Daring You

by Ketley Allison

  “You got it.”

  We part ways outside, the frigid air doing quick work on my exposed, overheated skin. But I enjoy the freeze on my arms, the frost forming on my legs. It gives a centering gravity to what is quickly becoming an explosive ball ready to be lobbed in my chest.

  Someone cornered Astor.

  I hail a cab, because fuck the subway.

  When I get in, I check my phone, despite the reality that Astor would rather cut off her own fingers than text me. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more risk I’m putting her in by not giving her my real name.

  And I’m wondering how much longer I can choose preserving my identity over her.

  Sometimes, I don’t know my own fame. More often than not, it makes itself very much a part of my life, especially when I drive face-first into a honey badger’s nest of reporters. And I say honey badgers because they are the most vicious, insane, feral skunk-like fuckers you’ve ever come across. Don’t believe me? Look them up.

  This is exactly what I’ve done as my bright yellow, NYC trademark taxi pulls to a stop in front of the mammoth gray courthouse building in Staten Island.

  No tinted windows here, my friends. Nor do I possess a baseball cap, hoodie, or any other basic paparazzi-repellant.

  I’m in a muscle shirt and sports shorts, with a duffel bag full of sweat-soaked clothes and sneakers. I really haven’t planned this right, but that’s what fear does, doesn’t it?

  Makes human evolution obsolete.

  Lightbulbs flash as soon as the cabbie brakes, and one by one, like the calculated badgers they are, heads turn and possible recognition ignites.

  They’re here for the ruling on bail, and any unexpected visitor would get detailed scrutiny.

  “Fuck, keep driving!” I yell to the cabbie. “Just…go around the corner or something. Anything.”

  “Yessir.” The whites of his eyes flash in the rearview. “Shit, didn’t realize who you were.”

  “No biggie,” I say automatically. “Just get me out of here.”

  I’m not worried about anyone making the Ryan-Ben link, since that’s essentially impossible for the public to do. I’m more concerned about connecting any further attention to this case, whether it be my NFL status and my “friendship” with Astor, or the reasons why a star receiver wants anything to do with a twenty-year-old murder. My murdered parents don’t need any more media attention.

  I just want them to rest in peace. I want Ryan underground with them.

  The cabbie, who must be familiar with the area, finds a deserted, narrow, side-street to drop me off at.

  “You got charges laid on you or something?” the cabbie asks.

  “Nah. Just here supporting a friend.”

  “Phew.” The cabbie laughs. “Can’t have next year’s fantasy football team be fucked over like that. Don’t get arrested any time soon, got me?”

  “Sure thing, my friend.” I pass a few bills through the glass partition.

  The cabbie thanks me profusely, but thankfully doesn’t ask for a selfie. I get out and sprint for the closest door to the courthouse, where maybe I’ll plan this shit out better and figure out what floor Astor is even on.

  Turns out, all I have to do is ask anyone inside the building this morning. Everyone knows what’s going on and where, and after going through the metal detectors and blending in perfectly with every other perp in casual, sports-related clothing surrounded by suited lawyers, I take the stairs two at a time to the right floor.

  As I stride over the marble tiles, giant wooden doors in front of me burst open, and people stream out. Reporters who had the ability and trickery to wait indoors descend upon the suits and spectators exiting, and my height allows me to adequately scan for Astor’s sleek, brunette head.

  She’s tall, too. I should be able to instantly spot her—there.

  I find her encased in five to ten other lawyers, microphones already thrust into their faces and questions being tossed left and right. Using my girth, I elbow through most of them. Everyone’s too focused on the ruling to notice the jacked-up football player trying to get a girl’s attention.

  Astor’s gaze slides towards, over, then skirts back and locks onto me as I’m a few feet away.

  Ben? she mouths, then breaks away from her suits of armor.

  Astor grabs me by the elbow and drags us out of the thick of it. “What are you—?”

  “Locke’s worried about you.” I cut her off, fully aware that I have a few seconds before anger, or more likely, indignation over being Locke’s sister who doesn’t need protection hits. “Especially after you called him.”

