessantly at my clit, urging me to stroke that small button over and over, no matter the place or the time or the circumstance.

I was horny.

My assignations had never been about any sort of amorous feelings. They’d been about filling an emptiness inside, of chasing away the dark cloud I could usually escape but sometimes…could not. I went to bars and parties and the park to pick up men who might take me away for a few hours, might make me forget everything in my head. Sex had been a choice I made to ease an ache inside. I knew it. I knew why I did it. I knew why I looked like a librarian and acted like a whore.

Until now it hadn’t mattered. I’d met men who made me laugh, who made me sigh, even a few, very few, who’d made me come. Until now I had never met one I couldn’t forget.

For two weeks I stuttered along this way, my concentration knitted together by strands of habit rather than any effort on my part. My work didn’t suffer, only because the numbers came so easily to me, but everything else did. I forgot to mail bills, pick up the dry cleaning, set my alarm.

The spring days were still easing into night early enough that sometimes my ride home on the bus was done in darkness. I sat in my usual seat, the one at the back, my coat and briefcase folded neatly over my lap, my legs crossed high up at the thigh. I stared out the window and imagined his face and the smell of his breath, and then, with the rocking of the bus to aid me, I began to get myself off.

At first, just a gentle squeezing of my thigh muscles done in time to the thump of the bus wheels on the pavement. My pussy swelled. My clit became a tiny hard nodule pressing against the soft fabric of my panties. My hips, hidden by the coat and briefcase, rocked on the plastic seat. With both hands folded sedately on my lap, nobody looking at me would have any idea what I was doing.

Streetlights cast bars of silver on my lap and made swiftly moving lines of light that slid up my body and away, leaving behind darkness interrupted a minute later by another streak. I began to time my pace to the passing of the lights.

Sweet tension curled inside my stomach. My breath caught and held, then hissed out between my parted lips when it began to burn inside my lungs. I kept my eyes fixed on the window and the sights outside it, but I saw none of them. I saw the ghost of my face reflected now and again in the window glass. I imagined him looking at me.

My fingers curled on top of my leather briefcase, holding tight. My foot moved up and down, up and down, squeezing my thighs together, rubbing my clit in a small but perfect motion. I wanted so badly to touch myself, to stroke my fingers in circles around that hard button, to slide them inside and fuck myself while the bus sped on toward its destination— but I didn’t. I rocked and squeezed, and each lamp we passed urged me that much closer to climax.

My body shook from holding so still when it wanted to writhe. I had never done this before, this furtive dance toward completion. Masturbation was done at home alone in the bath or in bed, straightforward and swift, a release of tension. This, here, was almost against my will. My thoughts of him, the movement of the bus, my celibacy, had all conspired to set my body burning with a fire only orgasm could quench.

Sweat slid down the line of my spine and into the crack of my buttocks. That touch, that light tickle, so much like the feeling of a tongue along my skin, sent me hurtling over the edge. My cunt tightened as my body tensed. My nails scratched thin lines in the leather of my briefcase. My clit jumped and spasmed, and bolts of pure bliss radiated through my entire body.

I shook in silence, drawing less attention than if I’d sneezed. I turned the gasping sigh into a cough that barely turned heads. In another moment looseness pervaded me, and boneless, I slumped a bit in my seat as the bus eased to a stop.

My stop.

I got off on trembling legs, certain the smell of sex had to be clinging to me like perfume, but nobody seemed to notice. I exited the bus into a spring mist, and I lifted my face to the night sky and let it kiss me all over, not caring that it flattened my hair and dampened my blouse.

I had made myself come on a public bus thinking of his face, and I still didn’t know his name.

For better or worse, that solo touch on the public transportation eased some of my need. The numbers came back to me, filling my mind with their steady stream of plus and minus. I threw myself into my work, landing several big accounts that had been the responsibility of Bob Hoover, now too busy getting lunchtime blow jobs from Mr. Flynn’s secretary to handle the load.

I didn’t mind. More work meant greater opportunity to show the higher-ups I deserved my title, my corner office, my extra vacation time. It meant I didn’t have to invent reasons to stay late at work so I’d need to choose between going home and facing an empty house or heading out to some meat-market bar and testing my strength of will.

“Sex,” Marcy declared in the lunchroom, “is like this chocolate éclair.”

She’d brought me a powdered sugar doughnut. “Full of cream and makes you feel like you want to puke after?”

She rolled her eyes. “What the hell sort of sex do you have, Elle?”

“None, recently.”

“I’m shocked.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t. “But no wonder, with an attitude like that.”

She might have big hair and trashy taste in clothes, but Marcy could make me laugh. “Tell my why sex is like that éclair, then.”

“Because it’s tempting enough to make you forget everything else you’re supposed to do.” She licked some chocolate off the top. “And it’s satisfying enough to make you glad you did.”

I sat back in my chair a little, watching her. “I take it you had some sex last night?”

She made a mock-innocent face, and I realized something. I liked her. She fluttered her eyelashes. “Who, little ole me?”

“Yes, you.” I put the doughnut back in the box and snagged the last éclair. “And you’re dying to tell me about it, so stop wasting time and get to it before someone else comes in and we have to pretend to be talking about business.”

Marcy laughed. “I wasn’t sure you’d like to hear about it.”

I studied her face. “You think that about me, don’t you. That I don’t like sex?”

She looked up from her gooey plate, her smile sincere, and something passed over her expression. Something a little like pity. It made me frown.

“I don’t know, Elle. I don’t know you well enough to say, really, but you act like you don’t like much of anything sometimes, except work.”

Hearing something you already know shouldn’t ever be a shock, but it usually is. I wanted to answer her right away, but my throat had closed and my eyes burned with tears I blinked against to keep from falling. I put one hand on my stomach, which had lurched at her words in recognition of the truth of them.

Marcy, despite her appearance and occasional dumb-blonde performance, is anything but stupid. She reached at once for my hand and closed her fingers over mine before I could pull it away. She squeezed my hand and let go fast enough to keep me from startling.

“Hey,” she said softly. “It’s all right. We all have buttons.”

Right then, at that moment, I had the chance to make Marcy my friend. A real one, not a business acquaintance. I have stood on the edge of so many things, so many times, and I most always back away. If there is a time when telling the truth will open a door, I lie. If a smile will forge a connection, I turn my face.

But this time, surprising myself and probably her, I didn’t.

I smiled at her. “Tell me about your date last night.”

She did. In detail enough to make me blush. It was the best lunch I’d ever had.

When it was time for us to go to our separate offices, she stopped me with another squeeze of my hand. “You should come out with me sometime.”

I let her squeeze my hand because she was so earnest, and we’d had such a good time. “Sure.”

“You will?” She squealed, the hand squeeze turning into an impromptu, full-length hug that made my entire body stiffen. Marcy patted my back and stepped away, and if she noticed that her embrace had turned me into a wooden effigy, she said nothing. “Great.”

“Great.” I smiled and nodded.

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and it had been a long time since I’d had a girlfriend. Any sort of friend. I caught myself humming later, at my desk.

Euphoria doesn’t last under the best circumstances, and when I pushed open my front door to find the light on my answering machine blinking steadily, mine vanished.

I don’t get many calls at home. Doctors’ offices, sales calls, wrong numbers, my brother Chad…and my mother. The red number four mocked me as I dumped my mail on the table and hung my keys on the small hook by the door. Four messages in one day? They had to be from her.

