“Is that X?” I point to a photo of the two of them in chef whites.
“Yup. Back when I worked in the kitchen at the Thorns.” She touches the glass fondly. “It was a fun night.”
I take in the homeyness and the quiet, and she looks at me and blinks, as if she were blinking away tears. She swallows hard.
“Can I get you a drink?”
I shake my head. “Why did you bring me here?”
She steps into my space, traces a finger down my throat, and looks up into my eyes, all temptation. “I could tell you it was to fuck your brains out. Which would be the truth, but also not the answer to the question you asked.”
Her words send a shudder through me. “Why?”
“You remember the first night we met, you invited me to this fundraiser, right? That was the thing you had tonight?”
I nod warily.
“In the moment right before I realized who you were, I fantasized about this. About bringing you home, laying you out on my bed, and…” she picks up my hand and kisses the inside of my wrist.
“And?” I prompt.
“That’s about as far as I got. But I wanted you here, and I wanted your hair down, and I wanted to undress you—god, Bex. I wanted you so much.”
“You can have me,” I whisper, and I lean in to kiss her. She meets me halfway, one hand landing on my hip, the other twisting up in my ponytail. My whole body responds, craving her wildness.
Her nearly-buzzed hair feels soft under my palms, so I rub her head, over and over as she bites at my jaw and my ears and the side of my throat.
“Where’s your bedroom?” I ask, and she points over her shoulder to a door without even opening her eyes or moving her lips from my throat. I start to steer her that way, and she laughs wildly, takes my hand, and takes charge.
She turns on a low light by the side of the bed, and I have a moment to appreciate the soft yellow walls and the lacy comforter, the quiet girlishness of it, and I open my mouth to ask a million questions, but she stops me with a finger on my lips.
“Can I undress you?” she asks.
I nod.
She steps around behind me, and at first, she doesn’t do anything, and I feel like if she doesn’t touch me soon, I’m going to die. Then her hand slowly brushes my ponytail from the back of my neck and sweeps it over my shoulder.
“Your hair is the first thing I noticed about you,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to the nape of my neck. “It’s stunning.”
Pleasure at the compliment flushes my skin.
She eases the zipper of my dress down to my waist. “And then you show up tonight, in leather and tulle, lace and fishnets.” This time, her kiss falls between my shoulder blades, feather-soft.
The zipper bottoms out and she helps me step out of the dress. I hear a rustle behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see her hanging it in her closet, as I stand there in my underwear, stockings, and boots.
“I fucking love these boots.” She kneels at my feet, running her hands over the leather from my heel to the back of my knee. She kisses me there, through my stockings, on the inside of the thigh, sending a ticklish buzz through my body.
She unzips first one boot, then the other, setting them aside, and looking up at me from her knees. Her eyes look heavy, almost like she’s drugged, and her breathing is coming fast. I can tell, without her having to say anything, that she gets off on this, on working me up slowly and gauging my responses. I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
Fingertips at my thighs, easing under my garters bring a gasp to my lips, but she doesn’t unfasten them. Instead, she snaps them playfully, a light sting against my skin that sends a rush of wetness between my legs.
“I love your thighs.” She gives them a firm squeeze. “They’re so soft and smooth. I love that you wear old fashioned stockings with thigh high boots and a leather dress.”
She kisses me, through my underwear, right over my clit. Can she tell how wet I am? “Mmmm, we’re gonna come back to this.”
Her teeth nip at my belly. “I wondered about how you would look here. I couldn’t stop thinking about how you felt when I kissed you.” A quick tug at my navel ring makes my knees buckle, and I grab onto her shoulders for balance. “All curvy and divine. I want to spend hours figuring out which parts of you are ticklish.” She stands up, and I drop my hands from her shoulders, keeping my eyes closed. She walks around behind me again, and her hands smooth down my shoulders reassuringly before she frees me from my bra.
“Jesus,” she breathes more than says. Then her hands are on my breasts, cupping them firmly, playing her thumbs over the nipples. “You’re magnificent.” Her voice has gone raspy, and her fingers and thumbs tighten rhythmically over the peaks of my nipples. I lean back into her arms, so turned on, my bones feel like jelly, but my muscles are tense.
She strokes from my breasts back down to my thighs, and a desperate sound erupts from my throat. Her own fully-clothed body presses against me from behind, her nipples pressing into my shoulder blades through the thin cotton of her tank top.
She takes my hair down, smoothing it out and running her hands through it. Giving it an experimental tug that makes me shiver with need.
“Shhh. Let’s take this to bed.” She eases me down onto my back, and finally, my eyes snap open again. I meet her steady, brown-eyed gaze and she’s smiling down at me.
I can’t help but smile back. Here in her bed, under her hands, I’m as aroused as I can ever remember being, but I also feel cherished and beautiful, and all the things I never expected the dirty bitch from Vertical Smile to make me feel—no matter how much I hoped and imagined.
“Let’s get these off you too.” She unclips my garters and eases my stockings down my legs before tossing them aside. And now I’m reclined on her bed, propped up on my elbows, in nothing but panties and a garter belt.
And she’s looking at me like starving woman at a feast.
