Chapter Text
The guy was tall and bumped into her on the dance floor. He laughed and made an apology and she would have kept dancing but he got closer. Her brother's friend had made some comment as she was leaving the table about her being a good girl and all the things good girls didn't do. It was echoing in her head a little as she danced alone in the crowd. Now tall guy was getting closer and she didn't want to be the good girl that everyone thought she was. She kept her back to him but kept dancing. This was better than dancing by herself and it didn't have to mean anything. This wasn't her town. She would be gone by Sunday afternoon. She could embarrass herself a little bit with a very tall man who smelled really good. Just for a little while.
His warm hands slid up her hips and right up under her skirt to brush along the bare skin of her stomach. She bit her lip and leaned back so her shoulders were against his chest and let him set the rhythm of the dance. It was a club. She could let go of being a good girl for a song or two. He took the invitation. His palm flattened out on her stomach and he pulled her back against him, stroking a little as he fit his hips to hers so her ass was pressed in against him as he controlled the way she swayed to the music.
Just one song.
Tessa didn’t go to clubs by herself but she was here to celebrate Nate’s birthday and Nate had disappeared with a girl or to run a drug deal or do something else that she definitely didn't want details of. Tessa didn't want to spend time with his friends on her own so here she was. Alone. Or she had been until this guy had showed up and demanded all her attention but when the song ended, she turned around. She wasn’t sure when she did if it was to push him off or invite him to keep going. She was tall but she had to look up at him.
He was gorgeous.
Oh.
Tessa hadn’t been expecting that. Perfect jaw line, soft lips, expressive eyebrows. He raised them at her in a question. His lips quirked up just a little at one corner. His dark curly hair fell over his forehead when he leaned in and smiled at her. There was something about his eyes that stopped her thoughts in their track.
“Ok,” she said then realized that was dumb and tried again. “Hi.”
“Drink?” he asked.
She was held still by those eyes and just nodded. He didn’t let go of her. He hooked a finger in her belt loop and pulled her along with him to the bar where he let her order and hung close to her while they waited for the bartender to make the drinks. She’d ordered something with just the tiniest bit of alcohol in it. She did not want to be drunk in a bar like this. She did not want to be drunk anywhere where one of Nate’s friends might find her.
She sipped the drink while the guy crowded into her space.
“Are you always this handsy?” she asked.
“There’s a guy over there,” he pointed with his chin and she turned to see Axel, Nate’s asshole older friend who was far creepier than his usual petty criminal friends, “Might have been making really disturbing suggestions about you to his minions meathead and doofus,” the gorgeous boy said. “I’m playing interference.”
“Your intentions are pure?” she asked with a laugh. She was sitting on a bar stool and he was between her legs with his hand on the bare skin of her lower back, up under her shirt. It was not a chaste position even with her jeans. He was very close and he was very handsy.
“I’m not good at pure,” Gorgeous said. “But my goals are, in the short term, hot makeouts in the back of the dancefloor and in the long term, you giving me your number so that we can start a brief and torrid love affair with a lot of sex before you realize that I’m a jackass. His intention are more getting you drunk and sharing you around.”
“You could do better than me,” she said.
“On a purely physical level,” he was speaking into her ear so she could hear him, “No, I couldn’t. Have you seen your legs in those jeans? Worth risking assface and his goons trying to beat me up later. And that does even get to your very nice breasts and adorable little mouth. Are your eyes blue? I can’t tell in this light.”
She blinked at him. Being torn down to the pieces of her that he considered most fuckable was not pleasant.
“Strike one,” he said in response to her expression. “Tell me something else. Give me a chance to redeem myself.”
“What makes you think you deserve three strikes?”
“Give me another chance and I’ll show you.”
The smile was destroying her.
“Gray,” she said.
“What?”
“My eyes are gray,” she said, “Not blue.”
“What do you do?”
“Grad student, English lit,” she said but left out where because she wasn’t sure she wanted him to be able to find her.
His smile spread and he was suddenly back in her personal space. She hadn’t realized that he’d pulled back until he pulled her back in. She spread her knees a little and slid forward on the stool in spite of herself. He was beautiful and it was making her make bad decisions. He smelled good and his smile was intoxicating.
“Byron or Shelley, if you had to pick one for a one night stand,” he said.
She laughed.
“Literature. I study literature.”
