Dirty Work Read online

  And as I’m about to text Liz back, my phone buzzes again.

  Bryan is asking about you.

  Crap.

  My heart jumps into my throat and sinks into my stomach, all at the same time.

  No other girls at the bar to occupy him, I guess.

  I know guys like him. Hell, I’ve even made out with a few of them. I know that Bryan must have bedded dozens of women - some of the hottest girls in New York City. I know what I look like. I am cute. Pretty. Not hot. I am too young, too inexperienced.

  And Bryan is asking about me? Bryan from work? Bryan with the tattoos?

  Oh, really? What did he say?

  I want to get some information before rolling up to the bar. I don’t want to be blindsided and I want to know what to expect out of Bryan before getting there. I want to know if he is asking about me in a friendly, new coworker way, or in another way.

  He said he wanted you to come.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. I gather up my things and make my way out to Second Avenue, hailing a downtown cab and setting off for the bar.

  _____

  “You’re here.” Bryan makes his way over to the door from the bar, past the crowd of people there on a Friday night, and takes my coat from me.

  He doesn’t look happy to see me. Oh, great. I screwed everything up before it even started.

  “You still aren’t wearing a scarf,” he says, filling me with relief. “I’ll have to buy you one.”

  “Do they sell scarves here?” I scan the room, lightly ribbing him.

  “Very funny. Let me buy you a drink first.” He disappears into the crowd, as quickly as he had appeared a moment earlier.

  “Anne!” Through the din of the room I can hear Liz, calling my name and rushing toward me.

  “Hey!” I respond. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. Bryan, Greg and I got here about an hour ago. I am so glad you’re here. Listen,” Liz grabs me by the elbow and guides me to a corner table at the bar, where it’s as secluded as it can be, given that it’s a Friday night in the frattiest area of Midtown and it seems that every finance and law dude is out for Bryan’s birthday.

  “Liz, what is it?” I feel the tenseness in my voice choke out my question, but I’m not sure what I’m afraid of. Maybe she needs to tell me that Bryan’s already move on from me and is working on another girl now. Maybe the drink he’s buying for me is just a friendly drink.

  “Nothing bad! It’s just that Bryan has not been able to shut up about you all night. He is, like, freaking out over the fact that you came here instead of going to hang out with your boyfriend.”

  “Wait, what?” I scoot around in my seat a little, unable to get comfortable. My panties are getting wet, and all I’m thinking about at this point is the idea that he actually knows that I exist.

  “He’s totally into you. I’ve never seen him like this before. I’m just saying. You can do with this info whatever you want.”

  “I’m sort of shocked. I knew that he was into me, but I didn’t know he wasn’t into a bunch of other girls, too. I mean, the dude is gorgeous and he can clearly have anyone.”

  “Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it is about you, other than the fact that you're hot and exactly his type. Maybe you should ask him. He would love that. He likes a straightforward chick. Someone who can serve his crazy questions and inappropriateness right back to him.”

  I feel a little bit deflated. If he talks to everyone like this - the questions, the innuendo, crossing the line of what’s appropriate - how can I think I’m any more special than any of the other girls in the bar? Or at the office?

  “So he talks to everyone like that?” I ask Liz, hoping she’ll tell me the truth.

  “I mean, not exactly. I’ve never heard him call anyone his girlfriend before. I mean, not even any of the girls he has dated recently. Sure, he gets a little...I don’t know...friendly, with other people in the office. But it’s the guys, too. It’s everyone. It’s his schtick. But it’s different with you.”

  “I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to see if this guy is for real. Because, to be honest,” I lean in to whisper to Liz, “I think I’m into him, too.”

  It’s not like me to be so forward with my feelings, especially with someone I just met.

  But what was the worst that could happen?

  With my confession to Liz, Bryan returns to us with a tall glass.

  “You seem like the kind of girl who likes a nice beer. You’re down to earth. You’re nice. Fun.”

  He hands me the glass and clanks his together with mine. Liz flashes a sly smile at me and makes a joke about having to pull Greg off some MILFs, excusing herself and leaving me and Bryan alone together.

  “Now we can talk.” Bryan takes a sip of his beer. He places it down thoughtfully and pushed his sleeves up. How could I have almost forgotten about the tattoos that decorated his strong forearms?

  “Yes. You’re right. I wanted to ask you about something,” I say, remembering that Liz said he likes a forward chick, but also ignoring her advice and intending to mention something about the day’s budget meetings.

  “Let me go first. There’s something I have wanted to get off my chest all day.” His green eyes look deeply into me and he reaches down to grab my hand. “If you don’t like me, I’ll leave you alone. I think that sometimes the way I relate to people is to kind of push them away. I’ve been burned by women in the past.” He takes another swig of his beer.

