cocktails – Jade Aurora Waters

She waits for him outside the bar. It feels longer this time, a slow crawl up a steeper slope. Above her, the neon sign glows like a halo she doesn’t deserve—an interrogation lamp under which she omits something, as easily as “Cocktails” flickers on, off, on… It’s a faint buzz trying to be there, but not quite. Another man asks her for a smoke; she shakes her head, because she can hardly see him.

It’s hard to see anything when she waits for him.

The bouncer nods at her, mouths, Coming in? She isn’t ready. Not yet. They’ve been here one thousand times before. Everybody knows them, their laughs together. They talk secrets of the world, and anecdotes from here to the galaxy over so many drinks and smiles. Those smiles she always sees: in her dreams, in the songs she writes. In her heart.

She can’t quite get him out of her heart.

This, she knows, is the problem. It’s the reason she stands here now, though there’s so much more to it—the way he speaks to her, often, or answers the phone to be sure she’s all right. It’s how he looks at her like she’s his comfort and the answer at the end of a hard day. Like she’s the one he’s been waiting for this long.

Too long.

The air feels colder tonight, but it often does before he comes. It’s not right that he can warm her through with the sound of his laugh, or the bite of his lip while he ponders a response to some moralistic question in the middle of their third round. She thinks of this now, the bite of the lip, how he does it without realizing the catch of her breath, and she crosses her arms over her stomach, waiting. Waiting. Why is nothing more important than him?

“Hey.”

He’s behind her, fingers sliding through the strands of her hair in a gentle caress over her neck. She wonders if he sees the flutter of her eyes when his skin meets hers, if he hears her sharp inhalation as he leans into her ear. His is an aura of confidence and love, and that scent he always wears, making her wish she could tilt her nose against his chin to breathe him in, feel the stroke of his fingertips up her thighs or over her naked back like she used to. His body is firm and protective. Close—before he remembers maybe he’s not supposed to touch her like this. His fingers slip from her skin, taking with them everything that makes her heart skip.

The “Cocktails” sign flashes on again. It lights their faces, and the ring on a finger almost tucked in his pocket when he comes around to face her.

“Have you been waiting long?” He gestures toward the door, and she shakes her head.

“Nope. Not long.” She smiles. He smiles.

Bites his lip.

Once they go inside, their bodies are close.

The above flash story was inspired by lovely F. Leonora Solomon’s “Friday Flash—Cocktails” meme. Click on the badge below to read other stories inspired by her fabulous photo!

I am so excited, everyone! Kristina Lloyd’s blog tour for her new book, Undone, starts today. She’ll be stopping by later in the month to answer some questions for me, but in honor of her protagonist, Lara, owning a bar, Kristina wanted to kick off the whole tour with an all-day kinky cocktail party—that is, each of our sites hosts a special drink with kink! Cheers to that!

Now, I had a few ideas running through my head on cocktail options, and as you know, alcohol tends to make people fairly uninhibited. So I thought—in the spirit of a good cocktail party story—I’d be a little extra open today. The following semi-fictional story is inspired by a vacation I took in Greece a few years back, on which I discovered a delightful new drink called “The Jelly Bean”…as well as an incredibly handsome man.

I hope you enjoy the tale…

THE JELLY BEAN

Jade A. Waters

“‘The Jelly Bean’? Well naturally, that’s what I’m going to have,” I said, waving my menu about with a squeal.

“Naturally.” Sia rolled her eyes, because after knowing my candy obsession—in particular, jelly beans and licorice—for over a decade, she wasn’t at all surprised.

Our waiter came out from inside the deli, then, and I dropped my menu to the table with a gulp. He was the epitome of all the Greek features I’d been drooling over this entire vacation: gorgeous, tall, and dark, with stunning rich brown eyes and nearly black hair that waved down to the bottom of his ears. And that smile—oh fuck me, that smile—had me sitting back in my chair with a gasp.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Hello, lovely. So you’ll have The Jelly Bean, I take it?”

I flashed him my grin in response. His English was superb, but that accent had me squirming in my seat. Why yes, hot Rhodes waiter. I will have whatever sweet thing you’re offering.

Out loud I said, “Yes please!”

Behind his shoulder, Sia shook her head with another eye roll.

“I’ll have a beer.”

“No problem.” He went inside to fetch our drinks, and my jaw fell open.

“Oh hell-oh,” I said.

“Here we go…” Sia muttered.

See, I admit, vacation sex is my thing. It’s not intentional, but it happens. Foreigners rock my world, and there’s something magical about meeting a man in another country and living a brief romance with him—and don’t get me started on an accent talking dirty in my ear while I’m fucking. I guess for me it’s when in Rome, do a Roman…or something like that. There was the make-out with the Floridean on our Hawaii trip, the beach sex with the Dutchman in Aruba, the park romp with the Roman in Italy, the virginity-shattering of the Croatian in Rovinj, and the sensual island sex with the Texan in Puerto Rico. And of course, I’d already given that bar manager a blow job in the kitchen a few days ago, right before he bent me over one of the tables and then took me skinny dipping in the sea…

But the whole encounter had ended with him being a tremendous ass, so now I needed a better memory. I’d made it two weeks of our vacation through Athens, Ios, and Santorini without a hint of play, and we had only four more days for me to amend my vacation fling, dammit.

