Zelda
Ican’t stop thinking about him on the way home from my shift. It’s like a compulsion.
I know where this goes.
I know where taking a chance on a tattooed guy with an air of danger leads.
It doesn’t lead anywhere good, and last time I got caught up in a mess like that, it almost derailed my entire life.
My lungs constrict at the thought of it. They’re old memories, but they still come fast and threatening. It’s hard to shake them off.
But I do it. I push those thoughts aside. I lock the door behind me and make sure the door to the main house is also locked.
Then I race to my bedroom.
It’s a neat space with two windows, both of them covered by sheer curtains that aren’t exactly opaque. They screen most of the room from anybody who might be walking by. Not that many people casually walk through my parents’ yard.
I go past the bed to the dresser and pull open the top drawer.
There are several layers of folded panties and bras to dig through before I find it—the little vibrator Carly gave me for my birthday a few years ago. I tried it once or twice, then relegated it to my underwear drawer. I didn’t have much to fantasize about, I guess.
Until the club.
Now this purple, silicone-covered toy seems like the best solution to…
To whatever’s happening between my legs and pulsating up into my core, which has become urgent. Urgent in a way I don’t think I’ve experienced since college, if then.
I rinse the dust away in the bathroom and come back to my bed, stripping off my work dress and panties, unhooking my bra and dropping it to the floor beside the rest of the clothes.
Then I slip myself between the covers and spread my legs wide, finding my clit with my fingers a second time, rubbing in slow, small circles.
The silence of the house above me tells me that my parents aren’t home, so I close my eyes and, for the first time all day, allow myself to think of Sawyer without any interruption.
His eyes on me in the club. The way he spoke to me.
I’m not very nice.
I don’t know why that turns me on so much.
I don’t know why I want to find out what it’s like to be with him. To be with a man who knows he’s not kind, who admits it in a club.
In my head, I don’t go home with Carly. Instead, I go home with Sawyer. I don’t know where he lives or what kind of place it is, but I picture somewhere spare and rough, a bed against one wall, but the furniture is the least of my concerns.
He would wreck me there.
He would be rough.
He would handle me, and I want to be handled.
I’m fucking myself with my fingers, and it’s all because I want to be fucking Sawyer.
The thought is so dirty that it makes me gasp, and then it makes me come hard, stifling my moans with my hand, hips rising up and down as I go over the edge and fall, fall, fall.
When it’s over, I collapse against the bed, my body in flames and my mind already ashes.
Something has to change.
A man like Sawyer would be a risk. I’ve taken risks before, and I got hurt.
But I can’t do this forever.
The pastel-painted walls of my room close in.
I need some fresh air.
But first—
A shower. Fast. Four minutes flat.
At my dresser I pull out my favorite pair of yoga pants, a tank top, and a long-sleeve shirt that will be perfect for the cooling May evening.
Above me, the front door of the house opens and closes. The text from my mom comes in a few seconds later.
Are you home?
She can see my car parked in the driveway.
Going out for a walk. Be back later.
How much later, I don’t know.