Katrina Jackson

“Would you like a lesson?” I ask. 

I hadn’t meant for that to sound so sexual, but the words break from my mouth before I can think them through. I never do that. It’s foolish and I can’t afford that kind of slip, but as soon as the words leave my mouth I hear the innuendo and I see it dawn on her. 

Her eyes widen and her lips thin in a sensual press. I want to taste that expression. 

And then she whispers again, “Yes. Please.” 

I have to take a deep breath as those words dig into me like hooks. I know that I’ll conjure the sound of that soft breath just as soon as I’m alone and can touch myself in peace, but that’s for later. 

For now, I grab her wine glass and pour a taste for her. I place the glass on the table in front of her and then pour myself the same. 

I nod at the glass and Shae follows my lead. She picks it up by the stem with delicate fingers and adorably perfect short red nails. 

She leans forward. “Is this where we smell it?” she whispers with an eager smile on her face. 

“I thought you didn’t know anything about wine?” I ask her with a smile that feels so delicious in its lack of familiarity as muscles in my cheeks I haven’t used in forever engage. 

She shrugs adorably. “I’ve seen movies.” 

“Ah, I see. You want to swirl the wine gently in your glass, letting the bouquet blossom.” 

She smiles and nods and then sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, concentrating as she follows my directions. 

I forget about my own wine. I don’t care about the depth of color or the taste. What I care about is the way Shae’s bright white teeth bite into the soft flesh of her lip and the small crease that appears across the bridge of her nose as she inhales the wine in her glass. And then I care a lot about the way she looks up at me through the fan of her eyelashes for my next instruction. I care about what I want to do with that eager attention and that mouth and those fingers.

“What do you smell?” I ask her in a rough voice. My chest is tight with need.

“It’s kind of…” She closes her eyes and licks her lips. 

My fingers tighten on the stem of the wine glass and I’m in danger of breaking it. 

“It’s kind of fruity. Earthy. Are these words people use?” she asks playfully with a cheeky smile on her lips. 

I don’t smile, not even to scare people. I know some men – butchers – who laugh and tell jokes and smile so much that their expressions don’t slip even when they’re slitting your throat. It’s cruel and effective; but that’s not who I am. I don’t want people to get comfortable with me. I don’t want to lure anyone into complacency. I like to be upfront. When I walk in a room I want my enemies to know that I’ll kill them if I deem it necessary. And I want my friends to know it too. 

But Shae makes me smile.“Yes,” I tell her, “these are words people use to describe wine. Is that what you smell?” 

She bites her lip again her eyelashes flutter as she thinks. And then she shakes her head, “I smell wine. Red wine.” 

I smile so hard, my cheeks push my eyes into a squint. “A good nose,” I tell her.

She beams at me and the first joke I’ve told in a decade. Decades? A long fucking time. 

“Now taste.” I mean this innuendo and it takes her much less time to hear it.

She licks her lips. “What about you?” 

I groan. If this is a trap from one of my enemies, it’s worth it. “What about me?” My voice is hoarse. 

“Don’t you want to taste?” Apparently, I’m not the only one who can play this game. 

I lift my glass slowly to my lips and she mirrors me. We watch one another over the rims of our wine glasses as we take the smallest sips. I taste every note. She’s not wrong. It is earthy with hints of berry and an oaky finish, but I enjoy this glass of wine more than any other I’ve had because she’s tasting it at the same time and I wonder what this sip would taste like on her tongue. 

When we lower our glasses, her lips are parted, stained the tiniest bit purple from the wine. She has no idea how erotic she looks in this moment or what the way she’s making me feel; the things I wish I could do. She can’t. 

“What do you think?” she asks me. 

Isolation Day 4

 Monica was working at her desk.

She’d been there long enough that her back ached, her eyes were tired and dry, and her vision was just a bit blurry, but she didn’t want to check the clock. She didn’t want to know how long she’d been here or how much longer she planned to be here.

“Quitting time, boss,” Kierra said in a surprisingly sunny voice.

Monica only looked up at her briefly, not long enough to let herself actually see her. “Okay,” she said, cringing at her dry voice and sore throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d called Kierra for anything to drink. Her eyes darted to the corner of her desk, and she spotted a full bottle of water, untouched.

“You coming?” Kierra asked.

“No, you go. I’ll be up in a bit.” Monica turned back to her laptop and tried to focus on the words on the screen, but her left eye was so tired it had started to burn.

“No, thanks,” Kierra said. “That doesn’t work for me.”

Monica looked up with a frown. “Excuse me?”

“I said that doesn’t work for me. You down here until after midnight, falling asleep at your desk doesn’t work for me. Let’s go.” As she spoke, Kierra walked toward Monica’s desk, and then she boldly pushed Monica’s laptop closed with her left hand and placed both hands palms down on Monica’s desk.

Monica was tired, but not too tired that her eyes didn’t dip down the deep v of Kierra’s shirt, where her breasts swayed slightly under the fabric. Monica frowned. She could have sworn Kierra had been wearing a bra at the beginning of the day.

“Let’s go,” Kierra said in a surprisingly hard tone that Monica had never heard from her.

“I only have two folders left to go through,” Monica said even though she didn’t need to justify her decisions to Kierra. She was the boss.

“Great,” Kierra said, holding Monica’s eyes with a sedate stare. “I’ll make sure they’re on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Quitting time,” Lane trilled as he came to stand in her office doorway. Monica almost lifted her eyes to him, ready to tell him to take Kierra upstairs, but she was certain that if she looked away from this standoff, Kierra would take the upper hand somehow.

“As I was telling Kierra,” Monica ground out, “I’ll be down here for a little longer.”

“And as I was telling Monica, that’s not an option. We’re off. Let’s go home.”

“You two alright?” Lane asked.

“We’re fine,” they said at the same time.

“My dick says otherwise,” Lane muttered.

“Don’t make me fire you,” Monica whispered to Kierra. She didn’t mean it, but if this was a powerplay, Monica was going to win; she always did. Or she always did under normal circumstances. There wasn’t any bite to her threat, and surely, they all knew that, but she didn’t expect Kierra to laugh.

It wasn’t necessarily full of mirth it sounded sarcastic, and maybe even challenging. This was yet another sound Monica hadn’t ever heard Kierra make. Her breasts, however, moved, invitingly.

“Oh, please,” Kierra said, “please fire me. I would love to watch you look for another PA who’s going to make sure your favorite coffee shop makes your lattes extra hot so that by the time it gets here it’s the perfect temperature, or who happily drives to get your favorite cheese from that bougie artisanal place, or who comes in early to print, collate, and organize all your work just the way you like it — from most to least annoying — and who does all of that in five-inch heels and a full face of makeup she’ll happily let you mess up whenever you like. Please. Fire me.”

Monica’s office was thick with tension, and not the sexual tension the three of them were used to. The silence stretched for an uncomfortable minute, and then Monica sighed and stood from her chair.

“Fine,” she said.

“Great. Who’s hungry?” Lane said with a single clap of his hands.

Kierra’s face transformed from a challenging stare to pure glee. “I’m starving,” she trilled in the high-pitched voice Monica recognized. She reached for Monica’s arms and held onto them with both hands, sidling up to her and pressing her soft breasts into Monica’s side.

“Are you hungry?” Kierra whispered to Monica in a gentle, warm tone.

Monica looked down at her, and now that she wasn’t sitting in her chair and her back could stretch — and twinge — she realized that she was hungry. And thirsty. And tired.

She nodded down at Kierra as Lane wrapped his arm around Monica’s waist, and he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I think I’m gonna fry some chicken,” he said in his thickest Texas accent.

 Isolation Day 10

 Monica was back at her desk.

Today she was compiling a list of her agents and assessing their needs.

Kenny was home with Maya and working some digital recon for some of their active missions currently on hold while, according to Kierra and Lane’s talk over dinner, helping Maya make some new self-isolation content for her cam channel. Apparently, it was going over very well.

There were a few agents who’d had to shelter in place while on a mission, which was dangerous and threatening to give Monica an ulcer. Some of them would likely be fine, while others were being forced to live in their covers twenty-four hours a day with limited or no access to their actual lives; their partners or parents and, in one case, their children. Monica was most worried about them and had been trying to figure out how to extract her agents without blowing up cases that had taken thousands of hours to put together. If that couldn’t be achieved, she was also working on her justification to her bosses about why her people were more important than the missions and hating that she might ever even have to state something so obvious.

“Drink some water,” Kierra said, placing a large glass on her desk.

“Thank you,” Monica replied, distracted.

“Now.”

Monica looked up at Kierra. She was standing on the other side of Monica’s desk with her arms crossed over her chest and that same hard glare on her face. Monica would have challenged her, but a glass of water was a foolish thing to pick a fight about, so she grabbed the glass and began to drink.

As soon as the liquid hit her tongue, she realized how thirsty she was, and she kept drinking, gulping the entire glass down in a few swallows. Kierra watched her the entire time.

Monica placed the glass back on the coaster, and Kierra snatched it up. “I’ll bring you another,” she said and then turned to flounce out of her office. Monica watched her leave and noted the bright smile on her face as she turned to wink at Monica over her shoulder, the bounce in her step, and the way her round ass jiggled under the skirt of her flowing dress.

 Isolation Day 15

 Monica slept in. She never did that.

Usually, she woke up before Lane or Kierra, and she was such a light sleeper that sometimes Kierra’s tossing and turning would wake her up in the middle of the night. But somehow, today, she’d slept through Lane and Kierra not only waking up but, knowing those two, fucking and then noisily getting ready together. That never happened, and it was actually a little bit worrying.

