DIRTY[COMPLETED]✔️

Chapter Eight

I didn’t need Dan to point out which one was Ceci. I knew her already, if not her, at least her type. She was tall, blond and built like…well, like a prom queen. She wore a red dress with lipstick to match, and my lip curled a little before I managed to smooth it.
It wasn’t luck that put us at her table, but swift maneuvering of the place cards by Dan, who gave a chuckle so evil as he switched them that I had to step back and look him over.
“What?” He asked, catching my stare.
“I didn’t think you could be so…mean.”
“No?” He looked at me. “Does it surprise you?”
“No. Most people can be mean.”
“But you thought I was a nice guy, and now you don’t?”
He took my arm to lead me toward our table.
“No,” I told him. “I know you’re not a nice guy.”
“Hey.” He frowned. “Yes, I am.”
I raised an eyebrow and gave him a disbelieving look. We stared at each other for a moment, not caring that people were passing us by and that we were blocking traffic.
“You’re teasing me.” He sounded uncertain.
“Yes, Dan. I’m teasing you.”
He shook his head with a little laugh. “You’re devious.”
“Sometimes.”
“No,” he told me, leaning in to kiss my cheek, close enough to my lips anyone watching would think he kissed my mouth. “I don’t believe it.”
He pulled away, admiration shining in his eyes. I warmed to it. We shared a smile, and I knew how rare this was for me, this rapport, even though he couldn’t have.
“Dan?”
The feminine voice made me turn, and there she was. Prom queen. Ball buster. Blond bitch.
We faced each other. Two ice queens. I kept my smile, though I felt it morph from bemusement to calculating appraisal in that automatic way women have when we meet our rivals. It was okay, though. She was giving me the same look.
She cataloged me efficiently and without the subtlety to keep me from noticing. Her eyes took in my hair, my face, my body, my dress. Most of all, her gaze took in the way Dan’s hand curled loosely around my waist. Possessing me.
“Hello, Ceci.”
Her eyes flickered over me. The smile she gave him was no more genuine than the one she’d given me, but she put a lot more effort into it. She tried to make me invisible, a tactic that would have worked but for one small detail.
Dan wanted me to be sexy.
“This is Elle Kavanagh,” Dan said, blandly polite. “Elle, this is Ceci Gold. She was our class president.”
She shook my fingertips as limply as if I’d handed her a dead fish to shake instead of my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
I knew she expected me to say the same, but I didn’t. I smirked, instead, and gave her the same sort of looking over she’d given me, because I knew she expected it.
Having sized each other up, we were free to stake our claims. She simpered at the man who came up beside her. Tall, dark-haired, wearing an expensive suit, he didn’t look much like Dan. I smiled at him, too.
“Dan, this is Steve Collins.” Ceci simpered. “My fianc�.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve.” Dan shook the other man’s hand.
Steve, to give him credit, was either nice or self-confident enough not to posture. Or, as it seemed more likely, he didn’t know his bride-to-be had picked up Dan in a bar and taken him home once upon at time. Either way, the men shook hands with more genuine sincerity than we women had.
“Looks like we’re at the same table,” Dan said, then to me, “should we sit down?”
We did. Boy, girl, boy, girl, just like in elementary school, which meant I ended up between the two men. The other two seats remained empty. We passed around rolls and chatted inconsequentially about what we might be served for dinner.
Ceci chattered about her job, party planner; her house, new; her upcoming wedding, ostentatious; and her plans for a Caribbean honeymoon, malicious. She kept her hand on Steve at all times. His shoulder, his hand, probably his thigh, too, as if when her hand disappeared under the table we wouldn’t know what she was doing. Securing him to her. Proving he was hers, making it all right for her to flirt with Dan in front of Steve and me, because obviously she couldn’t mean any of it. Not the fluttered lashes, or the pouting lips or the sly double entendres that sent her into bouts of giggles she’d have avoided had she known they wrinkled her forehead.
I said little, which I think she didn’t expect. There are unspoken rules about bragging. The less I said, the more frantically she spoke.
