“I wish I could take this nipple in my mouth. But I can’t because we’re in a room full of people,” he whispered in my ear. “Is this making you wetter?”
Oh God, it was. I nodded.
“If I slid my fingers inside you right now, would you still be wet?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Promise?”
I nodded and then felt his other hand coming to life again under the jacket resting on my lap. It glided up my thighs, and then one finger parted me. This almost sent me toppling sideways, but he held me firmly. He nudged my right thigh open a little more, and I spread his jacket wider to conceal what was occurring beneath it.
“Take a sip of your champagne, Cassie,” he said. I grabbed the cool glass, felt the burst of bubbles on my tongue. “I’m going to make you come right here.”
Before I could even swallow, his fingers had begun to coax me open. The feel of it was so marvelous, I choked a little on my drink. No one standing near us could have known that the most delicious things were being done to me.
“Feel that, Cassie?” he whispered in that sexy accent. “Arch into me, baby,” he said. “That’s it.”
My pelvis pushed down on his hand, now cupped beneath me. His fingers dipped in and out of me while his thumb traced circles around me. I closed my eyes. My entire body felt suspended in his strong hand, held as if in a swing.
“No one can see what I’m doing,” he whispered. “Everyone thinks I’m talking to you about how much I love the band. Can you feel that?”
“Yes, oh God, yes.”
He pressed himself into my back again. I leaned into this deliciousness, my right hand reaching up and cupping his working shoulder, my left arm holding the jacket steady. I felt his taut arm muscles as his thumb worked those magic circles, his deft fingers gliding in and out of me. He was playing me like an instrument. I lost myself in the darkness of the room, the beat of the music, the waves of pleasure. I wanted more of him inside me, not just fingers. Him. All of him. I edged my right thigh out and he read his cue to let his fingers explore deeper. I bent my head forward. I tried to look like I was totally lost in the music, but I was reeling with the swells this man was creating in my body, over and over, now building to a heavenly climax.
“Cassie, I can feel it. You’re going to come in my hand, aren’t you, girl?” he whispered.
I grabbed the bar with my right hand, feeling in a trance, and the room went black, the music mingling with a low moan (mine?) that had me bucking backwards. He was like a wall containing me as wave after wave flooded me. Oh sweet Jesus, I couldn’t believe he could do this to me, right there. I couldn’t believe I had just come in a loud, dark room full of strangers, some of them less than two feet away from me. He slowed his thumb as the waves in my body subsided; the room came into focus again. He stood still, holding me for a moment. When I shifted slightly, he pulled his fingers away gently, tracing them across my exposed thigh.
He slid my champagne glass in front of me. “You’re fearless, Cassie.”
I took the glass in my unsteady hand and gulped it down, then set the empty flute a little too loudly on the bar. I grinned and so did he. He was looking at me as if for the first time.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?” he said.
And instead of saying something self-deprecating, for once I believed it. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he said, signaling the bartender for the bill. He pulled off the two twenties again.
“Keep the change,” he said to the bartender. Then he fished something out of his pocket. “And this is for you,” he said, flicking what looked like a coin in the air and slapping it down on the bar.
When he lifted his palm, I saw my Step Two charm glowing under the bar lights, the word Courage engraved in script.
“It’s been charming,” he said, kissing my hair. Then he plucked his jacket off my lap and disappeared into the crowd.
After securing my charm and admiring it and its partner on my bracelet, I slid off the stool, my legs so rubbery beneath me I almost collapsed on the floor next to my abandoned thong. As I moved through the dark crowd, my breathing was still staggered, my sight blurry. I smacked right into a tiny girl in high platforms, nearly knocking her over. At first I didn’t recognize Tracina, because she was all dolled up, her curly hair a wild corona, her brown skin contrasting dramatically with her lime-green dress. And I definitely didn’t recognize Will in a smart dinner jacket and tie. He looked … sexy as hell.
