Tease (3 page)

He ran his palms along my thighs, then back to my knees, his thumbs grazing the insides. I kept them closed. I wanted him to open me. I wanted the pressure of his fingers on my flesh, and I wanted to resist, just a little.

“I have another thing I’ve been thinking about,” he said.

“Go.”

He put his hands up my skirt and slid his fingers under my panties as if they weren’t even there. The intrusion was delicious, and my cheap knit skirt rode up until the triangle of my underwear was exposed. When he looked down, I felt like I was being touched again.

“I own your orgasms.” He pulled me forward to the edge of the seat before I could respond. His move was forceful, demanding, and left no room for questions.

“I don’t know what that means,” I gasped as he slipped my panties off. He put his finger under my right knee and placed it over the arm of the chair. I let him. I wanted him to. The less I resisted, the more aroused I became, especially when he did the same with the left leg. I was spread-eagled on the chair. My skirt rode up, leaving nothing between him and my snatch.

“It means,” he said, running his hands up the insides of my thighs, “you come when I say. Not before. If I send you home without, you just deal with it until I see you again.” He looked at me as though he wasn’t sure how I’d react. His green eyes darkened in the afternoon light.

“My fingers reach, you know,” I said.

“Honor system,” Jonathan said, running a thumb on each wet lip, leaving a vibrating hum behind them, like a plucked string.

I groaned. Had it only been two weeks? With my butt sliding forward, my legs over the chair’s arms, and my pink wetness under his fingers, I felt as though I’d been pent up much longer.

“Ok.” I would have agreed to anything.

“Ok, what?” He knelt in front of me and kissed the inside of my knee before running his tongue up my thigh. I touched his shoulder, and he grabbed my wrists, placing my hands on my knees. “Say it.”

“You own my orgasms.”

“And?” He bit down, deep where my thigh creased into sex. The pain was sharp and perfect. I lost words for a second. “When do you come?” he asked. His hands gripped my thighs, spreading my legs farther apart. It didn’t hurt. It felt like surrender. It felt like giving myself over to his control. It felt safe.

“I come when you say,” I whispered.

“I’ve thought about nothing but this,” Jonathan said and put his tongue on my clit. He warmed it with his breath, not moving his tongue. I gasped and gripped the back of his head. He pulled his tongue away, and when I tried to push him back, he held my wrists in one hand. He sucked my clit, keeping my wrists in his tight grip. I was helpless under his tongue, the gentle counterpart to his rough hand. The tip of his tongue traced a line from my clit to my opening, teasing it, then sucking lightly. Warmth coursed through me. I threw my head back, breathing hard.

“Part of this,” he said, moving his tongue back to my thigh, “is you have to tell me when you’re close.”

“Okay.”

“You’re very agreeable today.” His green eyes looked at me over my crotch. I’d agree to anything that face asked.

“Next time, ask when I’m wearing pants.”

He crawled up and kissed me, and I tasted my juices on his tongue. My legs were still spread, and he was still fully dressed. He let go of my hands to brush his fingers over my breasts. I reached for his belt with one hand and felt the hardness through his pants with the other.

“Let me,” I said.

“Later.”

“Now.”

“I own my orgasms, too,” he said.

“God, you are a greedy bastard.”

He kissed me again, then stood back, staring at me. I started to move one leg down, but he held my ankle.

“Don’t move yet,” he said. Then he stepped back.

I saw his erection under his perfectly fit trousers, and he seemed disinclined to hide it. All he did was stand there, smiling, and look at me with my snatch out. I knew he wouldn’t fuck me, and I knew he wouldn’t let me come. Despite how unfulfilled that made me, because my body wanted him without a thought to any kind of agreement or rule, I knew he would draw our encounter out until I peaked with desire. I wanted him, and I’d wait as long as he told me to.

“It was a long flight,” he said. “I could use a drink.”

“And after that?”

“You said you had a gig.” He kneeled again.

I hoped for a second he would put his tongue back between my legs and finish the job, but he gently took my knees off the arms of the chair instead.

“Oh, man,” I said. “This orgasm thing is going to break me into a million little pieces.”

“What if it’s worth it?”

“I’m counting on it.”