“So, Elle, what do you do?” Steve asked finally, proving he really was a nice guy.
Ceci had opened her mouth to spout more inanities, but at her fianc�’s question, she pinned me with her gaze. “Yes, Elle. What do you do?”
“I’m a junior vice president of corporate accounting and finance with Smith, Smith, Smith and Brown,” I told him. “In other words, a glorified bean counter.”
I couldn’t have pleased her more. Accountants are nowhere near as exciting and sexy as party planners. Everyone knows that.
“Don’t listen to her.” Dan’s fingers rubbed the back of my neck. “Elle’s got a great position at Smith, Smith, Smith and Brown.”
I glanced at him. “Do I?”
He smiled and leaned closer. “You do. I checked. You’ve got your own secretary.”
I did, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. What exactly, had he checked? I didn’t have time to ask, because Ceci took that moment to add her own comment to the conversation.
“Is he cute?” She was being transparently witty. “The secretary.”
“Her name’s Taffy,” I told her. “And she’s adorable.”
“I guess bean counting must be a good business, then.” She faltered, like she wanted to say more but couldn’t think of what.
“It’s good enough, I guess. It’s steady work, and the money’s nice. It’s not as glamorous as astrophysics, but the pay’s actually better.”
That stopped them all.
“Astrophysics?” Dan’s fingertips skated down my bare back, traced the line of the bodice, then rested flat against my skin.
“I have a Master’s in astronomy,” I explained nonchalantly. “With a concentration in celestial mechanics.”
Blank looks.
“It’s the science of the motion of celestial bodies under the influence of gravitational forces,” I explained. I didn’t expect them to understand what that meant, either.
I don’t often tell people about my ostentatious beginnings, my attempt at glory, but I always love watching the looks on their faces when I do.
“Wow,” Steve said. “That’s impressive.”
Dan half turned to face me, his hand moving on my skin, tracing the exposed bumps of my spine. I’d never told him about my degrees or the jobs I’d held before going to work at Triple Smith and Brown. Now as I talked about it both men looked as intrigued as if I’d been describing my kinky sex practices. Ceci didn’t appear to like that much. Astronomy might not be sexier than party planning, but it’s a hell of a lot smarter.
“Astronomy,” she said with a small furrow of her otherwise perfect brow. “Horoscopes, right?”
Both men turned their heads to look at her, and she frowned. “What?”
“That’s astrology,” Steve said.
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Same difference.”
“They’re both the study of stars,” I said. “But astronomy has a lot more practical applications.”
“What made you leave that for accounting?” Steve leaned in, probably unconsciously, but I noticed the body language. Ceci noticed it too and frowned.
“There might be billions of stars,” I said. “But there aren’t billions of jobs.”
Steve laughed with a quick glance at Ceci, who didn’t seem to share his good humor. “That must have been quite a change.”
“Not as much as you’d think. It’s all just numbers.”
Ceci’s laugh failed at being bell-like by a good measure. “Oh, you were the class brain, huh?”
“Class brain,” I agreed, looking at her. “And I heard you were prom queen and class president.”
“And voted most popular,” she said without even bothering to hint at false modesty.
“Well then,” I told her without even a hint of false insincerity, “it’s a good thing high school was a long time ago.”
Longer for them than for me, too. I hadn’t realized Dan was already in his thirties. I’d be twenty-nine on my next birthday. Time was running out, according to my mother, at least, but not as fast as it appeared to be for Ceci.
The first awkward silence passed around the table.
I glanced at Ceci, who was smiling so hard she looked manic. Her eyes went from the back of Steve’s head to my face and back again, back and forth, fast. I felt sorry for her, so wrapped up in being adored she had no sense of herself without the admiration to tell her she was interesting. Of course, she was a bitch, too, that much was clear, and she had been flirting mercilessly with Dan for no good reason other than to build herself up and take me down. So my pity was short-lived.
