Forbidden Bonds of the Beast

20 - DANCING ACROSS THE RUBICON

Lacey

On the floor I let Ricardo pull me in close. Bodies swayed around us. The bass moved through my chest, and the warmth of the room and the warmth of him blurred the lights at the edges.

We kissed. Slow at first. Then less slow.

I'd braced to feel like a stranger tonight, a woman trying on a life that wasn't hers. The opposite happened. The craving that rose to meet his mouth wasn't new. It had only been waiting for somebody to stop guarding the door. Tonight nobody was.

Over Ricardo's shoulder I caught Janice watching us from the table, her chin resting lightly on her hand. She didn't look amused or embarrassed. She looked interested.

"Touch me like they are," I whispered against his ear, nodding toward a couple nearby. The man's hand was sliding up the woman's leg through her skirt in slow, deliberate strokes.

Ricardo did. Too eager at first, then catching himself, slowing.

His hands moved over my back, traced my spine, then lower, cupped me through the dress.

I ground against him. He hardened against my hip, fast, and made a small, embarrassed sound at how fast, and I felt more powerful than I had in years.

"That feels good," I breathed, the words lost in the music.

I tipped my head back and bared my neck. "Kiss my neck."

He did. Soft mouth along my skin, teeth grazing. It went down through me, warm and low. The lights blurred another degree.

I reached down and rubbed him through his pants. He groaned and the sound thrilled me. I hadn't known I was the kind of woman who could take a man apart just by deciding to.

I pulled his head to my ear. "I want you inside me tonight."

I felt the sentence leave me. It belonged to a woman I hadn't been before tonight. I wasn't sure yet she was me. But she took the lead.

Ricardo's breath caught hot against my ear. "Yes. I've been hoping." And for half a second something crossed his face that wasn't gentle. Then it folded back under the easy smile and I wondered if I'd seen it at all. "And can I taste you, too?"

"Jesus." My aching pussy answered before my voice did. "Yes. Come on, I need a drink and then we can find a place."

Ricardo laughed. "Lacey. This is the place."

I turned toward the table.

Janice's eyes met mine. Her legs were slightly open, her hand resting between them, moving slowly, the small, deliberate movement unmistakable in the dim light.

I should have been embarrassed. Should have looked away. The obsolete version of me would have, and apologized for it for the next eighteen years.

The new version looked, and held it, and let her see me looking.

Janice didn't pull her hand away. She smiled at me, slow, and then moved it, like a woman finishing a thought rather than hiding one.

"I'm shocked you two are sitting down again after that show," she said, fanning herself with one hand.

Ricardo laughed, easy, the sound against my side where I still pressed close.

Who am I now?

Janice caught the shift on my face. "Lace, sorry, I was kidding."

"No, it's fine." I shook my head. "I sort of—wanted you to like it."

Heat went up my neck. It was true. I'd wanted her to like it. That was a new piece of information about me.

"I'm still catching up to all of this. Last time I was the woman who ran out of here. Tonight I'm—" I trailed off, because the rest wouldn't sit in my mouth.

Ricardo's arm tightened. "I'm fine going as slow as you want."

I shook my head. "No. I'm over taking it slow."

I leaned in and kissed him again, deeper, my hand finding him through his pants, stroking light, feeling him thicken. When I pulled back his cheeks were flushed and his pupils were wide.

Janice's voice was husky. "Even watching you two makes me wet."

"Are you ready?" I asked him. "Because I am."

His eyes were dark. "Oh yes."

I stood. "Private. I just need it to be only you tonight. Is that okay?"

He nodded, decisive. "More than okay, Lacey."

Janice's voice came soft behind me. "You go, girl."

Ricardo led me down the dim hallway. Heavy velvet brushed our shoulders. Muffled sounds drifted through closed doors, soft gasps, the creak of springs. The air was warmer here. Clean linen, vanilla from candles, the musk of skin under it.

He opened one of the doors at the end. Stepped aside for me. Followed me in, and locked it with a quiet click.

It was a small room. Two lamps. Dark charcoal sheets. A single sandalwood candle on the nightstand. No mirrors. No restraints. Just the room.

I stood in the center, heart loud in my ears. I was waiting for him to take charge, to do what the books said the man did. Push me onto the bed. Hold me down.

He stepped close, eyes searching mine. "We go at your pace."

I closed the distance and kissed him, hard, the want of it cutting off whatever he'd been about to say. Against his mouth I whispered, "Strip my clothes off."

