“What the fuck is wrong with your car?” I mumbled, squinting at it, or rather the weird fluffy plastic strips glued to it.
“They’re cute,” she said defensively, and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
I folded myself into the seat with all the grace of a newborn giraffe, my knees hitting the dashboard. The car was small. Everything was small. Almost like it wasn’t fucking made for me. Obviously.
I smelled her there, stuck in the leather. Something sweet and fruity. Reminded me of Granny Smith apples.
I watched her get in the driver’s side and start the engine. We pulled away from the curb, and I let my head fall back against the seat. The streetlights strobed past overhead, each one a little burst of pain behind my eyes. I should’ve stopped drinking hours ago.
“You know,” I mumbled, “being an asshole is part of my charm. Chicks usually dig it.”
“Not this one.” She didn’t even glance at me as she said it, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, but I could hear a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Copy that.” I let out a laugh that came out more like a wheeze. “Still gonna rub one out to your videos before bed.”
The car swerved slightly, and I gripped the door handle, suddenly very aware that I was trapped in a tiny vehicle with someone who probably wanted to drive me off a bridge. “Jesus—”
“Pothole,” she said and even through my whiskey haze I could see that twitch in the corner of her mouth. For a minute we drove in silence and then: “Which one’s your favorite?”
The question caught me off guard. I blinked at her. “What?”
“Your favorite video of mine.” She kept her eyes on the road, but there was something different in her voice now. No hint of anger or the previous stonewalling. “I, personally, liked the balcony ones,” she said. “There’s something almost liberating in getting fucked when the city is watching.”
My favorite? Video? Of her?
Man. All of them. That was the honest answer. But I didn’t end up saying it. I kept staring at her, thinking this had to be some elaborate trap. And then I was thinking — why would I care if it was? I had offered her thirty grand to fuck her. Did I care? I absolutely did fucking not.
“Sybian,” I said. “How many times can you come before you tap out — or something. I don’t remember the exact title.”
“Why that one?”
I let my head loll against the headrest, eyes half-closed. The streetlights were making patterns on the inside of my eyelids, spinny things that did nothing but make me nauseous. “Because you came four times.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I thought maybe she wasn’t going to respond at all. Then: “Five.”
“Counted them, did you?”
“I was there for it.”
Fair point. I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “You looked like you were gonna die by the end of it.”
“Felt like it too.” There was something almost conversational in her tone now, like we were discussing the weather instead of the most intense orgasm I’d ever witnessed another human being have. “Couldn’t walk right for like two days after.”
“Damn.” The image of that — her, sore and sensitive and unable to move properly because of what that machine had done to her — went straight to my dick. Which was inconvenient, considering I was too drunk to do anything about it.
“You got off on it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“A few times.” I didn’t see the point in lying. “Probably sent you like… I don’t know, couple thousand that week?”
“Five thousand and forty dollars,” she said immediately.
I turned my head to look at her again. “You remember that?”
“Mm,” she hummed. “The forty though? That threw me off. Like couldn’t even make it a round number?”
I laughed — actually laughed, a real one this time that came from somewhere deep in my chest. “That was all the cash I had left in my account at the time.”
She glanced at me then, quick, like she was checking to see if I was fucking with her. “Seriously?”
