The Promise of Lace (12 page)

Waiters carrying platters of cheese, wine, and champagne
were mingled in with the crowd, which made me wonder if we’d missed a major
announcement in the City Pages about some sort of special event tonight.

“Well.” Dieter chuckled. He snagged a couple of champagne
flutes off a passing server’s tray and handed me one. “We seem to have the gift
of awesome timing.”

“Yeah.
The night looks crowded, but the
refreshments look free.” I sipped what turned out to be passable champagne.

“No complaints here.” Dieter held his elbow out to me and I
smiled and took his offered arm.

The old-fashioned gesture charmed me more and more as we
walked around the gallery. Dieter was such an odd mix of a person. He was
damaged, but still managed to be so trusting. He was masculine—broad and
chivalrous, but he worked in a lingerie store and wore lacy panties. He clearly
had a need for some approval, but he adamantly clung to things that he wanted
that were well outside of what he could easily expect approval for. He was
capable, but didn’t seem to be ambitious.

He was a question mark and a relief. The guys I’d been going
out with lately were so… draining. They had mediocre skills, but demanded
maximum reward. They thought machismo was equal to maturity. They expected
gratitude as a response to basic decency and sex to be live action video game
pornography.

I’d been thinking a lot about Hailey and Noah’s criticism of
my recent forays into romance and had come up with what I thought was a pretty
solid conclusion. The guys I had been going out with were entitled fuck ups and
I went out with them
because
they
were disposable. If a project came up, I didn’t feel bad about blowing off a
date. If the weather got bad, I didn’t think twice about dumping them so I
didn’t have to drive in the snow. They were just distractions and amusements.
Like going to a movie you didn’t particularly want to see just to get out of
the house.

Dieter lifted a cheese plate off an incoming waiter and held
it out for me. I snagged a piece of Gouda. He gave me a very warm smile and I
grabbed some red wine from another passing server and handed a glass to him.

I liked Dieter more than any of those other guys. But he was
going to be more difficult. Some of those things that he claimed as
“his”
were his because they were
disapproved of by the ex who had found a way to utterly control his life. That
was a symptom of still being haunted, not of healing. He seemed to spend a lot
of money on clothes for a guy working a starvation wage and he hadn’t mentioned
that he was even
looking
for a real
job.

There were solid, logical, smart reasons to bail on this
relationship before I was in too deep.

I sipped the wine, even though I’d polished off the
champagne too fast.

You weren’t supposed to think those sorts of things. You
were supposed to fall for Prince Charming immediately after he swept you off
your feet and then face the world’s obstacles together with Love and Puppies
and Good Vibes or whatever.

None of which paid the goddamn rent.

But I still liked him. We were having fun. We had chemistry.
He made me feel desirable in a way that none of those leering, pathetic mama’s
boys ever had.

And that’s what I had meant when I tried to explain to
Hailey that I was worried about how much I liked him. He was going to be a lot
more complicated than the average guy.
A lot more
problematic.
But unlike guy-who-lived-too-far-away, or Thorn Son of
Nerd, if I let Dieter suddenly fall off the face of the earth, I would miss him
and I would wonder about what might have been.

What was I doing? I shook my head as we came to a stop in
front of large, abstract blue painting. It had only been three dates. It was
way too early to be thinking about this kind of crap.

I traced my fingertips down his forearm and tucked my hand
inside his. I felt myself melt a little when he squeezed my hand and grinned at
me with his brilliant white smile. We wandered around the gallery, and the more
we walked, the more obvious it was that Dieter and the waiters in the black
slacks and shirts with red bowties were the only men in the entire place.
 

Dieter seemed to be enjoying himself. He talked about the
pieces like a normal person: “I like this.” “I don’t get this.” “How do you
suppose they made this?”

Most guys, the guys that I’d thought about in my list of
disposable jerks, would have been impatient to be done. They would see what
needed seeing then maybe try to cop a feel as a suggestion that it was time to
go home and be rewarded for having put up with a girly outing.

The other camp of men would be making comments or stupid
jokes or trying to impress me with a handful of facts they still remembered
from a random college class, or worse yet, high school humanities.

But Dieter wasn’t doing any of that. Three dates in and we
could just enjoy hanging out.
Spending time in each other’s
company.
He had dropped a lot on me in a couple of dates, but he was
honest and you had to respect that.

A red-cheeked old woman in a truly fabulous hat bumped into
him and staggered back in a way that made it clear she’d drunk too many cups of
the free wine. Dieter caught her before she tripped over another Red Hat Lady.
As he set her back on her feet they both looked at him with frank and unhidden
appreciation before giggling like teenagers and tottering off to rejoin their
group. He gave me an
embarrassed
grin in response.

I’d had a little too much wine as well, though obviously not
quite as much as the old ladies had and I was feeling pleasantly light and
warm, but also terribly in need of the facilities. One look at the massive line
of women either over retirement age or carrying purses that cost more than my
rent made it clear that the options were 1) bursting, 2) hurrying to the nearest
gas station on Hennepin and trying to simultaneously pee and avoid touching
anything.

Then option three, the option made much easier when you were
accompanied by a man, suddenly occurred to me when I realized that Dieter
really was the
only
guy I had seen
all night who wasn’t working. I sent him to scope out the men’s room and after
a few seconds he popped his head back out and gave me a thumbs-up for the all
clear.

I was done fast and spent a few moments outside the crush of
people, readjusting my hair and dress. There were three walls of mirrors and I
could see myself from every conceivable angle. I had been right that this dress
was a little too long. It hit my calf in a weird place. Maybe I’d take the hem
up later.

