AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh,she’sthe one?” Juliette stops us so abruptly that a Chewbacca-Leia couple bounce off us, and I find myself apologizing for something that’s not my fault. “I have to say, I see why.” She disengages her hands from mine. “Esther’s right. Go for it!” Juliette pushes me away from her, but now is not the right moment for what I must tell Lolly.
The woman who haunts my thoughts turns in time to see me lead Juliette back to her seat, and perhaps it is only my imagination, but I could swear her eyes land on the mark on Juliette’s neck—the mark I had no part in making. Lolly’s lip curls and she launches herself at Gustavo, arms above her head and her hips shaking like a belly dancer’s. He laughs and the two of them shout over the music, the words lost to me. They’re friends. Easy together. Comfortable. He has his hand on her waist, where I want mine to be, but she doesn’t flinch or pull away. He clicks his fingers at the band and the music switches from epic space opera music to a pre-recorded orchestral number.
I land in my seat with a thump as the dance floor clears, leaving only Lolly. What kind of warped world is it that I have to watch Lolly Benoit dance to Richard Strauss’Dance of the Seven Veils?
She sheds her horns, wings, and tail and is left in a skin suit of paint, feathers, and imagination that sends my heart galloping as if I am an untutored schoolboy. She conjures a sheer scarf from someone in the crowd and lets it flutter over one arm before she collapses in a move so sleek and elegant it’s as if she was poured from a glass. Her hand runs down her throat and over her breasts, touching every place I would wish to touch her, before she arches her back and springs from the ruins of her fall.
She’s joined by seven or eight dancers, tall/short, fat/thin, men/women, who knows. All I can say is they’re each dedicated to making this dance the highlight of the night. They leave little to the imagination as they writhe and thrust, bend and curl, twist and wave and press themselves against the crowd.
Lolly’s not the only Salome on the dance floor, but she’s the most lithe, the most well timed, the only one I have eyes for. As the music builds and rises, the Salomes fix themselves on a single audience member and dedicate their undulations to the pleasure—embarrassment, delight, shock—of one lucky, if unwitting, participant. I am half agony, half hope as Lolly whirls, her eyes landing on me. She weaves her way across the floor and my blood roars in my ears, drowning out the music, everything around me gone except her. I am certain she will turn away at the last second, rip herself from me, but instead she comes closer and closer, around the curve of the table, until she stands before me. She gives a final spin and then, just as she seems poised to sway away, her eyes find mine again and she drops into my lap before I have a chance to reach for her. In that moment, if I did not close my eyes, I would surely explode into a thousand miniature suns, and it is all I can do to control myself as her hands encircle my throat, her breasts press at my shirtfront, her tongue traces an L upon my cheek.
The hardness in my pants can hardly be a shock to her, but she reaches down and rubs her hand across my all-too-willing cock, the smile on her face something I can barely read as I grit my teeth against my excitement.
The music ends. Too soon.
“You lose,” she whispers. And then she’s standing. Turning. Leaving me to adjust my pants around my crushing erection.
Why, when I know so little about this woman, do I believe she’s right? I’ve lost something I never had, but the hole it carves inside me is cavernous.
RING MY BELL
Lolly Benoit. High Winds Polo Club. Palm Beach, Florida.
Ibuzz with something far more potent than the two shots of Casamigos Añejo I consumed for prinks, the electricity thrumming through me closest to the feeling I have when I come off the polo field having scored a winning goal.
I knew I was going to slay with my performance as Salome, but the way I feel as I whirl away from Mariano and his ravenous eyes isbeyondbeyond. It’s like someone took a shot of tequila, added a bolus of cocaine, and topped it off with the triumph Hannibal’s army felt after they crossed the Alps. No matter that I’ve never so much as seen cocaine, or the fact that Hannibal’s men were probably dirty, smelly, and covered in vinegar.To hell with you, analytic brain; this is my moment!The charge that has my every innermost part zinging with buzzing energy is something bigger than all those things put together. It’s Vengeance, with a capital V. That’s what it is. Except I never knew vengeance could feel so much like desire.
At the edge of the dance floor, Gustavo stands beside Nicolás, a two-person receiving line, greeting each of the dancers as we merge back into the crowd of well-wishers. When Gustavo sees me, he throws his arms wide again. “Lolly!Mi amiga bonita!” He makes to hug me, but no way am I going to get my body paint all over his wedding suit. Instead, I clasp his hands in mine as he leans in to kiss my cheeks for the second time tonight. Just as he pulls away, he whispers, “You are a rockstar. He’s still eating his heart out!”
