Chapter 9
nine
. . .
By the time I got back to my Benz, I was still hard as a fucking rock.
Hard enough that sitting down felt impossible.
I shut the door, dropped my head back against the seat, and let out one slow breath through my nose like that was supposed to do anything useful.
It didn’t.
Talia was still all over me.
I could still taste her. Mint, liquor, gloss, and something warmer underneath that had been hers alone. I could still feel the way her mouth had opened for me, the way her body softened first and then answered, the little shift in her when my hand moved over her waist and thigh.
And her ass.
The weight of it had filled my lap like it belonged there, soft and heavy enough to make every decent thought in me start looking for the exit.
That kind of ass a man felt with his whole body, not just his hands.
Even through her dress, through my clothes, I had known exactly what I was holding back from.
Every time she shifted, every time that softness pressed down against me, my dick had gone harder, meaner, like my body was offended by all that restraint.
And then that low damn against my mouth had gone straight into me and made a home there.
I closed my eyes, which was dumb as hell.
Now I could see her again. That dress high on her thighs. The silver studs catching light whenever she moved. Her mouth swollen from mine. Her body settled in my lap like a test I had barely passed. The way her nipples had tightened under the denim when I looked too long and she knew I was looking.
“Fuck,” I muttered to the empty car.
My body didn’t care that we had been in public. Didn’t care that I had done the right thing, kept my hands where they could still pass for respectful, and let that woman leave without giving either one of us a reason to question our home training.
My body only knew she had been close.
Warm. Soft. Opening for me in the small ways a woman did when she trusted the moment and was still deciding what to do with the man in it.
That part was going to stay with me.
The phone lit in the console.
I looked down.
A woman from the social circle I vaguely knew had reacted to a story from earlier. Another message sat under it from somebody I’d gone out with twice and never followed through on a third time.
I stared at both notifications for a second and felt absolutely nothing move in me.
That was new.
Or maybe it wasn’t new. Maybe it was just inconvenient as hell.
A week ago, I might have opened one out of boredom. Might have let a little harmless back-and-forth stretch into something with no real weight behind it. That kind of thing was easy when nobody had your attention for real.
Tonight, easy had no appeal.
Not because I had turned into some saint overnight. Not because one woman kissed me and suddenly every other woman in the city lost her face. Life didn’t work like that.
But attention did, and mine had gone somewhere.
I picked up the phone, cleared both notifications locked it and tossed it back into the console untouched.
On the drive home, the city still had that holiday-weekend looseness to it.
Fireworks kept breaking open over different pockets of sky, red and gold flaring between buildings before falling away again.
At a light near the bridge, a group of people spilled out of a bar laughing too loud, one of them holding sparklers they had no business lighting that close to parked cars.
I barely saw any of it.
My mind stayed in that corner booth.
Her hand twisted in my shirt. Her body shifting closer when I kissed her. The way she said my name while trying to act like she still had control over the night.
That was what messed with me.
The kiss had been good. Better than good. But it was the fit of it that stayed with me, the way my body seemed to recognize hers quicker than made sense, like it had been waiting all week for the rest of me to catch up.
At home, I let myself in, dropped my keys in the tray by the door, and stood in the darkened quiet with the city throwing weak light through the windows.
Usually, the condo settled me.
Tonight, it felt too still.
I walked straight to the bedroom, stripping as I went. Tee first. Then jeans. Then briefs kicked somewhere toward the hamper because precision was nowhere near where my mind was living.
The shower helped for about two minutes.
Then hot water only made it easier to think.
Easier to picture what her skin might feel like without the dress between us.
Easier to imagine those thick thighs opening under my hands instead of shifting under a table in a lounge where I had to act like my whole body wasn’t trying to get involved.
Easier to imagine her in my bed, hair slightly mussed, gold still at her ears, mouth swollen from kissing, finally enough room for me to take my time.
That was the part that got me.
Taking my time with her for real.
Peeling that dress over her head slow. Seeing those amber brown eyes lower to slits.
Kissing my way down that soft light-brown skin.
Dragging my mouth over her stomach, the inside of her thighs, listening to her breathing change while I put those hands she had already clocked to better use and held her open for me.
I wanted to lick her sweetness until she started shaking.
Wanted to hear what she sounded like when being composed stopped being an option. Wanted to feel her fingers clutching at my head, her thighs tightening by my ears, her voice going rough when she said my name because she needed something and finally quit trying to sound like she didn’t.
I braced one hand against the tile and told myself to stop.
I didn’t.
My mind went lower.
Talia on my bed with her legs spread for me, pussy wet and open, already clenching before I even put my dick in her.
Me pushing in slow at first because I knew I’d be thick enough to make her take a breath.
Me watching her face while I worked her open inch by inch until that first tight pull gave way to heat and slick and the kind of little moan that would go straight to my ego and make me fuck her harder than I meant to.
“Shit,” I muttered, forehead to the tile.
By the time I got out of the shower, dried off, and sat on the edge of the bed in nothing but a towel, I was still hard and meaner with it than before.
My phone lit on the nightstand.
Another woman.
This one from the app.
Khaliyah: You disappeared. You alive?
