The Submission Gift

by Solace Ames

  “She is such a carnivore. We went to a restaurant once where she ordered a salad made out of raw beef.”

  “Carpaccio,” she corrected. “Carpaccio!”

  Paul interrupted as smoothly as he could. “I’m a vegetarian, but I’m not picky. And tonight’s on me.”

  This time the movement of Jay’s eyebrow was impossible to mistake. “I see what you did there.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he protested. “I promise.”

  “Thanks,” Adriana said. “We’ll pay next time. I mean, for dinner. Oh, f—” She started laughing again. It didn’t feel uncomfortable—more like they were all in on the joke, and it wasn’t a bad one.

  Jay took a deep breath and wrestled his features into a more subdued expression. “We were talking for a while after you left. After dinner we should say good-night, I’m thinking. Take it slow.”

  Paul nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.” They were being mature. Thoughtful. The more primitive part of him still wanted to fuck both of them senseless tonight.

  “There’s a Turkish restaurant in Venice Beach we’ve been to a couple times,” Adriana said. “It has a good vegetarian selection. Lots of eggplant dishes and stuffed vegetables.”

  “But she’ll be carving into an innocent little lamb,” Jay warned.

  Adriana sighed. “It’s marketed as lamb, but they’re really juvenile sheep.” She looked right at Paul, her eyes so dark and wide all the epic metaphors came rushing back. He could drown in her. “This is our only minefield as a couple. Well, maybe not the only one, but the worst one.”

  “You’re outnumbered now, baby,” Jay said, winking.

  Paul was beginning to think he was. “Turkish it is, then.”

  “What’s that on your computer?” Adriana asked.

  His heart jumped. Normal people probably reacted this way when caught with porn. “It’s a computer-assisted design program.” Take it slow—this step felt very fast. “I’m in architecture school at Saylor University.”

  “I didn’t know they had an architecture program,” Jay said. “I looked into going there for my BSW, but I ended up going to CSU.”

  “It’s new. Not fully accredited yet. I started off at a more...standard place, but life got in the way.” He decided not to elaborate. The time wasn’t right, not yet.

  “I heard a lot of people drop out of those programs. They’re brutal, right?”

  “You have no idea. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but it’s true. There’s a lot of gleeful ego destruction involved.”

  “And you’re not the one who’s dishing it out?” Adriana asked.

  “Well, we always have to critique each other’s designs, but I like to keep my comments mild.” This wasn’t so bad. He looked her in the eyes and licked his upper teeth. “I have other outlets for that tendency.”

  Adriana’s face stayed neutral, with her head slightly tilted, which meant guarded curiosity. Jay sighed and twisted his mouth and looked at the ceiling, which meant a whole stew of emotional reactions, foremost among them back the fuck off, so Paul closed the laptop with a decisive click. “My other life is a lot more exciting to talk about. Usually. I waste a lot of time weeding out the chuckleheads trying to scam free cybersex. Don’t get me started on them.” Not the smoothest redirection, but it got Jay tentatively smiling again. “So, Adriana, where did you go to culinary school? I remember you said it wasn’t in Los Angeles.”

  “Oh, you do remember,” she said. “I’m impressed. Yes. It was in Washington State.”

  I memorized every answer you gave that night. But he had a good sketch of the boundaries of this night, and he planned on staying well within them.

  The getting-to-know-you stuff wasn’t breezing along as he’d hoped, but it wasn’t truly awkward, either, and by the time they got up to leave, he’d managed to dial down the analytical part of his mind, allowing himself to enjoy their company. To share the same space and smile with no calculated intent, no urge to impress or impose.

  As they left, Jay touched the back of Adriana’s shoulder. He looked behind, catching Paul’s eye, and gave him the most radiant smile of the night. “See you there, Paul.”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Adriana drove her Mazda. Paul followed. Jay had taken a taxi to the hotel, which might mean he didn’t or couldn’t drive, or maybe they only had one car. Paul could actually start asking questions like why and how, filling in the blank spots of the puzzle so that he’d know their lives as fully as seemed right. It felt good to think about that permission. It felt even better not to think about how he’d control the flow of conversation. No plans, no directions.

