Love Locked (2 page)

“Remind me why you ask so many questions?” he asks.

“Because it’s what I do. I mean, technically, I’m the assistant editor at this magazine publisher downtown, but really I mostly fact–check. Which means I call people up and ask them questions.”

“And you like it?”

She shrugs. “It’s a job related to what I studied. It’s a foot in the door. Would I rather be asking big, important questions so I could write feature articles? Sure. But it’s amazing what can come up even when you’re just calling someone to ask, ‘Is it true that you were a member of your child’s school council last year?’ and ‘Did you sit on the communications committee?’ One woman ended up telling me all about her affair with the council treasurer.”

“An affair, huh?” Lucas tops up their beer glasses. “What do you think of affairs?”

“I ask the questions, remember?”

“Except for the one about the boyfriend. I ask that one.”

Jocelyn eyes her phone; the
horny
texts running through her mind. “Fine. Do you think I’d be this sexually frustrated if I had a boyfriend?”

“Are you sexually frustrated?”

“Incredibly.” The bar’s warm, and she’s had a lot to drink. There are so many things to account for how pink her cheeks are that it doesn’t matter anymore, so even though her skin keeps getting hotter and hotter, she holds his gaze.

She hasn’t asked a question, but that doesn’t stop her from waiting for an answer. She’s not going to talk until he does. She’s just going to look at his amazing eyes, with all those flecks in them, of gold, and brown, and green, so that she can’t even really tell what colour they are, and she’s going to keep holding her breath so she gets dizzier and more light–headed, and — as Sam knows — those things always make her hornier.

She’s going to uncross, and re–cross her legs, without breaking the eye contact he’s holding as well, and she’s going to part her lips, just a little bit, and …

“Lucas!”

Eye contact dropped. Shit. And with it goes that lovely warm, fuzzy, buzzy spell.

A tiny blond girl reaches across the table to lift their empty pitcher. “Oh, my God, Lucas. Have you had a whole pitcher of beer? Are you drunk?”

Lucas looks at Jocelyn, quickly, and she nods, blinks. No need to mention that was pitcher number two.

“Hey, Char.” Lucas says the girl’s name with a soft “ch” and it’s familiar and sweet. Jealousy bolts through Jocelyn. “No, not drunk,” he says. “Just got thirsty while I waited for you to text and tell me where to meet you.”

“Oh, Lord, you are drunk.” Charlotte turns clear green eyes, and a sweetly turned–up nose to Jocelyn. “He only calls me ‘Char’ when he’s loaded. My proper name’s Charlotte. And you are?”

Huge, compared to you. And sloppy drunk. And going home alone. And desperate not to look pathetic or depressed
. She pushes a wide smile to her face. “I’m Jocelyn.” She looks at her watch. “And, wow, I should have gone a while ago.”

Jocelyn pushes back her chair, and her phone vibrates again. She slams her hand over it before a huge
HORNY?
can appear on the screen. That word just feels wrong in Charlotte’s flower–skirted, pink–bloused, pearl–earringed, penny–loafered presence.

“I …” Jocelyn hesitates over saying ‘sorry;’ over saying anything at all. She’s not sure how much Lucas intends to tell Charlotte about how they met, and she doesn’t want to get him in trouble. “It’s been nice.” Surely that’s bland enough. That lets him fill in any blanks he wants, any way he wants.

Lucas stands, too. “Thanks for the company.”

“My pleasure.” Jocelyn turns to Charlotte. “Nice to meet you.”

She’s been paying for the food and drink as they go. Meaning there’s nothing to keep her. So she leaves. Turns on her heel and walks away.
Back straight. Be cool. Don’t wobble. Don’t trip
.

Her entire focus is on the sidewalk outside. Where her bike is locked next to — but no longer intertwined with — Lucas’s. Maybe she should thread her lock through his bike frame again. Then he’d have to find her. Then she’d have to see him again. Oh, God, she shouldn’t drink in the late afternoon / early evening; it always leads to the threat of tears.
Stupid, Joss. You know better.

Almost nobody calls her Joss. Only her, in her own head, and the very closest people in her life. She thinks of Lucas calling Charlotte “Char.”
I wish he’d call me Joss. I wish he’d call me
… Tears well again.
Stop it
.

