by Eva Luxe
She’s too far away for me to actually see most things about her clearly, so on the paper I imagine the careworn lines on her face, the way she smiles when the baby coos at her, the exhaustion she keeps below the surface. I don’t know why she caught my attention the way she did, but as I sketch her, I felt connected to her, even from fourteen stories away. That’s the feeling I look for in my art, when I can. Most days, I can’t, because life can be ugly instead of beautiful, and sometimes, I forget what it feels like in the first place.
Things on the roof are starting to feel a little too melodramatic - after all, I’m supposed to be getting over my Sad Birds phase - so I climb down and head to the gym. That’s the other place I’ve always felt free and relaxed. I run, I lift, I condition, and I don’t have to think about any of it. My mind and my body just know what to do, without question.
So, I run. For a long time. And for some reason, today is the day that I can’t seem to just get out of my own head. What Nikki said won’t leave me alone. Am I really letting just the thought of Kelly keep me from going out, seeing my friends…picking up a girl? I think I might be. And that, more than anything, is what makes me pick up my phone and text Nikki.
“Okay. See you tonight at LeGrande.”
She responds with a string of emojis that run very counter to her punk image, and I sigh. That settles it then: the emojis have it. It’s time to get back out there.
Chapter 9 – Brent
LeGrande is crowded, as always. Loud, as always. Sweat and sex are in the air. Before I get my first drink, I hit the restroom, and there are already two guys banging it out in one of the stalls. Good for them, I think, and head for the bar.
I pound a couple of shots, still nervous and not sure I’m ready to be prowling clubs looking for my next conquest, even though I know I should be. Nikki’s there, as promised, with a few of our other friends.
I buy them all a round. They dance, drink, laugh, and pull me onto the floor with them. Nikki’s still in her leather jacket, and I don’t know how she’s not dying of heatstroke. Maybe she’s magical. (That may also be the alcohol talking.)
They dance, I dance - and the next time I turn around, they’re gone, replaced by a short, curvy woman with dark hair and a smile on her lips. She’s not shy either - or maybe that’s her friend behind her who’s not shy, and who may or may not have given her a push in my direction.
“Well, hello,” I say, and then Nikki runs off, but not before shouting, “I will get out of your way so you can do your thing, good luck!”
“Hello,” the woman says back, much more quietly than Nikki.
She smiles at me. Things look promising.
I reach out and put my arms around her. She doesn’t pull back, so neither do I. I move, and she moves with me. A hand on her hip, I slide the other hand up her side, then to the back of her neck.
She trembles just a bit…or maybe that’s just the bass from the DJ. I think so…because the next thing she does is press her hips against mine, her breasts against my chest. We dance. She grinds against me and I feel myself hardening below the belt as she looks into my eyes.
I love her hourglass shape and the way her tiny waist feels in my hands. Her eyes look at me seductively and I want to ravish her.
Maybe I’m ready for this after all.
Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m ready. She’s pretty, I’m having fun, and suddenly, I’m not thinking about Kelly.
Then, the unexpected happens: she leans close to my ear and whispers, “Your place or mine?”
She doesn’t have to ask me again. I pull her hand and start heading for the exit. Gustav and I are as ready as ever.
Chapter 10 – Amelia
We don’t make it to either his place or mine. Not because we’re too drunk – although we’re definitely both tipsy – but because we don’t want to wait. We make it as far as the sidewalk beside the bar before we’re making out, his lips pressed to mine. He’s greedy, and so am I.
He pulls me into the alley, pressing me up against the wall. His hands are firm against my skin, and he runs them up and down my thighs before starting to pull my dress up. At the same time, I’m fumbling with his pants, unzipping them, going after the reward beneath.
When I look down at his cock, I almost can’t believe my eyes. It’s huge. I wonder if I can take it all, but I want to. I try not to let myself have any second guesses or doubts. I’m not usually one to do this but this guy is so hot, and it’s been so long. I just have to have him.
