by Roxie Noir
“Tell me that’s not a kiss,” Darcy says.
“It is,” I confirm.
There’s a moment of silent horror.
“That’s how an alien would describe kissing,” Trent says.
Marisol laughs.
“That would explain a lot about Valerie,” she says.
The two of them stick around for a few more minutes, and then finally, Trent pulls out his phone and checks the time.
“I’ve got to meet a very famous, important person for champagne cocktails soon, so I should get going,” he says.
Darcy snorts.
“Go ahead,” I say, rising from the couch. “I’m going to use the restroom and I said I’d give Marisol a ride home.”
“Cool,” Darcy says. “We should figure out rehearsal soon. And if we had new material...”
She raises both eyebrows.
“We will,” I say.
“Be safe, kids,” Trent says opening the door.
“Use protection!” Darcy shouts, and then the door shuts.
Still pink, Marisol turns toward me.
“They’re—”
I kiss her before she can finish the sentence, and she says mmmph into my mouth but wraps her arms around me instantly, so I grab her ass and lift her until her legs are wrapped around me, squeezing my rock-hard cock, her face just above mine.
She pulls back slightly, laughing.
“Whatever you’re laughing at it’s quite serious and not at all funny,” I say.
Marisol grins, her nose to mine.
“You got busted,” she laughs. “They knew exactly what you were doing.”
“We got busted.”
“But mostly you.”
She kisses me again, tightening her legs, and opens her mouth against mine, her hand on the back of my neck. I slide my hand onto her back, underneath her shirt, my cock throbbing so hard I can barely think straight.
I swear she does things to me I don’t even understand.
“When you spend months in a van with someone on tour, they get to know you,” I murmur. “And I don’t give a fuck that they know what we’re doing right now.”
Marisol bites my lower lip just hard enough to send a surge of desire through my veins, sizzling over my nerve endings, and I growl at her in response.
I pull her shirt over her head. Before it lands I’m already on her neck, kissing and sucking the soft, delicate skin there, forcing myself not to leave a mark, no matter how badly I want to be just a little rough and reckless.
She moans. I press my fingers into her back as hard as I can, and she rocks her hips against me, one hand pressing my head to her neck as I move my mouth down. My teeth find her skin, and she gasps, but I keep going. I get her bra off one-handed — a skill I did practice, thanks — and before she can say anything, I toss her onto the couch and follow, her thighs still around me, her breasts still bouncing from the impact.
I take one perfect, dark nipple in my mouth and swirl the tip of my tongue around it, listening to Marisol’s gasp as it puckers for me and I harden in response, so hard it’s nearly painful. Her hand is on my head, gripping my hair, her hips moving under me.
My other hand finds her other nipple and that one stiffens too as a strangled moan escapes Marisol’s lips. I bite down, gently at first, and then harder little by little until her back arches and her hand tightens in my hair, and then I flick my tongue over it until her breathing gets ragged, pinching and rolling the other at the same time.
I open my eyes, her nipple still in my teeth. She’s got her head thrown back, and I can barely see her, but her eyes are closed, her lips parted and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I think I could stay here forever and just watch her, and I’m tempted, but instead I flatten my tongue and slide the length of it over her nipple.
Marisol grabs the back of my shirt and pulls, and then I’m taking it off and throwing it somewhere and she’s biting her lip and running her hands down the tattoos on my torso. The look in her eyes is pure, deep hunger, and it darkens when her hands reach my pants and she slides one palm over my achingly hard cock.
I groan and press myself against her hand, my own body no longer under my control, and Marisol lifts herself on one elbow, her mouth seeking mine, her body pressing insistently against me. I can feel every breath she takes, her lungs expanding and contracting, every movement of her skin on mine stoking an unquenchable fire.
She lies back, looking at me, her eyes pools of lust as she unbuttons my pants. Before I kick them off I take the condom I brought out of my pocket and toss it onto the coffee table.
Marisol laughs, and I grin at her, grab her by the belt of her jeans and unbutton them, planting a kiss on her chest, in the valley of her heartbeat.
“I’ve had time to plan this ever since you left this morning,” I say, my lips brushing against her skin as I pull down her zipper and she lifts her hips off the couch, helping me get her pants off.
My cock twitches and throbs. I throw her pants into a ball on the floor and she sits up, takes my cock in her fist, and kisses me deep.
I groan into her mouth as she strokes me, long and hard. My vision goes white for a second with the perfect, pure pleasure of Marisol naked in front of me, her legs around me again, my cock in her hand, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from pulling her onto me and pushing myself inside her right there and then.
I don’t. I run my fingers up her wet slit, circle her clit once and then slide three inside. Her hand closes around the back of my neck and she moans, her grip tightening on my cock as her hips move, her tight channel pulsing around me like she’s trying to take me even deeper.
My fingers push deeper, stroking her inner wall. She moans softly, like she can’t stop herself, her hips bucking and writhing, and I know I can’t control myself much longer so I grab the condom, unwrap it, unroll it onto the tip and Marisol pushes it the rest of the way down as I take my fingers out of her.
