Inflamed

"What is it men in women do require? The lineaments of gratified desire." --William Blake

"Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes." --Marquis de Sade

My hunky next-door neighbor materialized from his apartment the moment I opened my door wearing an oversized sleepshirt (a go-to fav procured during a Caribbean cruise with Mom last year) and not a stitch of anything else. No shoes, no shorts, and a big ass problem, I’ll tell ya!

I’d just gotten out of the shower and had nothing on the agenda tonight but some me time with my clit. It had been a long week, and I was in need. You know how it is.

The UPS courier knocked at the door, so I tossed on the nearest thing that wasn’t some skimpy towel and headed for the front door in excitement. Shopping online last week, I found a new toy. What did every girl need? A battery-operated boyfriend, of course! BOB was always there to satisfy you. My roommate and BFF Cynthia wouldn’t stop raving about hers, which prompted the search out of curiosity. The Adam and Eve website I bought the sex toy from also professed that BOB would light me up brighter than the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, which sounded pretty awesome. I looked forward to finding out since I never used one before. To be honest, I hadn’t much sexual experience to begin with.

Too much of a bookworm, maybe, or the thick headgear I wore during most of high school might have scared any prospects away. Whatevs. By the time I started college, not only did I get contacts (thank God!), but I was done with the braces, too. I cut my hair and dyed it an awful shade of crayon red. I hated it! Felt like a freakin’ neon sign. Look at me! Look at me!

Definitely was not my style or one of my better fashion-forward moments. Live and learn. Never get drunk on Tequila Tuesday looking for a change. Duly noted. Check the box!

I was glad when the semi-permanent faded, and my natural cool cedar roots settled in to stay. Frankly, so were my parents. I think they believed I’d turned to drugs or something. More like a rebellious phase that passed quickly. I started to grow my hair long again, and I lost 50 pounds at the end of my junior year. Whoo hoo! I’d gotten asked on several dates, but they went nowhere. Too busy holding down a full-time job at Macy’s and a full load at school as a psychology major, to be thinking about some boy.

Anyway, the last thing I expected to see exiting said front door was my hunky neighbor Roland shirtless in heather gray lounge pants, paying some pizza delivery guy for his dinner. He frequently got home late, and I heard when he came in because I was such a night owl. No more than five hours of sleep, max, and I was awake doing homework or studying. Roland must have taken a rare day off from his fast-paced corporate life.

Cynthia and I ogled him more than once as he jogged at 5:00 AM every morning, rain or shine. Such an ungodly hour of the morning when nothing but old cat ladies and kids like us staggered home from partyin’ our brains out at a frat or the club. Cyn thought Roland had to be at least 50, but all guys older than 30 seemed to fall under that magic number with her. Realistically, I knew he was closer to 30. He didn’t have any gray yet, but the start of lines formed on his forehead and crow’s feet by his yummy green eyes.

Yeah, I know. Still old as dust, but I couldn’t help it. If you saw Roland, you’d totally understand. Too old for me, maybe, but I always had a serious thing for older guys. They were more mature in the way I considered myself. I gravitated toward them, locked on their trajectory with tracker beams, and fantasized about them while playing with my clit because they always turned me on so I might get the job done. None of the younger guys my age ever did, not even the ones I dated.

Weird, huh?

So, I stood outside my apartment door almost freakin’ naked, right? For me, that’s way out of sync from the norm because I was Miss Proper Always Dressed to the Nines and all that shit, but today I was kinda feelin’ that “Lazy Song” by Bruno Mars. My best girl spent the night with her boyfriend, and for a change, the whole damn apartment belonged to me for the evening. I looked forward to taking full advantage of some me time.

Dripping with wetness, I rushed out, not even finished drying off. Titillation filled me over my present to myself. I didn’t even properly dry my hair. It was plastered to my face, yet I saw through the hair just fine to view my shoeless neighbor in his lounge pants. The higher up my gaze traveled, the more I noticed. How those same pants hung low on his narrow hips with the hint of pubes near the danger zone.

Mmmmm...

The top half of him was slender, rivaling an Olympic swimmer physique, but muscular where those fair hairs from his crotch thinned deliciously. Clear definition had been carved into the smooth skin on his long arms, and only a hint of a six-pack along his torso. His shoulders were broad--and oh my, can you hold me?--very masculine. His hair didn’t appear so blond in the hall light. A bit long, it curled around his face with glints of golden brown running through the caramel of his medium cut. I sucked in more than a few breaths as I tried to turn around and duck inside my apartment, but it was too late.

“Shit!” The heavy door shut in my face! I tried the doorknob, and it was locked. Greeaaaatttttt!

“Hey, you okay?” Roland asked with alarm sounding off in his voice.

I turned, and there I stood, face to face with the man of my hottest fantasies. He’s so far out of my range I quivered in my sleepshirt. Like literally, shook on my bare feet! I didn’t believe this was happening to me! What had I come outside the apartment for again?