“Excuse me?”

She whirls around, one hand on the door to push outside. Lucas?

No. The waiter.

“Oh, hi. Sorry. Did I not leave a tip? I thought I did, but I might be just a little bit tipsy …”

He holds both hands up. “No. It’s not that.”

“Oh. OK. What, then?”

He clears his throat. “I was wondering if I could get your number.”

“My number?” For a few seconds her head swims. What number? Their table number? He should know that, shouldn’t he?

“Your phone number?” Now the waiter’s blushing. His cheeks have two bright spots right in the middle. He’s cute. There’s no denying it. He could be a great distraction. Maybe he could be a distraction right now. Maybe he could ease her through the coming–down–off–a–two–pitcher–high crash with some highly athletic sex.

Probably.

But she’s not interested.

Don’t be rash, Joss. Just because you’re not in the mood now, doesn’t mean you’ll never be.

“I, uh … sure.” She smiles. “Of course. That would be nice.”

Now that she’s said yes, he meets her eyes, and his lashes are long and up–curling. Sweetly sexy. “OK … um, how …?”

Either he doesn’t ask diners for their phone numbers every day, or he has a great routine in place for covering it up. “Here.” Jocelyn holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.” She keys in her number and hands it back — “Jocelyn,” she says, pointing to her name on his screen. “That’s me.”

“Great! So, I can call you?”

She pushes the door open, smiles over her shoulder. “That would be the idea.” Behind him she catches Lucas’s eye. Just for a second. She can’t tell what he’s thinking. Oh well, who cares? He’s with his girlfriend, so she can give her phone number to whomever she likes. “Bye!” She doesn’t know if it’s for the waiter, or for Lucas, or just to symbolically bring the evening to an end.

She steps out into the spring air and unlocks her bike and cycles home.

***

Hot and bothered.

How is it possible to be lying in bed hot and bothered on what’s really quite a cool early May night, with her window wide open, and a chilly breeze blowing across her skin?

But she is.

She can’t stop thinking about the stories Lucas told her. The way he answered her questions. Short and terse at first, but getting longer after more drinks. After — she likes to think — they started knowing each other better.

Tiny details set her off. She’s making more of them than she should, but that’s half the fun, right?

Like when he let slip that he failed a core university course because of a consuming crush he had on one of his university roommates.

How he used to lie in bed, in the room next to the girl, hyper–aware of her presence on the other side of the wall. Unable to sleep so that he dozed off in class; had no notes and, even if he had, would have had no focus to study them with.

“Did you at least get together with her?” Jocelyn had asked.

“Nah. I don’t think she was into me.”

How could she not be? The more Jocelyn thought about it, the harder she found it to believe that girl wouldn’t have made the late–night, barefoot trip a few steps down the hall. How could she have resisted?

Joss knew
she
wouldn’t have been able to. Wouldn’t have been able to sleep, thinking of him next door with a whole bed to himself. She might have worried for a minute about the cotton underwear and stretchy tanks she wears to bed. Would he be the kind of guy who preferred black lace? She wouldn’t have thought about it for too long, reasoning if he was interested he wouldn’t kick her out of bed over her sleepwear.

She would have made sure the tank top clung, just so, to her breasts. Would have let a bit of cheek show out the bottom of her bikini underwear, and would have gone for it. Letting herself into his room, asking to be invited between the sheets.

After she’s worked that story through in her head, her underwear is soaking wet.

She checks the clock. 1:11 a.m. She’s not tired at all. She stares at the ceiling and waits to fall asleep.

How can she, though, when she has alternate images of their initial locked–bike meeting in her mind? Of how she should have grabbed him — no words — just pulled him off the path, into the trees. Pushed him against a trunk and started kissing him; light and teasing at first, building to something frantic and urgent, leading to the need to find somewhere more private than a few feet from a footpath?

She lays her hand across her breastbone and slides it onto her breast. Her nipple’s upright and begging for attention, but that’s not her goal, so she circles it a couple of times with her fingers then continues; smoothing her hand flat across her skin, finding her bellybutton, but not pausing there.

