Текст книги "Everything I Left Unsaid"

Автор книги: Molly O'Keefe

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

The next morning the tractor was fixed and parked just outside the shed. Ben had changed the oil, too. And at the end of the day, Kevin shuffled out to the field to pay me for my third week of work.

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” he said, giving me the envelope with the small amount of cash tucked inside. The rest paid the rent on my trailer.

“I wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Yeah, I heard about your little party. Next time—”

“Keep it down. We will.” If there was a next time. The one-two punch of Bebe and the kids being gone seemed like a pretty rare event. And frankly, I wasn’t entirely sure I could survive another night like that.

The hangover had nearly swallowed me whole.

“No. Invite me. I love a good girls’ night.”

Once again I had no idea if he was joking or not.

“You seen Ben around today?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“Nothing. Just haven’t seen him. He usually comes up to the office to get a paper. Didn’t get one yesterday, either.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” I said, thinking about that cough he had. How he hadn’t looked all that good yesterday on the bridge.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Kevin said, and lumbered off in his Adidas shower sandals toward the ice-cave office.

Christ, I thought, is that it? Really? Kevin was just going to turn around and not check on Ben? Who might be sick?

We keep to our own, he’d said when I first met him. And he wasn’t joking.

I put my cash in my pocket and headed back over to the laundry building to grab my things from the dryer. I’d had to rewash everything because it spent that night I’d been so drunk in the washing machine, getting stinky.

Tiffany was out in front of her trailer, emptying a bucket of water in the bushes.

“Hey,” I said with a happy leap in my chest at the sight of her.

She turned and gave me a wan smile.

“Still feeling rough?” I asked.

“So rough. Oh my God, Bucket-o-Colada was a bad idea. But your hair looks fucking awesome.”

“It’s really dry,” I said, feeling the brittle edges.

“Yeah. You gotta condition the shit out of it.”

“I’ll have to get some next time I go to town.”

“Wait.” Tiffany went back inside her trailer and came out with a few foil sample packs. “Take these—”

“I can’t,” I said, thinking about Phil and her kids and how she’d said they were late on all their payments.

“Take them,” she said. “Please. It’s…it’s nice to give someone something for a change, you know?”

I nodded and took the packets, shoving them in my pocket with the money.

I was so rich all of a sudden.

“Your kids must be coming home soon.”

Her pale face lightened at the mention of her kids. “Yeah. Mom’s gonna drop them off in an hour.”

“How was the bad television marathon?” I asked.

She smiled. “I slept through it. And Bebe had to leave at two, so it was kind of anticlimactic.”

“Your sister was pretty awesome.”

“She is. She’s going to college at night and works full time, so she doesn’t get a whole lot of time to take off like that. Bebe is the best. I wouldn’t—” She stopped and shook her head, and I remembered her finger against my neck, that grief in her eyes. And I knew that place so well. Not that I ever had friends, or encouragement or help, but I remembered feeling like an open wound to the world.

“Would she help you get away from Phil?” I asked, taking a leap off the bridge right into her problems.

Her eyes narrowed at me. “It’s none of your goddamn business, but I don’t need to get away from Phil. I need him to hold down a job.”

I blinked at her tone, surprised. That night at the sink, she’d looked so broken. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Put your nose in? God, what is it with you and Joan? We’re married, we’re working shit out, and I don’t need you guys.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” she said, and went back inside with her mop and bucket.

After a moment I turned away and got my clothes, ratty and holey. But clean.

I put my things away and caught sight through my bedroom window of Ben’s trailer. Dark. Quiet. I went into the kitchen and looked out the window at his garden. Dark. Quiet.

Shit.

What if he was really sick in there? Or worse? What if he was dying—right now—and Kevin couldn’t be bothered to check up on him?

And I was too chicken.

Gah.

I slammed my way out of my trailer and stomped past Joan’s. Inside I could hear the bass line of some heavy rock song. The closer I got to Ben’s, though, the quieter it seemed. The darker.