  Parking turned out to be trickier than expected, so he went around the block and walked in to see if they’d already gotten a table.

  The Ankara Café was extraordinarily murky and billowing with fabric—even the ceiling was draped in dark velvet—and it smelled of strawberry smoke and spices. After Paul’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he found them seated on cushions on the floor around a low table in the corner. Adriana beckoned as she unwound her scarf, the motion neat and economical and still absolutely alluring.

  The seating was a little tricky. He could either wedge against the wall next to Adriana, blocking in Jay, or sit across from both of them, which was what he chose. “Should I take off my shoes?” he asked.

  “I don’t think you have to,” Jay said. He looked very comfortable melting back against a shabby gold-tasseled cushion. “But we usually do.”

  “You can buy hookah smoke here,” Adriana explained, pointing to a table across the carpeted floor, where a mixed party tapped tentacles to their mouths, and strawberry clouds puffed from the gleaming copper tower.

  “That must be incredibly illegal,” Paul said as he fitted his legs under the table. “Not that I’m filing a complaint.”

  “It’s hard to breathe in this place when the college kids come in and all hit the hookahs, but otherwise, I love the decadence,” Jay said.

  Paul strongly agreed.

  When the first round of appetizers came, Jay’s toes brushed against Paul’s. Jay nibbled a stuffed grape leaf innocently as Paul worked on controlling at least three separate automatic physical responses. The quirk of his mouth must have given him away, though.

  “Oh my god, are you playing footsie?” Adriana asked Jay.

  “Just the toes. Toesie. Or is it toesies?”

  “That sounds like something hobbits do,” she said, giggling. Paul felt giddy too, even though he knew the smoke was nothing but flavored tobacco. “Paul, have you ever, umm—” She couldn’t finish.

  “What is it, precious?” Paul asked her, and they all fell into full-blown laughter.

  “You sound so serious,” Jay said, once he’d caught his breath again. “Until you break out with something like that, totally deadpan.”

  “I’m not sure I even want to finish that question,” Adriana gasped.

  “Leather elves are a thing,” Paul said, back to deadpan. “Hobbits, I don’t know.”

  They did manage to get back on the getting-to-know-you track, eventually. He learned that they were more passionate about music than he was, but equally into art and design. That Jay had six older brothers and sisters and Adriana only had one, a younger sister who lived with their father at a naval base in Washington State.

  Then the food arrived. “I love your dish,” Adriana said. “Do you know what it means? Imam bayildi, the imam fainted. Because the stuffed eggplant was that good.” Her lipstick was a little smeared, so she wiped the rest of it off onto a paper napkin and licked her lips clean.

  “Have a bite.” Paul dipped a spoon into the creamy center of the roasted eggplant. Feeding her would have been fantastically decadent, but he passed her the spoon instead. Jay smiled in seeming approval. Their toes had fallen ou
t of alignment, unfortunately.

  Paul was just about to answer a question about his own family when the music surged in volume. The pounding beat and swirling, sinuous high notes sounded vaguely Indian, but then, he really didn’t know much about this type of music. Half the people in the restaurant climbed to their feet and started dancing, never mind the lack of a dance floor, hips sending hookahs wobbling and endangering trays of flatbread.

  “I forgot this place goes nuts on weekend nights,” Adriana shouted over the table.

  “Can’t talk,” Paul shouted back. “Want to dance?” He felt a twinge of regret a second later, remembering Jay’s back. But they both nodded and wriggled out from behind the table and started dancing barefoot in the aisles, no particular style because the music was so damn easy to dance to, sways of the shoulders leading the hips and Adriana’s dress flaring and Jay like a psychedelic dream-blur against a poster of the minarets of Ankara.

  “Don’t worry, I’m all right,” Jay yelled at Paul. “It’s good for me. As long as I don’t bounce.”

