Muscle

by Lexi Whitlow

  “It’s not.” She puts out her hand and catches mine in hers, and she pulls me towards her.

  When I fall onto the bed next to her, she pulls at the waist of my boxers. I grab her hand and shake my head. “What I can do is make your first time planned. Make it special. Like you deserve.”

  “And tonight?” She bites her lower lip again.

  “I can make you come. Make sure you fall asleep with your legs shaking. Make sure you wake up sore.”

  She smiles at that, and I lie down next to her, running my hand over the planes and curves of her delicate body. I spread her legs apart on the bed and explore her wetness with my hand, observing her jolts and sighs. My fingers slip inside of her with ease, and my thumb finds her clit, circling it. Her body tenses and releases as she draws closer to the edge. I bring my mouth to her nipples, one after the other.

  My mouth trails over her smooth skin to the slick cleft between her legs, darting my tongue in and out, tasting her. Soon, my fingers and mouth are working in tandem as she writhes beneath me.

  “Liam,” she moans. She repeats my name like it’s a mantra, a prayer. With each utterance, I grow harder. I swirl my tongue over her clit and then down to her slick folds, where I remove my fingers. Slipping my tongue inside of her, I take in her essence, sharp and sweet. Skye’s body shudders beneath me, and I can tell she’s close to letting go. Her fingers find my hair, pulling it hard. She cries out, and I bring my tongue back to her clit, sucking it into my mouth, pulling gently. Her legs shake and she lets out a deep, animal groan as she comes for me, saying my name still, over, and over. I don’t pull away until she comes again, quickly on the heels of the first orgasm.

  When I move next to her on the bed, her eyes are still filled with need.

  “Can’t we—” Her gaze communicates exactly what she wants.

  “No, not tonight,” I say. “But soon.”

  Very soon, I think. She nestles in beside me and drifts off to sleep. Why am I holding out? I’ve never held on like this. But there’s something about Skye that makes me want to make this moment last, keep it going until the bitter end.

  It’s a shame that we’re running against the clock, that there’s an end in sight.

  This is one thing I can stretch out.

  And there’s lots of ways to make sure the time in between is really fucking good.

  Skye

  The next morning, it’s crisp outside, my favorite type of weather at the beginning of spring. But I feel a pervasive anxiety as we start leaving the apartment, walking down the rickety old stairs.

  There’s something I neglected to mention to Liam last night. And he’s not going to like it.

  After talking on my own to Finn, I made a modification to the apartment search.

  Liam grabs my ass as we walk to the front door of the bar. “I’m looking forward to this.”

  “My ass or the apartments?”

  He shrugs. “Little bit of this. Little bit of that.”

  I clear my throat as we wait for our Lyft to show up. “Well, you may not love the location.”

  “Lower East Side? I can live with that.”

  “No.”

  “Tell me it’s not in Brooklyn. That’s you. That ain’t me.”

  The Lyft pulls up, and we get in the back seat. The floor is a little worn and dirty, and the driver looks like a college kid down on his luck. “It’s in Queens,” I say. “Finn said that’s where Brie lives now. So that’s where her friends are. Her school. Her life for the past two years.”

  “It’s in Queens,” he repeats. The sound in his voice is not good when he says it. “I live in Manhattan. I’ve always lived in Manhattan. Why the hell did you go listening to Finn?”

  I give him a look, and the Lyft driver looks in his rear-view mirror between the two of us. The driver, thankfully, doesn’t add his opinion on Queens.

  “Finn said the commute from here to Queens is forty-five minutes on a bad day. You want her to do that every day she goes to school?” My stomach knots up as I say it. I’m basically telling him what to do with his life, how to live it. But shit, he asked me to find a place. I figured I’d make sure it was a place that would look good for the damn judge.

  “Wouldn’t be that long,” he says curtly. But he sighs right after he says it. “Maybe forty minutes. I could drive her there.”

  “You have a car? Why the hell do you have a car? No one in Manhattan has a car.”

  “I do. It works most of the time. I used to drive it out to the mountains in the fall.” His voice is haughty, defensive. But there’s the slightest hint of doubt there, too.

  “You cannot drive your daughter around New York in a car that works ‘most of the time.’” I roll my eyes and look out of the window, cheeks hot. This was a bad idea.

  “It works,” he says. “Well enough that we don’t have to live in Queens. Queens is almost as bad as Brooklyn.”

  The Lyft driver rolls his eyes, and I’m glad Liam doesn’t see it.

  “Liam,” I say, turning my body towards his. I try not to think about the way his hands feel on me, the way he can look at me and convince me to do just about anything. If I want to help him, this is one thing he has to understand. “If you want the court to actually take you seriously, you need to move somewhere that Brie knows. I’m not a social worker, but Rhiannon is, and she gave me the run down on what the courts are looking for. And Finn gave me her address. Her school’s name and location. These apartments are just blocks away from there. I’m looking out for you. Judges are looking for a good faith effort on the parent’s part, especially if that parent did some time.”

