Pick Up Artist

She spots me sliding through the bar crowd like a finger down wet silk. Light catches the red of her mouth when she smiles. I buy the drink. She drinks it slow. Then she says it plain. “You’ve been parked outside my place for three nights, mister. Husband send you?” Ice cracks in her glass. My pulse kicks once, twice. The truth sits ugly on the table and she smiles at it like it’s dessert. Before I blink she flips the game. “Tail my old man instead. Cash on the spot.” We drive to her house in separate cars. She keeps the tail-lights riding my hood like she owns me already. Inside it smells of money and cold sex. She opens the safe, and her face drops when it spits back nothing. Empty as Tuesday after payday. She turns slow. The silk slips off one shoulder. “Guess I’ll have to pay in skin.” Button by button she strips the distance between us. Lips part, tongue touches, fingernails trace muscle until I grow thick against her thigh. She unzips me, strokes once, hard, measures weight, then sinks to her knees on the marble floor. Tongue flat, lips sealing around the head, she takes me deep until her throat clicks and the sound echoes through the empty vault. Hands stroke the base while her mouth works wet circles; spit spills down my balls and she hums like she wants every drop claimed. We don’t make it to the bedroom. I spin her, shove the silk the rest of the way down, and bend her over the open safe. She braces palms on the steel edge. I drive into soaked heat, stroke after stroke, the slap of skin bouncing back like gunshot. She pushes back greedy, cunt gripping, breath coming rough. Nails scratch the metal. My hand threads her hair, yanks, and her orgasm tears out in one long shaking moan that fogs the mirror behind the bar cart. Pulling free I spill across the round of her ass, hot ropes streaking skin already flushed. She stays bent, pulse still fluttering inside her, eyes closed like she’s balancing the payment on her tongue. Outside the window headlights sweep across the wall and keep moving. Inside, the night stretches long and the safe stays open, witness to the only kind of debt either of us intends to settle tonight.