Sex Says

“Just put it on my tab, okay, Fred?” I asked, and Freddy answered from the other end of the bar with a salute.

Lola looked back over her shoulder with a laugh. “You come here a lot?”

“I told you they have good burgers and fries.”

Truth was, I knew people all over this city. Connections, acquaintances, people who owed me favors. Freddy was just the beginning.

I walked her out the door with a hand to her back and straight to a Mercedes at the curb. She turned surprised eyes in my direction and grabbed the handle on the door.

“A Mercedes?” she asked as I watched the door open without incident. I raised my eyebrows and bit my lip as she climbed inside and got settled.

As soon as she was in, I rounded the car, looked both ways and then crossed the street to my Corolla at the other curb. She’d been looking at her lap, but when she looked up and found me missing, the crazy way she jerked back and forth looking for me cracked me up.

Finally, she spotted me climbing into the driver’s seat of my car and scrambled for the door handle of whoever’s car she was in.

All she did was struggle for the first several seconds, floundering like a fish on land—an island it’d never been to, at that. When she finally found it and engaged the handle, she jumped out way faster than she’d climbed in.

I rolled down my window as she crossed the street.

Straight to my door, she moved at a jog and punched me right in the arm when she got there.

“Ow,” I said with a laugh, but secretly just happy it hadn’t been the jaw. “What was that for?”

“I hate you!” she yelled, but that didn’t stop her from rounding the car and climbing into the passenger side.

“How could you let me do that?” she railed. “I could have gotten arrested! What if the owner had come out and found me in their car?”

“Relax,” I consoled, still laughing. She, however, wasn’t entertained by my amusement. I reached over to rub her thigh, and she jerked away.

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t a big deal, and I didn’t say anything. You just assumed.”

Her head shot to the side, the glow from the restaurant creating a scar of light all the way from her eyebrow to the bottom of her cheek. “Because that’s where you led me!”

“I was headed this direction, across the street,” I explained.

“Well, you didn’t stop me.”

“That’s because it was funny,” I admitted, cranking the key and the car to life.

“I really hate you,” she said again, but there was no fire in her voice. Only a soft, sweet swell of affection.

I stopped what I was doing and leaned over to touch my lips to hers. She let me.

“You really don’t,” I whispered there, and the moist tip of her tongue traced along the flesh under my own.

“Ugh,” she huffed, realizing belatedly what she was doing, pushing me away and forcing her eyes open. “Just drive.”

“Your wish” —I told her honest, unguarded eyes— “is my command.”

I sat on my desk chair and smoked as Lola paced the room barefoot, grabbing a fry every time she passed the container. We’d already consumed our burgers, and apparently, having been fueled by the food, the entire evening was finally coming to a head in her mind.

“I mean, what is that?” she ranted. “Why the fuck do women do that? Why do they have to be someone else when they’re trying to impress a guy? Like, I’m just not getting it.”

I smiled, and she pointed at me angrily. “Don’t you smile at me.”

“What?” I asked with a laugh before taking another drag. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Bullshit. You’re the one who filled my head with all of this crap. Now I can’t let it go!”

Apparently, my words and perspective were doing the impossible inside her brilliant mind: making sense. I had to admit, I got a certain amount of sick satisfaction out of watching her mentally, and quite physically, battle herself over agreeing with me—Reed Luca, the devil himself—about anything.

Bringing the cigarette to my lips, I took a pull and winked before blowing the smoke in her direction. “You’re welcome.”

She lunged. I hadn’t been prepared, content to watch her pace my living room until the end of time—as it seemed she would use all of that time—but I found a way to get there quick.

Attack was her intention, but I caught her by the chin an inch from my face and held her there until her eyes met mine.

She trembled, and it all started to make sense. Lola’s anger was only a front for emotion, for arousal, and for a whole hell of a lot of agreement with me in every goddamn way possible.

She wanted me, and I always wanted her.

