Lust

by Violet Blue

  Evan and I are sitting at a window table when he begins to leave. Some part of me hopes that this morning he’ll break his routine and walk over, curious to see what a random moment can become, given a chance. Now that I’ve put the ball in his court.

  But he doesn’t.

  I sip my espresso and frown. I’m defeated, yet I can’t help following him with my gaze just as I always do. Knowing he’s fully aware of my stare, even though he never once looks in the direction of our table.

  He gets a napkin this morning; folds it, wraps it around his cup, starts toward the door. And then just as he pushes the door open, he stops. He turns and meets my gaze over the heads of all the caffeine lovers and strangers between us. Half a smile; that’s all he concedes. And then he’s off to conquer again.

  Office: Him

  I shut my office door and put the coffee cup on the desk. I’m thinking about her eyes. They remind me of a storm. When she looks at me I can feel the hair on the back of my neck rise, the tingle of electricity snake its way down my spine.

  I sink into my chair and drag my cup toward me. I figure I have maybe a half hour before my boss or one of my team bursts in here with a catastrophe. If I had my choice, I’d want her here, in the office. On the desk.

  I’d slide that sensible black pencil skirt up over her knees and her hips. Hold her wrists out of the way so she can’t distract me with her touch. I wonder if she’s a shave-it-all type of girl. I imagine her that way. Because I like the idea of nothing between her skin and my mouth.

  I’d lick her exposed clit. Lick her until she was wet and so aroused it hurt and she insisted I stop. I’d stop. But I’d give her light barely-there kisses to torment her even worse. Kiss the sides of her slit and her mound, down to her ass. Blow gently on her flushed, glistening clit and listen to her moan.

  I can tell she’s the kind of woman who likes to be in control. So I want to hear her elegant, sarcastic voice gone breathless and soft. I want her helpless to resist her own desire.

  I sip my coffee. Wish I was tasting her instead. My cock is hard; has been for the last ten minutes. I sigh and reach for my laptop. I have work to do and I can’t spend all day fantasizing about fucking some girl from the coffee shop.

  But I wish I could.

  Damned 7:30 a.m. meeting on Wednesday. I don’t get to Bob’s until well after lunch and of course she’s gone by then. I try not to be disappointed. But on Thursday and Friday I’m there bright and early.

  She isn’t.

  On Monday, it gets to me. The pale twerp she usually comes in with is at a table by himself and I walk over.

  “Hey.”

  He looks up from his paper and recognizes me. Gives me a “Hey, what’s goin’ on?”

  I nod at the empty seat across from him.

  “I haven’t seen her all week. Is she okay?”

  He nods. “Yeah, she’s just working. Been hectic this week and she’s been pulling doubles.”

  I nod. I should tell him to say I miss her, that I said hi.

  But I don’t; I just say, “Wow that’s gotta suck. Well, take care.” I reason that he probably wouldn’t give her the message anyway; he’s looking at me like I’ve stepped on his toes. Maybe I have. Good.

  I give him a slap on the shoulder and leave.

  Finally, on Friday morning, I’m given a reprieve. She’s at her table by the window, but she’s focused on the oversized folder of documents and papers stacked before her. The twerp is rubbing her feet and I’m insanely jealous. How the hell does he get to rub her feet? But with those gargantuan, chunky-soled shoes she likes to wear kicked off, I see for the first time that she has delicate feet. Slender, pretty, girly feet.

  She rubs a tired hand over her eyes and reaches for her coffee, still looking at her paperwork. Twerp says something, she replies and frowns, sips her coffee. She makes a disgusted face and takes another few rapid sips. I figure the coffee’s probably cold.

  At the counter I ask Bob what she’s having. He knows the regulars, and doesn’t even have to think about it.

  “Espresso with whipped cream and caramel drizzle,” he tells me.

  “Get me one of those too.”

  He winks and obliges.

  I walk up behind her and reach over her right shoulder to put the cup within her reach.

  “You looked like you could use a refill,” I say.

  She turns to look up at me. Her eyes are shadowed with dark circles that have nothing to do with eyeliner, her lipstick’s faded out and the elf braids in her hair are coming loose and untidy. She’s never looked more stunning.

