My Mouth Before 4

I couldn’t stop thinking about his hands.

Not just the way they moved—though Christ, they moved like they had a PhD in finding every nerve ending I didn’t know existed.

Mostly, it was the way he touched me like he already owned me, like my body was a language he’d been fluent in for years.

Twenty-four hours later, and I could still feel the phantom pressure of his fingers against my throat, inside me. The way he made me want to forget my own name and beg for his.

My vibrator had been working overtimes since I got back to the apartment, but it felt like trying to scratch an itch with oven mitts.

Wrong texture. Wrong rhythm. Wrong everything.

“Earth to Space, Cadet Sophie,” Cleo’s voice cut through my spiral, and I realized I’d been standing in our kitchen for god knows how long, coffee mug halfway to my lips, probably looking like I’d been lobotomized.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, taking a sip of what had apparently gone cold. “Just thinking.”

“Thinking?” Cleo snorted, hopping onto the counter with her legs swinging. “Babe, that wasn’t thinking. That was full-body reminiscing. You had that same glazed look you get when you watch those TikToks of guys doing construction work.”

Heat crept up my neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right. And I don’t masturbate to Audio Porn on Reddit.” She grinned wickedly. “So, scale of one to ten, how thoroughly did Mystery Man rearrange your internal furniture?”

I choked on my coffee. “Jesus, Cleo.”

“What? I’m invested now. You disappeared for like twenty minutes. Then you show up at the bar looking like you’d been hit by a very attractive truck.” Her eyes narrowed. “Also, your panties were missing.”

My face went nuclear. “How did you—”

“Because I know you, Sophie. You’re the girl who wears matching bra and panty sets to the gynecologist ‘just in case.’ You don’t just lose underwear unless something very interesting happened to it.”

I buried my face in my hands. “This is not a conversation I’m ready to have.”

“Too bad. I’ve been waiting twenty-four hours for details, and I’m about to combust from curiosity.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Was he big? Did he make you come? Did you make those weird squeaky noises you deny making?”

“That’s it, I am leaving,” I announced, grabbing my overnight bag from where I’d dropped it by the door.

“Running away to Daddy’s house won’t make your lady boner disappear!” Cleo called after me. “But hey, maybe some good old-fashioned family dysfunction will distract you from the fact that you finally had decent foreplay and then ran away like Cinderella with commitment issues.”

I flipped her off without turning around, but she wasn’t wrong.

My family was chaos incarnate, and right now, chaos sounded better than sitting here obsessing over a man whose name I didn’t even know.

The two-hour train ride to my dad’s house should have been peaceful. Should have been time to decompress, read a book, maybe catch up on some work.

Instead, I spent it staring out the window, replaying every second of what happened in that VIP room. The way he’d made me feel like the only woman in existence while simultaneously making me forget I was supposed to be a good girl.

By the time I reached my stop, I was wound tighter than a spring and probably radiating enough sexual frustration to power a small city.

Home sweet chaos.

The front door wasn’t even fully open before my dad launched himself at me like I was a life preserver and he was drowning in estrogen and elementary school drama.

“Sophie, thank God,” he wheezed, wrapping me in a hug. “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

From somewhere deeper in the house came the sound of my little sister Abby shriek-crying like she was being murdered by cartoon characters. Madison, my middle sister, was nowhere to be seen, which meant she was either dead, in jail, or locked in her room plotting someone else’s demise.

“What happened?” I asked, already mentally rolling up my sleeves.

“Madison got suspended for cutting off some girl’s ponytail with safety scissors,” Dad said, running his hands through his hair until it stuck up at odd angles. “Abby’s been crying for three hours because her favorite Barbie doesn’t have a head anymore—don’t ask—and I burned dinner because I forgot the stove was on while I was trying to untangle Christmas lights in fucking March.”

I blinked. “Christmas lights?”

