Hard Rhythm

by Cecilia Tan

  “I got lucky,” I said, which was true. “My grandmother left me a pile of money at the right time to buy this place as a fixer-upper. Rents have skyrocketed so much that what the guys downstairs pay covers the whole mortgage plus a little extra. I’d have to move to the boonies now if I didn’t own.” Or get much better paying gigs than I’d been living on for the past ten years. “Where do you live?”

  “Oh, nowhere special,” he said, brushing the question off, which seemed a bit odd. Did he have something to hide? He slipped his sunglasses on as we pulled into the main flow of traffic. “They say owning is the way to go now that I have money in the bank. It’s better spent on a house than most other things. Right? Assuming no mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires…”

  My instinct was to dig deeper to try to find out what he was hiding, but I told myself to let it go. “Is there a part of the country where they don’t have any of those things? I keep hearing how Seattle is going to get destroyed by a volcano. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods? There’s always something no matter where you go, I think.”

  “Probably true.” He was wearing some silver rings and had an assortment of leather and bead bracelets on his left wrist. As he turned the steering wheel my eye was drawn to them, flashing in the sun. They looked like he’d been wearing them for so many years they were part of him, like his tattoos. “You hungry? My coffeemaker broke this morning and I need to fuel up.”

  “Turn here and there’s a drive-through Starbucks a little ways up,” I told him, figuring I’d check the place out before meeting Price.

  We pulled through the drive-up window, and both ordered the largest iced coffees allowable by law. Chino also asked for a handful of food items, chocolate croissants, muffins, graham crackers, enough stuff that I was starting to laugh a little by the end.

  “Something funny?” His own smile was kind of sly, kind of self-deprecating.

  “We’re going to pull up and they’re going to wonder where the carload of hungry ten-year-olds is,” I said.

  “And they’re going to see a pair of red-blooded American twentyish-somethings…how old are you, anyway, if I may ask?” Before I could answer he went on to add, “I get the feeling you’re like me. All the other guys in the band are like, twenty-four, twenty-five tops. I’m about to turn thirty and sometimes it feels like there’s a much bigger gap between me and them than you’d think.”

  He glanced sideways again.

  “I’m about to turn thirty, too,” I told him.

  “Wow. You don’t look it.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I had the feeling you were more…experienced in life than Ricki and Gwen.” He lowered his window to hand his credit card to the cashier. “I’m glad.”

  “Glad about what? That we’re the same age?”

  “That I was right and it wasn’t just wishful thinking on my part.” He flashed me that smirk as he handed me my coffee and it seemed a lot less annoying than I remembered. Maybe remembering how good that mouth was at other things biased me somewhat.

  We chatted about inconsequential things for a while, and I started eating one of the croissants so I’d have something other than coffee in my stomach.

  “Give me a bite of that?” he asked.

  I tore off a piece. “I’m getting crumbs all over your car,” I said with mild alarm.

  “Don’t let that get in the way of your enjoying it,” he said, then opened his mouth like a baby bird.

  I popped the piece of the croissant in and felt the soft edge of his lip skim my finger as he took it. Purrrr. He settled back into the bucket seat with a sensual ripple of his spine. Was it my imagination or was every move he made pure sex?

  I decided to ask. “Are you always like this or are you being a sexy beast just for me?”

  “Always like this, sweets,” he said, “though maybe thinking about last night ramps it up a little. Mmm-mm. Have I mentioned how glad I am you’re coming with me today?”

  “It was at least implied.” I grinned. I liked his easy, breezy manner. It made it easy for me to relax around him even though underneath I had all these questions simmering. Was this going to turn into something more serious and how much did I want—or not want—that to happen? It made him easy to like.

  “So, how long have you lived in Southern California?” He turned the car stereo down a little so he could hear me better.

  “Most of my life,” I said. “I was born in San Diego when my dad was still in the military. We lived in Las Vegas for a little while after he got out of the service, and then various places around Southern California.”

