But it was decent enough. I introduced her to my co-workers as Courtney, which she was, my girlfriend, which she definitely was not. They all wanted to know what she did and where she came from and she smiled and nodded whenever possible, laughing when she absolutely had to, and only tensed and flinched when I slid my hand down her backside. After thirty minutes of small talk while we waited for the bar and dance room to clear, she bent her mouth to my ear. “Where the fuck is the free booze you promised me?”
“Inside,” I said.
“Your co-workers are boring.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we are.”
What followed would only be more of the same. My boss came over to ask me who I was with, and I happily told him she was in love with me, a woman who believed in all the great qualities I possessed, who supported me, was faithful to me, who was not necessarily prettier than her sister, but much hotter, and fucked like a wild pony. My boss smiled and nodded, drunk off his ass, and kissed her hand. He had to find it first and Courtney sneered at his wife as she gave us both a dirty look and carted him off. “Booze,” said Courtney. “He drank it all, didn’t he?”
We did eventually find the dance floor and Courtney did get her drink. But she did not overindulge. She matched me drink for drink, but only so that she could make the chatter of my officemates seem acceptable. When everyone got up to dance, I elected to stay in my seat, but Courtney pounded her shot and finished mine too. She grabbed me and pulled me up after them.
I don’t really dance very well. I know the bump and grind fair enough, and it seemed that was all Courtney was familiar with. The lights and the bodies mingled, the air going hot from the closeness of the bodies, the quickness of the gyrations. I pulled Courtney up against my lap and we molded against each other, moving and slithering. It was when her posterior bumped my crotch that I first inferred that there was nothing underneath. That she wasn’t wearing a bra was obvious. It was obvious to all the men on the floor with me, and their women, and the DJ and the bartender. She shook and jiggled in her tight little number, and she owned each curve and how it moved. And we sweat. We sweat against each other, until our sweat mingled and our hair came down into our eyes.
And then we were back at the table, everyone loosened up and drinking freely, and Courtney was giggling with Ben and Alicia about how smart I thought I was, and I was just laid back enough to let them have at it. Ben and Alicia had been cubicle mates for a long time, and after the way they were dancing, after the way they were sharing each other’s drinks, I thought the cubicle was about to get an upgrade.
* * *
The four of us broke away from the group as the night wound down, and we all helped each other find the way to the elevator and up to our floor. They said goodnight and tried to look casual as they strolled off to Ben’s room. As soon as they had their backs to us I pressed Courtney up against my hotel door and kissed her.
She kept her eyes wide, watching Ben and Alicia down the hall. I could feel her body tense, waiting for them to disappear into the room. And I kept my eyes open too, to drink in the sight of her angry eyes, feel her charged muscles, while I slid my tongue deeper into her mouth.
My hand gently pushed her to the door, while my other found her backside. I fondled one curvaceous ass cheek, almost reaching the hem of her skirt. She reached behind herself and pulled me away, but she didn’t break the kiss.
Her mouth was wet, her lips puffy, by the time Ben and Alicia fell, laughing, into their room.
Courtney pushed me off. “Fuck,” she said. She wiped her berry colored lip with the back of her hand. “You bit me.”
“Thought it would help your concentration.”
She gave me a withering look. “Just let me in so I can get my bag and get out of here.”
I smiled in the most diabolical way that I could. Mostly for her displeasure, but the motivation behind it was very real. “You’re not leaving tonight.”
Her brows knit together. “Fuck you,” she said. “I did what you said, showed up to this stupid thing, now pay up.”
“Nope,” I said. “I told you I needed you here for the event. Tomorrow morning is when we leave. How’s it going to look if I show up tomorrow and my date’s high tailed it out of there? They’ll think you were some kind of escort.”
Courtney looked furious. Her dark eyebrows came down over those blazing eyes. I had to wonder if she genuinely hadn’t known, or if my company disgusted her that much. Down below, in my pants, I hoped it was both.
“I’m not-” she started.
“You know what you’re here for,” I said. “Don’t waste my time.”
“Don’t waste your time?” she fumed. “I’m fucking gone.”
“Really?” I said. “You put up with everything tonight to go home empty handed?”
“I’m not spending another second here,” she hissed. “Especially not to-”
I put my hand on the door, barring her way. “I have $500 in my pocket. The rest is inside,” I said. “You want it, you can look for it.”
She shook her head.
“You can always just tell me no.”
The skin on her nose wrinkled, her whole face joining in to grimace. “No,” she said. “No I won’t do anything your sick brain wants.”
“It’s not my brain,” I put in. I leaned in closer. Our bodies brushed together against the door. “Do you want the money or not?”
“It’s mine,” she said.
“So you’re welcome to take it. Inside.”