I looked at it and almost laughed. Technically, yes, I was alive. In every other way that mattered tonight, not really.
I dropped the phone facedown and leaned back on my palms, staring at the ceiling while my body kept arguing for what my pride wanted to call discipline. I could leave it alone. Go to sleep half aching and act like restraint had won something.
That lasted maybe thirty seconds.
Then I reached for my baby oil, wrapped a hand around my dick, and gave up the performance.
The first stroke nearly pissed me off. It was too much sensation with too much of her still in my head.
Talia in that denim dress. Her mouth opening under mine.
The shiver that ran through her when I touched her waist. The way she looked at me right before she kissed me back that second time, like she already knew she was about to let me have more than she planned.
“Fuck.”
I closed my fist tighter and let the fantasy take what it wanted, dragging me out of the lounge, out of that booth, out of the dim room with people sitting too close, and into the only place my mind wanted her.
My bed.
Her on her back against dark sheets, denim gone, jewelry still on because I knew damn well I’d like the look of gold against her skin while I put my mouth on her.
My hands spreading her thighs. My tongue dragging through her wet pussy slow enough to make her curse at me.
My thumb on her clit while I licked deeper, listening to her lose the last of that polished little control she wore so well.
That was the part my body grabbed onto.
Making her cum hard enough to forget herself. Hard enough to start talking reckless. Hard enough that when I finally climbed over her and put my dick in her, she’d already be shaking and too sensitive, still opening for me anyway because she wanted it that bad.
My hand moved faster.
I could see her pulling me down by my shoulders. Feel the drag of her nails over my back. Hear the way she’d say my name if I was really in her, really giving it to her, making good on every dirty thing that had been sitting between us all week.
Then I sat her on top.
Talia above me, hair a little wild, gold flashing at her ears while she sank down on my dick slow and looked me dead in my face while she took every inch. My hands on her hips first, then her ass, then sliding up her waist and over her breasts while she rocked herself stupid on me.
That did it.
“Fuck, Talia.”
I came hard enough to feel it in my stomach, my fist still moving through it because the image in my head had not let go yet. Her mouth. Her thighs. Her pussy gripping down on me in my imagination like it already knew what to do with me.
Afterward, I sat there breathing in the dark with my sticky hand slack around myself and no real relief in it.
It helped my body. It did nothing for the wanting.
I cleaned up, got into bed, and stared at the city for a long time before sleep finally showed up.
I woke up with her still there.
Not in some dreamy, romantic way.
In the practical, male, aggravating way desire stayed in the body after you’d already tried to handle it and failed to make it leave.
The first thing I thought about was her laugh.
The second was the way she had pressed into me in that booth.
The third was what her pussy might feel like around me once I finally got the chance to stop imagining and find out.
That was enough to get me out of bed.
I threw on shorts and a black performance tee, then headed downstairs to the gym before I could lie there acting foolish.
Sunday mornings in the building gym were usually quiet. A couple on treadmills. Somebody half committed to stretching. One man lifting like his ex had started dating a trainer and he needed the world corrected.
I put my Bose headphones on, started with the bike, and tried to sweat her out.
That didn’t work either.
By the time I moved to weights, all I had managed to do was give my body another reason to think about how she’d looked in that dress. The hem high on her thighs. The denim hugging her ass. The gold at her throat. Her mouth going soft right before I kissed her.
A woman from the building I recognized in that loose, elevator-small-talk way smiled at me from the cable machine.
I nodded back and kept moving.
A week ago, I might have noticed more. This morning, she barely registered.
My phone buzzed twice on the bench beside me between sets. I checked it, grateful for anything that wasn’t my own imagination acting like it had a right to ruin me before breakfast.
Ciara in the family group chat, sending blurry pictures from the night before.
My niece, Ari, holding a sparkler with the expression of a child one second away from disaster. Mama in a lawn chair. Somebody’s plate balanced on their knee.
Then a separate text from a woman I’d gone for drinks with once in May.
Tish: You ever plan on taking me to that steak place or you retired? lol
I looked at it for a second, then typed the first honest thing that came to mind.
I’m off the market for the moment.
I stared at the message after I sent it.
That was stronger wording than I usually gave people who hadn’t earned it.
But it was true enough, because my attention had already committed somewhere, and I wasn’t the kind of man who needed to keep a line warm just to reassure himself he still could.
Tish:
By the time I finished the workout, showered again, and made coffee in my own kitchen, the condo felt more like mine again. Sun coming through the windows. Countertop cold under my palm. Quiet settling in the way I needed it to.
I stood there in gray sweats and a white tank, coffee in hand, and let myself replay the night one more time without fighting it.
Then I set the coffee down and reached for my phone. Because now there was the other part.
The next move.
I wasn’t interested in dragging this out through more little stolen windows and half-hours.
Not after the Velvet Room. Not after that kiss.
Not after the way she fit against me like we had already skipped past some of the usual awkwardness and gotten to the part where two grown people knew they liked each other and needed the room to find out how much.
Me: Last night wasn’t enough.
Then I added:
Now I need time with you I don’t have to cut short.
When do I get that?
I read it once, then sent it before I could soften anything into something less honest.