Lane

Rain pattered on the aluminum roof over my head.  Arms crossed over my chest, I stared at the water pooling and rippling with tears at the edges of the dark and gutterless street.  Looked down at the beads dotting my pink toenails and wondered if raindrops were like snowflakes, every one different than every other.  

I wished I was water, always changing but never broken because there was always a new form to take, a new bead to join with, whatever.  

It wasn’t like that for me.  Some of us didn't get a second chance. 

Headlights arced across the cement block motels up the road.  I felt my body tense, but I walked closer to the street.  The lights washed over me: my beige wedged sandals, skinny white legs, and I shut my eyes.  Listened to the car come closer, closer.  

I held my breath.

The noise of the engine kept going, diminishing until swallowed by the night.

Seconds ticked by.  Swallowing against a dry throat, I exhaled and opened my eyes. Nothing but night and street lamps.  Lights on the wooden motel sign.  A low hum of cars from the highway a mile away.

The best place on the way to the suburbs for a ho.  The worst place for me.  

The only place for me.

Such a fucking cliche.

Heels from the right raced toward me, clacking over the static of rain.  I glanced up, hugged myself tighter and backed against the wall as a figure under a black umbrella hurried closer.  Hazes of amber streetlights and red-lettered signs shone onto her white tank, denim shorts, and gleaming legs.  When she got under the roof, the umbrella tipped sideways.

Long, oily blonde hair with dark roots.  Smoky brown eyes and a smile with tiny teeth, making the rest of her face seem impossibly young.

My roommate, and the best friend I had in this world.

The tension in my shoulders eased.

“Lane!”  Boots shook out her umbrella and tossed it into the corner.  She ran her hand over her hair and smiled up at me.  “You braved it out!”

I shook my head.  Looked back out at the inky wet streets.  “Needed the cash, babygirl.  You know.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Shaking her head, she stepped to the edge of the sidewalk in her clear platform heels.  “Any biters tonight?”

We shot the shit for a moment, talking and laughing as if we weren’t working.  Rain diminished into sprinkles and faded.  Headlights whizzed by, catching the water on the pavement, their consistent anticlimactic existence rendering them nothing of significance.  Everything seemed the same as it had been for months, until a forest green truck splashed into the gutter and stopped.  

It took my voice away.  Along with my breath and any strength I could’ve mustered to be who I was supposed to be.

The window sped down.  A man leaned into the passenger’s seat.  Receding hairline, blonde or grey.  His facial bone structure was lost in the thickness of his beard, a certain double chin if he had one in the first place.  His glittery, wide set eyes were on Boots.

“Lookin for a good time, baby?” Boots called.  She flicked her fingers down my arm in the familiar see-ya gesture, and sashayed to the car.

His looked at me and back at her.  “Only from a real woman.  You got a real pussy, bitch?”

I bristled.  Clenched my teeth and ripped my gaze away.  Stared hard down the streets.  

God love her, I felt Boots look at me.  She gave a fake giggle.  “Girlfriend’s got her mama’s figure and her daddy’s hardware, baby, nothing wrong with that.  But I got what you need.”

As she got in the car with him, I tossed my hair back, fingers dwelling on the scar on my neck just below my hairline.  A constant reminder of near-death.  The fragility of life and the business, as memories of countless friends disappeared into the recesses of society without a breath of anyone coming looking for them.

Leaning back against the concrete of the building, I crossed my arms over my chest.  Pressed them against me until I felt the outline of my knife in my bra.  

Gotta make a living.  Woman up, Lane.

Headlights shone in the humid haze in front of me.  Bright LEDs, new.  I peeled off the wall and walked to the edge of the sidewalk.  A black Jeep slowed to a stop in front of me.  The tinted window rolled down.  

The driver had short, dark hair.  Narrow eyes and a perpetually pursed, small mouth.  Intensity all over his expression.  

Logan Marsh.  Assistant District Attorney extraordinaire.

I flicked my tongue over my top teeth, feeling my lip raise, and folded my arms.  “Can I help you?”

“After everything you’ve been through, you’re out here again.”

Steeling my mind from remembering, I shrugged.  “Don’t tell me Edison’s on your way home.”

“Tonight it is.”  Something softened in his expression, followed by a lift in his lip.  