She rushed out of bed to shower and wash her hair, but the rush left her once she was under the spray. She took her time shampooing and conditioning her hair and decided to shave her legs while she was there. And then she took her time moisturizing her body, combing a leave-in hair mask into her hair. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and then grabbed one of Kierra’s sheet masks and slapped it on her face while she picked out an outfit to wear.

She felt like an entirely new person — or like herself before all this — as she walked into Command.

As soon as she sat behind her desk, Kierra came rushing into her office with a cup of coffee in one hand, a muffin on a plate in the other, and a stack of files under her arm.

“I rescheduled your phone meeting with Asif, Lane’s handled that Skype chat with Chanté and Kenny, and here’s the new resource list for the op in Brussels. Let me know if you need anything else,” Kierra said. She placed everything on Monica’s desk, the food and coffee to her left side in easy reach and the files in front of her. And then she brushed her lips across Monica’s cheek before rushing from the room.

 Isolation Day 21

 “Quitting time, boss,” Lane said, standing in her office door with a tired smile on his face.

“I just have another email to send,” Monica said.

“Is it mission critical?”

“No, but I just want to get through it, and I might double-check the intel Carlisle sent yester—”

“No.”

Monica looked up at Lane. He was still smiling at her.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, no need to apologize,” he said with a brighter smile and a shrug. “I was sent down here to tell you that Kierra’s been baking bread all damn day, and she grilled some steaks for dinner.”

“Well, I’ll be up in a few,” Monica said through clenched teeth.

Lane laughed and shook his head. “It’s real cute, this thing you two have going on. You can come upstairs with me, or you can wait ‘til she comes to get you. Either way, we both know your presence at that dinner table is non-negotiable.” There was a pregnant pause between them. “Boss,” he added definitively.

Monica sighed and rolled her eyes. And then she stood from her chair. “That’s my girl,” he trilled at her.

 Isolation Day 30

 Monica had been under the shower spray so long that her fingertips were wrinkly. She’d lost track of time.

She turned the water off and stepped from the shower.

Kierra was waiting near the door. Monica wasn’t sure why, but seeing Kierra there staring at her made her feel…guilty. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what, and there was something about standing naked and dripping wet under Kierra’s gaze that made this moment seem slightly disconcerting.

“It’s Saturday,” Kierra said.

Monica squinted and frowned, “It is?”

“It is. Lane and I cleaned out the jacuzzi today. It’s hot now. We’re going to relax in it. All of us,” she said, just in case Monica was unsure. She’d been doing that a lot over the last month, telling Monica what the three of them would do day-to-day instead of asking. At first, it was shocking in its unfamiliarity, but now it had just become the new normal.

“I don’t know,” Monica hedged.

“I do. Now come on. I’ll let you pick out my bikini,” Kierra said and then walked into their bedroom.

***

“Oh, this feels good,” Lane groaned as he relaxed into the hot water.

“Is it helping your back?” Kierra asked.

Monica turned to Lane with furrowed brows. “What’s wrong with your back?” she asked, alarmed.

Lane grabbed Monica’s thigh under the water and squeezed. “Nothing but age,” he said. “Nothing but age.”

Kierra pressed herself against Lane’s other side and ran her nose against the sharp cut of his jaw. Monica noticed that Lane’s beard was thicker than he normally grew it, and she was shocked at how much gray there was there, much more gray than brown. There were soft wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and she wondered if all those things had appeared over the past month or if she was just now noticing them.

And then her eyes flitted to Kierra. She looked so much younger than Lane, but there were changes with her, too. Her perfectly manicured nails were now bare of color and not as meticulously manicured as Monica was used to, and her shoulder-length straight hair was wavy now, with thicker, wavier hair at the roots.

But the thing that caught Monica’s attention wasn’t any of these superficial changes to their presentation, but the way they made her feel.

Lane squeezed her leg again, and Kierra opened her eyes to look at her.

“It’s okay,” Kierra whispered. “You can cry.”

And somehow, it was only when Kierra said the word that Monica realized that’s what she’d been running from over the past month and that she already was crying. Her eyesight blurred with the wetness in her eyes that soon spilled down her cheeks.

Lane moved his hand over Monica’s lap to pull her closer to him, and the small movement was like an invitation she didn’t know she needed. She collapsed into his side and buried her face in his neck. Lane turned his head and kissed her along her hairline.

And Kierra, who had become harder and more demanding as Monica had withdrawn into herself, practically draped herself across Lane’s chest to get to Monica. She wrapped her arm around Monica’s back and kissed her shoulder.

They held her while she finally cried.

 Isolation Day 31

 “Let us take care of you,” Lane whispered against her lips.

Monica wanted to protest that she took care of them; that was her job, but he pressed his mouth to hers, stopping her from being able to protest. And she let him. She didn’t know if it was the isolation fucking with her sense of time or just the intensity of this moment, but it felt as if it had been years since Lane had kissed her this way.

His mouth moved gently and slowly against hers, prying her lips open slowly by degrees before he slipped his tongue past her lips. Their tongues slid together and apart and together again as his hands roamed down her sides.

Monica wrapped her arms around his neck, playing with his hair — that was getting longer than she normally liked — but also keeping his mouth close.

Lane’s hips circled, pressing his erection into her mound. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he shifted his hips, the column of his shaft slipping between her lips.

She moaned into his mouth, and he smiled in return.

“Can I taste you?” he whispered again.

Monica moaned and nodded, somehow too overcome with how easily he knew exactly what she needed, even though he always had.

She closed her eyes and relaxed against the pillows as he kissed down her body, his beard, lips, and tongue creating an erotic sensory mix everywhere he moved. He sucked at her nipples, scraping them with his teeth, and licked the sensitive skin underneath the mounds of her breasts. He dipped his tongue into her navel and swirled his nose through her pubic hair, breathing in and smelling her.

She was dripping wet by the time his tongue swiped over her clit.

“You ready?” Kierra asked.

Monica opened her eyes to see her behind Lane’s body, wearing the soft leather harness they’d bought her for their one-year anniversary. She was watching Lane’s head move between Monica’s legs with a hungry stare while her right hand obscenely stroked the dildo sticking out from her body, spreading a healthy amount of lubricant over the shaft.

Kierra had spent days finding a dildo that perfectly matched her skin tone. Monica had thought the endeavor was ridiculous but understood that it was exactly the kind of thing she would do, and it was worth it.

Monica shivered at the sight of her looming over them, beautiful and eager as ever.

“Are you ready?” Monica asked, her voice breathy with desire as Lane’s tongue massaged her opening.

Kierra’s eyes lit up. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”

“Probably not as long as me,” Lane interjected quickly before getting back to work on her pussy.

Kierra rolled her eyes with a smile and then moved her hands to Lane’s ass.

Monica started massaging her breasts and lightly pinching her nipples as she watched Kierra prepare Lane. She couldn’t see all her movements, but she knew better than nearly anyone what Lane liked, and she could probably guess from the way his breath hitched over her pussy and his fingers dug into her hips what Kierra was doing.

Lane shivered between them, and Kierra looked up at Monica with a triumphant smile on her face just before she lowered her mouth to Lane’s body.

“Oh, fuck,” Lane yelled out as Kierra rimmed him, probably circling the pucker of his ass with her tongue.

Monica knew better than most how talented Kierra’s tongue was, and she shuddered. She moved her hands to the back of Lane’s head and directed his mouth back to her pussy. And then she shuddered through the ripples of a small orgasm as Lane’s moans joined his tongue in pushing her over the edge.

“Are you ready?” Kierra whispered.

Lane’s body jumped, and his back arched. Kierra’s left hand was moving rhythmically, and Monica realized she was jacking him off, and it was her turn for her back to arch as another orgasm took her over with more intensity.

But Monica watched with rapt intensity as Kierra moved her dildo into place.

Lane’s grip tightened on her, and he panted hard breaths into her hip as Kierra slowly slipped inside him.

“Put your fingers inside me,” Monica told Lane, and he complied quickly, still panting and now groaning as Kierra pushed inside.

“Am I hurting you?” Kierra asked, her smile slipping the tiniest bit. “Is it too big?”

“Fuck. No,” Lane ground out.

“He’ll tell you if you need to stop,” Monica added.

Lane grunted in a kind of assent as he shoved three fingers so deep in Monica her thighs were shaking.

“Now fuck him for me,” Monica demanded, feeling something settle inside her, something she hadn’t realized had been out of place before this moment.

And as if they all knew that something wrong had been made right, Lane ducked his head between her legs and started eating her out again, and Kierra gently took hold of Lane’s hips and started fucking him in slow long strokes that made him come apart between them. And Monica watched Kierra concentrate on Lane’s body, listening to every sound he made and shift of his body, giving him exactly what he needed and, by extension, giving Monica what she needed.

Bedtime Routine

Mary hated sleeping alone.

She hadn’t had to in years, and apparently, she’d been very spoiled by it, so much so that her normally warm and cozy bed seemed big and cold now that she was in it alone instead of pressed against Knox or Santos. Or both, on those nights where she ended up in the middle.

Even Cat-leen had deserted her, but Mary couldn’t blame her. Her cat had an entire late-night routine that as far as Mary could discern included snacking on her food, dumping a few of her toys into her water fountain, and sleeping in Knox’s favorite armchair. Her routine was the same, and she clearly didn’t care that Mary’s wasn’t.

Mary sighed and sat up in bed with a frown. She reached for her cell phone on her bedside table and dialed Knox.

“Shouldn’t you be sleep?” he asked instead of hello.

“Shouldn’t you be at home?”

He chuckled softly, and Mary’s back relaxed. She hadn’t even realized it was tense.

“Believe me, I’d much rather be home than sitting in this damn fire station alone,” he said with a yawn.