Hating your mother is such a cliché comedians use it to make audiences laugh. Psychiatrists base their entire careers upon diagnosing it. Greeting card companies stick the knife in further by making consumers feel so guilty about the way they really feel about their mothers, they’ll willingly pay five dollars for a piece of paper with some pretty words they didn’t write, echoing a sentiment they don’t feel.

I don’t hate my mother.

I’ve tried to hate my mother, I really have. If I hated her, I might be able to put her out of my life at last, be done with her, put an end to the torture she provides. The sad fact remains, I haven’t learned to hate my mother. The best I can do is ignore her.

“Ella, pick up the phone.”

My mother’s voice is a nasal foghorn, bleating her disdain as a warning to all the other ships to stay away from me, the reason for her disappointment. I can’t hate her, but I can hate her voice, and the way she calls me Ella instead of Elle.Ella is a waif’s name, an orphan sitting in the cinders. Elle is classier, crisper. The name a woman called herself when she wanted people to take her seriously. She insists on calling me Ella because she knows it annoys me.

By the fourth message she was detailing how life didn’t seem worth living with such an ungrateful excuse for a daughter. How the pills the doctor prescribed for her nerves weren’t working. How she was embarrassed to have to ask Karen Cooper from next door to go to the pharmacy for her when she had a daughter who should be quite capable of taking care of her, but for the fact she refused.

She had a husband who could go for her, too, but she never seemed to remember that.

“And don’t forget!” I jumped at the suddenness of her voice ringing out from the small speaker. “You said you’d visit soon.”

There was a brief moment of hissing static at the end of her message as though she’d hung on the line, convinced I was really there and ignoring her, and if she waited long enough she’d catch me out.

The phone rang again as I looked at it. Resigned, I picked it up. I didn’t bother to defend myself. She talked for ten minutes before I had the chance to say anything.

“I was at work, Mother,” I managed to interject when she paused to light a cigarette.

She greeted my answer with an audible sniff of disdain. “So late.”

“Yes, Mother. So late.” The clock showed ten after eight. “I take the bus home, remember?”

“You have that fancy car. Why don’t you drive it?”

I didn’t bother to explain yet again my reasons for keeping a car in the city but using public transportation, which was faster and easier. She wouldn’t have listened.

“You should find a husband,” she said at last, and I bit back a sigh. The tirade was close to ending. “Though how you ever will, I don’t know. Men don’t like women who are smarter than they are. Or who earn more money. Or—” she paused significantly “—who don’t take care of themselves.”

“I take care of myself, Mother.” I meant financially. She meant spa treatments and manicures.

“Ella.” Her sigh sounded very loud over the phone. “You could be so pretty…”

I looked into the mirror as she talked, seeing the reflection of a woman my mother didn’t know. “Mother. Enough. I’m hanging up.”

I imagined the way her mouth pursed at such harsh treatment from her only daughter. “Fine.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

She snorted. “Don’t forget, you promised to come visit.”

The thought made my stomach fall away. “Yes, I know, but—”

“You have to take me to the cemetery, Ella.”

The woman in the mirror looked startled. I didn’t feel startled. I didn’t feel…anything. No matter what my reflection showed.

“I know, Mother.”

“Don’t think you can weasel out of it this year—”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

I disconnected her, though she still squawked, and immediately dialed another number.

“Marcy. It’s Elle.”

Marcy, bless her, revealed nothing but pleased surprise at my desire to take her up on her invitation to go out after work. It was exactly the reaction I needed. Too much enthusiasm would have made me rethink; too little would have made me cancel.

“The Blue Swan,” she said confidently, like she was reaching for my hand to lead me across a bridge swaying over an abyss. In a way she was. “It’s small but the music is good and the crowd’s eclectic. The drinks are pretty cheap, too. And it’s not a meat market.”

So kind of her, really, to keep assuming I was afraid of men. She didn’t know I had once slept with four different men in as many days. She didn’t know it wasn’t sex that scared me.

Her kindness made me smile, though, and we made plans for after work on Friday. She didn’t question my change of mind.

Still staring at the woman in the mirror, I hung up the phone. She looked as if she was going to cry. I felt bad for her, that woman with the dark hair, the one who only ever wore black and white. The one who might have been pretty if she’d only take care of herself, if only she weren’t smarter, if only she didn’t earn more money. I felt sorry for her but envied her, too, because she, at least, could cry and I could not.

Chapter 02

A figure in black waited for me when I got home from work on Thursday night. Black sweatshirt, hood pulled up over black-dyed hair. Black jeans and sneakers. Black-polished nails.

“Hi, Gavin.” I put my key into the lock as he stood.

“Hi, Miss Kavanagh. Can I give you a hand with that?” He took my bag before I had time to protest and followed me inside. He hung it neatly on the hook by the door. “I brought your book back.”

Gavin belongs to the neighbors on my left side. I’d never met his mother, though I’d often seen her leaving for work. I’d heard raised voices a few times through our shared walls, and it made me conscious about keeping my own television turned low.

“Did you like it?”

He shrugged and set the book on the table. “Not as much as the first one.”

I’d lent him my copy of C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. “Lots of people only read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Gav. Do you want the next one?”

At fifteen Gavin was a typical Goth wannabe with his Jack Skellington wardrobe and liberal use of eyeliner. He was a nice kid, though, who liked to read and didn’t seem to have many friends. He’d shown up at my door about two years earlier, wanting to know if he could mow my grass. Since I had a patch of grass about the size of a small compact car, I didn’t need a lawn boy. I’d hired him, anyway, because he’d looked so sincere.

Now he spent more time borrowing from my library and helping me strip wallpaper and sand floors than he did on my sad excuse for a lawn, but I liked him. He was quiet and polite and far cheerier than any Goth kid should have been. He was good, too, with tasks I found too tedious to tackle, like scraping the wallpaper paste residue left behind when we peeled off two decades worth of home decor from my dining room walls.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get it back to you by Monday.”

He followed me to the kitchen, where I put a box of chocolate cookies on the table. “Whenever you get it back to me is fine.”

He helped himself to a cookie. “Do you need any help stripping tonight?”

We looked at each other as soon as the words had escaped his lips, and I blinked. He looked stricken. I had to turn around so as not to embarrass him with my laughter.

“I’m done,” I managed to say. “I could use some help priming the drywall, though, if you’d like to help.”

“Sure, sure.” He sounded relieved.

I pulled out a frozen pizza and put it in the oven. “How’ve you been, Gav? I haven’t seen you for a few days.”

“Oh. My mom…she’s getting married again.”

I nodded, pulling out plates and glasses to set the table. We didn’t always talk much, Gavin and I, which I think suited both of us fine. He helped me renovate my house, and I paid him with cookies and pizza, with books and with a place to go when his mother was out, which seemed to be quite often.

I made a noncommittal noise as I poured milk into the glasses. Gavin got up to get the napkins from my cupboard and set out two. He washed his hands before he sat back at the table. His black polish had chipped.

“She says this guy’s the one.”

I glanced at him as I set out grated cheese and garlic powder. “That’s nice for her.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“Will you be moving?”

He looked up, dark eyes wide in a pale face. “I hope not!”

“I hope not, too. I still have an entire dining room to paint.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back after a moment.

I didn’t have to be a mind reader to see something was bothering him, nor a genius to figure out what it was. I could have played the part of mentor. Asked him sympathetic questions. We didn’t have that type of relationship, though, the sort that shared secrets or heartfelt revelations. He was the boy who lived next door and helped me around the house. I don’t know what I represented to him, but I doubted it was a guidance counselor.