“So? You’re knowledgable and most people aren’t. I tell people that if I had to pick a famous person to fuck, I’d pick Byron, they stare at me blankly,” Gorgeous said.
“You’d catch something.’
“Ha!” he said. “It’d be worth it.”
“Byron was a dude,” Tessa told him.
“I am aware. I like dudes. I like pretty girls too. But if I’m going to fuck someone from history I want someone who would be utterly decadent and who knows what he’s doing which Byron definitely would. He fucked everything,” he said. “I’m a little bisexual. I’m very bisexual. Does that bother you?”
“No but Byron is still a terrible choice,” she said.
“So, pick a poet, who would you fuck?” he was grinning now, their drinks were abandoned, partially finished on the bar rail beside them as he slid his hands up her hips and under the flowy fabric of the shirt she was wearing.
She’d thought the outfit was a conservative choice. It showed a little skin along her arms but it otherwise covered everything from throat to thighs. The high collar had seemed like a good choice to keep leering jackasses away. Now she had a guy with his hands hidden away beneath the drape of pink silk at her waist as they stroked her lower back and derailed her thoughts.
Later, she wouldn’t remember which one she chose, Shelley maybe or someone modern just to challenge his terrible choice of Byron. Whoever it was that she picked, he argued it. He knew what he was talking about. References to poems, to the public lives of the poets themselves, to other sources. She found herself laughing and leaning in and not objecting when his hand slid farther up her back.
“I want to dance again,” he said.
“Ok,” she said.
“If I try and invite you home, would you be into that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
It just came out. The word just escaped.
Tessa didn’t do that. She didn’t go home with strangers. She wasn’t even drunk. She’d had a drink and a half over the course of nearly three hours. She wasn’t drunk. She didn’t have another excuse. Her gorgeous boy didn’t look drunk either.
“Dancing?” he said.
“Ok.”
“I live about two blocks from here, we can walk there,” he said.
“Ok.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We can still do the making out on the dance floor and you giving me your number parts of this plan but you’re the kind of bad decision that should really be made all at once.”
“True,” he said. “You on the other hand are the kind of good decision that people shouldn’t fuck up by thinking with their cocks.”
“Worry about that in the morning,” she said.
That was an insane sentence. She hadn’t gotten his name yet. She knew which poets he had read and which ones he hadn’t but she didn’t know his name. Letting him take her home and volunteering to stay the night was a bad idea.
Her other choice wasn’t much better. Nate’s apartment. She hadn’t gotten a hotel, she was sleeping on his couch. His asshole friends would be around and the place was small and Nate passed out like the dead if he drank. The guy with his poetry and his perfect smile was a better choice. He’d be a good choice even if her other option was going home to her own safe, empty apartment.
He kissed her on the dance floor. He slipped his leg between hers and used one hand to pull her in so she was grinding against his thigh as the music pulsed around them and then he kissed her, hard. She had to hold onto him to keep from losing her balance. She wasn’t drunk. It was just the kind of kiss that demanded a full body response. He was strong enough to hold her steady and confident enough to keep their bodies swaying in the press of bodies and music so she was rubbing against his leg.
They had made their way through the crush of people and he’d found a free piece of wall. She had no idea where they were. The rest of the world was very far away. He pulled back from the kiss and spoke with his mouth against her ear because the music was so loud. Her back against the wall, his thigh between her legs, both his hands up under her shirt. She was overwhelmed. She didn’t do this. He whispered to her, he called her beautiful, she nodded.
“Are you still coming home with me?” he asked.
“I want to,” she said.
He pulled her out of the bar and onto the street. It was shockingly cold after the press of people in the club and it sobered her up. The gorgeous boy wrapped his jacket around her shoulders and laced his fingers with hers and pulled her under a streetlight about a half a block from the club. He tilted her chin up with his fingers and she frowned at him.
“They are gray,” he said. “It’s a pretty colour.”
“What about yours?” she asked.
“Blue,” he said.
“They’re too dark to be blue,” she said.
“No, I wouldn’t lie to you, look,” he said tilting his head so the light caught on his perfectly beautiful face. His eyes were a shade of blue that leaned into being violet. It was an incredible colour and she touched his face as she studied them. He grinned for her.
“Am I going to regret going home with you?” she asked.
“The sex will be mind-blowing but I am an asshole and I can’t be counted on to call when I say I will,” he said.
She frowned and nodded. She held out a hand and said, “Blow my mind then, pretty boy.”