by Louisa Trent
“It's prostitution.”
“Table dancing is not allowed at The Pink Flamingo.”
He'd wanted to take Blue inside The Flamingo, show her around, have dinner with her in his office, and then introduce her to the antique velvet settee that had never once been used for its intended purpose. He was proud of the place, proud of the entertainment value he offered. That plan was now out of the question.
So was telling her what he did for a living.
He booked all the talent at The Flamingo and no one got up on stage without an audition with him, so he could guarantee that all the acts were classy. No vulgar bumping and grinding, no taking it all off. He had strict rules and every one of them was observed. Not only that, Tomas Ruiz, the owner of The Flamingo, was becoming the most upstanding citizen in Fenton. He had a heart that was as big as his wallet, and he used both to improve conditions in town. But Blue's mind was made up and closed. He couldn't tell her any of that now.
“Where would you like to eat?” Lou said instead, withdrawing his arm from Blue.
His libido was still buzzing, but his pride was feeling a little battered. They'd eat, and then afterwards, he'd walk Blue back to her hotel.
He'd go only as far as the lobby. No further.
“We can go back to my workshop at the gallery. It's private,” Blue offered with a wink.
“The gallery?”
“GoCA,” she explained. “I have an exhibit going up next week. That's why I'm in town.”
GoCA was the new Gallery Of Contemporary Art in town. The small museum was housed in a beat-up old warehouse that Tomas Ruiz had renovated at cost because he believed strongly in keeping the arts alive and accessible. In fact, the ladies from The Pink Flamingo had participated in the opening night's performing arts segment. That had to mean something.
“So, Blue, you're an artist?” he asked, not wanting to spend the rest of the night arguing or defending his career choice.
“Un-huh. Although, I think of myself primarily as a multi-media artisan with a heavy emphasis on sculpture. This exhibit I'm getting ready has a little of everything. Photography. Painting. Sculpture. Collage. The neat part about it is that it's on going. I keep adding to it when I get a good specimen to put on display.” Her grin was part mischief, part sex. “I'd love to add you to my collection, Lou.”
She'd lost him. “Specimen?”
“You'll see. And here we are now,” Blue said, flashing her security clearance to the guard on duty at the gallery's side entrance.
After they'd signed in, Blue led the way through the industrial-size space. Vaulted ceilings. Gleaming hardwood floors. Stainless steel doors. Movable white walls.
“I'm back here,” she said unlocking a door with a key. “We'll eat first, then I'll show you around.”
“I'd like that.” He only wished he could've shared with Blue where he worked too.
“After the tour, we'll fuck,” she said conversationally.
That was putting things right on the line, all right. Nice and neat and orderly. Eat, tour, sex. One-two-three. This was one real contemporary evening they were having.
“Blue, I hate to mention this, now that we're getting all romantic and everything,” he said dryly, “but I don't have condoms with me. I didn't plan on sleeping with a woman tonight.”
“You always plan in advance? It never just sorta happens?”
“No. It never just sorta happens.”
“Jeez, you're a careful man.”
He supposed he was. And maybe that wasn't always a good thing. After all, the one careless slip in his life had given him Pete.
But that was then and this was now. Now, no condoms equaled no sex.
And maybe no sex was all for the best. He was beginning to think pickups weren't all they were cracked up to be. Call him a damned romantic straight out of the Middle Ages, but to his mind, it worked out better if a man and a woman had a few dates before falling into bed. A few getting-to-know-you conversations after the movies. A few respectful kisses exchanged outside the door before moving into lingering kisses inside the door. Maybe some beginning petting in the living room. Followed by some intermediate petting. Then lots and lots of advanced petting. Then foreplay. Light, medium, heavy foreplay. Steamy, all-night-long foreplay. Hands. Mouths. Tongues. After weeks of this, when the Big Night finally arrived he was thinking along the lines of some fine wine, possibly bubbly, chilling beside a table in a dimly lit restaurant. Soft music playing in the background. No damn arguments going on in the foreground. No need, because by that point in the relationship, they'd hammered out all the basic differences and they'd reached some sort of mutually acceptable understanding.