Smile, apology, wince?  I looked at him harder.  Tried to see into his eyes, read his truth.  

A car passed and I straightened.  “I’m not testifying.”

“I don’t care.”  

“Since when?”

“Since he killed a woman who fought back as hard as you did.  We have DNA.  You’re welcome to testify, but the case doesn’t need it.”

The guttural sigh was out of me before I could reign it in.  My limbs felt weak, my throat mashed in.  “You have DNA.”

“Yes.  He’s a lawyer, so it’ll be a trial.  But the DNA, it’s indisputable.”  

“Okay.”  I felt my head nodding, but I couldn’t comprehend anything anymore.  “So why are you here?”

His dark brows furrowed, driving deep lines into his forehead.  “Why are you?”

Me.  I felt my mouth drop, anger burning my gut.  Fighting for control, I scanned the empty streets then leaned on the edge of his window, letting my ass hang out.  “I work here.  As you know.”

“Correct.”  His lips pursed, then flattened as he stared into my eyes.  Guarded, yet intense.  “But you’re halfway to a Bachelor’s degree in sociology.  Why wouldn’t you pursue that?  You’re smart.  Strong.  Beautiful.”

The last word made my stomach fall to my knees.  

We stared at each other.  His head tilted an inch to the left.

A truck rolled by, water hissing under the tires.  

I let out a breath.  “Listen, you don’t have to come out here and save your tranny victim.  No one expects that.”

“Not why I’m here, Lane.  You determine your life, not me.”  He scraped his face with his hand and looked at the road in front of him.  Hooked his fingers over the top of the steering wheel.  “I see a lot of people who think they’re out of options.  That their life is tainted and frozen in the direction they’ve chosen.  It’s not my business.  I respect their decisions.  But… something tells me that you don’t understand your worth.  That you’re so much more than who you’ve chosen to be right now.”

I stared at him.

He met my gaze.  “I don’t know you, Lane.  Just your statistics.  Your history on paper and how you were victimized.  That’s my job.  But something keeps pulling me back to you.  Something else.”

“Stop,” I whispered, balling my hands.

“I wanted to be the one you heard it from.  About the man that assaulted you.  Not the news, not some stranger.  Me.”

The softening of his voice made the hair on the back of my neck rise.   I looked at the streets lit up under his headlights.  Then the sides, shadows in an overgrown ravine and in between dark buildings.  Thought of the motel just around the bend, where number 13 used to be my second home.

My skin felt like it was crawling with bugs.  

“Lane?”

“Unlock this door.”

“It’s unlocked.”

Sighing, I pulled the handle and opened it, slipped in the seat and shut the door.  “Shouldn’t just leave it unlocked in this neighborhood.”

“I didn’t leave it unlocked for the neighborhood.”

This motherfucker right here….

Fighting a smile, I looked down at my pink toes on his neat black floorboard.  “Drive, Mr. Marsh.”

“Logan.”  But he let his foot off the brake.  Coasted us into the roadway, left hand fingering the twelve o’clock of the wheel.  No ring.  But there should’ve been.  Someone like him with a cushy lawyer job, nice car, nice looks, probably some money.  He should have a wife.  Probably had a lot of things going for him.  Unless someone saw him with me.

“You didn’t think this through, did you?” I asked.

“How do you mean?”

“What happens when you get caught with me.  You can’t claim you didn’t know what I am.  Not to mention you and I together…. it’d jeopardize the case.”  

At the words, shock iced the meat of my limbs.  

“No.  I’m recusing myself,” Marsh said.

“What!”

“You’re surprised.”  He glanced at me.  

“You can’t dump this case.  He assaulted me!”

“And he killed another woman.  My mentor, Gopi Kumar is a better lawyer than me, and much more objective.  He’s handling the case now.”

“Objective,” I whispered.

I waited a few long moments, losing myself in the quiet hum of his engine.    

Goosebumps broke out on my shoulders, my body warming as my mind blanked.  I cleared my throat, a little green street sign catching my eye.  Adams Street.  We flew past popular bars, smokers at the walls.  People hanging around at the street corners, as old as I was when I hit the streets, on expensive cell phones and fancy shoes.  

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I don’t care.  Habit, I was driving home.  But you tell me.”