  His hazel eyes shift and change, green to brown. Brown to green. He looks away. “Yeah,” he says. There’s a long pause. “Who says I want her at that school? Public school system was good enough for me.”

  “She’s not at a public school right now, and it’s the middle of the year. If she’s going to live with you, she needs an easy transition. Like I said, a good faith effort. That’s what Rhiannon called it.” I think for a second, looking over at Liam. His long, muscular body stretches out over the seat of the car, his knees hitting the back of the passenger side seat. “You’re making an effort. They’ll see that.”

  “I should have done it before,” he says, looking out of the window. “Gotten a place that Marta could actually bring Brie. By the way—” he stops and looks over at me.

  “What else?” My stomach drops. “I don’t like your ‘by the way.’”

  “We’re meeting with the lawyer after this, and then you get to meet Brie. I thought it would be next weekend, but fucking Marta says she needs to bring her along to see the lawyers. Before she’ll even consider letting Brie see us again.”

  “Christ on a bike, Liam. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?” I groan and throw my head back against the seat. “Jesus. Give me a little time to prep for these things.”

  He doesn’t answer me directly—again. An irritating fucking habit if you ask me. Instead, he looks out of the window as we cross over into Queens. “I fucking hate Brooklyn. And I hate Queens too. It’s the new Brooklyn. Fucking hipsters.”

  I groan. “I’m going along with all of this and I don’t know why—and then you spring this newest shit on me like I’m some idiot who’s going to do whatever you say.”

  Liam looks at me and grins. “You know why you’re going along with all of this. It’s pretty fucking clear you want this magic—” Liam looks at the Lyft driver and then leans into me. “Cock,” he whispers.

  My cheeks color, and warmth spreads through my body. “I don’t know for sure if it’s magic. You haven’t seen fit to test it on me yet.”

  “I’m going to,” he says. “And it definitely is.”

  When he says it, there’s laughter in his voice, like there was when I first met him. I liked that sound. The goofy sense of humor that goes along with his New York accent and his inexplicable hatred of all things trendy.

  He brings his hand to touch my leg, r
esting just below the hemline of my skirt. It’s not an apology, not exactly. Liam Dougherty hasn’t apologized to me for any of this. It doesn’t seem like that’s the kind of guy he is.

  I add to my mental checklist for a long-term life partner. Must be able to apologize.

  His hand inches higher, and a thrill runs through me. We’re pulling into the neighborhood my friend found—cheaper than just about anywhere in Manhattan and close enough to Brie’s school to get her there and back in ten minutes. Not so far away from the bar that he couldn’t get there by subway in an hour.

  This is a sacrifice he can make for his kid. It isn’t even a sacrifice at all. Fucking asshole. He should be bowing down and thanking me—

  His hand is warm. Hot. It stays, pressed against my thigh, like a reminder that he’s in this with me. That I’m here, with him, for a reason. A favor. Something that will stick in my memory forever. I’m venturing out of my comfort zone. This is for me as much as it is for him.

  “This is it,” the driver says, pulling up to a tiny townhouse. The bottom floor was converted to an apartment with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a little family room just big enough for a sofa and a chair. Cute. Homey. Comfortable. The countertops might still be Formica, and the floor might slope to one side, but it’s safe and warm and far better for someone with a kid.

  When I see it—really look at it—as we pull up, I realize I picked somewhere I might want to live. Even though I won’t be living here. Not really.

  I look over at Liam as the car parks. He opens the door slowly, his hand falling away from my thigh. He grabs my hand and pulls me out with him, looking back at me for a second. The impression I get of him in that moment is one of curiosity, interest, maybe even excitement. The expression on his face doesn’t match his rumblings from before. It signals something hidden deeper inside of him.

  Maybe.

  The driver pulls away, and we’re left standing there together. I realize we’re holding hands, like a real couple. That thought makes me woozy.

  Being with him goes from being infuriating to tantalizing in a matter of moments.

  He walks to the stone steps, still holding my hand. “Where’s the realtor?”

  “She said she couldn’t make it. Told me the combo to get in. She’s a friend of Rhiannon’s so—” I fumble with the lock on the door, entering the code twice before it pops open and delivers a worn looking key. The door sticks when I try it, so I jiggle the handle. When it opens, there’s a change in the air. It’s warmer, quieter, inviting. “So, we can look at it ourselves.”

  I take a deep breath and exhale slowly as I walk inside.

  Behind me, the door closes and locks. Liam is silent, walking over the slightly crooked, worn hardwoods, over to the kitchen with its old gas burners. The Formica is stained very slightly from years of use. There are some scratches in the kitchen tile, and some cracks in the walls. But it feels nice, like a place we could live.

  A place he could live. After this is all over.

  He turns to me and smiles. “This is good. I gotta hand it to you.”