Lou checked his watch. Let's see. Blue and he had known each other all of an hour and a half. They still had a lot of hammering to do. Too bad the clock was ticking.
Blue walked to a long table equipped with about a million compartments. She reached into one, pulled something out.
“Not to worry. See? Condoms,” she said, breezily.
Here, she held up-no joke-a carton the size of a six-pack, with enough rubbers inside to bounce ceiling high. Blue must belong to one of those on-line sex shops on the ‘net where you get a great price if you order in bulk, he thought.
Trying not to gawk at the row upon row of festively wrapped squares, he said, “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Do I get to take smoke breaks in between or are we going straight through ‘till one of us drops?”
Blue laughed in answer.
He frowned and started to sweat. “Mind if I take off my tie?”
“Not at all. Be my guest.” Her lips turned up at the corners. “Take everything off if you'd like.”
Yep, it was a brand-new age in dating, all right.
“Thanks,” he said and loosened the knot. “Just the tie for now, if you don't mind.”
Once the tie was hung neatly over the back of a paint-splattered chair, he began to unload the takeout bag. Vegi-burger for her, cow-burger for him. Maybe over dinner they could talk. Get to know one another. He sure hoped so, because there was a flamingo in the room with them, pink feathers flapping. Hard to ignore a bird that big.
He wanted to be honest with her because he was honest. Damned honest. He wanted to tell Blue about the turn his career path had taken after his stint in law enforcement, explain how sometimes an ordinary man has to make life-altering choices. Yeah, compromises too, when he's got a little boy who depends on him to feed him, to clothe him, to stay out of the way of bullets for.
In the line of duty, he'd come this close to making his son a foster kid, and he hadn't been willing to test fate again. He'd decided that no matter how much he loved detective work, his kid had to come first. No damn medal was worth leaving his kid alone in the world. Hence, when Tomas Ruiz offered him the manager's gig at The Flamingo, he'd jumped at the chance.
Lou figured there was no way to make this any easier, so he jumped right in. “About our argument-”
Blue placed her vegi-burger aside. “Lou, I'm sure we have political differences, ideological ones too. You think stripping is fine; I happen to disagree. I spoke my mind on the issue. That's what our argument about The Pink Flamingo was all about. An issue. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe I came on too strong on the subject. Maybe it got personal when it shouldn't have gotten personal. If I was out of line, then I apologize. I never meant to attack you or impugn your character in any way. Fuck, I like you. I'm attracted to you.” She laughed. “My nose is now officially back in joint. How's yours doing?”
He kept his eyes downcast. “My nose is doing fine, thanks.”
“Good. I wouldn't want out-of-joint noses ruining good sex.”
Throwing his cow burger down next to her vegi-burger, good intentions forgotten, he pulled Blue up out of her chair and rammed his tongue down her throat.
No lip gloss, no perfume, just herbal soap, some mint toothpaste, and Blue, the sweet, natural flavor of woman.
She was too political, too idealistic, too everythi
ng he wasn't any more. She was still searching for who she was, while long ago he'd found himself in a little boy's eyes. And he drank from her mouth like he was dying of thirst.
Blue. Blue. He was slaking his thirst on Blue.
But with a pink flamingo coming between them, it just wasn't right.
Lou started breaking off the kiss.
Once they were separated, Blue went to work on his belt buckle.
He stilled her hands. “I think I should leave.”
Her tugging stopped. “Because of our argument?”
“Partly,” he said wearily. “Partly because of our argument.”
“Oh, dear. It's me, isn't it? You're just not attracted to me. That was a goodbye kiss,” she said, looking crushed.
Doomed, defeated, he undid the belt.
“Baby, that was no goodbye kiss. I want you so bad I hurt.”
“No need to be kind. I understand.”
