Page 2 of Bastard

My choices—bathroom stall or the bench?

I feel my spine stiffening. Where doesn’t matter. Bench, bathroom stall, public restroom. Anywhere will do, so long as I make good on my New Year’s resolution.

I narrow eyes at myself in the mirror. Black hair swept up into a loose updo and held in place by a dozen bobby pins. Thin application of eyeliner curling up at the corners, giving my brown eyes a catlike effect. Long, black eyelashes coated with two applications of mascara. Olive skin. I look different, foreign from the girl I used to be and more adept at masking who I really am. Except who am I? Who exactly have I become?

I dip my fingers into the V of my dress, pluck a flat tube of watermelon lip gloss from my bra, then apply a coat to my lips. Looking like a more mature, albeit more jaded, version of myself.

The lights go out and the lock of the door clicks into place.

I inhale sharply, slightly taken aback by his take-charge manner and by how quietly he’s entered. The scent of his expensive cologne fills the room. A crisp, clean smell with underlying woodsy notes. It’s pleasant yet unexpected. I missed that smell when we were bumping and grinding on the dance floor, my attention absorbed by my own emotional struggles than on him. Maybe he reapplied, before we begin bumping and grinding to a different tune?

I vaguely make out his shape in the mirror as he leans against a stall door. Arms crossed. Shoulders broad in his suit jacket. Taller than I thought.

He’s ten times more dangerous off the dance floor.

I swallow back my doubts. “You found me.”

He doesn’t answer but just studies me in the dark. The growing silence making me rethink this bold plan of fucking a stranger in a hotel bathroom.

I wish I could see him better. He seemed like your typical playboy hoping to ring in the new near with a bang. What’s the hold up? He would have fucked me like a Roman conquistador out on the dance floor an hour ago.

“Don’t play coy now. Come take what you followed me in here for.”

He prowls forward like a cat on the hunt. Then, he’s on me, weaving his fingers through my hair and gently pushing my head down so all I see is the lip gloss I must have dropped in the sink and the condom wrapper peeking out of my bra.

Es perfecto. Fucking him will be less personal this way. Intimacy isn’t what this is going to be about. How can it be when the goal is to fuck another man out of my system?

His lips brush across my exposed neck. Whisper-like. The lightest of caresses over a highly-sensitive part of me. His first touch, and it’s like he knows exactly where my trigger-points are.

A shiver runs down my spine.

I thrust my ass back into his groin.Teeth graze over my skin in response, lightly then slightly harder.

Better.

I rise up on my toes and drag my ass across his hardness, and I’m rewarded with his light nip on my neck. Gentle, like a caress.

Dios, no.

Sweet and intimate isn’t what I need from him. Not anyone. Ever again.

I try to raise my head.

He pushes it back down.

“Fuck me like you dance.” I wiggle against him. “Dirty,capisci?”I demand in Italian.

I gasp as the hem of my dress is yanked up and over my hips. And then, with a firm tug, he rips my thong off my body.

No translation required. He understands perfectly.

He smacks my ass. Once. Twice. Three. Four times.

“Harder.”

He makes a noise that sounds more annoyed than turned-on, then stops.

“I won’t break, if that’s why you’re hesitant.”