“See?” she said, slapping Will hard across the chest. “I told Will it was you!”
Shit! This can’t be happening. Not now. Not here.
“Hiiii” was all I could manage.
“As soon as I saw you and that … guy, I was like, ‘Will, check out Cassie on a date!’ ” she said, snapping her fingers and singsonging that last word. She was swaying drunkenly.
Will looked twitchy and uncomfortable. Did they see me pressing into that man’s stomach, grabbing his shoulder, writhing? Oh God! Could they tell what we were doing? Surely not. It was so dark, so loud. Where had they been standing? I was panic-stricken, yet there was nothing to do now but make small talk about the band. Then flee.
“Where’d he go?” Tracina asked.
“Who?”
“Your hot date?”
“Oh … he went to get the car. We’re leaving. We have to go. Yeah … so—” I could feel sweat dripping down my cleavage and the back of my neck.
“But the band is going to play another set. These are tough tickets to get your hands on, Cassie.”
“Maybe they’ve heard enough music for tonight,” Will said stiffly, taking a gulp of his beer. Was that jealousy I sensed? He could barely look at me. I had to get out of there.
“Well, I don’t want to keep him waiting so … see you tomorrow,” I mumbled, waving and already walking towards the elevators.
Holy hell. Inside the elevator, alone, I hopped up and down as though that would make it get to the ground floor faster. I had to get out and pull myself together. I let a stranger put his hands on me, in me—in public—and drive me half wild, while my boss and his girlfriend were standing somewhere nearby. What had they seen? How could something so marvelously sexy take such an ill turn? But I had to let it go for now. I’d talk to Matilda. She’d know what to do.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped out hurried through the lobby and out the glass doors to the street. It was a lovely night, the air refreshing. The limo was waiting exactly where it had dropped me off. I opened the back door before the driver could react, climbed in and sat down, still feeling the night air travel up my skirt, cooling the dampness between my thighs.
Every May, the Spring Fling on Magazine Street highlighted just how little Frenchmen Street had to offer in terms of daytime attractions. Five miles of shopping, music and pedestrian traffic drew crowds to the restaurants and cafés in the Lower Garden District. No such luck in Marigny. Frenchmen was a nighttime spot, where people came to listen to jazz and get drunk. Will’s face said it all as he pored over the receipts from the previous day, the muscles in his forearms twitching as he punched in the figures on his aging adding machine.
“Why did my dad have to buy this building and put a daytime café on this street? And why did the Castilles have to build that condo right across from us?”
He let his pencil drop. It had been a bad month financially.
“Special delivery,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. I pointed to the Americano on his desk that I’d freshly brewed for him. He didn’t even look at it.
“What if we put a half-dozen tables in the back on my parking spot, string some patio lanterns, pipe in music and call it a patio? It might be pretty back there. Quieter,” he said in a daze.
I could have been anyone standing there.
Just then, Tracina bounded into the office.
“If we’re talking about renos, fix the toilets, the broken chairs and the goddamn floor tiles on the patio first, babe.” S
he tossed her purse onto the chair in the corner. Then she whipped off her baggy white T-shirt in front of me and Will and changed into a tight red one she plucked out of her purse, the one she always wore on the night shift. She was so casual, so confident with her tiny, perfect body.
I tried to avert my eyes.
Spring Fling gave Will more gray hairs than losing business to Mardi Gras or the jazz festival. But gray hairs on Will only made him hotter. He was one of those guys who got better looking with age, something I had been about to say out loud that morning when Tracina interrupted. My two escapades and the boldness they were engendering in me had me blurting out all sorts of things. I was even swearing more, much to the consternation of poor Dell and her little red pocket Bible.
“Busy today?” Tracina asked, tucking in her T-shirt.
I was ending my shift just as she was beginning hers, with no tables to hand over. It was that dead.
“Not really.”
“Not at all,” said Will. “Spring Fling.”