  “I’m telling you this because I really do like you. But if you think it’s too much, all the questions and the joking about you being my woman, I’ll stop. But I have to tell you that I want to make you mine. I need to.”

  “No,” I say, filled with a new courage to say what I want. “I don’t want you to stop. I like you too. I know we’ve only known each other for a day...hell, it’s really only been a few hours. But of course I like you. I mean, as much as you can like someone you’ve just met. And on top of everything, I was lying when I told you I have a boyfriend.”

  My head is spinning and I feel like I could collapse onto the floor at any second. I’m nervous, lightheaded and giddy, and I want Bryan to hold me.

  He puts out a hand, as if to shake mine in a professional way. As co-workers. But when he does, his fingers linger on my palm as he intertwines his fingers with mine.

  “Come here.” He guides me through a curtain which lead to another part of the bar, a room that is sectioned off and not in use. He wraps one arm around my waist, brushing my lips with a thumb and tilting my chin up to kiss me. In turn my fingers make their way to his belt, and unclasping it, I slide a hand down into his boxers.

  So, this is how it’s really going to happen? I’m going to have sex for the first time in a bar?

  Crap. I am not prepared for this.

  “So you really do like me, I guess.” Bryan teases her. “I thought we were just going to come back here to make out.”

  He spins me around and lifts my skirt up, pushing my panties away so I’m exposed for him.

  “These are nice. Did you wear these for me? Did you think I would be seeing these? You’re a naughty girl.”

  “Yes,” I reply breathlessly. “They’re for you.

  He pushes a single thick finger past my folds.

  “You’re soaking wet for me.” He glides in and out, reaching all the way into me and rotating his hand so his palm is facing down and he can pleasure exactly how I want it.

  “I know,” I gasp. “You did this to me. I wanted you the second I saw you.”

  I push my hips back against his hand, grinding against him.

  “You want me inside you?” he growls. “You need to ask for it like a good girl.”

  I stand up straight and Bryan spins me around, but I quickly drop down to my knees and undo his belt, unzipping him and freeing his dick from his boxers.

  I have no idea what I’m doing, so I move my hand up and down the shaft, and it’s girth in my hand is making me wetter t
han I’ve ever been. Having him like this just feels so right.

  “Put it in your mouth,” he says, as I draw his full length past my lips. “That’s right, just like that.”

  I swirl my tongue all around the head of him, from the tip to the base and back again.

  “How do I compare to that other guy?”

  “What other guy?” I retort, pulling my mouth away for a second before going back to him, lubricating him with my tongue and sinking him all the way down into the back of my throat.

  “That’s right. I’m your man from now on.”

  “Stand up right now,” he says. He towers over me, and I run my fingertips along his strong, muscular, inked arms before he pushes me down so I’m laying back on the sofa in the dark back room of the bar. He pushed my dress up so I’m exposed for him again, dripping wet and burning to be finally fucked.

  Shit. Now he’s holding my hands tightly above my head.

  “Say my name when I fuck you,” he commands. “And know that you’re all mine.”

  “Bryan,” I whimper as he slides deep through me, filling her up. I was afraid it would hurt because he was so big and she could barely wrap my lips around him, but I’m so wet that he stretches me to the limit with only a hint of pain, my pussy sinking in around him as he glides in and out, faster and faster.

  I feel totally out of control, my body and mouth begging for him as he moves his lips over my mouth, to my neck, my ear, down to each of my breasts beneath my little back dress. But even though I feel out of control, I feel safe, because I know that Bryan is taking good care of me.

  He pulls out of me and flips me over so I’m on all fours, my ass in the air. He pushes past my folds again with one finger, and raised his hand above my ass, bringing it down slowly but firmly against my flesh. I whimper as he slides back into me, crashing into her and bringing his hand up again to meet her body.

  “Bryan,” I whimper helplessly. “You’re going to make me come.”

  “That’s what I want. Come for me, baby.”

  My pussy tenses around him as he unloads himself into me. I didn’t even think of using any protection, and it feels raw and dirty. But I know as he collapses onto me, putting her soiled and ruined panties back into place with care and love, that I’d be safe with him. Protected.

  “Should we go back to the party? I need to introduce some dudes from our other branch to my new girlfriend. And we should probably grab dinner.”

  Anne flop down into a seated position on the couch, satisfied and happy. I cannot believe that this whirlwind has all happened to me in one day, but I feel that it’s real. As real as any other relationship I’ve ever had.

  I look up at my new boyfriend.

  “Happy birthday, darling.”

  Chapter Six

  I’m standing at the sink in the bathroom of Bryan’s apartment, having seen it last night for the first time.

  It wasn’t what I was expecting.

  Not just sex for the first time. But his apartment, too.

