Chapter 7
Ibelieve no woman should be embarrassed for receiving or giving pleasure.
However.
Try getting caught receiving oral sex from your former boss in a boat bathroom, when you’ve vowed to stay single forever. Mortification does not even begin to describe what I’m feeling right now.
Smith offers a hand, and I take it to jump off of the counter.
“Come out now,” Barbara demands from the other side of the door.
“One moment,” I yell.
Smith’s face is bright red, and mine doesn’t look much better.
He takes his time, splashing water on his face. I arrange my skirt so it falls evenly and I double-check my ass in the mirror. Smith smacks it, and I give him a flirty glare.
“Did I just hear spanking?!”
“Oh, get your panties out of a twist, Barbara,” I say, and Smith laughs, covering his mouth. His arm looped around my middle makes me all gooey like caramel.
“You have to cover me again,” Smith says. I look down, and I grin. He has a hard-on, just like last time.
Aw, memories.
He presses his body against my backside, kissing my neck before we open the door. His arms around my waist, his body glued to me, we walk out like our ankles are tied together. I don’t know how pressing his cock into my ass crack will settle him down, but I’m not complaining.
A small crowd of people have gathered, with a severe-looking woman with a lip snarl and crossed arms at the center. That has to be Barbara, missing her calling as a harsh headmistress in a movie with a spunky child protagonist.
There are other people, including a janitor whose inner dialogue I want to hear so bad and a few women either proud of me or disgusted I snatched up such a good-looking man.
“Barbara,” Smith says with a respectful nod.
“Babs,” I say.
“This is a wholesome singles event, and you two…you two…” she reprimands, clearly not able to find the words. An exasperated huff comes out from her red lipstick, slightly smudged around the outline.
I truly wonder when the last time she got laid was.
“We apologize if we’ve made any guests uncomfortable,” Smith says. “I’m just crazy about her.”
He squeezes me to him, and electric currents flow through me. I never believed people when they claimed sparks when they touched their lover, but I am proven wrong. Everything I know for sure is shifting.
Maybe I didn’t know anything at all.
“Come with me,” Barbara says.
Smith pulls away from me, and we follow Barbara into the belly of the boat, down carpeted stairs to a non-descript white door. Barbara motions for us to go inside. We find a tiny office with two chairs for visitors. We sit down, careful not to touch each other.
Barbara sits down slowly in her chair. “We can’t go back to the dock until the event is over, but you two must separate.”
“I’ll stay here,” Smith offers. “She came with a friend, and I’ve gotten what I came here for tonight.”
Remembering that beautiful head of hair between my legs, I blush. Hard.
Barbara’s eyes flick between the two of us. She looks at me like I’m the biggest harlot to ever step foot on this boat. “You won’t find another man? Or woman?”
“She better not,” Smith says.
I didn’t know it was possible to blush even harder, but I do. Usually, I would be disgusted at such a show of alpha possessiveness, but it’s intoxicating coming from Smith.
“Okay,” Barbara says, her shoulders and face relaxing. “Sir, you will stay here, and miss, you can go up to the deck. No more funny business.”
“I promise,” I say. Before I leave, I drop my head down and steal a kiss from Smith.
Now, he’s blushing.
“Wait for me!” I yell dramatically to him as I leave the office.
I walk back up the stairs on shaky legs, the heat still present between them. I mill through the crowd, looking for my friend.
I pick out Raegan’s purple hair immediately. She’s talking to a man who wears desperation as a cologne.
“Hi!” Raegan says. She pulls away from the man, her smile disappearing once we are away from him. “Thank goodness. His breath smelled.”
We walk away, and I fluff my hair since I don’t know what to do with my hands.
“What happened?” Raegan whispers. “You look different.”
“Well…” I begin, putting my hands on my hips. I cannot contain my smile. and Raegan’s eyes go as big as quarters.
“Did you have sex? On a boat?”