  “Thanks.” She reaches up to squeeze my outstretched arm, and her voice is soft with surprise and tiredness. From my vantage point, through the tangle of mesh sweater, shirt and bustier, I can see a soft, unmistakable curve. And all the blood rushes from my head. I can’t move. Or think.

  “It is just what I needed.”

  “You’re welcome.” Automatic response because I still can’t think, and her touch on my arm is making this oh so much worse.

  I straighten up and she releases me, smiling. I refuse to think about what I want to do to her. Not now. Not a chance in hell, pretty girl. You’re not winning this one.

  I rest one hand on her shoulder and lean down so that she can feel my breath on her neck when I speak.

  “Don’t work too hard,” I say as I rub the muscles between neck and shoulder. I feel her inhale sharply and I smile, because I love the sound of that involuntary breath. And because twerp is now glaring at me with pure, disgusted envy.

  “I won’t,” she says. Her voice shakes, just that little bit, even though she tries to cover it up.

  I give her a last squeeze, a last smile. Then I escape. And her gaze follows me all the way to the door.

  Apartment: Her

  Timing is everything. So of course, mine sucks shit. I get back to the apartment Friday afternoon and fall into bed fully dressed. I’m exhausted.

  Maybe it was a good thing the DA’s office decided to have a political disaster on their hands with that case. A few days without seeing me seems to have made Coffee Shop Boy realize that I might slip through his fingers, and I don’t think he likes the idea. Not if today was any indication.

  I can still feel the warmth of his hand. I want to buy a bottle of Givenchy and soak my sheets in it so I can close my eyes and smell him while I get off. No, I’ll just get him soaked into my sheets. That’s what I really want.

  But like I said, my timing is shit. I can feel the sticky, sore sniffles that herald a cold. No way am I going anywhere if I’m sick. Not even for him. And I’m so goddamned tired; my eyelids are giving out on me.

  I fall into dreams of Coffee Shop Boy.

  I’m sick all weekend and into the next week. Great way to burn up vacation time, that. When Evan and I finally get to Bob’s at midmorning on Wednesday, I still feel crappy. And pissy. After a night of wrestling with uncooperative cadavers, I smell like the chemical factory of some Batman villain. I hope to god Coffee Shop Boy’s not there. And he isn’t.

  Evan points out the fact with a triumphant air. Jealous twit. So I tell him to fuck off and go to the counter. But Bob has a surprise for me.

  “Wait! Hang on a sec,” he says as I get my order. He finishes ringing up a customer and proceeds to fumble around behind the register while I wait, sniffing and scowling. I’m about to walk away when he produces a sealed business envelope and hands it over.

  “This was left for you.”

  My name is scribbled on it in Bob’s handwriting, but my heart starts going a mile a minute, and not from caffeine either. Who else would leave me anything here? I thank Bob and rush to the table. Inside the envelope there’s a single sheet of notepad paper.

  Hi. Heard you’re on vacation and I have to go out of town the rest of the week. But I’d love to see you Saturday. Around 3. Near the angel statue at the cemetery? Either way I’ll be there. Hope I see you.

  Now that was what a love letter should
be. Fuck pansy sonnets and floral metaphors. In only four lines, he’d gotten my panties wet. He hadn’t signed it; he didn’t have to.

  “Date?” Evan asks, sitting down opposite me.

  “Bet your ass.”

  Evan shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  I don’t either. But it works.

  Cemetery

  He’s sitting on a bench, Pocket PC in hand. As always, he’s in slacks and polo shirt. But today the weather’s worthy of a Monet painting and, just to confuse him, I’ve gone for the Innocente look: white skirt flowing to my ankles, amber beads, my hair pulled back in a simple bun. But my tank top shows the danse macabre tattoo spiraling around my left arm, the alchemist skull with its blood-hued rose on my right shoulder. He looks up, takes it all in as I stand before him, waiting for him to choose.

  He puts the Pocket PC down and reaches for my right hand with his left. Never taking his eyes from my face, he brings my wrist to his lips. Lips that are so hot, so knowing on my skin. And Stefany was so wrong. This boy isn’t one bit scared.

