The Thrill of It

by Lauren Blakely

  He raises an arm behind his back and tugs in one swift motion. He’s shirtless, and he hasn’t been since the night we were together. My breath catches. Even in the dark, I can make out the outline of his chest, solid and strong, his arms, all muscled and corded and covered in tats.

  Reflexively, I lick my lips.

  “Lie down with me,” he whispers. He sounds sleepy drunk and sexy, and the invitation is far too inviting to pass by.

  I slide in next to him, so he’s spooning me, and it’s innocent, I suppose, or I’m letting myself pretend this is an extension of the hand holding and the hugging and the sock removing. Right? We are simply two friends sharing a small couch, but then he wraps his arm around me, sighs happily, and exhales against my neck. A strand of my hair flutters.

  “Harley,” he sighs, but it’s not a question. More a statement, an expression, and there’s some kind of wonder, happiness in it that I want to let myself believe in, that I want to cocoon in and hold in my hands, a fragile glass globe that could break. But yet, I’m pretty sure it’s the Silver Bullet talking when he whispers, “This is so nice.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  I feel him shrug against me. “Maybe a little.”

  “Maybe a lot,” I counter.

  “So then you won’t get mad in the morning when I ask you about this. Have you really never given a blow job?”

  I roll my eyes, even though it’s dark, even though he’s snug behind me and can’t see my eyes. “No. I told you that.” I tense up. “Why?”

  “Did you ever want to?”

  “No.”

  “Do you?”

  I laugh. “You offering yourself?”

  He laughs too, and I can feel his breath against my neck. There’s a faint smell of beer, but it’s mingled with him, and I have the sudden urge to taste beer now for the first time. On his lips. “Anytime,” he says softly, but that’s all. There’s no innuendo in his voice. Nothing more than a continuation of the game in some ways.

  I push against his arm playfully. “And how the hell did you have a threesome, king of the studs?”

  “Two ladies.”

  “Yeah. I kinda figured it was two ladies,” I say. Then in a more serious, searching tone. “Was it good?”

  I’m not even sure why I’m asking. It’s like I’m picking at a scab, hunting for a wound, so I can worry away at it.

  “I barely remember it,” he says in a sleepy voice. A warm breeze blows through the open window, carrying with it the faraway sounds of cars and cabs on late night Manhattan streets. Somewhere, Jordan and Kristen are out there having fries. In here, I feel as if we are the only two people in the world. In the dark, hushed voices, whispering about our pasts.

  “But you remember you had two at once,” I point out.

  “Yeah and that’s it,” he says, and loops his arm tighter around my waist. I inhale sharply at the closeness. More, tighter, closer. He’s bringing me nearer to him, his jeans against mine, his bare chest against my shirt, his breath on my neck, and now, there, his hand on my belly. Then, slinking under the bottom of my shirt, inching its way to my stomach.

  I gasp quietly as his fingertips reach my bare skin.

  “But there’s this other girl and I remember everything about her,” he says, and in an instant, all I see, all I feel are his words. They have their own heartbeat and pulse, a living being, surrounding me.

  He traces lazy fingers across my stomach, and I want this feeling to last forever because it’s so out-of-this-world intense. I swear my body is sliding into another plane of existence, some realm of pleasure I’ve never allowed before, as feelings spill over – want, desire, fear all wrapped up in a messy package, without a bow.

  I close my eyes and revel in the sensations zooming and racing through my blood and veins and body at the slightest touch of his fingertips on my belly. I want so badly for him to touch me more, and I am so scared of what will happen if he does. I don’t know how it would feel. But that’s not true. I do know. Because he’s made me feel this way before, and now he’s doing it again.

  And I don’t know what it means. If it means we’re something, or we’re nothing, or we are just this moment. We are the here and now.

  “You do?” I ask.

