A Guy Walks Into My Bar

by Lauren Blakely

  I find my dad on the street and hand him the book. “I’m sure you’ll be too busy with Penny to read, but one never knows.”

  “Same goes for you,” my dad says. He tips his head toward the door, glancing upstairs. “I like him.”

  Three words, that’s all, but they make my heart glow. I didn’t realize until just now that I wanted them from my father. Needed them—his seal of approval.

  “Me too,” I answer.

  “I can tell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a good thing.”

  “Feels like a good thing.”

  Or really, a great thing.

  He heads down the street, and I return to my flat to see that Fitz has cleared the table and is already washing the dishes.

  I grin, ridiculously happy that he thought to do that. I grab a towel and start drying the dishes he’s already washed and rinsed, and we fall into an easy rhythm.

  “I like your dad,” Fitz says, glancing at me.

  “Thanks. So do I.”

  “I can tell. You guys have a great relationship.”

  “I’m lucky. We’re a lot alike, and honestly, we’re good friends too.” I take a beat, setting down a plate in the rack. “My dad said he liked you.” Once I speak the words, they feel significant. Bigger than I expected them to, like I’m opening up to Fitz in a whole new way.

  I swallow roughly, waiting.

  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye as he rinses off the last dish, puts it down, and wipes off his hands. He’s quiet, which is unlike him, so I fill the silence with another question. “Are you close with your mum like that?”

  “Not in the same way exactly. But we’re open, and we talk. I call her every week. She texts me before each game and wishes me luck. She texts me after every game to say either ‘Congrats’ or ‘You’ll crush them next time.’”

  “She sounds amazing,” I say, then I cast about for something more, something to fill this conversational void. “And have you talked—?”

  He runs a hand along my arm, then at last answers my unspoken question. “She’d like you too, Dean. My mom would like you.”

  Sparks spread across my skin. Only this time, it’s not from the contact—it’s from the admission that parallels mine.

  “Is that so?” I put down the towel.

  “Yes, it is so,” he says, imitating me.

  “And why do you mock me for that?”

  “Because it’s easy. And because you walk into it sometimes, so I can’t help it. Like the way you say, ‘Is that so?’ as if you doubt everything anyone says.”

  “Perhaps I do. Perhaps I like facts. So, tell me. Why would your mum like me?” I ask, and we’re treading dangerously close to the deep end again. Lately, that seems like what we do with each other. Like we’re dipping our toes in the water all the time. Maybe soon, one of us will jump.

  Or maybe we won’t. Maybe it’s safest to keep this on the safe, dry, limited ground where it belongs.

  He shrugs easily. “Because I do.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  Fitz smirks before leaning over and kissing my cheek. “And because you’re adorable.”

  I lift my chin. “I’m not adorable.”

  “A little. You’re a little adorable,” he teases in his Harry Potter accent.

  “Now you’re mocking me again.”

  “I am, but you walked into it, man,” he says, shaking his head, amused.

  “You really like taking the piss out of me, don’t you?”

  “I really, really do,” he admits. “Anyway . . . after meeting your dad, I can tell, too, why you resisted me at first.”

  I laugh as I grab the now-dry dishes to put away. “What does that have to do with my dad?”

  “He’s skeptical . . . like you.”

  Fitz makes a fair point. “It’s the reporter in him,” I say. “He looks at everything from every direction.”

  “You’re the same. You looked at me that way.”

  And he’s hit the nail on the head. “Yes. I don’t trust easily. I don’t give in easily.” I set the last dish in the cupboard and shut the door.

  “Because of your mom?”

  I lean against the counter. “Because of my mum. Because of my dad. Because of everything. It’s better to be skeptical, to be sure of what you’re getting into.”

  “I get that. I respect that. You like to check out all the angles.”

  “Exactly. Know what they are. What I’m walking into.”

  He runs his hand down my arm again, then over my abs, toying with the waistband of my jeans, tugging me closer. “So, tell me. Why did you give in to me? Is it only because I’m leaving?” His tone is more earnest than I’ve ever heard it. It’s hard to concentrate, though, with his hands on me.

  “What do you think?” I ask, my fingers curling around his ass as I inch closer to telling him why I gave in.

  Fitz shakes his head. “I think that’s the reason why you started, but it’s not why we’re here now.”

  I know where he’s headed. I ought to steer this conversation in a safer direction, but I can’t seem to resist this path. I want our motives to be out in the open.

  “What’s the reason you’re here, then?” I ask as I kiss his neck, nibbling and biting.

  Fitz breathes out hard, rocking his hips against me. His moans grow louder as I kiss his jawline, his cheek, and then nibble on his earlobe, trying to tell him with my body, with my lips, with the way I kiss him that there are other reasons.

  “What’s the reason?” I ask softly again. Then I bite his skin. “A pact?”

  Fitz shakes his head.

  “Last chance to get your rocks off?”

  “You ass,” he growls.

  I laugh. “You love my ass.”

  “I do. I really fucking do. But that’s not why I’m here.” We’re tangoing closer and closer to the dangerous edge we’ve been resisting. I could make another joke about this crazy chemistry, and part of me wants to, because I’m having so much fun with him. But I don’t joke. This is no longer a fling. We both know it.

