1984

He took her hand, and felt her rings edging into his palm.

"Leave with you?" she clarified,

"Now."

"All right," she said, mildly. "Why?"

Blaise didn't have an answer for her.

He led her away from the cupola, through the hacienda/hallway, into the upstairs lounge past "Happening in Green".

"That's a piece of shit," he informed her, as they went by.

They hurried down the stairs, a freestanding black metal spiral, little more than a glorified fire escape in design but wonderfully minimalist, n'est ce pas? - and Blaise was vaguely surprised at how little she was hampered by the Balenciaga. Pauline could barely manage to perambulate in wet rayon.

They cleared the foyer without incident, and then they were through the front door onto the smooth, flawless concrete of Alex's circular driveway.

"Corvette," she said, with a knowing smile. "You drive a new Corvette."

"Yes, I do," he answered succinctly. "Is that too uptown for your sensibilities?"

"Not at all. The convertible is very happening, Brady."

"Whatever," he said. "Get in."

Blaise opened the door for her, and she sat down, sweeping her stiff skirt with her in an attempt to fit it all in the car.

He picked up the trailing edge and wrapped it carefully over her lap.

Once he had the car started he relaxed a little. He lowered the window and the sounds of the party met his ears once more- the laughing, the low buzz of conversation, the jangling, giddy bounce of the opening chords to "The Safety Dance".

Christ on a cracker, Alex- he thought, dimly. Why?

Violetta leaned over the stick shift and put her hand on his arm.

"Drive," she whispered.

She leaned back in the deep leather seat as he peeled out of the drive and headed for the freeway. Her arms were raised above her head, resting, relaxed.

How could she relax? Didn't she know how narrowly he'd escaped?

"Why did you come with me?" he asked, after a moment.

The streetlights blurred into a running neon line that reflected blue from a hundred unknown sources.

Violetta paused, smiling diminutively.

"Because," she purred, "I want to fuck you all over your sterile yet tastefully decorated apartment."

Blaise stared at the road ahead, feeling himself surge at her words.

His cock was checking in.

He wanted her, he realized- and not just because she was there.

He wanted to-

"Hey Brad? Could you turn on the radio?"

He complied.

"Human Nature," she said with a sigh. "This is a good song. The best songs are always B-sides."

"Yes," he answered, evenly, feeling a rush of surrealism. "Thriller is a great album. Great video. That guy has talent."

"Where are we going?" she asked, abruptly, turning to look at him with one eye. The other was covered by the sweep of her hair, the black side.

"To my place," he said, automatically.

She laughed.

"Of course."

His apartment was near the top- not the penthouse, but just short of it.

The ride up was excruciating in uncounted tiny ways.

He kept marking the curve of her shoulder, the swell of her breasts beneath the stylishly worn top. But the presence of the elevator man precluded any pre-emptive strikes on his part, so he stood beside her in tightly wound silence, replying to the elevator man's polite inquiries with vague monosyllables.

Each floor was coded for security and private access, and the elevator opened right into his apartment. It was a nice touch, one of the reasons he'd chosen this building. That and the sauna.

"Thank you," he told the operator, tersely, as the doors closed behind them, and there they were, suddenly, alone.

Violetta was looking around, appraising her surroundings.

Low, sculpted furniture, open space. Immaculate white carpet. Above the black marble fireplace hung a Liechtenstein. Exposed brick on the interior wall, superficial walls all matte white, like a photographer's backdrop.

"The whole floor is mine," Blaise said, sliding his arms beneath hers.

She broke away from him gently and went into the living room, her tulle skirt trailing with a tantalizing rustle.

He didn't follow right away. He watched her, coolly exhilarated.

This was incredible, unthinkable.

And yet he was thinking of it. Thinking in detail.

She was like a strange, exotic bird.

A macaw? he thought, smirking, briefly, as his thoughts touched on Maxwell Cox.

No, he decided, as his thoughts resettled, fully intent upon the girl who now leaned against window, looking down at the street far below.

A bird of paradise…but that was a flower.

Blaise stopped trying to figure it out.

He went toward her, running his fingertips gently down the center of her back.

"It's amazing," she murmured. "This whole wall is a window."

"Floor to ceiling," he whispered. "But don't worry, it's tempered."

It was dark outside, and the lights seemed far away and surreal, as if they were high above the earth.

"It's like fucking Cloud City," he said, softly. "Isn't it?"

