Chapter Text
Good girl
Lucy is starting to hate the label. She’d been proud of it, once, when all she’d ever wanted to be was daddy’s little angel. In high school, it had gotten a little cloying, but it meant she stayed out of trouble, stayed on track for college and the rest of her life. It was worth it.
But now, a year into grad school, it’s starting to feel like something of a scarlet letter. Part of that is her own fault — she shouldn’t have spent so much of undergrad declining Steph’s party invitations or refusing to drink until exactly midnight on her twenty-first birthday. Now she has something of a reputation for being uptight. Now no one even bothers to invite her to anything at all.
Which is why she’s sitting here, on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, completely alone. Norm had called, and so had her dad, but Steph has seemingly forgotten her promise to take her out to dinner. And now it looks like Lucy has gotten all dressed up for nothing.
She does not want to cry. Her mascara and lipstick are perfect. Her outfit is immaculate. This is some grade-A bullhockey. No. Bull- shit.
In that moment, she comes to a decision. She’s not going to be a good girl for another freaking — fucking — minute. She’s going to get out there and do the baddest thing she can think of. Maybe she’ll go to a dispensary; she’s never smoked anything harder than a cigarette. Maybe she’ll go to an adult store and actually buy something. She can just see Steph’s face when she comes back to their apartment to find Lucy with a dildo, of all things. One of those really out-there ones, shaped like a tentacle or something. Maybe she’ll even get a tattoo —- or a tongue piercing. No one will be able to call her a good girl when she has a nose ring. Nose rings scream cool. Nose rings scream hardcore.
She snatches up her purse, grabs the door handle, and pauses. Suddenly, her outfit doesn’t seem so much immaculate as… immature. Conservative, even. Downright embarrassing, if she’s being honest.
Abandoning the door, Lucy returns to her closet and begins sorting through her things. All of them look frumpy or grandmotherly or like something only a damn good girl would wear. A sound of frustration issues from her lips as she wrenches a long-sleeved black dress (with no cutouts and a neckline about as risqué as a Catholic priest) from its hanger. She stands in the wreckage of her boring decisions, frowning — until her eyes light upon the one thing she didn’t purchase for herself.
Steph had bought it for her years ago, and it had slowly rotated to the back of Lucy’s closet the more she didn’t wear it. It was not something she would ever have chosen for herself: so short she might as well not have been wearing anything and with a top that looked more like a pile of yarn than a garment. In fact, by the time she manages to figure out how to get the thing on, she’s beginning to rethink this ill-conceived scheme.
But the idea of Steph returning to find her languishing on the couch, slinky red number abandoned on the floor, makes Lucy feel so pathetic, she renews her determination. Before she can sink into her own hesitation, she yanks open the door and stalks outside, still unsure of her plan. She opts for a cab and directs the driver downtown; it will give her time to think.
They speed up, the cabbie eyeing her now and again in his mirror, which Lucy has to admit makes her preen a little. Sitting back, she lets the glow of the streetlights wash over her. She’s warming to the tattoo idea more and more, especially in this dress. So much exposed skin.
Then they pass a mess of neon and loud music, and suddenly she knows exactly what a good girl wouldn’t do.
“Stop here,” she tells the cabbie.
He eyes the establishment skeptically but pulls up to the curb and sets the car in park. “You sure?” he asks. “We aren’t even downtown yet.”
Impossible-bright pink and blue paint her cheeks. “I’m sure.” She pays the driver and steps onto the sidewalk, immediately earning herself a wolf whistle from a smoker lingering against the brick exterior. She spares him only a passing glance, trying to convey more aloofness than she feels. Inside, her heart is pounding.
This, she thinks as she stands outside the dive bar, clutching her purse, is a phenomenally bad idea. The windows are plastered in faded advertisements for punk-rock bands and Pabst. The “Open” sign sputters, the back letters clinging to flickering life. Alcohol fumes suffuse the air around the place — that and cigarette smoke, thanks to the smoker and his friends.
Lucy hesitates. The taxi is still idling by the curb. She doesn’t have to do this.
She does anyway, grip white-knuckled around her purse strap, eyes gleaming with hunger for the unknown. She has no idea how this night will end. And it’s thrilling.
