Sex Says

After several long seconds, she saved me the trouble of having to carry her and conceal her cries of protest and jumped to her feet. She shoved past me and headed for the stairs to the level of the club made for dancing.

I followed her dutifully, watching the line of her shoulders as she walked. One peeked out from the collar of a dress I thought might have been a sweatshirt in a former life, while the other climbed to her ear and fell down again on a circuit.

I guessed she was talking to herself as she walked, or maybe cursing me, but eventually, my eyes moved down to her feet. Sparkly and overadorned heels belied the casual nature of her dress and spoke to what part of an outfit she found most interesting. Heels, Converse, boots—each was chosen precisely, while the clothes were there only as a means to combat nudity.

I honestly expected her to ditch me as we made it to the top, but she kept a slow pace and headed straight for the center of the mass of writhing bodies.

Amber green eyes lined to garner attention found mine over her shoulder to ask a question. I didn’t know what and I didn’t have one fucking clue about the answer, but she seemed to find it nonetheless, turning to face me completely in one smooth move.

She held out a hand for me to take, and my heart thumped. Naïveté wasn’t one of her recurrent qualities, but picturing her thinking about us doing the waltz and comparing it to what I actually intended to do made my blood pump faster.

Awareness shot through my arm as I took her tiny fingers in mine and clasped them tight. She gasped as I gave her hand a rough, calculated yank and spun her to face away from me, pressing the front of my body up against the back of hers at once. Her hand in mine, I brought them down to the front of her hip and pressed in.

“Ready?” I whispered in her ear, smiling when she trembled.

“Sail” by AWOLNATION hummed through the speakers without waiting for her answer, and I had no choice but to move. I loved to dance, the naughtier, the better, and this was one of my favorite beats. It reminded me in all the best ways of fucking, and with Lola’s body pressed up against mine, tonight couldn’t have been different if I’d tried.

One side to the other, I moved our joined hips in unison until her legs gave up the fight and her body relaxed into mine. I moved my face to her neck and just breathed her in. My lips never touched her skin and my tongue stayed inside my mouth, but I felt her so intensely, so acutely, I’d swear until I died that I tasted her that night.

“Reed,” she whispered, and by some miracle, I heard her.

Back and forth we swayed as my hands skated from the tops of her shoulders down to her fingertips and over the curves of her thighs. “Just feel it, Lo.”

Her head fell back onto my shoulder, and I pushed my body deeper into hers, circling my hips and making hers go with them. The back of her throat hummed with the effort to contain a moan as I spun her body out from mine and back in to press her front to my own and pushed her up my thigh until our hips met again.

Hand at the back of her neck, I held her face an inch from mine and kept her eyes captive, guiding her hips with gentle pressure from the other hand. My thumb rounded her throat and forced her chin up.

I shoved my nose to her neck and breathed.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered on a forced breath. Around her delicate throat, my hand traveled to the front and stopped. My pressure was light, but noticeable enough that her eyes opened and rounded, transfixed by mine as the song came to a close.

Everything was silent for one fraction of a second while the music changed over, and I swear I heard her heartbeat.

It’s probably my own.

“Hey, Lola?”

“Yeah?” she asked, scared. By me, by the intensity, by something even I couldn’t pinpoint, but mostly by the unknown mix of all of those things.

“Don’t ever check in with your location on Facebook again.”

“I…okay.”

I pressed my lips to her cheek, but I didn’t let them kiss—just the feel of her skin under them was enough.

Before she could ruin everything with questions or a fight, I forced myself to back away. One person between us led to two and three, and before I could count anymore, I turned and walked straight out and into the chilly night air to take my first sober gulp.

Something about her drugged me right into oblivion—and despite knowing the downsides of addiction, I couldn’t make myself stop loving it.

Just feel it, Lo.

Sweet shitting unicorns, even the memory of those words made my good places tingle. But as a connoisseur of many lonely nights, I knew just how to use that erotic energy practically.

I’d slept like a baby thanks to a self-induced orgasm and spent most of my day browsing the internet while watching episodes of Friends on Netflix.