Boots and my apartment flashed through my mind.  The worn red sectional, my mattress on the floor.  Sex, fucking, smashing, whatever you wanna call it.  But it didn’t fit.  Because god damnit I wanted privacy.  Intimacy.   Something scary, vulnerable, and beautiful, where I could pretend for just a moment I could lean on someone.  That I could be loved.

“Lane?”

“You have roommates?”  My voice was raw.

“No.”

“Your place is fine.”

In moments, I recognized Murray Street and the city rescue mission.  The homeless and transients that grouped together on the sidewalks, in the parks.  I caught my reflection in the window.  Red and orange lights flashed on my face, shadows finding the fine grooves of my wrinkles at my forehead, the corners of my eyes.  The hollows under my cheekbones, and every sharp line in my face that showed my assigned gender.  

I sighed.  Shook my head and looked forward.  

“Is Boots going to worry about you?” Marsh asked.

No.  And… maybe.  

I crossed my legs and ran a hand over my knee.  Pressed the short, thick bones under my skin, deep pressure to remind me I was alive.  In control.  “What you think you know about Boots?”

“She’s a real friend.  A good person.”  His brows flexed together, eyes narrowing at the road.  “She visited you in the hospital, took you in after.  Like a sister.  Or a survivor herself.”

The knife in my bra suddenly felt more solid against my breast and I remembered carving it down a white forearm bursting with dark hair.  Remembered Boot’s fingers on mine, and whispering to her about it in the hospital.  She’d spread the word like wildfire.  The summer was easier for everyone.  Winter not as much.  

“This guy y’all caught… he got any tattoos or piercings?  Scars?” I asked.

“Yes, but I can’t talk about that.”

“Why.”

“What if you change your mind and want to testify?  Then you can’t do a lineup.”

“They’d say you picked me up and told me everything, so it doesn’t matter anyway.  Don’t be putting on an act now.”

Marsh laughed—unexpected, unfettered.  Light.  “You’re right.  But you’d never testify.”

“You right about that.”  Wetting my lips, I looked ahead as he turned into a parking garage.  Drove up the incline to the second floor.  "He have a scar on his forearm?  Long one?”

“Ugly thing.  Glad you branded him so everyone knew who he was.  Nice little break in the case too.”  He nosed into a parking spot blazed with a yellow 124, then clicked the car into park.  Looked at me.  

I reminded myself to breathe, but the air barely touched my lungs before I sucked in another breath.  “Who said it was me?”

“People.  And no one.  As it should be.”  

Quiet fell between us, laden with promise.  With expectations.  Hope.  

Ripping my gaze from his, I stared at my hands.  Wiped at the smooth surface of my pink fingernails and exhaled, blood singing through my veins.  “This is crazy.”

“Why.”

“You know what I am.  Everyone you know, knows who I am.”

“Good.  Less I have to talk to them.”  

I looked up at him.  

“They got a problem?”  He shrugged.  “Fuck ‘em.”

Dizzy, I grabbed the armrest on the door.  “They’re big a part of your world, Marsh.  Don’t be stupid.”

“They’re a big part of my job.  My world is for someone else.”

I swallowed.  Raked my hair back and stared at his intense eyes as if something in their depths would give me an answer.

He looked at my mouth, then back up.  “Lane… I’ll be blunt.  I want to spend tonight, the next day, and every day after, worshipping your body and immersing myself in your mind.  Let me know now if you don’t want that and I’ll back off.”

“What…” A giggle escaped my lips.  I covered it, horrified at my reaction and terrified at his.  “Have you ever been with a trans woman?”

“No.”  His eyes dropped to my mouth again.

“A man?”

“No.”  

“Then what makes you think—”

“Don’t overthink every fucking thing right now, Lane.  Yes or no, God damn it.”  His voice was rough, and his body seemed tight.

“Have you thought at all?”

“It’s all I’ve done!” he exclaimed.

My skin was on fire, my brain frozen at his outburst.  The flare of passion, emotion.  

Happily ever afters didn’t exist.  Not for me or people like me.  

But in this moment, chest full with emotion, I wanted to believe.

“Okay.”  

His head ticked to the side.  His fierce expression melted into concern.  “Okay?  That’s not what I’m looking for, Lane.  Do you want me?”

“I… fuck.  Don’t make me say it.”