Neither of us needed any more foreplay. We needed connection. And we needed it fast.

“You need a release, huh, LoLo?” I asked on a whisper.

My fingertips flexed on her jaw while she took a minute to consider all of the options. Give me what I want, and get what she so obviously needed? Or run from everything because she couldn’t stand the idea of needing it at all?

It didn’t take long, just one simple reminder squeeze from my fingers at her jaw, and she nodded.

“What do you need?” I asked softly. Her eyes closed and her head tipped back, opening her throat further. I moved my lips to her ear. “What do you need?” I repeated, skimming the skin with more than my breath.

Her nerves made the column of her throat flutter.

My hand slid down her throat to the base, spanning the very top of her chest, and her eyes came back to mine. “You need a smoke?” I asked, and she shook her head.

My hand flexed at the bottom of her throat, squeezing slightly as I brought the cigarette to my lips one final time.

Dropping the butt in the ashtray to my right, I asked her again. “What do you need?”

The tip of her tongue rounded the rim of her lips and left them wet in its wake, but an answer still didn’t come.

“You gotta tell me,” I told her, knowing that I wasn’t just speaking for her. I was actually buzzing inside, coming apart from the inside out with the need to know how to please her.

She leaned forward and raised the volume on the already playing music on my laptop. “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails was just starting. My pulse sped up to throb in time with each beat.

Pushing back to standing, Lola had the same idea but on a grander scale, moving her body to the music and removing one piece of clothing at a time. Transfixed, I didn’t move from the chair—couldn’t. I was a captive of her movement, a prisoner of her provocation, just watching as she littered the floor of my living room with article after article until there were one hundred percent more clothes on the floor than her body.

My own body awakened at the sight and the feel of the moment. It wasn’t just watching her, and it wasn’t just skin. Lola’s eyes looked harder, and her breath came and went in bigger gulps. There was a cloud around us, powerful and noxious, something we made by looking into each other’s eyes and seeing more than the color.

Slowly, so fucking slowly it hurt, she sucked her middle finger all the way into her mouth and back out again. Down, down, down her body, she left a trail of moisture until it met her clit. A pause. And then one perfect strum.

I had to force myself back into the chair.

“Me or you, Lo?” I asked, and she moaned, playing with herself.

Oh, fuck.

My ass left the chair, and she noticed. Her eyes met mine with a shake.

“Uh-uh-uh. Sit back down.”

Difficult as it was physically, I did as ordered. Because this moment was bigger than anything I could conjure in my mind and bigger than Lola realized in her own.

Her body went back to dancing, her eyes went back into her head, and her hand went back to her clit. Each movement was deliberate and measured and close to snapping my control.

I slapped at the desk blindly, searching for my pack of cigarettes—because, holy fuck, I need another one.

One hand played with her nipple while the other shoved a finger inside, and I wanted to die. Die because I was in heaven, and I was in hell, and Lola was the sexiest, most erotically confident creature I’d ever encountered in my whole entire life.

Sweet Jesus.

She built the pace as the song climbed and moved her breast-fondling hand down to her clit. In and out, in and out, strum, strum, strum.

I was literally going to come in my goddamn pants.

She gasped once, twice, and the song demanded she get there, forced the issue, building and building and then holding it there until I thought I’d lose my goddamn mind.

All at once, the tempo dropped from the top of the cliff, and she went too in one big rush, moaning and crying out with an intensity that made me snap the cigarette in my hand right in two.

The hot ash end fell right in my lap. “Shit, shit! Fuck!”

Unbothered by me and my jumping hysteria, she slid her hands to her throat as she breathed and rode from one end of her climactic wave to the other.

I put out the burning end and stared. She was magnificence in one tiny, confident package. Something deep in my chest ached to tether itself to her and this moment.

Her head came forward, and her eyes came to mine—and then she stalked me.

I couldn’t do anything more than sit there as she leaned into my body and put her lips to mine. Not deep, not inviting—just a teasing touch.