by CD Reiss
“I hope you’re a size seven,” Dash said.
“In what?”
“Skates.”
I gasped. “Are you taking me skating?”
“You’re taking me skating.”
“It’s closed.”
“Not tonight it’s not. Not for us,” he said, opening the gate to the skating area.
“Oh, Dash, I love this!”
His smile was so wide it could have just about broken his face.
Once we were on the turf-covered platform that surrounded the rink, another man in a tux handed us two pairs of skates.
“Thank you,” I said.
I threw myself onto a bench and kicked off my heels. Inside the boots were a new pair of good, thick socks. Excellent, because the stockings were a hundred fifty dollars and would have gotten ruined in the skates, never mind my feet.
Dash held a pair of hockey skates as he said a few quiet words to Tux Man, who nodded and disappeared.
“This is so great!” I said. “How many guys in black suits are helping with this illegal trespass?”
“It’s totally legal and paid for.” He laced his boots up quickly. “They’re just parking the car, keeping people with cameras away, that sort of thing. Here, let me help you.” He kneeled in front of me and methodically tightened my laces.
“The cameras,” I said. “That’s why you don’t do interviews. You don’t like cameras.”
He stopped lacing and put his hand on my calf, brushing his thumb on the smooth stocking. “I like these.”
“Stay below the knee, sir.”
He looked up at me, all mischief, and tied the laces without breaking our gaze. “Really?”
“Really.”
He leaned down and put his lips on the inside of my calf. I gasped. Having him so close to home when we were outdoors made me wild. Even if no one was around, the presence of the sky above felt as if Los Angeles was looking.
“I can respect that,” he whispered. “For now.”
He worked his mouth up along the inside of my leg. Pressed my legs open. Kissed inside my knee. I gripped the edge of the bench.
“Are you wet, Apples?”
Wet? Wet was an understatement. I was soaking a pair of panties I couldn’t afford. “I’m not telling.”
He stood and held his hand out for me. “You don’t need to. Come on. Show me what you got.”
I took his hand, and we went onto the empty rink.
My muscles remembered what to do, pushing side to side, balanced in movement. I couldn’t have worn a more perfect dress to allow my legs proper movement, though keeping the underwear under wraps would be difficult. I pressed down the flared skirt.
He skated to me, pants fluttering against his legs, grace and power in male form.
“You skate?” I said.
“Everyone in Ithaca plays hockey.” He circled me twice, and I spun to keep my eyes on him. “I was a traitor when I went to baseball.”
“Why did you change?”
“Love. I just loved it.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along.
The wind blew my hair all over my face, and I sped up to catch then pass him. “What did you love?” I said as I passed him.
“The downtime. You can process every play, then there’s this burst of activity, and all the processing just clicks. Like dominoes. All the calculations you made in the past two minutes, it fills in like an equation.”
“And you catch the ball.”
“Sometimes.”
“Always.”
He put his arm around me, and we circled the rink. I turned my face to the sky. The speed, the scratch of blades on ice, the crisp January air, this man’s ridiculous body next to mine. My heart felt lighter than it had in a long time.
He twirled me under his arm then pulled me with his arm around my waist. We synchronized our steps, laughed when we missed, turned, and did it again.
I didn’t know how long we were circling before he got ambitious and sent me spinning to the center of the rink. It could have been an hour, but when he did that, I forgot what I was wearing and went into a scratch spin. It was slower than I did when I was more practiced but fast enough to pick up my skirt.
When I slowed down, he was standing still on his skates, mouth open, hands slow-clapping.
“What are you gaping at?” I asked, still thinking it was the spin that had impressed him. I skated over to him, and he pulled me into his embrace.
“We’re going now,” he growled.
“So soon?”
Before the words had left my mouth, his hand was up my skirt, tugging on the top of my stockings. He’d seen what I was wearing under the dress. In the exhilaration of skating, I’d forgotten I’d expose myself in the spin, and now I had his arms around my waist, his lips finding mine, the thrust of his body pushing me back against the wall.
“You wore those for me?”
“I’m wearing it for me.” I didn’t believe myself, but I said it anyway.
“I’m going to eat you alive.” His mouth coursed the length of my throat, and his hands gripped my ass.
He’d been attracted to me before. I knew that. But I didn’t know what a garter belt did. I’d hoped it would make me a little hotter. I hadn’t known it would make him crazy.
The sudden increase in heat sent my alarm bells screaming. It was too soon. He wasn’t committed to me or my feelings. My sexual arousal had always been tightly tethered to love, romance, the promise of something more. A future. We had none, and I was clear about that. It was the weight that spun me in his centrifuge. We were just bodies, and I couldn’t drag him down. I couldn’t weigh on him.
I was burning up from the inside out, melting flesh and bone against him. I couldn’t put together a thought, only a series of images. All were affected by gravity. Falling. Sucked down. My consciousness, thought processes, ability to keep my body from molding itself to his got swept into the black hole of our shared need.
“Wait,” I gasped.
“What?” he answered in my ear, breath hot, hands settling on my waist.