She takes a step toward the doors then pauses. Walking into a dive bar is one thing — walking into a dive bar without wearing underwear is entirely another. Skirting the smokers, she sequesters herself in the alley and, before she can talk herself out of it, wriggles out of her panties. She wads them up and stuffs them into her purse then smooths her hand down the now-uninterrupted sheath of her dress. Perfect.
Country music, overloud and distorted through blown-out speakers, coats her in a slimy film as she pushes through the squealing double doors. Her least favorite genre, but she can deal. The rattle of pool balls, the quiet hum of conversation. The weight of every stare.
Lucy can feel herself blushing, but she hopes the lights are too low for anyone else to see. Her mind is telling her everyone can tell what isn’t beneath her dress. But then, isn’t that what she wants?
Swallowing thickly, she weaves through sticky tables until she reaches an even stickier countertop, which she talks herself into leaning her forearms upon. Old beer and cocktail rings octopus-sucker onto her skin as if to keep her there.
The bartender, a crochety-looking old woman with hair like an electric shock and wrinkles so deep she could have been friends with Moses, gives Lucy a once-over. “What’re you having?” she asks.
There isn’t a menu – Lucy guesses this is the kind of place that has regulars. “Um.” She licks her lips; the only thing coming to mind is a Cosmopolitan, and this simply isn’t the atmosphere in which she should order anything pink. “A shot of tequila,” she decides with a self-affirming nod.
With a raspy chuckle, the bartender grabs a stepstool and plops it in front of her shelving units. “Top shelf, honey,” she says in response to Lucy’s obvious confusion. “Especially for you.”
A snort off to the side grabs both of their attention. “That’ll be a waste of good liquor,” a cigarette voice rumbles.
The source of such contempt appears to be an older gentleman, body hunched over a lowball, cowboy hat hunched over his ears. He has spider-web wrinkles and a few streaks of gray at his temples, but he can’t be more than forty-five, by Lucy’s estimate. He doesn’t even appear to be looking at her, his eyes fixed on some hazy point of nothing behind the bar as he swirls his glass.
“And why is it a waste?” she asks, leaning a little more heavily against the countertop in a move that says I’m not going anywhere, and you can just deal, Mr. Sullen Cowboy.
He deigns to slide his eyes in her direction, and she gulps, just a little. They’re deep-set and captivating and framed by thick, dark eyelashes that would make a starlet jealous. They’re also narrowed, peevish, watery with alcohol. “Girls like you come in here all the time,” he drawls, “thinking they’re something. Thinking someone will be happy to pay for however many shots they want to down before heaving it all up on that there sidewalk.” And he nods toward the front doors. “I give you three shots of anything higher than thirty-proof before you’re out there regretting it. Like I said: a waste.”
The bartender retrieves a gleaming bottle and makes her creaking way back down the ladder. “Don’t you listen to him, honey,” she says, rolling her eyes as she uncorks the bottle. “You puke these shots up, you come back in and buy more. I won’t complain.”
Then and there, Lucy vows not to throw up, no matter how wasted she gets. She’s not giving either of them the satisfaction. What she does do is pick up the shot glass the bartender has filled with trembling hands, unpeel her arms from the bartop, and drop herself cheekily onto the stool next to Mr. Cowboy.
“Tell me, since you’re so smart,” she says, lifting the glass, eyes a-sparkle. “What kind of girl am I?”
He doesn’t respond immediately, instead dragging his eyes up her body in a manner so lewd her cheeks go hot. When he’s seemingly looked his fill, he takes an appreciative sip of whatever is in his glass. “The kind who thinks she’s got something to prove,” he says. “Could be to your daddy, could be to a boyfriend, could be to yourself. But you’re here to convince someone of something.”
Lucy immediately drops her eyes then winces when she catches the cowboy’s smirk of satisfaction. She should have known better than to let him know he’s hit a nerve. Her face burns as much as her throat as she downs the tequila – and even manages not to cough. She can’t keep from gasping a little – a bonfire in her esophagus – but she slams the glass down with authority.
The cowboy reaches over, pushes the shot glass toward the bar’s edge. “We need a refill over here, Ma.”
Lucy refocuses on the gnarled bartender; she must be the proprietor, the Ma June of Ma June’s.