  “Even though it’s in Queens—”

  “Don’t mention that. You’ll ruin the moment.” He takes me in his arms and lifts me onto the kitchen countertop. There’s a window behind me that looks out into a tiny backyard. “And besides, I think I could pretend I’m somewhere else in here.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like not in Queens.” He kisses me, slowly, movements languid, like we’ve got all the time in the world.

  “Hey, I thought we needed to meet with the lawyer.”

  “Not until one,” he mumbles. His lips trail over my neck, hands searching beneath my shirt. His fingers unhook my bra. “I’d like to take this opportunity…” He lifts a hand to my breast and pinches one nipple, rolling it between his fingers. Before I can say anything, he’s lifting my shirt over my shoulders and throws it to the floor, along with my bra. “To show you more about my magic cock.”

  “Come on,” I whisper. “That’s not a good idea. We don’t live here. I mean—this isn’t our place. The realtor does have a key too. She’s not in the area, but you never know for sure. Shit. What if someone else—”

  “No one else lives here,” he replies. “Not yet. And besides, it’s ours. We’ll sign a lease today. After the lawyer.”

  “I have two other places to look at. One in Brooklyn—”

  “Fuck no,” he says, lifting my skirt and tugging at my panties. “No fucking Brooklyn. This is the place. This is the one that’s closest to Brie’s school? Close to Marta’s. And my Ma’s old church, I think. We’ll sign the lease today.”

  “You mean you will.”

  “You should too. Sign the lease. Make sure I can’t kick you out.”

  I balk at that, putting my hands on top of his. “It’s twenty-seven hundred a month. Are you just doing all of this to get me to pay?”

  He laughs and moves his hands away from mine, pulling my panties off and tossing them on the floor. “The bar isn’t just a fake job. I work my ass off. I’ve been putting money away for two years. And more before—” He stops, moving his fingers to my aching sex. “I have plenty. For as long as you’re here, I’m paying for you.” He kisses me in the hollow of my neck. “For your rent. Your meals. Like a real couple.”

  I’d like to tell him how that makes me feel—warm inside but also deeply anxious.

  Seconds ago, he was giving me shit for making him even go to Queens. Now he’s ripping my clothes off and feeling me up on a kitchen counter.

  It’s troubling, this thing growing between us. If it’s not real, then what is it?

  Two fingers slide inside of me, making a beckoning motion against my g-spot. Lightning strikes through my veins, smoldering heat licking over my thighs. My focus is growing blurry around the edges. My anger is fading from a deep, furious red to light pink. And then to nothing, as heat sings through me.

  “I shouldn’t sign it,” I say, a little moan in my voice. His palm rests against my clit, his fingers drenched in wetness. “We’re not a real couple.”

  “Real enough,” he says. “I’m starting to know what you like, anyway. My little librarian. Pure and innocent. But she secretly—” He leans in, the base of his palm resting against my clit now, my legs spread over the kitchen counter. “She wants to fuck.”

  “I’m a writer. Not a librarian. I’m not even a writer. Just an assistant.” I laugh as I say it, and I throw my arms and legs around him. It feels good to be wanted like this, to know that his cock is pressing against my thigh, that he could fuck me at any moment. The woman who was heretofore unfuckable.

  “I know what you are. I don’t get that shit confused.” He shifts his hand and lets his thumb work against my clit. White hot flame rises in me, focused on the spots his fingers find, the places he touches me, where no man has ever touched me before. I moan softly, leaning into his shoulder.

  “Liam, come on. I can make an appearance when and where I need to—” I stop, panting, moaning. He has me close and he knows it. “Fuck. Just listen to me—Are you going to fuck me?” I almost blush when I say it, but we’ve been building to this. He’s teased me, taunted me, made me want it more than I imagined I would.

  It strikes me. I’m invested now. How much deeper will I go when we start sleeping together?

  Still, there’s nothing I’m going to do to stop it now. It’s clear to me—I’m in this. And I’ll see it through to the end, whenever that is.

  “Not today,” he growls. He brings me to the edge with his fingers, kissing my neck, his mouth moving down to one nipple, his other hand holding me up as the sensation builds in my body. Everything grows tighter and tighter until it feels like I’m about to snap.

  “Please.” I hear myself saying the word. It wasn’t a conscious decision—to want this, to beg for it. The need is so deep that the words come out anyway, unexpected.

  “Please what?” His voice is gruff.

  “Please… make it today. I wa
nt you to fuck me today. Here.” My head swims as I’m saying it. This isn’t our apartment—and shit, wouldn’t we get arrested or something if the realtor caught us? If the landlord came by? The heat builds, pooling between my legs, centered on his fingers.

  My orgasm explodes through me, the wave so strong that my brain goes blank for a second. I hear myself calling out Liam’s name, and I’m babbling like a madwoman. My muscles pulse against his fingers, and I whimper as the pleasure crescendos and slowly fades away. “I want more,” I say without even thinking about it. “Make me come again. Fuck me. Please fuck me.”

  “Not yet,” he says. He leans in and nips at my neck.