The Sexpert

“If you ever want to have elevator sex, it can stop the car without the alarm and turn the cameras off for three minutes.”

“What?”

She does that sly grin that makes men stop in their tracks. “You heard me. I don’t know why Pierce has that programmed in, but he does. And he told me about it.” Which makes her pause and squint her eyes.

“Do you… fuck in the elevator?” I ask her. And then I kinda get lost in that visual. Tall, thin, serious Myrtle being pushed back against the wall by someone like tall, broad-shouldered Pierce, probably. His hand would slip up her leg and find its way under her skirt, lifting it up a little to reveal thigh-high stockings. And not the elastic kind, either. The kind with garters. And then—

“A girl doesn’t talk,” Myrtle says. “Now back to you. Why is your shirt missing all the buttons?” She raises an eyebrow at me. A serious one too. One that says she expects an answer. And I don’t know what it is about Myrtle that makes you want to do as she tells you, but she does have that power.

My cheeks go hot. And then I start laughing. “I bumped into him in the stairs this morning and we did this push-past-each-other dance, and I almost fell backwards, and then he tried to save me by popping off all my buttons and grabbing my ponytail, and then we kissed.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Myrtle smile so big. And then she practically chuckles. “I’m going to need all these details.”

But the trip down to the lobby is surprisingly quick when you don’t have to stop and let people on and off.

“Later,” I say, stepping out into a waiting crowd of people. “I gotta go! Enjoy your BS sandwich!”

It’s raining when I step outside. But not too bad, and my building is only a couple blocks away. So I walk fast and don’t run because it’s hot today and the rain is more like one of those water-mister thingies they have on non-stop in the summer at the Las Vegas hotel pools.

I can see my building—I’m like two minutes away—when the sky opens up, washes away my gentle, refreshing mist and replaces it with spectacular sheets of falling rain. I’m talking torrential downpour.

So now I have to run because I’m getting soaked. I make a mad dash for the lobby door, and since this place is fancy, there’s a doorman rushing towards me holding an umbrella, which slides over my head the exact moment that the rain stops.

“Figures,” I mumble. “But thank you. That was a valiant attempt!”

There’s people waiting at the elevator, and I’m soaked, so I take the stairs up to the second floor, more eager than ever to get out of these wet clothes.

All my best-laid plans come to a screeching halt when I exit the stairwell to find… yes, you guessed it. Andrew, waiting by the elevator.

He spins around when he hears the door open, blinks twice as he checks out my condition, and then loses the battle trying not to stare at my tits, because I look like I’m in a wet t-shirt contest.

“Wow,” he says, forcing himself to look me in the eyes. “What happened?” And then he puts a hand over his mouth to try to hide his laugh.

“I got stuck in a downpour. What are you doing here?”

“I was checking out the pool.”

“Why?” I ask him. “It’s not like you’ll ever need to use it. You have a private one upstairs.”

“I want to check out the gym too,” he counters.

“Are you spying on me?”

“What?” Andrew chuckles.

I don’t know why I say it. I’m taken aback at his appearance here. Plus I’m still kinda ruffled about the kiss in the stairwell, not to mention the fact that Pierce has him looking for me—even though he doesn’t know he’s looking for me, he is. And it’s actually weird. Like why is he on my floor?

“Why would I be spying on you?”

“Never mind,” I say, pushing past him. “I just came home to change my shirt, so I’ll see ya later.”

But as I push past him he blocks me. Which makes me want to back up. In fact, I do back up. Until I run out of backing-up space because I bump into the stairwell door.

“Why are you so nervous?”

He’s so close now I have to tilt my chin up to look at him. I’m breathing heavy from the run and my sprint up the stairs. And I’m wet. Like very wet.

He places one hand on the wall next to my head, half blocking me in.

“Ummm…” I duck under and start down the hallway. “I gotta go,” I say.

Because I am very nervous for all those reasons already discussed. But I don’t feel like talking about the kiss in the stairwell and I’m very much not going to tell him about me being his target, so my only option is to power-walk down my hallway, key card in hand, ready to flash it at my door and get the hell away from him until I can pull all these weird coincidences together into some kind of coherent sense.