Ma June doesn’t even bother to check with Lucy before pouring her another shot, and Lucy gets the sense this is not the first time the cowboy has done this.
Swallowing thickly, she fiddles with the hem of her dress. The garment is as long as she is experienced, and she’s starting to feel that acutely. It’s not like she’s done nothing, but a few fumbling experiences in dorm rooms look like nothing next to this dark stranger. She gets the impression he could show her a thing or two she’s never even thought of. A new part of her is starting to burn, and she crosses her ankles to take her mind off it.
He notices that too, damn him, and tilts his lowball toward her shot glass. “Drink.”
It’s like something short-circuits in her brain, some primal instinct to obey taking over. Instead of telling him she didn’t even technically order a second shot, she tosses it back without thinking. This time, she has to clear her throat to convince herself it isn’t actually aflame. Her thoughts are bordering on wispy; she’s bordering on tipsy.
Feeling bolder, she leans forward, gesturing to the worn hat resting on the bar on his other side. “Are you really a cowboy?”
He shakes his head. “I just played one once, on TV. What, you don’t recognize me?” Taking up the hat, he sets it at a jaunty angle and makes an expression fit for a movie poster.
Lucy stares at him, blinking, before shaking her head. “Sorry. I used to watch Westerns with my dad, but he only liked classics, and you don’t look old enough to have been in any of those.”
His teeth gleam in the dim interior, a flash of a smile. “Well, if you don’t know who I am, I’m not telling you.”
She’s tempted to pull out her phone and Google it just to see the look on his face, but she gets the sense that would ruin the game they’ve started. Instead, she sidles as close as she can without falling off the stool and bats her eyelashes. “Do I get a third shot?”
The cowboy gestures to Ma. “For being such a quick learner,” he says, chucking her under the chin. He drains his own glass and indicates that Ma should refill it too, which she does with alacrity.
Feeling equal parts rewarded and condescended to – a combination that goes down about as easy as the tequila – she stares down at the shot glass. Remnants of the good girl gape in horror as she places the rim against her lips and lets it wash over her tongue. This is asking for trouble – but trouble is exactly what she came here for.
Warmth suffuses her, a pleasant humming sensation working its way through her limbs, making her feel good. She’s missed out on too many nights like this by holing up in her dorm room; what a life she hasn’t led!
Lucy props her elbow on the counter, makes a fist and rests her cheek on it so she can better study the cowboy. “You were really on TV?” she asks, proud when it comes out without a hint of a slur. At his nod, she hums. “You’re handsome enough for it, I guess.”
“You guess?” He arches an eyebrow.
She squints, the tip of her tongue peeking from the corner of her lips as she concentrates. “I’m trying to shave off a couple decades in my head. You know, so you’re not so fucking old.” Did he notice she stammered a little when she cursed? God, she hopes not.
His attention fixes briefly on her slice of tongue before he pulls a move of his own, brushes his fingers across her knee in the barest hint of touch. “You got a problem with my age, sweetheart, there’s plenty of open seats in this bar.”
Plenty of younger guys too, she’d seen them when she came in. But Lucy intends to stay right where she is.
That is, until the doors open and a distressingly familiar voice calls out, “Lucy!”
Every drop of blood drains from her face, and she quickly turns, praying he won’t notice her if she just hunches her head between her shoulders and–
A hand settles on her shoulder, overwarm and slightly clammy.
She forces herself to turn, ignoring the curiosity evident on the cowboy’s face, but she can’t even make herself fake a smile. “Chet,” she half-grinds through her teeth. “What are you doing here?”
“I called you and you didn’t pick up, so I got worried.” Chet doesn’t drop his hand from her shoulder until she practically glares at him, at which point he takes to nervously rubbing his palms together.
Lucy is usually a lot better at patience; Lucy normally doesn’t have three shots of tequila in her. “I’ve told you, Chet, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. And your calling me doesn’t explain how or why you’re here. Standing in front of me in this moment.”
Chet eyes the empty shot glass and the unsavory character on the stool next to her and frowns. “I used Find My Phone, and it said you were at some dive bar, which I guess is this one. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. It’s not very… like you.” And he gestures helplessly to the rundown environment in which they find themselves.