As I knocked on the door, I could feel my heartbeat in the palms of my hands.

I really didn’t want to have to break in there and find him sick in bed or dead on the floor or anything, really, in between.

“Ben?” I said when initially there wasn’t an answer.

I knocked again and from inside the trailer I heard a thump.

“What!” he said, wrenching open the screen door. He looked awful. Up to this moment, I’d only ever seen him in neatly pressed tee shirts, his hair tidy, his pants clean. But now, he wore dirty sweatpant cutoffs and a white tee shirt stained with dark red and black spots down the front.

“Ben!” I cried. “Are you all right?”

“Peachy. Fucking peachy. What do you—” He coughed hard into his hand, where he held a red bandana. He coughed for like a minute and then when he was done, he spit into the bandana, wadded it up in a ball, and tossed it into the sink. “What do you want, Annie?” he sighed, sounding utterly worn.

“I just…I wanted to check on you. Kevin said he hadn’t seen you today.”

“I’m under the weather.”

“I can see that…Do you need anything?”

Ben’s eyes were dark. Very dark, nearly black it seemed, and utterly unreadable. Whether he was grieving or angry or sad or scared, I couldn’t tell. They were blacked-out windows, through which I could see nothing.

“I’m fine,” he sighed. “Thank you for asking. It’s just…just a cold—” Then, right in front of my eyes, he blanched and his eyes rolled back. I jerked open the door and grabbed his shoulder with one hand and his arm with the other, and held him up as best I could.

“Ben!” Was he fainting?

“Christ, girl, I’m right here,” he whispered, pulling away from me.

“Come on.” I wouldn’t let him pull away. I put my arm around his shoulders and half-led, half-shoved him toward his settee. Once he was sitting, I started opening up cupboards, looking for water glasses.

“Where are your cups?”

“In the sink,” he said. “I’ve got one in the sink.”

I filled the cup with water and set it down in front of him. With both hands shaking, he picked it up and managed to dribble half of it down his chest. “Fuck,” he breathed, setting it down. “I feel like shit.”

“It’s just a cold?”

“Flu maybe? Who the hell knows?”

“You got anything to eat?”

He pointed over to the stove, where he’d been pouring chicken noodle soup from a Tupperware container into a saucepan.

“You want this?”

“Yeah.” I put the rest of it in the pan and then turned on a burner.

“You made homemade chicken noodle soup?”

“No. I got a lady-friend that made it.”

From outside, a woman shouted, “Hey, you old fart, I got you some meds!”

You could have knocked me over with a pin when Joan walked into the trailer like she owned it.

I turned and lifted an eyebrow at Ben. Was Joan his lady-friend?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered.

“Well, well, you guys are cozy. Is his hacking all night keeping you up too?” Joan asked, stepping over to the table. She tipped a plastic bag out, dumping all kinds of cold medicine onto the table. Daytime formulas, nighttime formulas, sinus stuff, pain reliever. There was about a hundred dollars’ worth of over-the-counter medicine on that table.

“Something here should fix you,” Joan said, and then she turned to me and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Making sure he’s not dead.” I stirred the soup when it started to bubble on the stove.

“Yeah, we can’t have Ben die, can we?”

“I’m alive,” he muttered. “Now both of you go away.”

“Later!” Joan said, lifting her hands up. “And you’re welcome. For the medicine.”

“Fuck your medicine.”

“Lovely,” Joan said. “You coming?” she asked me.

“Yeah, just…” I tested the temperature of the soup and then poured it into a bowl, turned off the stove, and put the bowl down in front of Ben. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked him. He really looked sick, and what was the deal with the weird dried blood on his shirt?

Not my business was what it was.

“Fine,” he said with a wan smile. “And thank you.”

“Right,” Joan muttered, “her he thanks. Let’s go, Florence Nightingale,” she said, nearly dragging me away.

Once we were outside and on the other side of her trailer, she turned.