“Fuck Spring Fling,” she said, prancing out of the room.
I watched her fluffy ponytail bob its way down the hall to the dining room.
“She’s amazing,” I said.
“That’s one word for her,” Will responded, dragging his fingers through his hair. He did that so often I wondered if there were trenches in his skull. Finally, he seemed to notice I was there. He looked up at me. “Plans tonight?”
“Nope.”
“Not seeing that guy?”
“What guy?” I asked, perplexed.
“The guy from Halo.”
“Oh that guy,” I said, my heart speeding up. It’d been weeks since that night and neither he nor Tracina had brought it up, Tracina because she was probably too drunk to remember and Will because he never pried. Had he seen something after all?
“That guy was just a one-time date. There was no real chemistry.”
Will squinted as though he remembered things a little differently. “No chemistry?” He turned back to his adding machine and punched in more numbers. “Could have fooled me.”
When I asked Matilda what to do if I ever ran into someone I knew while out on a S.E.C.R.E.T. date, she told me that the truth was always better than a lie. And yet, here I was, lying.
“Will, Tracina’s here, so I’m off. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, making ready to bolt.
“Cassie!” Will said, startling me.
Please don’t ask me any more questions, I prayed silently.
Will met my eye. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said.
I saluted and left.
“Cassie!”
What did he want this time? I turned and walked back to poke my head through the doorway.
“You looked really … good that night. Great, even.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks,” I said, no doubt blushing like a teen. Oh, Will. Poor Will. Poor Café Rose. Something had to be done soon.
It was inevitable. That evening Tracina got the heel of one of her neon pumps caught in a crack in the sidewalk. Her toes moved forward, but the heel stayed put, wrenching one of her bird-like ankles. She had warned—and had been warned—about the cracks in the pavement and the perils of wearing those pumps at work. But such is a woman’s vanity, and such was my life, since I was the one who had to absorb a few of her night shifts until her puffed-up ankle returned to its normal dainty size. I complained to Matilda, who had asked me to keep her aware of my work schedule. I was hoping my next fantasy would take place in the Mansion, and I was also hoping it would happen soon. But it was looking more and more like this month might be fantasy-free. “Not a problem,” she said. “We will just schedule two events next month.” But still, memories of that interlude in the jazz bar were fading and the truth was, I was longing for more.
Thank goodness for Spring Fling was all I could think, while wiping down the tables. I couldn’t have made it through a week of double shifts if we’d been busy. The days stayed dead quiet, but the early evenings cast an even sadder mood over our part of the city. There were so few customers to absorb the glow off the streetlights, it just bounced around the walls and glass, giving the Café the feel of a lonely painting. Will was staying at Tracina’s to help her get around, so his reassuring presence wasn’t felt upstairs. I didn’t mind. I had a couple of good books on the go, and was even boldly using my free time to scribble some thoughts into my fantasy journal, which was the only homework S.E.C.R.E.T. had asked me to do.
That’s actually what I was doing at the bar when the door chimes alerted me to what I thought was a late-night customer. But it was the pastry delivery man, odd because normally those guys made their drop at the crack of dawn, when Dell was around to sign off on the waybill. I had sent the cook home hours before, since the only things I’d serve after 7 p.m. were coffee and dessert, and only to people who were wrapping up their meal. I turned to watch as a young man in a gray hoodie pushing a dolly stacked with pastry boxes walked right up to me without saying a word.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sliding off my stool and hiding my journal behind my back, “but aren’t you a little late? Don’t you normally come in the mor—”
He moved past me, removed his hoodie and shot me a smile over his shoulder. He had close-cropped hair, a chiseled face with dark blue eyes and forearms covered in tattoos. In my mind I saw a freeze-frame of every high school bad boy who’d made my heart ache.
“I’ll just put these in the kitchen. Meet you there?” he said, holding up his clipboard.
