by Max Monroe
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Moving my gaze up from his crotch—it admittedly moved a little slowly—I finally settled my focus into the face of none other than my archnemesis.
Reed Luca, looking fresh as a fucking daisy and smirking like the devil himself. Clad in a worn leather jacket and distressed jeans, even I couldn’t deny he looked good. Like, fuckable kind of good. Hell, put a cigarette in his mouth, and he would’ve been James Dean.
God, my eyes sure did enjoy looking at him.
This is a purely look but don’t touch scenario, Lola, I reminded myself. Reed Luca might’ve been the snake offering the apple, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be Eve.
Without offering any sort of greeting, I got down to the real question at hand. “Seriously… Are you stalking me?”
It all started innocently enough.
I’d been behaving—if you can call working on an opposing column to Lola’s best oral techniques behaving.
Seems a little sketchy to me.
But I’d been alone in my apartment and occupied with something that led to a paycheck from my current employer, so it was at least flirting with responsibility. The farther I got into the column, and the more I read Lola’s—over and over—as research, the more obsessed I became with connecting to her in more than words tonight.
Knowing she was out, I’d opened up some of our old emails and started to read. And then before I knew it, even that wasn’t enough.
I didn’t have her phone number, and I knew Cam was done doing me favors of the personal information variety. That idea seemed stale before it even fully developed anyway.
I wanted a physical connection. I wanted her eyes to meet mine, and I wanted to find a reason to touch her skin.
Honestly, the topic of these columns had me goddamn buzzing, humming, practically frothing at the mouth, and with one look to her Facebook page and a quick shower, I’d ended up here—handing my ID to the bouncer and scooting past a group of giggling girls in ass-grazing dresses.
Lola was easy to find the second I stepped into Vertigo Lounge and allowed my eyes to adjust.
She had a presence that stood out from all of the other people there, trolling for love and lust and racing to lose themselves to a mind-altering substance.
Secure in herself, she didn’t need an escape like the others, and it showed.
I watched as she chatted with two other women, her focus on them and theirs on the men around them. They spoke to her with genuine affection, but Lola wasn’t their end game the way they were hers.
When they jumped from their seats and headed for the stairs without her, I moved with purpose in her direction and didn’t let the packed crowd slow me down.
I made it to her easily enough, but she was so lost in her thoughts, I stood there in front of her for a full minute without her even noticing.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I finally greeted, breaking the spell. Her head jerked up.
It didn’t take her pretty features long to turn hostile.
“Seriously… Are you stalking me?”
“Actually, I bumped into some friends from college, and we decided to come in here and throw a few back,” I lied easily.
Her eyes narrowed, bullshit meter pinned in the red with an ability no one else seemed to have around me. “Yeah. Okay.”
I smiled. Something inside of me fucking loved that she could read me.
“You’re right. That’s not true at all. I don’t have any friends from college. I didn’t even go to college.”
“Yes, you did,” she said with a snort.
“Okay,” I admitted, still fucking smiling. “I did. But I didn’t finish, and I really don’t have any friends.”
“Reed.”
“Fine. I finished, and I have friends. But they’re not here tonight.”
And that was true. I’d gone to college at University of California Santa Cruz and gotten a degree in something—sociology—that was altogether relevant to my life but meaningless to ninety-five percent of the working world. My friends majored in business, joined major corporations, found trophy wives, and quickly impregnated them with multiple babies. I hadn’t seen all that much of them since. Actually, if you asked me for my best friend now, I’d probably say San Francisco.
Or Lola, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind. No. I haven’t known her that long. My inner voice raised a pointed eyebrow.
The city never seemed to let me down, and I had people and amusement all over it. I wasn’t planning tons of dinners at my house or trips to the bar, though.
Maybe I need to have Lola over for dinner.
“There we go,” she said with a little half smirk. “Now, why are you here tonight? The truth.”
I shrugged. “I’m stalking you.”
“I fucking knew it!”
“See, LoLo,” I said, my inner voice hanging out right above my voice box, apparently. “We’re pretty much best friends. Knowing each other and shit. Next thing you know, we’re going to be finishing—”
“Each other’s sentences. Yeah, yeah.”
“Now that’s just creepy,” I teased, and she shook her head with a smile.
“Why are you stalking me?” she semi-yelled over the music.
I didn’t want to yell. My days for screaming a conversation ended a few years ago when I started avoiding overcrowded places like nightclubs.
“I’ll tell you on one condition.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. No thanks. I don’t need to know.”
Leaning forward, I lifted the glass out of her hand and set it on the table before taking her hand in mine despite her protests.
“How many times do I have to tell you we’re not friends?” she asked, pulling at my hand in order to try to get me to release her.
I used my other hand to grab her elbow and pull her body close enough that she could hear me over the din. “I’m not sure. But I don’t think the tally begins until you start doing it without a gigantic fucking smile on your face.”
When I leaned back, her features were schooled into a scowl. I laughed.
“Come on, Skeets. Dance with me. It’s just a dance.”
