Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Danny
? Dance in a club
“Psst, Danny.”
Ally taps my shoulder from the row behind me in Runzhou’s SUV.
He and K are in the front seats, where K is DJ’ing the drive to the club to “get us in the zone.” Christina has twisted around in her seat to chat animatedly with Reese behind her—are they talking about fire codes in clubs?
That’s usually a conversation I would get in on, but I’m highly distracted because Christina’s leg is hiked up on the bench between us, her bare knee pressing against my thigh, and her little sparkly dress is so short that I can see a faint sliver of her lace thong where she’s spread wide.
“Earth to Danny.”
Ally jolts me out of my blatant salivation.
She snickers and leans in to mutter between the two of us. “Warning. Christina can dance. Like, make-the-worst-fundamentalist-on-the-planet-realize-sexuality-is-a-spectrum dance. I don’t know if it’s all the pent-up pastor’s kid energy or what, but you might want to prepare yourself.”
“Where have you seen her dance?” I ask, amused. Charlie has only dragged me to a club once before, and it wasn’t really my scene. But I’ve more than learned that Christina can transform any scene into my scene if she’s in it.
“She comes to The 135 with us sometimes. You know, the theater kid house at Hilltop where all manner of sin thrives. You better hope the music doesn’t turn sexy and slow.”
I huff. “I have sex with her almost every day. I think I can handle her dancing with clothes on.”
Ally gives me a sympathetic look like You poor little man.
To her point, I slip my fingers onto Christina’s knee and drag my eyes up her body. The glittering dress hugs every curve through the hips and ribs but then hangs low in loose layers of fabric around the breasts. So her perky tits are visibly bouncing with her every gesture.
I finally get my gaze past them to reach her face, and she’s caught me. Her hazel eyes on me are alight, and she’s smugly biting her bottom lip. I didn’t know that was possible.
Maybe Ally was right to warn me.
But Christina’s breaths likewise quicken as her gaze drifts to my messy hair and black-framed eyes. Now it’s my turn to smirk. She just slips her delicate fingers into my pocket and pops an almond into her mouth.
Charlie knows the bouncer at this club—because of course he does—and he called in a favor to get our names on the list. We breeze past the others waiting in line like the goddamn mafia.
“Now, remember,” Christina announces to the crew before opening the door. “Aim to record each other in 15–30-second clips on your phones throughout the night.”
Because permissions and audio are nearly impossible to manage in this space, it was Christina’s genius idea for all of the club footage to be unofficial user clips that we can montage together to accentuate the pounding chaos of the experience.
We’ve been collaborating on TJL for weeks, spending hours sketching the major beats, selecting key footage, and arranging the scenes.
She’s quickly learned the various software, and she’s even begun giving notes on some of my other projects.
It barely feels like work to be in the studio with her.
Christina raises one eyebrow with a hand on the door handle. “I want every one of you Sloppy Bitches on camera.”
Runzhou kisses her cheek. “Don’t worry, love. Even I’m letting out my latent Sloppy Bitch tonight.”
The cheering from each of them gets swallowed up by the deafening music as Christina pries the heavy door open.
She struts in like a queen, surveying her domain from high heels.
The dark, vast space seems to have its own heartbeat, pulsing and thrumming with the mass of writhing bodies to the all-consuming beat of the music and flash of lights.
Runzhou immediately snatches Christina’s hand and drags her onto the dance floor, both of them laughing, and K and Ally follow closely behind.
They’re swallowed up by other bodies quickly, so Reese jerks his head in a follow me gesture.
We edge around the dance floor to the bar lining the entire far wall, order drinks for the group, then post up at a standing table in one of the roped-off areas within the dance floor.
I’m scanning the crowd for Christina when Reese taps me and points to my right.
Holy god.
Christina isn’t just a queen on this dance floor. She’s not even simply a Sex Goddess Supreme.
She is a Jezebel.
She rolls her hips and punctuates beats with a fluid cast of her arm or a pop of her head.