  “Are your folks still here?”

  “They moved to Arizona a couple of years after I finished college.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where’d you go?”

  “Cal State. Long Beach.”

  “So you really know this area.” He took a sip from the straw, holding his cup in one hand and the steering wheel with the other. “Your cred as a house-hunting companion gets better all the time. I lived here as a kid but it’s changed a lot since then. We lived in Los Feliz then but now that’s gotten pricey.”

  “What made you want to look at Laurel Canyon? Lots of celebs up there?”

  “Ford’s dad has a house there so I’ve been up there a lot. Seems nice.” He slid his coffee into a cup holder by the gearshift. “And it’s really not that far from everything, even though it sometimes feels like it when you’re up there.”

  I took a good gulp of my coffee, holding it for a moment in my mouth before swallowing. In iced coffee I liked the interplay of the dark and bitter flavors vying with their opposite, cream and sugar. I wanted to ask him more about his background but wasn’t sure where to start, so I stuck with geography. “Where’d you live when you weren’t in LA?”

  “Ohio mostly, with stints in Detroit and Cleveland.” He shrugged. “Best thing about the band making it is moving back here.”

  “Is Chino a nickname?”

  “Oh yeah. Got it as a kid for two reasons. My real name’s not a practical, everyday name by any stretch.”

  “You mean it’s something like Mergatroid?”

  “Something like that,” he said with a smirk and I knew he wasn’t telling me on purpose.

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “It’s a pretty common nickname for kids with black hair and chubby cheeks—you know, kind of Chinese-looking—but my dad liked to watch Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies and I liked to jump around and pretend I was a kung fu fighter.” He let loose a Bruce Lee battle cry—wasssaaaaaaaah!—and then chopped the steering wheel before laughing. “So he started calling me Chino and it stuck.”

  “Huh! I’ve known a couple of Chinos and I never realized it meant ‘Chinese’ in Spanish.”

  He chuckled. “It’s that or those guys were known for wearing khaki pants.”

  We pulled into a driveway in the hills where a woman was just planting an OPEN HOUSE sign into the ground at the side of the road. Four other cars were already parked in the curved driveway, every one of them a luxury model of some kind.

  The front door was open, and we walked into a split-level, ultra-modern house that looked like something out of a furniture catalog. Everything was sleek and spacious to the point that there were bookshelves but almost no books on them.

  I found myself more curious about the other people checking out the house than I was about the house itself. Maybe Chino was right: They were all couples—at least I was pretty sure they were—including the two men who were walking around together and pointing at various spots discussing where their furniture and art might fit.

  Chino took a prospectus sheet from the coffee table and then gave me the high sign we should slip out. We got into the car without talking to anyone and drove on. I looked at the sheet as we headed uphill toward the next place he had on a list on his phone.

  “Six million dollars!” I stared at the paper in disbelief. “That wasn’t even two thousand square feet. Were the toilets gold-plated
or something and I didn’t notice?”

  “Looks to me like the price doubles on anything that has an actual view,” he said. “I guess that’s what happens when you have a bunch of people with more money than sense.”

  We looked at three more places in quick succession, ranging from a three-million-dollar, three-thousand-square-foot mansion to a hundred-thousand-dollar shack.

  “An actual shack,” I said incredulously as we drove away.

  “The listing did call it a ‘cottage.’ I guess now we know that’s Realtor-speak for ‘built by back-to-nature types with a bare suggestion of interior appliances and plumbing.’ But it sure was cheap.”

  “I’m sure anyone who buys it wants to tear it down. How much you want to bet there’s some kind of a problem, like a neighbor who can block new construction or something. That’s the only reason I can think it hasn’t been snatched up by someone already.”

  “Or it’s haunted,” Chino said with a laugh. “No, thanks. Let’s look at one more before I drop you back home.”

  “Okay.”

