“Maybe a lot,” I counter.

“So then you won’t get mad in the morning when I ask you about this. Have you really never given a blow job?”

I roll my eyes, even though it’s dark, even though he’s snug behind me and can’t see my eyes. “No. I told you that.” I tense up. “Why?”

“Did you ever want to?”

“No.”

“Do you?”

I laugh. “You offering yourself?”

He laughs too, and I can feel his breath against my neck. There’s a faint smell of beer, but it’s mingled with him, and I have the sudden urge to taste beer now for the first time. On his lips. “Anytime,” he says softly, but that’s all. There’s no innuendo in his voice. Nothing more than a continuation of the game in some ways.

I push against his arm playfully. “And how the hell did you have a threesome, king of the studs?”

“Two ladies.”

“Yeah. I kinda figured it was two ladies,” I say. Then in a more serious, searching tone. “Was it good?”

I’m not even sure why I’m asking. It’s like I’m picking at a scab, hunting for a wound, so I can worry away at it.

“I barely remember it,” he says in a sleepy voice. A warm breeze blows through the open window, carrying with it the faraway sounds of cars and cabs on late night Manhattan streets. Somewhere, Jordan and Kristen are out there having fries. In here, I feel as if we are the only two people in the world. In the dark, hushed voices, whispering about our pasts.

“But you remember you had two at once,” I point out.

“Yeah and that’s it,” he says, and loops his arm tighter around my waist. I inhale sharply at the closeness. More, tighter, closer. He’s bringing me nearer to him, his jeans against mine, his bare chest against my shirt, his breath on my neck, and now, there, his hand on my belly. Then, slinking under the bottom of my shirt, inching its way to my stomach.

I gasp quietly as his fingertips reach my bare skin.

“But there’s this other girl and I remember everything about her,” he says, and in an instant, all I see, all I feel are his words. They have their own heartbeat and pulse, a living being, surrounding me.

He traces lazy fingers across my stomach, and I want this feeling to last forever because it’s so out-of-this-world intense. I swear my body is sliding into another plane of existence, some realm of pleasure I’ve never allowed before, as feelings spill over – want, desire, fear all wrapped up in a messy package, without a bow.

I close my eyes and revel in the sensations zooming and racing through my blood and veins and body at the slightest touch of his fingertips on my belly. I want so badly for him to touch me more, and I am so scared of what will happen if he does. I don’t know how it would feel. But that’s not true. I do know. Because he’s made me feel this way before, and now he’s doing it again.

And I don’t know what it means. If it means we’re something, or we’re nothing, or we are just this moment. We are the here and now.

“You do?” I ask.

He nods against me, his lips practically brushing my neck in a sweet kiss. Not quite, but almost. “I remember the way she smelled so sexy and sweet,” he begins, and my heart stops, and then speeds up, and I don’t know if I can breathe. He plays with a strand of my hair, running it through his fingers, then leaning his head into my hair, inhaling me. Everything inside of me is burning with a tingling heat, and butterflies I’ve barely known. I never felt a thing for my clients. Not one iota of a flutter, a wish, a hope. With Trey, that is literally all I feel. As if my body is glowing, like a firefly, and I am flickering with every second of contact, or even merely the promise of contact. The possibility. Just the slightest touch from him is the sweetest escape. “And the sounds she made,” he continues, and I feel my cheeks flush, but still I’m dying for more, so I have to ask.

“What did she sound like?”

He sighs happily, and buzzes his lips against my earlobe. “Like no one had ever made her feel that way before.”

“No one had,” I say, and he spreads his fingers across my stomach. I shiver and my breath hitches.

“Like that,” he says, and I can hear the grin in his words. “That was how she sounded when I touched her.”

He draws circles on my flesh, lazy lines across my belly, and I can’t help it. I am beyond turned on, I am floating on a cloud of lust and wishes and wanting, and so I wriggle against him, feeling how hard he is against my backside.

He groans in my ear at the pressure of my body against his erection, and it’s still strange to me to want to do this. To want to be touched. To want more. And after last night, and tonight, and where I was, to want to do this right now is bizarre to me. As if my life is built into separate rooms, and I’ve left one and entered another. And here, now, in this room I am only a girl of the moment, of flesh and blood and want, and I am aching all over for him. He’s drunk, I know he’s drunk, I know if he were sober, he wouldn’t be doing this, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t care.

“It sounds like she liked it when you touched her,” I whisper, and I’m silently praying that he’ll slide his hand down my pants, that he’ll touch me again, taste me, do something, anything to alleviate the throbbing between my legs. This is so rare for me, so unusual to feel this way. To be wet. To be wanting. To be turned on. But he does this to me. He lets me experience my body in a new way.

“I loved touching her,” he says, and with one strong hand on my hip, he shifts me 180 degrees so I’m facing him. His eyes are barely open, he’s in such a twilight state right now, but he bends his mouth to my neck, and begins kissing me there, and in seconds, I am asking for more.

“Trey,” I whisper as if his name has ten syllables and I have to say them all, feel them all, taste them all as his soft lips explore my neck. He tugs me closer, hooking a hand around my thigh, moving my leg on top of his, and then yanking me closer so I’m practically straddling his thigh in this position. More kisses rain down on my skin, and I can’t help it. I start rubbing myself against his thigh, and I whimper at the contact that’s both relief and a wish for more.

“Do that, Harley,” he says in a rough, ragged voice. “Fucking do that and don’t stop. I want to get you off.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I loved doing that to you. I love everything about making you come. I want to make you come in every way. With my mouth, with my fingers, with you just riding me like this right now,” he says, before he dives back to my neck, layering hot, desperate kisses on me as I move against him. I should be embarrassed, I’m dry humping his leg, after all. But I want to do this, and maybe that’s why I’m not ashamed. Because I am wound full of desire and this dark craving for him. My breathing grows stilted and erratic as the feelings build inside me, like lightning crackling through my veins, hot and wild and electric. Soon his hands are in my hair, and his mouth returns to mine. He kisses me with the kind of deep, furious kiss of a man who has to have his woman, and that woman happens to be dangerously close to coming.

He doesn’t even have to touch me, though I wouldn’t mind if his fingers were down my pants, or his tongue again, but right now I am close, so close, just from the friction of my body against his. He shifts one more time, so he’s on his back, and I’m on top, totally clothed, but my legs are spread, and he’s under me.

“I want you to fuck me like that, Harley. I want you to ride me, and I want you to come while you’re doing it,” he says, grabbing at my hair, and pulling me back down to his mouth.

His tongue swirls wildly with mine, his lips crushing mine with such intensity, as if he would fall off the earth if he stopped, that I start to lose control.

The thing I value most, that I quest after. That I seek.

Control.