The buzzer went off on the oven, and I served us both sizzling slices of pizza. He added garlic powder. I used the grated cheese. We ate discussing the book I’d lent him and debating whether or not the next episode of the cop show we both liked was going to reveal the name of the killer. Gavin helped me load the dishes in the dishwasher and put away the leftover pizza. By the time I came downstairs after changing my clothes, he’d already spread out and taped down the tarp to protect the floor and opened the can of primer.

We listened to music and painted for a few hours until he had to go home. Before he went, he browsed the shelves in my living room and picked out another book.

“What’s this one about?” He held up my battered copy of The Little Prince.

“A little prince from outer space.” That was the easy answer. Anyone who’s read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story knows there’s far more to it than that.

“Cool. Can I take this one, too?”

I hesitated. The book had been a gift. It had also sat on my shelf gathering dust for years without so much as a glance from me. “Sure. Of course.”

He gave me a real grin, then, the first of the evening. “Great. Thanks, Miss Kavanagh!”

He let himself out, and I stared for a moment at the empty space the book had left behind before I started cleaning up.

That night I dreamed of a roomful of roses and woke with a gasp, eyes wide open to the darkness. Turning on the light chased it into shadows cowering in the corners of my room but could do nothing for the darkness lingering in my thoughts. I lay in my bed for a few minutes before admitting defeat and reaching for the phone.

“House of Hotness.”

I had to smile. “Hi, Luke.”

I’ve never met my brother’s lover. They live in California, a world away from my safe nest in Pennsylvania. Chad doesn’t come home. I hate flying. So far, it’s just never worked out.

We weren’t strangers despite this, and his reply warmed me. “How’s my girl?”

“I’m fine.”

Luke clucked into the phone, but didn’t comment further. A moment later Chad got on the line. He wasn’t so taciturn.

“It’s after midnight there, sweetie. What’s wrong?”

Chad is my younger brother, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he pampers me. I settled further into my blankets and counted the cracks in my ceiling. “Can’t sleep.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes.

He sighed. “What’s going on, punkin? Is your mother getting on your case again?”

I didn’t bother pointing out that she was his mother, too. “No more than usual. She wants me to go with her.”

I didn’t have to tell him where. Chad made a disgusted noise, and I had no trouble picturing his expression. It made me smile, which was why I’d called him.

“You tell Puff the Magic Dragon Queen to leave you the hell alone. She can drive her own damn self wherever the hell she needs to go. She should lay off you.”

“You know she can’t drive, Chaddie.”

He launched into a tirade of cursing and colorful insults.

“Your creativity and vehemence leave me in awe,” I told him. “You are truly the master.”

“Do you feel better now?”

“I always do.”

He snorted. “What else is going on?”

I thought of the man I’d met in Sweet Heaven. “Nothing.”

Chad paused to give me time to add more, and when I didn’t, he snorted again. “Ella. Baby. Honey, love muffin. You don’t call me after midnight your time to talk to me about the Dragon Queen. You’ve got something else on your mind. Spill it.”

I love my brother with all my heart, but I wasn’t going to tell him about my sudden lustful fixation on a stranger who favored odd ties and liked black licorice. Some things are too private to share, even with someone who knows all your deepest, darkest secrets. I mumbled something about work and the house, which he seemed reluctant to accept but did, anyway.

The conversation drifted from my pathetic mental state to his work in an elder-care home, his plans to meet Luke’s family, the dog they were considering buying. He had a cozy little life, my brother. A good job. A nice house. A partner who loved and supported him. I relaxed as he talked, my body melting into my bed and sleep beginning to tease me into thinking it might return.

Then he dropped the bomb on me.

“Luke wants to talk about having kids.” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

I might suffer from occasional social awkwardness, but even I know the appropriate response to that announcement is not “What in the holy fuck are you thinking?” but rather “Oh, that sounds nice.”

I didn’t say either one. “What do you want, Chaddie?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. He says I’ll be a great dad. I’m not so sure.”

I didn’t doubt my brother would make a wonderful father. I also knew why he feared the thought. “You have a lot of love in your heart.”

“Yeah, but kids…kids need a lot of…stuff.”

“Yeah.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, separated by distance but connected by emotion. At last he cleared his throat. He sounded more like his usual self when he spoke again.

“We’re just thinking about it. I said we should get a dog first. See how we do with that.”

It was more than I’d ever wanted to commit to, a pet. “You’ll be great, Chad. Whatever you decide, you know I’m here for you.”

“Aunt Ella.” He laughed.

“Aunt Elle,” I corrected.

“Elle,” Chad agreed. “Love you, bunny muffin.”

As far as pet names went, bunny muffin was among the more bizarre. I didn’t quarrel with it. “Love you, too, Chad. Good night.”

We disconnected and I settled back onto my pillows, my mind whirling with his news. A child? My brother…a father?

I fell back to sleep with visions of laughing babies in my head, which was marginally better than the dreams of red roses.

Friday came faster than I’d expected. I’d never been to The Blue Swan, but it was everything Marcy had said. More an intimate-coffee-shop setting with a dance floor than a dance club, it featured a steady pulse of electronic dance music, soothing blue lights and soft couches, an interesting array of drinks and stars scattered across the black-painted ceiling.

Marcy introduced me to her new beau, Wayne. He looked like the junior executive he was, complete with a hundred-dollar haircut and trendy designer tie, plain, without skulls and crossbones. He shook my hand and, to give him credit, did not overtly check out my breasts. He even bought my first margarita.

Marcy grinned. “Planning on getting wild, Elle?”

“Ah, one drink’s not a big deal. Not everyone’s a lush like you, babe.” What might have been condescending sounded fond from Wayne, his arm outstretched along the bench behind her to toy with the long, curling strand of her hair. “Trust me, Elle, we’ll be carrying Marcy out of here.”

Marcy made a face and nudged him, but didn’t look displeased. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Hey, so long as it gets me laid,” Wayne said, “I don’t care how drunk you get—”

She slapped him in earnest this time. “Hey!”

She sent me an apologetic glance, but I shrugged, not as embarrassed as I think she expected. The fact was, I liked drinking too much to be a hard drinker. I liked the oblivion, the way a few drinks softened the edges of my mind and chased away even the ever-present need I felt to count, catalog and calculate.

Alcohol is the noose with which my father keeps trying to hang himself. I understand why he does it. He is, after all, married to my mother. Now, retired and in his sixties, drinking is my father’s career and hobby all in one. Maybe it’s his shield. I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. We aren’t the only family with a white elephant in the living room, but who ever cares about anyone else’s family when their own is the one they have to live with?

“So, you work with Marcy?” Wayne earned points for what appeared to be sincere interest.

“Yes. She’s in public accounting and I’m in corporate, but we both work for the same company.”

Wayne grinned. “Me, I’m in murders and executions.”

“Wayne!” Marcy rolled her eyes. “He means—”

“Mergers and acquisitions. I got it.”

Wayne looked impressed. “You know American Psycho.”

“Sure.” I sipped my drink.

“Wayne thinks he’s Patrick Bateman,” Marcy explained. “Aside from that pesky bad habit of slicing up prostitutes with a chainsaw.”

“Well,” I said carefully, watching him, “nobody’s perfect.”