“You probably don’t know how to dance,” she accused.
“You’re probably right. But hey, just for fun, let’s see.”
I could see the wheels spinning in her mind as she considered it over and over again. What would it cost her to dance with me just this once? Would it lessen the intensity of her hatred or aid it?
I didn’t know which decision would win the battle, but I knew what action would win the war—she was going to dance with me whether she knew it or not.
After several long seconds, she saved me the trouble of having to carry her and conceal her cries of protest and jumped to her feet. She shoved past me and headed for the stairs to the level of the club made for dancing.
I followed her dutifully, watching the line of her shoulders as she walked. One peeked out from the collar of a dress I thought might have been a sweatshirt in a former life, while the other climbed to her ear and fell down again on a circuit.
I guessed she was talking to herself as she walked, or maybe cursing me, but eventually, my eyes moved down to her feet. Sparkly and overadorned heels belied the casual nature of her dress and spoke to what part of an outfit she found most interesting. Heels, Converse, boots—each was chosen precisely, while the clothes were there only as a means to combat nudity.
I honestly expected her to ditch me as we made it to the top, but she kept a slow pace and headed straight for the center of the mass of writhing bodies.
Amber green eyes lined to garner attention found mine over her shoulder to ask a question. I didn’t know what and I didn’t have one fucking clue about the answer, but she seemed to find it nonetheless, turning to face me completely in one smooth move.
She held out a hand for me to take, and my heart thumped. Naïveté wasn’t one of her recurrent qualities, but picturing her thinking abo
ut us doing the waltz and comparing it to what I actually intended to do made my blood pump faster.
Awareness shot through my arm as I took her tiny fingers in mine and clasped them tight. She gasped as I gave her hand a rough, calculated yank and spun her to face away from me, pressing the front of my body up against the back of hers at once. Her hand in mine, I brought them down to the front of her hip and pressed in.
“Ready?” I whispered in her ear, smiling when she trembled.
“Sail” by AWOLNATION hummed through the speakers without waiting for her answer, and I had no choice but to move. I loved to dance, the naughtier, the better, and this was one of my favorite beats. It reminded me in all the best ways of fucking, and with Lola’s body pressed up against mine, tonight couldn’t have been different if I’d tried.
One side to the other, I moved our joined hips in unison until her legs gave up the fight and her body relaxed into mine. I moved my face to her neck and just breathed her in. My lips never touched her skin and my tongue stayed inside my mouth, but I felt her so intensely, so acutely, I’d swear until I died that I tasted her that night.
“Reed,” she whispered, and by some miracle, I heard her.
Back and forth we swayed as my hands skated from the tops of her shoulders down to her fingertips and over the curves of her thighs. “Just feel it, Lo.”
Her head fell back onto my shoulder, and I pushed my body deeper into hers, circling my hips and making hers go with them. The back of her throat hummed with the effort to contain a moan as I spun her body out from mine and back in to press her front to my own and pushed her up my thigh until our hips met again.
Hand at the back of her neck, I held her face an inch from mine and kept her eyes captive, guiding her hips with gentle pressure from the other hand. My thumb rounded her throat and forced her chin up.
I shoved my nose to her neck and breathed.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered on a forced breath. Around her delicate throat, my hand traveled to the front and stopped. My pressure was light, but noticeable enough that her eyes opened and rounded, transfixed by mine as the song came to a close.
Everything was silent for one fraction of a second while the music changed over, and I swear I heard her heartbeat.
It’s probably my own.
“Hey, Lola?”
“Yeah?” she asked, scared. By me, by the intensity, by something even I couldn’t pinpoint, but mostly by the unknown mix of all of those things.
“Don’t ever check in with your location on Facebook again.”
“I…okay.”
I pressed my lips to her cheek, but I didn’t let them kiss—just the feel of her skin under them was enough.
Before she could ruin everything with questions or a fight, I forced myself to back away. One person between us led to two and three, and before I could count anymore, I turned and walked straight out and into the chilly night air to take my first sober gulp.
Something about her drugged me right into oblivion—and despite knowing the downsides of addiction, I couldn’t make myself stop loving it.
Just feel it, Lo.
Sweet shitting unicorns, even the memory of those words made my good places tingle. But as a connoisseur of many lonely nights, I knew just how to use that erotic energy practically.
I’d slept like a baby thanks to a self-induced orgasm and spent most of my day browsing the internet while watching episodes of Friends on Netflix.
And by most of my day, I actually meant my entire day. I had been the epitome of lazy. And now, night had settled across the city, and the glow of the streetlights filtered through the glass windows of my living room. Obviously, the time for doing something productive had passed—and I was okay with that.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to the one person I was trying my damnedest not to think about. He had truly become a parasite, first by consuming my thoughts, and now, by actually stalking me to public places.
What I found most concerning, however, was how much his stalker tendencies weren’t freaking me out. I mean, there should’ve been red flags popping up all over the place, the police should have been notified, something. But I only seemed to be intrigued by the way Reed never followed the normal rules for human behavior—including his complete disregard for spatial boundaries and respect.