We tumble together, a scramble of limbs, but then I’m on top of her and her hand’s on my cock again, guiding me in, and as I sink myself inside her with a perfect, delicious thrust. She moans, the noise coming from somewhere low in her chest, her eyes fluttering closed.
Everything is white hot. I’m buried in her, tight and hot and completely perfect, and I bite her shoulder until she gasps, her fingernails on my back. I pull her knees against my body and thrust again, hard and deep and she cries out so I do it again, the same way, again and again until the noise is one continuous moan.
Marisol’s got one knee over my shoulder. I don’t know how it got there but it feels fucking good, feels like I’m deeper inside her than I’ve ever been in anyone, and all I want is more, for this to go forever and never end. We keep going, hard and deep, and I’m pretty sure we’re both being loud as fuck and we might break this couch but I couldn’t care less because with every thrust, her muscles grab me like she’s pulling me in, more insistent with every stroke as they flutter around my cock.
She gasps, even louder. I drive myself deep, as hard as I can, and her nails rake down my back, her muscles fluttering and clenching around me. I keep going, not that I could stop if I wanted to.
This time she throws her head back and moans so loud it’s a shout. Her muscles clamp down on my cock like a fist, and I thrust one more time and then I can’t control myself any longer. I just fuck her as hard as I can while she shudders and moans, her whole body writhing, and I come into her again and again, as hard as I’ve ever come.
At last, I’m spent. Still inside her, I can feel the aftershocks running through Marisol’s body, her leg still over my shoulder. I stroke her thigh gently, kiss the inside of her knee. She opens her eyes and looks at me, removes her knee from my shoulder.
We kiss. I don’t move, still inside her and on top of her, because I like being close to her, my bare skin on hers. I like her arms around my back, her fingers tracing slow patterns.
I like the way she smiles when I put my forehead to hers,
as if the only world that exists is the two of us, right here on this couch in this hotel.
I like her.
32
Marisol
Gavin sits up after a moment, and I untangle myself from him, swinging my knee off his shoulder and wiggling my toes since my foot started to go to sleep. Not that I particularly care.
I sit up too and lean against his arm as he takes the condom off, ties a knot, and then tosses onto the coffee table.
“Oh, ew,” I say.
He laughs and puts his arm around me.
“Sex is perfectly natural,” he teases.
“But people eat off that,” I point out. “You’re getting ...fluids... on it.”
“Someone will clean it,” he says. “That’s their job.”
Right. Someone. For a split-second I picture the someone who’ll be coming in here to wipe my vaginal secretions off this table. Since we’re in Los Angeles, there’s a good chance that someone is going to look a lot like me.
I stand, grab the condom by the very end, and head for the bathroom.
“Marisol, I’ll get it,” Gavin says, the couch creaking as he gets up.
I wrap it in toilet paper and then throw it in the trash, wash my hands, and come back.
“I wasn’t going to leave it there,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose.
“I know,” I say. “I’m just weird about stuff like that.”
He sits on the couch again, putting his feet on the coffee table, and I sit in the crook of his arm.
“Okay,” he says. “No used condoms on the furniture. Got it.”
I’m silent for a moment, trying to put my sudden squeamishness into the right words.
“My mom cleaned hotel rooms when she first got to the U.S.,” I say. “Or, when she and my dad first became residents, I should say. She picked strawberries outside Oxnard on a migrant worker visa before that.”
I swallow, still staring at the tiny wet spot on the coffee table, because I don’t share my parents’ story a lot. People love to praise diversity, and God knows that in law school I’ve met tons of people who think it’s so great that I’m a first-generation American, but no one wants to think about who cleans their hotel rooms or how they get strawberries.
My parents still can’t eat them, by the way. The smell reminds them too much of days spent bent over in the sun.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Gavin said, and I shake my head.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I just... have a thing about leaving places clean. She’s told me some gross stories and I’m sure I haven’t even heard the worst.”
Gavin’s quiet for a long moment.
“I’ve trashed a few hotel rooms,” he finally admits. “Not trashed. I’ve never thrown the telly out the window or a chair into a pool, but I’ve certainly left some bad messes behind.”
“How rock and roll.”
“Liam’s the one who would just fucking wreck a place, though,” Gavin admits. “And it’s not as if I ever stopped him. Though he only threw the TV into the pool once and he did wind up paying quite a hefty fee for it.”
“It probably became the pool boy’s problem at that point,” I say.
“I’ve no idea who had to fish it out,” Gavin says. “As well as a chair and, I think, a suitcase full of clothing, though that last point is hazy.”
“Why’d he throw it into the pool?” I ask.
“Because cocaine is quite a drug,” he says. “And there was someone on TV he didn’t like, so he solved that problem by throwing it off the balcony and into the pool, and then that made a lovely splash so he followed it with a few more things until hotel security came barreling in.”
“And you were helping?”