“No calls, right?” she asked, trying to keep the fear from making her voice shake.

“No calls, sweetheart. This is all just a precaution,” he said.

Mary had heard that last sentence from Knox and Santos so many times over the last month that the words were starting to grate on her, not for any other reason than that eventually, it wouldn’t be a precaution.

It was easy to keep herself together during the day. While Knox and Santos slept, Mary spent hours in their kitchen baking and coordinating food deliveries to houses around town. Now that the bakery was closed, she kept in contact with Bria and Charlie through Facetime. Mary and Bria had split up their baking duties. Bria was working on her bread recipes — including gluten-free, whole wheat, and soon enough, even some sprouted options — while Mary worked on the sweet treats. They were both very busy.

When Willie had first closed the non-essential shops, Mary was worried that her bakery would go under just when it was starting to flourish, but online orders had surged for a while. But as shipping had slowed, she’d shuttered online ordering to focus on local deliveries around Sea Port and in some neighboring local towns. It worked.

At first, Mary was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to find work for Charlie, but the entire food box delivery was Charlie’s idea. They’d all been on Facetime when Bria had said Sully was worried about her own business, and Charlie had asked if Sully still had coffee to sell, because her aunt was running low. Charlie had brokered that sale through text message and then added, “Hey Mary, my aunt wants to know if you can make her some pecan cinnamon rolls. She said she’ll give you her entire SSI check for a pan.”

They’d laughed, and then an entire informal economy had formed, with Charlie as the hub connecting people with groceries — she even managed to rope in the local dairy farm — and recruiting a bunch of bored out-of-school teenagers to collect the items for each boxand deliver them with as little contact as possible. She’d even gotten the mayor to divert some of the gloves and masks she’d been able to buy to the delivery kids once the town implemented stay-at-home orders. Mary had been mildly amused by how nosy Charlie was, but her business — and a bunch of others in the county — would probably ride out the pandemic based almost solely on the fact that Charlie was in literally everyone’s business all the time. Who knew!?

Mary hadn’t ever thought that she’d be living through a pandemic, and a few years ago, she’d have said — if asked this incredibly strange question — that if it happened, she wouldn’t want to be in a small town that no one could find on a map. But now that they were all living through a pandemic, and she was in a tiny dot of a small town, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

She baked all day, and she Facetimed with her friends and family all around the country, coordinating with her great-aunts, Santos’s brothers, and Marcus to make sure that everyone had someone watching over them. And even though Mary still wasn’t talking to her mother like she used to, they’d begun texting daily just to check in, and she acted as the go-between for her parents, fielding her father’s slightly panicked calls about her mother’s wellbeing and then translating them into calm text messages to discern what her mother needed; which her father then promptly either ordered or ran out to the stores to buy and deliver to her door before she even woke up.

Life was stressful, but having something to do — actually, lots of things to do — made the day-to-day of this situation easier. That was the days; the nights were an entirely different story.

There were some great things about being in a relationship with the chief of police and the fire chief. The Sea Port crime rate was mostly bored kids breaking things, breaking into places, or painting graffiti on things, especially now when they didn’t have much to do but sit in virtual classrooms. And while lots of businesses had been hit by the youths, Mary’s bakery hadn’t, and she attributed that primarily to the fact that the entire town knew she was Santos’s girlfriend.

Blessings to the town gossip mill.

And while Knox’s expertise on building codes came in handy, Mary often thought wistfully of the privilege she had to have fucked all over the town’s small firehouse. She loved everything about Knox, but holding onto the fire pole for dear life while he fucked her into a stupor was a surprisingly comforting pre-pandemic memory. Once this was all over, she promised herself that they’d do it again but with Santos this time, and that could usually chase away the blues.

But hands down, the worst part of dating two of the town’s small cadre of first responders, and the heads of their departments at that, was that the mayor only trusted them to work the most stressful shifts. So, while Mary was baking and sourcing ingredients around the town and county, Knox and Santos were usually passed out in their bed. And just when she was winding down for the day, they were showering and putting on their uniforms to head out for the night.

Mary took the smallest comfort that Knox hadn’t had many calls at night, and since there hadn’t been a reported case in Sea Port yet — knock on wood — he was mostly on hand just in case. Santos spent most of his shifts in his car, driving around town and making sure that the bored kids weren’t out causing annoying, if understandable, chaos. Meanwhile, she spent a good portion of the night bored and alone without them, and her traitorous brain started to worry, mostly about their family members and friends who were all over the country.

And she didn’t want to worry about that; she didn’t even want to think about those scenarios. She didn’t want to wonder how they’d get to them or if they could even afford to. She didn’t want to think at night. She wanted to fuck away her anxiety and then sleep like a baby who didn’t even know the word “pandemic”, but she couldn’t.

“That silence sounds like you’re worrying,” Knox said in a light tone that she knew he was affecting to keep her calm.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“Mmmhmm. Hold on.”

Mary frowned as the line went quiet for a few seconds. She stared at her lock screen — a picture of her, Santos, and Knox under her great-aunts’ pecan trees from last Christmas. That picture seemed like a century ago.

“You there?” Knox asked.

“Where would I go?” Mary snarked.

“So you’re in a good mood,” Santos breathed.

Mary smiled at the sound of his dry sarcasm and Knox’s affable chuckle. “Shut up. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Santos breathed in a warm voice. “Just so fucking bored. The middle schoolers don’t even have the decency to be yelling at each other across the street tonight.”

“Don’t say that too loud. I’m sure those little hoodlums can hear you,” Knox said.

“I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get together in the woods,” Mary mused absentmindedly.

Santos sighed, and it was the weariest thing she’d ever heard. They heard the crackle of his radio. “Poole, can you ride out to the Freeman farm?”

“Sure, boss. Am I looking for anything in particular?” Max Poole, Santos’s newly promoted lieutenant asked.

“Yeah. These damn kids. Make sure they aren’t congregating out there.”

“Shit,” Poole breathed.

“Yeah,” Santos said.

“Sorry,” Mary whispered.

Knox burst into a laugh that made Mary’s gut clench with need, not necessarily sexual, just the desire to hear that laughter all over her skin.

“You sure you want to have kids?” Santos asked.

“A whole fucking misbehaving gang of them,” Knox said through his laughter.

“Like a basketball team, or…?” Mary asked.

“Football. Soccer,” Santos corrected.

Mary rolled her eyes, but she was smiling so hard that her eyes were closed. She yawned and settled back onto their mattress. Their bed was still empty, but she burrowed under their blankets and didn’t feel so cold.

“We should get started soon, then,” Mary hummed.

“You been talking to Ms. Pearl?” Knox asked.

“Yes,” Mary said, “but Santos’s mom is apparently working on a christening dress? It’s very frilly.”

Santos muttered under his breath. Mary’s Spanish was terrible, even though she’d been working on it now that she had a little more free time, but even she knew what “dios mio” meant.

“Well, since we’re starting, let’s start,” Knox said.

“Pretty sure we need to be together for that to work,” Santos said.

Mary could just imagine him rolling his eyes and Knox rolling his eyes in return.

“Practice makes perfect,” Knox said. “What are you wearing, sweetheart?”

Mary squinted her eyes shut in excitement. “Shorts and a t-shirt,” she said, already wriggling out of the former.

“What would you be doing if we were there?” Knox asked. His voice wasn’t warm or soothing anymore, it was hot with seduction and promise. He knew exactly what he was doing when his voice sounded like that; the way it turned them on.

“What would you want me to do?” she asked. She’d already bent her legs to plant her feet on the mattress and spread her knees wide. She was stroking her pussy, her fingers lightly tracing up one lip to circle her clit and then down the other to play at her opening.

“Santos?” Knox asked.

He grunted in response. Mary wondered if he was stroking his dick through his pants or if he’d taken himself out.

“Use your words,” Knox said. His breath had quickened, and somehow, Mary knew that alone in the firehouse, he’d dispensed with the foreplay and was probably already stroking himself like Mary was.

The line was quiet for a bit as they waited for Santos. “Get your toy,” he finally said.

Mary licked her lips and pressed a finger into her pussy to the first knuckle. “Please be more specific,” she huffed.

Knox’s laughter was thin, airy. He sounded close, and that made Mary’s breaths quicken.

“I want to be inside you,” Santos breathed.

Mary pushed another finger inside herself. “God, be more specific,” she moaned.

“I don’t need to,” Santos said. The sound of his zipper was loud through their connection.

Knox grunted.

Mary smiled at the sound of them. “So I should choose?” she teased with a tinkle of laughter.

They both grunted this time, and she laughed. She tapped at her phone screen with her free hand to put their call on speaker and then practically ripped open the closest bedside table. She sighed, only finding lube and Santos’s reading glasses.

“Wrong drawer,” she mumbled. Knox and Santos were apparently too preoccupied to answer. She rolled to the other side of the bed and pulled open the drawer to find a bullet vibe. She personally would have preferred something long and thick, but beggars can’t be picky, especially not when the sound of one of her men spitting into his hand came through the phone.

“You two better not come without me,” she warned, licking the cool metal of the bullet and then settling back onto the bed.

“Did you get a vibrator?” Santos asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah, just a bullet, though.”

Santos grunted unhappily.

“Can we stay on track, please?” Knox asked.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” she said, spreading her legs again.

Mary slid her thumb across the slide to turn the vibrator on and settled the bullet over her clit. She arched her back and moaned happily. Santos grunted again, but it was Knox’s keening moan that made her nipples hard.

“Fuck,” she breathed and shoved her fingers back into her pussy.

