I went upstairs with less anticipation, less heightened awareness than I would have if I thought I was meeting Jonathan. It was probably Yvonne or some random friend who was passing by and wanted to hit an after-hours.
Seeing a bar after closing, with the lights on and the music off, is much like seeing a beautiful woman without makeup. All the parts are there but made unappealing. Glasses thunk against bus trays, squeaky-wheeled press buckets make their way across the floor behind the slap and swoosh of grey-fringed mops. The staff laughs at each other’s jokes, which are invariably on customers. Guests lingered, mostly in earnest conversations about the next destination for drinking or fucking. Some clung by their fingernails, as if a change of venue would break a spell.
In the case of the Stock, the city had darkened beneath us as much as it ever would, and the sky was a burnt orange with reflected light. It was one fifteen in the morning. I had a pocket full of cash. Maybe I’d go the hell out and talk to people. Maybe I’d cling to a venue until four a.m. to avoid sleeping in my house for the first time in weeks.
But I wasn’t going out. I wasn’t getting drunk, and I wasn’t reacquainting myself with anyone. Only one woman was at the bar. It was Jessica, and she was not alone. Jonathan stood over her, and they were arguing fiercely. They looked like a married couple on the verge of a blowout, talking over each other, tense hands in front of them. I didn’t want to approach them. But something else took over.
She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. She wasn’t supposed to be in fifty feet of him. He was mine. I had a reaction that could only be described as biological. Rage filled my blood from some angry gland until my fingertips clenched and my teeth ground together.
Jonathan looked up. As soon as he saw me, he came my way like a torpedo.
“What the fuck?” I said.
He gripped my shoulder and spun me around. “Walk.”
“No.” He pushed me toward the back room. I shrugged him off. “I want to talk to her. That’s why she’s here.” He took my bicep and yanked me off the floor. “Get off me.”
He didn’t listen. He pulled me through the halls, past the few coworkers left, along the concrete floors of the back hallways. His face was stern and blank, a fixed mask of intention. He pushed me into the break room, locked the door, and drew shades over the window to the hall. When he finally faced me again, I pushed him away.
“Don’t you ever do anything like that again,” I said.
He pressed me against the wall and put his face to mine in a punishing kiss. I gave in to the heat, the urgency of his mouth on mine, his tongue demanding response, his hands still pushing my shoulders. I groaned into him, my voice a breath I had no choice but to take.
“I told you not to meet with her,” he said, face near enough to kiss me again.
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“Oh no?”
“Dragging me away from a conversation, trying to isolate me, you’re giving her quite a case.”
“Pick up your skirt.”
“Using sex to control me...”
“Show me your cunt, Monica.”
I felt a pool of arousal below my waist at the command. Though Jonathan didn’t hold my arms, his grip on my shoulders made skidding my hands over my skirt uncomfortable and awkward. I pinched the fabric and bent my wrists, hiking up the skirt one inch, then two. I got a fistful of cotton and yanked. The whole thing rode up as our eyes met, our breath mingling.
“So, what? You going to fuck me now?”
“I am.”
“You think that’s going to stop me?”
He put a hand at my throat, fingertips at the base of my jaw, forcing me to look at the ceiling. The restriction and posture sent a tidal wave of desire between my legs. I wanted to wrap them around him and take him inside me.
“I’ve never punished you, goddess. But I will.”
“Go on. I’m not scared of you.”
He looped his fingers in my panties and drove his fingers along my wet cleft. I gasped and moaned when he thrust two fingers in me. When he pulled them out, I felt their loss. I wanted to be filled with him, despite the fact that he was pissing me off, or because of it. Pressing his torso to mine and keeping his hand on my jaw, he put his wet fingers in my mouth.
“This mouth is mine,” he said. “It doesn’t talk unless I tell it to.”
The taste of my sex filled my mouth as he drove his fingers down my throat. I sucked them clean to please him, to please myself. The sensations caused by his forcefulness were overpowering.
He took his hand off my throat and ran it along my belly, to my thighs, inside them. He found the crotch of my panties and pulled them off. Then, without a pause, he pushed me onto the lunch table. The metal legs scraped the linoleum as he slid me back and bent my legs so my sopping pussy lay before him.
“You’re not fucking my decision out of me.”
Standing between my legs, he unbuckled his belt. “Don’t make me gag you.”
I held up my middle finger. He smiled as if he couldn’t help it then grabbed my hand and held it down, hard. His thumb dug into my wrist, and I knew my expression broadcast pain. My legs tightened and closed, but he pushed them apart.
“I’m going to fuck you, and you’re going to shut the hell up for the fucking duration.” He drove into me without an ounce more warning. He fucked me as if he owned me, my body bent, powerless, exposed.
He told me to take it, but he was the one who was doing the taking. He held the meat of my thighs, spreading my legs. The pain of his hands digging into my skin, his banging cock, him standing over me in dominion. I’d never look at those humming fluorescent lights without feeling a buzz in my cunt again.
I got up on my elbows, and he pushed me back down. “Don’t move unless I tell you to.”
“I’m going to—”
“You are not.”
I was going to come. A tsunami of pleasure rushed over the horizon, rising waters pooled at my feet, ankles, knees. I had another half a minute to complete oblivion. But his eyes shut and he grunted, then moaned, pushing into me slowly. He was coming, motherfucker, and he’d never just come because he couldn’t help it. Outside the first time he fucked me without a condom, he never lost control. Jonathan’s orgasms always had a purpose.
Taking his hands off my thighs, he leaned in. “Give me a number between one and ten.”
“Two.”
“Forget that, then. Between five and ten.”
“Seven.”
“That’s how many times you’re coming before sunrise. But you have to come home with me.”
“You son of a bitch. We’re playing orgasm games again?” I asked.
“You’re being a poor sport.”
I got up on my elbows, feeling done with that conversation already. “Tomorrow’s my day off, and I want to work on some songs.”
“I have a piano.”
“All my staff pads are at home. All my notes. Forget it.”
He picked me up gently by my biceps, but his fingertips sent bolts of not-so-sexy pain through them. He must have seen me flinch. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll come to your place. Let me drive. Please. Give me a couple of hours to do nothing but make you squirm.” He tugged at my skirt, and I hoisted myself up so he could get it back in place.
I put my arms over his shoulders and kissed him. I couldn’t help it. I had absolutely no choice. His lips sat so close to mine, and they were so responsive. His tongue ignited the smoldering fire between my legs. I wrapped my legs around him, letting his mouth take mine.
“My place until sunrise,” I said as he kissed my jaw, then my neck. “Then you get the hell out so I can get to work.”
“To write,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
I pulled away. “I might also go to the bathroom once or twice. Do I need to fill out a form or call you first?”
A smile drew across his lips. A joke was incoming, but there was a click as the door was unlocked from the outside. Jonathan got his dick back in his pants before the cleaning crew swung the door open.