  Those sails of righteous anger billow closed. “I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have called him. And you shouldn’t be here.”

  “You said you were being fucking followed, Astor.” I lower my voice at her warning glare. “What part of that worry makes you think I wouldn’t race over here?”

  “Because—because I overreacted,” she says. “There’s no guilty verdict today, nothing to incite anyone, never mind a drug lord. I’m on edge, and I didn’t mean to drag Locke or you into it—”

  “Consider me dropped into the center of it,” I say. “Because this is exactly what I warned you about, and now you have dickheads showing up at your door?”

  “It wasn’t my literal door,” she says. “My security isn’t that terrible. It was outside. Chavez was waiting—”

  “Chavez? Fucking Chavez?”

  Information I don’t want to think about scrolls its way across the back of my eyes regardless. How my biological father, Tim Delaney, became a reluctant informant within Chavez’s drug cartel when his roofing company went bankrupt and he became desperate. How my mom, a nurse pulling triple shifts, found safety in it so long as the FBI was involved. She didn’t think we’d be hurt.

  “That, more than anything,” I say through my teeth, “should tell you what kind of level you’re playing at.”

  “Ben, I’m fine.”

  “Say that one more time.”

  Astor takes a step back at my tone, a decibel I reserve only for rival teams or an asshole who’s particularly determined to start a bar fight with me. I don’t use it on women. I don’t curl my lips and dare them with a glare. But Astor’s doing things to me I’m not proud of.

  And—no great surprise—she meets my scowl with one of her own. “You don’t know this job, or what I’m honor-bound to do.”

  “Represent killers?”

  “Find justice,” she spits. “So sociopaths like Chavez don’t get opportunities to corner single women on sidewalks and threaten them.”

  “Newsflash, sweetheart. Guys like that always will. They think the law is a piece of paper they can light on fire. They will threaten. They will torture. They will kill.”

  “You have your way, I have mine.” Astor makes to turn her back on me. “Get lost, Ben.”

  “No.” I hook her elbow. Not hard, but enough to halt her steps.

  “Let go.”

  “When you let go of this case, I’ll let go of you.”

  Her eyes turn to frostbitten blue. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. The more you show up and tell me to stop, the more I’ll step forward. So why don’t you just pull out whatever Hercules complex has crawled up your ass—”

  “I got you to forget about it last night.”

  She stutters out, “Excuse me?”

  “Yesterday evening,” I clarify. “I stopped you with my mouth. I’ll do it again.”

  Her expression is so frosty, I’m about to die of hypothermia just touching her. “Don’t you dare—”

  Fuck the cold.

  I cup her neck, crash against her lips, and crack through the ice.

  18

  Astor

  Screw common sense.

  Honestly, I should push Ben off and scream at him to go away. I’d draw the attention of all the people—reporters, co-workers, and opposing side alike—all around the corner, just waiting for the next juicy sound bite.
>
  But I want to bite Ben. I want him, here and now, when my anger and oppression can be unleashed and I can forget about what I know, what I have to do. I don’t have to think about the past and how Ben broke my heart, or the resulting betrayal. I’m a woman. Ben wants me now. I want sex. Hot, scorching, soul-crushing sex, and I can just be for once.

  I hate him. I despise him because I loved him. And I’ll always want him.

  I pull away from his delicious, earthy taste for mere seconds to say, “Follow me.”

  Ben’s eyes, a miraculous blue-green, are fogged and unfocused. “Huh?”

  “I know where to go.”

  “Here? Now?”

  I throw a look over my shoulder as I’m walking, as if to say, You’re hesitating now?

  Ben answers by placing a hand on my middle back and propelling us forward.

  We take the back stairwell, and he crushes me against the wall a few times, kissing, sucking, nipping, and it takes strength to push away and continue our ascent.

  So many attorneys take secret smoke breaks in these stairwells, or use them as short-cuts when they’re late for a hearing or trial. Too risky.

