by Noir, Roxie
I promise that when I get home I’ll immediately put a profile on every dating site in existence just so I can meet someone else and forget about this inappropriate girl, and then she looks at me and tilts her head slightly and smiles.
“Oh hi,” Thalia says, folding her arms in front of herself, like she’s self-conscious. “I didn’t know you were coming. And I didn’t see you there, I was just walking to… that way.”
She nods vaguely behind me, so I turn and look, and it’s just as well because her folded arms only give her more cleavage, her breasts straining at the already-unbuttoned vest like they’re planning a jailbreak.
There’s a hallway. It looks mostly dark. I don’t know where it goes. I don’t think she does, either.
“Walking to that way, of course,” I tease. “Don’t let me stop your walk. To that way.”
“You’re not going to offer to come with me to keep me safe?”
My skin prickles, my defenses slightly up, because I don’t want a replay of the last time we talked. I didn’t even do anything besides attend a concert this time.
“Are there many unknown threats back in the mystery hallway?”
“If I knew, they wouldn’t be unknown, would they?”
“Touché.”
She’s got black eyeliner with dramatic wings and red lipstick, and she reminds me of the night we met, the only other time I’ve seen her look anything like this though there was no fishnet or cleavage then.
“What’s your costume?” she asks, arms still folded in front of her.
I look down at myself: boots, jeans, and a t-shirt that’s got a drawing of a bear and some trees on it.
“A professor who doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb at an undergrad event,” I say, pushing a hand through my hair. “How am I doing?”
“If you were about fifty percent drunker I think you’d blend right in,” she says, laughing. “At least you didn’t wear spectacles and bring a briefcase.”
“They’re not spectacles, they’re glasses,” I correct her, smiling. “Dr. Schwartz assured me they were very cool.”
“Dr. Schwartz wasn’t wrong,” she says.
“Was he right?”
She pauses for a moment, glance flicking away, her lips twitching like she’s about to either laugh or say something, and I don’t know which.
“He wasn’t wrong,” she says again, and now she’s laughing.
“Are you wearing a costume, or is this just Saturday night?” I ask, risking a look at her again.
“Oh, God no,” she says quickly, taking a step back, looking down at herself. “It’s a costume, and it’s a little more than I thought it would be because I told my roommates —”
She pauses for half a breath.
“— they kind of took control of things since I’ve been so busy,” she finishes.
“Who are you?”
That gets a smile, a sparkle in her eye.
“Guess,” she tells me, and the lights go low again.
I try to take her in as cooly and clinically as possible: shorts that look like they were once slacks, fishnets, the vest, the sport coat.
No idea, and then my eye catches on whatever it is in her pocket, and I point.
“May I?” I ask, and she nods.
It’s a long cylinder, paper covered, and as soon as I take it from her pocket I know it by its scent.
Thalia lifts one eyebrow.
“It’s just a cigar,” she says, and there’s a tease in the curve of her lips and in the way she’s looking at me, and instantly, I know who she is.
“Sigmund Freud,” I say, flipping the cigar through my fingers. “If Freud was in a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Congrats on being the first,” she says, and I slide the cigar back into her pocket.
“I wouldn’t have gotten it without the clue.”
“No one else got it with the clue,” she says.
I try not to imagine who else has been looking at Thalia, touching the cigar, trying to guess who she is. It’s absolutely none of my business but the thought of some drunk frat boy ogling her and asking if she’s the sexy Monopoly Man makes my stomach curdle.
“Do I win something?” I ask. “Free psychoanalysis?”
Thalia laughs, then steps forward, and now she’s even closer. Too close, close enough that it sends my pulse skipping and racing, and she puts both hands on my temples.
And stares deeply into my eyes.
All my alarms go off at her touch. All of them. She shouldn’t be doing this and I should be stopping her, but she is and I don’t.
“I was expecting to lie on a couch,” is what I say.
“Shh, I’m analyzing,” she says. “And it turns out —”
“Vellllcome back to ze second portion of our eeevening!” announces Mike, and we both look up, to the balcony, where his voice is booming from though we still can’t see him. “Next, I vill be playing anozer delightful piece by Johann Sebastian Bach…”
She’s still looking at me, dark eyes made wicked by black wings, by the shadows of the organ loft, by the low lights and the moonbeams just barely coming in through high windows.
I don’t hear what Mike announces. It’s another organ piece, the opus and movement or whatever lost on me anyway.
“It’s your mother’s fault,” she says quickly, the moment he stops talking. “Also, I’m sorry for last week.”
“What’s my mother’s fault?” I ask, my voice hushed in the quiet, and Thalia just shakes her head.
“Forget it, it was a dumb psychotherapy joke,” she says, taking her hands off my face. “Freud had a penchant for blaming everyone’s problems on their mothers —”
Then the organ notes hit, filling the room, and the rest of her sentence is lost, her red lips still moving but her voice drowned as she scrunches her face quickly, shoots a glare over our heads at the organ loft.