The room filled with the hum of Mary’s vibrator, her moans, and the slightly distorted sounds of Santos and Knox’s moans as well as the gentle rasp of their hands on their own bodies. They fucked themselves together, moaning and grunting and panting, while they thought about finally being together; dreamed about what it would be like when this was all over, and they could get back to something like normal.

“I’m close,” Knox breathed.

So was Mary, but she slowed down and took the pressure of the bullet off her clit, sliding it across her lips in gentle strokes. She moved her head closer to the phone so she could hear every scrap of sound of Knox’s orgasm. She knew Santos well enough to guess that he’d probably done the same.

And Knox did not disappoint. He never did.

His heaving breaths turned to moans as the sound of his dick fucking his fist got louder and faster, more desperate. “Fuck,” he said and then groaned long and loud.

Santos was much tamer. He always was. But as soon as Knox’s groan subsided, there was a shuffle of fabric on his end of the phone and then a series of grunts.

Mary had never stopped fucking herself with her fingers, and the wet slap of her hand against her sex was as frantic as her nerves had been just a few minutes ago.

“Now you,” Santos said, having the nerve to give her orders when he could barely speak above a whisper.

Mary might have pushed back at him, but Knox didn’t give her the room.

“You heard the man,” he ground out. “Let me hear how you’re going to come on my dick as soon as I’m home.”

Not that she needed the encouragement, but she really fucking loved when Santos got demanding and Knox talked dirty to her. She didn’t even need to move the bullet back to her clit to come. She arched her back, cried out, and then when her legs were shaking, she turned the bullet vibe all the way up to the highest setting and moved it over her clit. Her orgasm transformed from a gentle shudder to a violent shake as she gushed all over her hand.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, she was certain that one, or maybe even both Knox and Santos had grunted out another small release along with her, but she was too far gone to be sure. They were mostly quiet on the phone as Mary wrung herself out, alternating between just her fingers and then the vibrator as well to let one orgasm roll into another and then another.

Her men listened in silence as she came and came, only stopping when the batteries on her vibrator began to give out.

Mary turned over in bed, her fingers still stuffed inside her clenching pussy, and her eyes drifting closed.

She yawned, and Knox laughed, “Well, we got that part down. Next on the list is actually getting in the bed together, and then this baby-making thing can get on the way.”

Mary smiled and yawned again. “Deal. I’m tired now.”

“Good,” Santos said. “Go to sleep. We’ll be there when you wake up.”

“Leave your clothes in the mudroom,” she said, a sharp shot of panic pulling her back into consciousness.

“We know, babe. Calm down,” Knox said calmly. “Go to sleep, and maybe I’ll wake you up with my tongue.”

SIX WEEKS

 “Stay out there,” Cali called to Precious, who was patiently waiting just at the threshold of their new rental home.

“I can help,” Precious said.

“No, I’ve got it. Stay there. I’m almost done.”

Precious rolled her eyes. “You could be done faster if you just let me help you.”

Cali didn’t even respond to Precious’s well-reasoned offer. She shook her head and kept disinfecting their groceries before she put them away. Precious watched, feeling helpless and a little anxious as Cali scrubbed at every surface with the intensity of a woman on the edge, because she was, which only made Precious feel even more anxious.

She couldn’t keep watching her, so she turned and walked through the living room and down the hall to the bathroom — their second bathroom.

When they’d decided to move to New Mexico, they’d been so shocked at the realization that they could afford to rent a small house, not just an apartment, on just Precious’s salary. They’d had to fight the urge while looking at apartments to get the biggest house in their budget and maybe assuage their realtor’s curiosity at why three people were only looking for two-bedroom houses. They didn’t need much space. A big enough bedroom for their California king bed and a small second bedroom for visitors and, eventually, a nursery.

But the second bathroom was a revelation because it meant that when their family members visited, they wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with new people. They were more than adept at sharing a bathroom — and everything else — between the three of them, but the idea of sharing with other people made them nervous. But when they saw that second bathroom, all of those fears had washed away.

Although right now, who knew how long it would be before they had visitors, and they only used this second bathroom to shower whenever one of them — usually Mike — left to go to the store. And that’s where Precious found him.

She pushed into the bathroom without knocking.

“Mike,” she called to him.

He was rinsing shampoo from his hair, and he cracked open an eye to look at her. “Don’t touch anything,” he practically yelled. “I’m going to disinfect in here when I’m done.”

“Oh. My. Fucking. God!” Precious screamed.

“What’s wrong?” Cali yelled from the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked as he stepped from the shower, shutting it off absentmindedly.

He stood in front of her naked and wet, and at any other moment, Precious might have already stripped naked to join him under the spray.

“What’s wrong?” Cali panted behind her. She’d run from the kitchen.

Precious swiveled her head back and forth to glare at each of them in turn. “Stop treating me like I’m fragile,” she said. “I’m not.”

She could see Mike fighting not to say something that Cali just said.

“The fuck you aren’t. You’re literally six weeks pregnant. Anything could happen to you,” Cali shrieked.

She sounded hysterical, and Precious understood why. She also knew that Mike felt exactly the same way, and it made her furious.

It wasn’t that she begrudged them their fear, she didn’t, she just hated that they wouldn’t let her share in it with them. This wasn’t the pregnancy she’d imagined, but who ever imagined being pregnant during a pandemic? No one.

“We’re just nervous,” Mike said carefully.

“So am I,” Precious said, swiveling her head again.

But her eyes caught on Cali’s face because what Precious saw there wasn’t nerves, it was terror. It wasn’t just Cali’s darting wide eyes; it was the way she was wringing her dry, cracked hands in front of her body. They were all nervous about the pregnancy in these strange times, but Precious knew the way Cali thought. She knew that of all of them, the danger of this moment might trigger her latent grief about her parents’ death.

Precious took a deep breath because she knew that Cali had started seeing Dr. Toussaint through video chat three times a week, and when she wasn’t cleaning, she was reading every pregnancy and baby book she’d accumulated before the move or checking new ones out on the library’s Overdrive site.

Precious took another deep breath, unclenched her fists, and spoke slowly. “I know that there’s a whole fucking lot going on right now, and I know you both love me, but I’m a person too. I’m not just a womb for our baby, and I’m not so fucking fragile that I can’t help you two disinfect stuff, and sometimes, I need to get out of the house too.”

Cali’s knuckles were going white, she was clenching her hands so hard. She swallowed and shook her head, tears in her eyes. “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she whispered in a fragile tone that broke Precious’s heart.

“And you think I want something to happen to you?” Precious asked.

Cali’s eyebrows bunched.

“Or Mike,” Precious continued. “Do you think I love you two any less than you love me?”

Cali’s tears spilled over her cheeks. Precious and Mike bumped into each other getting to her. Precious wrapped her arms around Cali’s waist and rested her chin on Cali’s shoulder while Mike gathered Cali against his chest.

They held her and each other while Cali cried silently.

Dr. Toussaint is going to be so proud of her, Precious thought with a smile. They’d been working on Cali expressing her emotions when she felt them and without a filter. She didn’t mention it in the moment, but she would later. She was certain Cali would blush as she accepted the praise. Precious could only imagine how adorable she would look in that moment, and she tightened her arms around Cali at the thought.

“I’m sorry,” Cali mumbled against Mike’s chest.

“Sorry,” Precious said. “I didn’t hear that, can you—”

“No,” Cali laughed. “Shut up.”

Mike’s chest rumbled with laughter.

“I didn’t realize I would feel like this when you were pregnant. I didn’t think…” Her voice trailed off, and she burrowed into Mike’s chest, rubbing her cheek against his skin.

“I get it,” Precious said. “What’s your excuse?” she asked Mike, squinting up at him with a playful smile on his face.

His wet hair was streaming water down his neck, and that one curl right in the center of his forehead was perfectly round. He grinned, and his sharp jaw jutted forward as he shrugged. “I’m just generally terrified. I don’t know anything about pregnancy or babies. Before the pandemic, I was freaking out that I’d lose the kid under a couch cushion while playing Halo.”

“What?” Precious breathed.

Cali’s body shook with laughter.

“I know. I don’t even play Halo.”

Precious took a deep breath to calm the nervous giggles that wanted to spill from her mouth. “I say this with every bit of love I have,” she said in slow, deliberate words. “You two are absolutely fucking ridiculous.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Duh,” Cali breathed, turning her head to raise a skeptical eyebrow at her.

“Are you just now realizing that? You’re the sensible one in this relationship.”

“Definitely,” Cali added.

Precious let go of Cali’s waist and moved to stand beside them. She took another deep breath and thought of how easy it would be to learn Lamaze with all the practice she was getting. “Well, since I’m the sensible one, how about you two listen to me and just…chill. Don’t treat me like I need to be covered in bubble wrap or think you have to take care of me without letting me take care of you too.”

“But Precious,” Mike started, but Precious cut him off with a raised hand.

“This is going to be a long ass pregnancy. Soon enough, I won’t be able to do some things, and I won’t want to, but until that time comes, just treat me the same.”

Precious could see the battle behind Cali’s eyes. Mike tightened his arm around Cali’s shoulders and held her close to him. “It won’t be easy, but we can do that. Right, babe?” he asked Cali.

Cali’s eyes darted between him and Precious. She worried her lip and swallowed thickly before nodding. “I’ll add it to my list for Dr. Toussaint,” she said.

Precious pushed a hard breath out of her mouth, relaxing muscles she hadn’t even realized were tensed. She rushed to press her body against Cali’s, holding the other woman’s face in her hands, gently and reverently. Her thumbs caressed Cali’s bottom lip. She licked her lips, and Cali’s lips parted on a soft sigh.

“All I want is for you to try,” she said, reassuring Cali with her words and her touch.

“I can do that,” Cali breathed.