I’m on my knees, his cock in my mouth, growing firmer and pressing deeper into my throat with every second. It’s amazing. Exhilarating. I almost want to be caught, because the thought excites me - but not until we’re finished.
I stroke my hand up and down his shaft while cupping his balls. I suck the head of his cock and he moans and says, “That feels so fucking good.”
“You like that?” I ask, feeling emboldened now, but it comes out muffled, since his cock is jammed all the way down my throat. “Mmmm,” I decide to just moan while I lick him up and down, since talking seems futile at this point.
“Hell yeah,” he answers. “And I like when you make those sounds.”
“Mmmm, mmmmm,” I groan, letting the animalistic side of myself out. I go crazy, slurping and licking and sucking on him, figuring why the hell now? I’ll never see him again. It’s my one night to let myself go and not be judged.
“That’s so hot,” he says. “But I don’t want to cum in your mouth because I want to fuck you.”
He pulls me up, in a hurry, as if he’s close to the edge. I come back to my feet, hand wrapped around him, stroking as I help him hike my dress all the way up. From somewhere, a condom appears. I take it from him and slide it down his length. I love the feel of his big cock in my hand. It seems to fit there perfectly.
My dress is up around my waist now, and my panties are down to my ankles. His fingers find my slit, vigorously moving over the already slick lips.
“You’re so wet,” he groans, and he’s right. I can feel myself dripping onto his hand as he plays with me.
“Fucking get inside me,” I command, bolder than I usually am.
I lose all sense of manners when I’m with this stranger, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he doesn’t need to be told twice. He slides into me, pressing me up against the wall, and moves his hips easily back and forth, then increases his speed.
My legs are wrapped around him, and I’m being half-supported by him and half supported by the wall I’m pressed up against. The bricks are cool on my ass, and my pussy is warm with him inside. I thrust my hips in time with his, just like on the dance floor.
He thrusts in and out of me, each time sending a welcome pulse through my pussy. He pulls my dress from my shoulders, and runs his tongue over my breasts. The combination of his warm breath and the cool air is exquisite on my skin, and I reach a hand down to touch my clit as he thrusts even more vigorously against me.
He sets me on my feet, and with the same firmness that he had inside, turns me to face the wall, pushing back inside me from behind. I brace myself on the wall with one hand, and massage my clit with the other. There are voices out on the street, but I don’t really hear what they’re saying.
“Let me take you in public, and fuck you up against this wall where anyone walking by can see that I’m claiming you,” he says.
Normally, I would feel offended, but for some reason his words just makes me more wet.
“Okay,” I say, and that seems to turn him on even more because he pumps harder, faster inside me.
“Good girl,” he says, spanking my bare ass cheek.
“Ouch.”
I’ve never been spanked by anyone.
“You like it, don’t you?” he asks, his lips close to my ear, before he sucks on my ear lobe.
“Yes,” I admit, my pussy getting even wetter.
“I know.”
He spanks my ass cheek again and then cups it in his hands, grabbing it an
d squeezing it as he fucks me. I moan and gasp, which causes him to dig his fingers into my skin even more.
This guy’s rhythm is almost maddeningly perfect. Fast, almost violent, alternating with slow, full-length thrusts that take an eternity to bury themselves fully in my waiting pussy…I’m so close to cumming, I can feel a strange electricity in my teeth.
He thrusts, one last time, and I feel him spasm inside me. My body is over the edge, my legs shaking, my arm weak, barely keeping me upright, my body clenching and unclenching around his cock, as my orgasm roils through me.
“Fuck me…” I whisper with the last of my breath.
I hear a laugh, and then, as he pulls out of me and takes off his condom he says, “Isn’t that what I just did?”
Chapter 11 – Amelia
The blaring alarm on my phone drags me out of sleep. I lift my head off the pillows with the low groan of someone sleep deprived, and grab my phone off the floor. The first thing I see is a text from Rosa: “Not saying I told you so…but I told you so.” That’s when it all comes rushing back into my brain: the club, the dancing, the whispered invitation. The sex.