He took my hand.  Looked down and traced the outline of my finger.  The first, the second.  Gentle and slow.  “I’m not looking to bully you into letting me love you.  I want to know how you feel.”

Love?

“You’re insane.”  

“Maybe.”  His eyes met mine.  Didn’t look away.

“Oh forget it.  Yeah, sure.  Fuck the world.”

The grin that dawned on his face was disorienting.  A smile fit for a frat boy, if not for the deep lines in his five-head and the eerie memory of his inflexible grim expression.  

Marsh pushed the ignition button, turning off his car, and was out in a flash.  I reached for the door handle, only to grab air as he pulled it open for me.

Laughing, I clasped the bar above my head with one hand and grasped my headrest with the other.  “You gonna do this chivalry stuff the whole time?”

“Of course not.  There’re only so many doors.”  

He sounded as reckless and excited as a teenager tipsy for the first time and I stepped out feeling like I was trying on an actual tiara, existing on a breakneck high.  I glanced around the garage floor and its peppering of sparkly cars and amber lights.  We were alone.  

He walked to the corner of the floor toward a red gleaming exit sign.  Looked back at me, but I didn’t meet his eyes.  Just followed him into the elevator.  Watched him swipe a card in a slot before hitting the button for the first floor.  

The doors shut.  I swallowed.

“0229,” he murmured.  “In case you want to leave without me, just hit those numbers on the keypad and it’ll let you out.”

But as the elevator ascended, gravity in chaos, I scoured his face.  A white cis-male full of privilege and arrogance last year.  And now?  

He looked down at me with a bottomless softness. 

0229, I reminded myself.

The elevator doors slowed to a stop, then opened with a dull tone.  Smiling, he took my hand and led me down the cream-colored hallway to the corner apartment.  Entered a code at the door and pushed it open, dropping my hand to flick on a light.

His apartment opened into a living room.  A white sectional facing a tall TV on the wall.  Open bookcases, minimal books and more small paintings and knick-knacks.  The threshold into the dining room was a foot of wall on either side of the opening, making it seem like the apartment just went on and on to the kitchen in the back.  Charcoal-colored cabinets.  Stainless steel appliances.  Butcher block counters.  All the masculine stuff of remodeling shows.  Money.  Real money.  Class.

Hearing a clack behind me, I turned to look at the door.  Marsh’s fingers were on the deadbolt.  He raised his brows.

Oh.

I walked back to him and reached for his belt.

“No, Lane.”  He grabbed my wrists, pushed them back to my body. 

Air wooshed out of my chest. Panic lit my veins. 
 

Grip lightening, his gaze burned into mine.  “I…I want you.  You have no idea.  But I need to show you—do you want something to drink?  Wine?  Water?  Juice?”

What the fuck?

“No.”  

He let my wrists go, but caught my fingers and curled them to his mouth.  Kissed my knuckles and smiled.   “I’m going to draw a bath for you.”  

Fingers loose on mine, he led me to the left of the living room and through a small hallway to the master bedroom before letting me go.

It was only slightly bigger than a normal bedroom.  The walls were cream-colored, the queen-sized bed covered with a thick comforter with thin blue and white strips.  Rows of pillows bunched at the head and I wondered how many girls had laid there.  How much spunk he’d spilled for them and if he thought he loved any of them.

Doesn’t matter, Lane.

Water pounded into a tub to the right.  I followed the sound to the bright doorway.  

White subway tile gleamed over the biggest tub I’d ever seen.  Marsh crouched in front of it, sleeves rolled to his elbows.  Bubbles bloomed from the waterfall, and he zipped his palm in and out of it. 

Testing the water.  For me.  Me.

He looked up at me.  “How do you like it?”

I shrugged, keeping my face a mask.

My entire life, I’d seen movies that had luxuriated baths and romance, but it wasn’t something I knew about.  Standing here in front of him felt like I was acting out a character.  A dream.  

Don't get comfortable.

Standing, expression gentle, he took a step toward me.   Looked over my face with a small smile and settled on my eyes again.  “It would be my pleasure to put you first, all the time.  Show you who I am, who I want to be for you.” 

