Page 122 of Bend
“It wasn’t meant as an insult. You have a gymnast’s body, but the discipline that takes would keep you out of club bathrooms. So I went to dancer. Dressage wouldn’t have occurred to me, even if I knew you rode.”
“I was the only rider at Stanford with an Arabian. And I ride him Prix St. George.” My answer is defensive, not sexy. He’s implied that I’m an out-of-control little girl with a flat chest and muscular legs. Normally a man’s little insults are met with backhanded returns ending in ammunition for dirty hatefuck talk. But I want this man to respect me.
“Calm, forward, straight,” he says, putting his thumb to my cheek. “And submission to the bit.”
“You’ve ridden?”
“I spent a few years overseas with a certain crowd.”
I turn my head and take his thumb between my lips, letting it slip past my teeth and over my tongue. He smiles when I suck it on the way out.
“I’m going to be honest,” he says.
“Uh-huh.” I take his thumb again.
“I’m not looking for a sex partner.”
“Then what were you doing at Pompeii?” I take his middle and ring finger down my throat, all the way, and watch his face change. He may have just wanted to help a celebutante in distress, but his ideas of what to do with her are expanding by the second. I see it in his willing, wet fingers and the dilation of his pupils.
“Meeting the owner. We’re scheduling an event,” he says.
“What kind of event?”
“Something you might enjoy.”
And my brain, in its super-relaxed state, fell into his smiling blue eyes. At that event in the house on Maundy Street, I would be on my knees with an expert tongue in my asshole, a vibrating object in my cunt, and my mouth on a cock. So happy, content, sat
isfied, that when the orgasms came, I felt as if I’d transcended my own skin.
***
I woke with my back arched, out of breath, with Elliot pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist.
“I’m sorry,” I said, panting.
“Don’t be.” He stared at his watch another second then put my hand down. “You’re taching at one-fourteen.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“You’re going to have to work harder than that to make me uncomfortable.” His smile was so relaxed, I believed him.
I wanted to work hard enough to make him uncomfortable, just to see what he looked like. “I’ll remember that.”
“Just lie back and relax.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I breathed slowly, trying to slow my racing heart.
“Was that your first encounter with Deacon?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see him again?”
“He invited me to that party through Paolo, the owner of the club. I wasn’t going to go, but Charlie heard it was at Maundy Street and went nuts. I figured I’d see Deacon again. Which I didn’t.”
“No?”
“He’s known for not showing to his own parties. But he found me, like, a week later at Lucien’s. Bought the whole table dinner from across the room then tried to slip out.”