She shifts, and Chet pales when he gets a better look at her. At the provocative, low-cut dress, whose hem has rucked dangerously far up her thighs. “Don’t worry,” she says, standing and feeling the alcohol burn a new flaming trail down her stomach as she moves. It takes her only half a step to reach the cowboy’s stool, where she smoothly lowers herself onto his lap and winds her arm around his neck, hoping desperately he’ll play along. “I’m completely fine.”
To her relief, the cowboy drops perfectly into the role she’s created for him. One hand settles on her hip; the other kneads her ass like it’s his job, and Chet’s face goes, if possible, even paler.
“Wh-who are you?” he stammers, and god bless him for trying to stand up for her, but Lucy doesn’t need (and especially doesn’t want) his interference.
She opens her mouth to tell him so, but the words dissolve behind her teeth as she feels – no, surely he isn’t – the cowboy’s hand creep from her ass to the bare skin of her upper thigh. His fingers sneak beneath her dress, and her own hands fly to the front edge to keep it, at least, pulled low as he starts to tease the back half of it up.
Just enough for him to stroke the smooth outer curve of her cheek, skin to skin.
Lucy scrambles to remember how to speak. It’s obscene, what the cowboy is doing. Right in front of God and everyone. “Really,” she finally manages. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”
“I did.” Chet lifts his chin and cranks his shoulders back in what is supposed to be a display of authority, but he looks like a child play-acting next to the stranger upon whose lap she’s perched. “Someone could have been…” and his gaze drifts meaningfully to said stranger, “...taking advantage of you.”
The cowboy chuckles, low and condescending, and the sound diffuses all the way down to Lucy’s toes. His breath is hot on her neck, his hand is hot on her ass, his thigh is practically an open flame beneath her uncovered sex.
Do not grind down, do not grind down, do not grind–
“You hear that, sweetheart?” The cowboy lifts his leg, just a little, and presses himself right into the center of her even as his fingers slip further inward. She can feel his jolt of surprise when he realizes exactly what she isn’t wearing – and then the slow curl of satisfaction she knows has taken hold of his wicked mouth. A mouth he presses right below her ear as he half-whispers, “Mr. Chivalry over here thinks I’m taking advantage of you.”
If speaking before had been difficult, it’s become next to impossible. Lucy swallows down a whimper and avoids looking Chet in the eye. “Honestly, Chet–” The bastard cowboy swipes his finger along the length of her slit, and she breaks off mid-sentence. Has to swallow and try again with his index finger making lazy swirls around – but not on, not where she really wants it – her clit.
“Honestly, Chet.” Lucy hopes she doesn’t sound as strained as she feels. She hopes, too, that she can keep from rocking her hips like some needy whore at least until her cousin isn’t staring straight at her. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
More than okay, the cowboy seems to promise as he finally, mercifully, actually presses against her clit.
It’s all she can do not to moan and spread her legs for him then and there. Instead, she forces herself to level her stare at Chet and point to the door. “Go. Now.”
Chet hesitates, and the cowboy withdraws, wrapping his arm possessively around Lucy’s waist.
“I think the lady told you to leave,” he says, and there’s a dangerous edge to the words that has even Chet backing up a few paces.
Lucy waves him off, doesn’t stop waving until he’s fully out the doors and she feels like she can breathe again. She makes to disentangle herself from the cowboy, but he doesn’t loosen his grip an inch.
“That who you’re trying to prove something to?” he asks scornfully. “He looks like someone rode him hard and put him up wet.”
With a huff, she renews her efforts to get off his lap, but he only pulls her more flush against him. This close, she can smell the alcohol on his breath: whiskey. And cologne of some sort, something nice and woodsy that makes her relax back into him without her even realizing it. She sways toward him, inhaling, before coming to her senses and muttering, “No, he’s my cousin.”
The cowboy breaks into a rasping laugh that makes her feel even more humiliated. “Well, who’s going to tell him that? You know he wants to fuck you, right?”
“Shut up!” she hisses, face flaming redder than it ever has since she started this ill-fated encounter with the cowboy. Red enough to match the dress whose hem he’s toying with again.
“Of course, I can’t say I blame him. I want to fuck you too,” he remarks casually, as if the words don’t punch the breath from her lungs.