  I caught a glimpse of the HOLLYWOOD sign as we drove around a bend and then turned up a way we hadn’t yet gone. Cars were parked along the side of the road and we pulled in behind another sports car. There was a bit of a gully on my side of the car so I climbed over the gearshift and emerged from the driver’s side. Chino held the door open and helped me out with his hand.

  There it was again, that hint of something that felt like his manners were beyond simply polite, something darker and more possessive underneath. Something in the way his eyes followed me, in the curve of his arm and the firmness of his fingers. If I weren’t attracted to him, would I have even noticed it?

  But I did notice it. And I found it strangely attractive. Strange because if a guy was solicitous toward me usually my reaction was to bust his balls. I guess I liked Chino’s balls just the way they were.

  Chapter Four

  MADISON

  The final house was another split-level, built into the hill. The top floor had a patio, most of the bedrooms were on the middle floors, and the garage sat at the bottom.

  As we entered the foyer we ran into the real estate agent, another woman, this one middle-aged. Her suit was dove gray, her scarf a riot of pinks and yellows like an Easter basket. “Welcome,” she said, and held out her hand to shake ours. “Mr. and Mrs.…?”

  “Jones,” Chino said with a broad smile before leading me away to explore the property.

  One of the bedrooms was built into the hill and only had one tiny window. As we took a turn through the room I said, “Here’s where we’d build the private dungeon, don’t you think, Mr. Jones?”

  He slid up behind me, his hands fitting around my hips. “Would we? What would we furnish it with?”

  “With all this wall space you could have a St. Andrew’s Cross over there, hang all the floggers and whips here, a sling there—”

  “A sling?”

  “Definitely,” I said with a knowing nod.

  He slid his hand up my body until two fingers were holding my chin. “I like your…taste in interior decoration,” he said as he turned my head to the side. His grip tightened suddenly and I realized he had my other arm by the wrist, effectively trapping me in his embrace while he took lush liberties with his tongue in my mouth. He tasted dark and sweet and fresh all at once, and as I sucked in a breath I could feel how tightly he held me, the heat of his skin soaking through his shirt and warming my back. I could imagine us in the room outfitted as a dungeon, getting ready to play in it for the first time, and all the unfulfilled desire from last night flooded me once again.

  We separated quickly when the Realtor brought another couple into the room. I was flushed, my breath heaving, my lips tingling, but the Realtor just smiled and the male half of the couple gave Chino a wink.

  “Picking out drapes is my kink,” Chino said to the guy, as he slipped his sunglasses on.

  He led me back to the car by the hand. It took me an unsteady moment to climb into my seat.

  He started the engine but didn’t pull away, turning to me instead and saying, “So. This sexual chemistry thing.”

  “Yeah?” I said, still reeling in a happy, hormonal daze. “I mean, yeah.”

  He smiled. “Not just me, then.”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Tsk. You’re supposed to say fuck yes.”

  “You’re the one who said no to fucking me last night.” I couldn’t resist needling him about it since I couldn’t outright complain. I knew he’d done the responsible thing, the right thing, but I wasn’t used to being strung along and hunger for him gnawed at me.

  He looked at the beads and silver on his arm and I realized he had a watch on, too. “When I fuck, I like to take my time. And we’ve got to get you back to town before five o’clock.”

  I made a frustrated noise. “This is torture, you know, getting me hot and bothered like this.”

  “You’re the one who said you wanted a torture rack in our dream home,” he joked, and put the car into gear. We pulled away from the shoulder and he eased the car down the winding, hilly road. “Tell me seriously, though, what are your kinks?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual,” I said.

  “Uh huh. So you’re into…uh…baked beans? Clown makeup? Boiled doll heads up the butt? Pineapple soda?”

  As each thing he named got more nonsensical, I laughed harder and harder. “Pineapple soda?” I squeaked. “Pineapple soda?”

  “That’s a serious heavy-duty kink,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I can go that far. Might be my limit.”