He unfastened his gold cufflinks, placing them one by one on the chair he'd just vacated. The shirt followed. It got folded and installed on the chair too. His shoes-lazy man slip-ons-were slipped off, and placed side by side out of the way, underneath the chair. That left him in his trousers.
Brushing Blue's shaggy bangs out of her eyes from where they'd flopped, he said, “Could we just take it slow. Why the rush?”
“I don't mean to offend your sensibilities. It's just that I really am horny. You know how it goes.” Her fingers went to the buttons on her shirt.
“Sure, Blue. I know how it goes,” he said, trying not to feel let down. This was just the way men and women conducted their sexual business these days.
It just didn't happen to be the way he conducted his sexual business.
Almost forty years old and he'd never been in a bed with a woman. There'd been some sofas, a few back seats of cars, one hallway wall—because of his size, that hadn't worked out so swell. No bed. He'd never, not once, gotten all his clothes off during sex. And wasn't that something not to brag about?
He wanted to be naked with Blue. He wanted a bed for them both to be naked in. He wanted a night, a whole night, start to finish, spent with Blue, naked in that bed. A cup of coffee the following morning would be nice also. He'd make the coffee, he'd serve it, just so long so he could drink it naked with Blue in a bed.
Looked like he wasn't getting anything on his wish list tonight.
“How old are you Blue?” he asked.
“Twenty-seven,” she promptly replied.
The young never hesitate over telling their age.
As he'd left his twenties behind a son ago, he dragged his feet. “I'll be forty next month.”
“It's not a crime.”
No, it wasn't. And ordinarily he didn't mind the gray in his hair; the way he looked at it, at least he had hair. And he was in good shape. He was vital. He still woke up with an erection, still got a hard-on during his dreams. He knew he could keep up with Blue sexually. But life had dented him, bruised him, scarred him. Any lofty principles he once had were pretty much shot. It'd be a real compliment to call him jaded...
Except when it came to love.
He wasn't cynical about love. His kid had made love real for him. Love was one of the few things he believed in any more.
Blue's clothes were now assigned to the floor. Beads of honeyed moisture dribbled down the insides of her shapely thighs. She was very wet.
He started to shake. And when she swayed towards him, pink-tipped breasts bouncing just the tiniest bit, gold hoop glinting in her nipple, honest to damn, he backed up.
He'd faced the wrong end of a gun on numerous occasions and never once broken a sweat. He was sweating plenty now. He'd never been so scared.
[Back to Table of Contents]
CHAPTER SEVEN
To mask her uncertainty, Blue ran a brazen finger under the waistband of Lou's suit pants.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Making you comfortable.”
She undid the top button and started easing down the zipper.
“You think dropping my trousers will add to my comfort level?”
“Okay, maybe I was talking about my own comfort. In case you hadn't notice, I am completely naked here, Lou.”
“Oh, I noticed,” he said, sheepishly.
His pants fell around his ankles.
“I'm naked. You're nearly naked. What do say we put all this completely and nearly nakedness to good use, hmmm?”
“There's no bed,” he said.
She waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Minor inconvenience...”
As she was looking around her work area for a cozy spot, her eyes dropped, widened, flew back up to his face.
“What?” he asked.
“Your boxers! They're silk,” she sputtered. “Black silk.”
“So? I happen to like the way silk feels next to my skin. On the pier, you felt like silk next to my skin.”
That was a pickup line if she'd ever heard one, and she was about to tell him so when the blunt end of Lou's silk encased penis butted her belly. No biggie, except they were standing almost a foot apart.
“Excuse the guy's impulsiveness,” Lou offered, drawing back. “He doesn't get out all that often.”
“W-w-what?” she asked. Flummoxed, she stared at his penile extension.
He softly inquired, “You okay, Blue?”
No, she was not okay! Unless swooning when a man dropped his trousers was considered okay.
She knew her way around penises. From the line at Sprout's, she knew Lou was large. But she had no idea, none whatsoever, that the male organ came that large.
“F-fine,” she stuttered, her idiotically nervous stammer belying the word.
