Eye of the Tiger

by Melanie Greene

  She raised her eyebrows briefly, challenging him. If he wanted the condom, he'd have to find it. Not like her skin-tight clothes made the best hiding place, not if he looked. Touched. Something about the acoustics of her stairwell made echoes of his laughter, like suddenly they were in the middle of a towering mountain range, surrounded by trees and cliffs and the world.

  He started with her spine, wedging his fingers under the racerback of the bra, tracing past the bumps of her shoulder blades, following the material's curves until he was brushing the sides of her breasts under her arms, the heels of each hand pressing the mounds even closer together. He bit. Not gentle nibbling, but a force to counter that of the spandex, like he was engaged in a battle to release her by breaking through the weave of the fabric itself.

  She arched towards him, crotch hitting his chest, rubbing. Her moans echoed, too.

  Lifting her arms so he could yank off her bra, she'd have fallen, but his body was an anchor as he tugged. Her breasts sprang free, bouncing inelegant and joyful in his face, and her nipple was deep in his mouth before she'd replanted her hands on the wall. And then he enveloped her other nipple, then pressed both under his thumbs as his tongue soothed the marks of the elastic band. He descended a step, nipping at her abdomen and trailing his fingers along her ribs. Which was erotic and all, but left her breasts alone, so she walked down with him. Obliging, he kissed his way back up to her chest, then her shoulders and neck and chin and mouth as they moved downstairs together. His erection kept retreating, so she took it in hand, stopping his descent. They were halfway to the ground, and her hips were grinding on his thigh. As she removed his boxers, she rotated past him, leaving him rising stiff into her hands, a riser above her. Her teeth scraping his side, her trail of kisses getting lower as she guided his cock. She licked it, then lifted her chin to check his expression. His attention was focused, the tension in his expression echoed by the tightening of his balls against her chest. She liked this view, too, the pulse in his neck throbbing as he held himself upright, one hand a vise on the bannister, the other a fist at his side.

  "You owe me a poem," she said, which released his grip on his stillness, that acrobatic speed of his back in play. He was behind her, below her, peeling down her yoga pants, the condom that had been hiding by her hip bouncing a few steps down. His arm circled her, pulled his cock to push against her ass. He splayed his hand across her abdomen, lower, fingers in her curls, fingertips parting her folds, opening her even as he brought them both almost to the ground floor. He scooped up the condom and sheathed his shaft while she shoved the pants off one leg, then he had her kneeling on the riser above him, upright with hands braced a few steps higher. His fingers smoothed over her ass, up her hips, his mouth on the back of her shoulder biting as he pinched her nipples. The echo wasn't as strong as at the top of the stairs; her moans were loud enough to compensate.

  "So. Hot." His voice was rough, his hands were rough, the slide of his cock was sure and smooth and deep and high.

  Nat cried out his name. He anchored his grip on the front of her pelvis, keeping her back arched and her body open, and she had no time to rest; she felt a second explosion building quickly on the first. She tightened her vaginal muscles as he thrust, fast, firm, the friction everything she'd ever wanted, building up and up with each push, building stairways to heaven, the heaven of orgasm, the gates thrown wide, and, clamoring, they entered it together.

  "There once was a young man named Evan," he said, sprawled on his back at the base of the staircase. He was breathing hard, ignoring the nascent ache of his knees because the pounding of his heart was worth any transient pain in the world. He was immobile, simultaneously too keyed up and too tired to even care about the spent condom he was wearing. Besides, Natalie was sprawled beside him, her sweaty arm stuck to his sweaty side, and if he could lift his head to check, he was pretty sure he'd see her pants hanging off one leg.

  Thinking of those pants made his cock twitch. Which was absurd, since he was immobile.

  "You told me that part already," she said, and her breath was as ragged as his.

  He managed to rotate his head so he was looking at her. Her flushed cheeks and dilated pupils and slow, sweet smile. Her hair coiled across them both. "Right. I did. I forgot. You killed my brain cells."

  "Like all that was my fault."