“What the hell did I say to you?” she asked. “Stay away from the old man, Annie!”

“What were you doing bringing him a hundred dollars in cold medicine?” I asked.

“A hundred and fifty—that sinus stuff is expensive. He wakes up at six in the morning hacking away like he’s going to cough up a lung. I get home at three, I can’t fucking take it.”

“Right. Kevin asked me to look in on him,” I lied.

Joan heaved a big sigh. “Fine…just, honestly, Annie. Don’t get friendly.”

I wondered if Joan knew about the fire. The girl asleep upstairs. Probably, I decided. Joan seemed to know plenty.

“I gotta get to work,” Joan said, checking her watch. “I’ll see you later.”

Oh God, she would. She would see me later at The Velvet Touch. Or rather, maybe I would see her.

A lot of her.

–

What does one wear to a strip club?

It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of choices. In the end I picked my nicest shorts—which meant they didn’t have any holes. They were black and shorter than my other ones, which I thought made them sort of sexy. And I wore my maroon tank-top camisole, which I usually slept in.

I used two of the conditioner packets on my hair and it was actually soft and lying at least a little bit flat against my head, instead of sticking up like a haystack.

With my tan and a little lip gloss and mascara…it wasn’t half bad, I thought.

I spent the evening re-reading my favorite parts of Fifty Shades of Grey and I didn’t touch myself once, so I would be too worked up to chicken out. And truthfully, it would have been nice to have a bucket-o-something to get my courage up.

But at eleven o’clock I put down the book, grabbed my keys, and crossed the point of no return.

The Velvet Touch was three exits back on the highway. It was a dark, cement-bunker-type building sitting in a vast sea of parking, with a billboard so big and so pink it could probably be seen in space.

The parking lot was half full of pickup trucks and big rigs, and there were a half dozen motorcycles lined up near the entrance. The chrome reflected the lights and the black silhouettes of naked women on the billboard.

My courage was flagging, so I pulled out my phone and called Dylan.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “You okay?”

“I’m sitting in the parking lot of the strip club.”

The sound he made low in his throat was sexy. “Having second thoughts?”

“No. I mean…I’m nervous.”

“Nervous is okay. Nervous is exciting. This is naughty, baby. And you like naughty.”

“Yeah, but…what do I do?”

“You’re going to walk in those doors, order a drink, find a dark corner, and you and me, we’re going to talk about what you’re seeing. How it makes you feel.”

“What if it doesn’t make me feel anything?”

“Slip your fingers down your pants, baby.”

“Dylan…”

“Do it.”

Rolling my eyes despite the fact he couldn’t see, I sucked in my belly and shoved my fingers down my pants past the thin elastic of my underwear.

I gasped when my fingers brushed my clit and then again when I felt how wet I was. In my nerves I hadn’t noticed.

“What did you find?” he asked, like he knew. But of course he knew. Somehow he knew everything about this.

“I’m wet,” I whispered.

“Tell me.”

“I’m so slippery,” I moaned low in my throat, giving in to the feeling.

“Don’t come,” he said, his voice sharp, like he knew what I was doing.

“I’m so close,” I protested.

“Go inside. Call me when you get there.”

He hung up, and reluctantly I pulled my hand out of my pants.

I didn’t give myself a second to doubt what I was doing. It was just like getting out of my car in front of the grocery store.

Here goes nothing, I thought and started to pull open the big outer door, but just as I pulled, someone pushed and I nearly fell back on my ass.

“Whoa there,” a man said, reaching out to grab me before I fell. He was big, with a round belly and a long beard.

“Knocking women over again?” asked another guy coming out behind him. They both wore black leather vests over their shirts. A third man came out, younger than the other two, and taller. Bigger seeming, though he was actually kind of thin. He had dark hair and his eyes, when they ran over me, made me wish I had on a bunch more clothes. Like a snowsuit.

Bad news. That’s what my gut said. That man was the worst kind of news.

