by Lux Zakari
And he wasn’t the only one. Ryan stopped and grabbed his arm. “The bartender’s eyeing you up, bro. She’s hot, you’re famous. I say go for it.”
Of course Ryan would. Still, James clapped him on the back and made his way toward the bar, bolstering his nerve by running through the fundamental dating advice derived from fan fiction that Wade and E.Y. had given him. Granted, those two were some of the biggest crackpots he’d ever come across, and maybe that made him one, too, for seeking counsel from the same people who burst into hysterics upon witnessing his every failure. Then again, they’d seemed so earnest.
“Don’t talk her ear off about Greer and the kids, even if she asks,” Wade had said. “This is so obvious I shouldn’t even have to say it, but knowing you, you’ll start spilling your stupid guts before you even learn her name. No one wants to hear that misery. Even if she’s the one to bring it up, spout some shit about how it’s been a hard time for you all, but it’s over now and you wish Greer well, blah blah.”
“Keep from talking about yourself at all, if possible,” E.Y. had added. “It’s so boring when a celebrity blathers on about himself. Ask her about her. Compliment her on something quirky that no one else would.”
“But not too quirky, like that you’re into how her one eye is bigger than the other,” Wade had said.
“Right, compliment her on something that she obviously values about herself. Act like she’s the most important woman in the world. For a teen idol to do that, that’s incredibly hot.”
It seemed like common sense. He had had one question, though. “Wouldn’t these women want me regardless of how I acted?”
“You don’t know how to act,” E.Y. had reminded him. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve never known what you were doing. That’s why you’re now on the wrong end of your twenties, reading fan fiction about yourself to learn how to be the you you always should’ve been. You thought Greer didn’t value you. Well, act like a person who should be valued and you will be, once you gain confidence and live up to your potential. Have some respect for yourself. Have some class.”
Wade had just raised his eyebrows and nodded in agreement.
Being told to have some class and self-respect by E.Y.—who’d been wearing a shirt with an arrow pointing to her crotch that said Open for Business—and Wade—who had been coming down after a few bong rips—had been hard to swallow. But regardless of their lifestyles, they knew what they were talking about. They were bigger experts on him than he was. Maybe he should listen to what they had to say for once.
James leaned against the counter, shaking his hair from his eyes as he surveyed the throng of people dancing behind him only to find more than a few women staring. He could get used to this, and couldn’t believe he wasn’t already.
“What can I get ya?”
He turned to face the bartender, and instantly and unquestionably, he knew he’d be sleeping with her tonight. It was only a matter of getting from Point A to Point B.
A spark of recognition followed by restrained excitement flickered over her fey features. “Hey, you look familiar.” The tremor in her voice betrayed that she knew exactly why. “Are you famous?”
“In my own mind.” The quip rolled off his tongue before he knew it, and she laughed. Pride vaulted through him. Holy shit, he was flirting. Had he ever flirted in his life? It was as fun as people claimed.
“Come on, tell me.” She pouted, but on her lips still twitched a smile. “What’s your name?”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” Damn, who was he right now?
Ah, yes. James fucking Venora.
“It’s Crystal.” Her eyes sparkled like her name.
“James.”
“James as in the guy from that band Venora?”
He smiled in what he hoped was a charming and mysterious way. “Tonight I’m just James, the guy ordering a Red Bull.”
Even in the dim lighting, he could see a pretty blush spread over her cheeks. “You got it.” She patted the countertop. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Not without her, at least. He smiled. This might be easier than he’d originally thought.
“Y’know, I have to say I never really got into your band,” Crystal confessed after her shift had ended, drawing patterns on the side of her sweating glass of gin and tonic. “I think I was too old for that kind of pop music when you guys came out.”
There was no way she was older than he was. What was she, all of twenty-four? That was only three years younger than he was. James took a sip of his Red Bell and shrugged, fighting a wave of annoyance. Crystal wasn’t the first to tell him how not into his music she was. Why did people think that was okay, to casually tell him how much they didn’t care for or even downright hated his life’s work, something he poured all of himself into? What was he even supposed to say to that?
