Girlfriends Ch. 01

Cheri

I walked into a Mexican restaurant near my apartment, dressed up, understandably a little nervous but trying not to show it. Heads turned as I approached the bar, my crimson high heels accentuating the seductive sway of my hips. Some guys gave me the quarter second Not My Type glance, others had that I'll Fuck Anything predatory look, and quite a few couldn't take their eyes off me. My eyes flicked from face to face. A sea of 'noes' punctuated with 'hell noes' -- until I spotted a handsome man in an expensive suit seated at the bar, oblivious to my approach, from the look on his face wallowing in sorrow.

My eyes briefly narrowed as I judged what he's thinking. And no, I can't read minds per se, but I'm extraordinarily good at reading fleeting facial expressions, body language, and tones of voice, and then empathizing with their likely thoughts.

Which, to virtually everyone else, * seems * like mind reading. Or a built in lie detector.

Him, I thought. I'll talk to him.

I sat on the empty stool next to him, and touched his wrist...

***

Hunter

I sat on a barstool at an upscale Mexican bar and grill, in a grungy yet rapidly gentrifying East Austin neighborhood. The place was almost empty because it was pre-Happy Hour on a Friday. My blue silk tie was loosened - off early from work. Which I could do, because I owned a tech startup, and had gotten the usual chaotic clusterfuck back to a manageable level for the weekend.

I glanced in the mirror above the bar. A stranger who looked remarkably like me - dark brown hair, light brown eyes, moderately handsome, light olive complexion from a blend of my Italian and Irish ancestors - stared back. The unfamiliar part was the look on my normally serene face, a shellshocked bleakness that I had done my best to hide from my employees, though I had gotten the occasional concerned glance.

I stared back down into my fancy drink, a Mezcal Mule, trying, not particularly successfully, to put on an expression more fit for public consumption, and tamp down the almost unbearable pain from the recent breakup with my girlfriend.

OK. EX-girlfriend. Amazing how much pain those two extra letters could cause.

Every night for the last two weeks or so, I'd woken up at 1 or 2 am, and the memories would flood back...

How I'd cheated on her. While drunk. At a bachelor party in San Antonio, where the stripper the best man had hired had ended up giving blowjobs to all of us who ponied up $60. How I'd held out until it was just me and an ex-Mormon guy, while my mates drunkenly extolled how good the stripper was at giving head. Not that they ever used fiddy dollar words like "extol", least not while drunk.

How I'd succumbed to peer pressure, then received an amazing blowjob, way better than my girlfriend ever gave me. Gave her a mouthful of cum, watched her swallow, then felt the guilt slowly creeping in and ruining the post-orgasm sleepiness.

How I felt the guilt dogpiling in for a week, harder and harder, trying to hide it from my girlfriend. My friends from the party telling me to not be a "gotdamn fool", just pretend it never happened and she'd never suspect.

How I realized I couldn't bear the guilt any more.

Did... the Confession. Said I was so sorry. How it wouldn't ever happen again.

Honesty. Such a * terrible * idea in that specific context, with that specific hot tempered girlfriend.

I sipped at my drink, grimacing at the memory of how she'd stormed out of my house and blocked and ghosted me. Making me feel like she'd casually ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it and then, just to make sure, repeatedly run over it with her car.

How, when I'd almost managed to convince myself she might finally come back... she did.

Unannounced. While I was at work.

Using the key I'd given her, like a fool having never changed the locks, hoping against hope she'd show up and take me back.

And then she'd proceeded to trash the living fuck out of my apartment...

I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of someone taking the seat next to me in the uncrowded bar, then a whiff of delicate floral perfume. Beautifully manicured fingers, nails painted a warm red that complemented her dark skin, with unusually short nails for a woman, lightly traced the knuckles on my right hand. I felt an electric thrill from her touch, like tiny lightning bolts sizzling from the momentary gaps between our skin as she skipped from knuckle to knuckle.

I turned and saw an incredibly beautiful woman: a slim thicc body, small A cup breasts but a magnificently large firm-looking booty. She was wearing an understated but elegant looking crimson red top over what appeared to be a Shabby Chic pair of well worn jeans, threadbare holes in the knees, and artful tiny dashes of paint, like someone had lovingly faked a proletarian past for the denim. The sort of jeans visually teetering on the ragged edge between extremely expensive versus Straight Outta Goodwill.