Just like that, she forgives him all his trespasses, need making a home low in her gut. She resettles her arms around his neck and bats her eyelashes coquettishly up at him. “Why don’t you, then?”
He does the very last thing she wants him to do: places his hands on her waist and plucks her off him like a ripe apple from a tree. But only, as it turns out, so he can rap his knuckles on the bar and tell Ma to “Put her tequila on my tab.” Then he takes her by the elbow and steers her out of the bar. Barely even looks at her, and she shouldn’t find that thrilling, but she does, a little.
Lucy automatically angles for the street, expecting him to call them a cab or to have brought a car – one he’s probably too drunk to drive, if she’s honest – but he instead takes them past the smokers and around the side of the bar. There’s nothing there but an alleyway with trash piles dotting the walls and a dirty sidewalk. She feels grimy just stepping into it, but she can’t deny it’s secluded.
There is, in fact, barely enough room for the two of them to walk side by side together. The only source of light is a few dingy streetlamps; one of them is flickering, goes out even as she watches and doesn’t come back on. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of place she pictured ending her night.
Cobwebbed with shadows, the cowboy looks a lot more menacing, and her knees go a little weak. She throws a glance toward the mouth of the alley – far away and getting farther the more he leads her in. Her breath comes a little faster; the heat in her gut grows a little hotter. It smolders when he exchanges her elbow for her shoulder, pressing her back against the wall with his hands, then his body.
Lucy suddenly doesn’t know what to do. Grab him? Kiss him? Ask him to stop? God, no, not that last one; then he wouldn’t be skimming his hand up her inner thigh and drawing his fingers across her folds.
His rasping chuckle weakens her legs further. “Played right into your goddamn hands, didn’t I? Well, sweetheart,” he smirks, “now you’re in mine.” With that, he places his free hand on her other shoulder and pushes her down.
The pavement grinds against her knees, painful and raw, but then he pulls himself out for her, and she forgets all that. His cock is long and thick and gorgeous, and did she mishear pornography for television? Heartbeat pulsing on her tongue and between her thighs, she lowers her mouth to him and takes him in like she can’t breathe without it. Can’t breathe with it either, around it, but he feels like velvet and smells like cigarettes, even though she hasn’t seen him smoking.
Lucy savors the ragged exhalation above her, the tension she can feel in his thighs as she braces her hands against them. He’s trying not to rut into her mouth, and the tremble of it thrills her. What would he be like, she wonders, if he held nothing back?
For now, though, she focuses on what she has: the salt-musk slowly seeping onto her tongue, the rough brush of denim when she reaches the base of his shaft, the bite of his fingers as they wind in her hair. He isn’t gentle, and the bloom of pain has her pressing her thighs together just to feel a modicum of relief. All that time spent in her dorm room fantasizing about the gentlemanly boyfriend who would surely someday sweep her off her feet… she’s beginning to think she’s wasted a lot of goddamn time.
She’s not entirely oblivious to what men like, and she’s gratified to feel him shudder when she runs her tongue along the ridge of his cockhead. And to feel it again when she pulls off him just so she can lap up the precome beading at the tip. She glances up through her eyelashes as she takes him back into her mouth to find his eyes practically burning in the dark.
“Christ,” he breathes when she flattens her tongue along the bottom of his shaft and swallows him to the root. “A man’d think you spent every night on your knees like this, way you use that mouth.”
She wants to tell him she does, just to see what he would do, but her mouth is too full for speech. Instead, she only hums and lets her eyes flutter closed so she can better savor how he feels and tastes.
Only then does he let an ounce of that self-control slip. His grip on her hair tightens in silent warning before he rocks his hips forward; gently at first and then, when she relaxes her jaw, considerably faster until she has no choice but to hold on and remind herself to breathe.
It doesn’t take long for her to become a mess. Lips swollen from the abuse, jaw aching with the effort of staying so wide for so long, spit stringing from her chin to the ground. She’s making sounds she didn’t even know she could make, and she doesn’t mean to make any of them. They just happen, dragged from her throat by the force of his thrusts and the twist of his hands in her hair. Her scalp aches – she doesn’t even realize it until he tugs her off him and grabs her by the bicep to haul her back to her feet.