  He nods against me, his lips practically brushing my neck in a sweet kiss. Not quite, but almost. “I remember the way she smelled so sexy and sweet,” he begins, and my heart stops, and then speeds up, and I don’t know if I can breathe. He plays with a strand of my hair, running it through his fingers, then leaning his head into my hair, inhaling me. Everything inside of me is burning with a tingling heat, and butterflies I’ve barely known. I never felt a thing for my clients. Not one iota of a flutter, a wish, a hope. With Trey, that is literally all I feel. As if my body is glowing, like a firefly, and I am flickering with every second of contact, or even merely the promise of contact. The possibility. Just the slightest touch from him is the sweetest escape. “And the sounds she made,” he continues, and I feel my cheeks flush, but still I’m dying for more, so I have to ask.

  “What did she sound like?”

  He sighs happily, and buzzes his lips against my earlobe. “Like no one had ever made her feel that way before.”

  “No one had,” I say, and he spreads his fingers across my stomach. I shiver and my breath hitches.

  “Like that,” he says, and I can hear the grin in his words. “That was how she sounded when I touched her.”

  He draws circles on my flesh, lazy lines across my belly, and I can’t help it. I am beyond turned on, I am floating on a cloud of lust and wishes and wanting, and so I wriggle against him, feeling how hard he is against my backside.

  He groans in my ear at the pressure of my body against his erection, and it’s still strange to me to want to do this. To want to be touched. To want more. And after last night, and tonight, and where I was, to want to do this right now is bizarre to me. As if my life is built into separate rooms, and I’ve left one and entered another. And here, now, in this room I am only a girl of the moment, of flesh and blood and want, and I am aching all over for him. He’s drunk, I know he’s drunk, I know if he were sober, he wouldn’t be doing this, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t care.

  “It sounds like she liked it when you touched her,” I whisper, and I’m silently praying that he’ll slide his hand down my pants, that he’ll touch me again, taste me, do something, anything to alleviate the throbbing between my legs. This is so rare for me, so unusual to feel this way. To be wet. To be wanting. To be turned on. But he does this to me. He lets me experience my body in a new way.

  “I loved touching her,” he says, and with one strong hand on my hip, he shifts me 180 degrees so I’m facing him. His eyes are barely open, he’s in such a twilight state right now, but he bends his mouth to my neck, and begins kissing me there, and in seconds, I am asking for more.

  “Trey,” I whisper as if his name has ten syllables and I have to say them all, feel them all, taste them all as his soft lips explore my neck. He tugs me closer, hooking a hand around my thigh, moving my leg on top of his, and then yanking me closer so I’m practically straddling his thigh in this position. More kisses rain down on my skin, and I can’t help it. I start rubbing myself against his thigh, and I whimper at the contact that’s both relief and a wish for more.

  “Do that, Harley,” he says in a rough, ragged voice. “Fucking do that and don’t stop. I want to get you off.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I loved doing that to you. I love everything about making you come. I want to make you come in every way. With my mouth, with my fingers, with you just riding me like this right now,” he says, before he dives back to my neck, layering hot, desperate kisses on me as I move against him. I should be embarrassed, I’m dry humping his leg, after all. But I want to do this, and maybe that’s why I’m not ashamed. Because I am wound full of desire and this dark craving for him. My breathing grows stilted and erratic as the feelings build insid
e me, like lightning crackling through my veins, hot and wild and electric. Soon his hands are in my hair, and his mouth returns to mine. He kisses me with the kind of deep, furious kiss of a man who has to have his woman, and that woman happens to be dangerously close to coming.

  He doesn’t even have to touch me, though I wouldn’t mind if his fingers were down my pants, or his tongue again, but right now I am close, so close, just from the friction of my body against his. He shifts one more time, so he’s on his back, and I’m on top, totally clothed, but my legs are spread, and he’s under me.

  “I want you to fuck me like that, Harley. I want you to ride me, and I want you to come while you’re doing it,” he says, grabbing at my hair, and pulling me back down to his mouth.

  His tongue swirls wildly with mine, his lips crushing mine with such intensity, as if he would fall off the earth if he stopped, that I start to lose control.

  The thing I value most, that I quest after. That I seek.

  Control.