“So can I,” Mike said as his hands moved up and down Precious and Cali’s backs. “Um, since we’re all feeling better…” His voice trailed off, and his hips jutted forward.

Cali and Precious turned to him. “Seriously?” Precious asked.

“You interrupted my shower,” he said as if that was an answer to her question.

“I’m okay with it,” Cali said, her small, dry hand covering Mike’s hardening penis.

Precious laughed. “I’m shocked,” she said, pulling Cali into a kiss. Their lips and tongues touched tentatively as Cali squeezed Mike’s dick rhythmically.

“Let’s go to bed,” Precious said against Cali’s lips, already stepping into the hallway. She walked backward to their bedroom, watching as Cali followed her and led Mike by the tip of his penis.

In their almost fully unpacked bedroom, Cali and Precious quickly undressed as Mike climbed onto the bed. Precious kissed her way up Mike’s thighs, licking at the leaking head of his dick, her eyes on him as she moved up his body.

Her back arched as she groaned into the muscled planes of his abs when she felt Cali’s tongue at her wet cleft. Precious had been on a mission up Mike’s body, but she stalled as Cali pulled her ass cheeks apart and licked her from her puckered bud to her clit and back again. Precious had just enough wherewithal to wrap her hand around Mike’s dick and stroke him, his abs jumping under her cheek as Cali’s tongue brought her over the edge. Before long, her body was slick with sweat and shaking as Cali sucked her sensitive clit, bringing her to a quick, intense second orgasm.

Precious jumped when Cali’s palm smacked her ass cheek. She was so weak, all she could do was laugh and crumple to her side, her cheek on Mike’s stomach. It was the perfect vantage point to watch as Cali sucked Mike’s dick so deep his hips arched from the bed, and he groaned so loudly it shocked Precious, but in a good way.

Mike’s hand landed heavily on the small of Precious’s back, stroking her and squeezing her ass as she and Cali made eye contact, watching one another as Cali’s lips moved up and down Mike’s shaft.

After a few minutes, Cali released the head of Mike’s dick with an obscene pop that made Precious’s clit ache. Cali leaned forward to kiss Precious so she could taste herself and Mike on Cali’s tongue. As always, it was the specific dirty romanticism that Precious had fallen in love with years ago.

Their kiss didn’t last long because even though Precious had come twice, Mike and Cali were still desperate for one another. Precious watched as Cali gripped the base of Mike’s dick and threw her legs open over his waist.

Mike’s hand clenched around the meat of Cali’s ass, his fingers playing at her opening from behind.

Precious watched with rapt attention as Mike’s dick slowly disappeared between Cali’s legs. Her nails scraped across Mike’s happy trail. She moaned as his fingers pressed between her legs and slipped inside her pussy.

His fingers fucked her as Cali rode his dick, and for the next few hours, they forgot about how difficult it was to find toilet paper, or about where exactly to store all the kimchi Mike’s parents had sent them, or the fact that Cali was terrified about her sister all alone in her cottage now that the local libraries were closed. They even stopped worrying about if they could paint their spare bedroom that would have to be a nursery sooner than they planned or the fact that they hadn’t had nearly enough time to find a doctor to get them through this pregnancy before the pandemic.

                                                      Prologue                                    

 “Shut up!”

“You shut up! All you do is come in here and whine like a baby until you get your way.”

“When have I ever gotten my damn way in this fucking house? I work my fingers to the bone—”

“Where? When? Doing what?”

“Oh, fuck you! Someone’s gotta keep food on the table in this damn place—”

That’s about when I tune them out. My parents have the same fight every three to four days, like clockwork. It’s not really about anything, or not about anything specific; they just like to fight and really dislike each other. Mom hates living in Ohio, and she’ll never forgive dad for moving us out here. Dad hates living in Ohio too, but he refuses to admit that this was ever his idea. Money’s tight. There’s nothing to do. Neither of them can keep a job. Somehow, this is all my fault.

Different day, same bullshit, and why I don’t bother listening.

We all learn things from our parents, and mine taught me early and often that we all have lots of times in our lives when we can make decisions to not stay with people we barely know and can’t stand. My parents had more roads to escape than most.

My life as I know it might never have happened if their casual fling — without birth control, because dad didn’t believe in it — hadn’t turned into an unexpected, but obviously expected, pregnancy. That could have been a wakeup call, followed by a visit to a Planned Parenthood and an important life lesson learned, except mom was from a hardcore born-again family and didn’t believe in birth control or abortions. She believed in premarital sex, though, so I’m still trying to make sense of that faith system, but the damage was done. The damage being the mess those two made of my childhood because, even though they could have decided to co-parent or something, they apparently felt compelled to stay together. Why? I’ll never know, and I’m convinced they don’t know, either. My earliest self-realization wasn’t “This fucker took my nose!”, it was “My parents see me as a burden.” Can you imagine? Being barely old enough to sit up without wobbling and knowing, somehow, deep in your bones, that the two people who should love you unconditionally, don’t? It’s not a great life, just in case you need to see it in black and white. To my parents, I was just another mouth to feed, the thing that kept them bound to this person they hated more each day. Their entire relationship and my entire existence were just one bad decision after another, and the soundtrack to my entire life has just been this same argument.

They bickered all over New York in the almost-identical shoebox apartments they could just about afford, during our road trip West and ever since we settled in Akron. They don’t even like each other enough to shake up these knock-down, drag-out fights. Maybe a cheating accusation here, or a “Who ate the last piece of chicken?” there, but other than that, nothing.

The most interesting part of my life was that year just before they finally decided to move to Ohio. Dad had tried to feed me and mom some fairytale about how life would be different here — fewer people, better housing, more trees, less pollution and a stronger family unit. I never believed it, because in each of the yarns he spun, I was still with them — both of them — and there’s no happily ever after with them around; not for me, at least. But mom had been swayed, and next thing I knew, we were in a beat-up Ford truck, the entirety of our belongings packed precariously in the bed and heading West.  Surprise of all surprises, none of dad’s stories had been true.

Well, okay, let me be fair. There are technically fewer people in Akron than the Bronx, and the house we’ve been renting since we arrived is bigger than those small New York apartments, but besides that, my parents’ dysfunctional relationship and my shitty life are business as usual.

There were more trees when we got here, but I’m not giving dad credit for that since most of them were cut down about a year after we arrived to make room for the new pipeline running right through our backyard. That’s why the rent’s so cheap.

My parents fight about that, too.

The move wasn’t a Band-Aid to their relationship, and it certainly didn’t make my life better — not that anyone was worried about me — and as far as my parents are concerned, every problem in their life is my fault. They fight about it regularly and then circle right back around to being united against me, and that’s why as soon as mom banged the pot of spaghetti on the kitchen table, I scarfed down my portion and excused myself immediately.

Their problems aren’t my fault, I know that, but there’s no reasoning with them. It’s best to just disappear. I headed upstairs to my room with a mumbled “homework” and waited. Once I heard them start sniping at one another, I did what I always do and climbed up to the attic and out onto the roof. This is the only place where I feel safe, emotionally, if not physically. If I’m being honest, I really shouldn’t be up here. It’s slippery, and a bunch of the tiles are a good gust of wind away from falling off, but if my choices are inside my parents’ house and up here, the roof wins every time.

Out here, there’s enough space to escape my parents’ incessant fighting. The late spring air is a marked change from the stifling, probably not-quite-safe gas heat in our house. On a clear night, I can stand on the eastern edge of the roof and see all the way downtown, not that there’s much to see there. I mean, I can see the marquis of the Burger King where I work, but I’m not interested in that, so I usually look in the opposite direction. There’s not much to see there either, just a few farmhouses surrounded by large fields and the pipeline.  

But I’m not looking at any of that. I put my earbuds in my ears, turn my music up as loud as it goes and lay back on the roof to stare at the clear, dark blue sky. Sometimes, I haul my sketch book up here to draw, or pull my old astronomy textbook out and try to identify the constellations, but whatever I do, I say a prayer that my singular wish will come true. All I want is to get as far away from my parents as fast as I can.

My classmates are preparing for college, and lots of them want to enlist, but my only real goal post-graduation is to get away. I’ve worked out any number of escape routes up here. Instinctually, I know that I can’t just move to Columbus or Detroit. Those cities aren’t far enough away, and I’ve long been worried that my parents’ obvious co-dependency means that I need to put some serious miles between us if I want to have a chance at real freedom.

I toyed with the idea of leaving the country, but Burger King money doesn’t stretch nearly that far. Right now, I’m making just enough to give my parents one of my checks a month to help with household bills — and keep them off my back — and split the second between my cellphone bill and savings account. After three years, I have enough money saved to absolutely get the fuck out of Akron in exactly six months on my eighteenth birthday, and I plan to do exactly that, but I’m still working out the kinks in my escape route.

I’ve done the math, and I can either buy a decent used car or a plane ticket to California. Every time my dad comes home and tells mom that his paycheck was docked for calling in or mom hides yet another online delivery from dad, I’m tempted to go for the plane ticket, but I usually talk myself down from that impulse because I’m sensible, unlike my parents. Even though the thousands of miles away from here is attractive as fuck, I know that once I get off that plane, I’ll be broke as hell.

On the other hand, the rusty Honda Civic I have my eye on at the used car dealership downtown is sensible. It has less than 100,000 miles, good mileage, and if push came to shove, it could double as a temporary home. It wouldn’t be a six-hour plane ride to California, but I’ve got enough money that I could put some real distance between my parents and myself and have enough to really start the rest of my life.

