The Promise of Lace Read online

“Yeah. Just…” I wasn’t sure how to put this. “I’m a little worried about how much I like this guy already.”

  Hailey snorted and the level of actual derision in it was a little surprising. “Poor you. A gorgeous muscular man is taking you out over and over again and you’re enjoying yourself. The horror.”

  “It’s just gotten weirdly serious.”

  “Weirdly serious how?” Hailey sighed.

  I dithered for a moment, but Hailey was my best friend and she was going to keep asking me until I gave in anyway. “Deep dark confessions serious.”

  Hailey made the annoying sucking noise between her teeth that she always made when she was thinking. “Deep dark like “I murdered my grandmother with an axe” or like “I once auditioned for The Real World and I almost got in?”

  “He’s not old enough to have auditioned for the The Real World.” I pointed out.

  Hailey barked out a laugh. “Right.”

  “We are barely old enough to have auditioned for The Real World.”

  Carefully folding her coupon and sticking it back in her pocket, Hailey nodded. “So, what did he deeply, darkly confess to you?”

  I set down the mugs I had been carrying in the sink, turned back toward the living room and leaned against the counter. “Um…okay. He wears lacy bikini cut panties.”

  “Seriously?” Hailey leaned forward over the back of the couch, suddenly all ears. “Like…on the regular, or just to impress you?”

  “It’s something he does. He likes them. They are just what he wears.”

  “Was he wearing them when you guys did it?” Hailey asked, suddenly fascinated.

  I briefly described fooling around with Dieter, probably in more detail than I should have, but sometimes I could not resist trying to out-sex story Hailey.

  “Impressive, Roxanne. Definitely impressive. But so obviously only part of the story.” She pouted at me, just a little, shaming me for withholding information from her.

  “Okay,” I sighed. “Fine. Dieter… Dieter was really terribly abused by an ex-girlfriend.”

  Hailey’s expression froze for a moment, then narrowed. “Wait. Really? Does that happen to guys?”

  “Hailey, come on. We didn’t get that deep into it, but the little he said was… really creepy. She basically owned him. He had to sell his computer and drop out of college and run away across the country to get away from her.”

  “And he told you all about this after you went all dominatrix on him, huh?”

  “I did not go all dominatrix,” I defended myself. “We played a little sex game. He said he was fine with it. It’s not like I asked him to give me his phone and locked him in his room.”

  “Is that what he said she did?” Hailey’s tone was skeptical at best.

  “I’m extrapolating, but that was the gist.”

  “Right. Okay,” Hailey sighed. “Do you think that’s something that you can deal with?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I wasn’t mad, not yet, and god knows that I dished things like this out for people so I should be expected to be able to take it too, but I could just tell Hailey was going to push me here.

  “Honey, look….This isn’t really the type of thing that you are equipped to fit into your day to day. If this boy is using a story like this on you, it’s too bad that you already seem like you bought into the ‘poor little me, I’m damaged so I should be able to get away with things’ lie, and on the off chance he’s serious, and really, he’s six four and three feet across, how abused could he possibly have gotten, you’re not the kind of person who can fix psychological wounds like that and we all know it.”

  “I don’t have to fix his psychological wounds, Hailey. I’m not his shrink. It’s been two dates. We had fun, we had chemistry. We’re not getting married and moving into a yurt in Colorado together.”

  “Yurt?”

  “I mean we’re not… each other’s whole world. He’s not even my boyfriend. We’re dating.”

  “You once dumped a guy because his dog never stopped farting. You always act like your life is some elaborate house of cards that any even slightly human guy will knock down with his inconvenient existence. If this abuse thing is even true, do you think you can really find a place for it in your relationship?”

  “You’re being really weird about this, Hailey.”

  She threw up her hands again, this time not in celebration. “Well… it’s a weird story.”

  “I’m not fighting with you about a guy. We’re not the Real Housewives of Where-in-the-Hell. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Are you mad at me now?” Hailey demanded.

