(If you missed an earlier part, here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.)
1993
Seattle, Washington
His place is closer.
The second his door closes, I push him up against it, my hands under his shirt. I’m on my toes to kiss him, since he’s so much taller than me.
I push his shirt off over his head, my eyes running over his torso: washboard abs, strong shoulders, narrow waist. I bite my lip and just stare at him for a moment.
Who knew the accountant was so hot?
“Come on,” he says, and grabs my wrist, turning me, pulling me after him down a short hallway. “I’ve got roommates.”
“Now you want privacy?” I tease.
He pulls me into his bedroom, closes the door, pushes me up against it, the skirt of my dress already around my hips.
“I’ll have to look them in the eye tomorrow morning,” he admits. “Getting you off in a loud party around a bunch of strangers is hot.”
He kisses me hard, my fingers digging into his muscled back.
“But doing it in hearing range of two roommates is just rude,” he finishes.
He kisses me. He tugs at my dress, undoes the buttons going down the front. I wriggle out of it, gasping, and he pushes me against the door, holding me at arm’s length for a long moment, just staring.
Then he’s lifting me. I yelp and clap my hand over my mouth, because it’s four in the morning and he has roommates. Dan just laughs and slaps my ass, sits on the edge of his bed. I’m straddling him, his lips on my neck, my collarbone, his hands in my hair.
I moan softly, bucking my hips against him. I’m more than ready to go again, every nudge of his cock against me sending flickers of pleasure through my veins. Dan finds the clasp of my bra, tugs at it.
He stops. He kisses me, his hands wandering down to my hips, pulling me against him hard, a groan escaping his throat. I whimper in answer.
He tries my bra again, and this time I laugh.
“Not funny,” he says, laughing into my collarbone.
“I thought you were mister suave,” I tease, reaching back to undo it.
“Just get the damn thing off,” he says, grinning.
I do. He grabs my ass, pulls me up, sucks one nipple into his mouth in a single movement. His arms around me are like iron as he flicks his tongue across the sensitive bud again and again, his teeth just barely scraping it.
Shivers run down my spine. He palms my ass, slides his fingers between my legs again. This time he pushes my panties aside instantly, his fingertips already in my wetness, delving between my lips.
He strokes me. He bites my nipple gently, flicking his tongue around it. He slides his finger inside me, and I moan as he instantly finds the sensitive spot on my inner wall, making my hips roll forward.
He does it again. I moan. He adds another finger as I rock back and forth, and then his thumb is on my clit again, circling it slowly, steadily.
My body builds to a steady ache, a thrum, a desire deeper than anything I’ve ever known. I want him and I want him right now, so bad I can feel it in my bones.
I take a deep breath, push him backward.
Dan doesn’t budge. I push harder and he pulls his fingers out of me, pulls me down for a kiss. I push once more and this time he goes over backward, his beautiful body laying out on his bed.
His made bed. Even now, I can’t help but notice that.
I kick my shoes off, climb on top of him again. I tug off his jeans, his cock springing up, a huge tent in his boxers. My panties disappear somewhere. I crawl up him, hold my breath, tug his boxers off.
Dan has a magnificent cock. That’s the only word for it. It’s long and thick, curved ever so slightly up, a single drop of precum sliding down the tip.
I swear I get even wetter. Dan just looks at me, half-grinning, as he puts his hand around the root, slowly strokes himself.
My mouth goes dry with desire. I’ve never felt this way about a cock before, but then again, I’ve never experienced a cock attached to Dan before.
“Wanna take me for a ride?” he says, his voice low and husky.
God almighty, I’ve never wanted anything more.
I swallow hard.
“Do you have a condom?” I ask, praying to every god I’ve ever heard of that the answer is yes.
Dan just grins and reaches into his bedside table, pulls out a foil packet, his other hand still stroking himself.
I reach for it, but he pulls it away, holds it just out of my reach.
“There’s a price,” he says.
For a second, I’m unsure.
Then Dan grabs me by the hips, pulls me forward, over his chest. I yelp and steady myself against the wall behind his head.
“First you have to sit on my face,” he says, grinning. “Then I’ll let you fuck me.”
He spreads my thighs, pulls me up higher, and before I can say yes, please God yes, he’s already got his mouth on my clit, his tongue working it slowly back and forth.
I moan and nearly collapse against the wall. I wonder, briefly, whether this is all a hallucination, or whether my polite, pun-loving boyfriend is really also a dirty-talking sex god.
All signs point to actually a sex god.
His tongue flicks my clit harder, faster, his hands gripping my thighs. He pulls me down onto his mouth and I moan, fingers and toes curling.
Holy fucking shit. My last boyfriend practically needed me to draw a map and take him on a guided tour before he could find my clit, and Dan’s about to make me come for the second time in a single night.
He closes his lips around my clit, sucks softly.
“Oh, my God,” I moan, my forehead against the wall. “Don’t stop.”
“Roommates,” he says, mouth moving against me, then continues. I moan again, jam one hand against my mouth, forehead still against the wall as strangled gasps escape me.
He licks. He sucks. He strokes me with his tongue, and I fall apart slowly. I grab a pillow from his bed and push my face into it, against the wall, because I can’t help but make noise.
This time I come slowly, like I’m unraveling. My thighs shake like I’m an earthquake, his fingers still digging into me, pulling me down against him. I bite the pillow and scream, eyes clenched shut, fists bunched in the fabric.
Dan is relentless. He doesn’t stop until my whole body is shaking with every stroke of his tongue, until I drop the pillow, until I’m just gasping for air, leaning on the wall for support.
He lets me go. I take another deep breath, trying to right the world that just got rocked. There’s a soft crinkle, the unmistakable sound of a foil packet opening.
