the party was loud in the way that makes it easy to disappear. kitchen packed, bass coming up through the floorboards, somebody’s roommate crying about a breakup on the stairs. i’d had two drinks and was looking for the bathroom when a guy i didn’t know touched my elbow and steered me the other direction. tall, pressed shirt, the kind of calm that makes you stop asking questions.
“come with me,” he said. no name, no introduction. “he’s back here.”
“who’s back here?”
he just smiled, like the answer was obvious, and opened a door at the end of the hall. the room was dark except for a phone face-down on a dresser, the glow leaking out around its edges. “he asked me to find someone,” the friend said. “someone exactly like you, specifically. i told him i knew who.”
under the skirt and the sweater i was wearing the good set. the black one, the garter straps, the stockings with the seam. i’d put the good set on before a party i wasn’t even invited to, and some part of me that’s smarter than the rest of me understood that a room full of people at 1am is a room where someone might eventually say a word like specifically.
i stood in the doorway long enough that he started to laugh at me, quiet and not unkind, and then he gave me a little push between the shoulders and left. the door clicked shut behind me.
the room smelled like cologne and something sweeter underneath. i couldn’t see him yet. then i could: sitting on the edge of a low bed, shirt open, forearms resting on his knees, watching me the way you’d watch a delivery you’d already paid for.
“sit down,” he said, and pointed at the floor in front of him, and i did.
the rug was thin and my knees found every crease in it. he didn’t touch me right away. he just looked at my face for a long time, and then he lifted one hand and set it along my jaw, thumb at the corner of my mouth, turning my face toward the light from the phone.
“you’re exactly what i wanted,” he said. “i always want the soft girls. the ones who look like they’d break if you leaned on them.”
his palm was warm and dark against my cheek, fingers spreading back into my hair, and the contrast was so deliberate it felt like a sentence he was writing on me. “my pretty pale girl,” he said, thumb pressing my bottom lip down, and i let him.
“stand up,” he said. “slow.”
i stood. he stayed sitting, which put my waist level with his face, and he undid my skirt with two fingers and let it drop, and the sweater followed. then he looked — really looked — at what i’d had on under my clothes the whole night while the party happened around me: the black lace, the straps dug in where i’d been sitting on the stairs, the seams up the backs of my legs.
“you walked through a party in this,” he said.
“for me.”
“mm.” he hooked a finger under one garter strap and let it snap back against my skin, easy, like a man testing a latch. “women at this party spent an hour on their faces so a room would know they tried. you spent an hour on lace nobody was supposed to see.” he looked up at me along the whole length of my body, unhurried. “i like my math better. you dressed like a secret and walked in anyway.” he pulled me forward by the hips until my knees hit his. “a secret that walks in the room is just waiting to be told. didn’t anybody teach you that.”
“no.”
“no,” he agreed. “that’s why it’s my job now.”
he unzipped with his other hand while he said it, like punctuation. he was big, thick through the middle, and he took his time pulling his boxers down, letting me look. his hand came back to my face when he was done.
“open,” he said. not loud.
i opened. he slid the head of his cock across my lower lip first, slow, wetting it, then pushed in past my teeth and let me get used to the weight of him. my tongue went flat against the underside the way i knew how, working the head in small circles, and he groaned low in his chest.
“good girl,” he said. “look at you taking it so pretty.”
then his hand settled firm on the back of my head and i took him down, a few inches, pulled back, a few more, letting my throat open around him one inch at a time. the first time he pushed all the way in my eyes watered instantly and i gagged, spit running down my chin, and he held me there one beat longer than was comfortable before he let me come back up, breathing hard through my nose.
“again,” he said. “slower this time.”
i went back down. all the way, nose at the base of him, throat full and tight, held it while my eyes streamed, then pulled off gasping with a string of spit hanging from my lip and dripping onto my chest. he watched every second of it. his hips shifted under me, small rolling thrusts, and i swallowed around him, cheeks hollowed, sucking hard on every pass back up.
the wet sound filled the room. he clearly liked it, because his grip in my hair tightened right when i made the loudest noise, and he pushed deeper, held me down, and started using my mouth with real intent. i kept my hands flat on his thighs for balance and let him, throat working on every stroke. my jaw was going to file a complaint in the morning. that was the morning’s problem.
somewhere behind me the door handle moved. one try. somebody on the other side, hand on the knob, deciding. i froze for half a second — and he didn’t. his hips kept the exact rhythm and his grip didn’t loosen and his eyes never left my face.
“don’t,” he said, meaning don’t you dare stop, and i understood with every cell that he wasn’t going to lower his voice for a hallway. whoever it was would hear breathing and a wet sound and work it out. the handle moved once more, slower — and then went away. a speaker of bass came back instead. he held me down a little longer than he’d planned to, i think, because the whole thing had turned him on, and i stayed, throat working on every stroke like my life depended on being the least interrupted part of that entire house.
“you’re so good at this,” he said, breathless. “my pretty pale girl. you were made for this.”
then he stood up, keeping my hair in his fist so i had to come up with him — and i was on my knees in the middle of the room with him standing over me, which is a different geometry entirely, and a worse one for me, and a better one for how small it made me feel. he took my mouth from above, both hands on my head, using my throat at the angle he wanted while i braced with one hand on his thigh and kept the other behind my back, because it seemed right, because nobody had told me not to, because it was the most natural position i’ve ever held. he looked down the whole time. watched himself disappear into my mouth and come back out shining. “there it is,” he said, quiet, private, like a man who’d found something he’d misplaced. “you came here for this.”
“i came here for you,” i said, when he let me breathe. this far in, wrecked, chin hanging with spit, i don’t lie about anything. “asked for someone exactly like me.”
he laughed, one low note, and his thumb wiped a line of spit off my chin and fed it back to me. “right answer.”
his phone buzzed on the dresser. he glanced at it, didn’t pick up. just let it go dark.
he came with a low groan a minute later, hands fisted in my hair, holding me down through every pulse. i stayed where he put me and swallowed everything he gave me, throat working, eyes wet, until he finally loosened his grip and let me breathe.
he exhaled, long, and looked down at me like he was satisfied and not even a little surprised. “thank you,” he said, and it was the only soft thing he said all night.
i sat back on my heels, cleaned my mouth with the hem of the lace still hanging off one shoulder, and stood up. the skirt came back on. the sweater. he watched me reassemble myself like a man watching the second trailer after he’s already seen the movie. nobody walked me out. the phone on the dresser had already gone dark again, face-down, like the room had never had anyone in it.
back out in the hallway the bass was still going through the floor and somebody was still crying on the stairs, and the guy from the door was leaning by the bathroom with a beer, and when he looked at me — mouth wrecked, hair a mess, lipstick gone from the neckline of my sweater up — he raised his beer about an inch. a salute. like a doorman who works for tips.
i went to the kitchen, found a cup, and got a drink. a girl in line for the sink did one of those double takes where she almost asks and then decides not to. i fixed nothing. my mouth tasted like him for the rest of the night, and i didn’t wash it off right away, and i didn’t mind.
i never learned his name. i never learned the friend’s either. the good set still has the spit stain. i haven’t washed it.