  A young guy, 30 years old, good job, but not the rainmaker that some of the other guys at the firm were. He would probably have a huge TV, a couple of couches. Nothing in the fridge besides a few beers. Maybe some old Chinese food containers. I expected to open his cabinets and find stale cereal, a few loose plastic forks and knives thrown in there haphazardly.

  I expected him to unlock his door, guide me into the apartment and grab a cold beer from the fridge and tell me to have a seat in his living room. The big TV, maybe it would be on mute and left on all evening while we were out at his birthday party. A bag of chips crumpled on the coffee table, if there even was a coffee table.

  And when I would excuse myself to the bathroom, where I expected there to be no toilet paper. For there to be a tube of toothpaste that had clearly been squeezed at the top, by its opening, instead of being squeezed from the bottom.

  This is one of my pet peeves. And I would have to have a little talk with him about not throwing his shampoo bottles out while there was still a little bit left in the bottom of the bottle. We aren’t made of money, I would say. Do me the courtesy of using all the shampoo before you throw the bottles away.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I’m already having little arguments with him in my head. We would bicker like an old married couple. Even though we just met yesterday.

  As we left the bar after his birthday party, we held hands all the way from Second Avenue to his apartment on the Upper East Side. We held hands stumbling out onto the street in the heavy early fall night, we held hands in the cab that raced uptown to his apartment. We held hands as he slid one of his palms up my thigh and to the edge of my panties, the ones I had selected just for him.

  I was still skeptical as we exited the cab and he gave the driver a fifty dollar bill. He must be drunk, I’d thought. When the driver started to make change, however, Bryan waved his hand through the plastic shield separating the front seats from the back, telling him to keep the change.

  We held hands as he swung the cab door closed behind him, and held hands as he waved to the doorman and night attendant sitting, looking bored, at a desk in the lobby.

  The building wasn’t what I had expected. The lobby was marble, cool and white but with an added dimension of warmth from the flickering fireplace, painting the corners of the room with light. My shoes made that clicking sound that I hated, a sound that could only be produced by the kind of shoes I didn’t like wearing, that were corporate, that I had forgotten I was even wearing until her own steps betrayed their presence.

  “This is where you live?” I’d asked him.

  “Yeah. This is where I live.”

  “It’s...really nice.”

  “Oh. Yeah, thanks.” Bryan seemed a little bored by my comment. Of course he knew it was nice. He lived there, he slept there every night - ostensibly, although I suspected that he had an open invitation to stay over at any number of girls’ apartments on any given night - he paid the condo charges, he tipped the doorman every New Year. It was nice because he had selected it and he had chosen to live here because it was nice.

  I was starting to realize that maybe this Bryan character had money. I’d assumed that he was one of these upwardly mobile guys who came from a good family, but who was a little greedy and wanted a life of relative prestige and the cash that came with it. A couple of cars, nice apartment. Maybe by the time he was 40 he would have a house in Scarsdale or Connecticut. Maybe after he made partner he would sell his modest Midtown apartment and upgrade to something bigger.

  But what he had wasn’t what I was expecting.

  Of course, I didn’t want to be too forward and start blurting out a bunch of questions.

  How do you live here? This is, like, an old money kind of place.

  Sure, I didn’t want to start blurting out those kinds of questions.

  But of course, I couldn’t help myself.

  “This is your place? I don’t get it.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Bryan’s mouth. “What don’t you get?”

  “I mean, this place is really nice. Like, really nice.”

  “Sweetheart, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me yet. But you will.”

  So now that I’m standing at his bathroom sink in the light of day, I realize that Bryan must have come from a lot of money. There was no way a 30 year old guy could have a place like this.

  The fridge didn't have even one old takeout container in it.

  Chapter Seven

  “This is a problem.”

  I’m squeezing into the dress I’d worn at my high school graduation just over four years ago. I remembered that I brought it with me when I moved to the city and thought it would be perfect.

  My roommate, Karen, shifted her legs under her. She’s sitting on my bed aside the heap of my simple black clothing.

  “No, that is perfect!,” she says. “It looks amazing on you. It’s tight, it’s sexy. It’s good.”

  “It doesn’t fit!” I sm
ooth the fabric across my butt and hips. It’s pulling a little, slightly too tight around the widest parts of me. But part of me agrees. It does look sexy. It shows off my curves. It doesn’t fit how it did four years ago - it fits better.

  At least, it fits better for the occasion I need it for.

  An auction. A date auction. When I heard about it at work last Monday, I was borderline disgusted by it. It was some retrograde, sexist, misogynistic stuff.

  “You should do it,” Bryan whistled in his deep velvet voice as he sidled up to my desk. He put his hands down flat on the desk, letting himself linger there over me as I scrolled through the email everyone received from Human Resources.