Don’t ever check in with your location on Facebook again, he’d said, the bossy bastard.
And maybe even worse than the ridiculous things he did say, were the things he didn’t. One second I’d been ensconced in one of the sexiest moments of my life, and the next I’d been standing alone with nothing but an ache in my tailbone.
Like a film reel, I had been replaying his words, our conversation, the dancing, the way he looked, since the second his hands left my skin. Hell, I hadn’t even remembered to stop at Frank’s Weiner Cart before I left the Vertigo Lounge. I was too damn fixated on Reed and the way it felt to have his hands on me, softly caressing my skin as we danced. The way his long, sexy fingers made subtle circles across my arms, my shoulders, my belly, even the tops of my exposed thighs.
Sexy fingers. I didn’t even know fingers could be considered more than just appendages until Reed. But with him, they were sexy fucking fingers.
Last night, my body had craved him in all senses of the word.
I typed crave into the search browser on Merriam-Webster and watched the definition fill the screen.
Crave (verb) 1. To have an intense desire for.
2. To beg earnestly for.
Synonyms: ache, desire, hunger, yearn, thirst, want
Closing my eyes, I pictured Reed’s body over mine as he used every single one of those words.
What is wrong with me?
And what is wrong with God? I knew questioning the big guy in any form wasn’t exactly expediting my passport to heaven, but come on. Why would He pair those blue eyes with that sculpted face, and then heap kissable lips and a body I was certain looked even better bare on top of that? What good was that doing anyone? Bueller?
Last night, I couldn’t control myself. My hands had needed to know what he felt like underneath his white T-shirt. My fingers, completely in on the plan, had slipped under the material and felt the notches of abs, the thick muscles that popped and twitched under his skin as we’d danced.
God and Reed together, they’d gotten me hooked on the sensations and the man providing them, and then they’d ripped it away. One barely there kiss to my cheek and he had disappeared into the crowd, leaving me standing there, jaw slack, eyes hazy, and my body craving.
I was really starting to hate that word, which was preposterous. I was a lover of all words. Even the weird ones that everyone hated like moist or yolk or gurgle.
But last night, Reed had left me unfulfilled—and that was the worst ending for a story that starts and climaxes in desire.
So I had fantasized. And fantasized. Until I had no other choice but to lose myself to that fantasy and find release with Reed’s name on my lips—three times.
Seriously, what is wrong with me?
It’s one thing to be simply attracted to someone, but it’s a whole other bag of problems when you’re masturbating to thoughts of them repeatedly.
I probably needed to be medicated. Or maybe I needed sex.
Yeah, sex. I bet sex with Reed is—
Jesus. Let me rephrase: maybe I needed to have sex with someone who wasn’t Reed. It had been over two months since my last date. Maybe I just needed to dive back into the dating market and find a suitable guy to bring back to my place and get naked with.
Right? I asked in self-assessment.
My vagina all but packed her bags and jumped ship in answer.
Fuck. Get it together, I told her. The memo went out weeks ago; Reed Luca is bad fucking news.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
My head tilted to the side in curiosity. It was half past nine p.m., and clearly, I wasn’t expecting company.
I glanced up from my laptop—where I was currently acting like I was writing, but in reality, I was taking an online quiz that would tell me where I should travel based off of my cheese preferences—and stared at the door as I tested my telepathic abilities to tell them to go away.
Knock. Knock.
I obviously needed a little practice with telepathy.
I looked over at Louie, who was doing that weird sleepy fish thing where it looked like he was awake or dead, but in reality, he was in a food coma from eating one too many fish pellets. “Well, you’re no help,” I muttered. “I mean, if you were a cat or a dog, I could train you to answer the door for me. Thanks for nothing, dude.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Fucking persistent, aren’t you?” I mumbled in annoyance and looked down at my clothes—sleep shorts, a tank top, and leg warmers. It was what most would describe as, “I’ve called it a night.” Definitely not entertaining company attire.
If it weren’t for that one time the Chinese delivery guy accidentally brought food to the wrong apartment, I wouldn’t have even bothered with answering the door, but…Crab Rangoon. I knew asking for that scenario to happen twice in the same month was wishful thinking, but a girl could dream, right?
On the tips of my toes, I did a dainty run across the plush carpet of my apartment until I reached the door. It seemed like the solid wood had barely left the frame when my olfactory system was consumed with the drugging smell of soft vanilla and cigarettes. A few more inches, and I was face-to-face with endless pools of blue that my body honestly wanted to swim inside.
Did he really have to be so tempting?
I groaned and felt like shouting, Are you serious, universe! but settled on something slightly less outrageous.
“Oh, great. It’s just you. What do you want?”
Reed perused my haphazard attire for a few seconds and then flashed a dimpled, devilish smile in my direction. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“I had high hopes you were a Chinese food delivery angel here to give me a bag full of chicken lo mein and Crab Rangoon.”
He grinned. “Disappointed?”