Violetta nodded.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes," she said, turning to face him. He admired her eyes at this new, captive vantage. They were pale as opal.

He slowly moved forward, trapping her back against the glass, an arm on either side.

"Do you like this?"

She smiled.

"Don't you?"

"Very much," he said thickly.

"Is that a Brooks Brothers suit?" she asked, dreamily, her black-smudged eyes closing slightly. Her mouth was parted and his loins lurched at the sight of it.

"Yes," he breathed.

She laughed lightly.

"Of course it is. You're a yuppie, aren't you, Andrew…"

"Blaise," he said firmly, squeezing her cheeks between the fingers of one hand. "My name is Blaise."

"Blaise," she agreed, her eyes glowing in the electric blue half-light.

"I could fuck you like this," he said, touching her on the upper chest where her skin was bared. "Against the glass."

Violetta gazed at him for a moment, then boldly, without taking her eyes from him, pulled up the huge, stiffly billowing skirt.

"Fuck me," she whispered. "Yes."

Blaise couldn't believe her sexual energy. It was inborn to her pores, somehow. She wore Chanel, he noticed, dimly. Coco.

Pauline wore No. 19, which had always seemed like an old lady's fragrance to him. Not like this. It smelled exotic, compelling. It smelled like pussy- or at least as good, as it left him feeling the same.

Ready to fuck. Oh, so ready.

He realized that this Violetta wasn't wearing anything beneath her billowing Balenciaga but a red garter belt and stockings. Her pussy was exposed to him, vulnerable. She favored the landing strip, which was nice- short, sweet.

Who wants to be like fucking Ponce de Leon, after all, thought Blaise absently.

He hooked his fingers beneath the garters themselves and ran them slowly down the length of the straps. As the back of his hands grazed her thighs she moved, reflexively, throwing back her head.

She eyed him, willing him on, silently, a tiny smile playing about her pale lips.

Nice, he thought, trying to maintain his calm. Very nice.

He'd thought he was well jaded. No one had made him this hot in a long time. Not Pauline, not Nancy, not Traci, not Courtlynn, not Francesca, not Cynthia. What was it with this chick?

It isn't her, he thought. It's the taboo aspect of our converse social/sexual association. That's just basic sociology.

God, she was kissing his neck. He closed his eyes.

"Now," she hissed. "I want it now."

He was hard, already, just at the suggestion.

She was pulling at his zipper, and Blaise looked down at her hands. Her nail polish was mica-red and chipped.

It turned him on, though he couldn't for the life of him say why.

For once, he didn't care. He freed his cock with quick inattention, and there it was, Mister Trouble- upthrust and insistent, demanding action.

"Oh, fuck," she whispered, running her hands over her breasts, caressing them through the weathered fabric. "You're huge. You're fucking huge."

Blaise saw a blur of lights and smelled her- not just her, but her- perfume, hair, pussy- all of it. She wanted him. It was in the air. Thick with her need.

His cock felt hot to the flesh of his palm. He released it and grasped the backs of her thighs with his hands, raising her up, back against the glass, high above the city, until she was right where he wanted her.

He regarded the demure perfection of her shell-pink pussy, glistening like a new kind of diamond. It seemed too precious to assail without first breaking the ice with gentler endeavors- but its owner was of a different opinion, taking his head in her hands, shuddering, moaning, begging.

Blaise went in for the kill.

Violetta spread her thighs, breathing out, and he pushed into her like an earthbound rocket, heat-seeking, unstoppable.

He exhaled in silent relief. Being inside her was sweet and sour, tart with the bliss of stayed fulfillment, but delectable somehow.

She was tight, responsive; she fucked him back, her body reflexive and serpentine in the face of his steady pumping. Her wetness diffused over his thighs like hot mist, slicking him with her essence.

The warm smell of her musk- god, it drove him insane.

Blaise felt her hands on his biceps, clutching. His skin felt electric, skimming her body with each stroke.

He looked down at her face, her open mouth. He took his finger and touched her bottom lip, her jaw, lingeringly. He smeared her black eyeshadow downward, deconstructing her, aware of her beauty and surprised at himself.

Blaise rarely surprised himself anymore.

But this was not Pauline. God, no. This was nothing like Pauline.

Her eyes opened, hectically bright in the semi-dark, against the shadowy stain of passion-smudged kohl.

"Fuck me, you bastard. Fuck me like you mean it."

"I do mean it," he murmured, menacingly.

She smiled, salacious.

