His Treat

by Bloom, Penelope

  “Oh, is that how we’re spinning it? You’re naked as a baby, at least if it weren’t for this bra.” He stepped closer and tried to reach around my back for the straps. I leaned back, which had the unintended but not unpleasant effect of making him lean over me more as I knocked what had to be the last plate from the table.

  “You want the bra, you’ve got to offer me a fair trade. A thread for a thread.”

  He stripped off his tie and flung it to the side. Somehow, he seemed much more able to keep his own clothes from flying over the roof. I grinned as an idea occurred to me. “Actually, I know how you can earn this bra. You need to throw your suit and pants over the roof. I’m feeling generous, so you can keep the underwear, I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s you being generous?”

  I crossed my legs and accidentally grazed his erection in the process. I tried to keep a straight face so I could pretend it was part of my seduction routine. “Just for questioning me, your punishment is worse, now. You can keep the suit, because I’ll be wearing it when we’re done here. You get to wear my Bill of Rights costume back to the party.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  I almost burst out laughing because he looked genuinely terrified.

  “Oh, but I would. I want to see how that cute butt of yours looks behind the right to bear arms.”

  “Can I express my right to bear ass instead of having to wear that thing?”

  I laughed. “No. Until January, that ass is mine, now. And I don’t want to share it with any of the women at the party.”

  “You seem to be under the impression that I’ll be done with you before the party ends.”

  “You’re not getting out of this. You put those clothes on the ground. When we go back, you’re wearing my costume.”

  “If I fit in it, that is.”

  “The material is stretchy.”

  He sighed. “You’re lucky I want nothing more than to fuck you right now.”

  “You’re saying I should make more demands?”

  “I’m saying you should shut up and let me have you.”

  I felt a smile play across my lips. “Well, when you put it like that…”

  He stripped out of his clothes, giving me the show of a lifetime. His lean, powerful body towered over me, blotting out the skyline and city lights behind him. When he pulled his undershirt over his head, my breath caught. He bulged in all the right places and had hard, muscular cuts exactly where they should be. My hands physically ached with the need to run across those smooth, warm planes of muscle.

  “Pants,” I said. I was so beyond caring about looking like the perfect little good girl that I didn’t even care what he thought of my horniness. Yes. I was horny. It’d been a couple years since I’d been with a guy, and I was on a rooftop in New York City, spread out and almost completely naked on a table in front of a guy who looked like he could’ve charmed his way into a bank vault. Worse, he was my high school crush, at least up until the cupcake incident.

  He paused with his hands on his belt, probably completely aware of how the pose accentuated the sculpted peaks and valleys of his abs and made his forearms bulge. “Hmm,” he said slowly. “I think you owe me a bra.”

  I reached for the strap without taking my eyes off him, but he stepped forward, reaching to stop my hands. “You think I’m going to let you have the fun?”

  “No,” was all I could manage. My sassy belligerence was starting to fade as desperation roared to life in the depths of my stomach.

  “Would it be sexy if I could do it with one hand?” he asked.

  I gave him a sour look, but he made what felt like a single, quick motion with his fingers and my bra fell to my lap. I clapped my hands to my breasts in surprise a second later and laughed. “Wow. Why are you so good at that?”

  He wiggled his fingers. “Talented fingers.” He carefully peeled my hands away from my breasts and looked down at them admiringly.

  I’d never been genetically gifted in the chest department, and it took all my willpower not to clap my hands back over myself. All I could think was how his memory must be filled with girls who looked like supermodels and their perfect, perky breasts, and how sad mine must be in comparison.

  If he was thinking anything like that, he didn’t let it show. He bent down to bring his mouth to my nipple and very slowly took it between his lips and swirled his tongue there.

  I arched my back and gasped. More than the sensation, I was flooded by a kind of relief and acceptance. Without a word, he made me feel perfect. Complete. Beautiful.

  I threaded my fingers through his hair and held him to me as he kissed every inch of my bare skin, wrapping me in his heat and his passion. “Are we really going to be able to stop?” I asked.

  “I have a condom. We don’t have to.” His breath buffeted my chest with every syllable.

  “No. I mean when it’s time for me to go. Are we making a mistake here?”

  “Right now, all I know is my biggest regret in life will be if I have to remember tonight as the night I didn’t get to have you.”

  I pulled him closer to me and let him kiss me as my eyes searched the sky. The lights of the city blotted out the stars, even this late at night, so my view was a hazy yellow blackness. Trying to see through my pleasure to any form of sense was as useless as trying to see the stars, so I closed my eyes and let go of my last thread of resistance.

  I reached down to fumble with his belt until he put me out of my misery and did it himself. He kicked off his pants and then his underwear. I tried to steal a peek at the full view, but he was already pulling me toward him to the edge of the table before I had a chance. He slipped a condom on as easily and quickly as he'd undone my bra, then reached down to grip himself and slid inside me.

  I gasped. I’d expected a little more of his slow way of making me feel like I had to beg for every inch, but somehow, his suddenness felt exactly right. I locked my ankles behind his back, heels digging into the hard muscle there. He planted an arm on the table and his other hand on my thigh and started to slowly work in inch after inch of his length.