  The waiters, all gorgeous men with glossy black hair and five-o’clock shadows, came out after a few songs and gently pushed everyone back to their seats. They had to clear space for the belly dancer.

  She floated in, her prancing steps perfectly timed to the beat, finger-cymbals clashing.

  “This is too much,” Paul said to Jay. He’d given Adriana a five-dollar bill, and now she was on her knees, sliding it into the glittering girdle of Malika, Queen of Milk and Honey.

  “Yeah, I know it’s way more artistic than stripping, but it’s still hot as fuck.” Jay’s grin wasn’t innocent in the slightest. Somehow they’d ended up sitting on cushions against the wall, next to each other. Jay’s palm edged against his own, and Paul wasn’t sure who moved first but all of a sudden they were holding hands, hidden underneath a gold-tasseled pillow fringe. The light pressure of Jay’s fingers worked magic, had Paul’s heart pounding in rhythm to the beat. The singer wailed habibi, habibi and he knew it was Arabic for baby because someone had told him that long ago, although it seemed as though all times collapsed into this moment, and all places into this place, and all languages into one word.

  Saying good-night in the parking lot was anticlimactic, after that, but not too painful. They kissed on the cheek, featherlight and faux-European, the music and light and people spilling out behind them.

  “Have a good night,” Paul said, memorizing how Jay and Adriana leaned against each other, how Jay stroked the blue scarf that hung around her neck. Paul had a feeling he’d enjoy recalling the image very soon after he got home.

  Jay gave him that grin again. “Oh, we will.”

  “Talk to you soon, Paul,” Adriana said. “Thank you. This was wonderful.”

  Boundaries. Goddamn.

  * * *

  When Adriana flicked on the lights, the first thing she saw was the kitchen table scattered with letters and copies of insurance policies.

  “Stupid papers,” Jay growled, and walked up to the table and swept them all to the floor with a flourish and a thud and a smile on his face. “Take that!”

  “That’s right,” she shouted, tipsy just like him. “It’s only money.” More than the few glasses of red wine they’d shared, she felt drunk on the easiness of it all, like the whole world meant them well.

  “But they’re all over the floor now! Well, it felt good when I did it.” He sat on the carpet and started stacking them into piles. She came over to help. “I can’t believe Paul can dance. And design houses. I’m scared to find out what he can do next, like, shit, I don’t know, teach housecats to surf.”

  “I’m picturing Paul putting a cat on a surfboard now. And the cat is angry and he’s—oh my God—positioning it really patiently.”

  Jay raised an eyebrow. “So would you say he’s stroking a wet—”

  She lunged for him and got a hand over his mouth just in time. “I hate puns!”

  He tickled her until she had to let go, gasping, and rolled down to the floor with her. He was so gorgeous and full of the spark of life, and he loved her, and how lucky was she?

  “Let’s fuck right here,” he said, his grip firming, becoming possessive. It drove her crazy in a good way, how changeable his desires could be, but she always loved satisfying them. Although remembering the way he looked at Paul tonight, his urgency wasn’t all that unpredictable.

  “Any way you want,” she murmured.

  He pulled the scarf from her neck, the friction heat giving her a taste of roughness, which was as far as Jay would ever go and quite enough to get her pussy wet, pun or not. She tilted her head back for him. He licked her throat, and she moaned, eager for more touch and warmth and everything.

  “Hands and knees. Pull your dress up and your panties down.”

  She moved quickly to obey. A hundred erotic questions leaped to her mind, became scenarios, became heat flushing her skin and an ache in her core demanding to be filled.

  She couldn’t ask. That wasn’t who she was right now. She had to accept. She allowed herself to feel that compulsion, knowing it was safe, and right for the moment.

  “Did he get to you tonight?” Jay asked, his voice thick, the question unbearably intimate.

  “Yes,” she sobbed, not knowing until this moment how raw she felt.

  “It’s okay.” Maybe Jay was telling himself that, too. “It’s all good.” He slid his palm between her legs, cupping her sex.