“I’m sorry!” she shouts. Someone to our right turns, looks at us. A run of organ notes ripples through the air between, and I bend down, my lips an inch from her ear.
“What for?” I ask.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thalia
I close my eyes. I pull my jacket tighter around myself, as if it can erase the fact that I walked over to Caleb and struck up this conversation with my tits and ass basically out.
Until he looked at me, I didn’t feel almost naked. Slightly underdressed, yes; not wearing as many clothes as I normally would, yes. But the second he looked at me I suddenly felt like I’d gone on a romp through a Victoria’s Secret catalog and was now wearing the barest minimum of clothing that could be considered clothing.
I stand on my toes, put one hand on his shoulder to steady myself.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch last week when you walked me home,” I say, as succinctly as possible.
I meant to do this in a reasonable tone of voice, while the intermission was going on, but it’s like I hate making things not-awkward.
“You weren’t,” he says, his voice deep and rumbly, cutting through the organ music, both of them raising goosebumps on my skin, making me feel like I could float away.
I tighten my grip on his shoulder — his hard, muscled shoulder — and try not to think about it.
“I kind of was though,” I say, still half-shouting to be heard, even into his ear like this. “I didn’t have to say it that way, I was just tired and stressed and hungry and —”
I wobble slightly on my toes, and then his hand is on my waist, steadying me. I catch another glare from the same girl as before.
“And felt like I was taking advantage?” he asks, removing the hand.
“What? No,” I say, now to his face, now shouting, and now this girl is full-on glaring me down, lasers practically shooting from her eyes.
I am fucking this up. I’m not good at apologizing, I’m not good at talking about my emotions, and I’m really not good at talking to men I’m interested in, so this is some sort of horrible hat t
rick of Thalia Makes Things Weird.
Caleb just raises his eyebrows. I glance around, organ music humming and soaring around me, and spot a door in the wood paneling of the entryway.
Without thinking twice, I make for it, stepping over a few people and dodging around a few more. I look over my shoulder just enough to make sure that Caleb’s following me, and sure enough, he is.
The door’s unlocked. I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be. I’m altogether sure that I shouldn’t be opening it and going through it, but I do it anyway and find myself in a short, narrow hallway that leads to a tall, narrow staircase, a bannister running the length of one side.
Caleb steps in behind me. He closes the door, and suddenly the organ music is dimmed, louder coming down the stairs than through the door.
I take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry I was a jerk on Friday night,” I start over, moving closer. “I still think that what I said was valid, but I didn’t have to —"
He steps closer, leans in.
“—I didn’t have to be an asshole about it,” I say into his ear.
“I think I deserved it,” he says. His lips brush my ear, and my eyes flutter closed.
Don’t, I tell myself. Don’t do a single thing that isn’t apologizing for your behavior.
As if I didn’t seek him out. As if I didn’t drag him into this tiny, cramped back staircase.
“No, you were right,” I tell him, automatically reaching out, steadying myself against his shoulder. “I found you at the banquet. I kissed you later. I gave you a bottle of wine.”
“But I’m the one who should know better,” he says, and then his hand is on mine, holding it against his warm chest. My heart beats harder, faster.
“You think I don’t?”
“I shouldn’t be giving you rides and walking you home,” he goes on. “Pretending that those things are perfectly fine and innocent, because they’re not.”
We shift in the tiny space and suddenly our bodies are touching from shoulder to hip, the jolt of his heat like an electric current.
“We shouldn’t be seeing each other at all,” I tell him, even as I close my eyes, press myself into him so softly I can tell myself I’m not doing anything, my lips millimeters from his ear.
“No,” he says. “The more I see you the harder it is to pretend I don’t like you.”
A hand on my hip, his fingers touching bare skin above my too-small shorts.
“And the harder it is to pretend I don’t want you,” he whispers.
My heart’s beating so hard and fast that it feels like my ribcage is rattling in my body. Outside and from above, the organ hums thickly, surrounding us.
“What if it were my fault?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
I know I should walk away. I know that. I know Nathaniel got expelled for sexual misconduct and while I have no intention of making porn, I’m fairly certain that sleeping with my professor also falls into that category.
I know he could get fired and his career could be over.
I know a million things wrong with this scenario, and not one of them stops me.
“I mean,” I say, and plant a kiss on his neck, right below his jaw. His fingers curl into my spine.
“What if —" another kiss, higher up, “— it were my fault?”
The last kiss lands on his jawline, right below his ear, my fingers now woven through his hair, his slight stubble sharp on my lips.
He moves his hand until his palm is flat on my back, in the space between the shorts and my vest, underneath the jacket I’m still wearing. He swallows hard, his breath on my neck.
Then his hand is on my face, his thumb stroking my jaw, and he pulls me back, his green eyes nearly black in the dark, his lips parted, his gaze roaming my face. I don’t breathe. I don’t think my heart beats.
And he kisses me.
He kisses me so softly and gently that, for a moment, I think I’m imagining it. The kiss is over almost as soon as it starts, the lightest touch, but he nuzzles his nose against mine and he’s still holding my face, his thumb on my cheekbone now, and he kisses me again.