Her eyes studied mine, the wicked gears inside calculating, maybe ways to subdue me, maybe how to kill me. I could see, though, that tonight had been no joy for her and to walk out now would only compound her fury. “Fine,” she said. “Open it.”
“Not until you know what you’re going in there for,” I said.
“To get the money.”
“To honor our deal.”
“You said I had to pretend to be your girlfriend for the night,” she said quickly, spitting the words out without thinking.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
Before she could protest I’d swiped the key into the card lock and we pushed inside. Courtney’s bag was set primly beside the bed. My suit and bag were on top of it.
Courtney stalked to the bed, to my bag, and I was treated to the sight of those long legs flashing in the striped light of the blinds, the lamp inside and the hall’s diminishing radiance. The door swung shut, and Courtney was at the bed, my bag unzipped, rifling through it.
I let her search, closing the door (should I lock it? I wondered, or would that be too Hitchcockian?) and casually strolling into the room. It was a good room the company had provided. There was a bathroom on my left, a small kitchenette behind it and running from the door to the wall. On my right was the sliding closet, with both doors full length mirrors. The bed was on the far right side of the room and the bathroom was across from it, beside the TV.
Courtney’s face only grew darker as she flung my shit further across the room, to no success. A gray undershirt hung from the TV, and one of my socks had even caught in the half-lidded Venetian windows. I savored the movements of her, her bare arms scouring the bag, the fine muscles beneath the skin twitching with unconcealed tension. This was the first time, I thought, the first time my proper girlfriend wasn’t sleeping around the corner or waiting for me to return, the first time her family wasn’t around to threaten me with. We were two people in a hotel room; for all intents and purposes, as far as my colleagues knew, she was happy to be here, doing the things that couples did. In hotel rooms. Late at night.
My body stirred, even as I stood motionless in the center of the room. My manhood stiffened. She had stopped going through the bag. She’d turned it upside down, finished with it in a petulant fury, its flattened fabric deflated, just like her hopes to finish this without another word to me. But if her hope was deflated it did not stop her anger. It radiated out of her, making every glistening surface of her shine that much brighter. We were both lightly sweaty from the dancefloor downstairs. Some of it had evaporated in the intervening hours. I could smell myself, sort of, but I couldn’t ignore her. Her perfume and shampoo were still lingering in her hair but her sweat, a pure, natural aroma, filled the room. She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg drawn up under her skirt, one leg heading down (way down), to her black heel in the carpet. Her hemline, which had started low, was drawn up and stuck under her bottom, so half her ass was visible on the bed. Her breasts pushed at the fabric of her top, the deep shadow of her cleavage lined with sweat. Her dark hair trailed over her shoulders, almost reaching the tops of her breasts.
“It’s not in there,” I said simply.
She was up, she was moving. She was in front of me, breathing in my face. She didn’t shake with all that energy; she kept it bottled and bound inside. I imagined it swirling behind her eyes.
“Give it to me,” she said.
“I will.”
My eyes fell over her full lips; the bright eyes that lacked the inquisitive earthiness of her sister but were filled with something more obvious, sinister, and lancing.
“Where is it?” she said. Her lips came together, puckered. “Give it to me,” she said darkly.
“Take off your shoes.”
I did not expect the slap. It came so quickly, one minute I was leering at her, the next I was staring at the floor. I shook myself, and cocked my head back. Courtney still looked mad, but satisfied.
“Fair enough,” I said. “You can do that again, if you want.”
“You-” she started.
“Take them off.”
She remained planted to the ground, a buxom statue, a sweaty, organic embodiment of all my sexual demons. I wanted to peel off her clothes and taste every wet crevice she hid underneath them. My cock only hardened to think I had the time to do it. Provided she didn’t castrate me in the attempt. What tickled me, though, insofar as I could be tickled, was the glimpses of superiority that I caught from her time and again. She knew I wanted to fuck her; there could be no mistaking that; but did she recognize how hard I wanted to fuck her, how strenuously I needed to sink myself inside her, how badly I wanted to hold her, and squeeze her, and hear her curse me and groan? She thought I wanted her tits and ass. That was true enough. But did she know I wanted her, inside her body, her ignorant, evil little heart? I didn’t want to love her or be loved by her. I wanted the satisfaction of her loathing, and her cum.
I reached into my pocket. The hundreds appeared, slightly damp from the sweat of my body, but neatly folded in a metal clip. Courtney’s eyes registered the cash, but her mouth betrayed her. It was surprise that I saw. I smiled and tucked the cash away again.
“You said that was just five hundred.”
“No, that’s all of it. I just didn’t know how else to get you inside. And believe me, when I lose my clothes, you’re free to take it all. I’ll keep my word about that at least,” I said. “And you’ll get it. But the night’s not over.”