What He Wants (2 page)

I took a sip of my drink.
 
It was definitely whiskey.
 
Or, at least, what I imagined whiskey
to taste like since I’d never actually
had
whiskey before.
 
It burned
going down, but I was glad.
 
The
sensation kept my mind off what was happening.

The stranger reached out and took my arm
again, turning it over gently in his hand before raising it to his mouth.
 
Then he reached down and slowly,
deliciously, bit one of the candies off my bracelet.
 
His lips were hot and soft, and I felt the quick flick of
his tongue against my skin as he took the candy into his mouth.

Then, with a flourish, he picked the pen
up off the table where the waitress had left our bill, and put a big X on my
arm.
 
It was like he was marking
me, taking ownership of me, and the thought filled me with a weird little
thrill.

“There,” he said.
 

“You’re supposed to sign your name.”

“But that would ruin the mystery.”
 
He grinned, and I felt myself
melt.
 
I’d never understood how
women could end up hooking up with guys they’d met in bars, but I was shocked
to realize that if this man had asked me to go home with him right now, I would
have done it.

“Charlotte!
 
What are you doing over here all by yourself!” Cora’s voice
came trilling through the crowd, and then she appeared at our table.
 
The strapless dress she was wearing was
hanging down over her chest, and you could see the outline of her strapless
bra.
 
Cora had a great body –
tiny waist, long legs, perfectly proportioned – but somehow, her clothes
never seemed to fit quite right.

“Oh,” she said when she saw the man
standing next to me.
 
“I didn’t
realize you had company.”
 
She held
her hand out.
 
“I’m Cora.”

I took another sip of my drink as
disappointment flooded my body.
 
Now that Cora was here, I would be left in the dust.
 
I knew it was ridiculous – I’d
just met this man, after all.
 
And
to be perfectly honest, I didn’t have time for a relationship, or even a
hook-up.
 
I was in my first year of
law school, and it was demanding and crazy – I loved every minute of it,
but it didn’t leave me much time for a personal life.

“I was just leaving,” the man said.
 
He didn’t offer an introduction of his
own.
 
In fact, he didn’t really
look at Cora at all.
 
He just
drained the rest of his drink, then turned around and returned to the blondes
who’d been patiently waiting for him.

“What a jerk,” Cora said, obviously
offended by the fact that the man hadn’t fallen for her charms.
 
She looked down at my drink and
wrinkled her delicate nose. “What are you drinking?
 
Whiskey?”

“Yes,” I said defiantly, and took another
sip, even though my throat was still burning from the last one.

“Well, come on, you need to dance.”

She grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the
dance floor, where I spent the next hour dancing and trying not be obvious
about the fact that I was looking for the man who’d drawn an X on my arm.
 
But I didn’t see him again.
 
He must have left the bar soon after
Cora interrupted us.

Finally, at around nine o’clock, I
decided that I’d had enough.

I told everyone I had to be up early the
next morning, which wasn’t a lie.
 
The library was waiting for me.

“Are you sure?” Kristin, another girl
from our class, asked.
 
She was
drunk and slurring her words. “You should come with us to the next place.”
 
She turned to Cora.
 
“Cora, we’re going to the next place,
right?”

“Yes, in just a minute,” Cora said.
 
She’d found a man with a shaved head
who’d eaten a candy off her bracelet and had decided to sign her ample cleavage
instead of her arm as the instructions had indicated.

I said my goodbyes and slipped out of the
bar.

Once on the street, I breathed a sigh of
relief.
 
I wasn’t particularly
close to those people, and I’d always had a hard time partaking in small
talk.
 
Once you asked someone what
they did for a living and where they lived, what else were you supposed to
ask?
 
There was nowhere for the
conversation to go.
 
I was a lot
more comfortable in small groups, where people were a little more open.

The city was pulsing with life as people
ducked into bars and strolled down the sidewalk, enjoying the late spring
night. In fact, the street was so crowded, that at first I didn’t realize
someone was walking right next to me.
 
I quickened my stride, but he matched his to mine. I glanced over, annoyed,
expecting to see a homeless person, or perhaps a drunken bargoer who would try
to engage me in conversation.
 

My stomach flipped and my heart jumped
into my throat.
 
It was the
stranger from the bar.
 
Mr. X.

“Hello,” he said.
 
His voice was smooth, but there was a
huskiness to it that I didn’t remember hearing before.
 

“Hi,” I said.
 
I swallowed.
 
Part of me was unnerved and a little scared.
 
Obviously this man had waited outside the bar for me to
leave. The other part of me was filled with excitement.

“Didn’t feel like continuing the party?”
Mr. X asked me cheerfully.

“No.
 
I, um, have to be up early tomorrow.”

“On a Saturday?”
 
He seemed surprised by this, which
didn’t make much sense.
 
With the
way he was dressed, I just assumed he was another lawyer or perhaps worked in
finance.
 
He shouldn’t have been
surprised by the fact that I had to be up early on a Saturday.

“Yes.”

My original plan had been to grab a cab
and take it back to my apartment.
 
My little studio was fifteen blocks away, and I wasn’t in the mood to
walk that far, even though the night was warm.
 