She had deep brown eyes with a hint of epicanthic folds, black curly hair, lovely smooth skin the color of dark chocolate. If I had to guess, a gorgeous mixture of Black and Eurasian ancestors.

"Are you OK, sweetie?" Her finger slowly slid an inch closer to my wrist, sending more electric jolts into my brain. "You look sad."

I kept staring into her eyes. Ohmygod she's beautiful...

I realized she was waiting for a response, and my continued silence was possibly making it a tad awkward. "Uh, it shows that much?"

She barely rolled her eyes, amused, a gorgeous smile crinkling the corners of her mouth. "You think?" Her full lips were painted a dark blackish-red, about the color I imagined her pussy lips might look like... I had a brief vision of those lips wrapped around my...

Her eyes flashed at me, like she was reading my mind, or at least my expression, and I hurriedly stowed those untoward thoughts and dragged myself back into Gentleman Mode TM. "Been a rough couple weeks."

***

I watched his eyes lock onto my lips, as he forgot to breathe. Hmm... a flickering slide show of various possibilities... what's this... aaah.

He's thinking about getting a blowjob.

I gave him an attenuated Death Stare, softened with a wry quirk of my lips.

His eyes widened, and he hastily changed his focus to my eyes, a chagrined 'I'm So Busted' look on his face. But he did it so adorably... like a puppy caught piddling on the rug.

I instantly forgave him. He's smart enough for it to be slowly sinking in that he's never gonna get away with lying to me, and clearly attracted to me.

Maybe, I thought. Someone who might see me for who I am, and thinks I'm beautiful. No... more than that. Thinks I'm stunning.

A strong maybe.

***

"Wanna talk about it?" she said, her smoky, silky voice purring, sounding like liquid sex. Like she could read the phone book to me, assuming one could find a phone book in a museum or whatever, and I'd listen to that voice, enthralled for hours, not minding the paucity of plot or character development.

"The short story, or all the tawdry details?"

"Yes. And then yes." Her finger had finished its slow descent up my hand and was now caressing the dark charcoal wool of my suit jacket with an almost proprietorial air. "Nice suit. Hmm... Hugo Boss?"

I stared at her, impressed. "Yeah."

She lifted her finger and then lightly touched my dress shirt, giving me the beginning of a hard-on. Her beautiful eyes flashed at my bulge, so quick I almost missed it, then narrowed. "Aaaand... Brooks Brothers shirt, of course, to look suitably conservative, but with those thin violet stripes to show, hey, I've got some mojo. Not afraid to think a teeny bit outside the box."

"Holy fuck," I said. "Do I even need to tell you what happened? You've probably got it all figured out."

"Yes," she purred in that irresistibly sexy voice. "You'll want to tell me everything." She glanced at my drink. "Hmm, looks like a Moscow Mule... buut... given that yuppie look you're rocking..." Her eyes narrowed. "Mezcal Mule." It was not a question. Then, I realized, it was. As in, 'Are you ever going to act like a gentlemen and offer me a drink?' But too well mannered to actually ask the question.

***

Aaah, I thought. He's switching to Gentleman Mode.

I caught the eye of the bartender for a flash, whose eyes widened fractionally then instantly reclaimed the requisite professionalism of someone who sensed a big tip in the near future. He meandered toward us.

***

Suddenly the bartender, who'd been politely ignoring me, giving me space to wallow, apparently judging I wasn't in the mood to talk, appeared at her side. He discreetly raised an eyebrow the barest minimum upward, an unspoken question.

"Where are my manners?" I said to her. "What can I get you to drink?"

Her lips quirked, and she gave me an amused look.

***

I gave him a look that said, 'He can be a bit dim and socially awkward, but he's reasonably smart. For a guy.' Then I caught the eye of the bartender, who was clearly enjoying the witty unspoken mating dance unfolding, and gave a slight nod in the direction of his drink.

***

"One Mezcal Mule?" the bartender asked.

I nodded, then turned to her. She was still waiting.

"Oh. I'm Hunter."

She offered her hand. "Cheri." She rolled her "r" with a pitch perfect French accent. Finally, a tiny payoff from all those years I took French. I suck at foreign languages.

Phrasing?

I realized I was, in a corner of my mind, multi-tasking by imagining those lovely lips wrapped around my shaft...

I realized my response was lingering awkwardly long, plus I had the uncomfortable feeling I was busted on the blowjob thing yet again. Jesus. How does she do that? I took her warm, soft hand.