Everything felt bizarre.  Unreal.  Who really talked like that?  It made it easy to grab the hem of my crop top and rip it over my head, challenging him with my eyes to look at my chest.  To sexualize me.  To banish the fake niceties and give in to the feral frenzy just under the surface.

“Beautiful,” he murmured over the sound of falling water.  His gaze barely skipped over my tits.  He stood aside, stretching his arm toward the bath in invitation.  

I stared at the bubbles. Felt the air on every hair of my skin and felt soft. Feminine.  

Vulnerable.

My throat felt like it constricted.

Holding my breath, I pushed the vulnerability deep down where it’d come from.  Wrestled my fly, yanked the button loose, unzipped, and pushed the shorts down, ass in the air like a good ho.  Then I stood, the evidence of my gender at birth on display and thickening.

“I’ll get us some wine.  White okay?  Chardonnay?”  A bulge filled the front of his pants, but his attention never left my eyes.  

I nodded, unable to think of a witty reply.  He hesitated, then walked past me through the open door.

What the fuck.

Trembling, I stepped out of my shorts and kicked them aside.  Focused on the steady stream of water rushing down the gleaming silver trough of a faucet into the building of bubbles in the tub.  

I tiptoed forward, then stepped in.  Warmth eased my toes, my feet, calves.  Hot enough to make me stall a moment, but comfortable enough to ease in all the way and lie back.  Suds rose from my belly to my tits and I turned the faucet off with my toes.

Luxury.

Bubbles melted into each other, giving off a sound like rubbing cellophane.  I focused on a bunch on my arm, clinging to me like a shell on a beach until each iridescent orb thinned and disappeared with a faint puff.  

Something stirred inside me, deep and dark.

It was so simple, watching bubbles.  So basic.  But when was the last time I concentrated on something small like that?  When had I been able to marvel at something trivial in my adult life?

Never.

I scooped up a plateau of bubbles and examined it.  

Was luxury really the big bathtub?  The corner suite?  Or was it seeing all the little things life won’t give most of us time to see?

Marsh’s body caught my eye in the doorframe, frozen as he gazed at me like he’d never seen a naked person.  Appreciation, not lechery.  The stems of two delicate wine glasses were between his fingers and his feet were bare and all of a sudden he wasn’t a john or a fancy lawyer.  

Did cis-women feel this way?

His eyes met mine and held.  Questioning.

“Join me,” I answered.  

He set the glasses on the counter.  I watched his thick fingers work each button of his white shirt open.  His chest was broad, built, and blessed with fine, sparse hair.  When his shirt hit the ground, I saw his arms were stacked too.  

I sank further in the tub, letting the bubbles cover my body as I fondled myself, ass-pussy clenching and needy.

Marsh’s grasp went to his pants.  With a quick movement, they fell to his ankles.  Black boxer shorts clung to his thick quads, the material stretching in the middle.  His thumbs hooked under the front of them and pushed them down, kicking them off unceremoniously, semi-hard cock swaying as he walked toward me. 

All I could do was slit up and slide forward, water sloshing and bubbles climbing my chest.

He stepped in behind me and I could hardly pull in a breath.  I felt a soft tickle of air on my back, water lap my hips, and then his manly, hairy legs stretched along the outside of mine.  

Before I could process the intimacy of it, he dragged a wet loofah over my shoulder.  One, then the other.  I felt the gentle nudge of a hard cock just above my ass.  Chest brushing my upper back, he moved the loofah down my arms, leaving a trail of suds, and moved over my breasts.  

Sighing, I leaned into him.  Felt his lips press down at the middle of my shoulder.  I shut my eyes and drifted.  Imagined this was the love of my life.  The person I could be soft with.  Trust.  That I’d been female by birth, that I’d done things with my life and was a person that deserved love.  That he understood the wreck of the world and I was a gem.  That my frailties and goodness somehow stoked his own.  

Nothing mattered.  Just his touch.  His happiness.  Joy.  His thumbs, light over my hardening nipples.  The brush down my stomach, over the head of my growing clit-dick.  

A moan ravaged my throat, hips moving toward his touch.  

He pulled back, breathing hard, and the storm in my mind hushed.  I felt my body go rigid, steeling against the rejection.

“Marsh…” I started.