This is the only way she’s ever going to fall asleep tonight.

She slips her hand down farther until it hits the elastic of her underwear. She makes one pass over the top of the fabric, dipping her hand to the warmth between her legs, but then she returns it to the top again, to the waistband, and she wiggles the tips of her fingers underneath …

The anticipation’s more than half the fun, so she holds off. Lets thoughts drift in and out of her head. What would he think if he could see her doing this? If he knew it was all caused by fantasies of him?

She inches her fingers down and lets her legs fall open from her hips. The opening of her pelvis sends messages fizzing through her body, shivering through her.
You’re ready. It’ll be soon
.

She can picture him. The face she studied across the table for nearly two hours. The body she had no access to. She wonders about it. Dips, rises, scars — he’s bound to have them. She wants to touch them. Kiss them. Know them, so they’re always in her memory to work into this part of her routine.

She slides her hand right down, brushing past her hyper–receptive clit, gasping as she goes. She uses her natural lubrication, to return to her clit and the area surrounding it. To explore it with ease; her fingers sliding easily, applying light touches here, deeper pressure there.

Her breath is coming quick and shallow now, and she thinks of him again. Simple things like imagining him grasping the hem of her shirt and lifting it up and away; her doing the same to him. Of how it would feel to press her bare chest against his. She thinks of the frantic grasping and groping that accompany a first time — a good first time, anyway — and she’s positive this one would be sensational. She hasn’t had a first time for so, so long, but her body remembers the wash of lust that comes with it.

It’s time now. She’s just about there. She uses two fingers to isolate her clit; it’s so engorged and sensitive that she can hardly bear to touch it, and, at the same time, the ache inside her won’t let her leave it alone.

Then it’s coming. She usually thinks of it as a train, or it could be a waterfall — it’s something rushing, hard and fast, through her. Building momentum as it moves. The trick here is not to fight it. If she can remember to go with it, to ride it out, her reward will be a quivering, full–body orgasm.

At the last minute she slips one, then two, fingers down and into herself. Spreads them against her hot, wet walls.

Her other arm flies above her head to grip the headboard and, like that, the waves of bliss shudder through her. She arches off the mattress, once, then again, and holds onto the last ebbing moments, before warm, relaxed, and satisfied, she rolls to the side and drifts off to sleep; tiny aftershocks hitting her every now and then, twitching her thighs and her insides.

Good. Very good. But she can think of something better …

Chapter Three

(4:44)

N
OW SHE’S THE ONE
losing focus. Glad she’s not in university anymore, or she’d probably fail a core course. At work she does an entire fact check with the main subject of a story and forgets to confirm the proper spelling of his name. “I’m so sorry,” she says when she calls him back. “I don’t know where my mind is.”

He laughs — an older man — “It’s spring. I hope your mind is on love.”

Love, or something like it. A four–letter word that starts with “L” anyway, combined with a five–letter “L” name …

She thinks of Lucas all the time. Looks for him everywhere. At bike racks. At the pub they went to. She peers at clusters of workers wearing office–appropriate attire.

Sam flies into town, as he does now and then, to visit his parents; much older than hers, and quite frail these days.

She takes the bus to the airport to meet him; they’ll share a taxi back.

The board tells her his flight is on time. Landed at 4:44. She peers at the screen, which tells her it’s 4:44 right now. Since she met Lucas, it feels like every time she looks at a clock, all the numbers line up.

Lucas
. Desire forks through her, and she jumps when a deep voice asks, “To what do I owe the honour?”

She has to tiptoe to hug Sam, as always. His multi–Ironman body is hard and lean under her arms, wherever parts of her brush parts of him. His carefully curated half–stubble–half–beard scratches her cheek, as always. He smells like he usually does — not exactly perfumey, but not totally natural, either. There’s a product Sam uses he’ll never admit to, but she associates its scent inseparably with him.

She pulls back, looks him up and down. “You look great.” Sam’s clothes are expensive; he takes care of them, and their nice cuts hang well on his fit frame. She makes a point of complimenting him on them, and it’s never a stretch.

He smiles. “You look … different. Glowy. Something …”