Luke
I’m early for Lily.
She’s dressed, but a little surprised when I knock on the door at twenty minutes to six. She stares at me, blinking, mouth opening like she has something to say. Then she snaps it closed and looks me over.
I’ve changed my clothes.
I couldn’t meet up with her before showering off my afternoon activities. Grimacing at the memory of chasing down that two-bit motel manager, I clench my fists, my knuckles still smarting from beating answers out of the bastard. I left him in Russ’ and Keith’s care after that, hunting down my next victim.
That hunt led me to a strip joint in St. Louis. Someone had tipped off the club owner, so I found the trip mostly worthless except that I now temporarily owned a nudie bar. I’d love to see Lily’s expression after she heard that one, but the thought of mixing her innocence with my world churns my stomach.
No, I like the arrangement we have going. Keeping Lily as far from my world as possible, pretending we’re in love and preparing to spend a normal night in each other’s company.
Maybe later I’d take her to my place for a little more personal conversation. Our bodies sure had done a lot of talking last time.
That memory and her beautiful face staring up at me now make me smile.
“Are you going to let me in?” I tease. “Or is this as far as I get?”
Lily jumps at my questions, holding the door open and gesturing me through. She fumbles through an apology, her cheeks, throat and chest suffusing with her embarrassment. She’s radiant.
My gaze drags over her body.
Her plush curves fill out a strapless, uncomplicated black dress, the bottom of her flouncy skirt brushing above her knees. Her hair is down again, a clip dividing the top section from the bottom.
I see a necklace, the same silver heart-shaped pendant she wore earlier in the day when I had a front row seat to her bare tits. She’s wearing nude-colored stockings.
I see her toes curling at my head-to-feet survey. I follow her to the sofa in her living room.
She has a small place. Most of it, I realize, is within my sight from the center of the room. There’s her kitchen to my left and a small hall to the rooms to my right. Her flat-screen TV is a prize though.
Seeing where my attention has gone, Lily fetches the remote from the coffee table in front of me and hands it over. Then she grabs the gossip magazines spread out on the table and clutches them to her chest, mumbling, “I’ll be right back.”
I let her do her thing. I’m the one who’s early, so I guess I’ll have to be patient. Turning on the TV, I flip to the local news and then to the St. Louis news channel. It’s all vapid, so I find a sports channel I like and fall into a college basketball game.
“Local team?” Lily is back for a moment.
She’s wearing a flowery white sweater over her dress, the hem reaching her natural waistline. It’s parted open, and it sways with her quick movement behind the TV toward the direction of the kitchen.
She’s making a commotion in there, and then she returns, toting a perspiring glass for me.
“It’s strawberry and watermelon lemonade,” she says of the pink drink. Stepping back when I accept it from her, she waits on me like a proper, attentive hostess.
It’s certainly not my drink of choice—I’m more of a scotch kind of guy—but I take a sip anyway.
“But if you’d like something warm…?” Lily hugs her arms about her middle. She looks more troubled than she should, making me think this isn’t about the beverages she has on hand at all. “I have hot chocolate?”
Reaching out to rest the glass on the coffee table, I drag my hands over my knees and smile at her. “No, it’s fine.”
She nods, lingering to watch the game for a minute and then she excuses herself again.
My eyes track her naturally, gaze following her as she crosses the room to disappear down her short hall. I hear a door closing softly, and I should let my mind focus on the TV but I’m suddenly curious about my date.
I sensed her enthusiasm in my office when I asked her out. Most women are like that.
Only a lot of the ladies I’m with have agendas. Lily doesn’t.
She’s in this predicament, stuck on a date with me because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now she’s helping me right it by playing along with this alibi.
I couldn’t cross my T’s and dot my I’s without her cooperation. Sure, I gave her a little wiggle room by asking her out instead of commanding that we be together, but I was being a gentleman. I think. For fuck’s sake, I haven’t been on a real date in two years, and even then I wouldn’t have been considered chivalrous.
Those women with agendas I roll with? Well, they aren’t the type who care much about being wined and dined. They like it better when I suck and fuck them.
Lily is a simpler girl, and classy for it.
Bonus, I enjoyed fucking her once and I’m already fantasizing about our next romp, yet I also want to make sure she knows I’m putting effort into this too.
But I can see what she sees—I’m the guy holding all the cards and she’s thinking she has no play. Not entirely true.
After all, she has me asking her on a fucking date.
I admit to myself that I’m curious. How does a girl like her see me? How is she taking this, and how far will she let me go?
The evening is early, and I have plenty of time to explore my way to the answers to those questions. I wait out the final fifteen minutes to our date with impatience. I bite my tongue to keep from ordering her to hurry up.
Lily pops out five minutes to six, our initial meeting time. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she says quietly.
She has a clutch in her hands and her smile is now painted in a soft pink. Nervously, she nudges her chin at the television. “Did you want to finish the game?”
“Nope, I’m good.” I shoot off of the couch to punctuate a point—screw this, I’m done waiting.
Turning off the TV, I carry my half-full lemonade glass to her kitchen, barely taking in the space in my hurry to get back to Lily and get us on the road.
She slips on the black pumps from today. She doesn’t seem to have a large shoe collection or many coats in her closet. But I haven’t seen the dress Lily’s wearing, so it gets me wondering if it’s new. Hopefully she hasn’t gone out of her way for me. I’d take her in a paper bag, really. Naked would be even better.
Before my hard-on gets out of control, I lead her outside where Lily locks up her apartment and we head to the elevator.
Lily is silent until we’re in the elevator. I press for the ground floor when she speaks up.
“I never did ask, but why are we heading out so early?” She cranes her neck up at me. “Dinner was at seven thirty, right?”
Smoothing my hand down her back, I absorb her shudder and enjoy the play of desire warring with her curiosity, the mess of it flitting about her face. She’s a truly sensual little thing.
“It was going to be a surprise,” I drawl, “but we’re going to St. Louis for dinner tonight.”
“St. Louis?” Lily repeats, her head lowering at the opening elevator doors.
We walk out together, my hand at Lily’s back, and her heels galumphing over the tiles of the foyer and onto the carpet leading out through the front doors. There’s a lock protecting residents, but I managed to slip in earlier courtesy of another resident entering the building.
Of course it hardly mattered there being a lock if residents and their visitors let in anybody willy-nilly. It’s enough for me to wonder how safe the building is.
Lily draws me from my thoughts, her shivering alarming me.
“You’re cold,” I observe. Getting her bundled into my Lexus, I crank up the heat and fire up the seat warmers.
Lily springs up, her mouth forming a delicious circle. “That feels...nice.”
That draws a chuckle from me. My GPS is on from having used it to find Lily’s place, but I close it since now I know exactly where I’m headed. “Buckle up,” I tell her, changing gear and reversing the car out of the visitor’s parking.
I take the car zero to sixty pretty quickly, liking the smoothness this baby offers on the road. I invite Lily to play with the radio and choose her favorite station. She shies away from my offer and I’m a little irked.
Then she says, “I can get to know someone by their music choices.”
“Can you?” I glance her way, catching bits of her in the dark. It’s a little easier with the atmospheric, blue-white LED lights lining the cushions of our seats and the cup holder between us. “Fine, my music it is.”
I tap around on the screen fixed to my dash, finding my programmed playlists, meticulously organized by genre and alphabetized by artist. I find a favorite and watch for her reaction.
“You listen to country?” she asks, hand clapping out the beat to the song.
“I listen to everything, so long as I like it. My tastes are eclectic.” I grin at the sight of her smile.
The mood in the car is set, and it remains easygoing all the way into the city.