“Logan.  I’ve dreamt of this.  Touching you.  Seeing you as you are, without your mental armor.  Treating you the way you should be treated.  Gently.  Adored.  But baby I need to see you orgasm, see it take over your body and your expression.  And hold you in my arms through the night,” he murmured, his breath tickling my skin.

He kissed my neck, brushed my clit-dick again.  His hand encircled it, warm and tight.  Strong.  “I want to make you cum.  Over and over again.”

It’d been a long time since anyone besides myself tugged my cord and it showed in the stone hardness under his control.  How the head flared, begging for his touch.  I felt my body kick forward, balls boiling, and cum shot down the shaft like it’d never thought it’d be free.

Good as it was, I pushed my hips back, catching the base of his hard cock in the line of my ass.

The undersides of my breasts brushed his forearms as I gasped for breath.  When his hands left the front of my thighs, he smeared my cum across my shoulders.  Used it as lube to massage my muscles.  Deltoid to biceps.  He skipped over to my back, followed my spine down and fanned forward to my thighs.  

Weak and falling apart, I pushed my hands back and fumbled for him.  

His fingers cinched around my wrists.  “Not yet.  Relax and feel it.”

Anxiety rushed through my veins, needing to be of use for him.

“No.”  He stood, grabbing a towel from the rack outside the bath.

“Where are you going?”

His cock jutted from his long body.  

Without thinking, I reached for it.  Got to my knees, water splashing around my legs, and took it in my mouth.  Ached with the need to lavish him, fill myself with him.  The need to make him happy, to make him cum.

Marsh’s fingers scrabbled my scalp, but let go when I looked up at him, lips resting on the ridge of his cockhead.

“God, Jesus Christ, Lane.”  His gaze lasered on mine.  “Is this what you want?”

I nodded, bobbing on his dick.

“Tell me what else you want.”  His voice was suddenly deeper.  Rougher.  Eyes unrelenting.  Dick hard in my mouth.  

Feeling exposed, I was suddenly shy.  I backed off his cock, pumping his slick shaft and focused on my ministrations.

“Lane…”  When I wouldn’t look at him, he brushed my hand away.  "What’s wrong?”  

I rested my fingers on my thighs and looked at the floor.  “Nothing.”

“Look at me.”

“I… can’t.”

A moment passed.  I memorized every speck on the white tile.  Every tiny stain in the grout.  

Something caught my attention in front of me.  His knees, on the ground.  I trailed my gaze up them to hairy, powerful quads and a protruding cock.  

“Talk to me,” he murmured.

I scoffed, shaking my head.  “How?  You…”

He said nothing, but I stared at his dick, watching it diminish.

“You see me,” I murmured.

“I do.”

“Yeah.”  I laughed shortly.  “You say that like it’s easy and obvious and happens all the time.  It doesn’t happen to me.  Not girls like me.”

“Women.”

“Oh God, shut up.”  I looked up at his face.  

Marsh was smiling, the outer pinch of his eyes making a succession of wrinkles that looked like tiny winks.  He chuckled, then searched my expression for a moment.  “People see what they want to see, even if it’s not who’s even really there.”

“So how do you know you see me?”

He shrugged.  “Confidence.”

“Incorrigible,” I said, fighting a smile.

“Yeah well.”  His voice softened.  He reached out, brushed my cheek with the back of his fingers.  “I fucked up a bit, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should have started here, on this hard ass floor, face to face with you.”  

Breaths shallow, I focused on his mouth.  The little bow on his upper lip.  “Naked?”

“Mmm.”  His lips parted, fingers holding my jaw with soft insistence as his face came closer to mine.  Magnetisms to an eclipse.

This is where I’m meant to be.  The thought passed through my mind as his mouth closed on mine.  Pressing, searching, urging the blood to rise in my veins.  His touch, his scent, his need.  It was everything I craved.  

I opened my mouth and his tongue burst through.  Pushing and sliding, wet and as insistent as my own to his.

His forearms enveloped me and my hands found his back.  He pulled me from the tub and I straddled him, tightening my legs around him as the water made me slip.  My breasts pressed his chest, his cock rubbing my clit-dick.  His arms circled under my ass.

One glimpse at his lust-drugged eyes and he was kissing me again.  My arms around his neck.  He cut off the kiss as he rose with me, my legs at his hips.  

I hung on tight as he turned and walked us through the threshold.  A few more paces and he crouched and leaned me back.  The soft bed caught my shoulders.  