“Let’s go,” he said, dismissing me the moment after he saw me.

“You all right?” the bearded guy asked and I nodded, and the men got on three of the bikes and roared away.

Shit, I thought. This was ridiculous. I would tell Dylan that he had to come up with something else. Something less…extreme. I could go skinny-dipping again. Or watch some porn—I’m not sure where, the library? Could I do that at the library?

Anything would be easier than this.

But you want this, I thought. And you like that it’s hard.

“You coming in?” a giant black man standing on the other side of the open door asked me. “It’s Ladies’ Night.”

“Ladies’ Night?” I stammered.

“You get in free and drinks are half off.”

“Are there…other women in there?”

The man’s face broke into a smile. “Yeah. You ain’t alone, you little perv.”

He said it with such easygoing affection that I laughed.

Oh Lord, I thought, stepping into the club. If my mother could see me now.

–

The music was loud.

So loud that it actually kind of emptied my head of some of the noise I was producing. Some of the fear. The rug under my feet was threadbare and shabby and the lights were low. Some of them fluorescent.

Nice big chairs were gathered around small round tables and most of them were full. The stage was lined with men watching the act and girls walked in and around the tables, flirting and smiling, selling drinks. Selling sex.

I don’t know what I expected. Something shabby, and yes, it was shabby. Lewd, too.

I totally expected something degrading. I expected women with soul-dead eyes to be pawed at by men with cigars clamped between their teeth and a kind of awful shaming lust in their eyes.

And maybe the women dancing and walking around in G-strings and sitting on men’s laps and leading them into dark and shadowy corners, maybe they felt degraded, but they were hiding it really well. Lying about it.

And the whole place was in on the lie.

I was in on the lie. I needed to believe these women were all right. So…I just did.

One thing was for sure: they had amazing bodies. Like truly…lush and feminine, but strong, too. The woman onstage did some kind of crazy maneuver where she grabbed the pole and somehow turned herself upside down and then, from the top of the pole, using only her legs, slid down in slow circles.

Her breasts—they had to be fake—didn’t even twitch.

And I wondered what I would do if I had a body like that. If I could do that. Would I choose to shovel disgusting torn-up dirty diapers out of a bed of garbage and weeds, gagging the whole time, making far less than minimum wage? Or would I do something like this?

A man in the front row, a young man in a backwards cap sitting with some of his friends, held out a twenty-dollar bill, and the girl crawled over on her hands and knees and took it from him with her teeth.

Her eyes and her smile were inviting and flirty. Sexy.

Layla would have done something like this. For sure.

The thought of Layla, the persona of her, slipped over me, and the screaming of my raw nerves and terrible misgivings became muted. There, but in the background. Something I would worry about tomorrow, maybe.

I stepped to the left of the entryway and took it all in.

The women were putting on a show. And again, I bought it. I don’t know what that said about me. But I bought it and the carnality of it all, the sheer sexual suggestiveness of it, seeped into my skin and turned me on.

Like holy hell it turned me on.

“You want a drink?” A woman came up to my elbow, wearing a sheer black tank top that had been torn in half, the ragged hem of it just barely covering the bottoms of her nipples. She wore neon-yellow underwear and thigh-high fishnets that had been ripped in places. She looked like the sexy survivor of an apocalypse. “Hon’?”

“A piña colada?” I wish I could say that that was the first thing I could think of, but the truth was, if my reaction to Bucket-o-Colada was any indication, I loved piña coladas.

“Sure thing.”

She walked away, stopping at tables as she went. I expected guys to grab her ass or something, yank on her. But no one did. They looked. And they leered. But it seemed pretty hands-off.

There were giant guys without necks standing in the shadows, keeping an eye on all things.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Suddenly Joan was in front of me in a red push-up bra and black ruffled panties. She was more covered up than any other woman working in the bar, but somehow the sexiest.

And she was furious.

“Hey, Joan,” I said lamely.

“I repeat, what the fuck are you doing here?”