  When we reach the floor I want, I tell him to halt and be quiet, poke my head through, and see we’re alone.

  Still, to be sure, I keep our steps quiet over the carpeting, past the empty paralegal’s desk, and sneak into a side room.

  Ben takes in the large, wooden, desk, the open closet of black robes, the amount of books and the single couch and says, “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Judge Morcrest’s chambers.” I lay my lips on his, and he groans into my mouth.

  “This is…you could lose your job for this,” he says.

  “He’s on vacation. Nobody’s coming in or out of here for another week. And…” I peel away to flick the lock. “There’s that.”

  “I’ve never fucked in a chamber before.”

  I smile. Wickedly. “Neither have I.”

  “What’s gotten into you? I thought we were in a fight.” Ben seems to second-guess his question, because he shuts out any response with a kiss and pulls my blazer off my shoulders, locking my arms behind my back.

  “You decided to substitute our argument for sex,” I say against his lips. I can’t move, with my arms at my sides, but he takes advantage by biting my jaw line, kissing my neck, and taking my earlobe into his mouth.

  “Or add to it.” His voice and breath against my skin sends shivers to all the right places.

  “Prove it,” I say, my eyes cast to the ceiling. “I want you to fuck me. Hard.”

  Ben lifts from my neck, presumably to study my answer, but I don’t want him to.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m sure, Ben. I’m fucking sure. Now take off your pants already.”

  Before—when it had meant something—he’d been gentle. Sweet. I don’t want to remember that. I want Ben hard and ready and disaffected.

  This isn’t love.

  It’s forgetting with pleasure.

  Ben lets go of me long enough to pull off his shorts—no boxers—and toss them somewhere to the right. I’m too busy drinking him in to notice if it draped over a lamp or a first edition George Orwell.

  He’s as lengthy and gorgeous as I remember. And unfortunately, I can’t use my hands to explore him.

  I make the mistake of meeting Ben’s eyes, which contain too much emotion for me to want to decipher.

  He says, “Astor…”

  “No more words, Ben. No strings, no consequences. Okay?”

  Ben hesitates, like he’s unsure whether we should make the same mistake again. But he’s not dealing with a naive, clueless, twenty-year-old anymore.

  I tip my chin up in challenge. “You have me restrained. What are you going to do now?”

  Like liquid fire, his eyes go molten.

  Ben closes the gap and goes straight for my skirt, unzipping it roughly as I continue to stare him down. It pools at my feet, my heels spearing it as I regain balance. Ben looks down, sees the black lace of my underwear, and smiles.

  One by one, he undoes the buttons on my shirt, exposing a matching, scalloped lace bra. He peels the lace back, but leaves the underwire where it is, so my breasts are exposed and pert, nipples instantly hard as they hit the cool air.

  Ben goes to his knees. I close my eyes and tip my head back in anticipation, and when I feel his tongue around my hip-bone, I moan in acquiescence.

  The tearing sound, the sudden yank and jerk, have my eyes popping open.

  “Ben—“

  He stands, my flimsy underwear in his teeth. I open my mouth to communicate my approval, but he doesn’t give me time. He flips me around and bends me over the arm of the couch.

  “You want a quick fuck?” he asks behind me. I hear the sounds of crumpling and unwrapping, and spend a few wasteful seconds wondering when he scrounged around for a condom before answering.

  “Yes.”

  “You want it rough?”

  I don’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  His next statement is in the form of a thrust. I cry out before he reaches around and presses my underwear to my mouth to muffle anything else.

  I’m bent over the arm of the couch, my face is mashed against the velvet cushion as he pounds, my arms are still encased in my blazer’s restraints.

  I’ve never, in my life, been so turned on.

  I feel every inch of him against the walls I’ve erected, both mentally and physically. My mouth pools with saliva as I forget to swallow around the lace, but my vocal cords do all the heavy lifting.

  Words are pointless, useless, so I moan and wriggle and try to take him deeper. Ben’s hands cup my hips and squeeze, the sounds of our skin smacking like our own musical accompaniment to a sexual percussion.