Then he remembered E.Y.’s wisdom, how the James in the fan fiction always went for the least impressed chick. It set her apart from all the other fans, who’d scream and never have anything interesting to say. Her hostility and standoffish qualities would not be turnoffs but rather foreign, beautiful. It didn’t seem to make any sense to him. Where was the middle ground? Why did it have to be one extreme or the other?
Despite her disinterest in his reason for living, Crystal was pretty freaking hot. She looked exactly how someone with her name should look: in her mid-twenties, with light blond hair in choppy layers, pale blue eyes, porcelain skin, and a lithe, petite body with tits that belonged in a centerfold. James had to keep reminding himself not to stare but Jesus. He’d forgotten women could look like this. The thought churned in his gut. What had he been doing with his life? None of it seemed especially important in lieu of Crystal and the ripe sexuality wafting from her in waves. He could’ve been having girls like this for years. What was wrong with him?
James shook the disturbing, overwhelming possibilities from his mind. He could spend the night wracked with regret, or he could spend it with Crystal.
It was going to happen. It was just a matter of how and when. Admittedly, the guarantee of future bliss with a stranger was somewhat terrifying. It was so far out of his comfort zone, part of him just wanted to dart from the restaurant and return to the tour bus or the hotel room. But that had been the case for his entire life, and look where that had gotten him. He’d be crazy if he thought doing the same damn thing would warrant new results.
“No offense or anything,” Crystal added with a blush and put a hand on his arm, a warm unfamiliar touch that zipped straight to his cock. “I’ve just never been into pop music. I like the trippy psychedelia from the sixties and all that, like Jefferson Airplane and Donovan and Cream and stuff.”
James looked from her hand to her nervous, apologetic expression and back again, still saying nothing. He enjoyed making her squirm and hoped to find other, more interesting ways to do it. He caught sight of her nail polish. Red with white dots and topped with forest green. He also recalled what E.Y. said about taking note of the details, finding beauty in the weird. “Nice nails. Strawberries.”
Her blush intensified and she gave a smile and a nod. “Yep. I did them myself.”
“I like them.” James picked up his drink and took a swig.
Crystal raked her teeth over her bottom lip as her shy grin became wicked. “If you think they look good,” she said, “wait ‘til you feel them down your spine.”
At first he wasn’t sure he heard her right. Her words were a stun gun to the brain, and he choked on a mouthful of his Red Bull and coughed. He attempted to put the can back on the table but missed the edge of the table completely, and it clattered to the floor, leaving more than a few splashes on his suddenly tight pants.
She covered her mouth with those strawberry nails but was unable to mask her giggle. Her eyes met James’ and turned smoky with promise. “On that note, let’s get out of here.”
His heart pounding, James noticed Ryan give him a thumbs-up as he left the bar with Crystal. Th
ey climbed into her black Jimmy truck, with Crystal insisting he drive. No sooner did the doors shut was Crystal leaning toward him, her hand creeping into his lap. “You know what I could go for?”
“What?” James’ heart thudded in his ears as he watched her fingers walk up his thigh toward his hardening cock.
“A burrito.”
A long pause followed as James struggled to comprehend what she’d just said. She lowered his zipper and he wondered if this was some bizarre innuendo. It was no secret that he was out of touch with the dating world these days.
But she said, “Well?” and shot a pointed look at the steering wheel.
She’d snaked her hand into his open fly and now stroked him up and down, every caress urging another rush of blood to his cock and making it extremely difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. He could scarcely believe someone other than Greer was touching him like this. “A burrito? From where?”
“Anywhere.” Crystal grabbed his cock and gave it a squeeze. “Just go already.”