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you. That's what the poem's about. How I can't help myself."

  "If you have to give me the interpretation before I even hear it, it must not be a good poem."

  She had the temerity to look prim. Naked and sweaty and curls more insane than he'd ever seen them, but acting like a scolding schoolteacher. It gave him the energy to roll over, prop himself on an elbow. Rearrange her hair so it was sticking to her instead of to him.

  "There once--"

  "I know this part. There once was a poet named Evan."

  He traced her eyebrow. "Close enough. And Natalie's bod had him revvin'."

  "That is not a real word."

  "Artistic license. Do you want the rest or not?"

  She patted him lightly, like approbation, or indulgence.

  "He adored each round tit." He caressed them, to prove it.

  She lifted into his touch. He licked his lips. Said, "And the taste of her clit."

  Her fingers pressed into his chest, possessive. Before he lost his breath again, he finished, "And coming inside her was heaven."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days after the limerick on the stairs incident--placing her hand on the bannister gave her stomach flutters--Natalie called Evan. "So."

  "Is that code for me to head over there? Because I'm grabbing drinks with some people here. I can bail. They're just coworkers."

  She heard boisterousness in the background that made him cover the speaker and call a response to whoever surrounded him. "It's not, I'm not even home, but thanks for the very public offer."

  "Oops."

  "I'm joking, relax. Besides, I'm about to give you a good reason to drown your sorrows."

  "Well, now I'm worried. Hang on a sec, I'm going to step outside." She waited until the crowd noise disappeared and he asked, "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, fine, it's nothing like that."

  "You sound serious. Should I come over? I mean, just to talk, not...you know."

  "No, honestly it's fine. This is more of a strategy call than anything else."

  "Strategy for what?"

  She drummed her fingers on her steering wheel, watching for a green light, and said, "Can you hear me okay?"

  "Natalie East, are you stalling?" He was smiling. She could hear it.

  "Sometimes the Bluetooth cuts out. I'm just making sure."

  "This is your last chance to tell me before I head over there to coax it out of you."

  She eased forward with the traffic. "Tempting. But, no. Here it is. You told Koray and Marisa I'm going to the Fourth party, right?"

  "Yeah, why? Wasn't that the plan?"

  "I thought so. I mean, yes, it was. But I thought that was the whole plan. They thought it was just step one."

  He was silent long enough for her to change lanes. "I'm afraid to ask. What do they think is step two?"

  "Your mom emailed me just now, as I was leaving work. Telling me about their travel plans, and how they're happy about seeing me again."

  "I still think it's weird for my mom to email you."

  "Your dad emails, too. And don't be ageist. They're allowed to have the same friends as you."

  "Just not the same benefits."

  "I will hang up on you right now, Evan Lee, and you'll hear about this from your mom first, and it would serve you right."

  He dropped the smile from his voice. "Sorry. That was tasteless. Tell me about step two."

  She pulled into the strip mall where she was picking up her dinner. "Step two is you getting an extra invitation. For Elaine. So the parents can bond. At your work party. Where people at your office think I am dating you, and peop
le who are our parents think we are just friends."

  "Oh."

  "Yep."

  "Oh, crap."

  She put the car in park. "Yep."

  "But that's bad."

  "Like I said. You'd better go have that drink."

  "But, seriously, it's bad. It was going to be hard enough to contain them when it was two of them and two of us."

  "That's why I'm warning you. Can you pull off telling them you've maxed out on guests?"

  He sounded rueful. "I don't think so. Once we got up there, they'd never believe it. It'll be obvious we're set up for a crowd."

  "What if I just don't go? Come up with some excuse about missing it?"

  "I don't know. After my mom emails you to say how excited she is?"

  She sighed. "Yeah, that looks crap."

  "I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it."

  "I'm not either. If you come up with anything, you have carte blanche. Just text me in case one of them contacts me."

  Evan didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Okay. Yeah, I'll think about it. If I find a fix, I'll tell you. Meanwhile?"

  "Yeah?"