“Yes, but no penetration,” I say with a finger point. Leaning in, I whisper, “Smith went down on me in the bathroom.”
“Up top,” Raegan says, holding up a hand for a high-five. I smack it, and then we both shake our hands out since it was an enthusiastic (and hard) high five.
“We got caught, so Smith is in timeout in Barbara’s office.”
“Who’s Barbara?”
I point to Barbara, who is watching me like a rookie FBI agent.
“Oh,” Raegan says. “She looks scary.”
“She is,” I say. “I have to kill time before Smith’s sprung from boat jail.”
“Let’s just have some fun. The two of us,” Raegan says.
“Sounds good to me,” I say. “I need another drink.”
“Me too.”
Raegan speaks fluent French, so she spends the rest of the evening pretending like she doesn’t speak English when a guy approaches us. We find the bow of the boat and do our own Titanic reenactment. When they start playing music, we do interpretive dances, and most of the men stare at us. Some are intrigued, and I do not trust them for that since our dancing was awful.
When the boat docks, I feel giddiness in my soul.
Without a doubt, I’m going to get laid tonight.
* * *
“You’re free!”I say with outstretched arms, waiting on the dock. Smith smiles shyly as he joins me on dry land. He picks me up and spins me around.
“I learned a lot in my time behind bars,” he says. “Most of all, that I want to spend the rest of the evening with you.”
“I feel the same way,” I say.
“What do you want to do?”
“Go back to your place.”
Smith looks down and then back up at me with a devilish grin. “Sure.”
We have to wait for an Uber since the event just finished, but we get in one eventually. It’s a quiet ride, except for the rap music the driver plays, but Smith grabs my hand and holds it like we’re dating.
It scares me and thrills me, all at once.
When we arrive at his building, we step out, and the wind from the bay chills me to a shiver. He wraps his arm around me, pulling me to close to him for warmth. He buzzes himself in, and we walk across a carpeted lobby to the elevator bank.
“I’m triggered,” I say, and he lets out a hearty laugh.
“When the elevator situation happened, I talked to my landlord about this, and they’re serviced way more frequently than the ones at the Octavo.”
“Still nervous,” I say when the doors open.
I walk in first, and he follows me. As soon as the doors close, his lips are on mine, his hands cradling my face, his thumbs playing with my earrings. It’s a kiss that turns my knees to pudding, makes me question every truth I know about myself.
“One kiss in an elevator wasn’t enough,” Smith says. “Plus, this makes me forget that I’m terrified of being stuck again.”
“It distracted me too,” I say.
When it dings for his floor, the tenth, I breathe out a sigh of relief that we made it and follow him down the hall to his apartment. He pushes the key into the lock, looking back at me as he opens. When he flips on the switch, I gasp.
It’s the most beautiful apartment I’ve ever been in.
Clean white and neutral grays—simple, elegant. Large picture windows encompass the space, and the shine of the city overwhelms me.
This apartment is complete opposite to my tiny four hundred square foot apartment with clothes and video props and video equipment strewn about and one tiny window.
“Wine?” Smith asks, and I nod. He walks to his kitchen as I walk past his taupe couches to a side table with a vase holding white flowers and a single silver frame. I hunch down to get a better look.
It’s a younger Smith, with dark ink hair in a graduation gown, flanked by two older people. He holds a smile wider than I’ve ever seen on his face.
“Your parents?” I ask.
“Yes,” Smith says, handing me a glass of wine. I take a sip and let the flavor roll over my tongue. Smith’s eyes stay on me as he sips his own wine. “That’s my law school graduation.”
“Are you close to them?”
“Very close,” Smith says. “They live in San Rafael. It’s where I want to settle eventually. When I meet the right woman and start a family.”
That comment roasts my insides. The way he looks at me makes me think I’m on the short list for Smith’s future baby momma.
No, he can’t be thinking that. A couple standalone kisses and an amazing orgasm don’t mean we’ll fall in love or even date. My future of adopting multiple foster children and having a farm with chickens and sassy goats is still possible.