She gently squeezed back. Kept on holding my hand. Like she had no intention of breaking off contact any time soon. "I'm listening."

"Hmm. Short version -- I was dating a beautiful woman, and being very much a guy, it took way too long for it to sink in that, despite her attractive exterior, I had been in a relationship with a minor demon straight outta hell..."

Her drink arrived, and she gave me back custody of my hand to take a sip. "Had," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. Here's the part where I don't come off entirely angelically... assuming you can handle the really gritty parts of reality."

She took another sip. "I've got just three relationship rules: Don't lie to me. Don't cheat on me. Don't steal from me. And the corollary to the first part is, I'm too smart to miss a lie."

I admired how smoothly she'd slipped in the R-word... relationship.

I stared at her beautiful, perfectly symmetrical face, unsure how to proceed. And... something... in the back of my mind was tickling my RFM... Red Flag Meter. Maybe it was nothing. Plenty of false alarms. But I'd just been booted out of a relationship where I'd somehow missed a warehouse stuffed full of red flags that I belatedly recognized...

"Just fucking tell me the whole story. Whatever you did, you didn't do to me. Clean slate."

***

So he told me everything, while I looked at him like he was the most fascinating person in the entire world. Which, in that succession of lovely moments sliding by, he was for me.

***

Much later, over the third round of drinks, I said while waving my hands expansively, "... and that was when I realized she had broken her glass bong in my closet, so it would be reeeally awkward to call the cops on her."

Cheri was laughing. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Hunter, that was an awful thing that happened... but it's funny when it doesn't happen to you."

"It's fine. I get it. I'll get hours of amusement out of this story in the future, retelling it. But wait, there's more. Guess where she stashed the vacuum cleaner and the broom I'd need to clean up several square yards littered with razor sharp shards?"

"The other side of all that glass?" It wasn't really a question, based on how fast she had replied. Her eyes narrowed. "Aaaah. Let me guess... she'd sabotaged both of those?"

I nodded, impressed.

She glanced upwards and to the left. "Hmmm... cut the vacuum's power cord, but hid the damage behind the vacuum so you'd have to cross the glass to find out?"

I stared at her.

She's a fucking genius, I thought. "Mm-hmm. And sawed almost all the way through the broom, so it looked intact at a glance, but would snap off from the slightest pressure."

"Of course she did."

And then it hit me, what had been brewing in my subconscious while I was distracted telling the story.

Really expensive understated attire. Silk top, from the looks of it, and possibly designer, but not so gauche and nouveau riche as to have a visible label.

Super knowledgeable about designer suits and shirts, so she knows if I have both money and a taste for the finer things.

Really really smart.

Incredible flirting and social skills. Intuitive and deductive. Knows how to get men to open up quickly.

And somehow chose to sit next to a man who, while reasonably handsome, was still rather out of her league in terms of looks.

Is she a high end call girl?

I realized I'd been silent a while.

Cheri gave me a wry smile. "I can almost hear the gears churning away in your mind. Waiting for smoke to come pouring out of your ears. And, no you're not out of my league."

What? How the fuck does she DO that?

"Sooo..." she prompted.

I really didn't want to tell her. Not a fan of getting my face slapped and having a beautiful woman storm out of my life before I got to know her, because I read it wrong. I gave her a pleading look.

"Remember? Don't lie to me..."

"Don't cheat on me. Don't steal from me." I finished The Three Unbreakable R-word Rules for her.

"Not telling me about something that's clearly bothering you... that would be at least in the same zip code as a lie of omission. So... just say it?" Her voice implied it was a question, but her eyes gave a gentle command, made it clear that silence or prevaricating would be A Very Bad Idea.

I sighed, and braced myself for the potential fallout. "Are you... an upper class call girl?"

She gave me a cool, appraising look. No slappage ensued. "Are you law enforcement?"

"Oh, HELL no."

"Are you a social conservative with rigid moral standards?"

"No. I respect professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit. Regardless of occupation."

Her pretty eyes narrowed in amusement. "Then, to answer your question... I can neither confirm nor deny that supposition for the time being. But. Would it turn you on to role play that I was an extremely high end call girl? And that you were considering the proposition?"

I stared at her, a bit flustered at the ambiguity.

"Would that be fun?" Quietly asking for the sale. Great low-key sales technique. I admired it, being a practitioner of closing deals myself.

I thought about it. "Yeah. Let's do it." I said, brightly.