I pretend not to hear Gustavo. It’s his day and Nicolás’, and it should have nothing whatsoever to do with me. “I’m so happy for you Gustavo! You and Nicolás deserve every happiness.” I kiss his cheek and then Nicolás’, and then the line moves and my turn with them is over.
A waiter passes with a tray of champagne flutes and, even though I know better, I snag myself a glass and down it in one shot. I need to make a call. This moment is too delish not to share it with Dish-Lish. I push through a crush of bodies, still vibrating, but someone catches my arm.
“Girrrrrl, you were Salma Hayek hot!” Xena licks his finger, presses it to my shoulder, hisses and meows, then points at Mariano. “I wanted to get me some of that, too, but he turned me down oh-so-politely. I see why he was holding out!” Across the dance floor, Mariano still sits where I left him, the orange-glitter body paint outline of my breasts emblazoned across his chest. Oh god. What have I done? His eyes are on me. The instant he catches me looking, he stands, cutting across the dance floor.
Xena’s whisked away by some dude in tails, the two of them running their hands over each other like a couple of high schoolers under the bleachers. It’s going to be that kind of night. And why not. We’re young. We’re free.Carpe Vinum.Seize the wine. And parts south, apparently…
The giggle I’ve been holding back bubbles out of me, and I whirl. I have to get away, find somewhere quieter, because I am burning up with something I’m certain I can’t contain much longer. Someone has snagged Mariano on his way over to me, but his eyes haven’t left my body, and the tug, which resonates on the same frequency he’s broadcasting on, isn’t coming from my brain. Unless women get a second brain now that we’re all liberated and shit.Oh, little Button Brain. Quiet down. No one’s going to ring your bell. Not tonight.
Button Brain. Never heard the clit called that before.Another giggle escapes from my throat, the same way it does when I ride Velveteen and she shifts into a new gear and there is nothing but pure, joyful exhilaration. Only this time the cause of the exhilaration is Mariano’s eyes on mine, and that thrill is laced with something wilder. I already know what his mouth feels like, all that’s left is to taste the rest of him.Not happening.
He’s trapped with some old lady, talking the smallest small talk anyone has ever talked, but even as he leans closer so she can hear him, one hand steadying her as he helps her from her seat—ever the gentleman—he can’t stop flicking glances at me, and I am just going to straight upownit. He might be kind and respectful and considerate to everyone else I’ve seen him with tonight, but it’s me he wants. He’s already proven that, more than once. Just not enough. You want me, you too-dutiful, too-spineless man, and I want you to know that I know that you know I know it. So, suffer. See if I care! Half of me wants to smash my orange-painted self into him until he’s the same color as my spray-painted breasts, but the rest of me is more than thrilled that he can’t look away.
For the first time since he told me that I wasn’t good enough, I feel…powerful. In control. In slow-mo, I replay his eyes closing as he went even harder beneath me, his cock pressing through the skimpy fabric of my leotard in time with the music, in rhythm with the pulse throbbing just above the collar of his classic white shirt, pulsing through my fingertips and straight through my own bloodstream, down to sex central, where he’s ringing my bell for all to see.
I slam into the Ladies room, my fingers jittering so bad after a cocktail of fine tequila, bubbly, and an adrenaline chaser. I can barely manage to press the star for my favorites without dropping my phone.
Alicia picks up before it even rings. “Please tell me you are about to send a video of your performance.”
I open my mouth to answer and all that comes out is a froth of uncontrollable giggles.
“What’s going on?” There is a long pause into which I can only squeak and gasp and then silent laugh even more. “Please tell me! Did you…” Alicia breathes into the phone. “Did you well and trulyfuck him?” She’s breathless.
“What? No!” But then I laugh and laugh and laugh, because Alicia means ‘fuck him over’ by doing my Salome dance with someone else, which is what I intended to do. Instead, some other instinct took over and I did the closest thing to literally fucking him. In public.
When I finally manage to get myself halfway under control, I force out, “I don’t know what got into me. You know the bit I was telling you about in the Salome dance, when I was going to find some rando to grind up against? Well…I kind of ended up in Mariano’s—I gave him the equivalent of a lap dance in front of some dusty-ass woman who’s exactly the sort of woman he said he needed to snag.”
“You did not.”
