Twitter Fiction: What You Want (#twittersmut) Part 1

Writer’s note: This has been slightly edited from its original Twittered version, because writing on the fly is fun, but not as polished as I can bear allowing to live on my site.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” she said, tugging my hand down the front of her skirt and pressing it home into the hollow of her crotch. The material was thin; there was nothing beneath her linen skirt.

The sound of drunken conversation leaked out into the humid air. The shadows lay heavy across her face, turning her features to monochromatic stone, but the erosion was there, at the corner of her eye, where the light lay like a brand over her left cheek.

“How pissed are you?”

I shrugged. “Not very. Not at all, really.”

“Is that going to be a problem then? Will you get squeamish and develop a conscience?”

It was a challenge I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I slipped my hand out from under hers, crooked a finger, and brought it up to brush along the line of illuminated skin. She had a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip. “What’s the hurry?”

“I misread you. My mistake.” she said.  The words were clipped, angry. Shouldering her purse, she turned to go.

I caught her by the wrist. “You didn’t misread me.”

It was the truth. In the bar, I’d been interested. When she knocked back the shooter of tequila, I’d been interested.  As she gathered her hair up off her sweat-damp neck while talking, and pulled it crossly into a ponytail. There was a tension to almost everything she did. As if every word and act were ejected with disdain. Now, as she responded to what she thought was a rejection, there was a barely contained violence to her. I liked it. And very few men are totally immune to a woman who wears no panties.

She tried to tug free – not with any determination – but I held on to her arm. When she turned to speak, I could see, even in the dim light of the streetlamp, she was crying.

“Then you misread me,” she muttered. “I’m not after a date. Just a fuck.”

“This is a strange place to be after a simple fuck. They’re so cheap to buy here, and far less complicated. For one thing, a bought fuck doesn’t cry.”

I wanted to make my point with clarity. In a city where you can get a whore for a night for under twenty dollars, the zipless fuck loses its attraction.

Unable to pull the caught hand out of my grasp, she swung the other one at me, fisted. It missed my face, landing on my shoulder with a thud that would eventually, I was sure, make a handsome bruise.

“Fuck you,” she hissed.

“As I already explained, I’m interested, but could we calm down a bit first?”

“Let go of my arm.”

“Only if you promise not to hit me again. Not that I mind a bit of anger. Personally, I’m into it.”

She glared, her eyes black in the gloom. The streetlamp caught on the tears like shards. I can’t say the sniffling was attractive, but my mind was still stalled on her state of unpantiedness, which overrode the nasal congestion. Lust is like that.

I felt her arm relax in my grasp, and I released it. But as soon as I did, she swung at me again, open handed. Her palm landed on my face with a force that both hurt and shocked me.

I’d had enough. “The next time you hit me, I’m going to hit you back. You realize that, don’t you?” I said this as calmly as I could. The slap had left a faint hum in my right ear and I couldn’t be sure of my delivery.

Instead of offering me more violence, she leaned her forehead against the wall beside me and began bawling in a way I hadn’t heard since primary school. It was full throated, stuttered with hiccups and there was, from the sound of it, a great deal of fluid of one sort or another being produced and expelled.

I looked around – certain someone passing by would think I was doing something awful to this woman. Then, not sure what else to do, I gave her a few tentative pats on the back.

Either she hid drunkenness extremely well, or this woman was out of her fucking mind. Most probably it was the later. And, yes, I should have given her one last friendly pat, and gone home, but there was still the maddeningly delicious fact that she was absolutely bare beneath that skirt.

The combination of wanton slut, strident bitch and blubbing lunatic had an unaccountable charm for me. I’m not particularly normal myself. I invited her back to my house.

She looked up, flicking a mess of damp, dark wisps off her face with an angry shake of her head. Then wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“Sure. Okay.”