Jonathan scooped my panties off the floor and held them open while I put my toes through, then he slid them back into place when I stood. He was still kneeling, with his hands up my thighs, when he said, “Pick up your skirt.” I did. He put his hands on my ass and kissed between my legs, through the fabric of my underwear. Nerve endings I didn’t know I had fired like rounds of ammunition.

A million little pieces, for sure.

CHAPTER 3

“What do you drink, Monica?” Jonathan asked, as if realizing for the first time he had no idea. My mother would not have approved of our intimacy so soon, but Mom had never been at the raw wood bar in the lobby of Loft Club, either. She’d never seen the view of Los Angeles facing west, from downtown to the water, never been with a man besides Dad, never served drinks to seventy-five people a night or sung a note outside church. I stopped taking life lessons from my mother right about when I left my first love and started sleeping with Kevin.

“Same as you, actually,” I said. “Single malt if they have it.”

“I presume you’d like some ice to suck on?”

“You presume correctly.”

The bartender, an old guy who looked as though he could mix a bull shot or Harvey Wallbanger without checking the book, scooped ice into two glasses and poured two fingers of MacAllan into each.

The room was huge and not too crowded. Mostly, the members wore creative class outfits, movie executives, talent agents, entertainment lawyers, ad agency people, and they all sat in square-cushioned armchairs around low tables. The waitstaff flitted between them, making as little fuss and being as unassuming and invisible as possible. I checked to see if everyone was out of earshot.

“How long have you been a member here?” I asked.

“My father got me a membership to the Gate Club when I turned eighteen. I moved over here a few years later.”

Iggy Winkin, the sound guy at the studio, had a girlfriend who worked at Club KatManDo. It was probably the same kind of thing, and he said memberships ran about 35 grand a year. Obscene, for sure, but who was I to say? I was trying to get around to a different point entirely, and bringing up money would sidetrack the conversation indefinitely.

“They must know you in here,” I said.

“Pretty much. The old guys. Like Kenny over there.” He indicated the bartender. “He used to work at the Gate. Knew my dad. Told me stories I didn’t want to hear.”

“Like what?”

“You’re full of questions.”

“I’m trying to keep my mind off this feeling between my legs.”

He leaned close. “Describe it.”

I sipped my drink. I didn’t have a single word or even phrase to describe the raw hunger of the physical sensation. I whispered, “Kind of like someone hooked me up to a bicycle pump and put too much air in. I feel overfull. It’s your fault. Now, tell me. Kenny and your dad. Make something up, I don’t care.”

“My dad’s a drunk. A passive, pathetic drunk, and Kenny poured him a few thousand gallons of vodka over three decades. His stool was at the end of the bar, right there.” He pointed at a space occupied by a thirty-something year-old guy in a cream suit and blue tie. “I want to hear more about what’s going on between your legs.”

“It’s eating my brain. Your body just looks like a bunch of surfaces I want to rub against. I can’t think in this state. IQ points are dropping off me. I can only speak in short sentences. Back to Kenny. How many times has he seen you here with a woman who wants to rub herself up against you?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, because it doesn’t. And yes, because I want to know if I should steal a matchbook now or next time.”

He laughed softly, covering his mouth. “I want to kiss you, but there’s a guy here from acquisitions at Carnival Records and I don’t want to embarrass you.”

“Who?” I brushed my hair behind my ears and tried so hard not to look around that I must have looked everywhere at once.

“Eddie, hey,” Jonathan said to a man behind me. He was Jonathan’s age, bulky and handsome with receding black hair he brushed forward in a way that suggested he did it for style, not to cover a balding head.

“Jon, what’s happening? Did you watch the game? We got killed.”

“I can’t watch anymore,” Jonathan answered.

“Falling down on the job, as usual,” Eddie said before he looked at me. “I’m Ed. We played for Penn together.”

“Played what?” I was embarrassed I didn’t know, but not too embarrassed to ask.

Eddie looked at Jonathan, then back at me. “You’re not one of the sisters?”

Jonathan smiled, so I knew Eddie wasn’t implying anything terrible. “This is Monica. No relation,” Jonathan said.

