28. Chapter 22
Dashiell
I am about eighty percent certain that the name of the guy I’m kissing is Eddie.
He showed up during the second song Kenny and I danced to, right around the time that I deliberately lost my shirt.
Up until then, I had been debriefing Kenny on the whole Lorenzo situation (minus some of the more frightening details about how much danger I might be in).
When Eddie showed up behind me like a wall of horny muscle, Kenny got a near-wicked look of delight in his eyes.
“I have an idea,” he said.
“Why does that scare me!” I shouted over the music, only vaguely aware of Eddie.
“Can I dance with you?” Eddie shouted into my ear. “I’m Eddie, by the way.”
“Sure!” I shouted back, not really paying attention to him. “Thanks for asking!”
He proceeded to grind on me from behind while I mostly ignored him and talked to Kenny—that’s how things worked at the club, sometimes. Hot strangers will come up and dance with you and you just have to carry on your conversation.
“So you want to fuck Lorenzo,” Kenny shouted.
“Well, yeah.”
“And he clearly wants to fuck you.”
“I’m not so sure anymore!”
“Girl, he’s been staring over at you this whole time.”
I had noticed that, though I wasn’t about to admit it.
“You said you have an idea?” I shouted.
Eddie held a bottle up. “Poppers?”
“Ooh, yes!” Kenny cried, reaching for it and inhaling lustfully. Then, “You said your name is Eddie, right? You’re hot as fuck.”
Eddie’s hand slipped down my stomach, a pleasant, hot feeling, but it didn’t do anything for me beyond physical stimulation. I felt no lust for him, just normal, run-of-the-mill, “oh there’s a half-naked man touching me and I said yes” type of arousal.
“Thanks!” Eddie shouted back. “So are you! Are y’all a couple?”
“Jesus Christ, no,” Kenny said. “Isn’t there some saying about how you can’t fill one hole with another?”
Eddie laughed loudly. “I don’t know if they say that, but they should.”
“Would you want to help us out with something?” Kenny said, pressing in close so that he could shout right into Eddie’s ear.
“What do you need?” Eddie asked. “If it’s an IRS question, I’m off the clock right now.”
“Huh?” I shouted back at him, turning my head to look up at him—fucking hell, he was hot. Like a wall of abs from chin to navel.
“I’m a tax lawyer, duh,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, before pulling the poppers back out and taking a deep whiff.
God, I love San Francisco, and god, I love queer men.
Kenny laid the plan out in ninety seconds: Operation Everyone Gets Their Way. “You see,” he explained, “Dash here is in a weird situationship with that hot guy over there—”
“The hot one in the suit in the VIP section who looks like he could kill me?”
“Yeah, that one. Well, Hot VIP Guy says that he can’t lay a finger on Dash—which is annoying, because he literally sucked one of Dash’s fingers earlier—”
“That’s hot as fuck.”
“I know, right?”
“It was,” I affirmed, pressing my ass mechanically back against Eddie’s bulge.
“And Dash here is hornier than a cat in heat—”
“Hey!”
“No offense, girl, but it’s true.”
“Point taken.” I was practically panting for Lorenzo, anyway.
“And Dash and Lorenzo are into some real kinky shit,” Kenny continued.
“No judgment, though—I love to be tossed around—and I was just thinking how perfect it would be if Dash could get what he wants (dick) and Lorenzo could see exactly what he’s missing (Dash getting dick).
But, oh no!, wherever is Dash going to find a willing dick for this scenario? ”
Jesus, Kenny, I thought. It was sounding like a classic Kenny scheme. I was intrigued, and a little frightened.
“Well…” Eddie said.
“And then you sashayed over!” Kenny crowed.
“I don’t sashay.”
“Whatever you say, king. How would you like to fuck my friend while his fake boyfriend watches?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Eddie, all sweat and muscles and seemingly good humor. “This isn’t like a weird drug thing?” Eddie asked.
“Nah,” I said.
“Bet. I’m always happy to help a friend make a point.”
That settled it. No strings attached. No judgment. No weirdness. He was just a guy at a club who liked kissing strangers and was happy to help out. I liked him immediately because of it.
There’s something clean about a person who is willing to own exactly what they want and feel no shame for it. No subtext, no ulterior motive, no questioning whether this’ll become a thing or not. Just two bodies agreeing to have a good time.
That’s the beauty of casual sex, I think. It can mean absolutely nothing except having fun. There’s something powerful about it, honestly, about owning your body and your needs and your pleasure so unapologetically.
Objectively speaking, Eddie is a good kisser. If I weren’t continuously looking up at the VIP section, it would be easy for me to lose myself in his warm lips, his tongue. But considering the situation, the kissing really just feels like a means to an end.
“It’s working!” Kenny crows. He, like Eddie and me, has gone shirtless by now, and is putting his Go-go dancer body to work, gyrating and thrashing artfully on the dance floor with us.
Multiple guys have already come up to him and tried to get his number, and instead he’s pressed his business card into their hands and told them to make an appointment with his assistant (I’m tempted to tell them that he doesn’t have an assistant—it’s just him with a different email account—but I’m too distracted by my own mission).