But when I’m up on the roof, I also have another secret fantasy. It’s not real, but when my parents are really loud, and I worry that the yelling and crashing might turn to the sound of fists hitting skin and bone, I dream of space. Forget California or Tokyo, I wish I could go to the moon or beyond. There’s a tiny, terrified girl inside me that knows in her bones that the only way to really escape my parents is up above me. Sometimes, I lay back on the roof and imagine what it would be like to know that I was far enough away that I’d never have to hear my parents wake me up arguing again. It’ll never happen, but some nights, daydreams of flying up into the sky are the only things that make me feel safe enough to fall asleep. But just like with San Francisco, I bury that deep inside myself and calculate how many shifts I need to work to have the full price of the used Honda. The sky is my fantasy, just like Ohio had been my parents’, but that Honda Civic is the real path to freedom.

The sound of glass breaking hits my ears in the quiet between two songs, and I jump at the shock of it. I tap my cellphone screen to pause my music. I pull the earbud from my left ear and listen, trying to figure out which part of the argument they’re at now.

“Do you feel better?” dad yells at mom.

I roll my eyes, shove my earphone back into my ear and press play on the music again.

Mom likes to break dishes when she’s really frustrated but trying to hold it together; it’s why the few dishes we have don’t match. I suspect she’s gonna drag me to the Goodwill tomorrow to look for a replacement for whatever she’s broken, and I can’t have that. I pick up my phone and tap out a quick text message to my boss, Peter. In a plea that he’s very familiar with, I tell him that I’m available to cover any shifts tomorrow. Peter’s a good guy, and I know that he’ll do what he can to get me a shift, even if it’s just a few hours or closing. I’ll take it, and he knows I will. I’ll also immediately put whatever extra money I get directly into my savings account and readjust my timetable to purchasing the Honda and getting the fuck out of here.

The music builds to a crescendo and mercifully drowns out my parents’ screaming as I look back up at the sky.

On nights like tonight, the moon is so clear and big that I swear it’s close enough to touch. I stretch out my right arm above me, squint one eye closed, tilt my head to the left and pretend to capture the moon between my thumb and forefinger. I smile for the first time in what feels like hours, maybe even days.

And then I see it.

While I’m looking, a small speck in the sky moves across my vision, only visible because it passes the light of the full moon. At first, I think it’s a distant star, or maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. I blink, and something in the sky moves again. Whatever’s up there, it’s too far away to see clearly, so I sit up, trying to make sense of it all. It’s moving too slow to be a shooting star and too fast to be…well, literally anything else. I pull my earphones from my ears, as if it will sharpen my vision. I stare up at the speck that’s now bigger, closer; close enough for me to realize that the one speck is actually a cluster of distant lights. I’m not looking at a star or a planet but a constellation that’s moving in formation towards me. Toward the Earth.

But that’s not possible. I know that. I aced astronomy.

“What the fuck?” I whisper to myself.

As if in answer to my whispered question, those bright not-stars seem to move faster and get bigger in the large pane of sky above my house as they get closer. The lights seem to fill the sky of this boring ass town with a pipeline running through it dangerously close to the local drinking water; this town my parents hate that I can’t wait to escape.

I shake my head and turn to the right. My eyes land on the pipeline cutting through the fields behind our house. I can barely remember a time when it wasn’t the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning. I’ve read dozens of articles about what it is and how much time it’s probably shaving off of my life. I guess the environmentalists were right and assume that thing must finally be leaking. It has to be. Because how else do I explain what I think I’m seeing in the sky?

And when I tilt my head back to look up there, I gasp and jump to my feet.

In the handful of seconds when I’d been looking away, those not-stars seem to have come closer. Like real close. Now they’re so close that no one can mistake them for stars because no stars have ever been so damn clear in the sky or moved so fast. I watch as they get closer and closer, and then I shriek in shock as the constellation breaks apart.

If I’m hallucinating this, whatever the pipeline is leaking is grade-A lethal shit.

The lights disperse so fast that I actually miss it. One second, there’s a cluster of lights heading toward me, too many for me to count clearly. The next second, I blink. Then the next second, there are only five lights still above me, but I can see turquoise blue light streaks in the sky heading in thousands of different directions. And then in another second, those five lights begin to slowly move apart, still descending, closer to the Earth’s surface. They’re landing, I realize, and my mouth falls open.

“Fuck,” I breathe as my mouth curves into a smile so wide it hurts.

Now that there are fewer lights and they’re even closer than before, I can just about recognize what’s hovering in the sky above me. They’re ships, and not space shuttles like the ones I’ve seen in my social studies textbooks about the moon landing. These not-stars are huge, bigger than the biggest plane I’ve ever seen in the sky, maybe even bigger than the entire town, and they’re not US-made shuttles or like anything I’ve seen of Russian or Chinese ships. These big, hovering ships look like they’re covered in shimmering jewels, glittering as if reflecting their own sunlight. “Fuck,” I breathe again.  

“Drea, are you up there? Girl, get off the fucking roof, we can’t afford no emergency room visit. Do you hear me?”

I hear my dad yelling at me. I do. I just don’t give a shit, because there’s an alien spaceship in the sky almost directly above our house — an actual fucking spaceship — and this is infinitely more interesting than him reaming me out for being on the roof again. Besides, I hear the moment when he sees what I’m seeing and stops caring that I might stumble and fall off the roof. I hear the choked gasp that comes from his lips just before my mom bangs out of the front door, still yelling. I hear her words cut off when she sees the ship too, the final confirmation I need that I’m not having a pipeline hallucination, but still, I don’t care.  

Because I’m speechless. I know, deep down in my gut, that this ship is going to change everything about the world I’ve ever known, and I can’t help but feel elated. My body feels light, as if I weigh nothing more than my fantasies. I swear I could float up to one of those ships, and that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to bang on the door of a ship and beg them to let me in, because I can feel the surety along every inch of my skin that this ship is going to be my way out. This ship is going to get me as far away from Akron and my parents and that damn pipeline as possible.

DECEMBER 31, 2001

 Ezra Posner really didn’t want to be at this party. Actually, if he’d realized that his roommate, Miles Jefferson, would force him to leave the comfort of their dorm room and trek halfway across campus and then halfway up a hill, he would have pretended to be asleep until Miles left without him. He didn’t like parties. And he certainly didn’t like New Year’s Eve parties in the woods with the kids who’d decided – or had no other choice but – to stay on campus over winter break. They’d hiked into the hills surrounding their semi-rural campus to have their own New Year’s Eve celebration; all crushed together around a bonfire and listening to someone’s cheap boombox on low so they could keep an ear out for campus police.

The smell of smoke and cheap vodka made Ezra’s stomach turn. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to spend his New Year’s Eve and he was growing more annoyed that he’d let Miles drag him up here by the minute. But when he turned toward his best friend, he saw him sloshing that cheap swill into a red plastic cup with a frown. When he saw Ezra looking at him, he chuckled and then poured nearly half a bottle of orange juice into the cup “for taste,” meaning he needed to hide the burn of bottom barrel liquor. He held the cup out to Ezra and raised his own in toast.

“Cheers,” Miles said, smiling at Ezra with raised eyebrows. He’d given him the same smile when they’d met at summer orientation and then immediately suggested they become roommates.

Ezra raised his eyebrows at his friend, took the smallest sip he could manage and cringed. Miles didn’t notice. He was too distracted by Mei Barnes, the actual reason they’d come out tonight. She’d been the singular object of his attention all fall semester. Every week – sometimes every day – Miles had subjected Ezra to very detailed lectures about how Mei was literally the best, most perfect, beautiful girl on campus; maybe even in the world. Miles was the king of hyperbole. Ezra watched as Miles clutched his cup and began to inch through the crowd toward his crush and once again marveled at seeing his normally confident and sociable friend tur into a ball of nerves even though it was obvious that his attraction was completely reciprocal. Ezra stepped away from the glare and heat of the bonfire into the shadows and hoped – for Miles’s sake and the sake of his productivity – that those two would finally get together.

But just because he was rooting for their relationship, didn’t mean Ezra had to sacrifice his liver in celebration. He dumped his drink into a nearby bush, tossed his cup into the trash bag by the “bar” and went in search of a place to sit, hide, and wait for this all to end.

He settled onto a cold flat-topped rock and wished he’d worn a thicker sweater. He pressed the button on his digital watch to check the time. Eleven o’clock on the dot. He sighed. He didn’t think he could last another hour out here, but he didn’t want to leave Miles, especially not with how fast he and Mei were guzzling their drinks, smiling nervously at one another as if this was the first time they’d ever met. He wished again that he’d pretended to be asleep when Miles had burst into their dorm room, a towel around his waist, his shower caddy in one hand and excitedly told him to “get ready nerd, we’re going to a party.” Ezra also wished he hadn’t paid such close attention to the refrigerator magnet they all received at orientation about drinking responsibly and looking out for your friends, so he could have slipped down the hill without feeling guilty.

Either way, he wished that he was back in his dorm room working, because these were peak productive hours, and work was the entire reason he’d come back to campus immediately after Hanukkah. If he was going to submit his 3D scale model of his efficient train engine on time and with even half a chance of winning the Gilder prize, he needed to be giving it his full attention during every free moment of every day. He couldn’t afford to waste these few precious weeks before spring semester started observing someone else’s teenage romance and edgy underage drinking in the woods. He checked his watch again. One minute after eleven.

“Anybody sitting here?”

Ezra jumped at the voice. He looked up and couldn’t quite see who was standing in front of him with the bonfire behind them casting shadows over their face, but he didn’t need light to recognize her. He would have known that voice and silhouette anywhere.

Candace Garret was tall, almost as tall as him, with big curly hair that framed her head and gave her a few inches more height, wide hips and the brightest smile he’d ever seen. She was also way out of his league. He knew that. She knew that. Everyone knew that. Because Candace Garret was way out of everyone’s league.