What did I want to say? Did it have words? I just needed to stop breaking apart into a million hot shards, or I was going to lose my mind.
“I mean it. I didn’t wear this for you. I just didn’t expect to be doing scratch spins.”
He nodded once. Slowly.
“And I don’t even know you. It’s too soon for you to take me home. I’m scared of getting attached to you. Really scared.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
Mentally, I stopped dead in my tracks. Whatever train my thoughts had been on screeched to a halt between stations. I looked in his eyes, searching for a bit of guardedness, a little double meaning, but there was none. He wasn’t lying.
“I tell you what,” he said, drawing his finger along the ridge of my jaw. “Come home with me, and let’s get to know each other. But we can reserve sex for later.”
“Define sex. Penetration? Coitus?”
He laughed. “You sure you don’t teach sex ed?”
“I’m trying to make it less appealing.”
“Didn’t work. But I’ll use your words. I’ll get my mouth on you, my hands all over you. We can enjoy each other tonight, and I’ll fuck you later.”
“Those weren’t my words.”
“I meant the words you were thinking.”
“You’re a little crazy. Do you know that?”
He dropped his hands, smoothing down my skirt. His cheek against mine, I felt him smile. “Any man would get a little crazy around you.”
I put my hands flat on his chest. He was so solid, so real, yet he’d mistaken me for a woman who drove men wild. He saw some mirror image and not the real Vivian. What would the anti-me do right there, with her hands on him and his body so close she could feel the heat coming off it?
“Take me home, Dash.”
twenty
Vivian
He drove up to the hills, hand on the stick shift, mine on top of it, but he didn’t say much. I’d never wanted anything as badly as I wanted his body and his time, but he wasn’t talking.
Neither was I. I had nothing interesting to say besides fuck me, which I couldn’t bring myself to utter, and as he clicked the box that opened his garage door, I wondered if I was doing a good job of being the anti-me.
“Vivian.”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to.”
The garage yawned before us, and I wondered if I had my Ryde app ready.
“I want to.” He squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes in the darkness. “But I’m sticking by my word. I’m not fucking you. Not tonight.”
I wanted to reassure him that I could easily be talked into all kinds of things, but cautious Vivian and reckless Vivian agreed it was time to shut up.
I shifted in my seat, and my skirt slipped over the tops of my stockings. I pulled it down. He laid his finger on my thigh and drew it over the stocking, pushing my skirt back up. He looked out the windshield as if he needed a moment, then he turned back to me, leaned forward, and spoke softly yet with force.
“Open your legs.”
He put a hint of pressure inside my knee to part it from the other one. I went liquid and squeaked, so intense was the pleasure that gushed out from my center.
“Go on,” he whispered.
I parted my knees, and he watched. My hands were at my sides, braced against the seat, the only clue to my heightened nerves.
“That’s so good.” He brushed his hand inside my thigh. “Sweetapple, I’m going to make this a night you never forget. Everything I ask you to do is for your pleasure and mine. Communicate with me if I ask. Tell me what you like.”
“You’re a bag of tricks, Dash Wallace.” I barely got the words out around the dryness in my mouth and the chest-inflating heaves of my breath.
“You are too.” He pulled the garter strap and sat up straight to pull the car in.
He got out of his side and opened my door. If I’d asked for it, I could have gotten out of it regardless. Right? But I didn’t want out. I’d had sex for intimacy and love, but I’d never had sex strictly for pleasure.
All I had to do was ask him to stop if I wanted him to stop. Stop holding my hand up the stairs. Stop guiding me into his house. Stop turning on the soft lights.
Stop being nervous.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“I’m okay. A little. I’m not sure.” I laughed nervously, and he smiled, plucking an orange from a bowl on the counter.
He dug a nail into the leathery skin and said, “Take the dress off, sweetapple.”
I paused. He didn’t say please. He didn’t even look at me as he peeled a chunk off the fruit. Then he glanced up. I should have felt threatened by the way he looked at me. He was being bossy. He expected me to just do what he said. But his expression was kind and gentle, and I wanted all the things he’d promised.
I undid the side zipper, pulled my arms free until the sleeves were inside out, and let the dress fall down.
He ate me alive with his eyes. Toes to head, he made a meal of me, then he split the orange open. “Open your mouth.”
I didn’t. Not until he faced me, then I remembered I was supposed to do what he said. I parted my lips, and he brought a wedge to them. I opened up more, and he slipped in the orange.
“You’re nervous.”
“A little.” I chewed.
“Why?”
“It’s been a long time.”
Another wedge. I took it in my mouth. It was delicious.
“That’s a crime.” He fed me again. It was nice. I let myself feel cared for.
“Thank you.” I was grateful for his sensitivity. I was willing to give up my power and take a few orders, but I wasn’t ready to go full bore into whatever the essence of his kink was.
“More?” he said when the orange was gone.
“No, thank you.”
He took my hands and looked at me in my expensive lingerie and high heels. I’d definitely gotten my money’s worth at La Perla. He stepped back into the hall and led me by one hand into his bedroom.
