Page 3

“Then walk.”

He takes my hand. The crowd parts for him a second time and tows me along in the wake of it, through the heat and the blue dark into the corridor where the bass drops to a heartbeat behind the door. He pushes one open, glances in out of a habit I’d circle if I were circling anything tonight, finds it empty, draws me in, and turns the lock.

The light in here is vicious after the floor. He doesn’t grant me a second to adjust. He backs me into the wall, both hands rising up the outsides of my thighs, taking the hem with them, and I lift onto my toes to help, which tells the whole story of how far past deciding I went somewhere around the second song. The fabric gathers at my waist. He pulls back just enough to put his eyes on mine, leaving me half a second to call this off if calling it off is in me anywhere.

“Last chance to be the smartest person in the room,” he says.

“The title’s overrated.” I fist my hand in his lapel and pull him back in, and for once in my life I don’t hear a single number.

2

Adrianos

The lock turns, and I have her against the wall before the sound of it finishes.

She doesn’t startle. I’d watched her not startle all night, absorbing what most people flinch from, still underneath the heat, and that stillness had been the first thing that interested me and is now the thing I intend to dismantle in a bar bathroom under lights that do everyone a disservice. She takes my hands at her hips without flinching and tips her chin up and meets my eyes, and her chest rises before she’s cleared the response, the involuntary tell she’d been paying all night.

I run my hands up the outside of her thighs and take the dress with them. She rises onto her toes. That small cooperative lift tells me more than her mouth spent the last hour qualifying, and I don’t need to hear the rest.

She’s soaked before I reach her. Her underwear dark with it, and when I drag one finger across the fabric, her hips press into the contact, catch themselves, and press again. I give her two seconds of that, the thin cloth between my fingers and what’s underneath, and then I pull the underwear down and drop it, and she steps out without being asked.

“We’re not doing foreplay,” she says. “Get your cock out and get on with it.”

“That wasn’t foreplay.” I unbuckle my belt, pull the leather free, and drop it. My pants open next, and I get my cock out, already hard, and her eyes drop to it and stay there. “That was inventory.”

Her mouth had been open in an argument, but the argument doesn’t come back.

I take her thigh in my hand, hitch it up, and get the head of my cock against her. She’s soaked, slick against me, and I push in slow enough to feel every inch of it, feel her stretch around me and grip and take more, and I don’t stop until I’m buried to the hilt and her toes have left the floor entirely.

Her palms drive into my shoulders, and all ten fingers find grip, and the sound she makes she doesn’t try to contain, bouncing off the tile. I go still and give her the second she needs, because her cunt is gripping me so tight it’s its own argument for patience. She’s never been this full. I can feel her working it out, the way she exhales through the stretch, the tiny adjustments her hips make, testing, correcting, her body getting acquainted with every inch of my cock inside her.

“Too much?” I ask.

“No more talking,” she says, and rolls her hips forward to prove her point. “Just fuck me already.”

I set a pace, hard and steady, and she picks it up without lag, her hips rolling up to meet each thrust, her heel digging into the back of my thigh to pull me deeper. I can feel how wet she is every time I pull back, the slick drag of her cunt around my cock, and I push harder, and her head goes back against the wall, throat exposed. I put my mouth there, drag my teeth along the tendon, feel her pulse against my lips.

She’s taking all of it. Every thrust drives her up onto her toes, and she comes back down onto the next one, her body working with mine, her thigh hooked over my arm, and the sounds she’s making are getting louder and less contained with every stroke.

“You’re still thinking,” I say against her skin.

“I’m thinking you’re not fucking me hard enough.”

I pull back and drive into her harder, and her next thought exits as a sound with nothing coherent left in it. I set a rougher pace, each thrust pushing her up the wall, and I let myself have it, the full weight of a good night behind me, a deal closed, a room full of men who’d underestimated me and paid for it, and now this, her cunt slick and tight around my cock and her body taking everything I give her and asking for more. I grip her thigh harder and fuck her like I’ve earned it, because I have, driving in deep and pulling back and doing it again, and she stops trying to muffle anything and just takes it, her nails in my shoulders and her heel locked at my thigh and her hips snapping forward to meet each thrust like she’s as hungry for it as I am.

A breath, unsteady. “That all you got?”

I push in deep and hold there and feel her clench.

“Your pussy’s gripping me like it’s never had this much,” I say against her ear, giving her a moment to think she’s caught her breath. “I’ll ruin you properly, koukla. Since you asked.”

I pull back and slam into her, all of it, no rationing left, and she cries out, and I do it again, and again, setting a pace that’s got nothing measured in it anymore. The wall takes the impact of each thrust, her back against it, her whole body jolting up with every stroke, and I grip her thigh so hard I’ll leave a mark, but I don’t stop. I can feel everything, the slick heat of her cunt around my cock, the way she’s dripping down my shaft, the wet sound of each thrust obscene and loud in the tiled room, and I drive into her harder because I want that sound, want all of it.

She’s stopped trying to form words. Every thrust knocks the breath out of her, punches a sound out of her throat, and her hips are working back against mine with a desperation that matches mine stroke for stroke. I pull back until just the head of my cock is inside her and slam back in to the hilt and feel her walls clench and do it again, and again, and again, finding a brutal rhythm and holding it, my hips driving forward with everything I have, the slap of my body against hers filling the room.

I get my hand in her hair and pull her head back and fuck her harder, feeling her stretch around me with each stroke, feeling the grip of her tighten each time I bottom out, and she’s making sounds now that have no composure left in them at all, raw and broken and loud, and I want more of them.

I pull out and get my hands under her ass and lift her off the wall entirely, and she wraps her legs around my waist before I’ve finished the move, ankles locked at the small of my back, and I push back into her in the same motion, and she gasps, the new angle taking all of me, nothing held back.