Still gentle, but firmer, harder. He pulls away, both hands in my hair, leans his forehead against mine. We’re both breathing like we’ve been underwater for minutes on end, our eyes closed as our mouths find each other again and again.
With each coupling there’s less gentleness, more need. I wind my hands through his hair and pull his face to mine. He pushes me backward, walking with me until I’m up against the bannister that runs the length of this short hallway.
He grabs my hips, running his hand up my waist, under my jacket, until his fingers hit my ribcage, his mouth rough on mine, his erection pressing against my hips, pinning me against the bannister.
This time I don’t panic when I realize what it is. This time a delicate, secret warmth blossoms inside me and I curl my fingers into a fist around his shirt, bite his bottom lip between my teeth.
“Your fault,” he whispers, teasing. “What else are you going to make me do, Thalia?”
“Kiss me again,” I say, the only thing that comes to mind as words.
I want more. I want so much more but the words stick in my brain, refuse to come out in sentences.
“Done,” he says, his mouth already on mine, seeking, plundering.
Then, his lips still on mine: “What else?”
I want you to take my clothes off right here and ravish me and make me come and shout and scream like you said you could two months ago and I want you naked and on top of me and oh, God, I want everything.
“Take my jacket off,” I whisper, and as the words leave my mouth he’s already pushing it over my shoulders, lips on my jaw, on my neck, on my now-bare shoulders as it falls to the floor, his arms around my waist, pulling me into him.
“What else?” he murmurs, and I can hear the smile playing across his lips.
I reach behind myself, grab the bannister, hop up, my knees now on either side of his hips as I balance, precarious.
“Come closer,” I say.
Caleb moves an inch, one hand flattened on the wall next to my head, a teasing eyebrow raised.
“Closer,” I tell him. “Closer. Closer.”
I pull him in until my legs are wrapped around his hips and his hardness is against my heat, making me grip the bannister in both hands as he kisses me and his body moves against mine, hungry and needy and wild.
“What else?” he growls.
“Touch me,” I say.
He lights two fingers on one shoulder, draws a slow circle.
“Here?” he murmurs.
I grab his wrist, drag his hand to my chest where a pushup bra and a pair of socks are giving me much more cleavage than I actually have. For the record, the socks are clean.
“Here,” I say, and he groans, both hands closing around me, cock throbbing. “And here,” I murmur into his mouth as we kiss again, unbuttoning the last few buttons on the vest.
His mouth leaves mine as he opens it, traveling to my neck, my shoulder, my collarbone. He slides his hand under one bra strap, twists it around his finger, tugs lightly.
“Like this?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whisper, and he pulls the shiny black strap over my shoulder, onto my arm, and then my nipple is out and he slides his thumb over it, the rough pad skipping along as I arch my back and gasp.
“Jesus,” he says, the word half a whisper and half a moan, the fingers of his other hand already under my other bra strap. “And like this?”
I can only nod, and then he has both my breasts in his hands and he’s pressing himself into me, groaning, and he’s pinching my nipples between his fingers and his very hard cock is rubbing against me, finding my clit even through layers of fabric.
He kisses me again and this time I moan into his mouth, wrapping my legs around him, sliding my hands under his shirt and along the warm, rigid muscles of his torso.
“And you want me to touch you like this?
” he rasps, the organ music still soaring, his fingers pinching my nipples, rolling them as he bucks against me.
“Please,” is all I can say.
“What else, Thalia?” he asks.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, already touching him, my hands under his shirt, fingers skimming along the waistband of his jeans, and Caleb grins.
“Always,” he says, thumbs sliding over my nipples, sending a spasm through my body. “Thalia, you can touch me whenever and wherever you want. My body is yours to plunder.”
“Plunder?” I ask. “Are you sure?”
“Do your worst,” he says, and slowly, carefully, I slide the flat of my hand along the length of his clothed erection as he groans.
His head finds my shoulder and his hands find my thighs, clamped around them and he pushes himself into me and groans again like he’s lost.
So I do it again, and then again, and I’m definitely not a dick expert but I think we might be working with a lot here.
I expect the thought to make me anxious, given my virginal status.
It does not, so I pull on the button of his jeans until it pops open.
Before I can grab his zipper, his hand catches my wrist.
“I thought you were mine to plunder,” I say.
“I am,” he says, and slides his hands up my thighs, palms skipping and catching on the fishnet. “But I also believe in chivalry, and most particularly in ladies coming first.”
With that he grabs the waistband of my shorts, pulls me off the bannister, lowers his mouth to mine.
“Can I make you come?” he asks, fingers already dipping below my waistband, teasing at the elastic of my thong. “Please?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and almost instantly I’m undone and he slides his hand past the garter belt that Margaret got me a discount on, under my thong and then his fingers are exploring me, his mouth on mine, his other hand thumbing my nipple.
“You’re wet as hell,” he whispers, catching my lip between his teeth. “Thalia, you’re so —”