"OK. Ground rules. Neither of us breaks character. Ever. Starting... now." She scooted her bar stool closer so her warm thigh was touching mine. Put her hand on my knee. Started kneading it gently.

To my surprise, I felt myself getting a bit aroused. Again. That was fast.

She leaned in and whispered in my ear, her breath hot. "So. Tell me all the naughty, dirty things you wish a woman would do to you, but you've never gotten a date to perform."

I shut my eyes and felt her presence. "What you're doing right now, for starters."

"Tell me your deepest, darkest desires. Don't be shy. Don't hold back. If you don't tell me, I can't do it for you. Or to you."

I glanced around to see if anyone was looking. Nope. "Run your hand up my leg, slowly," I whispered. "Gently feel me up. Get me hard. OK, harder."

Her hand began a very slow, sensuous journey upward. She softly kissed my ear and whispered back, "Keep talking."

"I've never had a woman allow me to do anal."

"I loooooove anal. It's my favorite." Her bedroom voice was husky and inviting. Her hand teased me, kneading my upper thigh, not quite touching my growing stiffness. "What else? I know you want things much dirtier than that."

"Uhhh," I sighed, not quite moaning. "I want a woman to lay on top of me while I'm on my stomach, ease my legs apart, then grind her pussy against my ass."

"And?"

"Do a facial. Or stick a finger in my ass while giving me deepthroat. Swallow my cum."

"Mmm," she said encouragingly.

I could hardly believe she'd gotten me to tell her all this.

"Keep going."

"Kiss and lick me all over my body. Talk dirty to me while I shove my cock in all your holes. From every position." I thought about what I'd left out. "And kiss me softly on the lips. Weird thing to leave until last, yeah?"

"Not at all," she purred in my ear. "That can be the second most intimate thing of all. Most of my... colleagues... won't do it. They call it GFE - Girl Friend Experience. Convince you that I care for you. Anything else?"

"Umm... second most intimate? What's the first?"

"Touching a Black woman's hair. After you get her full and enthusiastic consent, of course. Unless you're rather cavalier about the possibility of sustaining MBD."

"MBD?"

"Massive bodily damage," she said, brightly. "What else?"

"I - I can't think of anything at the moment."

"That's a decent start." Her hand expertly squeezed the semi-erect shaft of my cock through my pants leg, just for a moment, then she quickly cupped my balls and used a finger to stroke the fabric covering my cock head. Her hand disengaged. I felt myself leaking precum. "You're ready to walk with me to my apartment." It wasn't a question. "It's two blocks away."

I pulled out my wallet and took out bills to cover the drinks and a generous tip. I caught the bartender's eye, even though up to then he'd been studiously not noticing what Cheri had been doing to me. "Keep the change."

His eyes momentarily widened at the size of the tip, then he regained his composure and nodded. "Thank you, sir!"

We stood up, and she softly took my hand. The unexpected intimacy of that touch made my heart pound madly.

"Wow," I said. "I left holding hands off the list." We walked to the door, Cheri guiding me. Taking control.

"Surprisingly sexy and intimate, yes?" she said.

"Mm-hmm," I murmured enthusiastically as we stepped outside into the balmy loveliness of a slightly warmer than usual Austin late autumn day, maybe low 80s. Or high 20s Celsius if this had been damn near anywhere else in the world. She guided me left, walking quickly. Closing the sale.

"GFE can be amazing."

"Can I call you my girlfriend?"

"Of course. I'm gonna give you everything you want."

"Umm... I forgot to ask. How much does this cost? If that's not too... impertinent."

"This is my apartment building." It looked older and perhaps not perfectly maintained, fighting against the tide of the rapid yuppification of East side Austin. We quickly walked inside to the sweet nectar of A/C in the lobby, set to the arctic chill that pretty much every place in Texas uses year round.

At the elevator bank, she stepped forward and pressed the button. I silently admired her amazing booty, in those shabby chic jeans with just enough threadbare holes around the pockets to give a preview of lacy looking black panties.

Cheri looked at me over her shoulder, her amused eyes quickly taking in me checking out her ass. "Like what you see?"

"Mmm-hmm!"

The elevator door slid open. Inside, she selected the top floor, then waited silently for the door to close.

Is she going to avoid my question about pricing? I thought.

"I'm not avoiding your question," she said, looking me in the eye. "Just waiting for more privacy to answer it. I'm very discreet, of course. Part of the service."

The door slid open. She walked to a door nearby, opened it with her key card.