  I couldn’t help letting little whimpering moans spill out of me. My eyes were squeezed shut and I saw white bursts of light against the backs of my eyelids as he made love to me. He didn’t just grip me and brainlessly pump away, he explored me. I could feel him actively learning me, moan by moan and inch by inch. He was testing and teasing out all of my desires and then putting his new-found-knowledge to work.

  The result was like nothing I’d ever dreamed of. He slightly changed the angle of his hips and I could immediately feel a wonderful, body-melting friction against my walls that had me shaking all over. He teased my breasts with his powerful hands and he kissed my jaw, my neck, and all the little, forgotten places in between. Distantly, I felt bad because all I could do was lay back and let him work, like the student before a master. At the same time, I knew it was ridiculous to feel bad. Every single movement of his body telegraphed his absolute pleasure--his unquenchable need to tease out my secret wishes and fulfill every last one.

  When my climax finally came, I pressed my mouth against his shoulder to stifle the sound. All the physical and emotional tension that had been building in the background since we’d met came bursting free in a single, fantastic rush. My toes curled and my fingers dug into his back. He tensed, too, making a noise between a grunt and a growl as he pulsed inside me.

  My eyes finally opened wide and I took in the sky above me and what I could see of his heaving, broad shoulders as he lay on top of me, still buried deep. With any other man, this was the part where regret, shame, and guilt would start to seep into my thoughts like poison. I searched for them--for any trace--but all I could find was contentment.

  14

  Ryan

  By the time we made it back down to the party through the now-miraculously unlocked stairwell doors, I was wearing a much-too-tight Bill of Rights costume and Emily was wearing my much-too-big suit. Her hair was wild from
what we’d just done, and her lips looked swollen and pink.

  She slapped my ass through the costume and squeezed hard. “I knew you’d look good in this.”

  I laughed. “Well, I know I’ll be the last one to get stabbed if this turns into a Halloween massacre, at least.”

  “Is it even Halloween anymore? What is it, two in the morning? Three?”

  I looked around the empty building where less than a tenth of the original crowd still lingered. It was in the deep stages of the aftermath of the party. People lounged in corners, clearly far too deep into their drinking. Some still danced, but it was to music over the loudspeakers now instead of from the live band. Others simply sat and talked.

  It felt more personal and far less crazy.

  I dragged Emily by the hand through the fog and past the witches huts I’d had set up. I found us a relatively quiet spot and gave the universal signal for “want to dance?” I tucked my arm behind my back and extended a hand, which I’m sure had a much less compelling effect when I was wearing her goofy costume. Still, she smiled and took my hand, letting me pull her in close.

  “This isn’t exactly romantic, slow dance music,” Emily said.

  “Well, well, well.” Steve emerged from the hut beside us and dusted straw off bare chest. He was wearing a leopard print kind of underwear. The girl who emerged behind him wore the same print on her scantily-clad frame. “Do I detect a costume swap?”

  “What happened to Jenna?” Emily asked.

  The girl behind him crossed her arms and glared. “Yeah, Steve. What happened to Jenna?”

  He gave her an easy smile. "My sister is fine, thanks for asking. Come on, Tarzette. We need to leave these two lovebirds to keep awkwardly staring at each other. It looks intense."

  Steve dragged the girl away before Emily had a chance to call him on his lie, if she was even planning to.

  “Tarzette?” she asked me. “Does he really think—”

  “Probably.”

  Emily clapped her hands to her mouth. “Oh crap.” She said. “Weren’t you Lilith’s ride?”

  I cringed. “I mean, she could’ve called a taxi if she was really ready to go, right?”

  “Lilith doesn’t do taxis.”

  “Do I even want to know why?”

  “Probably not. But we need to find her. She is not pleasant to be around when she’s in a bad mood.”

  I gave Emily a skeptical look. “If you’re trying to convince me that the version of Lilith we normally see is her in a good mood, I’m not buying it.”

  We eventually found Lilith glaring at a computer screen in an office to the side of the room where the party was held. The door should’ve been locked, but the broken window said Lilith didn’t really care about that minor detail.

  “Uh,” I said as we stepped through. “This was your handiwork, I guess?”

  “Uh, no,” she said dryly. She didn’t look up from the screen at either of us. “It was like that when I got here. No idea what happened. Must’ve just been a big gust of wind that blew my shoe right through the thing.”

  “Lilith,” Emily said calmly. She was walking toward Lilith over the crunching glass at her feet like Lilith was a wild animal. “We got locked in the stairwell, or we would’ve come back to the party sooner. Please don’t be mad.”

  “You got locked in the stairwell and thought maybe her vagina was the lock and your penis was the key, and it took you a few hours to figure out that wasn’t working?”

  “We didn’t sleep together,” Emily said.

  “I’m sure there was no sleeping. Too much penetration for anyone to fall asleep. Right?”

  “What exactly are you doing on that computer, anyway?”

  “Trying to hack it so I can destroy William’s stupid company.”

  “Since when do you know how to hack?”

  “I don’t,” she snapped. “But I know how to guess stupid shit William would use as a password.”