His smile rewarded me, and then he laughed. “Hey, Marcy, I like your friend.”

She looked at me. “Me, too.”

Sometimes you share a moment with someone that has nothing to do with where you are, or what you’re doing. Marcy and I giggled, girly in a way I wasn’t used to but enjoyed nevertheless. Wayne looked at us, back and forth, until he shook his head with a shrug at our feminine absurdity.

“To murders and executions,” he said with a lift of his beer. “And to all things materialistic and shallow.”

We toasted his words. We drank. We talked, though much of what we said had to be shouted over the music. I relaxed, letting the alcohol and music loosen my tense shoulders.

“It’s my turn,” I protested when Wayne made to order one more round of drinks.

He held up his hands. “I’m not gonna argue. My mama told me a woman’s always right. You go right on ahead, Miss Kavanagh, and buy the next round. I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to accept a woman’s generosity.”

“Oh, ho ho,” said Marcy. “You mean you’re drunk enough you don’t feel like getting up to go to the bar.”

Wayne grinned and pulled her close for a kiss that made me feel like a voyeur. “That, too.”

That was my cue to leave them for a few moments. I needed to stand, anyway, to gauge my own level of inebriation. Two drinks took me a lot farther than they had three years ago.

A space opened up at the bar as I approached, and the bartender gave me his immediate attention. I knew he was paid to flirt as much as he was to mix drinks, but his smile still flooded me with warmth. I’m no more immune to my sense of self being reflected in the light of another’s esteem than any other woman. I smiled back and ordered two more beers and a bottle of water for myself.

“She doesn’t want that. Get her a shot of Jameson.”

I didn’t turn to face the voice that had haunted me for the past three weeks. I nodded at the ’tender waiting my approval, and he slid the shot glass toward me without another word.

“Hi,” said the man from Sweet Heaven, and I turned.

“Hi.”

The crowd had grown as the night wore on, and now it jostled us closer. He looked down at me, his smile bemused. In the blue neon light his eyes looked darker than I remembered.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

My fingers curled around the shot glass, but I didn’t lift it. “Yes.”

His gaze traced the lines of my face; I felt his look as if it was a touch. Someone pushed toward the bar behind him, nudging him forward another inch. He reached to grab my arm just above the elbow, so the sudden impact didn’t make me stumble. He didn’t let go.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” He nodded toward the shot without taking his eyes from mine.

“I’ve reached my limit.”

More people pushed to the bar behind each of us, pressing us together. His hand slid down my arm to rest on the curve of my waist. A touch so casual anyone watching would assume we’d known each other for years. A touch so blatant it made my breath catch.

“So, you’re a good girl.”

Another man who’d called me a girl would have earned a stomp to his foot and maybe the drink in his face. For him, my mouth curved. Closer we drew, magnets attracting, one to one, without the pressure of the people around us.

“Depends on your definition of good.”

His fingers splayed against my side, his thumb drifting back and forth along the smooth fabric of my shirt. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Do you want to do what I want?” My pulse pounded at his question, murmured directly into my ear.

We’d already aligned thigh to thigh, belly to belly. If I turned my head, our mouths would be close enough to kiss. His breath caressed my ear and the slope of my neck exposed by my upswept hair.

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.

I saw him in the mirror first as he came in. He came up behind me, his eyes locked on mine in our reflections’ transposed gaze. The mole on his left cheek now on his right, my slightly higher right eyebrow arching now upon the left. His hands slid into place on my hips, his thumbs finding the twin dimples at the small of my back even through my shirt.

He said nothing. If he’d spoken, I’d have bolted. He didn’t speak. He was bold. Unfaltering. And even so, the glimpse of his face in the mirror showed that same odd mix of emotion in his eyes. Lust and admiration, with a sense of being honored.

He moved me with no hesitation to the last stall, the largest, and he locked the door behind us. Now I couldn’t see him, but he didn’t let me doubt what he wanted. He put my hands up, palms flat, against the cool ceramic tile. His hands slid beneath my skirt, over the tops of my elastic-topped stockings, then between my legs. He held me from behind, fingers curving upward to brush my clit.

I shuddered. I pressed my forehead against the wall. Closed my eyes. My thighs opened, and he spread them wider by sliding his foot between mine and pushing my right foot away from my left. His finger circled against me through the now-damp fabric of my panties.

I heard the small clatter of a metal buckle being undone, followed by the soft sigh of a button eased from its hole. The purr of a zip parting.

His fingers dipped down, then up, to slide inside my panties. He muttered a curse when his flesh met mine. He stroked a finger along my folds as though testing how slick I had become for him.

His chin pressed into my shoulder. His mouth nuzzled beneath my ear and I tilted my head to the side to allow him access to my neck.

The hand he’d used to loose himself now inched up my skirt. My fingers curled against slippery tile, finding nothing to grab. I bit back a moan when air hit my skin, the soft expanse of bare thigh and buttock exposed by my stockings and the edge of my panties. His palm caressed me, traced the curve of my ass.

I breathed in and in and in, forgetting to let the air from my lungs come out, too, until at last it hissed from between my lips in a long, shuddering sigh.

“You want this.”

His words were not a question, yet they demanded an answer.

“Yes.”

He put a finger inside me, then two, stretching me a little. He stroked me, in and out, a parody of what he would do with his cock. And I, shameless, trembled at that small touch and pushed myself against his hand to take him in as far as I could.

“My purse,” I murmured, wondering if he’d balk and preparing for this all to end if he did.

He withdrew. I sighed a protest. He laughed, the sound broken by the harsh intake of his breath.

“Give me half a minute, Elle,” he whispered into my ear.

I heard the jingle of my keys, then the crinkle of paper and sound of tearing, then a low groan as he eased on the condom. He paused, breath still hot against my neck, and a bolt of electric desire arced through me. It centered in my clit and radiated out through the rest of my body. Even my fingertips tingled. I imagined if the lights were off, I’d be glowing with it.

He pulled my panties over my hips and down past my knees, then pressed his cock against me. He nudged it along the cleft of my ass, then pushed between my thighs. His hand guided it toward my entrance, and he dipped down, then up, to push inside me.

“Fuck,” he muttered, then bit down on my shoulder as though to stifle a further outburst.

I gave a strangled cry when he filled me. It had been so long I was almost too tight, but I was so wet with arousal there was no friction. Only a delicious fullness.

He put his hands over my wrists, his front along my back, and slid my hands down on the wall until I bent more at the waist. I hadn’t thought he could move inside me any more, but that small shift in angle let him nudge my tender cervix, and I gave another low cry at the tiny spark of pain that did nothing to diminish the pleasure.

“Christ, you’re hot,” he murmured. “Like a fucking furnace…”

He began to move. Slow, smooth strokes at first, his hands anchoring my hips to keep me from moving. Then, after a few moments, faster. Harder. One hand slipped around front to press my clit in time to his thrusts.

The door to the restroom opened. Dan stopped for a moment, then kept on, pulling out and pushing inside me with excruciating slowness. His finger circled faster.

I heard voices, two chattering women who used the stalls at the far end of the room without a break in their conversation. One of them peed forever, a waterfall of piss, and a bubble of laughter leaked out of me.

My shoulders shook with the effort of keeping it inside. His breath puffed in silent glee on my neck. Stars, the result of lack of oxygen, danced in my vision and I drew in breath after shallow breath, trying not to make a sound.

I laughed, and laughing made me come, writhing against his hand and moving on his cock while he kept his movements almost stationary for silence.

