Nancy
Panic is a strange thing. It’s like I’m sitting outside of my body watching the hyperventilating woman, and as I sit here I can’t help but think that she looks kind of pathetic. I want to scream at her: “Get yourself together, dammit! He didn’t do anything! You’re safe!” But in the panicked woman’s head, Michaels is still leaning over her, still sneering and threatening, and his threatened deeds could become reality all too soon.
Fink leads me into the ladies’ bathroom. He nods at a woman doing her makeup in the mirror. “Sorry, bathroom’s closed. On your way, now.”
The woman retreats and, after checking the stalls, Fink locks the door. He returns to me by the mirror and runs the tap. “Shall I, or you . . .”
“You do it,” I say. “I . . . I’m sorry, Fink.” I don’t know why I apologize. No sooner have I said it than I forget the reasoning behind it. “I’m not, actually. I’m not sorry at all. I’m scared. No, angry. I’m . . . I’m angry, and tired. I’ve never had—I guess Dad has threatened me before. But I never believed him. I believed Michaels. He didn’t care—a whore, I was. Just a whore now. And because I was a whore, he could do anything to me. I saw it in his face. He didn’t care. He was going to—I mean, really going to—”
“Okay,” Fink says, stroking my hair with surprising softness. “I get it. It’s over. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you now.” Fink cleans me up as best he can, washing the blood from my face completely and from my shirt only partially. Then he steps back, hands at his sides, watching me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just wondering if you need an ambulance or what. Your breathing’s all janky.”
“Janky?” I giggle, a little forced but a giggle nonetheless. “Janky?”
He shrugs, looking lost. “I don’t know. Have you breathed like this before?”
“I think I’m coming off a panic attack,” I tell him. “I used to have them when I was a little kid, before I understood what a panic attack was. Dad would come crashing around the house and I’d hide in my room, all hunched up, and just pant and pant into my knees.” As I talk about those torturous times, my breathing slows. Odd that the thing that started all of this would help to fix it. “Once, Dad caught me mid-attack and knelt down beside me and started to cry, said he was sorry and he’d never drink again. The next day he was drunk.”
I take a deep breath, let out a deep breath, repeat the process a few dozen times. Fink watches calmly.
“I’m better now,” I tell him.
“Okay.” He nods. “Good.”
We pause for a few moments, just watching each other.
And then Fink says, “What are you doing here?”
“Really?” I can’t hide the anger from my voice. “That’s the first thing you want to ask me after what just happened?”
He doesn’t enter into the argument, stays cold, distant, just watching with his light green eyes. “I want to know why you’re here,” he says. “I don’t see that that’s a problem.”
“Have I done something to offend you?” I ask. “You’re looking at me like I slashed your tires.”
He laughs, seemingly unable to help himself. “You haven’t done anything to offend me. I’m just in a damn stressful situation and I don’t see how us seeing each other is gonna make it better. The Sons of Wolves and the cops are at each other ’cause those cop bastards tooled me up, all because I tooled your dad up. I don’t know how this is gonna end, but blood seems pretty likely. I don’t want you anywhere near when that happens. Look what almost happened today.”
“I’m not a child,” I say. “I can make my own decisions.”
“Do you know how lucky it was we showed up when we did?” he counters. “That could’ve ended anywhere.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I snap. “What do you think my panic attack was about? Fun?”
“Then you agree with me,” he says. “We can’t be near each other. So I’ll ask you again. Why are you here?”
“I don’t like your tone,” I say. “I don’t like it at all. I feel like you’re trying to act all cool and nonchalant. I see right through it, Fink.”
He massages the bridge of his eyebrows. “You’re speaking like we’re a couple or somethin’.”
“There it is again! Mr. Cool and Nonchalant, too cool and nonchalant to bother with me.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe!” he breaks out, waving his arm and gritting his teeth.
His explosion of anger brings emotion with it. We meet eyes again, and this time we truly see each other. In his face, I see that he’s missed me as much as I’ve missed him, thought about me as much as I’ve thought about him. It makes sense for neither of us and yet it’s the truth.
“I just want the best for you,” he says.
“Don’t you think I should have some say in that?” I reply.
“We can’t see each other,” he says. “The cops’ll go crazy at the idea of one of their own—and that’s how they see you, Nancy, even if that ain’t how you feel—they’ll go crazy at seeing us together. They’ll kill me and kill you, or worse, and then where will we be? And for what?”
“I don’t understand it ether,” I tell him. “All I know is for the past few weeks . . .” I cut off, suddenly embarrassed. Half-turning, I say, “I’ve missed you.” I feel vulnerable admitting something so intimate to a man I scarcely know: scarcely know, and yet I feel close to him.