  "This is exactly the kind of situation we knew would be a danger when we started this."

  She tried to keep the bratty lilt from her voice. "I told you so."

  "Great, that's mature."

  She shook her head, which she figured he could see just as easily as she'd been able to see his smile earlier. "That's not really what I mean. Just, we're running into predictable problems. That's why we had to agree on rules when we started."

  "At least we have one thing going for us." He sounded resigned.

  “Oh? What's that?"

  "The sex. The sex is really fucking hot. That makes up for a lot."

  She didn't quite hang up on him, because she was laughing, but so was he.

  His dad made them pose for a selfie in front of his office door. He put them off staging photos at his desk by promising they could come by Monday morning to see him actually at work, not play-acting. Then he mentioned the gunpowder shrimp highlighting the party's heavy appetizer menu to lure them onto the elevator to the Skyscape Level.

  With Mom brushing invisible lint off his shoulder, Evan was self-conscious enough to resist fiddling with the balthus knot on his woven tricolor tie. He'd tried a trinity to start with, but the red, white, and blue stripes refused to intersect neatly. It was the material. He'd managed a trinity with striped ties before, to good effect. But the balthus, with its wide equilateral triangle, suited the heavy bold nature of the tie, and felt appropriate for the holiday. So he only glanced at his reflection in the elevator walls before turning to Dad. "Remind me to find Connie Alonzo for you. She's the one who runs the philanthropic initiatives. You can brainstorm your plaid pants protocol."

  "Green shirt fund." Dad corrected him, as he'd known he would. Dad always corrected him when he knew Evan was joking. When he flat-out made a mistake, Dad got all serious and patient and teacher-voiced. As soon as Evan figured that out, back in middle school, he went out of his way to joke about everything he could. He hated that teacher voice, and felt unreasonable amounts of triumph every time he managed to get Dad to correct him when he'd genuinely not known something.

  The doors opened into the midst of the party. There was no transition from elevator to milling crowd, and Evan was glad he hadn't tried to lie about the lack of invitations. Security was checking the list on the ground floor, but no one monitored the number of people upstairs. He scanned the room. They'd left the windows fairly clear, clustering low seating areas to one side, opposite the larger bar. High tables, a few with stools, were arranged between the columns ringing the open space. A jazz quartet played on a raised platform in the center of the floor. Wait staff circulated with wine and nibbles.

  Evan nodded to a group from Nineteen South, but guided his parents to one of the side bars. He wanted a beer. And Mom would want a tumbler of scotch. She said it made her feel fancy, to wave it elegantly as she mingled. And she disliked it just enough to keep her from overindulging as she negotiated her social anxiety.

  "You cool, Mom?" he asked, escorting her with an arm across her shoulders.

  "Of course."

  "Okay, but the truth?"

  She shrugged his hand away. "Stop hassling me, son. You know I'll be okay in a minute."

  It was true. She had trouble with the first quarter hour in a crowd. Once she cased the joint, she could relax. It bugged her that Evan knew it. The others had been her built-in buffer zone when they were around, a crowd to hide her from a crowd. Possibly the fear didn't set in until they were all off living their own lives, and Evan became an inadequate buffer of one.

  He'd diagnosed the problem when her clinging ran contrary to his plans to get away with semi-illicit activities. Thwarting his teenage desires was a surefire way to get him to think about other's mindsets.

  "I know," he said. "But you can't stop me caring, so I'll hassle you if I want."

  Mom shook her head, but let him put back his arm. With his other hand, he extracted his buzzing cell. Natalie texted they were parking and would be up soon. He started to ask the bartender for a glass of the reserve Chianti, but he didn't know what Elaine would want, and it would be rude to have a drink just for Natalie. Plus, he shouldn't be showing his folks that he knew Natalie's drink preferences. And he'd been worried that someone else would unmask them. Idiot. He'd almost blown their secret before she made it into the building.

