He digs into his pocket and sighs. There’s something white in his fingers. “At least I still have my ID.”
“Come,” I say.
“Where?”
I brandish my Metrocard. “I’ll give you a swipe, Wall Street.”
RORY
THURSDAY 10:00 P.M.
Sofia gives me more than a swipe. She buys me a coffee and a slice of pizza on the way to the 6 train.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’ll pay you back.”
She gives her shoulder a little shrug as she folds the pizza in half. Her perfect, round lips wrap themselves around the cheesy goodness. I ate my pizza in about three bites and now I’m chugging my coffee.
“I’ve never been mugged before,” I say. “That’s shitty.”
“Yeah, well. It’s desperate times. Doesn’t make it okay. Just, keep your money on the inside of your 007 suit.”
I look down at her. Even though it is dark out, she’s no longer bathed in that hazy purple light. Her skin is a warm brown and her mouth is rose red.
When we get to the subway and she swipes me through, I’m surprised she knows I need to go in this direction. Then again, she has looked at my address for the last three days.
“What’s your deal, Sofia?” I ask.
The train chooses this moment to arrive. It blows her hair over half her face, her dark eyes glance at me before turning away to the opening doors. “What do you mean my deal?”
I follow her inside the nearly empty car and sit beside her but leave half a foot of space between us. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl you usually find at places like that.”
Her brow pushes up as she frowns. “And how do you know what places like that entail?”
“My mother was a stripper,” I say. It’s not a lie but everything about her is skeptical. “Back in Kansas City. That’s how I got to go to a fancy catholic school and got a scholarship and did all the things I was supposed to do. I remember visiting her at the Palace when I was little. All of the girls there looked, I don’t know, not happy. I mean, you don’t look happy to be there either, it’s just—fuck.”
She scoffs. “Thanks?”
“I’m sorry, I’m saying everything wrong.”
“You’re right.”
“About being wrong or about not being happy?”
“A little of both. It’s been a rough year. I wish I could quit.”
“What’s stopping you?”
She rolls her eyes like I don’t understand. But I know the answer. It’s money. The answer is always money in a place where you have to work to live in the most basic form.
Because of men like you, a voice inside my head tells me.
“And you’re showing up every day at noon at a strip club because you’ve discovered the meaning of life?” Her voice is demanding, her body leans towards me defensively. The train rattled as it shoots uptown.
In this moment, she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. “No, but I did discover you.”
SOFIA
THURSDAY 10:30 P.M.
It’s a line. I know it’s a line.
But he I still kiss him.
He’s so surprised that he pulls back for a second. Stares into my eyes then leans back into finish what I started. I turn in my seat, bringing our knees together. Heat radiates from my skin as he raises his hand to the side of my face. His fingers are warm from holding the cup of coffee, and as his thumb traces the slope of my cheek, I can feel my chest flutter with pleasure. It’s a slow kind of kiss. Curious in the way he searches for my tongue. Needy in the way I nip at his bottom lip.
It doesn’t make sense that I would kiss this stranger, this guy I’ve watched stumble in day after day with a sadness that mirrors my own. It doesn’t make any sense, and yet, it feels like I’ve kissed him a hundred times before this.
The only reason I seem to be able to pry myself from him is because I can hear my stop called. His stop too.
And because it’s been a long week and his kiss has ignited a feeling I’ve thought was gone, I say, “Do you want to come up for a drink?”
RORY
THURSDAY 11:00 P.M.
I would come over to scrub the toilet if she asked me to. When Sofia lets me up to the her studio apartment, one block away from my building, I can’t seem to form words. Instead, I take her hand and climb the steps with her.
There’s the buzz of attraction between us and an awkwardness, too. Because we’ve never done this before. Because I don’t know where she likes to be touched or how she tastes.
But I want to find out.
“Sorry the place is a mess,” she says, disappearing into the bathroom.
Her bed is in a corner, sheer white curtains draped from the ceiling around the headboard, and lights that seem to come on as if my approaching the bed triggered a sensor. I take off my jacket and add it to the coatrack near the front door and let my eyes roam.
There are stacks of book everywhere. Novels and biographies and cookbooks with little tabs everywhere. Framed pictures, faces smiling—family, friends, people I’ve never met but who must mean the world to her to take up an entire wall.
I’ve been in New York for a year and my walls are still bare.
Then I hear the toilet flush. Water run from a sink. The doorknob turn. I’m suddenly aware of the radiator hissing in a corner and my own heart rattle in my chest.When she steps out, she doesn’t come out right away but fusses around her kitchen. I crane my neck but there’s a beaded curtain that blocks my view.
“Need any help?”
“I got it.” Something metal falls, but the next minute she’s stepping out of holding two glasses of wine. My heart gives a jolt that’s met by my dick because now that we’re so far away from the club I see her differently. Every time I watch her I notice something new. The way her hair falls, favoring the right side of her face. An adorably slightly crooked canine that makes her smile entirely hers. I take the glass of wine and realize she’s got a gold band on her middle finger, simple but pretty.
I tilt my glass to hers and we cheers. “Thank you for coming to my rescue today.”