“Madison said they were fairy lights for her room, but they’re clearly Christmas lights, and now they’re somehow tangled around the ceiling fan and I think I might have accidentally created a fire hazard.”

This was my life. Had always been my life.

Mom walked out when I was thirteen, and I’d been the unofficial family crisis manager ever since. I was the one who remembered to buy groceries, who knew which sister needed which type of hug, who could negotiate peace treaties between teenage hormones and elementary school meltdowns.

I was twenty-two years old, and I’d been mothering my own family for almost a decade.

“Okay,” I said, dropping my bag and switching into crisis mode. “Go sit down. Pour yourself something stronger than coffee. I’ve got this.”

Three hours later, I’d successfully negotiated a ceasefire between Madison and reality after she came home from detention, convinced Abby that headless Barbie was just “practicing for Halloween,” untangled the Christmas lights without electrocuting anyone, and made a dinner that didn’t require calling the fire department.

Madison was curled up next to me on the couch now, her head on my shoulder, finally admitting that maybe slashing her ex-boyfriend’s tires hadn’t been her most mature moment.

“I just felt so stupid,” she mumbled into my sweater. “Everyone at school saw him with that bitch Debby Lister, and I just… snapped.”

“I get it,” I said, stroking her hair. “Heartbreak makes you do crazy things.”

“Have you ever done crazy things because of a guy?”

I thought about that night. About kissing a stranger. About letting him touch me in ways that still made my thighs clench together. About running away before I could find out his name or whether what I felt was real or just really good alcohol and better hands.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I have.”

By the time Dad had fallen asleep on the recliner and both girls were tucked into their respective beds, I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. I grabbed a glass of wine—okay, fine, I grabbed the bottle—and slipped out onto the back porch.

The night air was cool against my skin, and for the first time in hours, I could breathe without someone needing something from me. I settled into the old porch swing, tucking my bare feet under me, and let myself just exist for a minute.

This was my pattern. Take care of everyone else until I was running on empty, then steal moments like this to remember I was still a person with my own wants and needs and desires.

Desires that, apparently, included mysterious strangers with commanding voices and hands that knew exactly how to make me forget my own name.

My phone buzzed with a message from the Unknown number. Strange.

I opened it and saw that the message itself wasn’t words. Just a photo.

My black lace panties, delicate and unmistakable, held in a large, masculine hand. I nearly dropped my wine before the second message followed immediately:

Unknown: You left these behind, Cinderella.

My entire body went hot, then cold, then hot again. My fingers shook as I typed back:

Me: Who is this?

The response came so fast he must have been waiting:

Unknown: Really? Already forgot about our sweet encounter in the club’s private room?

Heat pooled low in my belly, and I had to set my wine down before I spilled it all over myself.

Then came another messages:

Unknown: You disappeared before I could give it back.
Unknown: Among other things I could do, actually.

I stared at the screen, my heart hammering. Part of me wanted to delete his number, pretend last night never happened, go back to my safe, predictable life where the most exciting thing I did was reorganize my color-coded planner.

But a bigger part of me—the part that was still aching from his touch—wanted to see how far this rabbit hole went.

Me: You talk big for someone who couldn’t even tell me his name.

Unknown: You talk big for someone who ran away before I could finish what we started.

My breath caught. The memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he’d made me feel like I was coming apart at the seams flashed through me like lightning.

Me: Maybe I wasn’t running away. Maybe I was just making you work for it.

Unknown: Is that what you call it?

Me: What would you call it?

There was a longer pause this time. Long enough that I started to wonder if I’d pushed too far, been too bold, scared him off.

Unknown: I’d call it unfinished business.

My legs pressed together involuntarily.

Me: And what exactly do you plan to do about that?

Unknown: Depends. Are you brave enough to find out?

I stared at the message, my heart racing, my whole body humming with anticipation and terror in equal measure.

For the first time in my life, I was being offered something that was just for me. Not for my family, not for my responsibilities, not for anyone else’s expectations.

Just for me.

Me: Try me.