He takes a step forward, his body close to mine. I feel the heat from him drawing me in, impossible to ignore. It’s heat that promises rounds of pleasure, so many rounds that when the bell rings, I’ll lie spent on the floor. I turn to him, stepping closer.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” he says, and then an animal look comes into his face.
He moves with deadly speed, the same deadly speed he used outside to smash the leering cop over the head. His hand yanks down my tights and panties to my knees, and then slides up my inner thigh toward my pussy. His eyes are locked on me the whole time. I know I could ask him to stop. I’m not that sort of girl, etc., etc. . . . but I don’t want him to stop. I’ve dreamt of this hand for too many nights to make him stop now. Fear has become lust like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
He pushes his finger against my hole, moving it softly, opening me up. “Is this what you want?” he asks.
I’m wet, so wet, and aching, and hungry for the release of pleasure. “Yes,” I moan.
He slides his finger inside of me, deep, pushing all the way to my sweet spot. That aching spot is waiting for him. The second his finger presses firmly against it I lose control, leaning forward against him and biting onto the leather of his jacket to stop from screaming. I’m vaguely aware that we’re in public, that outside women talk to each other, wondering aloud why the toilet is locked. Music pumps through the walls and glasses clink together. But I blot all that out until all that exists is me, and him, and his finger pressing against the most pleasurable part of me.
He moves his finger fast, around in circles, which make my hot spot hotter and hotter. I taste leather, and then taste his sweat as I bite down on his T-shirt. His pectoral is solid, so solid that I can hardly grip it with my teeth. He tastes good, manly, smelling faintly of oil from the garage. Without warning, he lifts me up, both with his hand in my pussy and his arm wrapped around my bum. He drops me on the sink surface and leans forward, pumping his arm so that his finger drills my pussy. I feel utterly powerless, and feeling utterly powerless with Fink is almost too much to bear.
Everything is on fire. My body, my mind, a billion pleasure centers singing a unified song.
“I want you to come on my fuckin’ hand.” Fink growls like a beast, kissing and biting my neck as he fingers me. “I want to fuckin’ feel it.”
I squeeze my legs around his hand, squeezing my pussy at the same time, making it so that my lips are tight around his finger, trapping him inside of me. He moves his finger even faster, so fast that I can’t feel it anymore: not each movement. All I feel is a searing heat inside of me, a heat so powerful it touches every part of me. The orgasm approaches, hot and steaming, touching my finger and my toes, making both curl, and making my cheeks and my lips flare red-hot. I close my eyes and see heat imprinted on my eyes. Fink rubs me quicker, quicker, and I can’t stop myself anymore. It feels too good. I’m lost to the world.
I moan loudly, not caring that someone might hear, not caring about anything other than losing myself in this pleasure. I moan in unison with the heat, my moans getting louder the hotter my pussy gets. Soon, the heat is a giant force inside of me, so large that it blots every other feeling. I grind against his hand, so close now I can almost feel the orgasm. And then—
The orgasm snaps from inside of me like a whip; Fink’s finger has become a weapon flailing wildly, hitting every single inch of me. My pussy releases, pleasure releasing with it, my hole getting looser as attack after attack whirls within me. Heat-touched pleasure utterly consumes me. My pussy gets tight, loose, tight, loose as pleasure empties onto Fink’s hand. I squirt, hard, squirting so much that I feel it dripping onto my thighs. I am aware that I’m screaming in pleasure but unable to stop myself. The orgasm could last for five seconds or five minutes. I have no idea. All I know is the flame-tinged whip, making my clit, my sweet spot, my face, my body, my nipples, everything—making all of it hotter than I can bear. Finally, the orgasm retreats and I’m left leaning against the mirror, my chin resting on my chest, breathing so fast it’s like I’m having a panic attack again.
Fink steps back and I hop down from the sink, pulling up my panties and my tights. “Wow,” I say.
“Wow,” he agrees.
He doesn’t ask for sex. I know why, because he knows I’ll say no. And yet part of me is disappointed. I splash some water on my face, my panties damp from the pleasure, and then turn to him. “So,” I say.
“So,” he replies. His chest heaves as lust slowly leaves him.
“I want to see you again,” I offer.
“I know,” he replies. “I want the same.”
“But?”
“We’ve been over it. I’d say this is like Romeo and Juliet, but I don’t consider myself much of a Romeo. We’re from different worlds, Nancy. How do you reckon this could work?” He kisses me on the forehead and makes for the door. “I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”
I stand there, dumbfounded, not sure how to feel. He gives me the greatest pleasure of my life—and I mean that, because that frantic exchange dwarfs every other orgasm in my life—and then leaves me just like that. After a while, I leave the bathroom, leave the bar, make my way home, where I sit on the edge of my bed full of restless energy. He’s made his position clear and I should respect that, but I can’t help but feel that there’s more to this, there has to be more to this.
It can’t all end with an orgasm in the restroom.