This feels too perfect. The wheels are bound to fall off.
I know this, but I still keep driving.
“Do you like music?” he asks, walking toward me, resting a hand on my waist.
“Sure,” I say.
“Alexa, play my relaxing playlist on shuffle.”
A slow, seductive jazz starts, throwing a gauzy haze over this night.
“Jazz, huh? Trying to get in my pants?” I look down. “I’m not wearing pants.”
“Maybe,” he says. Smith sets his wine down on his coffee table, next to a large book about boats. I watch him as he takes my wine glass out of my hand and sets it down.
He leans in, and we start kissing feverishly. My mind races as his hands are everywhere, cupping my ass, palming a breast, threading through my hair. Moans echo between our mouths. I deliberately rifle his hair, and he pulls away, panting.
“Should I get a condom?”
I nod like a bobblehead. He jogs away, and I bite my lip as I watch his ass go.
After I unzip the back, awkwardly, I pull my dress off of my shoulders, letting it pool at my feet. A bra doesn’t work with this dress so I stand there in my panties and heels. Usually, I would be self-conscious being topless in front of such a huge window, but we’re so far up that it’s sexy, not scary.
When he comes back, a condom packet pinched between his fingers, he stops in his path.
“My God,” he says. He bounds across the space between us, and then I’m in his arms again.
The kisses are hard and frenzied, our breath heavy and labored. I rip the buttons off his shirt to reveal strong abs and I run my fingers down his stomach to cup him.
“Get on my level,” I whisper in his ear.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, pulling off his shirt. My mouth waters at his arms, at the Adonis V pointing to his cock. He drops his pants and his boxer briefs, and I cannot tear my eyes away.
Holy shit, his cock is more impressive than I thought.
He spins me around so I’m facing the city, my hands pressed against the glass.
His fingers cup my breast, kneading my nipple as his other hand travels down to between my legs and inside my panties. I gasp as he curves his hand there, the tip of his finger flirting with my opening. I’m still wet from our time in the bathroom, and I ache for him even more.
When his finger dips inside of me, his palm against my clit, I cry out and lean against the window so I don’t fall.
“Be as loud as you want to, Cassie,” he growls. “No one will hear you scream.”
“In another context, that would be creepy.”
He laughs the way only powerful men do, his breath tickling my ear. Smith’s finger dips lower, finding the soft part within me and presses. I see stars and it mingles with the light of the city. My mouth lets out a deep groan.
“How about now?” he asks.
“Perfect,” I say. His hand still in my panties, his other arm wrapped around me, I ride his hand to another orgasm. It breaks me open and I let out a moan as my body settles, slowing his pace.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” Smith says in my ear.
“No,” I say, hooking my underwear and pushing them down to the ground. “Take me here.”
“Alright,” he says. I hear rustling as I bend over, planting my hands firmly on the glass. One hand splays on my lower back as he guides his cock with his other.
It feels like paradise. We sigh together and I feel the weight of his chest on my back. As he eases into me, stretching me, he turns my head and kisses me.
“You are spectacular,” he whispers in my ear.
Overwhelmed by him inside of me, stretching me, filling me, I say nothing, I just moan. The sensations are too much for me to handle, too much for me to process. I cry out again when he wraps his hand around to touch my clit, his other hand gripping my hip.
Smith thrusts into me, thrumming my walls and making my body pulse with his power.
Smith and I together like this, our connection so hot and all-consuming, is one of the biggest surprises of my life.
It turns from romantic to filthy when our primal instincts take over. His hand goes to my neck and the pleasure overtakes me as I break apart for him and he loses himself too, his breath labored and heavy.
After we settle, he anchors the condom and sits down, butt naked to his couch, the condom still on, his cock still partially erect.
He’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling. He grabs a tissue from his other side table and hands it to me.