Her back arches and her ass snaps and she whips that long black hair so much that she no doubt left it down just for this purpose.
She crackles with energy, drawing the eye of multiple men and women around her, but her movements are smooth as glass. And those fucking tits—
Okay. Ally was very right to warn me. My heart rate could fuel a rocket, and my cock is under the impression that this is a torturous form of foreplay just for me.
My girl will wind a hand around Ally’s hip or grind her ass into Runzhou’s lap or rock against K, and the hot carnality of it all has me downright panting to put my hands on her.
I force myself to take a sip of my drink—my hand is fucking shaking—and find Reese videoing me.
“Sorry, man,” he says, voice raised slightly to be heard over the music. He ends the video and lowers his phone. “Christina would be very disappointed if we didn’t have footage of you seeing her dance for the first time.”
I lift my drink to him in a resigned cheers and sip some more to steel myself to keep watching her.
Jesus, this woman I love. Some days, I don’t know how it could be possible for my heart to expand another millimeter; I’m always on the edge of bursting out of my own skin.
But then the sun sets and rises, and she laughs, or strokes my hair, or hops on the counter to chat with me while I make her dinner, and my being expands again.
How much space will I eventually consume to contain this love?
“It’s difficult, isn’t it?”
I rip my eyes off Christina to glance at Reese. “What’s difficult?”
He presses his lips together and looks out at Ally, who is laughing wildly as she shimmies back to back with Christina, their red and black hair tangling. “When she holds your entire life in her hands, and you don’t know if she’s going to choose you or not.”
I flinch. I’ve tried to block it out—that she may be leaving, that we may not feel right enough for her to let me love her the way I want to for as long as I want to.
But the fears do creep in and curdle deep in my belly, especially when she’s asleep in my arms. And now with graduation only a week away …
“How did you deal with it?” I ask, not having heard Reese and Ally’s story but certain he’s speaking from experience.
He considers. “You take every single day she gives you, and you treasure them, and you treasure her, and you make them the best days you can. And you store them up and hope they’ll be enough to keep you alive if the days together ever end.”
I close my eyes to process his words. Then I throw back the rest of my drink, and I stride out to join my queen and goddess—my perfect Jezebel—on the dance floor.
She catches sight of me moving toward her, and she doesn’t slow her movements at all. She continues rolling her hips but she also bites her lip and crooks a finger at me to come here. I arrest those hips the second I get to her, and she throws her arms on my shoulders to grind against me.
“What the actual fuck, Christina?” I say right against her ear so she can hear me over the pounding music. Her sweat mixes with her spring scent, and I’m drowning in her. She just tosses her dampening, wild hair over her shoulder and laughs huskily.
We dance, and drink, and sneak almonds, and film through the night, and my love and lust for Christina seize me in an unyielding iron grip. When the music turns sticky slow, she drags her lips up my neck as her unrestrained breasts scrape against me.
Enough.
I yank her by the hand off the dance floor. She half-jogs unsteadily on her heels behind me. I charge us straight toward the long hallway of bathrooms and practically shove her inside the mixed gender option.
“Danny.” Her chest is heaving, eyes fierce.
Some women and men are at the sinks, but I pay them no mind and back her into one of the stalls. Thankfully, this is a rather nice club with rather nice bathrooms. The stall walls are wooden instead of that flimsy plastic, and they go all the way to the floor but are still open at the top.
“This is what these bathrooms are for, baby.” I push the front of her body against the stall wall and hook her hands on the top, which she can just barely reach in her heels. “Hold on tight. I don’t know if anyone who’s fucked in these bathrooms has ever been as desperate as me.”
I slam my whole body flush against her, letting her feel my hard cock against her back, and she stifles a whimper, trying to keep quiet. I whisper at her ear: “Probably because no one’s ever been as much of a sexy little slut as you.”
She shudders violently as I slide down her body to my knees. I wrestle the edges of her little dress up to her waist so I can see her whole ass. My mouth goes bone dry and my skin stretches unbearably tight. I push the thong aside and spread those luscious cheeks wide. “Holy mother of god.”
