Dalia's Private After-Party

The last taxi pulls away outside and the door clicks shut, and suddenly the apartment is very quiet. Your best friend is face-down on the bed in the back room, dead to the world after seven birthday shots and a round of beers he didn't need. You should call a cab too. You know you should. Dalia has other plans. Thirty-five years old as of midnight, barefoot now, dress riding up her thighs where she's folded herself onto the couch beside you. She's refilled your glass without asking and hers is already half gone. "So," she says, clinking hers against yours. "Everyone left. Even the birthday girl's boyfriend." She laughs, low and warm. "Some party, huh?"

She stretches her arms over her head and the dress slides higher. You look away. She catches it immediately.

"Don't do that." She leans in, close enough that you can smell her perfume, something vanilla and dark. "You've been looking at me all night. I felt it. Every time I bent over the table, every time I laughed." Her eyes are bright from the drinks and something else. "You think I didn't notice?" You open your mouth to deny it. She presses one finger against your lips.

From the back room comes a snore. Long, wet, unmistakable. Dalia glances toward the door and grins.

"He's gone until morning. Trust me. I've been with him six years — I know what seven shots does to him." She stands, wobbles just slightly, and steadies herself on your shoulder. Her hand stays there. "Here's the thing," she says. "I turned thirty-five today. And I've spent all night being the cute girlfriend, the polite hostess, the girl who refills everyone's glass." She walks to the speaker and turns the music up. "Tonight I want to be something else."

She starts to move. Not dancing exactly — swaying, her hips rolling slow with the bass, her eyes locked on yours the whole time. She reaches back and pulls the zipper of her dress down an inch. Then two. "You can watch," she says. "Watching's free."

You're on the couch, drink forgotten in your hand, and your heart is hammering against your ribs. This is your best friend's girlfriend. This is the woman he's been with for six years. She's unzipping her dress three feet from you. "I know what you're thinking," she says, still moving. "You're thinking we shouldn't."

"You're right," she says. "We shouldn't." The dress slides off one shoulder. "He's my boyfriend. You're his best friend. It's a terrible idea." The other shoulder. "Terrible."

She stops moving. Holds the dress to her chest with one hand. "And yet here you are. And here I am. And neither of us has moved toward the door." She tilts her head. "So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to finish my drink. Slowly. And you're going to sit there and wait, and you're going to tell me exactly what you want to do to me. Out loud. If you can't say it, I'll put my dress back on and call you a cab."

Your throat is dry. She waits, sipping, patient as a cat. "I want to touch you," you manage. "Mm. Better. More."

"I want to take that dress off you. I want my mouth on you. I've thought about it for years — your legs, that night at the pool in the yellow bikini —" The words come out faster than you can stop them, and her smile spreads slow and delighted. "There he is," she breathes. "Took you long enough."

She crosses the room and straddles your lap, settling her weight right on you, her dress a puddle of fabric barely held between you. She takes your glass and sets it down without looking. "Here are my rules," she says against your ear. "You don't touch until I say. You don't rush me. And you don't fall asleep before I'm finished with you." She rolls her hips once, deliberately, and you groan out loud. "And if he snores again, we ignore it."

Her mouth finds your neck. "Happy birthday to me," she whispers.

She takes your hands and places them on her thighs — high, at the hem of the dress, and no higher. "Stay," she says, like you're a dog on a leash, and laughs.

She kisses you then, finally, and it's nothing like you imagined — it's better, it's hungry, she kisses like she's been waiting as long as you have. Her tongue slides against yours and she makes a small sound into your mouth that goes straight through you. "Fuck," she mutters. "I've wanted that since the night we met."

"Okay," she breathes, pulling back, lips swollen. "You can touch me now." You don't need telling twice. Your hands slide up her thighs, under the dress, over the lace at her hips, up her bare back. She shudders — actually shudders — and arches into your palms.

"Yes. Like that. God, your hands." She pulls the dress over her head and drops it, sitting in your lap in nothing but her underwear, warm and gold in the dim light, thirty-five and gorgeous and so much more than you'd let yourself picture. "Say I'm beautiful," she orders. "You're beautiful. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

She pushes you back against the couch and undoes your belt, unhurried, her eyes on yours. She takes her time with the button. The zipper. "You've waited years," she says. "You can wait thirty more seconds." But her hands aren't steady anymore, and you both know it.

When she finally takes you in her hand, she exhales like she's been holding her breath all night. "Oh," she says softly. "That's what you've been hiding at parties all this time?"

Then she leans down and takes you into her mouth, slow and wet and warm, and your head drops back and you stop caring about anything in the next room.

She pulls off with a wet sound and wipes her lips, breathless. "Not yet. Not there." She stands, hooks her thumbs in her underwear, slides it down, and steps out of it. "I've decided how I want to come. On your tongue first. Then the rest." She sits back on the couch, opens her thighs, and looks at you like it's the most natural thing in the world. "Six years of staring," she says. "Show me what it was for."

You go to your knees in front of her. She tastes like salt and vanilla and the whole night, and she grabs a fistful of your hair and holds you exactly where she wants you, saying your name in a whisper that gets less and less quiet.

She comes with her hand clapped over her own mouth, hips bucking against you, a muffled scream leaking between her fingers. Then she goes slack, laughing breathlessly, pushing your head away because she's too sensitive.

"Okay. Okay, wow." She pulls you up and kisses you, tasting herself on your tongue, and doesn't care. "Get up here. I need you inside me. Right now. And don't you hold back on me."

You sink into her and you both groan at the same time, foreheads touching, and she wraps her legs around you and locks her ankles. "Fuck — I forgot what new felt like," she gasps, and pulls you deeper.

You move together on that couch for what feels like an hour, the music covering everything, her whispering filth in your ear between kisses — harder, just like that, don't stop, don't you dare — her nails digging into your back where someone will never see them.

When you tell her you're close, she holds you tighter. "Inside me," she whispers. "I want all of it. It's my birthday."

Afterward she lies beneath you, sweaty and grinning, tracing lazy circles on your shoulder while the music plays and the apartment stays quiet around you. "Best birthday I've had in a decade," she says.

She makes you both a drink, wearing nothing but your shirt, and you sit tangled on the couch in the small hours while the music plays low. From the bedroom, another snore. Dalia raises her glass to it, mocking. "He'll sleep till noon." She curls into your side, warm and satisfied, and presses her lips to your jaw. "So. You staying till morning, or are you going to make me beg? Because I will, you know. I've got no shame left. You took it all." She laughs against your neck, and her hand starts wandering again, lazy and promising.