  I try all day and night, all my fucking life, to find it and then hold onto like it’s a precious treasure. But right now, it falls through my fingers as I give in to my body, with my thighs spread, his fantastically hard erection thick and heavy and doing its job between my legs, even with all this denim between us, as his mouth searches mine like I’m the answer to every and any question he’s ever had. He roams a hand down my back, cupping my ass to keep me close as I bite my lip, because I don’t know how to let go and shout and scream even though I want to. Instead I shudder several times and pant heavily as I come.

  “Oh,” I gasp, keeping my voice low. I don’t want anyone to hear me, even though we’re the only ones here.

  Without wasting a moment, he pulls me closer, wrapping his arms so tightly around me that it feels as if he’ll never let go, and I can’t say I want him to. His legs are tangled with mine, his arms hold me close, and I don’t know where I end and he begins. He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my hair, and I feel cared for in a way I never have. I also feel pretty fucking amazing, like my whole body has taken a bath in golden sunlight and is shining. Is radiant. Is beautiful, and new, and pure again.

  Maybe that’s weird to feel pure. But I do. With him.

  “You’re beautiful Harley, so beautiful,” he murmurs and his voice is fading again, sleep threatening to overtake him as I roll off of him and return to lying side by side. He pulls at the sleeve of my teeshirt and kisses my tattoo.

  “Are you going to tell me why you have a red ribbon on your arm?”

  “Yeah, but you go first. You tell me why yours are all in threes. Why do you have the sunbursts and birds and all your abstract patterns in threes. What’s with the threes?”

  “Hmmm? Those?”

  “Yeah. Those,” I ask. He’s never told me. But I want to know.

  He snuggles closer, tucking his face into my neck and breathing me in. He sighs happily, then says, “So I don’t forget my brothers.”

  Brothers? Something doesn’t compute. Trey is an only child.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will, Jake and Drew. They all died at birth. They’re my three dead brothers.”

  My blood stops pumping, and it’s as if someone turned off the music at a dance, and turned the lights all the way up on me.

  I push both hands against his shoulders. “What do you mean, Trey?” I ask, hoping, praying he made a mistake, that he will unsay what he just said. “Take that back, please.”

  But he falls asleep, the drinking finally taking over, and he is passed out in arms, the marks of his three dead baby brothers permanently inked on his beautiful body.

  Chapter Eleven

  Harley

  The first thing I do after I shower in the morning is locate a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Not for Trey. But for me. To separate myself from how I used to dress, used to look, used to play. I need to feel as comfortable in Converse as I do in Mary Janes.

  As I do in evening dresses.

  In trenchcoats and leather.

  I can’t be like Layla all the time, at least not the Layla I was last night with Cam.

  I want to be the person I am with Trey. I want to be that girl. Real and true and honest and scared.

  I pull my hair into a tight ponytail and apply only the barest of makeup — gloss and a dab of blush.

  But it’s hard, so incredibly, unbearably hard, to resist doing everything I can to look pretty, to be the prettiest girl in the room, as my mom taught me, as my tattoo reminds me.

  So I go through the motions.

  I linger over the powder, eyeshadow and mascara in my makeup bag, wanting — longing — to put on a perfect face. I pantomime the moves. Foundation dotted on the chin, the cheeks, under the eyes, then the forehead. Makeup brush spreads the foundation smoothly, then the makeup wedge to spread the powder. Blush next brushed onto the cheekbones, then eyeshadow, three to four applications so the eyes stand out. Then eyeliner on the lids. Mascara next, a full five minutes to achieve the right length, the right fullness above and below. Five minutes to make the eyes pop.

  Mascara is the most essential of the five makeup vitamins — foundation, blush, eyeshadow, lipstick and mascara. Mascara is the hardest to apply, takes the longest, but reaps the most rewards. It’s the difference between a finished look and one that says I just don’t care.

  I care. I care deeply. Painfully.

  Too much.

  I close my eyes, grit my teeth, hold the pink tube tightly in my fist and then let it go. It drops to the bottom of my makeup bag with a dull clank as it hits the powder case.