She pulled me out of the spot I’d claimed and past a few groups of men who watched us as we went.

“Who’s your friend, Joan?” one of the guys asked. His calculating eyes followed us and his joking had a heavy dose of mean to it. “You gonna give her a lap dance?”

“Fuck off, Steve,” she said.

“Can we watch?”

She ignored him, still pulling me into the shadows past the chairs around the stage.

Once we were in a corner dark and quiet enough, Joan stopped and turned on me, her hands on her hips. Behind her there was a girl on a man’s lap. His hands grabbing her ass, grinding her into him.

My entire body went hot and then cold. Between my legs, I got so wet. I swallowed a groan, watching that man’s fingers bite into her ass, the skin turning white and pink beneath his touch.

What does that feel like? I wondered, breathless and riveted.

The stripper had her hand up, braced against the wall behind the man’s head, her dark hair thrown back. The guy reached up and grabbed a handful of it and pulled.

I could hear the woman groan from five feet away.

And here’s the thing—I’d been on the bad end of all of that. I’d been hurt—but I could see the difference here. I could feel it in my body. In the air that we were all breathing in and out.

“Hey!” Joan snapped in front of my face, tearing my attention away from the couple in the corner. “Why are you here?”

“I…I’m…” playing this weird game with a man I’ve never met, and he told me if I want to have phone sex with him again, I have to go to a strip club.

No way could I say that.

“Is this some kind of weird stalker thing?” she asked. “Because the last thing I need right now is to have a weird stalker living beside me and following me to work!”

“What? No!” I cried. “No. I’m not…I’m not stalking you.”

“Are you gay? Because I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

I shook my head, so embarrassed I was pretty sure my cheeks were glowing. That day at the swimming hole. She’d noticed. Of course she’d noticed; I was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “No. I’m not gay—”

“Bi?”

“Bi-what?”

“Sexual, you idiot! Do you like men and women?”

“I don’t…” I hadn’t really processed that. This weird attraction I had to Joan’s body. It was beautiful as a thing. Sexy as a concept. But I didn’t want to touch her.

I wanted to touch Dylan.

I wanted Dylan to touch me.

It was strange that I’d never really thought that before. Or looked past the parameters of this thing we were doing. Yes, the phone sex was…amazing and exciting, and his voice alone was enough to make me crazy. But what I really wanted was to be the couple in the corner.

I wanted him to grab me like that, to pull me and push me. I wanted him to make me groan.

I didn’t have the slightest clue what Dylan really looked like. He could be fat and hairy and all kinds of ugly—but it didn’t matter.

Because that was who I wanted. That man on the phone who’d never been a normal sixteen-year-old. Who called me back because he was worried that I was scared. Who texted me pictures of himself in a tux, like he knew he looked good.

“No,” I said. “I’m not bisexual or gay or stalking you. I’ve got this thing with a guy…”

“Same guy who gave you the bruises?”

“No.” Oh, God no. “Different guy. We do this thing on the phone—”

“Say no more,” Joan said, lifting up her hand, her face changing from confused and angry to begrudgingly respectful. “I don’t need details. And I have to say, I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”

“Here you are!” The waitress who took my order came up the small steps with a big, fancy glass with fruit sticking out of it on her tray. “I couldn’t find you.”

“Thank you,” I said, digging into my pocket for one of the twenties Dylan gave me.

“I got it,” Joan said. “Thanks, Denise.”

“No problem,” Denise said and she walked away.

“So?” Joan asked. “What are you going to do here?”

“Watch women dance, I guess.”

She gave me a long look. “How daring do you want to be?”

“It was pretty damn daring just walking in the door, trust me.”

“Yeah, but you’re here now. What are you going to do?”

“I’m supposed to call him…” I trailed off and glanced over her shoulder, back at that dark corner. The girl was now facing me, still on the guy’s lap, plastered really all along his chest and legs, like she’d been poured on him. Her eyes were closed and her face…well, if she was acting, if she was pretending to be turned on—she was totally convincing.