They used the sink, still chattering. If they heard us, they paid no attention. Perhaps we managed to be quiet enough, or maybe the saga and drama of their lives was so enthralling nothing could tear their attention from it. I only know that the second the door closed behind them Dan began fucking me in earnest.

Hard and fast. The hand on my hip gripped tight enough to leave a bruise. The stroking hand stopped and held me. I came again, smaller but no less pleasurable, and throbbed on his palm.

His teeth grazed my neck. His mouth moved to my shoulder, and he muffled his outcry against my shirt. His cock jerked inside me, and he thrust once more, hard enough to smack my forehead on the tile wall.

It hurt, but it made me laugh again. Sex in real life is never like in the movies. The choreography’s always off. Most people, though, don’t like to laugh during sex. Something’s wrong there. It’s supposed to bring joy, isn’t it?

Dan’s hand squeezed my sides gently before he pulled out. My skirt fell back around my thighs, and I reached to pull up my panties from their place around my knees. He flushed the condom, tucked himself away, zipped up his pants, every movement businesslike and efficient like he’d done this dozens of times before. For all I knew, he had.

“I took care of the check,” he said, his voice suddenly too loud for the small space, and then he walked out.

What had I expected? I chided myself. The same face looked at me from the mirror, but this time the fading flush on my throat and cheeks were a sign of a woman not about to be fucked, but one who has already been. I searched my eyes for some sign of change, something inside me to indicate how this should make me feel. Remorse? Guilt? Smug satisfaction? I saw no evidence of them in my gaze, couldn’t feel it. All I could think of was the way I’d laughed and climaxed simultaneously.

Even so, I lingered at the sink to wash my hands and pat a dampened paper towel across my face. I fixed my hair, freshened my makeup, sprayed cologne to mask the scent of sex.

The parking lot had emptied, the lunchtime crowds gone. I came out into late-afternoon sunshine that had me pulling my sunglasses from my bag. A spring breeze plucked at the hem of my raincoat.

“Hey.”

I turned to see him standing just outside the front doors. He flicked a just-finished cigarette onto the pavement and took two strides to catch up to me.

“You took a long time,” he said. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming out.”

I took a second to answer. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

Something flickered in his eyes I couldn’t decipher. “No?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you were finished. I figured you needed to get back to work.”

I’d taken a cab to the restaurant, but the bus stop was only a block away. I started walking. He let me go four steps before he followed me.

“So…you think I just left you there?”

I nodded again, keeping my eyes straight ahead. It was true. I hadn’t expected him to wait for me, had believed he’d gone. I hadn’t been ashamed of what we’d done until I found him waiting for me. When it became clear he expected not just a quick lunchtime fuck, but conversation after.

“That’s the sort of guy you think I am.” He had a way of phrasing questions in such a way he answered them himself.

I glanced at him. “Well, Dan, I don’t know what sort of guy you are, other than you’re careful, which I appreciate.”

Darkness passed over his features and he reached to grab my arm when I made to move forward again. “Elle—”

I extricated myself from his grip with firmness that could not be misconstrued. “Thanks very much for lunch, Dan.”

He let me get six steps this time before he followed. “Is that all you think I wanted? Is that what you expected?”

How could I explain to him, who seemed so affronted, that it was not only what I had expected, but all I wanted. Twenty minutes of oblivion to make me stop thinking.

He took two more quick steps to end up in front of me, walking backward to keep us face-to-face. “Elle.”

“That’s my bus.” I pointed at the one pulling up to the stop. I could be there in another minute, get on, go back to work.

“You’re not getting on that bus.”

“No? I think I am.”

He stood in front of me so I had to step around him to keep moving. He matched my move with one of his own, graceful, as though we were dancing. He wasn’t smiling, but then, neither was I.

“Elle,” he said warningly. “Don’t walk away from me.”

I might have liked it when he was leading me unerringly toward sex, but I didn’t like his assumptions now. “I’ll walk wherever I want.”

Again he stepped in front of me. The bus, its driver apparently taking Dan’s side, pulled away. I glared. This time he let me move forward.

“Now you have to talk to me,” he said.

“No,” I retorted. “I don’t.”

“But you want to.”

“Look,” I said, whirling on him. “Just because I let you fuck me doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do!”

“I didn’t say it did!” He frowned. “I think it at least gives me the right to have you not think I’m an asshole.”

“I don’t think you’re an asshole.”

He moved closer. “Then what do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a man,” I replied, not caring if that offended him.

Dan didn’t look offended. He grinned. “Glad you noticed.”

I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to feel disdain. Yet as I’d waited for shame or remorse in the bathroom, anger and disdain eluded me, too.

“Look,” I said finally. “We had a nice lunch—”

“We did.”

“And what happened, after—”

“Also nice. We forgot dessert.”

I paused. “But let’s not kid ourselves it was anything more than what it was. All right?”

“Elle,” Dan said seriously. “Why not?”

The bus stop was ten steps away, but I kept walking past it. He followed. I walked faster.

“Why not?” He asked again, softer this time, and reached to grab my elbow.

I didn’t pull away this time. I let him turn me. He put both hands on my elbows, holding me in place.

“Why not?

A thousand explanations raced through my mind, but only one slipped from my tongue. “Because it’s not what I do.”

“Take off your sunglasses. I want to see your eyes when you talk to me.”

I sighed, belabored, but complied. He met my gaze, searching my eyes like they held a clue, a key, a treasure map. His fingers curled on my arms.

“Why not?”

I could only stare at him for a long moment while traffic passed us by and birds chattered among the branches of a tree in springtime bloom. “I just don’t.”

“You don’t what?” The tone was gentle, the words nonthreatening, but I could give him no answer. “You don’t date?”

“No.”

He studied my face. “But you fuck in bathrooms.”

I jerked from his grasp and set my feet to the sidewalk again. “I’ve never done that before.”

This time I thought for sure he’d let me go. I made it to the corner before he reached my side again. I didn’t look at him.

“I want to see you again.”

I stopped, shoulders hunching in resignation that this conversation would not end until he was satisfied. “Why, Dan?”

“Because I didn’t get to see your face this time.”

Just like that, desire sliced me open like a samurai sword and left me gasping for breath. I hid it with a shake of my head and a scowl. He didn’t grab me to stop me this time, just murmured my name in a low voice that halted my feet as though I’d stepped in glue.

“Because you have the sexiest laugh I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t think I could stand knowing I’d never hear it again.”

Why is kindness so much harder to believe than cruelty?

I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted to think he was full of empty words. I wanted to walk away from him. I wanted all those things, but in the end, had none of them.

“I don’t date.” The reply sounded lame, even to me.

Dan grinned. “So we won’t date.”

“What,” I asked, refusing to smile though the corners of my mouth insisted on tilting upward, “will we do?”

“Whatever you want, Elle,” Dan said. “Whatever you want.”

Chapter 04

Whatever I wanted. An easy thing to promise, but not so easy to request. I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Marcy cornered me by the coffee machine. “Where’d you go on Friday? You ditched us!”

“I got a headache.” The lie tripped easily off my tongue. “You two were looking pretty cozy by the bar, so I just snuck out.”

She seemed satisfied with that answer, then prattled on about her night with Wayne. The cologne he wore. The brand of shampoo he preferred. The way he liked his eggs. She stopped midsentence to stare at me.

“What?”