  The man I’ve spent the last few nights with looks at me intensely, like this moment could tip into something much more than an interlude or an affair. Maybe it already has.

  And because he’s taken so many steps to me, I make this one toward him. “Why are you in my home? Why are you having dinner with my dad? Why do you want to meet my friends?” They aren’t questions though. They’re statements about where we’ve found ourselves. His eyes never stray from mine as I run my thumb along his jaw, ready to be completely honest. “Maybe it’s because there’s much more here than chemistry. More than the hashtag Best-Sex-Ever effect.”

  Fitz lets out a breath like I’ve freed him, like I’ve given him everything he needs. “So much more,” he echoes, his shoulders relaxing, his arms looping around my neck, and his lips zeroing in on mine as he repeats “You are so much more” against my mouth, kissing me.

  I close my eyes as those words reverberate in my head. You are so much more.

  They’re the chorus of a song, and they don’t stop playing, and we don’t stop kissing for a long time.

  When he breaks the kiss, he says, “You know, sometimes talking to you is like leading a horse to water.”

  “Are you going to make me drink?”

  “I’d like to make you take my cock.”

  “What do you know? I’d like to have it.” I put a hand over the front of his jeans, where he’s hard and ready for me. “Because I like you and your cock so very much.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” he says, tossing my pet phrase back at me.

  As we slide back into the games we play, the teasing, the never-ending flirting, the dirty words all feel bigger too.

  More necessary.

  They cover up what’s simmering, all the next steps and possibilities we can’t have.

  The only thing we can have is the now.

  And in the now, I want contact. I wa
nt it desperately, and I need the sex to drown out the refrain in my head.

  You are so much more.

  Except the volume knob is broken, and those words can’t be turned down, even as I take his hand, lead him to my bedroom, and strip him naked.

  But I try hard.

  I try so damn hard to just zoom in on the sex.

  I pin him to the bed, my hands on his shoulders, our bodies aligned. “Do you realize I haven’t had you in my mouth nearly enough times?”

  “Are you worried you’ll forget what I taste like?”

  “So damn worried.”

  His eyes glint with dirty deeds. “That’d be such a shame.”

  I grind against him. I’m still in my clothes, and for some reason, I like this inequity. It gives me a chance to be fully in charge of his pleasure.

  His eyes squeeze shut, and his lips part on a heavy breath. “You should fix that now.”

  “I should. And I will. But I’m giving you fair warning about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  I lean in even closer, bringing my mouth to his ear. “I’m going to tease the fuck out of you.”

  Fitz groans. “I’d expect nothing less.”

  I slide down his body slowly, taking my time and kissing him as I go. A brush of my lips on his shoulder. A kiss on his throat that makes him groan. A flick of my tongue across his pecs. A bite of his right nipple, then the left, then a lick across the words No Regrets.

  “I think I’ll trace this letter by letter,” I say.

  “Please do.”

  My tongue coasts across the ink, then down to his abs, where I savor the landscape of his body, the grooves between all those hard muscles, licking and kissing and wanting never to stop.

  “You’re killing me, babe. What are you doing to me?” he rasps.

  It’s a valid question. And I answer it in my head. Imprinting you on my mind so I don’t forget.

  As my lips glide across his flesh, I say, “Just making sure you don’t forget me.”

  “As if I could.”

  I reach the V of his abs, and he’s already rocking his hips, seeking me out, begging for my attention.

  My head goes hazy with his longing, and my own too, as I move closer and closer to where I want to be.

  When my mouth reaches his shaft, he’s pulsing, and there’s a bead of liquid at the tip, just waiting for me.

  I lick it off.

  “Fuck,” he groans, his hands shooting to my head, curling around me like a vise.

  I can tell he wants me to take care of him straightaway, to get him there fast, but I know, too, how much better it’ll be if I drive him crazy, so I reach up to loosen his hands.

  “Just let me,” I say quietly. “Let me do this slow. Let me enjoy every second of having you in my mouth.”

  He huffs, but then relinquishes his grip, hands going slack but still holding my head. “Okay. Do your thing to me, babe.”

  I look up at him. His eyes are hooded, desperate. “I will.”

  And I return to kissing his shaft. No. I’m adoring it. I lick him like he’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, because he is.

  With a hand wrapped around the base, I travel down to his balls, sucking until he’s writhing against me.

  When I have Fitz panting and wild, I move back to his cock, flick my tongue over the head, and take him all the way to the back of my throat.

  “Yesssss,” he groans, and it lasts forever, the sound of his relief becoming the sound of his wicked pleasure as I draw him in deep. “God, your mouth. Your perfect fucking mouth.”

  His words are going to be the death of me. A sultry, mind-bending death. I spread my hands across his thighs, pressing and squeezing his legs as I suck.

  “You are so fucking good,” he rasps out as he thrusts into my mouth. Lust rockets across my skin from tasting him.

  This time when his fingers curl around my head, I let him grip me in place. He holds my head tight as I lavish attention up and down his cock, flicking my tongue as I go and sucking him hard, the way he likes it, the way I like it when he does it to me. I want him to feel extraordinary pleasure, to go back to New York and never fucking forget how I made him feel.