She would have fallen if it weren’t for his grip; she thinks her knees are bleeding; they’re certainly bruised. As it is, his thigh is between hers before she can do much more than try and right herself. She perches atop the very spot her hands just clung to as he takes her chin in his fingers and wrenches her face up.
“Show me how much you want me,” he commands.
Swallowing thickly, Lucy curls her fingers at the hem of her dress. There isn’t that far for it to go, but she tugs it up anyway until it can’t get in the way. Then she gives in to the desire that’s been blooming inside her since her second shot, lowers herself to his thigh, and grinds down against it. A moan, thready and humiliating, falls from her lips, but her sense of shame quickly evaporates as she rolls her hips.
She’s too focused on getting what she wants to feel self-conscious – that is, until he offers her his fingers and she treats them with the same reverence she’d shown his cock. She realizes how she must look, suckling on his hand, riding his thigh. Debauched. Miles from the girl she thought she was.
She retreats back into her own pleasure, focused only on getting herself off. To that end, she braces her feet more firmly on the ground and plants her hands on the uppermost part of his thigh to give herself more leverage. Her breath comes faster in line with her movements as she edges toward a cliff’s edge. So close… almost there…
Before she can reach it, the cowboy pulls his leg away.
“Bastard.” Lucy doesn’t even realize she’s going to say it until she does, but he is. A smug bastard who’s smirking down at her with his dripping, glistening fingers and a damp spot in his denim.
He lifts his hand to her face and strokes down her cheek, along her jaw, and somehow he makes a move that should be tender feel condescending. “I want you to beg.”
Lucy glares at him. Just for a moment, she considers pulling her dress back down, marching out of the alley, and seeing if one of the smokers is willing to go for a round… but her eyes wander back down to his cock, and need pulses deep in her gut. So she licks her lips and bids farewell to the last of her dignity. “Please.”
He grips her chin and tilts it up, eyes gleaming. “Please what?” he asks, voice practically a purr.
She reaches for his belt buckle and begins to unthread it without ever breaking his gaze. “Please take that unfairly thick cock of yours,” she tugs sharply at the leather, “and bury it so far in me,” flicks the button of his jeans open, “I won’t be able to walk straight for a week.” With those last words, she hooks her fingers in his waistband and pushes it down so that his jeans pool around his knees.
It’s far from glamorous: the both of them half-dressed, a second light starting to flicker, the muffled music of the bar thumping through the air. Lucy doesn’t care a whit, not when he takes her by the hips and hefts her up so that the head of his dick nudges at her entrance. She drapes her arms around his neck and locks her ankles in the small of his back.
Only once she gives him a small nod does he lock his arm around her waist, steady himself against the wall with his other hand, and push into her with a long exhalation. “Like fucking velvet,” he breathes.
Lucy shudders, partly at the sating of her desire after so much anticipation, partly at the adjustment her body has to make around him. God, does he feel good. She shifts her hips experimentally and gasps as he sinks in even deeper. And that’s nothing compared to when he starts to move deliberately, thrusting forward and pulling another gasp from her.
He seems to savor it, runs his tongue over his teeth like the sound is something physical he can taste and he wants more. In fact, he leans in to nip at the soft skin of her throat, a move she hadn’t thought would make her clench around him the way it does.
“Oh, you like that?” he asks, tone bordering on dangerous.
Her body answers for her when he moves to the junction of her shoulder and buries his teeth there instead. Her head falls back, eyes fluttering closed as she moans. She tugs at the short hairs on the nape of his neck to encourage him further and only slightly regrets it when he bulls them back toward the alley wall.
The scrape of her skin against the brick is quickly overwhelmed by the snap of his hips, the way he moves within her. She clings to him like a scrub bush to a cliffside, trying to weather his storm. He hasn’t been gentle this whole evening, and he isn’t now either. So Lucy doesn’t bother to be. She digs her nails into his back and shoulders; she tightens her legs around his waist until her muscles tremble; she fastens her own teeth in the lobe of his ear and tugs.
All of it only makes the cowboy bolder. He crowds her against the wall, thrusts sharper now, deeper, as if he’s laying claim to her. Supporting her with one arm, he gathers her wrists in his other hand and pins them above her.