Damn, the sex. I’d been too shy to fuck anyone until Jason, and since then, I really hadn’t been on the search. Until last night. My heart beats faster now, and I feel the familiar tides of anxiety welling up in my chest. You fucked him. In an alley. Alleys are for 1940’s PIs to walk down while they’re investigating murder suspects. Who actually fucks in an alley?
“You, apparently. Good job.” Consistently sassing myself this way is a habit I’m trying to break, but today clearly isn’t the day I’m going to be able to do it. “Hey, at least I didn’t bring alley guy home with me.”
I mean, I didn’t, did I? Whenever someone wakes up from a one night stand in a romcom, the “stand” is usually standing in the shower. If he was here, he’d be making an appearance wrapped in a fluffy pink bath towel right about…now.
Nobody comes out of the bathroom. I could’ve saved myself the trouble by looking at the open door and the dark room beyond it, but that would’ve been too easy for my addled brain. The whole one night stand thing has sort of stopped me in my tracks. I don’t know what to do.
Text everyone I know? Terrible idea. Get tested? Not a terrible idea. Tell Rosa she was right? Never. (A vow that even when I make it, I suspect will last less than 48 hours - at least I’ll be right about this one).
That’s when my second alarm chimes. “What?” My phone screen tells me: Crystal Plaza. 10 AM. “Shit.”
I see now that the reminder is on my personal calendar, not the shared “Wedding Calendar” I’d deleted while drinking my third bottle of wine a month after Jason left. I really was the one who had forgotten to cancel it.
“Noooooo. I don’t wanna go.” I catch sight of myself in my bedroom mirror: naked, tousled, and pouting. I don’t like the look on my face. “Okay. I have to get out of this apartment.” Otherwise I might just spend the day naked in bed, thinking about the alley guy. Alley guy. It’s such an awful nickname for him, even in my head, but I think I’m trying to will myself not to think about him, or his delicious looking eyes, or his huge cock or the way he knew exactly how to put it in and out of me…
“No! Get dressed.”
I put the same bra back on that I wore last night, because it’s my most comfortable one. No luck with the matching panties, so I end up wearing a black lacy bra and turquoise panties. Not that it matters, since no one is going to be seeing the combo but me.
That’s what you thought last night.
“Oh my god. Shut up.”
I hope this trip doesn’t take too long. Because apparently I have to talk myself down from trying to track down alley guy again. I didn’t even get – or give – a number, because it was purposefully supposed to be a “one time only” thing. That much was clear, from the way we just started going at it to the very place and timing of our going at it.
But still, I was really glad it had happened, and I’m rather sad it won’t be happening again. Unless somehow I can find him again, because he’s the only person that, for whatever reason, I’d feel comfortable doing that with.
Chapter 12 – Amelia
To get to the Plaza, I run to the subway stop that’s down the street from my apartment - and I grab a bagel on my way. Yesterday’s bagel had gotten ruined, after all. Plus, I’m starving. Dancing burns plenty of calories. And so does that other thing. Having sex with strangers in alley ways.
I sit on the subway, eating my bagel. Part of me wonders if the people around me somehow know what I did last night. Can they smell it on me? No, that’s ridiculous. This is the subway, where the scents of pee and weed smoke cloak everything.
I’m safe on the scent side of things. But I still feel…guilty? Is that what this is? Guilt, hesitance, uncertainty? I’ve never slept with anyone I wasn’t going to wake with the next day. Not that I had any problem with people who did - to be honest, if I felt anything towards them it was usually jealousy. Because I never thought I could be that carefree and fun-loving.
The juxtaposition of my first one night stand with the fact that I’m headed to what was meant to be my wedding venue makes my head spin a bit. I close my eyes and rest my head back, using my innate New Yorker strength to tune out the shouting, moaning, screeching machinery, and other assorted noises that permeate any subway ride. With my eyes closed, I try to figure out what I’m going to say to the people at the venue, if anything. Part of me still wants to go with Rosa’s “get free shit” plan, and the rest of me is saying that trying to get free stuff on top of getting laid is asking too much out of a twenty four hour timespan.