“Just doing my civic duty.”
And because I can’t help it. “Does your civic duty always come with a kiss and wine?”
She smirks and sits on the edge of her bed. It’s made, a colorful sarape draped across the bottom half. “You don’t know it doesn’t. About once a week some poor schmoe gets mugged right in front of the club and I save him with a kiss and an alcoholic beverage. It’s my super power.”
“When I was a kid I used to want X-ray vision as my super power.” I drink the wine and sit beside her.
“Don’t tell me,” she says. “To see through girl’s clothes?”
“How entirely predictable. But no. I hated Halloween so I rationalized that if I could see through people’s disguises they wouldn’t freak me out so much.”
“Who doesn’t like Halloween?”
“Clearly, small town Kansas boys.”
When she laughs, I feel like I want that to be my new superpower. Sofia gives her head a shake. “What brings a small town Kansas boy to the Doll House in the middle of they day three times in a row?”
I lick my lips, busy them with drinking. I know that when I tell her what I do, what I’m supposed to get done before my boss comes back from vacation, she’s going to hate me. I don’t want her to hate me. Am not ready for it. I want her to keep staring at me with curiosity. Like there may be something more to me even though I think I might be past that.
“Let’s just say I’ve made a choice that I don’t think I can go back on. Not without losing a lot.”
She makes a sweet hmm sound. “You Wall Street people really need to stop making deals with the Devil.”
“Even if it saves the people you love?”
She crosses one long leg over the other and I drink my wine to have something to wet my suddenly parched mouth. I’m a lucky fucking son of a bitch to have wound up i
n this room with her. “I’m not sure.”
“What about you?”
She brushes her hair back. I want to bury my nose and breathe her in. All of her.
“When I was in college my dad got sick. We couldn’t pay for his treatment so I started working at the clubs. It was good money. All cash. He got better and I went back to school part time.”
“What did you study?”
“Social work and pre-law.” She drinks her wine, leaving the red outline of her lip on the rim. I’ve never wanted to be so many inanimate objects so that I can be in her hands. “But then my dad got sick again and we repeated the same cycle three times. Until the last time he didn’t get better and I didn’t go back to school. So maybe you’re right and I am the usual kind of woman you find in places like that.”
“When my mom danced it was because it was her only way out. I promised her that I’d make it and give her everything she never had. But I know in order to do that, I have to take things from others. I don’t know you so I can’t say what you’re like, but I want to think that we can be more. Maybe.”
“It’s a little early for philosophizing,” she says, a smile tugging at her lips.
“It’s late for me,” I say.
“I usually work doubles. So the night is just beginning for me.” She sits perfectly still but her foot moves back and forth quickly. “Maybe I can help you figure out what to do with your problem.”
I look into the red wine in my glass. “There’s no helping.”
“Maybe. But you should still try.”
“Will you let me help you back?” I ask, but when I look into her eyes she glances away.
“Let’s start with you. What is this Devil deal you’ve made?”
I haven’t been to church in years, but it almost feels like I’m thirteen and in confessional again. “I work of Sanderson & Co.”
She doesn’t seem to know what it is, and if she does, she lets me keep talking.
“It’s a land developer. We clear an area to make room for condos, malls, etc.”
I see the realization blaze in her eyes. “So you gentrify.”
“Yes.” I swallow the knot in my throat.
“How long have you been working there?” she asks.
“A year. Before that I was at a smaller firm that did the exact opposite. But when they approached me I knew I’d have to get my hands dirty. I told myself it would be fine as long as it helped me provide for my mother.”
“Then why are you so torn up about it now?”
Looking into her eyes is like a balm for this angst I can’t explain. “I don’t know. I guess it’s having to put faces to names. It’s easy when people are just names on a piece of paper.”
“Why is that easier? When people are on lists for something that will ruin their lives it never ends up well.”
“I’ve been going to the Raccoon Lodge before I go to Dolls,” I tell her. “The bartender’s been working there for thirty years. He has two daughters he’s putting through college. And I just sit there and drink and leave big tips and he calls me son and then I take my briefcase and chicken out. I don’t tell the owner they’ll have to get out because we’re building another high rise.”
“Maybe you can cry into your giant paycheck, Rory,” she says, her voice is hard. “You don’t get to feel guilty. Not when others lives are at stake and you can do something about it.”
“I don’t know what I can do.”
“Quit. Talk to these people. Tell them they shouldn’t take shitty deals. Stand your ground?”
I shake my head. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“It isn’t. Because I gave up a whole year ago. I sit at that front door and it’s like I’m in a nightmare loop because I’m afraid to leave it. I can’t afford to leave it. You can.”
I breathe harder because I’m angry. She’s not giving me any sympathy. She’s not letting my wallow. And I know that she’s right but I don’t want her to be.
“Tell me what to do,” I ask her, leaning into her to that her hair tickles my nose with her scent.
“I just did,” she whispers.
I level my eyes to hers, dare her to look away. She doesn’t. “Tell me what to do, Sofia.”
“Kiss me.”
And I do.