I look around, and he senses what I need. He points down the hallway, and I kick off my shoes and run barefoot down his hall. Once I’ve peed and washed my hands, I look around. Everything is clean and organized, beautifully decorated. I wonder if this was Daniela’s doing or he is capable of this himself.
I walk out, and I feel a robe being draped around me.
“That was fun,” Smith says, his big hands rubbing up and down the robe sleeves.
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Do you want to stay the night?”
My heart constricts. Staying the night seems serious. Yes, he just took me from behind against a huge picture window, and he did go down on me in a bathroom on a boat, but sleeping next to someone, seeing their pillow, how they look while they dream, just feels ten times more intimate to me.
Still I say yes.
He gives me a gray Stanford Law T-shirt that looks like a dress on me. He has a spare, new toothbrush, and when I leave the bathroom to look at his bed, he’s placed a glass of water by my side.
“Just in case you get thirsty in the middle of the night,” he says.
I climb into bed and into his arms.
In a surprise to no one, we have sex again, this time me on top. At one point, he interlaces his fingers with mine, our hands by his head as I moan. I thought one time would be satisfying, but this time builds on the time before and is even better.
I look down, and his eyes on me, our hands together, just raw and real, is more than anything I ever expected.
He sits up and consumes me, kisses my breasts and my neck, and I continue to ride his lap, rolling against him, saying his name as I come.
Afterward, I lie there and stare at the ceiling as Smith lightly snores.
Hands down,the best sex of my life.
Hands down, the most scared I’ve ever been in my life.
I think Smith is asleep until he says, “I feel like it’s okay to say this now, but your ‘Girlfriend Soothes You to Sleep’ is my favorite video, and I watch it every night to go to bed.”
I turn over and I put my hand to his face.
“I’m here so I can give you the real thing,” I whisper as my fingernails rake his stubble.
Let’s not dwell on the fact that I called myself his girlfriend. Or that this feels natural, like we’ve been dating for months and this is a typical weekend night. I do not remember that video’s script by heart, but I do my best. I whisper, “Baby, I know you’ve had a long day. Let me pamper you so you fall asleep and get the rest you need.”
He kisses me, and damn, is it romantic.
It’s also freaking me out.
“This is so nice. Having someone here,” he says before he drifts off to sleep.
His eyelashes fluttering with light snores through his nose.
Hours pass, and I get no sleep. My mind will not shut up.
Smith’s lonely, like me; he’s broken. He just got divorced from a woman who cheated on him, and he is not whole. I’m just some rebound, some crush requited, some ass he finally got after he’d thought about it for too long. It doesn’t matter it’s me.
All of this will end, no matter if I stay or not. The last three years of finding myself will be for nothing. This shows I’ve made zero progress, because I feel myself falling for a man who is raw and vulnerable and will destroy my heart if I let him.
I was weak and needy and powerless when I dated. That same feeling creeps over me like bugs in the springtime as I lie here, with a sexy arm over my stomach.
Around two in the morning, my eyes tugging with exhaustion, I know I need to leave.
I look at Smith, content and asleep. I kiss him on the cheek, and he stirs, but clings to his pillow harder.
After I dress, I avoid the elevator and take the stairs, and my feet are killing me before I reach the lobby. After ordering an Uber, I wait, looking back every so often. I’m not sure why. He wasn’t awake when I left and wouldn’t know I was gone.
When the Uber pings me to tell me that it’s close, I walk outside. The wind whips against my cheeks, and it hits something wet, cooling my skin. My fingers wipe it away, and I stare in disbelief.
Tears.
I breathe in and my nose rattles from the emotion, but I shake it off.
It’s better this way.
I get into the car, and the Uber driver confirms my destination. I watch the building drift away, and it tugs at my heart.
The tears really fall as we drive through the city, and I crumple in a ball in my apartment, alarmed that I somehow care so much.
It’ll pass. It has to pass.
Smith is not my future.
Not at all.