Lisa Desrochers - A Little Too Hot

I stumble down the stairs and to the table where Izzy’s still holding down the fort.

“Everything good?” she asks when I slip into the seat across from her.

“I’m good,” I say, and it doesn’t feel like a lie.

I’ve talked to Mom. She wants me to come home. I think we understand each other a little better now. She gets that she needs to let me make my own mistakes, and I get that I need to try to make less of them. But the truth is, I really feel like it’s time to stop relying on everyone else and stand on my own two feet. I’ve been researching scholarships and grants, and I think I want to try the college thing again—on my own this time. San Jose State offers a victimology concentration in their criminology program, and I want to minor in women’s studies.

I’ve spent a lot of time at the shelter over the last week. Sabrina and I have talked and cried together. If all I can do for her now is to be her friend, I think that’s something, but I want to learn to help women like Sabrina for real. I want my life to mean something. Which means I need to get it straightened out, and the first thing that’s going to entail is getting a real job so I can keep living at Izzy’s and pay for school. The next thing is going to be figuring out how to shake the feeling like I left a huge piece of my heart up on that hill in Berkeley.

I’ve got to let Blake go, but I can’t deny the hole in my chest every time I remember the brush of his lips over mine; the feel of his hands, so gentle on my skin; the press of his body against mine as he loved me.

I miss him.

“Have you heard from him?” Izzy asks just over the music, reading my mind.

“No. Nothing.” I’ve resisted the urge to call him, and after what Cooper said, I’m glad. If he’s trying to get everything straightened out and keep his job, I’m only going to be a problem for him. I have to stop pining for him.

“He’ll call, Sam. When he can. I’m sure of it.”

I just nod, because if I try to say anything, I’m going to start crying again.

“Hey,” someone says from the end of our table.

I look up and see a dark Hispanic guy. He’s totally hot, and Izzy sits up a little straighter when she sees him. “You up for a dance?” he asks, grinning at her.

She looks in my direction with a hopeful expression.

I give her a nod. “Go.”

“I’ll be right back,” she says, giving me a quick hug before sliding out of the booth. I watch as he guides her to the dance floor.

Jonathan is screeching into the microphone as his guys back him up with a breakneck rhythm, and Izzy starts to move. She’s a great dancer, and her guy can’t take his eyes off her. Half a song later they’re pressed together, swaying half-time to the beat.

I slouch into the booth and tip my head into the back of it. I need to forget about Blake and move on. I listen to Jonathan sing and resolve right then that I’m going to dance with the next guy who asks me.

Jonathan and the band wind down their song, and there’s a pause in the music. It’s a few seconds later when he says into the mic, “This next one goes out to my best friend, Red. Things aren’t always going to suck. Starting now.”

I sit up and look toward the stage, where he’s grinning at me as he breaks into the Bruno Mars song that was playing the first time I met Blake. I’ve never heard him do this song before, but as he starts on the first verse, my heart contracts into a hard ball. He doesn’t know what this song means to me. I close my eyes and lower my head, determined not to cry, as the lyrics yank at the deepest part of my soul.

“Dance with me.”

At the slow warm-honey drawl, my breaking heart explodes. I lift my head, and my eyes find the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

BLAKE IS STANDING   at the end of the table in the same pink button-down he was wearing the night we met, his hand out to me.

In a total daze, I take it and blink away tears as he guides me out of the booth and to the dance floor. His hands on my back are so gentle, but at the same time insistent, as he pulls me tight against him and begins to sway to the song. I don’t know how or why he’s here, but I’m not going to worry about it now.

My heart swells at the feel of his body pressed against mine, the heat of his breath in my hair. I press my face against his chest and hear the beat of his heart over the music. His hands smooth slowly over my back, one of them gliding up to the nape of my neck. He weaves his fingers into my hair as he nuzzles the crown of my head. I can’t stop the tear that escapes over my lashes when I feel him sigh.

People move all around us on the dance floor, but all I know is Blake, and Jonathan’s voice singing our song as we move together in our own universe. His lips brush my forehead and down my temple, and when he starts to sing the chorus in my ear, slow and sure, the floodgates open and I cry into his shoulder. He strokes my hair and pulls me closer, and we dance, blending together into one on the dance floor.