And by most of my day, I actually meant my entire day. I had been the epitome of lazy. And now, night had settled across the city, and the glow of the streetlights filtered through the glass windows of my living room. Obviously, the time for doing something productive had passed—and I was okay with that.

But no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to the one person I was trying my damnedest not to think about. He had truly become a parasite, first by consuming my thoughts, and now, by actually stalking me to public places.

What I found most concerning, however, was how much his stalker tendencies weren’t freaking me out. I mean, there should’ve been red flags popping up all over the place, the police should have been notified, something. But I only seemed to be intrigued by the way Reed never followed the normal rules for human behavior—including his complete disregard for spatial boundaries and respect.

Don’t ever check in with your location on Facebook again, he’d said, the bossy bastard.

And maybe even worse than the ridiculous things he did say, were the things he didn’t. One second I’d been ensconced in one of the sexiest moments of my life, and the next I’d been standing alone with nothing but an ache in my tailbone.

Like a film reel, I had been replaying his words, our conversation, the dancing, the way he looked, since the second his hands left my skin. Hell, I hadn’t even remembered to stop at Frank’s Weiner Cart before I left the Vertigo Lounge. I was too damn fixated on Reed and the way it felt to have his hands on me, softly caressing my skin as we danced. The way his long, sexy fingers made subtle circles across my arms, my shoulders, my belly, even the tops of my exposed thighs.

Sexy fingers. I didn’t even know fingers could be considered more than just appendages until Reed. But with him, they were sexy fucking fingers.

Last night, my body had craved him in all senses of the word.

I typed crave into the search browser on Merriam-Webster and watched the definition fill the screen.

Crave (verb) 1. To have an intense desire for.

2. To beg earnestly for.

Synonyms: ache, desire, hunger, yearn, thirst, want

Closing my eyes, I pictured Reed’s body over mine as he used every single one of those words.

What is wrong with me?

And what is wrong with God? I knew questioning the big guy in any form wasn’t exactly expediting my passport to heaven, but come on. Why would He pair those blue eyes with that sculpted face, and then heap kissable lips and a body I was certain looked even better bare on top of that? What good was that doing anyone? Bueller?

Last night, I couldn’t control myself. My hands had needed to know what he felt like underneath his white T-shirt. My fingers, completely in on the plan, had slipped under the material and felt the notches of abs, the thick muscles that popped and twitched under his skin as we’d danced.

God and Reed together, they’d gotten me hooked on the sensations and the man providing them, and then they’d ripped it away. One barely there kiss to my cheek and he had disappeared into the crowd, leaving me standing there, jaw slack, eyes hazy, and my body craving.

I was really starting to hate that word, which was preposterous. I was a lover of all words. Even the weird ones that everyone hated like moist or yolk or gurgle.

But last night, Reed had left me unfulfilled—and that was the worst ending for a story that starts and climaxes in desire.

So I had fantasized. And fantasized. Until I had no other choice but to lose myself to that fantasy and find release with Reed’s name on my lips—three times.

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

It’s one thing to be simply attracted to someone, but it’s a whole other bag of problems when you’re masturbating to thoughts of them repeatedly.

I probably needed to be medicated. Or maybe I needed sex.

Yeah, sex. I bet sex with Reed is—

Jesus. Let me rephrase: maybe I needed to have sex with someone who wasn’t Reed. It had been over two months since my last date. Maybe I just needed to dive back into the dating market and find a suitable guy to bring back to my place and get naked with.

Right? I asked in self-assessment.

My vagina all but packed her bags and jumped ship in answer.

Fuck. Get it together, I told her. The memo went out weeks ago; Reed Luca is bad fucking news.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

My head tilted to the side in curiosity. It was half past nine p.m., and clearly, I wasn’t expecting company.

I glanced up from my laptop—where I was currently acting like I was writing, but in reality, I was taking an online quiz that would tell me where I should travel based off of my cheese preferences—and stared at the door as I tested my telepathic abilities to tell them to go away.