“What is that?” She hitched in her breath.

“Something I got for you,” he said. “Do you like coming?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Our dinner will be here any minute,” he said, tipping his chin towards the waiter who scurried to the kitchen. “I want you to come before he arrives with the food.”

“Clay,” she said under her breath, but when he pressed his finger against her center, she bit her lip to silence her groan. The vibration was intense. He had some kind of mini-vibrator strapped to his index finger, and he wasn’t messing around. He was hitting her right where she was hot for him, and the sudden friction against her clit turned her insides molten.

“Show me what a good actress you are.”

“I’m a great actress,” she said, through gritted teeth as he teased the vibrator in a dizzying circle around her flesh. Delicious sensations flooded her body, and she fought her impulse to hold onto the edge of the counter, as he rubbed her faster, sending sparks racing through her bloodstream.

A couple having dinner a few tables away pushed back their chairs, the legs scraping across the wood floor. The man held the woman’s coat, and the woman looked in Julia’s direction as she slid her arms into the sleeves. Julia plastered on a fake smile, pressing her lips firmly together, clamping inside her mouth all the moans and scream and cries she wanted to unleash.

“I’m looking forward to eating. I hope the food arrives soon,” Clay mused, keeping one hand under her skirt as he reached for his scotch with his free hand. He tapped her clit with the vibrator – gently but insistently – sending an exquisite pulse between her legs that spread like ripples, reaching all the way to her fingertips.

Oh god. She wanted to roll her eyes in pleasure, to spread her legs wide.

“What about you, Julia? You hungry for your risotto?” He tilted his head to the side, giving her a deliberately curious stare.

“Sure.” She sucked in a moan as a wave of intensity slammed between her legs. She ached with a desperate desire to be touched, to be felt. To come. He moved his finger back and forth, the pad of the vibrator driving her into another world of pleasure. Involuntarily, her shoulders curled in.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she choked out.

“You sure?” He stroked her fast, then faster. “You don’t seem like yourself?”

“Just hungry,” she muttered as he pushed harder against her swollen clit, bathing her entire being with the thrilling sensations of vibration. She could barely take it anymore. She’d been reduced to nothing but feelings, but the raw physical need for release from the flames lapping up her being. She wanted to throw back her head, run her hands through her hair, slide her palms down her own body to savor every second. But she knew how to bluff. She knew how to fake it.

“I think the food’s on its way,” he said, gesturing with his eyes to the kitchen door. The waiter appeared, holding it open with his elbow, balancing plates along his arm.

Julia swallowed hard, and wanted to pant, to moan, to scream. She wanted to climb up the walls, to rub herself against Clay’s thigh, something, anything, to relieve the build inside that was teetering on the edge of explosion.

“Looks like he’ll be here any second. What about you? You ready?”

“I think I might be,” she said in a choppy voice, trying so hard not to give an inch.

But he was hitting her where her body sang, turning her up, all the way on. And if she were alone with him, she’d have grabbed his shoulders and held on hard. Instead, she gripped the edge of the stool, her sharp nails digging into the wood, surely leaving scratch marks, as she channeled there all her desires to writhe and moan and let herself bathe in the bliss of the orgasm that rocketed through her body. She was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The orgasm was on a high-speed chase, tearing around curves, racing through every cell. Julia Bell was coming at the bar, eyes wide open, lips sealed shut, body still as still could be. Every inch of her was lit up and ignited.

The waiter set down their plates as her entire body buzzed with the delicious tingles of an orgasm she hid fiercely.

“Your risotto, miss,” he said, gesturing to the plate. Then he set down Clay’s meal. “Do you need anything else?”

“I believe I have everything I could possibly want,” Clay said, then flashed a quick smile, before turning to her. “What about you? Do you need anything more?”

“I’m good,” she said, her eyes bugging out.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said with a satisfied sigh, that one syllable strung out, the only hint of what had just gone down.

The waiter left, and she picked up her fork. “I am famished.”

“You deserve some sort of award for that performance.”

“My reward will be torturing you when you least expect it.”

“I will count down the seconds until that kind of torture comes my way.”

Her phone woke her up in the morning.

She’d turned the damn thing off last night, seeing as she was spent and exhausted from her time with Clay, but now it was buzzing. McKenna probably wanted more details on last night since they always shared these kind of tidbits with each other – not the nitty gritty sex details, but the so you really like him part. It had been a long time since Julia had actually liked someone. Even with Dillon, even as it ended, the really like him feelings had faded well before. Sure, she’d fallen for him in the start, for his self-deprecating humor, for his piercing blue eyes, for the sweet nothings he whispered to her that made her feel special.

She met him when he was one of her students at a weekend class she’d been teaching at a boutique bar in Noe Valley on the art of making cocktails. She’d taken on the class before she bought a stake in Cubic Z; the class helped supplement her bartending income. And Dillon had been her finest student, his keen eye for detail giving him a leg up as he mixed and matched the perfect amounts.

“You, sir, concocted a most excellent margarita,” she told him.

He’d tapped the side of the glass, and said, “Someday I’ll be sipping this in Bora Bora or the Bahamas.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice. Sitting on a hammock in the sun with a nice cool drink.”

“Blue skies and mixed drinks,” he added. “A perfect getaway.”

One time, after everyone else had left, he hung back, raised his hand as if in a classroom, and asked. “I have a question. I know student-teacher relationships are generally forbidden. Does that apply to bartending school too?”

“Terribly forbidden. Violates all sorts of mixed drink laws,” she teased.

“Call me guilty then,” he said, then asked her out.

They’d gone to a Turkish restaurant in Russian Hill for the first date, then for a walk through that neighborhood. A photographer, he’d made a decent wage shooting interiors of homes in the city for realtors, so he showed her the outside of some of the homes he shot, including a rather tiny one that he’d made look palatial in a picture. He used to say that with the right angled shot, he could make any room look “spacious, open and well-lit.”

Later, after they became a couple, he was the one who had encouraged her to expand her role at Cubic Z, and to invest in the bar. She didn’t regret that decision, not one bit, though she sure as hell regretted him, and wished she’d gotten out sooner.

All his sweetness had leaked away by the end, and they were merely holding on. Until he left. The unraveling of that relationship wasn’t what hurt; it was the way it fell to pieces that stung like snake poison. The way she had to bear the brunt of the breakup and all he heaped on her, and she couldn’t even tell McKenna the specifics. Julia ached to pour out all the sordid details at times especially because her sister understood heartache. But McKenna understood happiness too. Newly engaged to a man who made her wildly happy, McKenna was in that haze of believing that every new relationship would turn out to be the one, so Julia fully expected a text asking her when she was going to get engaged.