He was expected to drive and think? James twisted the key in the ignition and tried to remember if he’d seen any all-night taco joints from his tour bus. In a small act of mercy, Crystal cooed some vague directions in his ear. However, she also freed his cock from his boxers and his pants, rubbing circles over the sensitive head. He maneuvered from the parking spot and merged into traffic with jerking stops and starts, simultaneously wishing Crystal would stop and wanting her torment to never end. She giggled as he accidentally zipped through a stop sign, but he could care less. He was in a fog, unable to keep from darting glances from the road to his lap, at the unfamiliar hand massaging him to an ever-nearing orgasm.
James nearly passed his intended destination until Crystal pointed it out. She’d also quickened her motions, and he yanked the wheel hard to the right, the tires releasing a shrill squeak with his efforts. She laughed, despite that he nearly hit the idling car in front of him waiting to order via the drive-thru intercom system.
“That was exciting,” Crystal purred as she shrugged off her seat belt. She looked at his cock and raked her teeth across her bottom lip. “James, has anyone ever told you have a big, beautiful dick?”
James’ breath hitched. The question rendered him speechless, but Crystal didn’t wait for a response before lowering her head and wrapping her lips around his tip.
“Oh, fuck.” James squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head back, surrendering himself to the hot liquid magic of Crystal’s mouth. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a blow-job. He twisted his fingers in the hair at the back of her neck and looked down at Crystal’s bobbing head, her tongue sliding up and down his shaft. Shit, a few more minutes of this and he’d be done for.
A blast of a car horn behind him shocked him from the moment, his heart doing the kind of somersaults a trapeze artist would be proud of. He realized the vehicle in front of him had moved forward. Now it was his turn and, according to the impatient driver all but creeping into the Jimmy’s trunk, he best be quick about it. Shaken, James pressed his foot on the gas and inched toward the intercom, waiting for Crystal to sit up and tell him what the hell she wanted on her burrito. But she didn’t. Instead, her mouth became akin to a vacuum and was intent on sucking the rest of his tenuous self-control and sanity from his body.
“What can I get you?” The drive-thru cashier’s voice crackled through the speaker.
Now he had to do all the driving, the thinking, and the talking. Unpleasant. “Just a burrito.”
“What kind, chicken or beef?”
“Um.” James glanced at Crystal, whose only act of decision-making involved wrapping her hand around his slick cock and fisting his shaft while her lips and tongue teased his head. “Chicken.”
“Do you want any sauce with that?”
Crystal moaned around his cock, twisting her blond head in his lap, and he sucked in a sharp breath as the familiar, prickling heat crept through his legs. “Yeah. Sure. Fine.”
“Hot or mild?”
He gritted his teeth, everything in his body screaming for release. “Hot. Definitely hot.”
“Four eighty-nine, please drive around.”
Without granting his usual departing “thanks,” James slammed on the gas until his bumper nearly kissed that of the car in front of him and lifted his hips, wanting her to take him all. Again she groaned around his length, the sound ricocheting straight through him to his cock. He grabbed her head and forced himself deeper in her mouth, his pelvis rising and falling to meet her motions, until he tumbled into the abyss of pleasure, a ragged, pent-up moan escaping his lips as she sucked him dry.
Again the car behind them sounded its horn, startling James from the languid side-effects of his orgasm. “Oh my God.”
Crystal tucked his cock back in his pants and straightened just as he drove up to the window, whipping her hair back. She wiped the corners of her mouth with her fingertips and giggled. “They’re just jealous,” she murmured in his ear as he scrambled for his wallet. “They wish they had your cock in their mouth.”
“Uh huh.” He all but threw the money at the poor cashier.
“Do you know what I’m craving now?”
“Kentucky Fried Chicken?” he asked dryly as the cashier passed him a greasy bag.
“Nope.” Again Crystal groped him as he drove away, and she grabbed the bag from him and tossed it in the backseat. “That big, beautiful dick of yours inside me. What do you think?”
