Here I was. A career woman. A professional. In a back alley behind a dumpster. Skirt around my waist, fresh manicure gripping brick grime between my hands. A strange man’s tongue inside me and doing things I hadn’t even been sure were possible until just now.
“Jesus Christ!” I grabbed the back of his head, clutching his hair, and he chuckled against my inner thigh. Then he dove in again, and I couldn’t see anything but the stars shining above me… When it came, when I came, hard and hot and bubbling, seeping like waves crashing over rocks on the far distant seashore through my whole body, I heard him hiss, an inward suck of breath.
He was shuddering beneath me, a deep, guttural growl rolling through his mouth and his tongue. He picked himself up effortlessly from his knees—and that was a show of strength, especially on this cracked concrete in those shorts—and pressed me into the wall. He kissed me, first on the cheeks, then the lips, and then his tongue started probing. I patted at his face, trying to push him away—not a fan of my own stink—and still, his tongue darted, probing… probing… my gumline?
He drew back, and his face was hooded, pale, his eyes heavy and half-lidded. He whispered again in my ear, his hot breath causing rippling shudders down my spine: “Do you like to be bitten?”
“Yes.” There was not a second’s hesitation in my voice.
His rough hand flared with warmth as he swept back my hair from the right side of my neck. He paused. I opened my eyes, looked up. He was staring at my neck.
At my birthmark. Jesus, how embarrassing.
“How beautiful,” he said. I could feel the passion in him recoil, and now there was only softness and sincerity. “Where did you get this?”
“My birthmark?” I squirmed from his embrace, rearranging my skirt. “From birth, I guess.” I couldn’t help the little twinge of sarcasm that stained the words.
“You superstitious?” he asked.
“Umm. No?”
“My family is,” he said. “We revere marks like this. Folklore has it that when we die in our past lives. It leaves scars in the next life. Marks. Blemishes. Scars. They mean something, something important if you can only figure out where it came from.”
I bit my lip, unsure what to say. He was suddenly very serious. I wasn’t having it.
“So are we going to have sex, or…?”
He shook his head, pulling away, and seemed to fall into himself. He brought a hand up to his mouth, to his nose, palm against his mouth, and turned away. He inhaled, as if for a sneeze, and made some kind of strangulated noise—some loud exhalation, almost as if he were growling, and then when he turned back around, one of his hands was pinching his nose. Crimson was dripping from where he grasped it. He held his head back.
“Oh, crap!” I gasped.
“Nose bleed,” he said, voice timbered awkwardly. “Look. I like you. But I think I better go.”
I tried to grab at his hand, but he waved me away.
“You don’t have to leave,” I said. “Do you need help?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Look. Forget any of this happened. You’re a special lady. Way too special to let someone like me spoil you. Just get out of here.”
“Can I have your number?” I asked. “I’d like to pick back up on this when things, umm. Clear up for you.”
He shook his head.
“You don’t need to be around someone like me,” he said, turning, and he staggered down another alleyway and around the corner.
“You don’t know who I need to be around,” I called after him.
I quietly cursed and stamped my foot, then ran toward the alleyway he had gone down. When I turned the corner, there was nobody there—just a trickle of red that seemed to patter on for a bit and disappear.
The wind blew a paper bag with a wine bottle in it into a gutter.
I sighed.
Chapter 4
Eddie was gone. Not a surprise. More of a disappointment. I knew I’d saved myself some major heartburn in the long run, but I had been all geared up for a night of bad decisions. Disappointed, I wandered back into the club and tried to find Tamara, where I’d left her. I made a pit stop to check my makeup and dress in the bathroom, then sighed again, clawing my way back out to the dance floor.
As soon as Tamara saw me, she was smiling judgmentally from across the crowded floor.