I’d been transfixed by her commentary, but now I finished pouring my coffee. “Nothing.”

I didn’t want to tell her I envied her. I wasn’t sure I did. I’d been in love before, with disastrous results.

“Did something happen at The Blue Swan?”

I shook my head. “No. Should it have?”

“Hell, yeah.” Marcy tossed her blond hair over one shoulder. “It should have. Definitely. But…nothing? We lost you after you went to get the drinks. Thought maybe someone swept you away.”

“Oh.” My laugh sounded forced and lame. “Nothing like that, I’m afraid.”

She didn’t look convinced, but I didn’t give her any more of the story.

Dan didn’t wait to call me the way I had.

“Hello, Miss Kavanagh. Daniel Stewart calling.”

“Yes, Mr. Stewart. How can I help you?”

“I read a good review about the film showing at the Allen Theater this weekend. I’d like to make an appointment with you to see it.”

“An appointment?” He’d caught me washing dishes left over from breakfast. I cradled the phone against my shoulder while I swirled a soapy sponge over my bowl and rinsed it.

“Yes. I believe you said you didn’t go on dates.”

“I said I didn’t date. Not that I didn’t go on dates.”

“Ah. Fine line, there.”

I imagined him running a hand through his hair, maybe wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He’d have a leather couch. Big-screen television set. Plants a housekeeper watered and plucked the dead leaves from.

I finished with my dishes and set the kettle on to boil water for tea. “I go on an occasional date.”

That wasn’t quite true. I hadn’t been on a date in a long time. Longer than I’d forgone sex, as a matter of fact.

“You’re changing your story on me, Elle. That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair.” I wiped off my table and replaced the napkin holder in the center.

“Elle.” His voice reached through the phone and stroked me from head to foot. I closed my eyes. “You want to go with me to the movies.”

I leaned against my counter, an arm folded across my stomach to support the one holding the phone. I thought for a moment. “Yes. I do.”

“Good,” he said, as though that settled things. And it did.

He took me to an arty, independent film with subtitles, the plot of which I had difficulty untangling but enjoyed anyway for its lush visuals. We had dessert in the theater’s attached coffee shop, where he challenged me to a game of Scrabble in which he spelled words like “cleft” and “slick” for a triple word score. We traded limericks, and he seemed impressed I knew so many. We laughed so loudly we turned heads, and I didn’t even care. He didn’t touch me, though I wanted him to.

He invited me back to his apartment for drinks. I agreed. I wanted to see the place where he lived. I wanted to see his bed.

He served me Guinness in a pint glass and didn’t insist on using coasters, though his furniture looked new enough to require them. He settled down beside me on his leather couch as easily as though we’d spent months together instead of hours, and he asked me questions about the movie as if he cared about the answers.

I’m not completely socially incompetent. I do have to know how to interact with clients, give presentations, make appointments, shake hands and make small talk. I can do those things sufficiently, if not with ease. If anything, I would imagine people would describe me as aloof, taking my silence at times for standoffishness rather than awkwardness. I’m still the girl who sat in the front of the class, ready to answer all the teacher’s questions. I just lost most of the answers somewhere along the way.

Dan didn’t make me think too hard. He led me through the maze of conversation without hesitation, as easily as if he’d taken my hand to keep me from stumbling over a crack in the pavement. He talked a lot about himself, but not in an obnoxious way. It soothed me to hear his anecdotes of high school soccer games and college frat parties. I didn’t have stories like that. Normal stories. Hearing the tales of others fascinated me. Maybe it should have made me bitter with envy, but it didn’t, not any more than a fairy story made me envy the princess who could weave gold from straw.

Anyone who’s ever spent time with someone who seems enthralled with every word you say knows how intoxicating that can be. His eyes watched my mouth move. He listened to me, engaged me in conversation, drew forth answers that surprised me with their honesty. I told him about my house and my job, my favorite television show and the fact I love anything chocolate but not hot fudge.

All because he listened. Was I so starved for admiration his good manners seemed like more to me? No. It was him, Dan, entirely, and the fact he listened to learn about me, not as a reason to have me learn about him.

I was in the middle of a sentence when he leaned in to kiss me. The contact startled me. I hadn’t been expecting it, hadn’t had time to turn my face. His mouth was soft and warm on my lips. I tasted salt from the popcorn. His hand came up to touch my face, strong fingers on my cheek.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kiss him on the mouth, that gesture more intimate than taking him inside my body. I turned my face, broke the kiss, didn’t finish my sentence.

“No?” He asked, breath hot on my ear.

“No.”

He slid his hand down to caress my breast. “But this.”

I turned my head to look into his eyes. “Yes.”

Something flickered in his gaze. Got harder. His hand slid up to cup the back of my neck, his fingers threading through my hair. He pulled, tilting my head back and exposing my throat.

“And this,” he said, pressing his lips to the spot where my pulse beat, beat, beat, skipping.

His teeth grazed my skin, and I gave a little gasp. “Yes.”

His mouth trailed lower, to the jut of my collarbone. His fingers tightened in my hair, and I gasped again at the mingled pleasure/pain. He sucked my skin between his teeth, the tip of his tongue circling against it. His other hand found my breast and he thumbed my nipple erect. His hand slid lower, between my legs.

“And this.”

“Yes…” The word sighed out of me.

“Stand up.”

I did.

“Take off your clothes.”

My hands went to the buttons on my shirt. I slid them from the holes, my fingers trembling. Fear and fierce desire can almost feel the same, sometimes. I slipped off the shirt, let it fall to the floor in a way I’d never done if alone.

I wanted to see his eyes fill with desire, hear him hiss in a breath at the sight of me. Dan watched me, his face unreadable. I flushed, heat creeping up my throat to paint my cheeks. I wanted to put my hands on them to cool them. Instead I undid the button and zip on my skirt and let that puddle to the floor, too.

I wore fine things beneath my clothes, panties and bra of black lace and satin and flattering cut. The bra pushed my breasts together, creating creamy-skinned cleavage. The panties rode low on my hips and cut high in the back to reveal the curve of my ass. The black looked darker against my skin, pale from being kept out of the sun, and I knew he could see the darker triangle of the hair between my thighs.

I stood in front of him, trying not to shake, though the desire that had made my fingers tremble now made my legs want to buckle. I’d been naked in front of men before. Had let them look at my body, judge it, praise or find flaws with the curve of belly, the jut of my hipbones, the weight and shape of my breasts. For them, I’d worn my body the way I wore my clothes, as something practical to be used for a purpose. A function.

In front of Dan, I’d become more than hip and thigh and cunt. He looked at my body knowing my real name, the way I drank my tea, the sound of my laughter. My nakedness came from what he knew about me, what I had let him know, those tiny, irrevocable intimacies I never share with anyone.

“The rest. Take those off, too.” His voice had grown thick, proof of his desire, and it gave me courage.

This part I knew. How a glimpse of pink could render a man mindless. We all have the same parts, us women, yet every man I’ve ever been with has looked at me as though he’s never seen a naked woman before. There is power in our bodies that men don’t have, secret and hidden places they yearn to explore over and over. Women’s bodies hold the mystery of blood and life, not just pleasure.

I reached behind me to unhook my bra, the movement thrusting my breasts forward. I watched him watch me as I let the straps fall down my shoulders. As I let the cups fall away to reveal my flesh.

He leaned back against the couch, his cock pushing at the front of his khaki pants. I wasn’t the only one flushing. Red tinged his cheeks, too, and he licked his mouth as he watched me.