“Ceci,” Dan said. “I’m sure Steve won’t mind if I steal you away for a dance. Would you, Steve?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Clever, clever Dan. I ducked my head to hide a smile, catching her gaze as I did. The expression on her face was priceless. Go with Dan and reaffirm he had, indeed, not been able to get over her, but leave Steve to discuss the mysteries of the universe with me? She nodded, her struggle clear to me, at least, then stood.
“Don’t you worry, Elle,” she said. “I’ll take good care of him for you.”
I smiled, catching Dan’s eye. I had no worries. He wasn’t my boyfriend. No attachments. She didn’t threaten me.
“I won’t worry,” I replied, and turned back to Steve.
“So how long have you known Dan?” he asked.
“Not long.” It had been three months. A lifetime and yet only a moment.
“You’re a cute couple.”
Maybe he was trying to be nice, or maybe he was doing what some people do when they’re about to make an advance they want to be able to pretend is something else if it’s refused. He smiled at me. Leaned a little closer.
“We’re not really a couple.”
“You’re not?” Steve looked surprised, but I didn’t miss the flicker in his eyes. Mr. Perfect was, after all, just a man. “Sorry.”
“No reason to be.”
We stared at each other across the table, and his glance flicked over my shoulder, to the dance floor. I didn’t turn, but whatever he saw must not have pleased him, because he frowned. He spoke without looking at me.
“Would you like to dance?”
Then I did look, following the line of his gaze to where Ceci had draped herself over Dan, turning the upbeat ballad into some sort of sultry hoochie-coochie tango. Dan, for his part, looked as if he was having a good time, and somehow managed to give the impression that his hands were all over her when in reality they stayed perfectly still. It made me smile. He had talent.
“Sure. I’d like to dance.” I let him take my hand, and by the time we got to the small square of wooden parquet the hotel had arranged for dancing, the music had changed.
“You all might remember this one.” The dj cued up the next song. “From what I heard, it was y’all’s prom theme.”
“Oh, boy,” I murmured as a late eighties love ballad came on. “Hold me back, I might cry.”
Steve laughed and pulled me into a competent dance position a little too close to be casual but nowhere near what his fianc�e was doing with Dan. We danced in silence for a few moments. The colored lights flashing on his face made shadows. His hand drifted a little lower, less on my lower back and more on my upper ass. I glanced at his arm, then back up at his face. He was smiling.
I looked at Dan. He smirked over Ceci’s shoulder. Ceci, however, was not smiling. “If looks could kill” might be an old and clich�d turn of phrase, but it was true. It didn’t seem to matter what she was doing with my date. Only what I was doing with hers. Or more appropriately, what he was doing with me, since I wasn’t doing anything but not telling him to stop.
Another slow song came on. Steve drew me a little closer. I smelled his cologne, though I couldn’t identify it.
“Smart women are so sexy,” he murmured in my ear.
Steve had long legs, broad shoulders, white teeth and even features. He smelled good. He danced well. His hands were big enough to splat across my entire ass, something I was quickly discovering.
I didn’t want to be dancing with Steve.
I looked over at Dan. He might have been holding a rag doll, for all the attention he paid the woman in his arms. Our eyes met. The song ended, and Dan left Ceci standing there while he came over to take my hand from Steve’s.
“Pardon me,” he said pleasantly. His eyes never left mine. “I think this dance is mine.”
He took me in my arms without another word, without looking away, and held me close to him. My head fit perfectly on his shoulder, one of his hands at the small of my back and the other holding mine. He pressed his lips to my hair.
“Mine,” he murmured, and we danced until the music changed again, became faster and no longer suited to slow dancing.
Then he took me by the hand and led me from the room, past a scowling Steve tossing back a shot of something at the bar, and an arm-crossed, pouting Ceci next to him. Dan took me down the hall, pushed open a door, led me inside the coatroom.
I didn’t have time to ask him what he wanted, but then, I didn’t have to ask. In May there were no coats to cushion me as he pushed me back. Only the jangle of metal on metal as he set the hangers swinging, and my gasp as he slid a hand beneath my dress and found me already wet for him.