My feet were killing me from the heels I was wearing.
 
But now that this man was beside me, I
didn’t want our time together to end.
 
I was willing to keep walking if it meant we could continue our
conversation.

We turned the corner onto a side street,
and the crowd began to thin out.
 
There were no bars or restaurants in this area, and most of the retail
stores were closed.

A second later, the man grabbed my hand
and pulled me into a space between the buildings.

“What are you doing?”
 
I asked as he pushed his body up
against mine. I reached out and tried to push him away, but he was too strong,
his chest rock solid.
 
My nerve
endings were on fire, every sense on high alert as I breathed in his scent, a
heady mix of alcohol and cologne.

He didn’t answer, just gave me a devilish
grin before taking a few steps back.
 
“If you want to go, go.”
 
His tone made it clear that he knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

My breath was coming in short gasps.

He licked his lips slowly and then his
gaze traveled up my body, like he was trying to decide just exactly what to do
with me.
 

He didn’t move for what seemed like an
agonizingly long time.
 
We just
stood there, our gazes locked on each other.
 
He was biding his time, I could tell, waiting for me to
leave, waiting for me to decide I couldn’t handle whatever it was he was about
to do to me.
  
My head was
screaming at me to move, to run, to get away.
 
My body was screaming the opposite.
 
So I stood my ground.
 
And finally, after what seemed like
forever, he took a step back toward me.

He grabbed my shoulders and ran his hands
down my arms and over the X he’d drawn there earlier.
 
He smiled in satisfaction at his branding before raising his
eyes back up to meet my gaze.

“Right now,” he rasped.
 
“You are mine.”

And then his lips were on mine.
 
The kiss was like nothing I’d ever
experienced before.
 
He tasted like
mint and alcohol.
 
His lips were
soft but his skin had a rough stubble, and the difference in sensations sent a
burst of heat through my whole being.
 
My nipples tightened as he pushed his body up against mine, his tongue
probing my mouth.

He broke away, then reached down and
grabbed my hand, pulling my right arm up over my head.
 
He repeated this maneuver with my left
arm, until both my hands were above my head and up against the wall of the
building behind me.

He held me there with one hand, and used
his other hand to pull down the top of my dress, then grinned devilishly as he
yanked my bra down.
 
My nipples tightened
even more as the cold air hit my skin, and I bit my lip to keep from crying
out.

Part of me knew this was wrong, and my
brain screamed at me to tell him to stop, to run, to get out of there.
 
But my body was on fire.
 
I had never wanted someone as much as I
wanted this man, right now, in this moment.
 

He traced his fingertip over my nipple,
and I moaned.

“Shhhh,” he commanded, moving his finger
to my lips.
 
“Quiet.”

I was afraid if I made another sound, he
would leave, so I bit my lip to keep from moaning again.

He paused for a moment, and then turned
me around so that I was facing the building.
 
He pushed me up against the wall, my cheek hitting the
coarse brick.

My hands were still above my head, and he
reached up and grabbed the candy bracelet around my wrist.
 
He pulled the elastic band into a
figure eight, and slipped the other loop around my other wrist, effectively
tying my hands together.

He tugged tightly on the elastic, using
it to hold me in place.

His other hand reached down and pulled my
dress up, and then I felt him pulling my panties to the side.

“My God,” I gasped before I could stop
myself.

His hand grasped my mound, and then he
slid a finger inside of me.
 
“You’re wet for me.
 
You’ve
been wet for me since I drew that X on you, haven’t you?”

No one had ever talked to me like this
before.
 
It was both exciting and
frightening at the same time.
 
He
pulled the makeshift rope around my wrists tighter.
 
“Weren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I was wet for you since you drew on
me at the bar.”

His mouth was right against my ear, and
the delicious tickle of his breath made me shiver.
  
He undid his pants, and his cock pushed up against
me.
 
It was rock hard and felt
huge.
 
My heart sped up at the
thought that maybe I wouldn’t be able to take him.
 

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he breathed
into my ear.
 
And then he was
inside me, filling me with one stroke.
 
There was a brief flash of pain, but I was so wet, so turned on, that it
only lasted for a moment before I began to feel pleasure.
 
I tried to push back, to take him
inside me as far as he could go, but he grabbed the bracelet and pulled my arms
back, shoving his body up against mine, letting me know he was in charge.

He fucked me hard, in and out, faster and
faster, giving me his entire shaft, harder and harder, faster and faster, until
my body felt as if it was going to ignite.

“Come for me,” he commanded, and no
sooner were the words out of his mouth then I did come for him, my orgasm
taking over my whole body, causing me to moan in pleasure.

He kept going, pumping into me, until I
felt him come inside me.

He held me up against the wall for
another moment before letting my hands go.
 
There were marks where the elastic of the bracelet had cut
into my flesh.
 
My breath was
coming in short bursts, my heart beating so fast I could feel the blood rushing
through my body.

Every one of my nerves was on alert,
stimulated so intensely it was almost too much to bear.

Mr. X pushed my hair to the side and
kissed me softly on the back of the neck.