There’s only one way to know that I didn’t wear this and that’s to give it the smell test. An erotic shiver shakes me as the image of Leka standing in the living room sniffing my underwear dances through my head.
This is progress, I tell myself. Time to turn up the heat.
* * *
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Leka thunders.
Bent over at the waist with my booty high in the air, my upside-down view of Leka is framed between my two legs. Even from here, I can see his frustration. It fills me with a sad sort of happiness. I’m glad I can get a reaction out of him but dejected that all he’s done in the past two weeks is to tell me to cover up, stop leaving my stuff around, and to go to sleep.
He likes the last order a lot as if I have a bad hangover that’s causing me to act weird and if I just get in a couple naps during the day, I’ll return to the meek girl that I was when he left me four years ago.
“I’m exercising. What does it look like I’m doing?” I swing my hips around, trying to mimic the half-dressed woman on screen. My actions are sluggish, though. I’m tired, but not because I’ve been working out for a long time. I started only minutes ago after I got the word from doorman Terry that Leka was on his way up. I’m tired because I’ve gone through steps two through twenty without one physical reaction. That lack of response kills my morale like a bus hitting a pedestrian at forty miles per hour.
“You’re watching a porno. That’s what it looks like you’re doing.” He sounds unusually agitated.
“Gold star for you. It is a porno, and your immediate recognition of it makes me wonder how much you watch.” The online article I’d read about seducing your man suggested watching porn with my man. I’d never be able to con Leka into that, so I combined that idea with the one about doing a sexy striptease. I thought it was a brilliant idea at the time, but, currently, faced with Leka’s dumbfounded stare, I’m reconsidering.
He stomps over to the living room and snatches the remote off the television. “None. I don’t watch porn. This is fucking ridiculous. If you want to work out, go to a gym.”
“But there are men at the gym,” I taunt. “What if one of them is overcome with lust and attacks me?”
Leka presses his full lips into a thin, angry line but doesn’t have a rejoinder. There are dangers everywhere in this world and there’s only one way to avoid them—by hiding. I refuse to do that.
32
Leka
“There’s still some taco meat left. Want it?” Bit leans over my shoulder, deliberately brushing her unbound tit against my arm.
It’d be so easy to reach around and pull her down on my lap. Or even better. I could clear the table with one swipe of my arm, lift her onto the empty surface, slide down whatever pair of panties she’s wearing—if she’s wearing any—and eat her out like she’s been begging me to for the last three weeks.
I remind myself how fucking wrong that would be, bite into my tongue until I taste copper and then shake my head. “I’m full. Thanks.”
But I’m not full. I’m hungry. I’m reaching the state of starvation. Every time I look at her, my tongue tingles and my fingers twitch. My dick rises to half-mast and my tiny pea brain screams at me to take her. Strip her clothes off, tie her to a bed, and fuck her every dirty, naughty way that anyone has dreamed of and a hundred new ones that people haven’t even invented yet.
Days have become a torture. Nights are pure hell. I work myself hard, but I find that I can’t be far from her. The invisible tether that has connected us since the day I found her reels me back. My body can walk and talk and function, but the heart of me sits in her little hands.
She putters over to the sink, pulls out the trash, making sure her ass is high in the air. I catch a glimpse of apple-green lace covering one juicy cheek. A man can only take so much before he breaks. My control is whisper thin. One wrong move and it will snap.
I drop my hands below the table and stab my palm with the fork. The pain allows the lust to recede a fraction—enough so that I don’t throw the table out of the way and attack her.
I’m tired of this. I’m tired of having to exercise self-control while she peels off her underwear in the middle of a rerun of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I’m tired of having to pretend I don’t see the outline of her figure when she stands in front of the fireplace in a white nightgown so sheer it’s a miracle it doesn’t fall apart when she breathes. I’m tired of going to bed each night with my dick in my hand, furtively jacking off because if I don’t get some motherfucking relief, I’m going to explode.