As I watched, the man’s hand slipped down across her tummy to cover her entire pussy, which was bare except for a small heart-shaped patch of hair. She twitched against him, her hand covering his, and as I watched, I wondered if she was going to lift that hand away. If that was against the rules or something.

But instead she held it there, grinding it against her, while she was grinding against him.

This. This moment. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

“That’s Destiny,” Joan said. “Her real name is Renee, and when the song switches over she’s going to stand up, take that guy by the hand, and lead him over there.” She pointed to a dark alcove covered in one of those cheesy beaded curtains. “There’s a door there that leads back to the VIP room.”

“What’s she going to do there?” I whispered.

“Fuck him, maybe. Blow him for sure.”

Blow him. My entire body clenched tight.

“You want to call your guy and share something with him tonight, go in there now. Sit way back in the corner and watch them.”

“What?”

“Happens all the time. Husbands sit back there and watch their wives fuck another woman.”

“But…won’t they care?”

I was considering it. I was. Even before I consciously realized it I was halfway in that room.

“No. I’ll let her know you’re there. I’ll tell her about the phone. As long as you don’t take pictures it’s cool. She digs that shit. Probably put on a really good show for you.”

I was breathing hard. And my hand around the drink was numb from the cold.

“Music’s gonna change. Yes or no.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“What is it with you and the whys?” Joan asked, rolling her eyes.

I didn’t know. I really didn’t.

“Your guy is going to dig it,” she said, prodding me on.

Yes. He was.

“Okay,” I said. “But, Renee, is she…?” God, I didn’t know how to say it. “Does she have kids? Or like some kind of terrible drug habit? Or a dad who used to sneak into her room at night—”

“Is she a victim?”

“Yeah.”

“Does it matter?”

I gave Joan a long look. “Yeah.”

“Oh good God, Annie. I don’t ask her about her life. She’s tough. She’s smart and she doesn’t take shit from anyone.”

“Really?”

“Really. And she’s freaky as shit.”

I took one giant long draw of my drink and then set it down on the table, nearly running toward the curtained doorway. I slipped between the beads and there was a small hallway with two doorways, and at the end, a red illuminated exit sign.

Shit. Which door?

I opened the first. Inside it was thick with cigarette smoke, and there was a table with five men sitting around it. All of them turned to stare at me when I walked in.

“Wrong door, sister,” one of them said. A thin man with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Kind eyes. I have no idea why I got that impression in the three seconds I was face-to-face with him, but I did. And he was wearing a linen suit. At a strip club. That’s all I could see through the haze of smoke.

“Sorry,” I said, getting out of there as fast as I could. I spun around and opened the second door.

Inside was a small room with two big leather couches. In the shadows in the far corner there was the gleam of another leather chair, and I made a beeline for it before all my courage deserted me.

I tucked my legs up under me and tried to be as small as I possibly could and called Dylan.

“Are you still in the parking lot?” he asked, his voice teasing.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m in a VIP room. I’m going to watch…”

The door opened again and in walked Renee, who was like seven feet tall in her outrageous sequined heels. The guy she was with came in behind her, his hand wide across her belly, keeping them together.

God, my breathing sounded so loud. And I shifted in the chair and the leather creaked. I closed my eyes, my hands across my mouth.

It hadn’t even started and I was ruining this.

“Hit the button, baby,” Renee said. And the man, who’d clearly been here before, reached over and tapped a button on a black box on the wall and music filled the room.

I turned my phone so no one could see the glow. Or at least I hoped they couldn’t.

Renee turned them a little better so they were almost facing me head on, though there was twenty feet between us. The lighting was super dim but I saw her face.

She winked at me.

“Layla,” Dylan murmured. “Are there people in there with you?”

“Yes,” I breathed as quietly as I could, watching Renee and the guy to see if they heard me. They were locked on each other, the music blocking out any sound of my voice for them.