The train jerks to a stop, and I count without opening my eyes. Three more stops. Part of the reason I’d wanted to look at the Plaza for the wedding was because I walked past it every day for months when I first moved here to New York and was working as a paralegal. I worked at the kind of firm that takes out ads on the side of buses, hoping you’ll get distracted and run into the bus while you read it. Nobody ever did, as far as I know. It was awful, but I worked there anyway, and every time I passed the Plaza, I thought about how one day I would be fancy enough, rich enough, good enough to get inside.
My rumination, as usual, proves totally unhelpful. I want to get inside, but doing so under false pretenses now that I’m no longer engaged feels, to my lawyer brain, somehow like cheating. And walking away with nothing would not only be embarrassing, but it would also cost me the deposit (which I’d paid out of my own pocket anyway).
God, Jason was such a cheap ass sometimes. He’d said we should get married far away from the City so that it would cost less. It’s just a day, he’d said—why waste so much money on it? Good thing I didn’t waste money on one day—or the rest of my life—with him. Who wants a ceremony in the countryside anyway? The last thing I need is a herd of cows as witnesses to my wedding.
I keep my eyes closed, waiting for the next stop. To distract myself from the decision I need to make about what I’ll tell the wedding venue people, I let my mind drift back to last night - not that it needs much excuse to do so. I can still feel the cool air on my skin, hands on my thighs, the dampness between my legs…
Without realizing it, I’m smiling. I can feel the muscles in my face curving up as I remember the kiss, the touch, the fuck. I twist my hips just a bit on the subway seat, and the light abrasions on my ass from the brick wall tingle in response, even through my skirt and underwear. It seems I can even feel his hand marks and the welts, from where he spanked me and grabbed at my ass.
I bite my lip, already wishing that the guy from last night could be here to do it for me again. Do not masturbate on the subway, Amelia, I tell myself. Even without a single touch, I can feel myself getting revved up - heartbeat increasing, legs opening, panties just a bit wet. So, I do the only thing I can to stave it off: open my eyes.
Around me, no one seems to have taken notice. Whew. I scan the faces just to be sure, and - What the ever liv
ing fuck. No.
Down the car, there’s a guy in a tan jacket. A guy with a great jawline, sandy hair, lean body…and a dick that was inside me less than 12 hours ago. Fuck. That can’t be him. But it is. Even without the strobing lights of the club or the pale streetlights of the alley, my brain knows what I don’t want to admit: I’ve somehow managed to get on the train with my one night stand, the morning after said one night stand took place.
Chapter 13 – Brent
“You did what last night? Where? With whom? You didn’t even know her?” Nikki sits at the end of my bed, eyebrows raised in a half-pleased, half-apprehensive look.
“Exactly what you’re always telling me to do, Nik! I forgot about Kelly.” I’m sitting in bed, bare-chested with a sheet covering my lower half, sleep still blurring my eyes. “Also, we really need to chat about personal boundaries.”
I can’t believe that less than twelve hours ago I’d fucked a hot girl in the alley. Nikki was definitely the only person on earth I could tell about this.
“What? I made coffee this time.” Nikki hands me a mug and keeps one for herself. “Now, tell me everything.”
I sigh, sip my coffee - which is too hot to use as a stall - and tell her. I tell her about the dancing, the curvy brunette that found her way to me, the whisper in my ear…and what came after that. (Or “who” came after that, if you’re feeling filthy. Which Nikki always was).
“Three questions.” Nikki says when I’m finished. “Were you drunk?”
“No! You saw what I drank, which isn’t a lot for me.”
“No need to brag about your muscles,” she interjects.
“Well, I barely finished that third shot of the night before we started dancing, and that’s all I had all night.”
“Okay. Two: was she drunk?”
“No! We’ve talked about this - the ‘predatory guy’ thing isn’t sexy.”
“Okay, good. Last thing. Was the sex great?”
“Little bit, yeah.”
Nikki raises her hand in the air. “Well then. High five to you, my friend. Although…in an alley? Really?”
