The air felt heavy, thick, like walking through a club with too many dancers on the floor and dry ice clotting the air you try to breathe. I should have backed away. I knew that this had moved beyond something I could explain as being caught by the music or the seduction of the dance. But his breath smelled sweet, like something delicious I hadn’t tasted in a long time and the weight of his arms, the liquid heat pouring from his skin onto mine, kept me frozen, made me answer his body with each brush of our hips meeting over and over again.
He gripped my hips and moved them harder, matching the movement with a roll that was more than a graze, sweeter than a grind. And those fingers that had touched me so surely at Summerland’s, those wide knuckles that had already brought me to orgasm once before, gripped down, more than control, then, eager, like insistence.
I closed my eyes, slowing my movements when I felt the familiar outline of his dick, hard and heavy against my stomach. The first time that had happened, my surprise, then flippant excuse to myself about Ransom being a guy and things like that happened to guys when they try a dance like this, had caught me off guard. Now the surprise felt more like some affirmation I knew I didn’t really need.
He hadn’t stopped dancing, still controlled both our movements, and I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to fight back the buzz tickling my clit and the sweet, aching brush of my hardened nipples against his damp shirt.
“Aly.”
My name from that low whispered voice was a warning. I knew it without having to open my eyes. But I was a stubborn woman and sometimes I didn’t listen to warnings even when I recognized them. Just then, I knew that when I opened my eyes and returned that intense stare, I’d be accepting an invitation I’d coveted but had always been too afraid to accept.
One inhale and I blinked, given no time to refuse before Ransom took my face in his hands and brushed his mouth over mine. And then…we lost our minds.
I don’t remember opening my mouth. I don’t remember my fingers threading in his hair. I don’t remember making that satisfied, small noise that was all triumph. I only know that Ransom’s mouth was wider than mine, that his tongue was warm and tasted like something that was either very sinful or obnoxiously fattening.
He made music with his body, demanding that I surrender. His kissed me like someone who always reached for something to hold onto and only ever got something that made him spin further out of control.
It was Ransom that pulled me against the mirrored wall. Ransom who moved his hips into mine so that my thigh squeaked against the glass. It was Ransom that gripped my ass and moved his hand up my ribs to cup my breast under his greedy, desperate hand.
“Aly,” he breathed again, the word winded and frantic before he went in for more, moving my face with his fingers, guiding my chin.
I wanted all of this. I wanted him and the taste of his tongue, the call of his moans louder than the music that continued to play, unheeded. I’d wanted it for a very long time, and yet, and yet…. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t all there. He was pretending again, at least some part of him, like he had one night at his parents’ home when we sat around the table eating Chinese take-out. His smile hadn’t seemed authentic to me then. His reassurances to his folks that he felt wonderful, that his classes were great and practice was exhausting but kept him energized, came out flat and forced.
I waited tables at a diner in the city that stayed open twenty-four hours. I saw people at their most honest. Sometimes I’d see them at breakfast, preparing for their day and then again when their nights have led them somewhere they’d never admit to going. I knew what it was to pretend that your world isn’t crumbling all while you dust the bits of grime from your shoulders. Ransom had been like that on that night, with his parents and now, though he went after my mouth like he wanted to own it, I felt that small measure of hesitation from his touch. He wasn’t giving me everything he had. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, someone else held a piece of him that she wouldn’t let go of.
But I’d gladly take what I could get.
The squeak of my skin against the glass got louder when Ransom lifted me up and I arched against his mouth as he moved his lips down my neck. He took a breath, one that I jumped on and returned the same attention he’d just given me, letting my teeth scrape against his ear, my tongue in hollow of his throat.
“Stop…shit, Aly…wait.”
This time his voice wasn’t awed or whispered. His words came out clear, more desperate than the way he’d kissed me, and when I saw Ransom’s eyes squeezed shut, I couldn’t keep my hands from touching his face, wanting to wipe that pained frown off his face.
“Ransom. Souple. Silans now. It’s fine.”
But he shook his head and pulled my hand away from his face, squeezing it once before he set my feet back on the floor.
For a minute, I thought he’d laugh, tease us both for acting like horny teenagers. But Ransom only breathed as though he needed to regulate his pulse and he rested his sweaty forehead against mine. “I’m sorry,” he said, head still down and his thumb rubbing along my cheek. “God, I’m sorry, Aly. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
I couldn’t stop him, didn’t have a chance to tell him I’d wanted his kiss, I’d wanted him for far longer than he’d known who I was. Before I had a chance to say anything, Ransom left the studio in a rush, pulling back on the door so hard that it bounced against the wall. He was in his car and squealing out of the parking lot before I made it to the front entrance.
And it wasn’t until I saw his taillights disappear down the empty street that I thought about calling him, about dismissing what had happened as nothing more than getting carried away by the moment.
“Aly?” Leann called from the back of the studio, and I started at the sound of her voice, barely glancing over my shoulder when she joined me by the door. “What’s going on?”
I growled, kicking my foot against the molding. “I have no idea, Leann. I have no idea.”
11
The diner was on Esplanade, across the small street from both a veterinary clinic and a small club where old jazz musicians went to kill their instruments until three a.m. It was a tiny building, likely once an old residential home and I suspected that resident had been a maid or butler for the larger, expansive place right next door.
There were small, wrought iron tables and chairs chained to the cement courtyard outside the diner. Each one held a laminated menu and a small rack that held condiments. The exterior was pale blue with black trim and the porch had been taken down years before when Tillie, the diner owner, thought the place could use a courtyard. But drunks tended to be stupid at night when our staff was thin, and had taken to moving around all the nice furniture Tillie had spent some serious cash on in order to “French up the place.”
Now the place was worn, a little shabby around the edges with a weird yellow tint turning that pale blue to an ugly green. Tillie had stopped caring about the diner looking French when her man took off with the money she’d help raised for her Yorkie’s chemo treatments. Now Tillie was without any pets at all and only cared about making sure the vendors got paid and that we didn’t draw the attention of the health department.
She did care about keeping the place clean, but wouldn’t spend a nickel on updates, so the bar across the front of the diner looked like something out of a bad 50’s sock hop flick. The Formica top was white lined with silver trim, and Louie Clemens, the day cook with too much paunch leaned his elbows against it as I wiped it down.