“Ah,” Eddie said, holding out his hand to shake mine. “Sorry then. Nice to meet you. Jonathan pitched. I played the bench.”

“Nice to meet you, Ed.”

“Monica’s a singer,” Jonathan said, “but she finds time to follow the Dodgers.”

“My sympathies to both of you,” Eddie said.

“I’m from Echo Park,” I said. “I don’t know this guy’s excuse.”

Jonathan took mock offense, looking at his watch. “Don’t you have a gig?”

I sipped the last of my scotch. The ice cubes were huge, so I couldn’t hold one in my mouth for Jonathan’s benefit the way I wanted to. “I do. The late dinner crowd at Frontage awaits. Ed, it was nice to meet you.”

“Oh, that’s
you
,” he said.

“Maybe. I guess that depends on what you heard.”

“I heard someone’s taking the house down over there.”

“I doubt it was me.”

Jonathan put down his drink. “It’s her. She’s not as modest with a microphone in front of her.” He addressed me, “Come on, let me get you down to the car.”

We said our goodbyes, and when Jonathan walked me out, he put his hand on my back. My skin shivered where he touched.

“Thanks for that,” I said in the hallway outside the elevator. “That guy, he’s important in my world. You put my face in a good context.”

“My pleasure, and just so you know, I wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t sing the way you do.”

The elevator was empty. I kissed him on the way down, not as a lead into sex, but because he’d moved me by talking about me the way he did. His arms went around my waist and cradled my back, his mouth returning my affections, matching the tone and substance of what I was trying to say. That he wanted my body was enough for me, but supporting my work was a new and different thing, and it required a different kind of kiss. I wished there were more floors, because the doors opened before I’d appreciated him enough.

Lil got out when she saw us approach. I had enough time to make it back to my car and get to Frontage early enough to get made up.

“After your gig,” Jonathan said, “text me?”

“I usually go out after with my friends.”

He looked me up and down as if he was eating me raw, just like he’d done and tried to hide the first time we’d met. Only now he didn’t have to conceal it. “If you don’t mind unfinished business, it’s okay with me,” he said.

I got into the Bentley, and he walked back into the club.

CHAPTER 4

The dressing room at Frontage hadn’t improved a single bit since my first night there two weeks earlier, but my attitude toward it had. We’d begun on a Thursday night, and they’d asked us back for Sundays and Tuesdays as well, until we dried up or found something better to do. Bitch and moan though I might, they paid in cash and didn’t suck us dry for incidentals. After that first show, we brought people in, so they started feeding us dinner and slipping a few drinks our way after the set. I enjoyed being treated like something besides a piece of drink-slinging eye-candy or a desperate whore singing for nickels.

Gabby was already there, smearing beige under her eyes. Tonight was our night. WDE had booked a table. Rhee, the hostess, confirmed it was true, and at my request, she put them by the speaker on the left, which had the warmest sound.

“Did you check your seat for gum?” Gabby asked.

“No gum,” I replied, clicking through the bottles and tubes in my makeup bag.

“Vocal chords attached?”

“I hope you get carpal tunnel.”

“Bitch,” she said.

“Snob,” I replied. We smiled at each other through the mirror.

I’d met Gabby during my first day in L.A. Performing. I was tall but gangly and awkward. Glasses and braces, the whole thing. All the other kids seemed to know each other. They’d all come from a music charter on the west side, slipping into ninth grade at the exalted magnet as planned. I’d filled out my application and bussed myself to the audition behind my parents’ backs. I informed them of where I was going to high school when the acceptance letter came.

So in that first week, while I was getting my bearings, Gabby and her crowd had themselves completely together. Totally unprepared for the competition, I was subjected to laughter that may or may not have been directed at the fact that I was off half a key, fell victim to broken guitar strings, and found a blue gum wad on my drum skin. During last period on my first Thursday, when I sat down on a stool and it broke under me to the music of everyone’s laughter, I ran out crying.

The last person I’d expected ran out after me: Gabrielle. She laughed the loudest, stared the hardest, flipped her blonde hair with the most vigor. Before she fell apart at twenty-two, she was the most together girl I’d ever met.

“What do you want?” I’d shouted when she followed me into the bathroom. “Why are you all so mean to me?”