With his arm crooked over her, he feels like even more of a cage. Lucy rolls her hips down to meet his every stroke, the only avenue left to her to remind her she hasn’t entirely lost control. She’s awed by his strength; it can’t be easy to hold her all this time, but he never falters, never so much as trembles with anything but passion.
He applies a greater pressure to her wrists. “Keep them there,” he says. Without waiting for a response, he removes his hand and tugs the neckline of her dress down until it’s captured by and exposing her breasts. He groans at the sight of them, bouncing each time he spears her, an irresistible invitation.
Lucy squirms as he takes both tongue and teeth to her nipples. It’s a pleasured sort of pain, how rough he is, and she can barely obey his command to keep her hands where they are. Not before this moment has she wished to know his name, but now she wants something to call him so she can tell him how desperate she is to finish. Instead, all that comes from her parted lips is a “Please” closer to a whine than a word.
Even so, he seems to know exactly what she’s asking for. He kneads her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers before giving it a solid pinch that draws another gasp from her. “You think you deserve it?” he smirks, slowing his pace. He’s practically languid now, infuriatingly slow and far from satisfying.
Lucy’s first instinct is to ignore his instructions regarding her hands, but if she’s trying to prove what she deserves, that’s the last thing she should do. She settles for arching her back, which puts him at a delicious new angle inside her and makes her eyes roll back slightly into her head. “What… what was the question?”
The cowboy chuckles, removing his hand from her breast so he can set his thumb against her lip. “Tongue.”
Obediently, she laps at the digit, heart fluttering when he trails his knuckles along her upper thigh. When he finally touches her clit, she lets her arms fall, drapes them over his shoulders to give herself better leverage.
He circles the sensitive bud, matching the rhythm of his thrusts even as he returns to his previous pace.
Waves of sensation wash over Lucy, making her whimper. She peels herself away from the wall so she can bury her face in the curve of his neck. His skin muffles the sounds she makes, but not enough. If the smokers are still out in front of the bar, they’re sure to know exactly what he’s doing to her.
She comes around his cock with a euphoric shudder and an even stronger desire to know just who this man is. Once, she already knows, will not be enough.
“Your turn,” she whispers, allowing her lips to brush the shell of his ear. “Inside.” She’ll keep the fact that she’s on birth control to herself unless he asks.
He doesn’t. Just buries himself deep as he can go on his next thrust and braces himself against the wall to keep them both upright.
For a long moment, the only sound is their mingled breaths as they both struggle to catch it. Lucy whimpers when he withdraws, hating the empty ache he leaves behind. Unlocking her legs from his waist is a process and one that ends with her nearly toppling over from how shaky her muscles have become.
The cowboy catches her, hauls her up, cradles her against his chest so briefly she almost thinks she imagined it. It’s a glimpse of someone softer – maybe someone he used to be.
Curiosity itches beneath her tongue, but she swallows it down. This isn’t about getting to know him. She focuses on fixing her dress, shimmying it back down over her hips and putting her tits back where they belong. There’s nothing to be done for her hair – which she can tell is in hopeless disarray – or for her neck – which is riddled with teeth marks. It might have taken her five years of college, but she’ll finally have a walk of shame that’s actually worthy of the name.
She’s not sure what to do next – it doesn’t seem right to just… thank him and leave – but he takes charge here too, sweeping an arm around her waist and tugging her flush against him. His kiss is a searing, devouring thing, as if he were just beginning his seduction instead of finishing it.
After her initial jolt of surprise, Lucy melts into it. He tastes like the whiskey he’d been drinking, and she laps into his mouth to chase it.
He breaks away with a scrape of his teeth over her bottom lip. Makes a pit stop by her ear to whisper, “Name’s Cooper Howard, sweetheart. Look me up.” Then he’s gone, really gone, striding away without a backward glance and disappearing around the corner – presumably back into the bar from whence he came.
Cooper Howard.
Lucy turns the name over and over again in her mind; she knows just what she’ll be looking up when she gets home. She makes her tottering way to the mouth of the alley and waits at the curb for another taxi. Despite the nature of her and Cooper’s meeting, she can’t help but think this won’t be the last she sees of him. The thought makes her heart beat faster. She can’t wait to see what comes next.