  She shivered forward, away from his cool fingers, and then rocked right back against him, repentant, as the heat mounted. “You like me this way,” she whispered.

  “Smooth?” He stroked slowly, barely parting her vulva. “Sure. I love you any way. I’m going to come in you, quick. Then I’m going to get my fingers inside you—”

  “God, yes, do it.”

  She loved a basic hard fuck, but Jay was so much more than that, with his twisty mind and clever fingers and sweet cock pushing inside her right fucking now. And Paul couldn’t make her cunt wet and sticky with his come—no, that was only for Jay. He steered her hips, and shivered like she’d shivered, and softened inside her, and she knew it was done.

  They lay beside each other, then, and he brought her to a messy climax right there on the floor next to the scattered papers, and they laughed and kissed and wiped their fingers on each other and laughed some more at how deliciously dirty it all was.

  “You’re such a come fiend,” Jay said approvingly. “Mmm. Maybe I can get you some more tonight.” He licked her throat one last time before he sat up and started taking off his socks.

  “You can watch porn while I suck you off,” she suggested. “You know, your stuff.” She liked the porn scenes only straight men were supposed to like, with gangbangs and spitting and face-slapping that made Jay put his hands over his eyes, and he watched indie porn where people with lots of piercings and unpredictable genders actually talked to each other before fucking. They’d found an overlap over some kinds of gay porn, but she liked the idea of taking care of Jay tonight, making it about him.

  “Fuck, yes. That sounds perfect. Let’s get out the toys, too.” He put the socks on the table, shook his head ruefully, picked them back up and threw them over his shoulder onto the floor. “Tomorrow,” he promised the papers and the socks.

  She threw her panties to join them and led the way to the bedroom. “I wonder if Paul is thinking about us.”

  “Baby, I know he is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Within a week, Jay had a job in the belly of the beast: an insurance company. He wasn’t too happy about that, but the assignment fit his skillset when it came to medical records filing, and he certainly wasn’t going to turn the temp agency down.

  The stack of manila folders to his left shrank throughout the day. He read and filed reports of psychotic brea
ks from reality, most of which would probably be denied mental health coverage. Thank God that wasn’t his decision to make. He just filed them, and filed them, and filed them.

  “You’re almost done, honey,” Louanne said. She looked impressed. “We thought that was gonna take you all week.” She was the agent who’d set him up with the boxes when he reported in to work, a large, sweet woman with a Georgia drawl.

  “I’m a cheetah.” Jay made clawing motions at her. She giggled. “A cheetah of the files. Seriously, I want to make a good impression.”

  “Well, you can put me down as a reference when you go.” She lowered her voice. “But don’t put Mr. Alvarez. He’s a jerk-ass son of a bitch.”

  She was right. An hour later, Mr. Alvarez told Jay that since he’d finished all the boxes ahead of time, he could sign off and leave the office immediately in order to save the company money on his contract.

  Jay gritted his teeth and nodded and turned his back on them. At least it’s a job. Outside, the sun was high in the sky, and the air warm enough that he loosened his collar and tie. He walked toward the parking lot as if he had a car, in case anyone was watching. They probably weren’t. Fuck, this was humiliating.

  Eduardo was supposed to pick him up at five, but he had to work too, and so did Adriana, and his mom was taking care of some sick grandkids, so Jay was either looking at a four-hour wait time or public transportation, and he didn’t know how the buses worked in Glendale.

  He leaned against the wall, took out his phone and went to work on some bus lookup. No emergency. Everything was fine, really. Or at least, it could be fine. He had to stay balanced—on one side was the normal slightly bumpy walk of life and the other was an abyss of self-sabotaging mindfuckery and you failed failed failed and it’s never going to change. He rested more weight against the wall and took a deep breath.

  Paul didn’t work a day job.

  There was no reason not to call him.

  “Hi, Jay.” God, he felt better already. Paul’s voice was like a hand stroking his forehead, cooling the fevered thoughts. “Is everything all right for dinner at seven?”