The Last Thing Blake Expects

With a grin on my lips I turn, cocking one hip and leaning in to my current attire as much as I possibly can.

I play with my femininity, bouncing the bottle of water on that cocked hip of mine while my other hand curls into the middle of me demurely but not so innocently. The fingers of that second hand draw idly at the neckline of my dress, pulling it just enough that it gives him a good look at the lines of my neck and maybe even the edge of the cup of my bra but surely nothing more.

I am a woman in that moment, enshrined in the power of my gender. I am beautiful and fearsome and loved and wanted and no more the quiet little flower who was so shocked when he had her all alone. I tell him, with every inch of me, that he can want me but can’t have me.

Not without my permission.

For a moment it’s actually a little fun. Blake is set on his back foot, obviously unprepared for me to be acting like this at all. His jaw practically drops and whatever he’d seen from the back of me, well clearly it failed to leave a lasting impression because he’s taking his time taking in the front of me.

And it isn’t that he’s so blatantly checking me out, his eyes rolling down to my toes and all the way back up. It isn’t even that he lingers on my curves and that his gaze feels like it’s shredding through the material of my dress and leaving me bare. It’s that the way that he looks at me triggers all those feelings I had in the crowd and all those needs I had in my bed and with other people I could at least begin to understand it objectively, but Blake shouldn’t be making me feel like this.

We have history. We have bad history. He’s made me feel like less than dirt more times than I can count and he has been so outright cruel that I shouldn’t ever be able to forgive him.

But the little voice in the back of my head that I’m starting to hate so much reminds me that wasn’t this Blake, even if only because this Blake hasn’t had the opportunity to do that yet. This Blake is all potential, without any actual action. He’s not committed a single sin yet.

Does that mean he should be forgiven though?

By the time his eyes find my face and he remembers to be decent I feel thoroughly exposed. I don’t have to fight the urge to cover up to resist it though. My mind is too torn up between trying to reason out where exactly that urge is coming from. Whether from the masculine side of me which is screaming out that this is all too much or whether, maybe, it’s shy little Emily who is thinking the exact same thing.

In the end it doesn’t matter. I’m standing with my hip cocked to one side, water bottle bouncing against my leg, letting my bully get a good look before he plasters a grin on his face and plans his next move.

All the momentum I had is lost, swept away by my indecision, doubt, and uncertainty. Instead of being careful I try for boldness.

“Now I’m new to all of this, just as new as you, but I haven’t seen a single thing in my time on campus that I’d describe as interesting. Given that, and given the fact that you strike me as the type of guy who is all talk and no action, I have my doubts that you’d be able to provide me with anything that would fit the bill.”

I’m going to be honest, I have no fucking clue where that came from. It just spilled out past my lips, bubbling away and falling into place. Given the fact that I wasn’t thinking when that stream of consciousness came out I’m frankly astonished that it was even remotely coherent but it was more than that. It was maybe more than I intended. It was… flirtatious.

Or at least that’s how Blake took it.

His grin broadened a little and I realized that he was definitely into the bold new me. He stepped forward, just enough to close the gap but not enough to touch me. Close enough that when he parted his jacket and reached inside to show me the slim little bottle he had hidden it was only him and I that could see it.

“I might have something. A little something to spice up the night,” he said, “Come on. I know a quiet little spot.”

Danger. Sirens blaring and lights strobing. Every single warning in the world that I was in danger and the voice of someone telling me once to never let someone take you to a secondary location. All of that telling me that I should think better of this, telling me that I was getting myself into trouble. Danger.

“Lead the way,” the words came out of me, once more guided by a hand that I couldn’t see.

But I could see his hand, or feel it rather, as he pushed it into the small of my back and turned me away from the crowd. As he led me towards the dim darkness at the edge of this space and beyond it. As it slipped around and swallowed me whole.

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