Something moved behind his eyes again, that same flicker, at hearing the careful doctor give the order.

Then the delighted smile. His hands went to the zipper at my back and drew it down with a reverence I hadn't given anyone permission to feel for me.

The dress slid off my shoulders and pooled at my feet.

He unhooked my bra, let it fall, his thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts as the lace cleared them.

His hands weren't quite steady. He caught me noticing, and huffed a small laugh at himself, and that disarmed me more than any smoothness would have.

Then he knelt.

He hooked his fingers in my panties and drew them down, slow, kissing the inside of one thigh, then the other, until I stepped out and stood naked in front of him.

I'd spent decades apologizing for my sexuality.

Hiding it. Dressing it down. Asking it to take up less room.

Standing naked in front of Ricardo in this small room with the candle going, I felt something change.

Not transformation. More like a door I'd been shoving against for years giving way because I'd finally stopped shoving the wrong direction.

I wasn't Dr. Bonds. I was a woman in a body that wanted a man, and the man was a foot away, on his knees, looking at me like a fox in a henhouse.

The candlelight moved across my skin.

Ricardo stood and stripped, shirt shrugged off, lean muscle, pants and boxers pushed down in one motion that was a half-second too quick, too eager, and he knew it, and didn't care.

He pulled me to the bed. He kissed down, slow, along my collarbone, lower, his mouth closing over one breast, then the other, patient, while he softly stroked my clit. I arched and held him there.

He kissed lower. Ribs. Stomach. When he reached my hips I gave up on patience and pushed his head down, and he went without hesitation.

His mouth found me, and I stopped narrating it to myself. Just his mouth and my pussy that had quit pretending it didn't want what it wanted. I was loud in a way I'd never let myself be loud. It built fast, and when I was close, too close, I pulled him up by the hair.

"Fuck me, Ricardo."

He reached for the nightstand, fumbled the condom once, swore softly, got it, rolled it on. Then he pressed against me and slipped in, filling me slowly, and sighed, and started to move.

It didn't take long. I was already wound taut, from the dance floor and from his mouth and the candle and the fact of being here at all. A few deep thrusts and I came, hard, clenching around him, a primal cry tearing out of me I'd have been mortified by anywhere else.

He kept moving, drew it out until my tremors slowed and I could breathe, then stilled inside me, breathing hard.

I looked up at him, chest heaving.

"Do you want me to suck you?" I heard myself ask. "Do you want to come in my mouth?"

He froze.

"I've never tasted it. I want to."

His eyes widened. "Yes. God, yes."

I pushed at his shoulders. "Lie down."

He pulled out, the sudden emptiness making me clench around nothing, and rolled onto his back.

I shifted down the bed, heart hammering in my throat. I peeled the condom off, slick and warm, dropped it to the floor, and took him in my mouth.

The first taste hit hard, salt and musk and bitter latex under it.

I was clumsy. My tongue unsure, lips too tight, then too loose, the rhythm uneven.

I gagged once trying to take him deeper, eyes watering, and I didn't pull back.

I pushed forward instead. I wanted to do it right.

I wanted him to know I was a woman who could.

My hand wrapped the base of him and worked what my mouth couldn't reach.

"Yes," he groaned. "Almost."

I sucked harder, and his hips lifted once, and his thighs went tight under my palms, and then he came.

The first of it shocked me, more than I'd been ready for, hitting the back of my throat. Instinct told me to pull away. I didn't. I swallowed and kept going until he shuddered and started to soften between my lips.

When he was done I didn't pull off right away.

The thought passed through me, intense and hot—I am taking care of him. I am servicing him.

I licked him slowly, carefully, cleaning him, the act intimate in a way I hadn't been prepared for. The pull in my chest deepened.

He exhaled, half-laugh, half-groan. "It's okay, Lacey. That was—" He didn't finish.

He threaded his fingers through my hair and drew me up to his chest.

I wanted to keep going. The wanting confused me. Some part of me had been waiting my whole life to be allowed this, and I'd only just found out the part existed.

We kissed, slow and deep. I tasted both of us on his tongue. I had crossed a line and not arrived anywhere I recognized.

We got up in near silence. I put my bra and panties back on, paused, and then looked at my dress pooled on the floor.

"I don't have to wear a dress, do I?"

Ricardo shook his head, amused. "No. You don't have to wear anything here you don't want to."

I draped my dress over my arm and stepped into the hallway in just my underwear, black lace, heels clicking on the polished floor.

Lacey Bonds. Walking through a bar in her underwear.