“How do you know it’s working?”
“Lorenzo’s staring! No, don’t look! You have to seem interested in Eddie.”
Eddie pulls back just enough to grin at both of us. I would have to be an actual robot not to notice how hot he is—tall, broad, built like a wall of granite and with the vibe of someone who likes to spend his weekends outdoors and shirtless.
“For the record,” he says, “I’m having a genuinely great time whether your fake boyfriend is into this or not.”
“Good,” I say. “Now kiss my neck and make it look really horny.”
I let him pull me back in. Honestly, it’s good. A warm mouth, strong hands, the specific uncomplicated pleasure of a stranger who wants nothing from you except what’s happening right now. No stakes. No history. Just two bodies exploring and enjoying each other.
It’s fun—and I’m not ashamed of that. There’s nothing wrong with this being fun. If Lorenzo Diamante didn’t exist, I’d probably take Eddie home with me tonight and have an excellent and uncomplicated time with him.
But what makes this the most fun is that it has an audience, and the audience, tonight, is the whole point.
Eddie’s tongue is searching for my uvula when Lorenzo appears on the dance floor, sweat gleaming on his brow, his suit jacket left behind somewhere.
He looks positively edible in his white dress shirt, open at the neck, taut across his hairy chest, the sleeves rolled up along his muscled, veiny forearms.
“Oh, hey,” I say with as much casualness as I can muster, while being groped by an almost complete stranger.
“Lorenzo!” Kenny says, twerking over to him. “We were wondering when you would show up!”
With a large hand, Lorenzo pushes Kenny out of the way, his molten gaze focused on me and only me. “Dash, a word.”
“I’m a little busy, if you can’t tell,” I say as lightly as possible, and then, because Eddie is into this and I want to really sell it, I run my hands up and down the topography of his torso.
Lorenzo’s jaw grinds—God, it gets me going to see him jealous like this. I don’t know what that says about me, maybe it’s toxic, but this is the club, not therapy, so I don’t plan on unpacking it.
“A word,” Lorenzo repeats, and then takes my arm. I don’t struggle as he guides me away from Eddie, off the dance floor, to a dark corner of the club where we can speak in private. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, when we’re alone (aside from a semi-naked couple playing tonsil hockey).
“I’m having fun at the club!” I cross my arms over my bare chest, knowing that it’ll make me look a little petulant, but I don’t care.
“What, are you jealous? You’re not really my boyfriend, Lorenzo.
We’re not actually dating, and you’ve made it very clear that you’re also not going to hook up with me.
I’m a man, Lorenzo! I have—needs! I like to fuck, and, yes, I want to fuck you, but clearly that’s not going to happen.
You have no right to say that I can’t fuck someone else. ”
He takes a deep breath, his eyes flicking past me to the dance floor, where I know he’s sizing up Eddie.
“Really, him?”
“He’s hot,” I say defensively. “And willing.”
The jealousy, the frustration, the internal battle, are all clear on Lorenzo’s handsome face. Now’s my time to strike. “Actually, Kenny had an idea.”
“Do not film yourself having sex and put it online for money.”
I hold up a finger. “First off, sex work is real work and if that’s what I wanted to do with my life, you better fucking not have something to say about it. Got it? Second off, no, that’s not his idea. I think you’ll like hearing his idea.”
“I’m not so sure I will.”
“Such a closed-minded attitude. Must be because you were born in the nineteen hundreds.”
“Oh my god. I was born in—never mind. Is now the time to remind me how much older I am than you?”
I breeze past the comment. “Kenny thinks Eddie and I should have sex—”
“Obviously.”
“—and that you should watch.”
I didn’t think it would be possible to shock Lorenzo Diamante as much as I just have, but he is struck absolutely speechless by my comment.
I smirk up at him, savoring the scandalized look on his face.
“You’re kidding, right?” he says finally.
“Nope. Not at all. We could even do it here. There are rooms here for that kind of stuff, right?”
Lorenzo says nothing.
“We’ve explained it all to Eddie. Well, not everything. He doesn’t know the parts about you being a mobster or how someone might be trying to murder me, but he knows that you and I have a complicated relationship and that you might enjoy watching us. He’s completely consenting.”
“I might enjoy watching you?”
I step closer, into his space, until I can feel the heat radiating off his body. “You seemed to enjoy watching when it was just me in the shower. Just wait until you can see what sort of show I can put on when I’m riding someone’s cock.”
Then, on impulse, I reach for him, trailing my fingers lightly up his chest. I grasp his collar and pull him down closer to me, so that my lips are near his ear. “Trust me, it’s quite a show. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can watch.”
Lorenzo’s whisper is just as low and dark as mine. “And what if, while I watch, I imagine that it’s my cock you’re riding, and not his? What then?”
A tremendous shiver runs through me, coupled with an urge to present myself to Lorenzo right here, right now. To let him rip my pants off in full view of the club and claim me for all to see.
I manage to hold my composure and look up to meet his gaze, my hand still clinging to his collar. We’re so close that I can smell him, his cologne and a hint of the day’s sweat. “Good. Because when he’s fucking me, you better believe that I’ll be picturing that it’s you.”