"Fuck me like I'm your type," she purred.

Blaise drove into her, slower, more forceful. Deliberate.

Her mouth fell open as if she had seen something wonderful. Speechless.

"Am I yours?" He demanded, thickly.

Violetta gave a little shiver at something, something her body was doing.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes, what?"

She let her head fall back, ecstatic, reverent.

He took her by the hair, gentle but firm, as sensation coursed through his loins in bullet-like pulses.

"My name."

Violetta eyed him with a cool solemnity that her body betrayed.

"Your name?" she said, softly, tilting her head.

"Yes, I want to hear you say it-"

"Blaise," she whispered, and her eyes shone, with lust, with amusement- he didn't fucking care. "Your name is Blaise."

"Yes," he said. "It is."

He stroked her hair as he fucked her, his mouth by her ear.

"Blaise Benjamin Braidon." He whispered, darkly. "I want to hear it from your lips while I'm inside you."

"Is this some kind of trigger for you? Some fetish?"

"You could call it that. It's my fetish with you."

"Blaise," she said, deliberately. "Benjamin. Braidon."

"Violetta."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to do something else now."

He pulled slowly out of her, and she moaned at the loss of him, sinking down against the glass in half-satiated stasis.

"Lie down," he said.

She stretched out languid beside the window, looking up and outward at the starless sky. Her reflection lay beside her in the glass, hovering over the city streets.

Blaise pulled off his shirt and moved toward her.

She gazed at his torso, reaching out to touch his stomach as he neared her, almost as if she were entranced.

Why not, he thought. She's used to fucking art-nouveau shitheads who slather themselves with cream cheese and honey and act as the buffet centerpiece at their own parties- whose primary exercise consists of running to the bathroom to purge.

Too late, it vaguely dawned on Blaise that he was also describing Pauline's most cherished daily regimen.

"Accustomed to wan ennui?" he asked, his lip curling slightly in something that was not quite a smile.

"You aren't the first yuppie I've fucked," she said, but her eyes continued to roam his contours in an endless circuit.

Her eyes held a kind of odd wonder- and for a fleeting moment he wondered if his own eyes had ever looked like that- even as a child- or if they'd always been like the ones he saw in the mirror; flat shields of cool predatory guile- dead, sexy.

Blaise put his mouth on her skin, at the knee, watching her indolently with his silver dollar eyes as he kissed his way down the inside of her thigh. Her knees eased open, outward, even further, like the wings of a butterfly, and he aided this with an affirming hand on the other thigh, as he began to kiss it too, slowly following the curve of her leg to the delta of her loins.

Her black lashes crushed violently together as she sighed, and then her eyes opened once more, staring upward, past the vaulted ceilings of his apartment.

Blaise pushed aside his own desire with practiced detachment, and leaned forward, curving his arms under, around her thighs, pulling them apart, crucifying her pussy before him.

Now she was at the mercy of his mouth, and he was pleased by that, the idea of it. He lowered his head and kissed the smooth, shaven skin there, feeling a tremor overtake her at the presence of his lips.

Violetta's eyes swept shut as her head turned to the side, and her fingers rolled and clenched in the lush white carpet, which was more like fur than fiber.

Blaise touched down on her warmth, and she first tensed, then melted against his mouth. He traced meaningless figures over the lips of her pussy with the tip of his tongue, pausing, taunting, before bisecting them, and as he did she moaned- and he ran up the length of her, the slit, with light, priming strokes.

As her body shuddered under the trespasses of his mouth, he let himself delve more fully into her, yet kept a slow, languid rhythm, dragging his tongue caressingly upward, over her clit, time after time.

She was responding to him now, her hips revolving against his attentions, his studied licking.

Blaise regarded her, his gaze intense, his manner absorbed. If she had opened her eyes at that moment, she might have been afraid of him.

Violetta shuddered and sobbed, as her fingers found his hair and slid slowly into it, grasping thick handfuls and pulling his face to her.

An appreciative purr rolled from his throat.

She looked both sultry and sullen in the heat of her desire, her arched eyebrows contracted into ardent gull-wings, her lips pushed forward, ever so slightly, into a cloven pout.

At the sight of it Blaise nearly gave in, nearly gave her what she wanted. He let his hand stray, and his fingers crept over her pussy, seeking, pulsing, then pushing, gliding up into her.

What he wanted, for the barest second, was not crystal clear to him.