Lou looked at her sideways. “Don't be nervous, honey. To be honest, there's very little mileage on him. Hardly broken in at all. He's practically new. And tonight he's staying inside the boxers.”
Not really listening, she shook her head. “The clamps will never fit.”
“No damn clamps on the first date. He's a big guy, but he's got a tender heart. You know what I mean? In this one area, I've gotta hang firm.”
Oh, he was that and more. Much more. More than she could handle?
She didn't have all that much experience, after all—
Her first and only lover was a passive academic whose genitalia was of medium size. Six inches. Six and a half, max. And Jeremy was British! Underneath Lou's black silk boxers was at least ten inches of American-bred sex. There was absolutely no Brit reserve in that organ. Not without a shoehorn and a lot of lube would that fit inside her.
Still, there was that fission of excitement again doing a nuclear eruption inside her.
She took a brave step forward. Then another. Lou stood still for her while she reached inside his boxers and skimmed a bold finger down and around the massive length and breadth hidden by black silk.
A drop of pre-come bubbled from the top of his cock. Was that for her?
That small bit of liquid signified Lou's arousal. That he was letting her touch him so intimately, without so much as a twitch, without trying to make a grab for her, signified the power of his control.
Reaching under the jut of his penis, she cupped the sac.
He was very heavy, very tight under her spanned fingers. He had to be aching too, and yet he was letting her examine him in the minutest of detail.
Blue shivered. How could any man hold himself so still?
“On second thought,” she said, before she lost courage, “let's do it now, before we take the tour.”
“I just can't, Blue. Not until we talk.”
“I don't want to talk.”
“We're talking first,” he said with an underlying strength that unnerved her.
She'd show him! He didn't always get to set the terms. It was her turn now. Lou Franco would be begging to fuck when she got through with him.
Tossing her head, she went to the worktable with a forceful stride, which was the purposeful way she g
ot from one place to the other. No sense pretending she was a mincing girly-girl when she was almost six feet tall. No sense trying to be something she was not. She was assertive and forceful and independent, and she wasn't shy. He wanted her, she wanted him; they'd talk later. Much later.
She slid up onto the edge of the worktable, slowly, one teasing fanny cheek at a time. Picking her feet up off the floor, she hiked them onto the workbench, heels on the edge, toes dangling out into space. She leaned back onto her bent arms and nonchalantly widened the space between her knees.
“C'mere Lou,” she said, hooking a finger at him. “My pussy is your pussy, remember?”
Lou walked to the table. He looked between her legs, inside between her legs, deep inside between her legs. At her vagina, she thought with a self-satisfied grin. He was like a kid in a candy shop with his looking.
Then her Cheshire cat grin faded.
She thought she might come. From the sheer excitement of his intense attention, she thought she might climax. No man had ever looked at her as Lou was looking at her now. And he had yet to touch her.
She wanted him to touch her! The same way he'd touched her on the pier. And he wasn't. Why wasn't he touching her?
The doubts crept in. The pier had been dark. The studio was well lit; a dim workspace was an artist's nemesis. Didn't he like what he was looking at? Was she too wet? Not demure enough? Was her thatch of curls not to his liking? Was it the ring through her cunt? Now that he was looking at it up close, did it turn him off? Should she have raced to the bathroom to douche first?
“Your body is so beautiful,” Lou said.
At his praise, her hips started to roll on the table. She couldn't not move, couldn't stop the undulation, couldn't prevent the sensuous dance. Because she wasn't petite, because she was strong of body and liberated of mind, she never thought of herself as helpless, but oh my, she felt helpless now before her need for him, for this one man whom she'd only just met and with whom she had nothing in common.
“But it's not right,” he said.
She knew that! Of course, it wasn't right. They weren't right, at least not for each other. In the most hideous of ironies, that mutuality should not have mattered to her. Whether he approved of her or not, liked her or not, should have had no impact on her whatsoever. Why should she care about the opinion of a man she'd picked up in a takeout line?