  I shrugged and sighed. “Not mad. Annoyed though.”

  She stood up, and shrugged. “Sorry. I’m just trying to help.” She took the coupon back out of her pocket. “Will this make it up to you?”

  I chuckled. “No. Go enjoy your free dip. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Hailey patted my arm apologetically and left. She wasn’t completely wrong. I wasn’t Florence Nightingale. I thought she was being pretty closed-minded about whether or not guys were as susceptible to abuse as women, and there was no doubt in my mind that Dieter had told me the total and absolute truth, but I couldn’t deny that I didn’t do great with baggage.

  And everybody knew that.

  Chapter Nine

  Dieter and I had somehow wound up at the Art Institute during a bizarre convergence of other people’s events. The main lobby was overrun with Red Hat Ladies, all laughing cheerfully. A few of them were pointing to random pieces as they walked, particularly the nudes, and bursting into the loud giggles of older women who were simply out of fucks to give.

  There was also a relatively large conglomeration of women in expensive suits and too-high heels. The crowd was filled out with raggedy students who had clearly come to college in Minneapolis from much smaller towns and hadn’t figured out how to dress up as though they were adults yet. They stood out in a crowd split otherwise evenly between eccentrically dressed older women and impeccably dressed young professional women.

  Waiters carrying platters of cheese, wine, and champagne were mingled in with the crowd, which made me wonder if we’d missed a major announcement in the City Pages about some sort of special event tonight.

  “Well.” Dieter chuckled. He snagged a couple of champagne flutes off a passing server’s tray and handed me one. “We seem to have the gift of awesome timing.”

  “Yeah. The night looks crowded, but the refreshments look free.” I sipped what turned out to be passable champagne.

  “No complaints here.” Dieter held his elbow out to me and I smiled and took his offered arm.

  The old-fashioned gesture charmed me more and more as we walked around the gallery. Dieter was such an odd mix of a person. He was damaged, but still managed to be so trusting. He was masculine—broad and chivalrous, but he worked in a lingerie store and wore lacy panties. He clearly had a need for some approval, but he adamantly clung to things that he wanted that were well outside of what he could easily expect approval for. He was capable, but didn’t seem to be ambitious.

  He was a question mark and a relief. The guys I’d been going out with lately were so… draining. They had mediocre skills, but demanded maximum reward. They thought machismo was equal to maturity. They expected gratitude as a response to basic decency and sex to be live action video game pornography.

  I’d been thinking a lot about Hailey and Noah’s criticism of my recent forays into romance and had come up with what I thought was a pretty solid conclusion. The guys I had been going out with were entitled fuck ups and I went out with them because they were disposable. If a project came up, I didn’t feel bad about blowing off a date. If the weather got bad, I didn’t think twice about dumping them so I didn’t have to drive in the snow. They were just distractions and amusements. Like going to a movie you didn’t particularly want to see just to get out of the house.

  Dieter lifted a cheese plate off an incoming waiter and held i
t out for me. I snagged a piece of Gouda. He gave me a very warm smile and I grabbed some red wine from another passing server and handed a glass to him.

  I liked Dieter more than any of those other guys. But he was going to be more difficult. Some of those things that he claimed as “his” were his because they were disapproved of by the ex who had found a way to utterly control his life. That was a symptom of still being haunted, not of healing. He seemed to spend a lot of money on clothes for a guy working a starvation wage and he hadn’t mentioned that he was even looking for a real job.

  There were solid, logical, smart reasons to bail on this relationship before I was in too deep.

  I sipped the wine, even though I’d polished off the champagne too fast.

  You weren’t supposed to think those sorts of things. You were supposed to fall for Prince Charming immediately after he swept you off your feet and then face the world’s obstacles together with Love and Puppies and Good Vibes or whatever.

  None of which paid the goddamn rent.

  But I still liked him. We were having fun. We had chemistry. He made me feel desirable in a way that none of those leering, pathetic mama’s boys ever had.