“Hello,” she said again, leaning close and waving a hand in front of his face.

His vision adjusted as her lips spread into a small smile. Ezra was mesmerized by that flash of her bright white teeth and her even, flawless, deep dark brown skin that seemed to drink in every bit of light around them.

“Anybody in there?” she laughed.

He jumped from the rock and their heads collided.

“Ow,” she whined and rubbed at her forehead.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Ezra said, panicked, his own head beginning to throb. “Shit.”

His face heated and his eyes widened. What if he’d given Candace Garret a concussion? She was rubbing small circles on her forehead but still smiling at him. This only made the embarrassment he felt intensify. But ringed around that shame was the same awe he always felt in her presence.

“Calm down, Ezra. I won’t press charges. This time.” Her voice was calm but playful.

“I- You know my name?”

She laughed and shook her head.

Ezra loved Candace’s laugh. So much so that he’d catalogued and ranked his favorite moments of becoming absolutely mesmerized by it. In descending order, Ezra’s top five Candace Garret laughs were:

5. Once in the middle of their Chem II lab. He’d become distracted and accidentally ruined three days of an experiment.

4.  Once in the dining hall during the lunch rush. He’d heard her above the din and mistakenly dumped an entire ladle of ranch dressing on his grilled cheese sandwich rather than the salad he’d forgotten to make because he’d been too busy trying to get a glimpse of her across the room.

3. He’d been rushing from English to the engineering lab when he’d heard her distinctive twinkle wafting along the late fall breeze. His head whipped around as he searched for her on the Oval. When he’d found her, Candace was surrounded by half the basketball team and they were fighting each other for her attention. She was ignoring them and reading a comic book, laughing as she turned the pages.

2. That one time Miles had begged him to tag along to Mei and Candace’s dorm room. Ezra had spent the entire hour leaning awkwardly against her desk – too terrified to take her up on the offer to sit on her bed – while Miles had entertained them with jokes Ezra never heard because Candace’s laughter took over all his senses.

1. Well actually, he’d forgotten his number one favorite laugh because it was immediately replaced by this one. Every other time he’d heard that throaty melody, he’d been a bystander; accidentally infringing on someone else’s moment with her or her own moment with herself. But when she finally laughed with him – at him – it felt so much better, even if it shouldn’t have. It sounded so much sweeter.

“Of course, I know your name,” she said pulling him out of stasis. “My roommate and your roommate have been playing cat and mouse with each other since orientation.” She laughed as she turned and pointed at the party.

Ezra assumed she was gesturing at Miles and Mei. The two had basically imprinted on each other from the moment they’d met, and he and Candace had been unwitting spectators to the inevitable. But he didn’t look their way, so he couldn’t be sure, because for the first time all semester Candace Garret was looking at him. Talking to him. Laughing at him. And it was heaven.

When she turned back, her smile slipped slightly but only for a second. “Why are you over here all by yourself, Ezra?”

Her voice was different than he’d ever heard it. Deeper maybe? Intimate, he hoped for a fleeting second.

“I don’t like parties,” he admitted quietly.  

Her smile narrowed to a grin and it made him feel like they shared a secret. “Yeah, neither do I,” she said. “Especially not outdoor parties with cheap liquor and a severely high chance of starting a forest fire.”

He smiled or at least he thought he did. “This is really irresponsible.”

“Totally. But we’re supposed to be the brightest of the bright. The best of the best,” she said sarcastically and rolled her eyes. He always liked that about her; that she could seem older and wiser and smarter than everyone else around them with a simple inflection of her voice, a wry smile and a graceful tip of her head.

“I-if you don’t like parties, why are you here?”

She moved to the rock he’d jumped from and lowered herself onto it gracefully. She did everything with grace. Candace was the exact opposite of his awkward, gangly mess of an existence. She looked up at him and waited until he sat back down. Next to her. His hands started to sweat as he lowered to the rock, perching on the edge so he could leave room between them because he knew she hadn’t meant for him to touch her; not even accidentally. She couldn’t have meant that, life couldn’t be so perfect as to give him his most cherished – albeit secret – fantasy.

“I’m here for the same reason you’re here probably,” she finally said. “To watch out for my roommate.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Ezra said. This time he did look at the party and his eyes zeroed in on their roommates. They were standing in the middle of the clearing making out, swaying slowly together even though the loud rap music blaring from the stereo was up tempo. Ezra might have thought their first kiss after months of pining would be gentle and slow like their swaying. It was not. They were attacking one another’s mouths. Aggressively. And they didn’t seem to care who saw them.

“So gross,” Candace muttered under her breath.

“Exactly how much have they had to drink?” He could feel Candace shift on the rock, closing the distance between them. Clearly accidentally.

“Too much. Not enough. Who knows? I think tonight was just a reason to make it official. That gross kiss is what young love looks like, my friend,” she snorted.

He turned to her and gulped before speaking, he was so nervous. She’d called him ‘friend.’ “What would you be doing if you weren’t here?”

She really seemed to think about her answer before she made eye contact with him and shrugged, “Don’t know, actually. Maybe reading or washing clothes since the laundry rooms are empty for once. Something boring for sure.”

He frowned slightly. “That’s not what I would have imagined,” he breathed.

She slid across the bench; her left thigh pressed against his right. Ezra swallowed a gasp. “I’m not nearly as deep and interesting as everyone thinks,” she said, almost shyly. And then she straightened, her elbow grazing his ribs. “What about you? What would you be doing?”

He had to force himself to breathe normally before he could answer. And even when he was able to speak, his voice sounded strained, tense. “Easy,” he croaked. “I’d be working on my submission to the Gilder engineering competition,” he said. He could still feel the sharp, sweet pain of her accidental touch.

“And what’s that?”

“Engineering innovations prize. The winner gets half a million-dollar investment to build a real model of their submission and career mentoring.”

“That’s amazing. When is it due?”

“Senior year.”

She blinked rapidly. “What?” She turned fully toward him, her left leg bent, and the dull point of her knee dug into his thigh. “It’s not due for three more years and you’re already working on it?”

He gulped. So much of her body was touching his. He tried to regulate his breathing and slow his heartbeat by sheer force of will. “It’s a huge deal,” he croaked. “They only give one prize every four years. There are people who’ve been working on their submissions since high school. And some alums are coming back to enter. Technically, I’m behind. I really should be in my room working on my project.” He said the last sentence – the same thing he’d been thinking for the past hour – but for the first time he didn’t mean it. For this beautiful, unexpected moment, Candace’s leg touching his was so much more important than the prize that had been his singular obsession since high school.

And then what would surely be the best night of his life got even better. He tried not to tense when her hands landed on his shoulders, but he did. Because Candace Garret was touching him on purpose. She turned him toward her.

She was beautiful. Her lips were parted in shock. Her eyes were wide. And then her mouth shifted from that wry grin to a full on, prize worthy, brighter than the sun smile that took his actual breath away. “You’re an interesting guy, Ezra Posner,” she whispered. “Real interesting.”

“You’re late,” Stephen yelled from the kitchen. “You’re lucky I didn’t start dinner on time.”

Tasha dropped her keys into the bowl on the small table by their front door. She hung her bag from the hook on the wall, toed off her shoes and walked as quickly as she could to their kitchen.

“Tash?” Stephen called, his back to her as he rummaged in the refrigerator.

“I’m here,” she said.

He turned and smiled. He was so fucking beautiful. It was a different kind of beauty than she’d seen in Heaven. Stephen’s beauty was all in the angular planes of his face, the five o’clock shadow of his beard, his soft lips. They weren’t plump like Heaven’s, but she knew that he could make her knees weak with just a kiss. Could Heaven? Stephen’s beauty was also in that easy smile he never failed to welcome her home with, the love in his eyes, and the way he knew her; knew what she was thinking and feeling before she could even express it.

“You met Heaven?” he asked as he turned fully.

She nodded.

“Can you wait?” He’d already started moving toward her slowly.

She nodded and swallowed. “But I don’t want to.” She felt his soft, burring chuckle at her fingertips, over her nipples, and inside her sex.

She let him back her against the wall, using just his built chest as leverage. She moaned when he pressed against her, giving her the secure feeling of being trapped that she so desperately needed. That was part of his beauty as well; that he knew what she needed and gave it to her. No questions. No judgements. Just the easy press of his knee between her legs and his hands along the column of her neck.

He licked along her bottom lip.

“She’s fucking adorable,” Tasha whispered.

Stephen nodded as he kissed her chin and jaw and then her earlobe softly.

Tasha began to grind against his thigh. “Oh god, that ass.”

Stephen laughed in her ear and kissed her just at her hairline. “Is this gonna be enough?” he asked, pressing his leg even more firmly against her aching core.

She shook her head quickly. She wasn’t sure if his question was about this moment — Can you get off on just the pressure of my leg? — or if this was about the impending dilemma of Heaven next door — Can you get off on just knowing that she’s there? — but the answer to both was no.

Tasha knew herself and she never lied to Stephen. That had always been the core of their relationship, a kind of honesty she’d never thought possible. They had the kind of trust that was the result of nothing fancier than good fucking hard work. They were the kind of couple who cringed at even the thought of #relationshipgoals [KA1] because what worked for them was so beautifully specific that it fit like a favorite sweatshirt — a little worn at the edges, a torn seam or two, but a fit so perfect it felt like home. So, Tasha knew she needed more of Stephen right now and Heaven would become a particular point of distraction, but so did Stephen and they could worry about all of that later.