“He wanted you.” He fastened his mouth on my neck, just at the curve of my shoulder. “He wanted you so bad, Elle.”
He stroked my clit with his thumb through my panties, then put his whole hand inside them. His palm pressed me, his
fingers playing with my slickness. He put a finger inside me, and I muffled my cry with my hand, not caring if I smeared my lipstick.
“Would you have gone with him?” He asked in my ear, his hot breath blowing a loose strand of my hair.
I turned to look at him. “Tonight?”
“If he’d asked you.”
“No.”
His fingertip found my clitoris again and circled it, making my hips push forward. “You wouldn’t?”
“No.” My fingernails dug into the shoulders of his tux. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” His other hand came up to caress my breast.
I pushed him away a little bit to look into his face. “Because I’m with you tonight.”
He looked into my eyes, and his hand stilled for a moment before he started moving it again. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you. You’re always ready for me.”
An arrogant statement, but he made it seem like I’d given him a gift. He stroked me, made me shudder, then put my hand on the front of his fly.
“I’m ready for you, too.” He smiled and moved my hand up down, stroking him through the fabric.
I looked automatically toward the door, which could have opened at any moment. “This turns you on. Sex in public.”
He barely paused. “Sex anywhere.”
I might have been indiscriminate when it came to choosing my partners before I’d met him, but until I’d met Dan, I’d never fucked in public. This would make three times. Thrice a charm. Or maybe our luck would run out this time, and we’d be caught.
I couldn’t decide if the thought excited me or not. His touch did. His hands and mouth did. The way he looked at me did. And the way he said my name.
“Elle,” he whispered. “I want you.”
His touch skated me closer to the edge, and I wanted him, too. “My purse.”
He nipped my neck, then looked up at me. “You really are always ready, aren’t you?”
“I believe in being careful.”
He shook his head a little, as though my answer amused him, but it took only a minute for him to put the condom on and slide my panties down to my thighs.
“Put your hands up. Grab the bar.”
I grabbed the bar. It was cold. My fingers curled around it without effort, the tips of my nails meeting my palms.
He thrust inside me without resistance, his sole noise a grunt. His hands gripped my hips, lifted my leg to wrap around his waist. I grabbed the bar harder. My nails dug into my skin, but even that little pain wasn’t a distraction to the pleasure of his cock filling me. He put his hands under my ass, holding me up as he moved.
It must’ve looked awkward, but I was spared the sight of it. No mirrors reflected the way he fucked me, nothing to show our faces twisted in lust. I looked at him as he looked up at me, and he slammed inside me so hard it moved my entire body.
I couldn’t hold on to him. If I let go of the bars, we’d both fall. I couldn’t move, either, balanced so precariously. It was all Dan, his job, his skill, and his brow furrowed in concentration as he moved.
I’ve said it before. I’m not small, and he’s not large. Yet that didn’t seem to matter now. He moved inside me without effort, his pubic bone hitting me in just the right place, over and over again, so he didn’t have to slide a hand between us.
My orgasm surprised me more than it did him. I didn’t think I’d come that way, skirt around my waist, hands numb from gripping a cold steel bar, heart pounding in anticipation of the door opening and our illicit behavior being discovered.
I came with a low, small cry, my eyes open and watching him, and he smiled. I closed my eyes immediately after, turned my head, but he didn’t like that.
“Don’t look away from me,” he whispered, voice hoarse and breath short from exertion and arousal. “I love to watch your eyes.”
There was no good reason for me to do as he said, not then, not ever. I want to make that very clear. No matter what Dan asked of me, I always had the ability to say no. I simply didn’t take it.
I had the ability to refuse, and I did not.
I opened my eyes and looked into his, blazing with passion. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? Do eyes really blaze with passion? Can they?
Yes. I don’t know who said the eyes are windows to the soul, but I believe it. I saw passion there. And enjoyment. And as always, that hint of disbelief, like even though he was doing this he couldn’t quite believe it.
I knew how he felt.
He fucked me harder. I adjusted my grip on the bars. The ring I wore on my right hand clattered on the metal. The hangers jangled. Our breathing sounded very loud.