My mind is the most clear it’s been all week as I catch her mouth with mine. “There.”
“Do it again,” she whispers, and takes my glass from me, setting them on the floor. She returns to the edge of the bed and runs her hands on the inside of my suit jacket, pushing it off my shoulders. I let her undress me. Undo the buttons of my shirt.
She climbs on top of me, straddling me with her powerful legs. My dick strains against my pants, aching to be freed by her quick, knowing hands. As she gets to work, I kiss her face. Her softly pointed chin, her jaw, the lobe of her ear. I press my tongue there, and when she moans she arcs her back into my waiting hands.
Her sounds unravel something within me, and I wrap my arms around her slender waist and lay her back on the bed. She grinds her pelvis against mine, lining up her hot, wet pussy with my erection.
I’ve never wanted to be everywhere at once. Stealing kisses from her red stained mouth, licking the swell of her breasts, lapping the slick wet between her legs. So I work my way down. I finish pulling off my shirt and throw it on the floor. She’s trying to pull off her blouse and adds it to the growing pile. My heart skips a beat at the sight of her full breasts in that a pretty lace bra.
“Sofia,” I say, because I want to etch her name in my memory. I never want to forget this moment.
“Rory,” she says, followed by a tiny chuckle.
I lower my tongue, tracing circles through the lace. She rakes her fingers through my hair, pulling harder as I make my way to her belly button. I kiss her flesh there, the faintest white lines of stretch marks like roadmaps on her warm brown skin.
She undoes the button to her black jeans and starts wiggling out of them, and I help her pull them down and over her muscular calves and throw it to the side. “Your turn.”
I’ve never dropped trout so quickly. She props herself up on her elbows to watch me.
“All of it,” she says.
And I do what she says, like her very voice controls my tendons and muscles. I pull down my boxers and grab my dick. I run my hand up and down the length because the sight of her in that matching lace set is driving me wild.
“Come here,” she says.
I get on my knees, part her legs to expose her center. She’s running a finger along the fabric, showing me where she wants me to go. Holding onto her thighs as my anchors, I press a kiss there. She gives a tiny squeal of surprise as I pull her underwear down.
My words won’t gather in my mouth, replaced by strangled noises as I lick her swollen little clit, getting harder and harder with every one of her sweet moans.
“Wait,” she says, and I sit up and let go of her hips.
My heart hammers in my throat as she crawls across her bed to reach the bedside table. She opens a drawer and opens a box of condoms, rips one off and holds it shyly in her hands.
“You are so incredibly sexy, Sofia,” I tell her.
“You’re surprising,” she says with a devilish smile.
I climb onto the bed to reach her. “I mean, I did catch you checking out my ass every time I came in.”
“Guilty.” She wraps her delicate hand around my dick and I shut my eyes and sink into the sensation of her jerking me off before she slides the condom up my shaft.
She guides me, leads me. It’s a strange thing being under her spell like this. And yet, it’s the simplest, surest thing I’ve done in a long time.
Her commands so easy. Quit. Kiss me. Come here.
I wonder why she can’t see her own way out when she’s offering me one? Maybe it’s easier to help others than ourselves. I don’t want to be a bad man. I want to be the kind of man my mother raised me to me. I want to be the kind of man that can hold his head up. But
don’t we live in a world where money means everything? I know that I can’t have both.
I know that right now all I want, everything I want is her. She parts her legs for me and I try not to crush her with my weight as I lay down on top of her. She cups my ass with her hands guiding me inside.
When I slide in I could choke on the sensation of her. The way she sighs and pulls at me, begs me to press deeper and deeper. She lift her leg and wraps it around my waist and calls out my name. We are a slippery mess of moans and the slap of skin on skin and I’m not sure if I’m trying to lose myself in her or if she’s the one devouring me, but neither of us stop until the ripple of her walls comes crashing down around me and I come hard and long inside her.
SOFIA
FRIDAY 2:00 A.M.
I’ve been awake for over sixteen hours now but I’m not ready to go to sleep. I want to keep feeling him. My thighs hurt so good from taking his weight between them. I tell him I feel raw and he slides down south and licks the pain away.
Yeah, maybe I imagined what this was going to be like the minute I saw him. But I couldn’t have guessed how gently kissed. How attentive he’d be while we’re naked. Maybe it’s because he’s used to taking, taking, taking in other parts of his life.
I come once more and this time and we lay naked on my bed facing each other, I imagine what it would be like if we did this every night. But I’m not sure if that’s the direction we’re headed in.
“That was—” I search for the word and realize this is the first sentence I’ve uttered for hours.
When he smiles he looks younger, less burdened. “Amazing?”
“Different,” I say at the same time, and we both laugh.
The awkwardness pre-sex doesn’t return.
“Have you decided what to do about your problem?” I ask him.
“Have you decided what to do about yours?” he shoots back.
“I mean, there’s nothing magical about our parts.” I trace his collarbone with my index finger and takes it, kisses my knuckles. Somehow that’s more intimate than the hours he spent inside me. “How can we solve something so big with sex?”
Rogue Passion (The Rogue Series Book 5) Page 5