For a moment it seemed as if he wanted nothing more than to finish her off, then and there- and he began to push and withdraw his fingers with merciless intent, eating her, wanting to feel her come, knowing she would-

Soon.

He felt her writhe, gasp- and withdrew.

"Not yet," he said, quietly.

Violetta lay, silent, breathing, than gave him an unexpected smile.

"You're surprising," she said.

She rose slowly up to sit before him, the crumpled Balenciaga settling around her lap like a crisp black pool of tumultuous frozen water.

"Am I?" Blaise replied, with a lift of his eyebrows, running a hand smoothly over his forehead.

"Yes."

She reached out and held his jaw in her hand, still chasing her breath.

Blaise turned his head and bit lightly at her fingers.

Then he took hold of her and pulled her upward, back against the glass once more, causing her to cry out, startled, but oh, her eyes were alive when she looked at him- alive and willing.

Blaise leaned in, bent his head and kissed her, for the first time.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he felt her arching into him, pressing his hand to the small of her back.

It was heady like scotch and cigars, kissing her- this strange chick- an experience he would never have imagined, let alone contemplated. Blaise let himself descend deeper into the kiss, winding his hands into her hair at the temples, immersing himself in the heady melange of Coco and Paul Mitchell, of sweet carnality.

It was almost sweet, for a moment. Too sweet.

Tout suite.

His hands found her fashionable jersey, seizing the slashed neck and ripping it open, so that her breasts were revealed, heaving, cradled alluringly by their red demi-bra. A rhinestone pendant lay between them, at the end of a long thin chain that dripped down the front of her chest. It sparkled mockingly in the half-light.

Blaise whirled her around so that she faced the window, pressed up against it, her palms against the glass. He caught a glimpse of her open-mouthed smile as he did.

"How's the view?" he whispered in her ear.

He smoothed her two-toned hair back from her face with his hand, feeling the rise and fall of her respiration against his chest.

A wicked, transient smile grazed his lips and faded.

"You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

He paused.

"Don't answer that."

Violetta gazed through the glass. The street below was only a dark glimmering suggestion; the sky above was an endless field of night. Lights from the city poured and filtered narrowly through the space between, blue-amber neon just below them and sodium from above.

The buildings loomed like Gotham, and her perspective seemed limitless from every side, as if she could step out onto the night itself and veer, like her eyes, among the jagged monoliths- a high-rise neo-Stonehenge of infinite magnitude.

Robotic dusk, liquid sky, a mechanical sunset horizon. She lay pressed up against the electric night- only this one, invisible barrier between her and the sky.

Glass?

Tangible yes, but hard to believe in.

Easier to believe in was Blaise's hard cock, pressing into her back.

He pushed clouds of skirt up over her hips, pausing to run his hand over her ass, which he more than approved of. The arch of her back rendered it up-thrust and inviting, the straps of her garter skimming either side, accentuating the roundness of it.

Blaise slid his hand around the curve of her waist, down to her pussy, stroking it firmly as he readied his cock, bracing his other hand on her hip.

Then he was inside her, before she expected him, ramming into her from behind, driving her against the glass. She reached upward, forearms resting on the window above her head, spreading her thighs and lifting her ass, wanting him to penetrate her more, and more deeply.

Her gasps were choked, muffled, snarling, breathless- and he fucked her with relentless abandon, burying himself deep with each thrust.

Violetta felt his cock working savagely inside her, as his fingers slapped and massaged her clit, and she bared her teeth, feeling the ravaging onset of orgasm brewing within her loins.

"What was that noise?" he intoned, his breathing softly jagged. "Are you close?"

She nodded.

"Yes?" he asked. "How close?"

Violetta turned her head to look over her shoulder and he saw her narrowed, smoldering eyes, the barest sheen to her face.

She began to push against him, furious, slamming back onto his cock.

Blaise caught his breath, taken aback by the unbearable rush of pleasure that struck him.

No- he thought, ruthlessly. You first. I insist.

He leaned forward, covering her with his body, pinning her wrists to the glass with his free hand. Her hips rolled and bucked beneath him as he fucked her harder- battering her between his cock and his merciless fingers, working her pussy viciously as he thrust, the muscles of his forearm stiff and corded with exertion.

Suddenly he felt it- as Violetta threw her head back, over his shoulder, a cry escaping her. He pummeled her, pushing away his climax, hardly able to stand her screams, her moans- her eyes closed tight- crushing silk fans, crushing black butterflies, her pink-painted mouth open in a scream.