“You’re cold and shivering! You locked yourself out, didn’t you?” He shook his head at me like some poor waif.

Too ashamed to speak, I nodded. It was freakin’ Roland! A second ago, before that knock sounded on my apartment door, I thought about how I would use Roland as I played with my clit. I know my face turned scarlet like the letter and all, but hey, no one needed to brand me on my forehead or anything. I knew exactly what I was in that moment, and the burn focused much lower.

“Do you want to use my phone and give your roommate a call?” Roland inquired, trying to be a gentleman.

I nodded again… totally mortified at how I would explain any of this to Cyn. She’d kill me if she had to come home and let me in. She hadn’t seen her guy Ryan in the eight days since she’d been on her period. While I loved her like my own sister, Cyn was a real bitch during that time. However, she usually was if she didn’t get her “some on the regular,” as she called it. The point being, I’d never hear the end of it either way.

Roland motioned me to come into his bachelor pad. Porpoise gray on the walls, black walnut wood finishes, vintage driftwood-colored floors, and leather everywhere. It’s the kind of place I expected from him. Sophisticated and manly. A real guy’s place.

“Cool decor.”

“Thanks,” Roland replied as he shut the door. He headed to the kitchen with white painted cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and the granite island counter where his phone charged. He put down the Armando pizza and unhooked the newest Samsung, which he handed me. “Here.”

I nodded and took the phone obediently, still at a loss for what to say. I swore I was such a dork sometimes. There I stood with my fantasy guy, and you’d think I would find something more to say to him than the lame conversation I mustered so far. I shook my head, and I dialed up my friend; shocked, I even remembered her cell number and held my breath. The voicemail picked up, as I suspected it might.

“Dammit,” I muttered in frustration. Leaving a message for Cyn, I let my shoulders slump and shook my head again at the pitiful creature I was. Should have known I was out of luck. I settled his phone back on the kitchen counter.

“Did you get her?” Roland asked with a white cotton towel in his hand when he returned to the living room where he left me. He began helping me dry my brunette hair with it as I shivered. He brushed up against me so close I smelled the clean scent of Ivory soap on his skin.

I gasped in my leap away from him, realizing that my breasts were exposed through the wet cotton of my pink sleepshirt. My nipples were harder than little rocks as I folded my arms protectively over them, shocked at the realization I was so visible to his eyes.

“Could you—er—put on a shirt?” I requested and looked away from him bashfully. I know my face had to be the color of my pumping blood because this situation was not getting any less awkward for me.

“Why?” he asked while still holding the towel in his hands. “Don’t you find me attractive?”

I stared at him blankly for a minute, stunned that he would ask me that stupid question. For some reason, I must have forgotten my filter before I stepped through his apartment door because I said, “I do. That’s the problem.”

Roland looped the towel around my neck and used it to pull me toward him. When I stumbled into him, I braced my hands against that hard chest I fantasized about falling into so many times. He released his hold of the towel to wrap his limber arms around me. My heart beat even faster than it did before he cupped the strands of my drying dark hair behind my ears. When I still failed to meet his eyes, Roland turned my head toward him with his warm palms against my cheeks.

“That’s not a problem at all, angel. I’m attracted to you, too.”

“I call bullshit,” I whispered, dumbfounded by the expression on his rugged face that was a mixture of amusement and something altogether steaming hot. That heat transferred down my face, my neck, right to my hard nipples, and so much lower. It took me off-guard, like his words to me.

“Why, because you’re younger than me?” he wondered with a half-smile I found sexy as hell.

I glared at him flatly, though. “Your girlfriend looks like a Vogue model?”

“And real girls have curves… like you.”

I laughed then, unable to help it, and Roland smiled alone. It met his green eyes that burned with that insane heat that shot right through me. I tingled and suddenly pressed my thighs together. That smile was it for me. Stick a fork in me. I’m done! I never wanted to play with my clit so badly in my whole life! My lips parted so that I could breathe more regularly.

“Stop playin’. Like I really turn you on.” Roland wasn’t serious. I mean, I was not even wearing any makeup! Come on, I looked like a wet dog with really hard nipples and freakishly long legs.

Mom always teased that I was all legs and should have run track or hurdles, yet that joke was on me. I seriously lacked the coordination of a gazelle. Believe me, I quit while I was ahead and kept it in a book where I was safe. Being the klutz I was, I fractured the same foot on the same stupid step of our new house three times in the same year. Let’s face it: I didn’t have a graceful bone in my gangly body.

“I’ve not even begun to play with you yet, but give me a chance to put in some work.”

Roland lowered his mouth to mine and dropped a soft kiss on my lips. A test for chemistry, perhaps? In my mind, there was no doubt in how the air always crackled around him when I saw him, but I had no idea if he was for real or if he felt anything near what I did for him.