  I wiped carefully at my eyes, which were tearing up, trying not to smudge my eyeliner. “Okay, point taken. I’ll try to be more specific, but I guess it really depends. I’m not into any specific toy or activity, you know?”

  “You’re not that into toys…but you’re about to launch a video blog about them?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, you know, when it comes to specific kinks, I’ve had good and bad spankings just the same as I’ve had good and bad sex.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” he said. “I guess I’m similar. There’s not one specific thing that gets me off. I’ve been trying to take that as a healthy sign.”

  “Healthy how?”

  “Like a healthy appetite. It’s not like I can’t get off unless I spank you or you wear a clown mask because I was spanked by a clown as a child or something. I just mean it’s not that I’m broken somehow. This is just who I am.”

  “Right,” I said, wondering just how much experience with kink and dominance and submission he actually had. Over the past six months at the club I had been assuming he was a newbie, but between the way he’d handled our scene and the way he was talking now I knew I’d been wrong. He was more experienced and much more of a dom than he’d let on. “I had a boyfriend once who could not get off, literally, unless his thumb was in my mouth.”

  “Really? I’ve heard of people who sucked their own thumbs but that’s a whole ’nother level.” Chino snorted.

  “Exactly. It got really weird. Like even if he was masturbating at night he wanted to put his thumb in my mouth.”

  “That’s someone unclear on what self-love is all about, don’tcha think?”

  “This was in college. I had an early morning class and would be trying to sleep and he would be like ‘just ignore me, honey, I’ll take care of myself so you can sleep, but oh by the way could I stick my thumb in your mouth?’ We didn’t have one of those ‘I own your body’ kind of relationships, either. It was more like he was just…just…” I flailed for an adjective suitable for what a loser he was.

  “Weaksauce,” Chino said.

  “Yes. He was the king of weaksauce. I might’ve respected him more if he’d just said, ‘Shit, honey, I’m horny, can we have a quickie before we conk out?’”

  “Did he ever say that?”

  “No. It was always passive-aggressive bullshit with him. Which was probably a much
bigger deal breaker than the thumb.” I shrugged and picked up what had been my iced coffee and was now just ice. I slurped out the last of the melted water and rattled the remaining ice around in the bottom of the cup.

  “Speaking of horny,” he said. “On a scale from one to ten, how horny are you right now?”

  “I don’t want to give you the impression I’m easy,” I said, squirming luxuriously back against the leather seat, “but I’m at a seven right now.”

  “And it’s all my fault you’re so hot, is it?”

  “One hundred percent your fault. Picking out drapes is not my kink.” But kissing you might be.

  He turned us onto another road, this one going up the hill, and I got the feeling he was driving around aimlessly now rather than trying to get back to the main drag. “I guess it’s my job to cool you down, then. Fish an ice cube out of your cup,” he said. “And then rub it against your clit.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a suggestion,” he said, but over the tops of his sunglasses his gaze bore into mine. “A very strong suggestion.”

  I swallowed, my throat going dry as it felt like all the blood in my body surged between my legs. How could he make me so hot with just a few words and a look? This was a different kind of domination than most guys would throw at me, rousing my curiosity as much as my lust.

  My fingers trembled a little as I got the lid off the cup and I tipped one of the larger remaining pieces of ice into my mouth. I took it between my fingers. It was flat on one side and curved on the other. I popped open the button on my jeans and undid the zipper. Thank goodness for stretch denim: I could just get the ice and my fingers in there if I slid down in the seat a little.

  The ice was cold but my flesh was hot, so hot, and the throbbing of arousal only increased as I moved it up and down on my clit. I moaned as the ice melted down to nothing and then my fingers were stroking up and down.

  “Oh, sweets,” he said. “I can smell you.”

  That comment sent a flush of heat to my cheeks, making me feel like such a naughty girl at heart. “I’m sorry.”