“The panties.”

I hooked my thumbs in the sides of the lace and eased them over my hips. I did it slowly, enjoying the look on his face as he focused. I parted my thighs and cocked my hip, slid the fabric down my ass and over my thighs, then let them fall to my ankles. I stepped out of them and stood, at last, completely naked.

“Fuck,” he muttered and ran a hand through his hair. “Turn around.”

I did, one rotation.

“Touch yourself.”

The request surprised me but I was already complying. I held my breasts, my nipples responding to my touch as quickly as if my hands were his. I slid my thumbs over the tight buds, then ran my hands down my sides, over my belly, down my thighs. I put one hand over the hair between my legs, cupping my center and pressing the heel of my hand against my clit.

“Fucking hell, you’re hot.”

My flush grew deeper, more blush than flush this time. His praise thrilled me and eased the fear that always accompanies being naked in front of another.

“Elle,” Dan said, “tell me you want me to fuck you.”

Simple words to describe an act with so much variation.

“Oh,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Dan, I want you to fuck me.”

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more. I will never forget the feeling of standing naked in front of him that first time. How he looked at my body as not pieces, but as a whole, woven together by those small things about me I’d allowed him to know.

He was on his feet without hesitation. His hands on my hips pulled me against him as his mouth found my throat. He kissed me there, then on my shoulder, then bent his knees to reach the tops of my breasts. His hands roamed my skin, cupped my buttocks, pressed the small of my back, traced the edges of my shoulder blades.

“Put your arms around me.”

I did. He put his hands under my thighs and lifted me. It was sudden and took me unawares. I am not a small woman and he not a large man. It didn’t matter. I wrapped my legs around him, the fabric of his oxford shirt rubbing my clit deliciously enough to make me whimper.

He took me to the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him, I don’t know how. I could only hang on and pray we didn’t end up on the floor. He didn’t drop me. He laid me down on the bed as skillfully as if it had risen to meet us. He covered me with his body, kissed me all over. Every place but my mouth, because I had told him no.

Together we worked the buttons on his shirt with far less grace than I’d used on mine. One flew off and spanged against the wall. Another refused to come free and tore the hole until it slipped out. His skin beneath was smooth and covered with crisp, curling hair over muscles that shifted under my fingers as he tore his arms from the sleeves. Then his hands were on me again, sliding up and down, and my hands were on his belt buckle, tugging. He reached to help me, his teeth biting into my shoulder when I reached inside to grasp him.

I gasped at the bite and tightened my grip involuntarily. He gasped too and gave another muttered curse. He sat up to push down his pants and the boxer briefs beneath, rolling onto his back to get them past his thighs and down his legs. He kicked them off, one foot at a time, and I watched his body become revealed to me.

I could say his body was perfect and every part of it beautiful, because it was. Not because he had no flaws, but because I wanted him so desperately I couldn’t see any.

He rolled on top of me, skin to skin. He was hard where I was soft. Rough where I was smooth. Straight where I curved. Man and woman, puzzle pieces, meant to fit.

He took my nipple between his lips and I arched beneath him. He laved it with his tongue, then suckled gently. It tugged within my womb, and my cunt spasmed. His hand slid between my legs. His fingertip, unerring, found my clit and circled it. He dipped down to my folds and brought slickness from inside me to smooth his touch.

I put my hand on his head. His hair was soft and long enough for me to grasp and tug. Pleasure made me pull too hard, and he muttered ouch against my breast.

I loosed my grip but kept my hand in its place. He moved to the other nipple, offering it the same treatment. Every tug he gave sent another spasm through my insides. My clit swelled under his touch. I felt it grow, felt the blood rushing to that small bundle of nerves from all over my body. I floated in that pleasure, gave myself to it, welcomed the oblivion of ecstasy.

His mouth grazed my ribs. His tongue swept my skin, tasting me. He murmured against me, words I couldn’t understand but didn’t need to.

His cock stretched hot along my thigh. He rubbed it against me, his hips pumping slowly. I thought of how he’d feel thrusting inside me and moaned.

“Damn it, you’ve got a sexy voice.”

I looked down at him, uncertain if I’d be able to form a coherent sentence. “Hush.”

He grinned up at me, his hand moving, moving, making me shake. “You do.”

Compliments embarrass me. I shook my head a little. My hair spread out around me on the bedspread.

He looked at me again with that same odd expression of query and acceptance; a man being handed a gift he’s not sure what he’s done to deserve but taking it without hesitation.

“Elle,” he said. “I’m going to watch your face this time, and I’m going to be inside you. Do you want that?”

I nodded. My fingers tangled in his hair. “Yes.”

He left me for a moment to reach inside his nightstand drawer, and I was grateful I didn’t need to insist, or get up to get my purse, too far away in the living room. I reached for the condom, but he shook his head.

“I need to do it.”

He must have seen a question in my eyes, because he smiled. “I don’t want to finish before we’ve started.”

His honesty made me want to be honest with him. To give him something real. But I had given him enough already with inconsequential revelations he didn’t realize he was so privileged to have.

I got up on one elbow to watch him, glad for the chance to see him. Like the rest of him, his cock was near perfect. Pretty, even, of average length and girth and color but somehow lovely. He slipped the condom on, stroking the latex down to the base. Thus shielded, he leaned in to look into my eyes.

He positioned himself on top of me, using his arms to keep from crushing me. His cock nudged me, and I parted for him and tilted my hips to allow him entrance. He rubbed the tip along my folds, pushing in a little before reaching between us to guide himself all the way inside.

I moaned when he did, and he did, too. He stopped when his cock hit my cervix. I had a hand on his biceps and felt him trembling. He put his forehead against mine, his eyes closed for a moment before he opened them. Then, without taking his gaze from mine, he began to move.

He’d said he wanted to fuck me, but that one word can mean so many different things. Dan moved inside me with slow deliberation, every stroke smooth. I put my arms around his neck to bring his mouth back to my neck. He obliged me by kissing me there. I tilted my head to offer him more, and he took it. He pressed his teeth to the spot he’d bitten but didn’t bite this time. His tongue smoothed the spot.

He slid his hands beneath my rear to tilt me against him and change the angle. His pelvis bumped my clit with every thrust. The intermittent pressure pushed me higher. Made me wetter. Delicious friction, no need for lubrication, our bodies worked exactly the way they were meant to.

Skin on skin. Cock in cunt, a perfect fit. He moved. I moved. He gave, I took. I hooked my legs around his thighs, urging him against me.

He murmured my name. I answered with his. Connecting. We were connecting, and even in the oblivion of pleasure I could not forget who I was with. I didn’t want to. It mattered to me what mouth kissed me, whose hands stroked me, whose penis filled me.

It mattered, suddenly, that it was this man, and the mattering made my body stutter. I froze. My heart, already pounding, skipped a beat.

A woman’s orgasm is such a fragile thing, dependant as much upon her mind as on her clitoris, and though my climax had been swelling inside me, ready to spill over, I lost it. My body shifted, my thoughts atangle with self-discovery. I had let him in.

He couldn’t know, of course, that because I had told him my true name and the way I drink my tea, sex would suddenly become so complicated. I had let him fuck me in a bathroom stall, after all. He couldn’t know that sex was something I did and intimacy something I did not. Dan could not have known those things, but he looked into my eyes at that moment anyway as if he did.