She’s trembling but still holding on to the top of the stall for dear life.
“You can shake this ass around all you want, baby, but you’re my sexy little slut. So I’m gonna have to eat you whole now.”
“What are you—ahh.”
I lick her tight asshole roughly, and my eyes roll back in my head at the salty taste of sweat that’s accumulated there.
“Danny …?” she breathes, uncertain.
I lick that puckered hole again, and she whines.
I bury my face between her cheeks fully then, licking and eating at her, and I know the moment she finally gives over to the pleasure.
She pushes her ass back against my face to chase the sensations, to invite me to have every part of her.
I kiss down her barrier to discover with my lips how wet she’s gotten—and Jesus fucking Christ, she’s soaked.
I gather as much of it as I can in my mouth and tongue it up to drench her back entrance.
“How … how …” She’s barely able to string two words together. “How does that feel so good?”
“Because you want to be devoured,” I rumble between her ass cheeks. “And I want to devour you.” I do just that, munching down like she’s my last meal on this plane of existence.
When her legs begin twitching, I know she’s close. So I rub two hard fingers over her clit on one more rough lick, and she bursts. I keep my lips glued to her tight little hole so I can feel it pulse with her contractions.
The need to fuck her is nearly blinding me.
I rise to my feet, whipping my cock out, and turn her to face me.
Her face is stunned and dazed and so beautiful that I’m vibrating with the hard clench of every one of my muscles.
But she takes one look at my cock and wraps her arms tight around my neck, hiking a leg up my hip as best she can.
I lift her up like she wants, slamming her back into the stall wall, and she locks those legs around my waist. She throws one arm back to grip the top of the wall, and I cover that hand with my own, keeping my other arm braced under her ass.
“Put it in, baby,” I husk at her ear.
She obeys, and her slick pussy clenches around me as I slam in as far as possible. This fuck is quick and sloppy and frantic, and we’re both groaning and muttering filthy nonsense as quietly as we can against each other’s ears. Even in my animal state, I think I catch the phrase fucking guyliner.
“You’re a dirty fucker, you know that?” she pants.
I bite down on her earlobe as I rock into her harder.
She licks my ear with her hot tongue. “We’re lucky I’m a dirty fucker too.”
It takes one good yank of my hair to come like the dirty fucker I am, our bodies straining against the wall. I dig into her hand at the top of the stall for grounding through the alarming pleasure whipping through me.
When we stabilize, I gingerly set her on her feet, clean her up with toilet paper, and fix her thong and dress.
She just stares at me dazedly as I work to set her right, still trying to steady her breathing.
“Dance in a club … what the hell was I thinking? Sex in a club should have been the TJL item.”
I laugh lightly. “They are essentially the same thing. Because if you’re dancing, there will be sex, I assure you.”
She places a gentle hand on my face and brushes her thumb over my cheekbone. My eyes drift shut.
“Can we order a car now?” she asks softly. I open my eyes. She’s looking at me like … like she’s trying to ascertain if I’m real or not. “I just wanna hold you.”
My heart squeezes painfully. “Where would you like to go, sweetheart?”
Her eyes are the most lovely blend of blue and green as she peers up at me. “Home.”
It almost slips out then. I love you. Like it has almost every day these past weeks together. I have to bite my tongue to keep it inside this time, even though it’s pushing on the boundaries of my person. I could crash back on my knees right now and beg her to let me love her forever.
But I don’t.
Because she deserves the opportunity to trust herself enough to accept that offer. So much of her life has been decided for her, and I want this to be her decision, driven by her initiative. She has to trust that we are right. She has to trust that sharing life with me won’t define or limit her.
And if she never does? If I do everything in my power to make us feel right—like I have done, and will continue to do, every single day, for as many days as she gives me—and it’s still not enough?
Maybe there will be enough pieces of me leftover to subsist.
But I doubt it.