I powdered my nose and was adjusting the odd bunching up of
my tights when I heard the hinges creak. I was already dropping my compact in
my purse and preparing my apology when I looked up into the mirror and saw
Dieter. He was biting his lip and smiling at me.

“I’ll wait outside for you,” I said, pointing for the door.
We were comfortable, not many years married. I wasn’t going to stand here while
he peed.

He shook his head. “No, I just realized that this is the
only quiet part of the whole place.” He crossed to the line of sinks in two strides
of his long legs, placed a hand to the mirror on either side of me and kissed
me, hot and quick and deep. I returned it before thinking about it and he
pressed his body to mine. I pulled back and laughed.

“Really?
In a men’s room?”

He bit his lip again.
“An
empty
men’s room.
You up for it?”

I laughed, but couldn’t deny the flash of heat that shot
through me at his wicked grin. He dropped one hand from the mirror, pinched my
skirt between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it up from my body. Not high
enough to expose more than my knee, but high enough to make clear what he was
suggesting.

I didn’t particularly warm to the idea of Dieter eating me
out under my skirt while I tried to hold myself up against the counter. Not in
a men’s room, even if it was a nicely decorated, perfectly clean men’s room in
a building full of women.

However, the huge mirrors on every surface did give me an
idea.

I pushed at his shoulder and he pretended that the light
touch made him spin like a top. I snaked my other arm around and stopped him so
that he was facing his reflection. I exerted just a little pressure on his hip
as I took a wide step to the left, guiding him to follow me.

“Let’s get you
up
for it,” I said. I set my hands to his fly, giving him plenty of time to stop
me as I undid the button.

He didn’t.

I lifted myself up onto the counter, pulled my skirt up so
that it wouldn’t get in the way when I tugged him back against me. I pulled his
shirt up out of his pants and undid a couple buttons so that the sides of his
shirt didn’t block my view of his groin in the mirror’s reflection. He settled
more heavily against me and I unzipped his fly and let his pants drop a little
ways down his hips. A flash of purple peeked out between his legs. He let out a
breath that sounded like it was hiding a laugh.

“That’s pretty,” I chuckled.

He gulped and laid his head back against my shoulder. I
kissed his cheek and slipped my hand into his panties, fishing his half-hard
cock out of the little lacy briefs he was wearing, just like his dark blue ones
from last night.

“I like this cut,” he managed in response.

I wasn’t even stroking him and he was growing firmer in my
hand by the second. I set little closed mouth kisses to his neck and his arm
jerked up against mine where they were wrapped around him.

“Alright.
If we’re doing this, let’s not push our
luck, huh?”

I gave his cock a quick squeeze,
then
dropped it. I reached over to the sink, pumped a couple of squirts of soap into
my hand and quickly slicked his cock before I started jerking him off, hard and
fast. He moaned
,
eyes locked on our reflection in the
mirror as I tried to get him off as quickly as I could, rough, hard, no
foreplay, no wasted stroke. I was not getting arrested for indecency. I didn’t
like him that much.

He was wobbling against me, leaning on me for support, but
still trying to hold himself up. His breath was already stuttering. He was
turned on and rock hard and I felt
hot
and adventurous for getting him like this in a public place.

I snatched a paper towel from behind me so that he would
have something disposable to come in. I didn’t want him to pop all over his
slacks in public. There was a line between kinky and gross.

He made a loud, almost hiccup-like noise and I squeezed him
harder, pistoning my arm.

I set my lips to his ear, “Don’t worry about impressing me.
I’ve got a round two already planned.”

He made another choked noise. I slowed my hand and loosened
my grip. His eyes shuttered closed and then snapped back open again, like he
didn’t want to miss anything. He tilted his forehead toward me as I ran my fist
over his slowly and I could feel the sweat at his temples. I sped back up,
determined to get him off as quickly as I possibly could.

He shook in my arms and I felt his cock pulse in my grip.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on.”

He made a hissing noise as he forced a harsh breath out
through his teeth.

“Come on,” I urged him again.

He groaned, and just over the groan, I heard the squeaky
door again. I dropped his cock instantly, and, as though the plan had already
been formed in my mind, I hopped down off the counter, put on the tap water,
and in the same moment I spun Dieter so that he was facing the sink and pulled
up the front of my skirt so that it covered his unzipped pants and his rock
hard erection the moment before someone wandered in.

“See,” I said cheerfully to Dieter, as though my hands were
not covered in soap and precome and he was not gripping the sides of the sink
like a lifeline and red in the face like he’d just collapsed behind the finish
line of a marathon. “I told you the wine would come right out. It’s all about
blotting.” I looked over to the guy who had just walked in. He was tall, square
jawed, and square shouldered. His eyebrows were precisely plucked.

I laughed, trying to sound dumb and harmless. “Sorry, the
line was just so long for the lady’s room.”

He shrugged.
“Doesn’t bother me any.”

He wandered over the urinal but, despite what he’d said, he
was clearly waiting for me to get gone before he actually unzipped.

“Just use a stall, I’ll meet you outside,” I whispered to
Dieter. He panted, still gripping the sink hard. There was something odd about
the way his jaw was set so tight, but I couldn’t exactly hang out in the men’s
room and figure out what it was. He quickly tucked himself back into his pants
with my skirt still operating as a cover. And, as I let the skirt back down, he
hurried to a stall.

 
I grabbed a couple of
paper towels and went for the door, making sure to close it loudly behind me so
that both Dieter and Random-Peeing-Guy knew I had left.