Page 2 of The Wrong Reciprocation

“Well,” she sighed, “now you know for sure.”

Arturo reached up and lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him. He was so close to her and smelled so good that Twyla swallowed hard against the desire rising up in her.

"I would like to take you on a date.” Arturo announced. “I need to see you outside of work—some place where I can put my hands on you the way I'd like to. Are you free Saturday evening?"

Without even stopping to consider her schedule, Twyla nodded. Whatever—if anything—she had planned would be rescheduled. Time alone with Arturo Benavides was everything she'd wanted for months. She enjoyed their morning moments, but it hadn't been enough.

“I’m free, but what about the event you were telling me about this morning? The MMA match?”

He smiled, and Twyla felt a flush of heat at the pride she saw in his eyes.

“Yes. You remembered.”

“It was just this morning,” she said with a laugh. “I know that I’m quickly approaching middle-aged, but my memory still works.”

At his chuckle, a thrill shuddered through Twyla’s body. Just the sound of his voice did her in.

“You are nowhere near middle-aged, Twyla, but I appreciate that you have remembered a boring detail that I mentioned.”

Shaking her head, Twyla smiled softly. “I always listen when you speak, Arturo.” She was unable not to. Outside of his sultry accent, every word out of his mouth was valuable to her, giving her more pieces with which to figure out just who he was and decipher why she was unable to curb her attraction to him.

He stared at her silently, eyes boring into hers, making her wonder just what was on his mind as he observed her. After a moment, he nodded.

“The match is in the afternoon, and I am only a spectator this time around. That leaves the entire evening for us.”

“For us,” Twyla repeated, her grin wide. He’d said it with such ease, and it sounded like music to her ears. She hadn’t been an us in quite a while.

A server delivered two baskets of barbacoa street tacos to their table, and they talked as they ate. Twyla learned that Arturo was multicultural and had grown up in his mother’s native country of Panama amongst her family. His father was American but had passed away when Arturo was ten. He didn’t return to the states until he headed to college at eighteen, bringing along his closest cousin whom his mother had raised after Arturo’s aunt had passed away. While he was his mother's only child, he had several siblings on his father’s side, but hadn't seen any of them in more than a decade, despite them all living in the greater Houston area.

Both Twyla and Arturo had both been raised by single mothers, but while Arturo was decidedly close to his maternal family, Twyla couldn’t say the same regarding her mother's side of the family. If it wasn’t for the week-long family vacation they all went on every year, she’d never see them, save for weddings and funerals. She wished it wasn’t like that, but it had been that way for as long as she could remember. It used to break her heart to see pictures of her cousins having sleepovers she hadn’t been invited to or hanging out at the skating rink on nights when she was home alone. More than twenty years later she still could feel the pain from asking her mother why wasn’t she in the pictures, only to have her pain dismissed as Linda bitterly informed her ten-year-old self that she hadn’t known about it either.

The conversation shifted to their upcoming date. Arturo wanted to take her dancing, and Twyla immediately made a mental note to schedule wax, hair, and nail appointments. She’d spent three months lusting and daydreaming about this man; that was all the waiting she was willing to do. Once she saw his hips move on a dance floor, she was going to need to see them do the same while they both lay naked beneath cool sheets. Twyla sighed contentedly as she watched him talk, picturing herself giving him a passel of wide-eyed, curly-haired babies. She blinked rapidly when he cut himself off mid-sentence and he gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up to his.

"Please, Twyla. There’s something that I have wanted to do since I first laid eyes on you. May I taste your lips?"

Speechless, Twyla stared at him with widened eyes. Her behavior in that restaurant had teetered on reckless, but she hadn’t forgotten where they were. While she didn’t recognize anyone at the four tables near them, the desire she had for Arturo overpowered her usual concern. She nodded, and at her consent, Arturo moved without hesitation.

He leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, and greedy as she was, Twyla opened for him instantly. What was intended to be a chaste, closed-mouth kiss became a duel of sorts. Their tongues met, instantly eliciting a groan from the back of Arturo’s throat. He moved his hand from her chin to the back of her neck, deepening the kiss. She whimpered, her hand falling to his upper thigh. As she squeezed him there, her fingertips brushed steel beneath the poly-cotton blend, and she gasped into his mouth. Arturo covered her hand with his own and lifted it from his lap as he ended their kiss. Twyla stared at him under heavy lids, breathing heavily and wanting desperately to test the fire she saw in his eyes.

"Careful, Twyla," he warned in a low tone that caused the heat in her belly to surge.

Pulling her hand out of his, she placed it higher up on his thigh, palming his erection as she met his eyes with hers.

"I don't want to be careful, Arturo. Not with you."

His eyes darkened, and he scooted closer to her, reaching under the table and dropping his hand to the knee that was pressed against his, slowly dragging his palm up her leg.

Without breaking eye contact with him, she boldly spread her legs, both allowing him free reign and inviting him to continue his exploration upward. He wasted no time, purposely dragging his palm against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh until he reached the edge of her panties. His fingers danced across the thin fabric in search of the center where he rubbed along the wetness that his kiss had elicited. His thick digits pulled the covering aside and blood rushed loudly through Twyla’s ears, her heart pounding hard enough to burst out of her chest. She was buzzing with the need for him to touch her. She craved it.

Just as he breached her opening, he took her lips in another kiss, snaring her gasp with his tongue and swallowing it down effortlessly. With two fingers knuckle-deep inside of her, and an incessant thumb on her clit, he grabbed the back of her neck with his free hand and deepened their kiss. She came swiftly, trembling in his hold as she whined low through her climax. He captured every single sound, humming his approval.

Arturo ended their kiss, but pressed his forehead to hers, effectively blocking her from prying eyes as she came down from her high. When she nodded her head that she was okay, he extracted his fingers from her opening and brought them to his nose. Twyla blushed as he took a deep inhale of her essence before sucking each of his fingers clean. The action was so incredibly erotic that Twyla's breaths shortened as her arousal reignited.

Noticing that he was being watched, Arturo winked at her and wiped his damp fingers on a cloth napkin.

"Is it too presumptuous of me to say that I can't wait for you to come on my tongue?"

"Maybe we should skip the date and go right to the nightcap," she purred. Still feeling the aftershocks from her orgasm, she was only half joking.