  I sit beside him on the bench and nod at the Pocket PC.

  “Not working are you?”

  He smiles and shakes his head.

  “Not a chance. Reading.”

  He holds it out for me to see and I peer at the screen.

  “Vampire novel?”

  He shrugs. “Guilty pleasure.”

  I laugh loud enough to startle a handful of nearby crows. “Do you have a lot of those?”

  He leans back on the bench and smiles, answers in a tone that is not his businessman’s voice. “No, just a very, very select few.”

  He reaches out and traces the skeletal figures on my arm, bony hands joined in glee all the way up to my shoulder. But his fingers don’t stop where the tattoo ends. They go on, up to my neck.

  “I want to let your hair down,” he says.

  I nod. I can’t refuse.

  Any other day, with any other man I would say no just to make him beg. But today, from this man, it isn’t a request. And all I can do is close my eyes as he unwinds the scarf from around my bun, pulls the hairpins out and drops them in my lap. Tugs at the thick coil until it spills, black as the raven Morrigan’s wing, down over my shoulders.

  He sticks the Pocket PC in its holder and reaches for me with both hands. He pulls me into his lap. My legs tangle with his and I put my hands on his shoulders for balance, feel him warm and solid and so close under my hands. In my grasp. He reaches up to bury his fingers in my hair and plays with it, giving gentle pulls and tugs for a few, innocent seconds. Before he yanks my head down.

  No warning and no reprieve. No preamble to let me reconsider.

  He isn’t kissing to be clever. He isn’t kissing to be sweet. He’s taking and claiming and using me. I’m his slut, or maybe he’s mine. He pulls away from the kiss, breathing hard because my hands are busy caressing the hardness between his legs, and for a moment I think I know just what to expect. But I have no fucking idea. Lightning fast, he catches my wrists, pinions my arms behind my back.

  He’s pushed the tank top up over my breasts, and I can’t move except to squirm and twist while he bends to take my nipples between his teeth. Licking, sucking, biting. Changing to the other just when I can’t bear one sensation anymore. Keeping me prisoner all the while. Getting me hotter and wetter by the second, and I wonder if he knows this cotton skirt isn’t exactly thick material and he’s about to end up with a nice big wet spot on those designer pants of his.

  I don’t think he cares. He torments me, and I’m almost sobbing with frustrated desire, longing to get his lovely, thick cock in my mouth and return the favor, when he leans back and slides his hands up my arms, loosens his grip. He wraps one arm around my shoulders and gathers my legs into his lap with the other. I figure out what he’s trying to do and before I can do more than whisper “Oh hell…” and get my arms around his neck, he stands.

  Carrying me like a heroine in a five-dollar romance novel, his conquered prize, he takes me into the shade of the trees. Away from the gaze of casual passersby. He stops on the far side of the angel statue that keeps watch over the grave of some long-decayed city father from two centuries back. I’ve sat at her feet I don’t know how many times. On bad days and good days and simply quiet days.

  I’ve never shared her with a lover until now—and its Coffee Shop Boy of all people. But as he lowers me to the ground and kneels over me, smiling and lifting my damsel-in-distress white skirt up over my hips, I remember that the angel was his idea.

  Unreal.

  I tug at his shirt and he lets me pull it off, along with the T-shirt under it. Powerful shoulders, lightly muscled. I breathe in Givenchy and musky arousal. He takes my tank top off, and a moment later my bra follows.

  I see him glance aside and I follow his gaze to my purse and the head scarf carelessly stuffed into the front of it. I’m about to sit up and protest—I see the look in his eyes.

  But I don’t.

  I must be out of my ever-loving mind, but god help me I don’t. I raise my hands up and offer them to him. He stares, lips curled in a sarcastic smile. He thought he’d have to fight me, wrestle me every inch of the way to surrender, and instead I’m giving him his victory without a shot fired. And he hates it, but he claims me anyway. He lifts my arms above my head; ties the gold and burnt-orange silk about my wrists.