  And that’s what I had meant when I tried to explain to Hailey that I was worried about how much I liked him. He was going to be a lot more complicated than the average guy. A lot more problematic. But unlike guy-who-lived-too-far-away, or Thorn Son of Nerd, if I let Dieter suddenly fall off the face of the earth, I would miss him and I would wonder about what might have been.

  What was I doing? I shook my head as we came to a stop in front of large, abstract blue painting. It had only been three dates. It was way too early to be thinking about this kind of crap.

  I traced my fingertips down his forearm and tucked my hand inside his. I felt myself melt a little when he squeezed my hand and grinned at me with his brilliant white smile. We wandered around the gallery, and the more we walked, the more obvious it was that Dieter and the waiters in the black slacks and shirts with red bowties were the only men in the entire place.

  Dieter seemed to be enjoying himself. He talked about the pieces like a normal person: “I like this.” “I don’t get this.” “How do you suppose they made this?”

  Most guys, the guys that I’d thought about in my list of disposable jerks, would have been impatient to be done. They would see what needed seeing then maybe try to cop a feel as a suggestion that it was time to go home and be rewarded for having put up with a girly outing.

  The other camp of men would be making comments or stupid jokes or trying to impress me with a handful of facts they still remembered from a random college class, or worse yet, high school humanities.

  But Dieter wasn’t doing any of that. Three dates in and we could just enjoy hanging out. Spending time in each other’s company. He had dropped a lot on me in a couple of dates, but he was honest and you had to respect that.

  A red-cheeked old woman in a truly fabulous hat bumped into him and staggered back in a way that made it clear she’d drunk too many cups of the free wine. Dieter caught her before she tripped over another Red Hat Lady. As he set her back on her feet they both looked at him with frank and unhidden appreciation before giggling like teenagers and tottering off to rejoin their group. He gave me an embarrassed grin in response.

  I’d had a little too much wine as well, though obviously not quite as much as the old ladies had and I was feeling pleasantly light and warm, but also terribly in need of the facilities. One look at the massive line of women either over retirement age or carrying purses that cost more than my rent made it clear that the options were 1) bursting, 2) hurrying to the nearest gas station on Hennepin and trying to simultaneously pee and avoid touching anything.

  Then option three, the option made much easier when you were accompanied by a man, suddenly occurred to me when I realized that Dieter really was the only guy I had seen all night who wasn’t working. I sent him to scope out the men’s room and after a few seconds he popped his head back out and gave me a thumbs-up for the all clear.

  I was done fast and spent a few moments outside the crush of people, readjusting my hair and dress. There were three walls of mirrors and I could see myself from every conceivable angle. I had been right that this dress was a little too long. It hit my calf in a weird place. Maybe I’d take the hem up later.

  I powdered my nose and was adjusting the odd bunching up of my tights when I heard the hinges creak. I was already dropping my compact in my purse and preparing my apology when I looked up into the mirror and saw Dieter. He was biting his lip and smiling at me.

  “I’ll wait outside for you,” I said, pointing for the door. We were comfortable, not many years married. I wasn’t going to stand here while he peed.

  He shook his head. “No, I just realized that this is the only quiet part of the whole place.” He crossed to the line of sinks in two strides of his long legs, placed a hand to the mirror on either side of me and kissed me, hot and quick and deep. I returned it before thinking about it and he pressed his body to mine. I pulled back and laughed.

  “Really? In a men’s room?”

  He bit his lip again. “An empty men’s room. You up for it?”

  I laughed, but couldn’t deny the flash of heat that shot through me at his wicked grin. He dropped one hand from the mirror, pinched my skirt between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it up from my body. Not high enough to expose more than my knee, but high enough to make clear what he was suggesting.

  I didn’t particularly warm to the idea of Dieter eating me out under my skirt while I tried to hold myself up against the counter. Not in a men’s room, even if it was a nicely decorated, perfectly clean men’s room in a building full of women.

  However, the huge mirrors on every surface did give me an idea.