“What do you want?” Renee asked and for a second I thought she was asking me, but the man spoke up.

“Your mouth on my cock,” he said, and Renee laughed and then gasped when the man’s hands came up and cupped her breasts. Palmed them.

“Can you hear that?” I whispered to Dylan.

“Yeah, baby, I heard. You’re watching a blow job.” His voice, oh, God, his voice was so thick. So heavy. I could feel how turned on he was.

“What do you want?” the guy on the couch asked Renee.

“My mouth on your cock,” Renee said.

His dark laughter rumbled through the room. “This is why we work.”

This is why we work. I could say the same thing to Dylan right now.

Renee stepped away from the guy and gave him a shove over to the couch. He fell back willingly, and she grabbed a pillow from beside him and tossed it on the floor at his feet.

“Tell me,” Dylan ground out in my ear.

“She’s kneeling in front of him.”

Quickly, Renee undid the guy’s pants, her eyes flicking occasionally up to his. He was biting his lips, his hands up on his head, like he was trying hard not to touch her. Like he didn’t want to ruin the show.

And then she reached into the shadows of his open pants and pulled out his dick.

“Fuck, baby, go,” he breathed.

Renee closed her fist around him and pumped him slowly, from bottom to top.

Like Dylan.

“She’s touching him the way you like it,” I whispered. “Hard.”

Dylan groaned. The guy on the couch groaned.

“You want more?” Renee asked. And she could have been asking all of us; she had us all in the palm of her hand right now.

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“Yes,” I breathed.

Oh God. Forget about being quiet. Forget about not being noticed—I was going to go up in flames in this corner. Literally spontaneously combust.

“Touch yourself,” the guy said, and again, my mouth fell open. Was he talking to me?

But he was talking to Renee, who slipped a hand down between her legs.

“Show me how wet you are,” the guy said.

“Yeah?” In the shadows it was too dark to really see what she was doing, but I got the idea when she lifted her hand and held it up to the man’s face.

“Taste how wet I am.”

The man opened his mouth and Renee slipped her fingers in. The guy groaned. Renee groaned. I nearly died in my chair.

“She touched herself and put her fingers in his mouth,” I told Dylan.

“How do you think she tastes?” Dylan asked.

“Good,” I breathed.

“Do it. Touch yourself and taste your fingers for me. Right now.”

I wanted to put my fingers in Dylan’s mouth. I wanted him to taste me. I wanted him to look at me the way this guy was looking at Renee. The way I was looking at Renee.

But he was on the phone and not here, so I did what he said. Traced the edges of my lips with my fingers, gathered up the slickness there, and then put the fingers in my mouth. I moaned.

“Sweet?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Renee bent and licked the guy’s dick, top to bottom, doing some kind of swirl thing over the head that seemed to make the guy go nuts.

“Suck, just suck, baby,” he groaned. “I want to come in your mouth.”

“She put his dick in her mouth,” I whispered.

“Where are his hands?” Dylan asked.

“On his head. He’s…watching.”

“Does it look good?”

“Yes.”

“You want to come?” Dylan asked.

“So bad.”

Soon, the guy dropped his hands, tangling his fingers into her hair, and he was holding her head, lifting his hips to ease in and out of her mouth.

“Do it, baby,” Dylan whispered. “Make yourself come.”

His permission made my heart pound, my fingers clumsy, and my nails scratched my skin as I slipped my hand down between my legs and through my shorts, I pressed up hard against my clit. I flinched I was so turned on.

“Oh, yeah,” the guy groaned, and Renee’s hand was a blur and I bit my lips against the sounds climbing up my throat. I stuck my hand down my shorts until it was buried in the liquid fire between my legs. It took nothing. One touch, another against the pulsing knot of my clit, and I was coming.

Coming so hard I saw stars.

“Oh fuck, yeah. Fuck—”

It was the guy. Not me. I was biting my tongue until it bled, trying not to make any sound.