When Jonathan trails off at the end of the song, Blake pulls back and looks down at me, cupping my face in his hands and wiping my tears away gently with his thumbs. “Hi, Sam.”

I press my eyes closed to stop the last of the tears and sniffle. “Hi.” When I open my eyes, he’s still here. Real. For now, anyway. He still has my face in his hands, and he watches me as he leans in slowly. It still surprises me how my body reacts to the feel of his lips brushing across mine. He twists his fingers into my hair and deepens our kiss, and afterward it’s as if I’m finally able to exhale the breath I’ve been holding since the morning he left.

He pulls back a few inches and gazes down at me with hungry eyes. “I need you alone.”

I take his hand and tow him toward Izzy, who’s dancing close with Hot Hispanic Guy.

“Hey, Iz. We’re gonna go. Can you tell Jonathan we’ll talk tomorrow?”

She grins at me, a slash of white in the dark of her face. “Told you.”

Blake takes my hand and wends us through the press of bodies toward the door, and we escape into the cool San Francisco night.

“What now?” I ask, turning to him.

Slowly, he lifts a finger and traces the scar on my cheek. It’s hardly visible through my makeup, but he knows exactly the spot. His touch sends a shudder through me. “I’m going to take you back to my room and love you all night long,” he says, his gaze burning into mine.

“Okay,” I say, totally mesmerized.

He hales a passing cab and we climb in.

“No Escalade?” I say after he gives the driver an address.

He pulls me against him, both arms holding me tight to his side. “No Escalade,” he says into my hair.

I sink into him, savoring the feel of his arms around me, and focus on the steady beat of his heart. I watch the city pass by, not even caring where we’re going if it means we’re going there together. But when the driver turns down Market Street, I sit straighter. “Please tell me we’re not going to the Federal Building.”

He gives me a small shake of his head and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Never again.”

We pass the Civic Center and turn onto Haight, and not long later, the driver pulls to the curb in front of an old Victorian house.

Blake pays the driver and helps me out.

“Where have you been?” I ask as he takes my hand and tows me up a set of stairs to the door of the house.

He slides his key in and opens it. “There were some things I needed to handle.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

He pulls me through as if he’s on a mission. “Because I didn’t know how things were going to turn out, and there was no way I was going to drag you into the middle of anything else.”

There are only wall sconces lit, but in the dim light I see we’re in a foyer, with parlors overflowing with antiques off to either side. Ahead and to the right is a staircase that Blake tows me toward without slowing down. He jogs up the stairs, pulling me behind.

“Cooper told me about Nichols,” I say, a little winded, when we reach the second floor, but he’s already got me pressed between him and the wall.

He crushes me in a kiss, then pulls away and stares fire into my eyes. “Can we talk later?”

His kiss leaves me breathless. And speechless, apparently, because all I can do is nod.

He hikes me off the ground and I wrap my legs around his hips as he carries me up the short hall and unlocks a door. He throws it open, then kicks it shut. Navigating us past an antique chest, he sets me down on a four-poster bed and proceeds to waste no time undressing me. He slows down then. Kneeling between my knees at the side of the bed, I watch his hands flow over every inch of my skin as if worshiping me, pricking goose bumps to life everywhere he touches.

“You promised to love me,” I say, my voice breathy, but thick with need.

His fingertips caress my nipple, feather light, and his gaze lifts from my body to my eyes, burning through them. “I am.”

I let him continue loving me in his way as I work the buttons of his shirt loose, one by one. When I get to his jeans, he stands and lets me slide them down his legs. He moves us into the center of the bed, then continues his soft exploration, this time with his lips and tongue.

He works his way up from my ankle, past my knee, to my inner thigh, and there’s not an inch of me that’s not thoroughly ablaze by the time his mouth finds the sweet spot between my legs. It’s not a minute later that I’m crying out with my climax.

He fixes his condom in place and settles his weight between my legs. He takes a few more minutes with his mouth to make sure my breasts don’t feel neglected before rocking into me.