  I pushed at his shoulder and he pretended that the light touch made him spin like a top. I snaked my other arm around and stopped him so that he was facing his reflection. I exerted just a little pressure on his hip as I took a wide step to the left, guiding him to follow me.

  “Let’s get you up for it,” I said. I set my hands to his fly, giving him plenty of time to stop me as I undid the button.

  He didn’t.

  I lifted myself up onto the counter, pulled my skirt up so that it wouldn’t get in the way when I tugged him back against me. I pulled his shirt up out of his pants and undid a couple buttons so that the sides of his shirt didn’t block my view of his groin in the mirror’s reflection. He settled more heavily against me and I unzipped his fly and let his pants drop a little ways down his hips. A flash of purple peeked out between his legs. He let out a breath that sounded like it was hiding a laugh.

  “That’s pretty,” I chuckled.

  He gulped and laid his head back against my shoulder. I kissed his cheek and slipped my hand into his panties, fishing his half-hard cock out of the little lacy briefs he was wearing, just like his dark blue ones from last night.

  “I like this cut,” he managed in response.

  I wasn’t even stroking him and he was growing firmer in my hand by the second. I set little closed mouth kisses to his neck and his arm jerked up against mine where they were wrapped around him.

  “Alright. If we’re doing this, let’s not push our luck, huh?”

  I gave his cock a quick squeeze, then dropped it. I reached over to the sink, pumped a couple of squirts of soap into my hand and quickly slicked his cock before I started jerking him off, hard and fast. He moaned, eyes locked on our reflection in the mirror as I tried to get him off as quickly as I could, rough, hard, no foreplay, no wasted stroke. I was not getting arrested for indecency. I didn’t like him that much.

  He was wobbling against me, leaning on me for support, but still trying to hold himself up. His breath was already stuttering. He was turned on and rock hard and I felt hot and adventurous for getting him like this in a public place.

  I snatched a paper towel from behind me so that he would have something dispos
able to come in. I didn’t want him to pop all over his slacks in public. There was a line between kinky and gross.

  He made a loud, almost hiccup-like noise and I squeezed him harder, pistoning my arm.

  I set my lips to his ear, “Don’t worry about impressing me. I’ve got a round two already planned.”

  He made another choked noise. I slowed my hand and loosened my grip. His eyes shuttered closed and then snapped back open again, like he didn’t want to miss anything. He tilted his forehead toward me as I ran my fist over his slowly and I could feel the sweat at his temples. I sped back up, determined to get him off as quickly as I possibly could.

  He shook in my arms and I felt his cock pulse in my grip.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Come on.”

  He made a hissing noise as he forced a harsh breath out through his teeth.

  “Come on,” I urged him again.

  He groaned, and just over the groan, I heard the squeaky door again. I dropped his cock instantly, and, as though the plan had already been formed in my mind, I hopped down off the counter, put on the tap water, and in the same moment I spun Dieter so that he was facing the sink and pulled up the front of my skirt so that it covered his unzipped pants and his rock hard erection the moment before someone wandered in.

  “See,” I said cheerfully to Dieter, as though my hands were not covered in soap and precome and he was not gripping the sides of the sink like a lifeline and red in the face like he’d just collapsed behind the finish line of a marathon. “I told you the wine would come right out. It’s all about blotting.” I looked over to the guy who had just walked in. He was tall, square jawed, and square shouldered. His eyebrows were precisely plucked.

  I laughed, trying to sound dumb and harmless. “Sorry, the line was just so long for the lady’s room.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me any.”

  He wandered over the urinal but, despite what he’d said, he was clearly waiting for me to get gone before he actually unzipped.

  “Just use a stall, I’ll meet you outside,” I whispered to Dieter. He panted, still gripping the sink hard. There was something odd about the way his jaw was set so tight, but I couldn’t exactly hang out in the men’s room and figure out what it was. He quickly tucked himself back into his pants with my skirt still operating as a cover. And, as I let the skirt back down, he hurried to a stall.