All the lights were out but a nightstand lamp. King bed. Very few pillows. Geometric bedspread made to hospital corners. Dark wood. A patio with two chairs overlooking the city. What else? I couldn’t even take it in.
He stopped me at the foot of the bed and took my chin in my hands, pointed it upward, and kissed me. His tongue filled my mouth, owning it, commanding it to respond. I gripped his lapel and tried to get his jacket off, but he took my wrists and pinned them behind my back with one hand.
He lost it a little just then. I felt it in the movements of his body and the way he breathed into me. Pinning my hands did something to him, and it did something to me as well.
“Take me,” I whispered.
“Oh, I will.”
Still holding my wrists together, he slid his finger inside the cup of the bra. It collapsed under the pressure, and my rock-hard nipple appeared. His mouth closed on it, licking and sucking, driving pleasure between my legs until I could barely stand. He let my wrists go and pulled the bra up, then he twisted one nipple and sucked the other.
I made a noise that was a word in some language, and he responded with a deep-throated groan. I wove my fingers into his hair and let my eyes flutter closed as he took my breast in his mouth. His hair was sticking up when he stood straight again and pulled my bra over my head.
“You ready?” he said. “I’m going to eat your pussy now, and you’re going to love it.”
My hands covered my crotch. It was a reflex. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but I was suddenly seized with the fear that he wouldn’t like it. That I was dirty and gross.
He pulled my hands away. “What?”
“I told myself that I didn’t want to, so…” Deep breath. “I didn’t shave or anything.”
“You’re supposed to have hair, sweetapple. You’re past puberty.”
How could I explain what Carl had said? Anyone would have thought I was crazy to even listen to it. But I didn’t want this first time to be burdened by my ex-boyfriend’s hang-up about unsanitary hair.
Dash didn’t miss a beat. My expression was enough.
“Come on.” He pulled me, but I resisted. “Trust me.”
He yanked me again, and I followed him into the bathroom. He flicked on the light. The room was twice the size of mine and gleaming white. I caught myself in the mirror, bare-breasted and gartered in black below the waist.
“What are you doing?” I asked when he reached into the cabinet.
“Making you comfortable.” He took a leather envelope from the shelf.
“Oh, no no no.”
“Oh, yes yes yes.”
“No. Really, we can just skip the oral satisfaction tonight.”
“Take those panties off, or I’m going to spank you, Vivian. And you’re not ready for that. Not if you want to get to work on time this week and sit still behind that cute little desk.”
He wouldn’t spank me if I didn’t want him to, but the threat of it got to me. I unhooked the garter belt.
He undid the string on the envelope.
I got the straps off the tops of my stockings.
He took out a shiny silver straight razor.
“Don’t you have a safety razor like a normal person?”
“If I can do my face, I can do you. Come on.” He patted the counter. “Get up here.”
I hesitated. He picked me up and plopped me on the vanity.
“Lean back.”
I was frozen. Simply frozen. One that he’d be so close to my most sensitive parts. His face. His eyes. Observing it so intently. Two, that he’d have a blade.
But his expression didn’t give an inch. Trust him or not. Surrender to doing things I’d never done before, just for a little while, or walk out.
Before I could d
o anything, he put his hands on either side of my face and brushed his lips with mine. “I want you to be comfortable, and I’ll make you uncomfortable to do it. I still promise you I’m going to make this as good as it can be.”
“I know.” My voice barely worked. “We’re just breaking through three comfort zones at a time. I feel off-balance.”
He leaned back, stuck the knife in his teeth, and picked up a mug and brush. “We are. Don’t make me go for the home run.” He said it around the blade, and it was as sexy as anything I’d seen.
He put a little water in the mug and swirled the brush around, still biting the knife like a savage. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, still in his button-down shirt and jacket, me nearly naked before him.
He put the knife to the side. “Come on. Open your legs.”
I couldn’t breathe. I relaxed my legs but didn’t open them. He did it with the slightest pressure between my knees. He inspected the softest, most vulnerable part of me. The ugliest part. The part where all the shame lived. My lungs got very small, and the insides of my legs tingled as if I were in free fall.
“Do you remember in Eternal Joke?” He drew his hand across my belly, down to the tuft of blond hair. “That scene where Captain Gastronome is on the Aegean?”
I flicked the mental pages of the book. There were a hundred barely connected stories in it. “The one that made me seasick? Yeah.”
He put the brush below my navel. It was soft and cool running down, down to where I couldn’t feel the touch of the brush against my skin anymore.
“Do you think he knew his wife was below decks, fucking what’s-his-name?”
He lathered me from clit to navel. My excitement came from inside, more at the idea of his attention than the touch of the soap.
“I think he only loved the sea.”
“Until he caught them.” Dash crouched down, razor in hand. “Then he loved her again. Because he’d lost control of her.”
“He was such an ass. Honestly. I hated him.”
The razor touched the line where the hair started, scratching the skin harmlessly.
“You’re hard on the guy. He had a club foot, you know. I can barely stand upright on a boat deck with two good feet.”
