Is that discomfort I sense on my girl’s face?

“I thought you wanted it out in public,” I tease, tasting her strawberry lipgloss on my mouth. It’s so sweet; it makes me want to drop down to my fucking knees right now and rip her panties off.

“Whatever could have made you think that?” she says saucily. I know she knows. That first night, when we met in the dark cover of the party, the anonymity of it turned her on. I know she’s a dirty girl at heart.

I take her by the hand and turn to Mike to let him know our game’s over for the night.

“Fair enough,” he says as I toss the ball over to him. He dribbles between his legs and shoots easily into the basket as I put an arm lazily over Ava’s shoulder.

“You forget something?” she says, handing my t-shirt back to me. “You might want to put that on before you get arrested for public indecency.”

“I’m friends with the police chief,” I say, “but there’s no law against a man going topless in public. As a matter of fact,” I add as we start strolling onto the quiet side street, “there’s no law against a woman going topless in public, either.”

She stops and looks up at me, rolling her eyes. “You’re making that up.”

“No, I swear,” I say, putting my hand over my heart.

“Well,” she says, starting to walk down the street again as we make our way toward the corner of the quiet tree-lined block, “I trust you. So I guess if you say so.”

I haven’t felt this comfortable with a woman in a long time - probably not since a year ago, when I was at that wedding with Christine on the day we broke up. But I don’t want to think of her. It’s not right to compare your relationships, even if the one you’re in now is more incredible than anything you can imagine.

Relationship. Shit. I’m breaking my own fucking rules left and right over here. It doesn’t matter. I follow no one’s rules but my own. And I can change them whenever I like.

And it’s not just comfort with her. It’s more than that. It’s excitement. Shit, she was so fucking cute when she got all embarrassed at those old biddies watching us, and the flush on her cheeks when she saw my dick nearly poking out of my shorts made me want to spank her ass so the pretty shade of pink on her butt would match the flush on her face.

I don’t even care that she’s the daughter of a colleague. He might care, but he’ll get over it right quick when he sees how well I treat baby girl.

But there’s still something I can’t quite figure out.

“Sweetheart,” I say, putting her small hand inside mine “There’s still something I don’t understand.”

“Oh?” She peers up at me as we cross the street. I squeeze her hand gently as we cross, the cars and cabs stopping at the light and delivery boys on bikes zipping through traffic. “What’s that?”

“Well, I’ve know your dad for a while now, and your last names don’t match. So my question is why you lied about your name. You’re not a Jones; you’re a Murray.”

“Oh,” she says, “that.” She bites her lip and shrugs her shoulders.

“I should punish you for lying, young lady.”

“I wasn’t lying,” she says casually. “I use my mom’s last name. So I might be a Murray in spirit, but not in name.”

She takes her Metrocard out of a compartment inside her bag and starts toward the subway, but I grab her by the hand and pull her back to me.

“No girl of mine takes the subway,” I say, taking out my phone. “I’ll text Danny to come pick us up.”

“I don’t mind the subway, really,” she says brightly, her gorgeous smile lighting up her face. “There’s no need to spend money on a cab.”

“Not a cab, sweetheart. Danny’s my driver. Not some guy from the local car service.”

“Your driver?” she stutters, trying to act cool.

“That is correct,” I say, shooting Danny my location. We could take the subway, but there’s no reason. “There’s no possible way you actually like taking the subway.”

“I do like it,” she protests. “But I can see why you wouldn’t want to get on public transportation wearing that.” She lifts her eyebrows and peeks down at my shorts.

“It’s not like I’d sit down on the subway in this,” I say, shaking my ass a little bit for her. “And anyway, I don’t like taking a seat on the subway. I’ve found that the people most in need of a seat and the first to give them up. Old ladies, people with a lot of shopping bags or kids. There’s enough dickhead guys man-spreading on the subway without me adding my ass to the mix.”

“I thought men who had big...you know...were the ones with the biggest spread.”

“No, baby. They’re the ones who want you to think they have the big dicks. The aggressive ones. And they’ll pretend to be a asleep when a lady with a baby carriage gets on.”

“Huh,” she says, looking up at me with a smirk. “I guess I never thought of it like that. And here I was thinking those were the guys who had it made. You know, the big job, lots of money, hot girlfriend. Or if not a girlfriend, then at least an endless parade of sexy girls coming in and out of their beds on a weekly basis.”

“You stick with me,” I say. “I’ll teach you all about what it means to be a man. You haven’t been with the right kind of man yet.”

I’ve never meant anything as much as I mean that. Before me, she was probably getting hit on by limp-pricked losers who thought blowing empty hot air around made them into big powerful men.

She puts her arms around me and gives me a sweet hug. God, I need to have her. Danny can’t get here with the car fast enough.

“Fuck, you’re sexy,” I groan as my fingers caress the deep curve along her waist out to her hips. I want to trace that curve with my tongue instead, flip her over onto her hands and knees and spank her while I drive my tongue deep into her hot pink pussy.