Once again, she runs her hands up my body, from knee to breast. My legs drop open, but she refuses to take the hint.
“I want to feel you. Skin on skin,” I demand, and she pauses to stare at me, as if she’d forgotten I could talk. Or maybe that ratty old tank top is her armor, and I’ve as much as asked to get under her skin.
All I know is I want all of her. And she doesn’t look inclined to give it to me.
“Please?” I beg. “Don’t be invisible here.”
She shudders and nods. Slowly, she pulls her tank top over her head and tosses it to the side. She’s as thin as a supermodel, all angles, with small, perfect breasts, each nipple pierced with a tiny barbell. As she drops her cutoffs to the floor with a jingle of change, she stands there, naked except for a pair of black briefs with a red circle—an O-ring to attach a dildo.
“What do you want?” She asks softly. “And don’t say whatever I want. I want to make you feel good.”
“Kiss me,” I say, though I meant to ask her to fuck me. She kneels over me on the bed, carefully lowering her slender body between my legs, and then she does. She kisses me deep and hard, full of longing and lust, driving her hips into mine. Her skin is soft and satiny, the warm metal of her nipple rings a delightful contrast to the smooth skin all around them. I touch one with a fingertip, and she breaks the kiss to throw her head back, her mouth working soundlessly.
I take advantage. I pinch and twist it, watching her face move, her spine arch. After a few ragged breaths, she grabs my wrists and pins them over my head.
“No,” she tells me firmly. “Not until I’ve made you come.”
She reaches for my panties, and I close my eyes again, leaving my wrists where she pinned them.
With a few quick movements, she’s stripped my panties and garter belt away, and then she’s kissing her way up my thigh. I wait for her to reach my pussy, my breath caught in my throat, but she just moves to the other leg and makes her way up.
“You’re such a fucking tease.”
“Mmmm,” she hums against my pubic ha
ir, the light vibration enough to make me tremble all on its own, and then her tongue touches my clit and I practically erupt off the bed in startled pleasure.
One of her hands presses down on my belly, holding me still as she settles in, curling her tongue around my clit. I rock up into her mouth, and she rides out the desperate motion, covering my clit with her tongue and letting me grind up on her face with abandon. It feels so good I could cry, and then she eases two fingers into me, and I shout.
The tightness of an orgasm about to uncoil builds in my body, impossibly soon. I don’t want to come yet, but she seems determined to get me there, holding my thrashing hips down and making me take her tongue.
“I’m gonna come,” I whimper, and she holds me tighter, digging the fingernails on her restraining hand into the top of my thigh. I can’t hold my hips still; my whole body seems to be reaching for the orgasm I’ve been trying futilely to stave off.
It hits me with breathtaking force. My shoulders lift up from the bed and my hips shake. She stays right there with me, gentling her touches in response to my shudders as wave after wave of pleasure contorts my body.
When I finally open my eyes, she’s staring at me, heavy-lidded and eyes glazed. I sit up and tug at her waistband.
“Take these off.”
She complies slowly, as if in some kind of dream state, and then I roll her onto her back and grin. “Now it’s my turn.”
She shakes her head. “No teasing, I’m close.”
Really? Just from watching me? I file that away for future reference as I lower my mouth to her left breast.
I flick my tongue over the nipple, tasting the salty tang of her skin. I take the ring in my teeth and give a tug. She arches up, hissing.
“Okay?” I ask her.
“Yes, fuck!”
Smiling, I move on to the other breast, trailing one hand up her leg to the juncture of her thighs. She spreads them wide for me and I cup my whole hand over her vulva, feeling how hot and wet and swollen she is.
“Bex, now, please.” She’s practically growling with lust. I spread my fingers, sliding the middle one deep into her. My thumb, stroking lightly over her clit, encounters more metal, and I pull away from her breasts to have a look.
“Wow.” There, nestled against her clitoris, is a tiny piercing through its hood. I run my thumb through her wetness, then I bring it up to circle and rub, flicking that ring curiously.
She clearly wasn’t joking about being close, because she starts panting and moaning my name like a prayer. I plunge my middle three fingers into her, and she lets out this wild, sexy noise. I move them roughly, leaving my thumb on her clit, and she rides my hand with an utter abandon that is devastatingly sexy. Suddenly, without a warning, she cries out and shudders, her whole body wracked with her orgasm.
We collapse down to the bed together, sticky and sated. She tugs blankets over us, and that ridiculously girly bedspread, and kisses my hair. And then, she falls asleep, snoring. The dark circles under her eyes and the sharp pitch of her cheekbones make her look startlingly vulnerable, especially in sleep. I reach across her and switch off the light, plunging us into darkness until my eyes adjust.
I watch her for a long time before the Sandman finally comes for me too.
Nat
* * *
I wake at three in the morning with an armful of Bex. What have I done? My brain leaps from losing my job to losing my band to losing my fucking mind because of one selfish mistake.
No. Not a mistake. I refuse to think of sleeping with Bex as a mistake. Definitely selfish, though. I ease my arm out from under her and stand, face flushing with guilt, the bees in my stomach tearing me apart from the inside out.
