WHEN YOU DANCE WITH THE DEVIL
 by Gwynne Forster
 
Harper Masterson rang the doorbell before Jolene could get down to the front door and wait there for him. She knew he'd made a point of doing it, for he remarked on their last date that she apparently didn't want him to meet her landlady or any of the other boarders. He took her to the amusement park, a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and to dinner at the restaurant of her choice-- the Lobster Pot in Snow Hill, the most expensive seafood restaurant in the region outside of Ocean City. When they were about to leave the restaurant, she took his hand and led him to the souvenir shop near the door.
 
"I've always wondered how they get ships into these bottles," she said. "They're fascinating. I love to look at them.
 
"It's an art. Look, it's getting late. We've been to an amusement part, seen a movie, been to two museums and had a long dinner. Let's go. I need to stop by my place."
 
He hadn't mentioned sex, so she had begun to think he wanted to do things for her because, as he said at first, she was beautiful and had plenty of everything in the right places. But just in case, she unbuttoned the top button of her pink-linen shirt dress,

 

"Okay." She didn't look at him. He'd spent a hundred dollars for dinner alone, so he deserved whatever he wanted. Oh, no. Not that! It occurred to her at once that [in the romance novel she was reading] Melinda didn't have sex with Blake the first time he wanted it. Besides, if I wait till the next time he wants it, 1 may get that bottle with the ship in it.
 
Harper parked in front of the building in which he lived, cut the motor and said, "Coming?" His question reminded her of something, but she wasn't quite sure what.
 
Inside his small, but neat, apartment, she didn't get a chance to see her surroundings before he put one hand on her buttocks, the other at the back of her head and fastened her body to his.
 
"Mmm... wait a---"
 
"I've waited as long as I'm going to. Open up to me. I want you here and now."
 
The hard length of him pressed against her belly, and excitement shot through her, sending blood hot and fast to her vagina. Visions of herself exploding in orgasm while he pounded into her had her twisting and rubbing against him in a frenzy to experience the pleasure of which she read in her [romance] books. Recklessly, she unbuttoned her dress and exposed her high, rounded breast.
 
"My Lord, I never dreamed you were so hot," he said and sucked her right nipple into his warm mouth. When, acting out her fantasies, her hand grabbed his penis and squeezed it, his groans matched her loud cries. He slipped her dress to the floor, ripped off her bikini panties, sat her in a chair, got on his knees and plowed his tongue into her. She howled as he worked at her. Unable to bear it longer, she twisted her hips and squeezed her nipple, locked her ankles across his back, and screamed as she burst into orgasm. He dragged her off the chair and on to the zebra rug that covered a part of the floor.
 
"Don't make me pregnant," she pleaded.
 
"No way, baby." He slipped on a condom and drove himself into her. Immediately the pumping and squeezing resumed and she raised her body to him with such force that she nearly threw the two hundred pound man off her. He gripped her hips and accelerated his pace. It seemed to her that a thousand strange images darted before her, her nerve endings burned, and she thought she'd die if whatever he built inside of her wouldn't let itself loose. At last, he held her still and rode her mercilessly as her hips ceased to slither over the Zebra rug.
 
"Oh, Lord," she screamed and sank into a vortex of oblivion. He sucked a nipple into his mouth, pumped hard a few more times, and collapsed into her arms.
 
Several minutes passed before he raised his head, looked down at her and said, "You came so hard. I never knew a woman to come that hard."
 
Shocked by what she believed to be an inadequacy, she apologized. "I'm sorry if I disappointed you. I…uh...haven't had much experience."
 
He stared at her in what was clearly disbelief. "You sure as hell don't need any lessons, baby." He left her, went to the bathroom and returned fully dressed.
 
Embarrassed because, hoping for more of what she had just experienced, she had remained as he left her, she looked around for her dress, but didn't see it. "May I please have a towel?" He threw her a towel and left the room while she dressed.
 
"When am ... are we going to see each other again?" she asked as he walked with her to the front door of the boarding house.
 
"We'll see."
 
Oh Lord, she'd make a big mistake. She should have told him to take her home. Fear streaked through her. He couldn't drop her after making her feel like that. "What do you mean?" she asked him.
 
He put his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the wooded floor of the porch. "I was liking you a whole lot, but you don't have any real feelings for a man. You're just after what you can get."
 
Cringing, she stepped away from him. "How can you---"
 
He continued as if she hadn't attempted to speak. "You were getting a place deep inside of me, but if! hang out with you, I'll be broke before I know it. I don't like women who're only out for what they can get from a man. I'm a bus driver, and you know it. I spent over two hundred dollars on this date, and that's twenty percent of what I made last week. On top of that, you wanted a hundred and fifty dollar model ship. Last Sunday, you also wanted to go to museums, a movie and have dinner at the most expensive restaurant you'd heard about. I'm looking for a woman to build my life with. Be seeing you."
 
She didn't bother to wipe the tears that bathed her face, but ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. At last she had found a man who could do the things the men in her books [the romance books she read] did, and she'd mishandled the relationship. She didn't know what to do or how to do it. She had never had a girl friend, never talked with any girl or woman about boys and men and had no idea how you got a man to love you and care for you. All she had were her books, and those women were so perfect, educated and knew so much. She wasn't like them and couldn't be. She had thought that Harper cared for her, but he hadn't.
 
"I'm not going to cry," she told herself." Maybe I won't have anything else to do with men." She washed her face, put on her pajamas, went to the window and gazed out at the quiet, deserted night. "It must be my fault. All these women I see with men couldn't be crazy. But what am I doing wrong?" Dispirited, she closed the curtain and, in doing so, banishing the night and letting her own gloom envelope her. Needing comfort, she reached for her book, but put it aside. Nothing the men in those books did matched what Harper did to her and how he made her feel. For the first time in months, she didn't take one of her books to bed.