  We eventually managed to drag Lilith away from the computer, and while she wasn’t kicking and screaming, she was giving us looks that rivaled any horror movie villain. If anyone was the person to stab you in your sleep, it was Lilith. I made a mental note to do something nice for her down the line, if only to avoid the whole knife to the face thing.

  Driving the car in the costume was difficult, but I managed. I guessed if we got pulled over I’d probably have a hard time talking myself out of a ticket, but considering I was nearly naked beneath the costume, I didn’t exactly have a choice since Lilith was in the car.

  After I dropped off Lilith, I took Emily to her apartment and walked her to the door.

  “Thank you for tonight,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I definitely didn’t expect, well, this.” She gestured between the two of us.

  “Sometimes the unexpected parts are the most fun.”

  She nodded, but her eyes looked a little sad. “Let’s hope so.”

  I gave her a bit of a confused kiss goodnight, and walked back to my car with her last words playing on repeat in my head. Making a deal to break up with a girl I was rapidly falling for was confusing enough, but trying to decipher her own feelings about the arrangement might as well have been like reading hieroglyphics for me. I guessed the best I could do was try to stop worrying and just enjoy the time I had. After all, I’d had plenty of practice at doomed relationships. This was just the first time I knew when and why it was going to end ahead of time.

  15

  Emily

  I had to work the morning after the Halloween party, which meant I was bleary-eyed and short on sleep as the seniors for my art class at the retirement home came shuffling into the room. Grammy paused, looked me over, and then gave me a knowing wink.

  “Good work, you little hoochie-mamma.”

  I glared. I was too short on sleep to have the energy for her antics. “Nothing happened. I just didn’t get a good night’s sleep.”

  She rolled her eyes and went to sit down near the back, right beside Earl.

  It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that I’d lied about having slept with Ryan. I was never the promiscuous type by any stretch, but I also hadn’t felt like I was the type to be secretive about it, either. I was sure there had to be some kind of weird psychological analysis for what I was doing, but if there was, I had no idea.

  So I shoved it right down and decided it was a problem for another day. I felt good about last night. The sex had been amazing, for one. And Ryan had been amazing in every other way. Granted, there was the whole part where he revealed he’d actually been misleading me to a certain extent since the gastropub incident, but other than the knock against how trustworthy he seemed, I couldn’t make myself want to dwell on it. He’d admitted it, apologized—and very convincingly, I might add—and now we could move on.

  As if thinking about him conjured him up from thin air, Ryan popped into the room with bright eyes and a smile that looked unfairly good on someone I knew had gotten as little sleep as I had.

  “Can I sit in?” Ryan asked.

  “No,” Grammy growled. “Unless you’re going to be modeling in the nude for us, and with an erection. I refuse to look at a limp dick for two hours.”

  “She’s not lying,” Earl agreed with a grave nod. “She really won’t do it.”

  I winced. I wasn’t exactly sure what the story on that could be, but I was sure I didn’t want to know.

  “He’s not modeling nude for us. We’re just painting a still-life today and really focusing on three-point perspective.”

  “Boo,” Grammy yelled. “We want penis!”

  “Speak for yourself,” Earl said in his whispery, thin voice. “I’d take a pair of knockers, though. Unless he’s got them under that tight t-shirt, he can keep it on.”

  Before I could answer, my phone buzzed from inside my purse. I dug it out and looked at the number. It was an area code I didn’t recognize, but I excused myself and answered it anyway.

  “Hello?”
<
br />   “Hi, Emily? I’m Valeria Purgot’s personal assistant.” The woman had a thick, French accent.

  My stomach turned ice cold. “Valeria Purgot?” I said dumbly. I knew who she was, of course. She was half the reason I wanted to go to Paris to study. She’d made some of my favorite paintings of all time, and she was teaching part-time as a favor for a year or two at the school I was planning to attend. She was the same one I’d written an embarrassingly candid letter to a little over a month ago.

  “Yes. She got your letter, and she thinks you’d be a wonderful apprentice. You’d still be able to attend classes next semester, but she’d be able to offer you paid work starting as soon as you arrived.”

  “I’m sorry, please don’t take this the wrong way, but why would she pick me? And for what kind of work?”

  Ryan edged a little closer with a curious but slightly worried expression on his face. I waved him off with a forced smile and mouthed, “it’s no big deal.”

  “Because,” the woman said over the phone. “She liked that you took the initiative to send the letter, you’re already planning to come for school, which should simplify logistics, and she believes you have potential. Miss Purgot has always had a passion for developing young talent. You would be helping with the day-to-day tasks at her gallery, but she would also provide one-on-one instruction to you.”

  “When would she need me to arrive by?”

  “We would arrange for your flight in two days. Work would begin the following day.”

  I raised my eyebrows and stared at the wall. “That’s… sudden.”

  “Yes. It is. And she will need to know if you’re going to accept her offer immediately.”

  “Immed—can I at least have a few hours to digest all of this?”

  “I’m very sorry, but no. It’s very important that you would arrive quickly.”

  “Okay?” I said shakily.

  “Very good. We’ll be in contact soon with travel arrangements. I’ll let Valeria know you’ve accepted the offer and one of our people will be in touch.”