  “Astor…fuck…I’m gonna…”

  Guess I’m not the only insanely horny one in this moment.

  I can’t speak. Instead I close my eyes in bliss and arch my back, letting him know I’m getting there, too.

  Faster, harder, he plunges, and I feel him all the way to my heart. But—forget that—focus on the pleasure.

  Focus on his dick.

  Inside me. Wet from me. About to spill—

  Ben groans at the same time I reach my cliff’s edge.

  We fall together, he and I, and when I’m catching my breath, when he’s pulling out of me, I wonder how it’s possible to feel so connected to a man who touched me with nothing but his cock during sex.

  There was no stroking, no sighing, nothing to indicate anything other than a calculated, baseless fuck. He wasn’t on top of me, I wasn’t on top of him. We didn’t watch each other as we came.

  So why, then, does this feel like so much more?

  I spit out my panties and straighten, noticing my nipples feel a little raw from scraping over couch fabric over and over again. My own fucked up version of a hickey, I suppose.

  “You get what you want out of that?” Ben helps pull my blazer all the way off, and I resist the urge to turn and fall into his hold, to catch my breath on his chest, feel his heartbeat in my ear.

  “And then some,” I say over my shoulder as I bend down for my skirt.

  He backs away without a word, and slips on his shorts as I’m pulling on my shirt. His cheeks are flushed like he just ran a few yards, and when he catches me looking, I’m thinking he’s up for another round.

  “I can’t,” I say before my vagina betrays me.

  Ben scrapes a hand through his hair. “Okay.”

  I follow up with an even better line. “I have to go.”

  “I may have to come with you,” he says, and at my questioning look, he adds, “I don’t know how the hell to get out of here.”

  “I can show you a private exit,” I say. “You ready?”

  “Sure.”

  If he’s dubious over this after-sex talk, he’s not showing it, a habit from his slutty days that I appreciate.

  When we’re taking the stairs, there’s a few moment
s where I swear I feel his hand hovering near my back, but he never makes contact.

  “I’m still worried about you,” Ben says. “Chavez was making a point, coming to you instead of anyone else.”

  “He won’t hurt me,” I reply with confidence. “Since I finally have what he wants.”

  “And what’s that?”

  We round for another flight of stairs down, but Ben’s attention won’t divert away from me.

  “You don’t want to know,” I say.

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Clearly, I do.”

  “You made it clear last night, and this morning”—don’t think about his mouth don’t think about his mouth—“that you want to be as far away from this case as possible.”

  “I said I want you to be—”

  “I can find Ryan, okay?”

  Ben comes to a sudden halt, and I have to backtrack up a few steps to meet him.

  “Astor,” he says, in that low, snarling tone of his, “I thought I told you not to do that.”

  “Yes, because I always submit to what you say.” I peel my lips back at my own realization. “What just happened up there not withstanding.”

  But Ben doesn’t follow up with a predicted snipe. He’s too busy trying to read my expression, drinking in any wayward clues.

  “Nah,” he says at last. “You don’t know where to find him.”

  “Uh, what gives you that impression?”

  “I just know.”

  With infuriating ease, he brushes by me. “Where’d you say that exit was?”

  “That’s it?” I say to his retreating back, my voice echoing in the stairwell. “You find me, fuck me, and now that you’ve got whatever answer you wanted, you’re gone?”

  Ben spins around on the bottom step. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Find, finger, fuck, forget. In that order.”

  I catch my breath at the unexpected, jarring hurt in the pit of my stomach—the one spot I can’t harden. “It’s how we both feel, Ben. Why complicate it?”

  “You always think you know everything.” Ben takes a few steps closer to where I’m standing. “How I feel, how you need to feel, what the Delaneys went through, what could happen to Ryan if you put him up on display for everyone to see.” When Ben’s one step below me, he stops, so we’re eye-to-eye. “You may know a lot, Astor, but you need to learn to fucking care.”