  "The Easts are on the way up," he told Mom, and because his hand was there, he felt the tension drop from her shoulders. And there, though he hadn't said as much to Natalie, was the main reason he'd gone with this scheme to bring Elaine to the party. She would reinforce the buffer zone, and help Mom have a good time.

  "Come on, I'll introduce you to my friend Luke. Do you remember him from when I was in Durham? He's on the Asian markets now, but sometimes we let him come over to South America. Just to visit."

  "And he's the one with the girlfriend?"

  "Yep. Be sure to tease him about her. You don't want to miss the flaming ear tips." He snagged his dad, chatting with people Evan didn't know, and steered them towards the easy-to-spot tall blond head of his friend. Leticia, of course, was by his side, and he was touched by how quickly she moved in to put his mom at ease, joking about the crowd of strangers and asking Mom about his siblings. Mom could talk to anyone about her children, her grandchildren. But she always waited to be asked, having decided at some point before Evan's birth that she could easily turn into a bore, babbling about her brood. Or, as she said now to Leticia, "After four solid years of conversations only about diapers and schedules and the terrible twos with twins, I swore to keep my trap shut about them, unless someone wanted to know."

  "I do want to know. Luke's got a couple of sisters, but I'm an only child, and I find the idea of lots of kids fascinating."

  Evan looked at Luke. Bright red. "You two are talking about kids?"

  Luke rubbed at his neck. "Well. Not officially or anything."

  He whistled, low. They'd only been dating as long as him and Natalie. Not that he and Natalie were dating, just meandering through this unmapped minefield of not-dating but no one else knowing what their status was. To each his own. Luke could debate baby names and Evan could enjoy strings-free sex, and they could both be happy. Which wouldn't stop him from sneaking over to Luke's desk on Monday and dropping a pacifier in his pencil cup.

  He heard his boss's laughter and turned to see if the joke was one he should get in on, for networking purposes. She was standing with her husband and a couple of bald men who were almost taller than her. He toasted her with his beer, and she nodded, but not in a 'get over here' way, so he left her to it and wandered towards the entrance. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd been keeping track of how long it would take to get from parking garage to Skyscape Level. Because it was polite to welcome invited guests. He got there with ten seconds to spare--plenty of time to check h
is hair and straighten his tie in the brushed gold of the elevator doors before they opened.

  Natalie blew half his fuses when she stepped out, and it took a sec for his internal reset to hit so he could greet them.

  They'd joked about red, white, and blue halter tops, and he'd remembered it off and on. Like when fruitlessly trying to knot his tie, stuck on a fantasy of untying a knot at her nape. She hadn't carried through on that threat. What she wore was better. White linen slacks that skimmed over the curve of her hip, the wide waistband highlighted by a slim patent blue belt. The pattern of her top was fireworks on a deep blue background, and it wrapped in a vee crossed neatly over her breasts. Simultaneously pristine and cool, raunchy and hot.

  "Natalie. Happy Fourth." Dumbass thing to say, but it's how people kept greeting each other at this shindig, and it had infected him. He remembered to kiss her cheek, and then her mom's, like it was the same mundane thing for both. "Elaine."

  "Evan, lovely to see you again. And I'm so pleased you included us tonight. I hope Natalie thanked you for the invitation."

  "She did," he said, overriding Nat's protest. "Of course. You raised a charming woman, Elaine. Let me take you over to my parents, they're already sick of me and I think my dad only agreed to enter Texas in July so he could thank you for that photo."

  They each took an arm. Perfectly normal. Polite. His folks didn't act like he was slow to disengage from Natalie. He left them to their reminiscing, saved by his boss gesturing him over to greet her husband and a different bald guy, this one in a straw hat.

  He moved from them, to a group of analysts he'd consulted the previous week, and on to where his dad had found Connie Alonzo on his own. They were deep in discussion. He scanned the area. His mom was over by the windows with Elaine, who seemed to be pointing out landmarks. Natalie was near the musicians, shaking hands with a man, exchanging hugs with a woman. He wandered over to meet Raj's partner, who was inexplicably upbeat despite an afternoon spent making balloon animals at the zoo.