Because what mattered most to Tasha in this moment, was the strong feeling of her husband’s hands on her waist as he moved her back into their living room, his big body hot and reassuring behind her. His thumbs dug into the small of her back and she moaned, her aching muscles spasming at the beautiful pressure. She felt his smile as he leaned over to whisper in her ear.

“I knew it,” he said, but left it at that. At least for now.

Her stomach pressed against the back of the couch and she turned to smile at him over her left shoulder.

Stephen kissed her gently as his hands slid forward to unbutton and unzip her pants. When he pulled away, she tried to lift onto her toes and twist her body to get his lips back, but sometimes Stephen knew what she needed better than she did. So he shook his head and pushed her pants down over her hips.

He kissed her shoulder and then bent down, pulling her slacks free.

She stepped carefully out of the legs and moved to grab her underwear, but he stopped her.

“Nah, you can keep those on,” he said, and then bit her left ass cheek playfully.

It was eerily quiet even though she could still hear the crowd roaring in the distance. She could hear her breath and the rush of blood in her veins. Her skin was hot, her pussy was wet. Every time; it was like this every time. And no matter how much she hated being on display during the fights, Calvin always made it up to her, even if he didn’t know that’s what he was doing.

She knew when he was close; the cheering crowd still echoing down the hall, reverberating up her feet, between her thighs and across every inch of her skin. Heaven dropped her purse on the bench and stood in the middle of the room; ready for him. When it opened, she saw Calvin and Pete and then Reggie, but only Calvin entered the room. They all knew the drill.

“See you later, champ. Heaven,” Reggie said as he pulled the door closed. Calvin turned the lock and the quiet was all-encompassing. Or maybe it was just that Heaven tuned everything not in this room out. Calvin’s panting breaths as he stalked toward her; the thud of his gloves hitting the bench next to her purse; the smell of him — soap, sweat and the slight metallic notes of blood — as he circled behind her.

She didn’t look directly at him. She kept her eyes just over his head and followed his movements by sound, letting the vibrations of his energy course through her body. She felt him, big and hard and warm behind her, and she reveled in all that residual power from the fight rolling off him and through her. She loved this moment.

Heaven moaned when Calvin finally touched her.

His big hands clapped against her outer thighs. The sound of his skin hitting hers was like a klaxon call. His blunt nails raked up her soft skin before snagging the hem of her dress and pulling it up her legs. She felt the cool air on her wet pussy and whimpered. He licked his lips in her ear at the sound, or maybe because he could smell her now. Smell how turned on she was. Smell what it did to her to watch him in the ring.

Calvin threw an arm around her stomach and turned her quickly to the mirrored wall to their left. She gasped as she took in their reflection. He towered over her, his bare shoulders and arms covered in sweat. His left eye puffy, but not fully swollen, and his eyelids hooded with desire. She knew that look. She adored that look.

“Look at yourself,” he said in that deep whisky voice that had made her pussy weep the moment they met.

She clenched her thighs and swallowed hard and did as he said.

Heaven hadn’t been a virgin when she met Calvin. She wasn’t innocent or particularly inexperienced. But three years with Calvin had only opened her eyes to all she could have. To all he was willing to give her. Before him, she never would have imagined that anyone could turn her out like this. Have her waiting for him in a dress so tight every roll and curve and thigh dimple was on display. Have her waiting for him with an already dripping pussy. Have her standing in front of a mirror, her dress hiked up to her hips, her bottom half bare, and not feel one inch of shame. What was there to be ashamed of?

He moved his mouth to her ear but kept his eyes on her reflection. She watched him watching her as his hand moved over the curve of her stomach to the seam of her thighs. His other hand gripped her waist so tight it hurt, but it was the perfect amount of pain. His touch was always so perfect, precise. He was nothing if not great with his hands.

Keep reading for SNEAK PEEK

This exclusive Kentucky Derby afterparty thrown by a luxury diamond company was just the kind of decadent, ridiculous rich white people event Cleo loved, because she could turn her empathy chip all the way off. No need to feel bad about what she was about to do. Why bother feeling sorry for these people whose eyes were glued to her — even the drunk ones — judging? She had a job to do and she was more than dressed for the occasion. 

She hadn’t known when she saw this specific dress in Saks when she’d need it, but she was happy to have it on deck for this occasion. There was something so wonderful about walking through this party in a dress that was barely a suggestion and definitely an advertisement. It might even, technically, be lingerie since it was made up of equal parts see-through lace and slinky jersey that just barely covered her good bits — as it stopped just below the curve of her ass — but gave a clear indication of everything underneath as she moved.

A different person in the same situation might have felt the need to blend in, but not Cleo.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t blend in if the job called for it, but her specialty was understanding how to get the crowd to focus on her. If a moment called for all eyes on the decoy, she was the woman for the job. Cleo talents included grabbing the room by the balls and not letting it go until she and her crew had done what needed to be done. And there were few people of any gender who could do that better than her.

So, she walked straight through the middle of the room — her head swiveling left and right — looking down her broad nose at everyone around her in their most expensive and boring dresses, high-end shoes and gaudy jewelry. She smiled and smirked and sometimes even winked at men who were ogling her too hard, just for the fun of pissing off their wives. She reveled in her own audacity, which only made the other people at the party angrier. Her ego soaked up all that annoyance like water. This was why she was one of the best – if not THEE best – at this job. This wasn’t a job for Cleo, it was her calling.

“Champagne, ma’am?” a waiter asked her.

She smiled and plucked a flute from the tray in his hand. She didn’t need to flip that tray to know that it would be engraved with the Tiffany’s symbol and she didn’t need to see the tag on the waiter’s uniform to know it was Gucci; it was her job to know. Besides, like most of these lavish parties for the disgustingly wealthy, the name brands were everywhere, right on down to the $15,000 fur rug she was stepping on with her $45 Perspex heels.

Cleo brought the glass to her lips and took a small sip. It would be the only indulgence she’d allow herself tonight since she never mixed liquor with work. As she savored the flavor of the best champagne money could buy, she turned in a full circle, ostensibly toying with the room as they watched her, wondering over if she belonged here. But really she was making sure that each piece of art her team had marked for removal was present and accounted for.

She winked at an older woman and her younger wife who looked like they wanted to do more than stare, before she turned and continued walking toward her mark.

She found him sitting at a table full of old, drunk, lecherous men playing poker in a raised den next to the bar. He technically owned the house they were partying in, but she and her team knew that he was no more than three months from losing it all. The FEC was investigating him for insider trading, his soon-to-be ex-wife had a team of private investigators looking for money she was certain he was hiding in the Bahamas, and unless he got an influx of cash soon, the bank would be foreclosing on this house and then he would truly be ruined.

He was the best kind of target, because his financial situation was so precarious. In less than twelve hours, she and her team would have gotten what they came for and any goof cop or insurance investigator would have to seriously consider if the victim hadn’t orchestrated the entire thing. By the time anyone thought to look for a crew, Cleo would be long gone. And who would think that anything was going on with the tall, nearly naked Black woman or the wait staff.

If she focused and kept her eye on the prize — the balding man with a fat cigar hanging from his lips — this job would keep her and her crew set for the rest of the year.

And focus was easy for Cleo. It was why she slowed down as she ascended the stairs. She wanted to feel every second of this moment, to see when he saw her, when his mouth went slack and his lit cigar drooped and his eyes widened. She wanted to give Francis Pugh III enough time to drink in every curve of her body, to imagine running his sweaty hands over them, to fantasize about her body over him in bed. She wanted Frank and everyone at the table to wonder who she was and want her hanging off their arm for the rest of the night, because a rich man who wanted something he felt entitled to was the best kind of idiot to rob.

When she was by his side, he practically pushed the woman perched on the arm of his chair to the ground.

“Hey,” the woman whined.

Now in her normal life, Cleo would have offered to help the girl slash this man’s tires, but she was an actress — of a sort — so she didn’t even let her eyes fall on the other woman. She simply moved past her and settled onto the side of Frank’s chair, her hip resting against his shoulder. 

“What do you say, sweetheart?” he asked, showing her his hand.

Cleo glanced at his cards. 

He was going to lose no matter what, probably. She could have told him to fold, but in her experience, men like him didn’t want advice from women, in fact they often hated a woman with opinions. And her job wasn’t to give her marks her true self; she had to give them what they wanted, so they’d let their guards down.

So she leaned into his side, pressed her left breast into his shoulder and giggled. She didn’t even need to speak; in fact, she knew some men who would have preferred that she didn’t. And apparently Frank was one of those men.

He smiled at her cleavage, shifted in his seat — probably to hide his erection — and then threw a few cards on the table. She looked at his hand. Those weren’t the cards she might have discarded, but whatever, she didn’t care if he won or lost money in the short term, since he was about to lose it all in just a few hours. 

“Final bets,” the dealer called.

She looked around the table, not because she cared, but because she was always on the lookout for more work. All of the men sitting at the table looked like Frank, honestly; maybe a little older or younger, but definitely rich, gaudy, and bleary-eyed from alcohol. Easy targets. 

But one man stood out from the rest. He as sitting directly across from her. He was also the only person not trying to angle his head so that he could look up her dress. His eyes were darting from the cards in his hand to the pot of chips on the table to the crease of her thighs, so it wasn’t like he was ignoring her - and she would have been offended if he was - but there was something intriguing about a man so in control of himself that she couldn’t fully distract him.

She didn’t like it, but she did find it interesting.

The tall Asian man’s long hair fell over his shoulders and the faint shadow of his beard caught her eye. But it was his long, thick fingers that made Cleo do something she never did while she was working; she momentarily lost focus.

One minute she was casing the poker table, the next minute she was running her teeth along her bottom lip, imagining that man’s fingers playing with the strip of her thong between her ass cheek.