Think? He’d had enough thinking for one evening. Already his cock began to twitch back to life. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“Believe me.” Crystal laughed. “I’ve got a lot more of them.”
According to legend, gin turns a man mean. But gin turned Crystal bug-fuck crazy.
In the dark, she was nothing more than a dancing flashlight beam shrieking with laughter. James followed her, gingerly threading through the rows of stones awash in bluish moonlight. The gnarled black arms of the trees reached for him as he passed them. He wasn’t easily spooked, but he challenged anyone to stay calm when roaming a cemetery in the dead of night.
James sucked in a deep breath and let a stream of comforting thoughts roll through his head. There was no such thing as ghosts. Zombies weren’t going to burst from any freshly dug graves. No one had forgotten to bury their dead. Still, there was no denying how terrifying the eyeless stone angel atop a headstone looked when he nearly bumped into it. He was grateful he swallowed his shriek.
“James, come on!” Crystal called.
He shook his head. How did Crystal’s craving to have sex with him turn into a desire to run between gravestones? This definitely marked the last time he would ever drive past a cemetery with a girl when he was feeling horny.
Yet if he was honest, his lust had hardly ebbed. He finally caught up to her by a family tomb and she switched off the flashlight. By the brightness of the moon, he watched her breasts heave, her lungs expanding underneath her tight tank top by the light. The necklace she wore disappeared somewhere in the valley between her breasts, all pale and smooth like Christmas china.
When his gaze traveled to Crystal’s face, he realized that she’d noticed him gawking. Before he could say a word, she crossed both arms down in front of her and peeled the shirt over her head, exposing her pop-star-sized boobs deserving of exclamation points. He wanted nothing more than to pop one of those hardening nipples in his mouth until she screamed for more.
“Cemeteries get you horny, James?” she asked softly, her hands traveling to the button of her pants, which she peeled off in one fluid motion, leaving her naked except for a red thong shaped like a butterfly. “Me too.” As if to prove it, she slid a hand down the front of her panties and cooed as she leaned against the tomb’s stone wall and widened her stance.
In spite of their surroundings, his dick was hard in an instant. James simply watched her, stunned, until she reached for the waistband of his pants with her free hand and yanked him towa
rd her. The flashlight rolled away and hit the side of the tomb as she licked the inside corners of his mouth, moaning against his lips. Hesitantly, he touched her bare breasts, and she arched into him, covering his hands with hers and showing him how she wanted him to touch her. Her take-charge ways made his head swim.
His caresses traveled lower to the butterfly thong. He gritted his teeth as the magnitude of the situation fought through the lust clouding his brain. He was about to touch someone in a way he’d only ever touched his wife. This was serious. But Crystal didn’t grant him the opportunity to dwell on the situation for long before she tore off her panties and pushed his fingers into her pussy with a yowl that reverberated in his cock.
As he worked his fingers in and out of her, she unzipped his pants. “Do you have a condom?” she asked, stroking his cock in that magical way again.
“Uh, yeah.” His heart pounded. This was really going to happen, there was no question, no going back. He was going to fuck a total stranger, and an exceptionally weird one at that.
“Well, let’s see how you look in it.”
He fumbled for the condom in his wallet and struggled to open it with shaking fingers. Meanwhile, Crystal never stopped tugging at his cock, pausing only for him to roll the condom on. He took a deep breath, anxiety starting to replace his desire.
Then Crystal forced him to the ground and straddled his waist, a few clumps of freshly cut grass clinging to her bare skin. She took hold of him at the base and teased her wet opening with the head, and the sight and feel erased his worry and hesitation. He grabbed her hips and forced her down the length of him, and she let out a wail of pleasure that spiked through him.
James’ breath came in pants and gasps as Crystal rode him, her breasts bouncing and her hair swinging around her shoulders. His hands traveled from her hips to her waist to her nipples to her ass and back again. He couldn’t get enough of touching her, couldn’t believe this was really happening. It was like losing his virginity all over again, and this time to a porn star.