Hot Rhodes waiter came back with Sia’s beer and my blue and red glass of wonder. The Jelly Bean, you see, is a concoction of curaçao, grenadine, lemonade, and ouzo, and it tastes exactly like it sounds. I took a sip while they watched, the cool, candy-sweet taste washing down my throat as we sat in the unbelievably torrid, muggy air.

Our waiter grinned again.

“So where are you girls from?”

“San Francisco,” we chimed.

“Wow. San Francisco! We usually only get visitors from the east coast this far over. You two came a long way!”

“We did,” I said. “We wanted the full Greek tour.”

Sia gave me a look, but we made small talk with him for another twenty minutes because the place wasn’t busy midafternoon. Nikolaos—that was his name, and damn, even that fabulously Greek moniker stirred my blood—seemed tickled by his California customers. By the time I’d downed half my second Jelly Bean while devouring my Greek salad and a side of dolmas, we’d already started flirting hard. Sia, the perfect wing woman, laughed and played along, but it was on the way back from the ladies’ room that Nikolaos grabbed my hand and backed me against a wall.

“You’ve got a smile like some American actress…I can’t remember her name. But oh,” he said, looking me over, “you’re beautiful.”

Well, shit, handsome. Take me home now.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re damn sexy yourself.”

“What are you girls doing later? I work late tonight, but you should come for dinner…”

Which is precisely what we did.

Greek dinners, for those who don’t know, happen mighty late. Sia and I had explored half the area by 10 that night and still had time to head back to our hotel for a nap and shower. It was so blazing hot—in fact, this was the year that Athens caught fire, 2007—that we lived in a layer of sweat from the second we left the shower until the moment we crawled our way back in. This meant we returned to the deli restaurant sweaty all over again, despite a good hour of freshening and dolling ourselves up. But, Nikolaos didn’t seem to mind. Not through dinner as we chowed on gyros and more drinks (Jelly Beans for me, of course), and talked to his friends who had joined the hang out. Not when Sia wandered off with some adorable Australian and a promise to meet me back at the hotel in a few hours.

And definitely not when Nikolaos talked me onto his moped and took me back to his apartment.

The place was a wreck, but I was all eyes-on-Nikolaos. He could have been a model, some Greek beauty blessing the pages of a magazine I would surely take home as a souvenir. However, I had better things in mind for this guy, and by the feel of his cock rising up between us, it was obvious he did too.

Nikolaos pulled me into his chest when the door shut behind us. He ran his fingers up my cheek, then stroked his hand through my hair. When he rolled his pelvis up against me, I let out a quiet purr only because I’d had three Jelly Beans and I wasn’t sure if I was coming off louder than I thought.

“You’re an aggressive little thing,” he said.

“I am.”

“And you almost look Greek.”

“But I’m not.”

“Are you sure you’re not a Greek-American actress? You look like an actress. And your Greek is fantastic.”

“I’m totally not. I just have a good tongue.”

That might have been the Jelly Beans talking, but Nikolaos took the bait. He leaned down and kissed me then.

And yeah. We were all tongues.

Tongues, fingers, hands, lips—we were naked and rolling around on the bed in no time. Nikolaos, it turned out, looked like a model from head to toe, and I, apparently, was his favorite shape. He spent several minutes running his hands up and down my body with heavy inhalations that made his nostrils flare, then he buried those fingers so deep in my cunt and his tongue so furiously against my clit that my Jelly Bean fueled groans had to have woken his neighbors.

“I’ve never fucked a Californian,” he growled.

“Perfect. I’ve never fucked a hot waiter from Rhodes.”

Our lips sealed back together when he frantically searched his nightstand for a condom. I barely noticed him putting it on, because moments later he plunged inside me, hard and filling, his hands gripping at my breasts and his cheeks so bright.

“Your smile…” he moaned. “It’s like fucking a celebrity…”

This somehow turned me on more. So as Nikolaos thrust in me, bit at my shoulder, nipped at my lips, and groaned in my ear—I writhed with wild calls that were twice as loud thanks to all those Jelly Beans. My body quaked with excitement as he pushed faster and deeper, and when he erupted with a grunt and I hadn’t yet come, he was right back down between my thighs lapping at me until I shuddered with cries that put everything before them to shame.

I remember thinking as we lay there—Nikolaos panting against my thigh, me trying to catch my breath, inhaling the smell of musty sex and dirty room and Greek humidity—that vacation sex was, even when terrible, awfully fun. I’m not one for notches on a bedpost, but maybe a map to mark my foreign conquests might make for a good chuckle.

Nikolaos slid up along my body, planting kisses over my face and tracing the circumference of my nipple with a fingertip.

“So you leave in four days?” he said.

“Yep. Four more days.”

“Hmmm.” He ran his fingers down my stomach, then slipped them between the sensitive, pink lips of my pussy. “Maybe you and your friend can come back to the deli tonight for dinner again…and have another Jelly Bean.”

“Oh. For a Jelly Bean, huh?”

Nikolaos gave me a quick kiss, and when he leaned back, he nodded with a grin.

“I just might,” I said.

I always have liked sweet things.

***

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As for me…I think it’s time for another drink…