  I zip the bag shut. I look myself over in the mirror. My face looks naked. It’s jarring and I feel jumpy, jittery. I remind myself what Joanne would say. Change is supposed to feel weird. You don’t get to the other side by feeling the same way you felt before. But knowing what’s coming this afternoon from Miranda to my mom’s house — a black-and-white reminder of who I was and what I did — it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever get to the other side. I want to cover myself up. I want to hide my new self. I want to slather my face with makeup.

  I also just want to be me.

  But I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who I am. I am two people. Torn and tattered in split halves.

  I leave the bathroom and return to the living room. My apartment is quiet and the sun is barely rising. The first pink slivers of dawn peek over the horizon, pulling the night away. It is early, but I want to get ahead on my debt.

  Kristen is probably sleeping, and Trey is still here, stretched out and gorgeous on the couch. He sleeps on his stomach, his cheek pressed into a pillow, one arm hanging off the side of the couch. I kneel down and reach for his arm, not quite touching, but tracing the air near his shoulder, outlining the sunbursts.

  Did he mean what he said last night?

  Does he have three brothers he’s never told me about?

  He knows all my secrets. All my terrible truths. I want him to trust me. I want him to tell me about the marks on his body. I want him to feel safe with me. I want to know him as deeply and as truly as I think he knows me.

  I need to resist Layla to do that. I bend closer to his arm and brush my lips ever so softly, ever so gently against his shoulder. A wisp of a kiss, a hint of all that I might feel for him.

  A wish.

  Then I grab my computer bag, head for the nearby diner, order a strong coffee, and steel myself for the next sordid chapter in my Memoirs. Soon, soon, I’ll be done.

  Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict…

  Page 198…

  Most of the time I was requested to wear my school girl uniform. But there were a few other outfits my clients liked. Some wanted me decked out in evening wear regalia so I could be the arm candy attending fancy parties, events and galas with them when they wanted the full girlfriend experience. But there was one client in particular – let’s call him Morris, shall we? – Who wanted me in something else.

  Who wanted me in leather.

  Wi
th a leash.

  Those were the times I prepped elsewhere. I couldn’t undertake that kind of prep at home. So I’d arrive at the five-star hotel in my trench coat and heels, the risk of being seen part of the thrill. But I was never seen. Sunglasses were my best friend, along with doormen whose palms had been greased by my man.

  I pressed the button for the elevator, shot up several floors to the penthouse level, and knocked – sexily of course, I’d been trained to knock sexily, and yes, there is a way to do this – on the door of his suite.

  Once inside, the trench coat came off and the collar went on. Not on me. Never on me. On him. Black, leather, spiked. I attached the leash to it. Then, wearing a painted-on leather skirt, a skin-tight bustier and heels, I walked Morris around the suite.

  Like a dog.

  He was on all fours, he was naked, and he liked it when I pulled hard on his collar. He was a naughty boy, and he needed lots of corrections when he sniffed chairs and rugs in the suite. But if he was a good boy, a perfectly well-behaved pooch, he’d receive his reward. I’d take him to the balcony, remove one high heel, and let him lick and suck my perfectly manicured toes.

  Funny, the things high-ranking political advisers want to do behind closed doors, isn’t it?

  Kiss the feet of call girls.

  Trey

  The sun beats cruelly through the windows. A mean yellow ball blaring at me. A reminder to get the fuck up.

  My mouth is like cotton, and I lick my lips, desperate for a drink of water. My head pounds, but it’s nothing that a stiff cup of coffee won’t cure. I sit up on the couch with a groan and kick off the blanket. I look around for Harley, but the living room is empty. Hunting for my shirt, I find it on the other side of the coffee table, in a heap on the carpet.

  A faint memory flicks by of taking it off last night, tossing it somewhere, then wrapping myself around Harley. Then the rest of the night floods my mind, and my brain is filled with the best wake-up images ever. The sweet smell of Harley’s neck, the way she trembled when I touched her stomach, then her on top of me, grinding against me.