I had a feeling I was going to receive a lot more than two-dozen beignets and a tray of Key lime tarts. Seconds after he punched open the doors to the darkened kitchen, I heard a crash that made me glad Will wasn’t upstairs. And the cacophony didn’t happen just once. It was in stages. First a crash, then a series of bangs, then another metallic nightmare.
“Oh my God!” I yelled, inching my way to the kitchen door, behind which I could hear groaning. “Are you okay?”
I shoved the door open and felt a body, his body, move a little. I felt along the inside wall and hit the fluorescent overheads, and there he was lying on the floor, clutching his ribs. Pastries of various pastel hues were smeared across the floor, leading to the walk-in fridge.
“I seriously screwed this up,” he grunted.
I would have laughed, but my heart hadn’t calmed down enough.
“Are you okay?” I asked again, gingerly approaching him like he was a dog that had been hit by a car and might run away if I moved too fast.
“I think so, yeah. Wow, sorry about the mess.”
“Are you one of the guys from … you know?”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to ‘take you by surprise.’ Ta-da! Ow,” he said, grabbing his elbow and collapsing back on the floor, a box of pecan pie his accidental pillow.
“Well, you did take me by surprise, in a way,” I said, laughing at the mess he’d made. From the looks of it, his dolly had careened into Dell’s steel-topped kitchen island, sending all the pots and pans suspended over it crashing to the floor.
“Want some help?” I asked, extending my hand. What a face. If a bad boy could also be angelic, he would look like this. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty, tops. He had a slight Cajun accent, too, local and very sexy. He unzipped his hoodie, shrugged it off and whipped it across the floor to get a better look at his injured elbow. He was oblivious of the fact that he was revealing a boxer’s torso under his white tank top, with intricate tattoos covering his arms and shoulders.
“That’s going to be a really nice bruise tomorrow morning,” he said, standing next to me.
He wasn’t tall, but his sexy brutishness gave him incredible presence. After he shook off the last vestiges of pain, he stretched backwards, taking me in.
“Wow. You’re really pretty,” he said.
“I … think we have a first-aid kit or something around here.”
As I walked past him towards the office, he grabbed me by the elbow and gently tugged me close to him
.
“So? Will you?”
“Will I what?” I asked. Hazel. The eyes were definitely hazel.
“Will you do this Step with me?”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to say it.”
“Damn,” he said, racking his brain.
He was so cute, but not too swift, this one, which I suppose didn’t matter.
“You’re supposed to ask, ‘Will you accept the Step?’ ”
“Right. Will you accept the Step?”
“Here? Now? With you?”
“Yeah. Here. Now. With me,” he said, cocking his head, giving me a crooked smile. Despite his rough-hewn exterior, and a hairline scar on his upper lip, he had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. “Are you going to make me beg?” he added. “Okay, then. Pretty please?”
I was enjoying this. A lot. And decided to play it out a little longer. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I know this one,” he said. “I’m going to do everything you want, nothing you don’t.”
“Good answer.”
“See? I don’t totally suck.” So sweet and so sexy. “So? Will you accept the Step?”
“Which one is it?”
“Uh … three, I think. Trust?”
“Right,” I said, surveying the damage in the kitchen. “You come in here just as I’m closing and wreak the kind of havoc that’s going to keep me here after hours cleaning up.” I put my hands on my hips and squinted at him as though I had to really think about my choice. This was too much fun. “And do you really think you’re in any shape to—”
“I don’t get it. Are you saying you don’t accept the Step?” He winced as though in real pain. “Fuck, I screwed up.”
After a good, long pause, I said, “Nah. I’ll … accept the Step.”
“Wooo!” he said, clapping his hands hard, which sent me giggling. “I won’t let you down, Cassie,” he said, flicking off the fluorescent overheads, leaving us lit only by the warm glow of the streetlights streaming in through the kitchen cutout. He took a step back towards me and held my face in his hands.
S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel Page 8