He eased me down and let go, then grabbed something from the drawer of the nightstand.  Licking his lips, he leaned between my legs.  His warm, wet tongue dragged up the belly of my clit-dick and I moaned.

“What would you do,” he asked as a lubed finger penetrated my pussy, his breath hot on my dick, “if I made you cum as I entered you.  And then made you cum again?”

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered.

His mouth came over my clit-dick again.  Soft and sweet.  Sensual, as he added a second finger in my ass.  Moving in and out, curling toward me just enough, as if he knew what he was doing.

I forced back a moan, my throat catching.  “You have some big fingers, Mr Marsh.”

“Logan.  And you know what they say.”  His voice was husky, teasing as his mouth left me.  But his eyes never left mine, a smile not quite breaking over his face.  

The air was thick.  My body coiled and released, over and over.  Tighter every time he pressed in.  Craved him more than air.

“Fuck me,” I whispered.

“Soon,” he answered, his mouth around me again.

Soon?  Soon?  Soon I’d be ready to combust.  Which meant begging or leaving before I lost my self-worth.  Or it’d be over.  Which meant I’d have to make some kind of decision, which I wasn’t equipped to handle.  

I felt my head shaking, hips aching to meet his fingers.  His mouth.

“Yes, Lane.  That’s it.  Fuck me back.  Show me.”

It wasn’t about ownership.  Wasn’t about violence or ego or going outside his box or bragging rights.  It wasn’t about anything superficial.  

And intimacy?  He was scared too.  Needed reassurance.

Maybe he was as alone as I was.  Maybe of all the steps he made inside the fold, there were the same amounts that weren’t.  And maybe my heart beat in the off tempo.

Maybe his beat in mine. 

“You keep saying you want to give me everything, that you want to make me the happiest girl in the world tonight.  So do it.  Push that cock inside me.  Fuck me like you’ve never dreamed of anyone else.”

 Eyes on mine, he closed his mouth around my clit-dick, taking it to the base of his throat.  His tongue lapped at my shaft, mouth tight around me as he moved back to the tip and I nearly lost control.  

He lowered his head, dragged his tongue up my dick as he reached for my breast.  Squeezed my flesh, then stimulated my hardening nipple.

His stare was the only thing that kept me grounded.

Do it.

When his tongue lifted from my dick, his body rose over mine.  His forearm flexed as he grasped his cock, pressed its blunt tip against my pussy.  I moaned, pressing back, and it slid in, stretching me around him.

I gasped.  It’d been months since I’d taken a man inside me.  Tonight had only been my first night out since…

He pressed further as he leaned down.  His mouth came over mine.  Soft.  Sweet.  The lightest of kisses, and then he moved to my neck. 

My nipples scraped his chest as I gasped for breath over his shoulder.  My pussy fuller and fuller, I piano keyed my fingers at his lower back.  His body brushed my wet cock, trapping heat between us until his heavy balls stopped against my crack.

“So tight, so hot.  So god damn beautiful.”  He kissed my neck again, pressing his body to mine.

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”  He began the slow descent from my body, an excruciatingly undesirable exit.  I whined, clinging to his back.  “You don’t like being tight?  You don’t like being hot and alive?”

“Just fuck me.  You don’t need to say all that.”

“Why?  Because you don’t like it or you’re afraid to hear it?”

I swore I could see the blue in his commanding eyes even in the shadows of the room.  I reached between us, tweaking the head of my dick.  Didn’t want to answer.  Didn’t want to go there.  Just wanted to live in the bows and arcs of sex and orgasm, of being wanted without it forcing me to change who I was.  Serious and life-altering, but only in the swift fantasy of it all.

“Fuck.  Me.”  I made sure to annunciate.  

“Such an angelically dirty mouth,” he whispered before he trapped it in his own.  

It felt like his body was oxygen.  Every kiss, every thrust, every brush against my skin was everything I’d ever needed.  I was lost and found, shy but emboldened.  

He broke the kiss, packing me full of his cock.  “Whatever you want, beautiful.  Sensual and slow, rough and dirty.  I want everything.”  

“Take me from behind.”