His thrusts grew ragged, and beads of sweat formed on his brow. He bit his lip, shifting my weight and sinking into me one last time with a low grunt that brought a smile to my lips. It might be nice to be elegant and eloquent at the moment of orgasm, but most of us aren’t. I watched his eyes flutter and the line of his throat as he swallowed hard. He put his face against my chest, bared by the gown’s d�colletage.
“I have to put you down,” he murmured. “Ready?”
We disentangled with a minimum of awkward fumbling. I kept a hand on the bars above my head to keep me steady. My legs trembled.
My dress fell down around my ankles. He took care of the condom with a handful of tissues from a box on the shelf above us, zipped himself, tossed the evidence in the small brass wastecan by the door.
“Hey.” He grinned.
“Why is everything so easy with you?” I asked him.
The words surprised me as much as my orgasm had. I think they surprised him, too, because his smile turned quizzical. He reached to smooth a curl that had fallen to my shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
Heat rose from my belly to my throat to cover my face. The dress revealed enough of it to be obvious. I couldn’t meet his eyes anymore.
Shame and I are no strangers to each other. I’m well acquainted with the feeling. Oh, I force it away easily enough, pretend it’s not there, deny it. Much of the time, I can even convince myself I have nothing to be ashamed of, and most of the time, it works.
Not then. It made me stagger, the shame that hit me in the gut like a punch. My ears rang with it. My vision blurred. I’ve fainted once or twice in my life, consequences of low blood pressure and anemia, or too much heat and too little hydration. I recognized the feeling. I ducked my head and kept my grip on the bar above my head, fearing if I let go, I’d fall.
“Elle? You okay?”
The solicitude in his voice was too much. I pushed past him, out of the closet, into the hall. I put my hands to my burning cheeks. I needed to get out of there, fast, and my feet found the swiftest route, toward the end of the hall and the door marked Exit.
I came out in a dark courtyard littered with cigarette butts and smelling of stale smoke. I gulped in blessedly cool night air as the metal door clanged shut behind me. The brick wall of the hotel still held the day’s heat and was rough beneath my fingers. I let it support me for a minute while I breathed.
I wasn’t crying, at least. But then, I didn’t. Tears were a relief that had abandoned me a long time ago.
Sex is not wrong. Sex is not dirty. Not even sex in a public place with a man you barely know. It’s not. Sex is a gift, a built-in human pleasure, something to enjoy and cherish and utilize. Sex rejuvenates. Sex replenishes. Orgasms are just one more miraculous function our body provides, no more shameful than a sneeze or the beating of our hearts. Sex is not dirty, not even in public places with someone you barely know. Liking sex, liking a man’s hands on me, coming with him, letting him inside me…that doesn’t make me dirty.
The night was cool, not cold, but I’d gone from heat to chill in minutes. Goose bumps humped my arms, and I rubbed them, furious with myself.
Sex is not dirty. I am not dirty. I’m not.
The door opened behind me. Dan came out. I straightened, the near-frantic motion of my hands on my arms ceasing abruptly.
“Hey,” Dan said after a moment. “Elle, are you all right? Too much to drink?”
“No.”
He stood next to me, but didn’t touch me. I kept my gaze straight ahead, though I had nothing to see. Now I not only felt ashamed, but embarrassed.
He rustled in his coat pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered me one. I took it, though I’m not much of smoker. He lit it for me, then one for himself, and we stood in silence while the red tips of our cigarettes glowed red in the darkness.
“Are you mad at me?” He asked after a while.
“No, Dan.”
“Okay.”
He tossed the butt to the ground, where it still glowed. He didn’t crush it out. I watched the ember flare and go dark, then tossed my cigarette down to meet it.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He turned to look at me, his face in shadow. “I wish you weren’t.”
I swallowed, my throat tight, glad of the darkness that hid my face from him. “I think I should go.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“The night’s almost over, anyway,” I said.
“Elle.”
One word, my name, but it fixed me as firmly as if he’d reached out and grabbed my arm.