  I feel the gravestone warm and rough under my shoulders and outstretched arms, the tickle of grass at my sides. My skirt is bunched around my waist and he rests on one elbow to trace the shape of the snake curled around my left thigh with its head resting against the lower curve of my belly.

  “So beautiful,” he says as his fingers pause just below the snake’s head. Just above my shaved-bare mound. He meets my gaze and smiles.

  “Adorned like a goddess, mystical in her pictures and her secrets,” he adds. And I swallow hard. Nobody’s ever talked to me that way. How does he know the things I’ve dreamed of hearing a lover say?

  I’m helpless. And it’s not because my hands are tied.

  He slithers downward and traces my snake with his tongue this time. One hand spreads my legs, opening me to him; the other hand rests on my belly, fingers toying with my navel ring. His tongue flickers between my parted pussy lips and he licks my clit softly at first, pausing to savor my taste. But each lick is a little harder, a little more demanding, and soon I’m sighing and spreading my legs even wider for him. Arching my hips up to give my flesh to his worshipping tongue.

  He buries his face in me, moaning, and I feel the vibration of his voice in my clit, in my pussy, in my belly—in my very fucking soul. Here in this place of death where I can still smell the green, living smell of summer; the fertile smell of grass and earth and lovemaking, under the guardian eyes of my stone angel. In this place where death meets life and the circle is completed, I can believe he touches me that intimately. Right now, hell, I can believe in anything.

  I close my eyes and die under his mouth. Writhing so hard as I come that I feel the burn of stone bruising my skin. I’m tearing my knuckles and the backs of my hands on the stone of the monument base behind my head as I brace myself and grind against his mouth. I don’t care. I’m his bacchante, his willing Persephone. I’m all his.

  He doesn’t lift himself when he’s finished. Only slides upward, between my legs, levers his hands beneath my torso and lifts me up toward him. Rolls us both over so that now I’m on top. I frame his face between my arms, bury my fingers in his hair, kissing him hard. Licking my juices off his chin, off his perfectly trimmed moustache and goatee that define his lips. Lips that have distracted me so often; that today have driven me out of my mind.

  I bite his lips and his neck, marking him as mine. But his hands are massaging my bare ass, his fingers are exploring my still-wet pussy, and I want him in me. I want to fill myself with his length, soft and slow. So I ease him in. Teasing.

  Half of my teasing is involuntary because I can’t find
my balance and guide him in with my hands locked together. And he doesn’t help, laughing and stroking my hips with light, lazy touches that distract me even more. The silk pulls tight when I angle my hands, painful pressure on my wrists sending numbing tingles through my fingers. But I won’t give up. I won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me beg.

  And at last I make him prisoner, trap him within me, and I arch backward and up. Grinding the tip of his cock into the most sensitive parts of my pussy; listening to his breath come shallow and hard. The gentle touch of afternoon wind feels like ice on my skin.

  Yes, I’m that much on fire.

  He reaches up, pulls my hair over one shoulder and tucks it to the side of one breast. He lies there, looking at me with his bruised, bitten lips parted in silent ecstasy while I push down on his chest. Baby-soft hair and skin hot under my palms as I ride him harder. My downstrokes come faster and rougher, and he winces each time I crash into him just a little too hard. He never makes a sound, but he pinches my sore nipples in punishment.

  And we hurt each other. Fuck each other. Adore each other.

  I’ve lost count of how often I’ve come. I want to keep torturing him like this, torturing myself, but my body can only stand so much before it’s screaming at me to stop. The muscles in my thighs are trembling with the effort to keep moving.

  Has it been five minutes? Or eternity?

  I bend forward, running my fingers into his sweat-soaked hair again. I slide up, almost letting him fall out of me. And then down in a rush, like a landslide, like a sudden storm. He gasps and grabs my ass hard. He closes his eyes.

  “I want to make you come,” I whisper in his ear.

  “Never!”

  I laugh. Because the spirit is unwilling.

  But the flesh is weak.

  He fights me, fingers digging into my ass, trying to stop my motion, but I struggle with every last iota of strength. I ride him fast and deep, driving my pussy down the length of his cock, driving him to his limits. Just like he’s done to me. Give and take, babe, God and Goddess.