“It’s all right,” he told me, as confident in that as when he’d ordered lunch for me. “Elle. It’s all right.”

He rolled me so carefully we didn’t part and then was beneath me. He adjusted my legs and put my hands on his chest. My fingers curved around his ribs. He put one hand on my hip. The other slid between us, his thumb pressing my clit.

“Move,” he whispered. “Move the way you want to.”

And though I’d stuttered, though the moment I’d almost lost had less to do with sex and more to do with fear, I did as he said. I moved. I rocked against him, finding a pace that satisfied me and brought me back to where we’d been.

He helped me, shifting when I shifted and easing his thrusts when I changed the angle. He moved his hips at my guidance, and even when his breath became ragged he kept his thrusts smooth.

I let my head fall back to feel my hair tumble down and stroke the top of my ass. I wanted to lose myself again, to give up to the same sweet nothingness, but though my body filled with pleasure, I couldn’t find it.

“Come for me,” he whispered. His thumb stroked me as he helped me rock against him. “I want to watch you.”

I shuddered. I opened my eyes. My body knew better than my brain. He looked at me, and I at him, and I gave him what he wanted.

Everything drew tighter, knotting, until I unraveled. I cried out. My fingers dug into his skin. His thumb ceased moving and stayed still, the pressure enough to keep me surging. He thrust harder, faster, both hands moving to pin my hips. He grunted when he came, so close behind me it was almost simultaneous.

We lay together in silence, after, not touching. Sweat cooled on my body, but it felt good. I felt good.

At least for a little while, before I began to calculate how long I’d have to wait before I could get up to leave. I listened to his breathing deepen. Maybe he’d fall asleep, and I could sneak out.

He let out one small, entirely adorable snore. I got up and padded to the bathroom connected to his bedroom, where I used the toilet and the sink. His washcloths were thick, plush and blue, to match the paint and shower curtain. I used his mouthwash, sniffed his cologne, admired the surprising cleanliness of his floor and counter. He had a rubber duck in his bathtub, and I marveled over it for a minute. The hint of whimsy.

Still naked, I came out of the bathroom to find his eyes open.

“You’re the first woman I’ve ever been with who practically counted the seconds until she could leave.”

“Really?” I asked from the doorway. “I’ve been with plenty of men who’ve done it.”

I went to the living room to pick up my discarded clothes and put them on. I’d slipped on my panties and was hooking my bra when he came after me.

“Why don’t you date?” He asked from the doorway. He’d slipped on boxers printed with a pattern of marching jellybeans, and I was vividly reminded of meeting him at Sweet Heaven.

“Dating complicates things.” I slid my arms into my sleeves and did up the buttons. I put on my skirt, zipped and buttoned it, tucked in my shirt. I smoothed the wrinkles.

“How do you figure that?”

“Dating,” I said, “implies a level of emotional connection for both parties to either create or work toward creating.”

Dan crossed his arms over his chest. “And?”

I sighed. “I don’t have time for that.”

He made a low noise of disbelief. “You mean you don’t want to have time for it.”

“Semantics.”

He watched me look around for my purse but made no move to help me find it. “You said you did go on dates, sometimes.”

I shot him a smile. “Sometimes. Not for a long time. And a date is not dating. Dating implies more than once.”

“Ah.” He looked bemused. “Which leads to the emotional corruption.”

“Connection—” I looked up. He was teasing me. “That, too.”

“How long has it been since you went on a date?”

“Not counting our appointment?”

He held up a finger. “That was an appointment, not a date.”

“Right.” I didn’t have to think hard. “Four years, eight months, three days.”

I found my purse in the moment of silence my answer had created. I rifled through it, checking for car keys and cab fare. When I looked up, Dan was staring at me.

“How long since you’d had sex?”

“Three years. Give or take.”

“Are you counting from tonight or the time in the bathroom?”

“I’m counting from the time on the dance floor.” I zipped my bag closed and slung it over my shoulder. “Because… that was sex.”

He watched me get ready to leave. His expression didn’t tell me if he was shocked, angry or admiring. At last he ran a hand through his sandy hair, spiking it, then passed the same hand across his mouth.

“Good night, Dan.”

His words caught me with my hand on the knob to his front door. “You want to see me again. I know you do.”

I turned to look at him. “More than once, you mean?”

“You’ve already seen me more than once,” he pointed out.

“So then I should say no.”

I didn’t want to say no. The sex had been fantastic. More than that, his company had been comfortable. Dangerously so.

“I don’t date.”

“I’ll make another appointment.”

“Why?” I asked, point-blank. “You’ve seen me come with you inside me. What’s left?”

I think I really shocked him then. I meant to, anyway. I wanted to chase him away from me.

He stood up straight and glanced to the bedroom before striding over to me. He was tall enough so we didn’t stand eye to eye, but not so tall I had to crane my neck to meet his gaze. His face had gone hard, and though I shouldn’t admit it, the sudden sense of danger, of wondering if maybe I’d pushed him a little too far, sparked a thrill through me.

“You’re smiling.” He wasn’t. “Do you like to play games, Elle? Is that it?”

Some men like to use their size or their fists to intimidate women. Dan looked angry, but he didn’t touch me. I didn’t move, didn’t retreat. He put a hand on the door frame next to my head.

“I didn’t get you off good enough?”

“That’s not it. You were very good.”

He didn’t look pleased at the compliment. “Not good enough for another round?”

“You didn’t ask me if I wanted to fuck you again,” I said matter-of-factly. “You asked me if I wanted to see you again.”

“You can’t do the first without the second, Elle.”

He was fast. Clever, without being arrogant about it. I liked that. Liked him.

“If you want to fuck—” I began.

“Is that what you want?” His voice dipped lower. “Just a quick fuck?”

“No,” I said. “Sometimes I like them to be slow.”

He put his other hand on my hip, pulling me step by reluctant step against him. “I can give you that.”

He was hard again. I felt him on my belly. I put my arms around his neck and let him press me close along his body.

“Can you?”

He nodded, solemn, hands cupping my ass now to rub me against his erection. “I told you. Whatever you want.”

“It won’t work, you know. It never does. People get attached—”

He laughed. “I won’t get attached.”

I smiled. His bare skin was warm beneath my hands. “Nobody thinks they will. But they always do.”

“And that’s why you don’t date.”

“That’s why.”

He rocked me against him, slowly. “Because men get attached to you.”

“Some have, yes.”

“And you don’t?”

I splayed my fingers on his shoulders, my thumbs stroking the ridge of his collarbone. “I did once.”

He bent his head to run his mouth along my neck. “But other than that, you’ve broken the hearts of scores of fools who got attached to you.”

“I don’t like to think so, no. I’ve tried to avoid it.”

“Why? It doesn’t get you hot, thinking of all those broken hearts in your wake?”

“No.”

“Because…you’d feel guilty.”

“Yes…” The word became a hiss as his tongue stroked my skin.

“And that’s why you don’t date.”

“Haven’t we gone over this?” I looked at him, pushing him away a little to see his face.

“Don’t worry, Elle,” he whispered, pulling me closer again. “I won’t get too attached.”

How can I explain exactly how he made me feel? Even now, looking back, I can remember everything about that moment. The feeling of his hands on me. The scent of him, cologne and sex. The way his mouth curved at the corners and the way the first hint of stubble glinted on his cheeks. I hold a perfect picture of him in my mind: Dan in that moment. The moment he convinced me to stay.

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