I move backward, unsteady, but he takes me by the hips again. He pulls me down and I kiss him, tasting myself on his lips. It’s deep and it’s long, surprisingly sexy. I reach between my knees, grab his condom-covered cock.
I take him with a single deep thrust, his strong hands bringing my hips down on top of him.
He hits every single pleasure zone and a few I didn’t know I had, bringing all the nerves in my body achingly alive. We both gasp in unison as he hilts himself and I stretch around him, taking him all in.
Holy fuck, this feels good. I feel like a lock that finally found the right key.
I start riding him slowly, carefully. I’m still trembling from my last climax, still feel heady and overwhelmed.
It doesn’t last long. His hands are on my hips, pulling me down as he thrusts to meet me. They’re on my breasts, tweaking my nipples as I moan, louder and louder. They’re on my face, one thumb in my mouth. We move harder and faster, the bed creaking below us.
I grab his hand. My fingers lace through his and I press it to my mouth, the word roommates vaguely floating through my brain as the pleasure builds and builds. I think I bite him as I moan, sighing the words holy fuck Dan, fuck yes.
Harder, even harder until I’m completely lost to the motion, my whole world wrapped up in this. Now his other thumb’s on my clit and I’m shouting, his fingers still against my mouth.
I come like I’ve never come before, like the sheer force of it might turn me inside out. I hold his hand against my face, against my mouth, because I need something to hold onto or I might blow away.
It’s nuclear. It’s seismic. It’s still rocking me as Dan sits up on the bed, tipping me backward, his mouth finding mine and claiming it. He pulls me down and wraps my legs around his waist, the steel in his arms holding me tight.
He kisses me as he comes, one hand in my hair, pressing my face to his. I’m wrapped around him as he throbs inside me. I swear our hearts are beating in a perfect rhythm. I’ve never been closer to anyone.
We don’t move. We don’t move for a long time afterward, just stay like that. We kiss and we hold each other. I let my fingers explore his face, his shoulders, the smooth muscles along his spine. He trails soft kisses down my neck and along my collarbone.
Finally, I unwind myself from him and we topple over onto his bed, still half-tangled together, his arm over my waist and my leg over his hip. I want to do it again, right now, but I also feel like I can barely move.
Dan kisses the tip of my nose. I smile, my eyes closed.
“You’re still wearing your knee socks,” he says.
I open my eyes, look down at my feet. He’s right.
“You seemed to like it,” I tease.
“I didn’t say I minded you still wearing your knee socks,” he says. “I just said you were.”
“If these are the results knee socks get, I’ll never take them off again,” I laugh.
He grins, pulls my hand to his lips, kisses each of my fingers in turn.
“It’s not the socks, Joan,” he says. “It’s you.
SIX MONTHS LATER
“He’s definitely a record exec,” Ava says, peeking around the curtain. “He’s wearing goddamn wingtips with his jeans. Come on.”
She’s got her bass guitar slung around her back, peeking through the curtains on the stage of the Harlequin Ballroom.
It’s bigger than the Heathen Hotel. It’s nicer. It’s still a little run down, still smells like stale cigarettes and beer, but it’s a step up for sure.
“Come on, don’t tell us that,” Nadine says, pacing back and forth, one of her combat boots squeaking with every step. “You’re just gonna make me nervous, and I fuck up when I’m nervous.”
“So don’t fuck up.”
“So don’t make me nervous!”
“Guys, quit it,” I say. “Maybe he’s just bad at fashion.”
I don’t need them bickering, not now. We’re about to play our biggest show ever. There are tons of people here, way more than have ever come to a show of ours before.
There might be a record exec in the audience. This could be our big break.
And Dan’s not here. He said he’d be here, and he’s not.
I’m trying not to let it bother me. He’s been to nearly every show we’ve played since we met. He helped us rent a recording studio for an afternoon, and he’s been sending our five-song demo out to labels.
We also moved in together, into a little apartment on College Hill. No roommates to give me weird looks in the morning.
So it doesn’t matter that he’s not here, and I’m sure he has a very good reason.
“Nerves are good for you,” Ava’s saying, her hands on her hips. “They keep you on your toes.”
“Maybe they keep you on your toes,” Nadine counters, arms crossed above her guitar, one hip cocked. “They make me overthink songs I’ve played a thousand times and fuck them up.”
Ava just scoffs. Nadine rolls her eyes. I turn away, back into the tiny backstage area, where I can get out of earshot of their bickering.
It’s practically their pre-show ritual, so I try to tune it out by standing against the cinderblock wall. I take a deep breath. I take another one.
“Excuse me, did I miss Girl Bomb?”
My eyes snap open at Dan’s voice.
“Nah, I think they’re just about to go on,” someone else says.
I jog down the short hallway, turn the corner, and there he is, just like the first time I met him: button down shirt and gray slacks, neat and polite as can be.
This time he smiles when he sees me, gives me a long kiss.
“I’m so sorry,” he says in a rush. “I was at work late because the environmental impact reports with the stadium keep running into issues, and then a tanker truck overturned on I-5, and—”
“It’s fine,” I say, giving him another quick kiss. “You didn’t miss anything.”
“Joan! Come on,” Ava’s voice hollers.
I grab Dan’s hand, and we walk back down the corridor. They’re both standing in the wings. Ava looks slightly annoyed and Nadine looks nervous, but that’s nothing new.
“Break a leg,” Dan says, and gives me one more quick kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say.
The lights go up. The crowd cheers.
Girl Bomb heads onstage.
The End
Thanks for reading!!
If you’re looking for more Joan, she’s a side character in Always You, the second book in my Dirtshine trilogy.
Dirtshine #1: Never Enough (Gavin & Marisol)
Dirtshine #2: Always You (Trent & Darcy)
Dirtshine #2: Ever After (Liam & Frankie)
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