“I don’t want you to ever be sorry,” Dan said. “Because I’m not.”
I didn’t mean to laugh, but that’s what came out. One short, sharp laugh, full of cynicism.
“I don’t imagine you would be.”
He scuffed his shoe against the courtyard’s stone floor. “You think I’m just the sort of guy who picks up women and fucks them all over the place.”
“I don’t know you!” My reply came out sharper than I’d meant it to.
“So get to know me,” he offered. “I’m easy to know, Elle. I promise.”
“I’m not.”
I heard the smile in his voice. “No kidding.”
“Do you…do you think I’m the sort of woman who just lets guys pick her up and fuck her all over town?”
“Are you?”
“Apparently.” I sounded resigned.
He touched me, then. He put his hand on my waist and pulled me closer to him. He moved into the shaft of light from the security lamp. It made his eyes look very blue.
“So what if you do?”
I could only stare at him. He smiled. I didn’t return it. His fingers moved on the slippery fabric of the gown he’d bought me.
“I don’t think you’re the sort of woman who picks up guys and fucks them all over town. No matter how many men you’ve been with.”
“Seventy-eight.” The answer slid from my mouth like an oil spill spreading between us.
He blinked and hesitated. “You’ve been with seventy-eight men?”
“Yes.”
I waited to see disgust or censure cross his face, but he only reached up to smooth his finger around the curl of hair that had come loose from my chignon.
“That’s a lot.”
“Does it bother you?” I asked.
He looked thoughtful. “Does it bother you?”
“Yes, Dan,” I told him after a second. “It does.”
“Before you I dated lots of women. Does that bother you?”
“No.” That was different. Dating women was different from picking up men and taking them home and fucking them to prove I could.
He inched me closer, adding his other hand to my waist. He smelled of cologne and sex. His shirt looked rumpled.
“I don’t care what you did before. All that matters is what you do now.”
I shook my head, silent.
“If you wanted pretty words, I’d find some for you. But something tells me you wouldn’t believe them, anyway.”
That tilted my mouth upward a bit. “That’s probably true.”
He pulled me in front of him to cradle me from behind, his hands linking through mine. His embrace chased away the goose bumps. He rested his chin on my shoulder and lifted our linked hands to point at the sky.
“What stars are we looking at?”
“That happens to be the Big Dipper.”
He held me closer, keeping me warm. “How come you wanted to study astronomy?”
I leaned into him, looking up at the pinpricks of light against the night’s black sky. “I used to think I could count them all.”
“The stars?”
I nodded. “I thought I could count them all, or at the very least, learn all I could about them. Figure out how they hung there in the sky like that without falling down. Find a way to reach them, maybe. Discover if there was life out there.”
He laughed, low, his breath a brush of heat on my skin. “UFOs?”
“It’s a legitimate field,” I murmured. “But I never studied UFOs. No.”
“Just the stars.”
“Believe me, that was plenty.”
We stood, quiet for a few moments. His thumbs traced repetitive lines on the fabric over my stomach. His lips pressed the skin of my shoulder.
“Do you ever miss it?”
“Every time I look at the stars,” I told him.
“Did you ever figure out how many there are?”
I turned my head to look at him. “No. Nobody can count them. They’re infinite.”
“So…you gave up?”
I frowned, pulling out of his arms a little. “Abandoning a task that is futile and pointless is not giving up.”
He didn’t let me get far before tugging me back against him. “I know.”
“So then why did you say that?”
I felt the lift and drop of his shoulders as he shrugged, and the shift of his lips on my shoulder as he smiled. “I wanted to see what you’d say.”
I said nothing.
“So how long did it take you to decide it was a futile and pointless task?”
I pulled away again to look at him. “Who says I have?”
We studied each other under the light of the stars. Then I looked away, back up to the sky. Dan looked up too, holding my hand, and we stared together at the night.
“I didn’t give up,” I said after a moment.
Dan squeezed my hand. “I’m glad.”
“Me too,” I said, and squeezed back.