  I revel in every moment of his taste, his scent, his bliss. With each move he makes, I’m more aroused. That seems like it should be impossible, but my body says it’s not.

  His palms clasp harder, and he’s fucking up into my mouth. “Dean, babe. What are you doing to me? Jesus. What the fuck are you doing to me?”

  His words come out strangled. I know he’s close, and hell, I feel close too. I’m actually rocking my hips against the bed, desperately seeking my own pleasure. But his first. I want his first.

  And I crave his words.

  The things he says to me in bed.

  The things he’s saying right now.

  “You,” he rasps on a wild thrust. “You’re so fucking good to me.” Then he just grunts and calls out, “Coming.”

  Seconds later, I’m tasting him, drinking him down, and losing my mind with lust, with desire, and with something else entirely.

  Something I never wanted to feel when we started.

  But something that I can’t stop now.

  The feeling that he belongs to me. Just me. Only me.

  When I climb up his body, I kiss him deeply and passionately. I know he likes that after a blow job, and hell, so do I. We go at it like we can’t get enough of each other’s lips. We go at it like time is running out. We go at it like we’re trying to consume all the kissing in the world, so we don’t forget how each other tastes.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  Maybe it’s all in my head, this rush of emotion that pummels me, these impossible thoughts running rampant.

  When we stop, with bruised lips and chins rubbed raw, he strokes my face, his eyes locked with mine.

  For a second, maybe more, I see everything reflected back at me, and it’s terrifying.

  But it’s thrilling too.

  “I’m fucking obsessed with how you touch me,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I swear you suck me off like you love it. Like you can’t get enough of it. Of me.”

  Nailed it. “Sounds about right.”

  “Yeah?” The weight he puts in the question says it’s about more than mouths on body parts. It’s about this obsession we’ve given each other. This shared addiction.

  So I answer without teasing, only with truth. “Yes.”

  I don’t know what to do with this torrent of feelings. I fight the urge to say something that would reveal all. To say why I love it now, how it’s changed from the pure desire of a few days ago to something richer and deeper.

  But it’s hard to keep it inside when Fitz repeats what he said when he was fucking my mouth. “Dean, what are you doing to me?”

  He strokes my jaw and gazes at me, and this isn’t the heat of the moment.

  He’s saying it after.

  I swallow and try to look away, but I can’t unlock my eyes from his. “What am I doing to you, Fitz?”

  His fingers trace my face. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “That’s definitely the question.”

  For a few seconds, a heaviness descends on us, but I don’t want the pressure—not when time is running short.

  Maybe he doesn’t either, because the next thing he says is light and easy. “I could do that every night with you. Every damn night.”

  “A blow job?” I ask, a little relieved we’re returning to familiar territory.

  He relaxes into the pillow for the post-orgasm sex talk. “Yes. But it goes both ways, babe,” he says. “You. Me. Every night. A blow job, a handjob, fingers, tongues, cocks. Everything. I want everything every night with you.”

  Or maybe this is how we make the talk manageable. He’s talking about sex, but he’s also not talking about sex. He’s talking about every night. How he wants this, us, me.

  Fitz wraps an arm around me and drops a possessive kis
s onto my shoulder. He does everything possessively. His entire body seems wired for possession.

  I arch a brow and fire back at him. “Every night? You sure about that?”

  He nods vigorously against me, his beard scratching my neck. “Every night. Every morning. Couldn’t you?”

  “That’s a tall order. You would want to go every night and every single morning?” Goading him is easier than dealing with this strengthening storm in my chest. And because of course I could fucking go every night and every morning. Of course I’d want to with him.

  “Yes,” he says with certainty, then he shifts, looking into my eyes. “With you, absolutely. I would fuck you every night and then I would fuck you every morning.”

  Well, I can’t back away from one question that comes up. I drag a hand down the hard planes of his chest, trailing it toward the V of his abs. “But what if I wanted to fuck you, Fitz? What would you do about that?”

  His eyes darken, and the sound that emanates from him is an animalistic rumble. He drops his face to my neck and licks a line up to my ear, making me shudder. “I would let you, now and then,” he murmurs.

  I want to laugh, arch a brow, and say, Let me? You’d let me?

  But he pushes up on his elbow, expression serious.

  This matters to him.

  This is a big deal.

  I can see it in the set of his jaw, the vulnerability in his eyes.

  So instead, since I want to understand what this means to him, I say evenly, “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, I would. I wouldn’t let anyone else do that. I haven’t in years. But I would with you.”

  I sit up and take notice of this. “Why with me?”

  Fitz lets out a deep sigh. “I’ve always liked the control, needed it, even. But with you, Dean, I already feel reckless.”

  “You seem pretty in charge.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m hardly in control with you.”

  “So when you pin me down and have your way with me, that’s not control?”

  “No. Not at all. Because everything’s different with you. And I don’t just mean how great the sex is.” He snakes an arm around me, dragging me close. Fitz is the most tactile person I’ve ever known, seeming to crave constant contact.

  “How? How is it different?” I press. This tells me volumes about Fitz. “Why would you switch for me?”