“I was sitting on the bed laughing hysterically, also high as a fucking kite,” he says. “Though I think Liam started drinking a few hours before I joined his party and he can be an unpleasant drunk.”
I wiggle my toes, feet resting on the coffee table, and hesitate for a moment. I’ve only met Liam once, the time he set my book on fire, and he didn’t make a very good impression. Gavin only talks about him obliquely, when he’s telling me a story about something else, and I don’t know what to make of it.
They were friends. It sounds like they were best friends, practically brothers, judging by Liam’s presence at every stage of Gavin’s life, but Gavin never brings Liam up directly. It’s like he’s trying to avoid thinking about the other man.
I’m not sure I blame him. I haven’t asked yet about the details of Liam’s downfall, how he almost died and then got kicked out of Dirtshine, but I know Gavin’s still hurt about it. I think he’s avoiding the topic of Liam because they were so intertwined, and because Liam was so present for... well, everything, but especially the years Gavin spent as an addict.
“Did your parents meet in the states or in Guatemala?” he asks.
“They met on the truck from the worker quarters to the strawberry fields,” I say. “My mom was nineteen, my dad was twenty, and he was aghast that her family had let her come to the United States alone to earn money for them with no one to protect her.”
“If your mother’s anything like you, I don’t imagine that went over too well,” Gavin muses.
“That depends on which of them you ask,” I say, grinning. “My mom says that she politely informed him that she was the oldest of four children, her father was too crippled to work, and the family needed money so off she went.”
“And your dad says?”
“My dad says she gave him a piece of her mind about a woman’s place in the modern world, the whole truck went silent and simply stared at her, and that’s when he fell in love.”
“Who do you believe?”
“Him, of course,” I laugh.
“Have you found them a house yet?” he asks.
I close my eyes and lean back against his arm, because I still haven’t quite told Gavin the whole truth. He knows I agreed at the beginning of this so I could buy them a house. He doesn’t know that they’re being evicted in two more weeks — before I even get the million dollars — and despite our best efforts, my sister and I still haven’t found them another place to live.
I’ve almost told him a dozen times, but he’s already giving me a million dollars, and if I tell him I’ll feel like I’m asking for charity from him and that’s the last thing I want. Especially now, naked on a hotel room couch together.
“Not yet,” I say. “I’m still doing the research part.”
“It is your favorite.”
“I find information very soothing,” I say.
We’re quiet for a moment. I’m leaning into him, my right side against his left, and even though I’ve got homework and studying tonight, a full day tomorrow, and a test on Friday that I’m only half prepared for not to mention my parental apartment problems, I don’t want to move. I just want to stay there, warm and safe and tucked against him until everything I don’t like disappears.
Somewhere, a phone buzzes. Gavin sighs.
“You or me?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, so we both sit up and reach for our pants.
It wasn’t my phone that buzzed just now, but I’ve got a series of texts from my sister Sandra, all apartment listings. Then, at the top, I’ve got three missed calls from her.
I frown. That’s weird. Sandra hates the phone.
“Bugger me with a dirty spoon,” Gavin mutters, and I look over at him as he holds his phone up to his ear and stands.
“Eleven missed calls and four voicemails from a number I don’t—”
He goes quiet, listening as the voicemail starts, and as he listens his jaw tightens and something in his face hardens. He listens to another voicemail, then another, and pulls the phone away from his face and takes a deep breath.
“That was the security company,” he says, his voice flatter and harder than usual. “Seems someone’s broken a window into my house.”
My mouth drops open, chest squeezing.
>
“Did they take anything?” I ask, standing as well.
Gavin swallows, not quite looking at me as he pulls his boxers and jeans on.
“Not that they can tell but I don’t know yet,” he says. “Whoever the wanker was that broke in has left a good amount of blood on the floor and the sofa, though.”
“Did they cut themselves on the window?” I ask. “Did they know it was your house? Was it just a burglary gone wrong, or a crazed fan, or....”
“I really don’t know yet,” he says, pulling on his shirt. “It sounds as though the police are there now, but I’ve got to call them on the way back.”
I nod, still naked but dumbstruck. Gavin walks over, finally looking me in the face as he pulls me to him.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Gavin, your house got broken into,” I say. “Go.”
He gives me a long, lingering kiss on the lips, then strokes his thumb over my cheek.
“I’ll call you,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Now go talk to the police.”
I get one more peck on the lips, and then he’s out the door. I shake my head, trying to clear the fuzz out of it, and search for my underwear.
33
Gavin
I shouldn’t have lied to her, I think as I walk down the hall. I should have just told her the truth.
There’s time. Go back and confess. She’ll be disappointed but that’s not so bad, right?
I keep walking, hit the button for the elevator, and wait. It comes. I get on and head down to the parking garage, guilt gnawing away at me.
I can handle this, I tell myself. After this, I’ll boot him, it’ll be like this never happened, and I’ll never have to tell her anything because it’ll be over.
You didn’t even lie.
You just didn’t tell Marisol the entire truth. That’s different, isn’t it?
The heavy, prickling sensation in my gut right now says no, not really.
