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He peered up at me once he stopped speaking and I remembered to breathe. Though I still couldn’t think of anything to say. All I could think of was that in his classroom my senior year, our inappropriate thoughts had at some point existed simultaneously for each other. The thrill of the thought coursed through my veins and buzzed in my chest. “So…” I played with the cutouts of my dress, hooking my fingers inside of them. He watched me do it. “The way you felt about me back in high school… is what made you feel so strongly when you saw me again? Three years later?” The tips of our shoes were touching at this point and I had a beautiful, glowing view of downtown Manhattan in front of me, but all I could look at was Daniel.
“For the most part, I had you erased you from my mind because otherwise, I couldn’t do my job in that town. But once in awhile, I wondered how you were doing. What you were doing. What made you passionate now, the way that story did.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “So when I recognized you that night at the restaurant, I felt it all come back. All those thoughts and more. Because you still looked like the student I remembered but you were suddenly also this gorgeous, happy, unbelievably sexy woman. That dress you were wearing drove me insane. And right away I felt this need for you. I wanted you so fucking badly that I was fantasizing about you before I even stepped into the restaurant.”
“Why is any of that a bad thing?” I asked. Excitement was building in my stomach. I forced myself not to just grab him right there and then since I had the irrational need for him to touch me first. For now, all I’d allow was for the wind to blow my hair forward to graze his chest. “I know you think that the feelings you had for me were wrong but they couldn’t be anything that other teachers hadn’t felt before. They were just thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like you were anything but professional towards me.” My heart beat in my ears as I waited for him to respond. Since he was quiet, I took the liberty of reading his mind. “I know people at home would do more than disapprove if they saw us together. And that they’d make up stories and give in to crazy rumors just because of me. I know you love your job and that it’s an incredible school to teach at. But that doesn’t mean Woodhill should get to dictate your personal life. Or mine. I let them do it for too long, but I’ve learned my lesson.” I thought of Ben, my mother. Dane. “And that lesson is screw Woodhill. Fuck ‘em.”
In the midst of rubbing his neck, Daniel raised an eyebrow at me with amusement. “Yeah?”
God, just one word and he had my heart racing and my cheeks warming again. “Yeah,” I managed. “Forget what they think and treat me the way you want to.” Heat spread through me so that my skin tingled against the fabric of my dress. “Do what you want.” The words rolled off my tongue with a lust so thick that I surprised even myself. I hardly recognized my voice but then again, the need I felt for Daniel’s touch was unlike any other I’d experien
ced before. It dizzied me and pulsed in my neck, my chest, between my thighs, erasing my memory of anything else around me just to focus on getting the one thing I wanted. It consumed and intoxicated me in a way that Ben had never come close to doing, not even in the beginning.
And it sent all my blood rushing to one, aching spot the moment Daniel touched me. Sliding his fingers into the cutouts of my dress, he pulled me into him by handfuls of stretchy fabric, drawing a hard but breathy exhale from my mouth. Suddenly, he had me against the chain link fence, the metal feeling like ice against my hot neck. I gasped upon feeling the softness of his lips and then the warmth of his tongue right above my collar bone, the mix of sensations curling my fingers in his hair, tugging lightly and prompting a low, sexy grunt from his throat as he withdrew his mouth from my neck.
“I can’t do what I want right now,” he rasped with a pained laugh. Under my dress, his hands squeezed my bare waist with frustration. “Not here.”
The groan I heard came from my own mouth. Writhing with breathless, lightheaded, searing desire, the bridge was truly the last place I needed to be right now — out in the open, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, cars zooming by us virtually every second.
“But I want you.” The torture in my breathy voice immediately drew his body back into mine. His hands clasped around my neck and I felt a low rumble from his chest before his lips crushed against mine. His fingers tightened around me, his thumbs propping under my jaw and holding my face still so that all I could do was part my mouth to welcome the thrust of his tongue. The sensation of cold metal crisscrossed on my palm and only then did I realize that my hands were at my sides, my fingers intertwined with the fence as a means to stop themselves from grabbing the top of Daniel’s jeans. I could feel his erection against me and I didn’t trust myself not to tear those jeans off if I let myself touch it.
“Fuck.” Daniel ripped himself away from me for a moment, stepping back and raking through his hair hard with both hands. The image of his flexing muscles didn’t help my frustration, which had me squeezing handfuls of chain link in my fingers. Daniel panted as he stared at me. “I’m so sorry. I want to give you everything you want right now. Trust me.”
I nodded, murmuring some sort of response as I tried to think of the best way for us to find privacy, though it still meant a torturous walk back into Manhattan.
But the brainstorming proved unnecessary because, of course, Daniel’s phone rang. It was then that I realized I’d left my own at Todos.
“Yeah, Mike,” Daniel all but grunted when he picked up. “Alright,” was all he said before hanging up. He looked at me, seeming to be cooling down. “He said Kelsey needs you back at the restaurant.” At the mention of her name, I felt my body simmering too. Our chests still heaving, we stared at each other for a couple seconds, finally cracking a laugh at the same time before turning back towards Manhattan, walking yards apart from each other just as we had before. It was the best way to survive the walk.
CHAPTER 9
I tried to ignore Adriana’s knowing look as I counted out at the register, shuffling through a stack twenties, tens, fives and then singles in record speed.
“Damn, girl. You are dying to get out of here.” I could practically hear the smirk on her lips. “Got bluewalled yesterday?”
I stuffed the money into an envelope and stared at her, already laughing. “Bluewalled?”
“Yeah. You know how guys get blueballed? And since you’re a girl — ”
I stopped her. “Okay, I figured that’s what it was,” I snorted, sticking my closing report into the envelope before sealing it and scribbling my name on the front in what looked like a serial killer’s handwriting.
“You poor thing. I hate that feeling, getting left high and dry. I literally feel pain in my stomach when a guy gets me all worked up and then something comes up so he can’t fuck me senseless. Those are the times that my Magic Wand becomes my best friend.”
That nervous laugh crept upon my lips again. “Your magic wand?”
Adriana stared. “My vibrator? You… ” She cocked her head at me, frowning. “You’ve never used one before, have you.”
I shrugged. “I’m sure Ben would’ve smashed it into a million pieces if he ever found one around the apartment.”
Adriana snorted, putting on a deep, caveman-like voice. “‘My selfish penis does not satisfy you? What do you need to come for anyway? Sex is about my pleasure only! I’m a shithead!’”
I burst out laughing. “I swear that was what he was thinking. He always came before me, but in the first month or two he’d at least…” I made a face, shy but feeling stupid about feeling shy about the topic. “… he’d finger me to get me off.”
Adriana gave me an incredulous look. “Did you really just hesitate to say the word ‘finger?’”
“Well, in that context, yes.”
“Girl. Of all people, you can talk to me about sex, doofus. You and I have practically dry humped each other before.”
I laughed, scrunching my nose up and making a face. “True.” It was at that Halloween party of Linh’s. When Adriana and I had decided that the guys there were too aggressively horny to go near, we turned to one another — for fun and the purpose of unloading our sexual frustration. “I just never talk about that stuff aloud.”
