I thank Danny and get out of the car, still feeling the electric hum of Ava inside my bones. I don’t think I’ve been this hard for this long since fucking college, when I had no clue what the hell I was doing and would go on dates that never ended in sex. Back then, I was too shy or too much of a pussy to make a move.

This isn’t how I thought the night would turn out when I first saw her. It was a near fucking guarantee that I’d have my cum dripping down her chin by the the time I was done, but instead I’m alone with nothing but a stiff prick and confusion clouding my head.

I just told Danny, my driver, that I wouldn’t need him anymore for the night. I hate calling him to come back after he’s already started home. It’s really fucking rude. He’s got his own life, and he needs to go home to put his babies to bed and catch up with his wife. Instead of calling him to come back I could just grab a cab and go downtown to one of the college bars. It’s springtime and the girls are falling over themselves right now for a high hard one, plus it’s still early and I can get one of the good ones. They’re always the first ones to get plucked from the bars.

But fuck, I don’t want to troll for pussy tonight. Not anymore. Not since I saw Ava. I’m spoiled rotten by her.

I walk up to my building and make my way through the revolving glass door. Eddie, the doorman, is sitting in the lobby with his feet up, reading the newspaper. He starts to get up to see if I need anything, but I wave at him to sit back down.

“Evening, Mr. Ryan.” He tips his head and shakes out his newspaper, putting an ankle over his knee.

“I told you a million times it’s Caleb,” I joke, striding past him toward the elevators. He’s an old school kind of guy, and he insists on calling us by Mr. or Ms. so-and-so. He thinks it’s a sign of respect. I say fuck that. It’s a sign of respect for everyone to be equals, no matter if you’re a doorman or a fund manager. I think I may have literally told him a million times to call me by my first name, and I’ll tell him a million more times if I have to. “Night, Eddie.”

I hit the button for my floor once I get to the elevators. It’s a pretty modest building, and the one I grew up in. I could afford more, but I like it here. And it’s perfect for bringing women to. Perfectly located, and in the morning I can just pile them into a cab or if I really liked them, have Danny drive them to where they’re going and have him back in no time to get me to the office.

It’s perfect.

After what feels like an eternity in the elevator, I finally get into my apartment, my sanctuary, but I can’t focus. Something’s off, and I know exactly what it is.

It’s Ava. It’s the fact that her sweet little pussy isn’t wrapped up tight around my cock right now, and she’s off somewhere doing anything else. It’s a fucking shame.

And I was so close. I had her. And I don’t understand why she left, why I let her slip through my fingers like sand and disappear, melt into the crowd until I couldn’t find her.

There’s something she didn’t tell me. There was something behind her eyes, something stopping her.

Fuck, maybe she really was married and she she felt guilty as soon as I got her off.

No, the way she looked at me with her sparkling eyes and how young and innocent she was, there’s no way she’s a married broad. She was too wet for me, too soft and sweet.

I make my way into my bathroom and strip off my clothes. My cock’s been hard as a rock for the better part of forty minutes, and it bobs between my legs fucking comically as pad over to the shower across the cool tile floor. It feels good to be out of my suit.

Fuck, my cock feels good free-birding in the cool air of my apartment. I can taste Ava’s bubbly sweet champagne on my lips still, competing with the harshness of my whiskey rocks. It’s nice. Maybe I should buy a bottle of it for her, switch it up.

But I’ll never see her again. In a city of nearly eight and a half million damn people, I’ll be lucky if I ever even get to breathe the same air as her, which would be a blessing in itself, just to breath in what she’s breathing, see what she sees through her innocent baby blues.

I reach into the shower and turn the faucet, making the water extra-hot. I should take a cold shower to calm the hell down, bring me down from the high of tasting Ava, but I want to ride this wave as long as I can. My cock aches for release, and I step into the tile and glass box, letting the water from the chrome shower head beat down on me like pellets of ice in a snowstorm. It’s so hot it almost feels cold, so cold that the hard stream of water is shocking my skin like embers from a fire, but it feels fucking good. Everything is heightened, and my thoughts are drowned out by the feeling of my heart thrashing inside my chest.

The water rolls down my body in slick beads, washing away the dirty sweat from the evening. I palm my cock and twist my fingers around it, thinking of how close she was to this, how her body was begging me to bury myself deep inside her. I need to know what stopped her, why she said no, why she pulled herself away from me so suddenly. Fuck, I should have let her keep going when she had her fingers inches away from my zipper.

I pump at myself hard like I haven’t gotten laid in weeks, even though I fucked one of the hostesses at my favorite Italian spot near Wall Street a few days ago. I made a point of getting her name because she was so beautiful, but now I can’t remember it. And I can barely even remember what she looked like. Everything is blocked out by Ava. I brace myself against one of the glass walls of the shower and my hand slips a little bit. I imagine Ava under me, bracing her body against mine, my hands exploring every inch of her soft, supple flesh, her curves moving under my fingertips.

Shit, I pump at my dick faster as I think about the water slipping between us, the pure erotic energy of her skin dotted with pearls of moisture. I picture her tongue sliding across her top lip as she sinks down to her knees and opens up wide to take me all the way into the back of her throat. I imagine my dirty girl making long, deep strides against my cock as her tongue plays at the underside of my shaft, barreling me hard and fast toward a fucking explosion.

I pump hard and don’t stop as I cum, my cock shooting out a thick, unencumbered load onto the floor of the shower, some of it getting on the hard lines of my belly. I freeze and struggle to catch my breath, and I almost forget I’m in the shower. I want to close my eyes and fall fast asleep right here, but there’s something missing, and it’s her. My girl, taken away from me too fucking soon, and I don’t know why. I never got to taste the sweetness of her cunt, to push myself into her and have her moan and beg and scream my name like her lips were made for doing.

Finally regaining some fucking composure, I push off the wall with the hand that’s been mounted there since I got in. I squeeze some Diptyque shower gel into my loofah, and even though I just had a mind-erasing orgasm, I still can’t stop thinking about her in the shower behind me, her lips against my shoulder blade as she runs the scrubber over my skin, getting me fresh to climb into bed with her. The aftershocks of my orgasm erase everything...everything but her.

This isn’t like me. When I cum, that’s it. I don’t have any feelings after that. It’s what I’ve trained myself to do over the past year. It’s what’s kept me safe inside the fortress I’ve built.

This isn’t like me at all.

And there’s nothing I can do to see her again.

My self-imposed rule dictates that.

That’s a fucking problem.