“Because you don’t want to see who’s taking you or because you like it?”  Immediately, he shook his head.  Kissed me as he pulled out, leaving me achingly empty.  “Don’t answer that.  Turn around.” 

Trembling, I obeyed.  Rested on my hands and knees, tits swaying heavy under me.  The mattress shifted behind me until I felt his legs on the inside of mine, his cock pressing into me again.  Deeper, deeper.

“Fuck.” I whimpered, my elbows wobbling.

“So fucking tight on me, angel.”  He reached around, stroked my clit-dick as he packed me full from behind.  “Yeah, you like that.  So sweet, so delicate with my cock inside your tight ass.”

“Pussy,” I gasped, correcting him.

“Your tight, hot pussy.”  He murmured harshly, pulling out and easing back in.  Every inch, every delicious millimeter of thickness, followed by a leisurely stroke of my clit-dick until I felt like I might explode.  Then he pulled out again, leaving me gasping and aching.

“Marsh,” I whispered, my voice breaking.  “Please.”

“Logan, god dammit.”  Tone near-crazed, his pace increased.

The room shook into static.  Everything was heat and flesh.  Air thick and humid with frantic breath.  My arms collapsed, forearms slapping against the sheets, fingers splayed to keep my balance as I held my ass high to meet the strength of his rhythm.

My balls were tight and hot, the burn of orgasm singeing my flesh, but I couldn’t give all of myself, be that vulnerable.

“I’m not cumming first.  I need to see you in ecstasy.”  Logan gripped my shoulder as he pounded into me.  “Don’t you fucking dare keep that from me.”

“Not,” I panted, “first.”

He grunted.  “With, then.”  

“S-spank me.”

His thrusts slowed.  “What.”

“Just do it!”  It was all I could eke as I pushed back on him, picked up the rhythm, needing the promise of oblivion and love more than air.

“Are you a bad girl, Lane?”  His voice took on a musical, rough tone.  Then smack!  A sting seared through my ass, lighting my nerves on fire as his cock shattered every semblance of reality.

Another spank, the other side, joined the fire in my flesh as he pounded me into the edges of the atmosphere.  Sweat slicked my skin, his hands slipped on my skin and I felt cum boil deep between my legs.  Moaning, whimpering, begging, I collapsed, but he dragged me hard against his hips.  My forehead hit the soft sheets as cum kicked from my dick.  His feral groan ripped through the air and his cock spasmed, filling me with bursts of fire.  

We were weightless.  Soulless.  Full and devoid at once.  

Bliss.  Freedom.

“Lane,” Logan whispered, as if my name was the only thing that tied him to the world.  

I felt his cock retreat.  Panic seized my body and I slapped my hand on his, eyes closed and head still pinned to the luxurious bed.  “Don’t leave me.”

He paused, softening cock pressing as deep as it could.  “As if I could.”

My throat tightened, biting back a sob as the gates to my soul bowed.  Keep it together, Lane.  Feel it, live it, but go home whole.

“Hold me.”  My voice sounded vulnerable, like it belonged to someone else. 

His arms came around me, urging me to the side.  We fell together on the bed, his softening cock inside me.  His knees followed the bend of mine.  I felt his lips meet my shoulder, pressing softly.  His chest lined my back, matching my breaths with his own until our tempo rejoined the rhythm of the world.

“Lane?” he murmured.

“Hmm?”

“Stay.”  

My eyes flew open, cold fear blowing through my blood.  Every molecule of my body felt like it detached.

I nodded. 

He pulled me impossibly close, his warmth against mine in every nook, our bodies staying one even as his softening cock slipped out of me.  

One, two, three… I counted.  Slowly.  One to ten, to one hundred.  Started over again.  A few times.  The haze of orgasm dwindled.  Logan’s breath sounded more crisp, the air deathly quiet.  

I gotta go.  

Shadows danced on the wall.  A reflection of the moon from the river through the window.  Sweet and peaceful and alien.  

I stared into the darkness.  Waited eons for his breathing to slow more.  Slowly, in increments of breath, I got off the bed.  Groped for my clothes.  Found my shoes in the kitchen, next to his wallet.  

A red credit card poked out.  

It glared at me, beckoned.  A force I couldn’t ignore.  Something I controlled.  Something that was normal.  

Snatching it, I snapped around and opened the front door.

0229, I hit on the elevator.