A few eyes turned as I came into the lounge. Curious. Appreciative. Not fixed on me. Nobody stared, nobody gasped. The cool air raised goosebumps along my arms.

I could still taste him. And in my head he was telling me to swallow it, except I knew he hadn't said that. I'd wanted him to say it. Why did the idea of being told what to do arouse me so much, walking through the lounge in my underwear, after I'd already done more?

The new Lacey caught the question and didn't have an answer. Didn't need one. The sixty-percent woman was at eighty percent now. The forty-percent woman was being voted out.

When Ricardo and I came back to the table, Janice was sitting on the lap of a young Black man I'd never seen before.

I stopped short.

He was tall even sitting down, broad-shouldered, close-cropped fade, easy smile, wearing a fitted black button-down with the sleeves rolled up. Janice was perched sideways across his legs, one arm looped around his neck, entirely at home. She looked flushed and happy.

"Hey, guys!" She waved us over like nothing was unusual, which, in this place, I was learning, it wasn't. "This is James. We sort of planned to meet here if things went well with you two." Her smile was bright, entirely unapologetic. "And it looks like things went very well."

James gave a small nod, respectful, his eyes direct. "Nice to meet you both."

Janice stood, closing the gap. "Look at you," she said, and pulled me into a hug away from Ricardo. Her perfume mixed with the scent still on me. She took my hand, squeezed.

"How do you feel?"

I half-laughed. "It was great."

Ricardo took a step back, easy. "I'll get us drinks," he said, and headed for the bar.

Janice leaned in. "Do tell."

Then James stood. "I see you ladies need some girl time. Have a good night." And he strolled away.

We sat. I told her. The room. The bed. Pushing his head down. How I'd demanded more. How I'd taken him in my mouth after, and I didn't leave out the clumsiness, the teeth, the shock of it, the swallowing and not stopping. My voice stayed steady. My cheeks burned.

I finished and shrugged. "This must be boring to you."

Janice leaned closer. "Nothing about you is boring, Lacey." There was a sheen on her face, and she was closer than she usually sat. As she started to lean back, I leaned in and kissed her, light, just on the lips.

I hadn't thought about it. I just did it.

Her eyes were bright when I pulled back.

Ricardo returned then and set the drinks down. Vodka soda for me. Orange juice for Janice. Something dark for himself.

On the way home the city lights slid past in long amber streaks. Janice kept the radio low, a slow bass line that matched the hum still moving through me. She drove satisfied in a way she hadn't been on the drive over.

"You kept going," she said. "Every time I figured you'd hit your limit, you didn't."

I watched the streetlights. "I'm adaptable, apparently."

"You're more than that." She glanced over. "You felt it, didn't you? What it's like when the rules aren't someone else's."

"Yeah."

The true version was that I hadn't noticed the rules going.

"I came in with a list," I said. "Things I wasn't going to do tonight." I exhaled. "I think I cleared most of them in the first hour. The ones I couldn't get past, Ricardo let me keep. I don't know what I'd have done if he'd pushed."

She raised an eyebrow. The slow grin. "So why have them?"

The question settled heavy in the car.

"Because there's a wildness in me. An animal that's been locked up so long it forgot what running feels like. And if I just open the door and let it go without thinking—" I shrugged. "I don't know what it'll do."

Janice laughed, bright. "God, I love that for you. You've spent your whole life being the good girl. I can't wait to meet whoever comes out when she finally runs." A pause. "Maybe with Ricardo."

"Maybe," I said.

And meant it. Partly. There was another part of the answer in there, the part that had clocked Janice's hand between her own legs at the table, the part that had leaned in and kissed her without thinking when she said nothing about you is boring.

The Jeep rolled to a stop in front of my house. The porch light was on, the same one that used to mean coming home to Brad, to routine, to the exhaustion of being managed.

Janice shifted into park. "Same time next week? Ricardo will clear his whole schedule, I guarantee it."

I looked at her, flushed and glowing.

"Absolutely," I said.

I shut the door, gave her a small wave, and watched her taillights go until the red faded down the street.

Then I stood in my driveway a long moment, arms loose. The street was quiet.

The animal in me had gone quiet, the way a caged predator will when the door opens.

I was barely inside when the phone went.

Hola, Lacey. You were wonderful tonight. Perfect. Please let me take you to dinner, to a nice restaurant. A gentleman should not only see a woman in a sex club, yes? You should be treated like a lady.

I felt a little glow.

I would love that, Ricardo. Send me the details and I'll let you spoil me.