I grab my robe from the hook on the wall and take a glance back at Bex, asleep in my bed, in the room X let me decorate when I still found comfort in lace and teddy bears. Without me at her back, she curls into my pillow, hugging it to her chest. I want to climb back into bed and wrap my arms around her and go back to sleep—but the panic rises and I turn away instead.
In the kitchen, I pour myself a glass of water and chug it down, trying to silence the bees, my brain, everything.
something’s got to give something’s got to give, something’s got to give
“Nat?” A bleary-eyed Bex stands naked in the doorway. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, take another gulp of water.
She comes and stands behind me, rubbing a hand between my shoulder blades. “Do you want me to go?”
The thought makes me physically ill. I shake my head again, barely able to keep myself from retching.
“Do you want to talk?” She takes the water glass from my shaking hand and sets it on the counter. “Come on, let’s sit down. Couch or bedroom?”
I glance at the living room, seeing X’s face staring out at me from our pictures. “Bedroom.”
She leads me back to bed, obviously impervious to her own nudity. Normally it would turn me on, but—
She pushes me down to the bed, wraps my blankets around me, then sits beside me and picks up my hand again.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I—” my voice comes out on a croak. I try again. “—I feel like my heart is going to explode out of my chest.”
“Take a deep breath, focus on the feeling of my hands on yours, okay? Don’t think about anything else. Think about the pressure of my thumb on the inside of your wrist. Think about how your fingers are curling into mine. Just focus on those things.”
I try, I really do, and for a minute it works, but then my buzzing, whirring thoughts turn back into bees, and I gasp for breath.
“Shhhh.” She strokes my hand, then starts rubbing it between hers. “My mom had a nervous breakdown after the divorce. She said some days, she woke up and it felt like the floor was gone. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t walk.”
Nervous breakdown? No. I’m just dealing with too much. Something has to give.
“Where’s your floor, Nat?”
I shudder, draw in another ragged breath. “It’s underneath me, where it’s always been.”
“Yeah? Good.” She keeps rubbing my hand between hers, and leans her head on my shoulder. “You’re going to be okay. Your breathing is slowing back down. Did you take anything?”
I shake my head again.
“Do you have anything to take?”
“No. I might have a roach in an ashtray somewhere, but pot sometimes makes me paranoid.”
“That’s okay, I think you’re through the worst of it right now. How long have you been having panic attacks?”
“Panic attacks?” Yeah, I know what they are. But hearing her say it makes the words real in a way they’ve never been before.
“Yeah. You just had a panic attack. Heart racing, shallow breathing, trouble getting words out. You looked like you were going to throw up. And you smell different.”
I sniff my pits. Rank. “Ew.”
She laughs. “It doesn’t bother me. I think you’re sexy. A little fear-sweat won’t change that. But a hot shower might feel good and help you calm down enough to get back to sleep. Or we can stay up.”
“What would we do if we stayed up?”
She shrugs. “Fuck, talk, paint each other’s nails. I don’t know. What time do you have to be at work?”
“Seven.”
“Then we have time to do all three. Wanna show me your dick?”
Thirteen
Bex
* * *
I kiss Natalie goodbye at the door to her apartment, feeling boneless and exhausted and relieved to see her looking herself again. She runs her hand over the leather of my dress, her face wistful.
“I’m sorry my jeans didn’t fit you.”
I shrug. “It’s not my first walk of shame. And at least it’s only as far as to the Lyft car.”
“I’m sorry I have to work today.” She tugs affectionately at my quickly-braided pigtails. “I’ll text you later though.”
>
I frown. Maybe looking herself, but still not feeling herself. “Promise me you’ll stop starting all your sentences with ‘I’m sorry.’ You don’t need to apologize for things outside of your control.”
“I’m sor—” She claps a hand over her mouth. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“One more kiss?”
She meets me halfway. It’s sweet and playful and and it turns me on even though we were fucking half the night and morning. She clutches my arms with both hands like she doesn’t ever want to let me go. But even epic kisses can’t last forever. We break apart and she touches my lips with her fingertips.
“I’ll text.” She says firmly. “Go get some actual sleep.”
I almost nod off in the car, so when I arrive at my temporary apartment, I take her advice and crawl into bed. Heaven.
It seems like I’ve barely closed my eyes when my phone rings, but when I pick it up, it reads ten o’clock. And it’s Angie.
“Hey.” I rub my gritty eyes. “What’s up?”
“Your dad and his fiancee were just in here looking at wedding bands. She’s a cutie.”
“Uh-huh.” I flop back on the bed and close my eyes as Angie prattles on about how my dad actually smiled at her and asked for advice.
“Bex. Rebecca. Becky.”
The “Becky” is what jerks me awake. “That’s not my name. And I’m sorry. Late night, early morning.”
“Get some coffee in you and join me for brunch at the Thorns. I want to hear all about it.”
As much as I’d love to tell Angie all about it, there’s absolutely no way I’m breaking my promise to keep Nat’s secrets. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Meet for brunch?”
“Brunch I can do. I just—I can’t talk about last night. It’s private.”
“Even from your best friend?”
“I’m sorry, Angie.”
Off Limits Page 9