Page 1 of Pretty Obsessed

One

Emory Ker

Have you ever met the eyes of a stranger across a room and instantly imagined fucking them?

I'd never experienced it until now.

It—he—was intoxicating.

I wrote for a living, and I’d taken to sitting in a sex club while I wrote—one of the only places I found myself able to focus in recent months. The dark interior promised secrets in every corner. People lost to pleasure and pain, nothing off limits. It felt freeing almost, like I didn’t matter.

Sitting in the club, I felt like an artist sketching in an art museum. An observer of life, the universe, and everything in between, including sex. It left my mind open, and faded into the background until tonight. Tonight my focus wouldn’t remain on my books, but instead piercing green eyes.

They held an intensity I rarely saw. Something our smart phones had burned out of us. A focus I hadn’t realized I’d craved with a beauty to them. A parody of sorts because I wished I could write that type of intensity into my novel. These were things writers strived for.

And there he sat, perfectly in the flesh, black hair that glowed under the red-tinted lights, and full, fuck-me lips turned into a conflicted pout.

The object of my attention was a young man. He was art.

Every time I looked up from my work, his eyes were on me, causing quite the flush in my cheeks. His intensity all focused on me, burning through my chest until there was nothing left but him and me.

Only I couldn’t work out why I’d caught his gaze, his intensity, his focus.

He sat on the receiving end of a blow job from a beautiful redhead. None of that bothered me. Quite commonplace in this environment. Why would his focus keep coming back to me, and not the one with her lips around his cock. Surely she earned his attention and probably deserved it, but that didn’t stop me basking in the glow of it.

He caught me staring and his lips tipped up at the corners, the faintest of smiles, and I heated, willing myself to return to my work, but knowing deep down I didn’t want to.

I wanted a full smile from him—no—I wanted to be the cause of his smile.

"Can I get you another drink, or are you going to stare at him all night?" Octavius asked, breaking me out of my fog.

"Huh?"

"Exactly. I thought you came here because you weren't distracted by all of this?”

"This time it's not my fault." I forced myself to turn towards Octavius, away from the green-eyed stranger. "What did you ask?"

"Do you want another drink before I close the bar?"

"Soda with lime," I said automatically. Always the same when I was here.

He took my glass to refill it. "You don't want something stronger to give you some courage?”

"For what?"

He nodded across the room. "Who are you staring at?"

"No one," I said much too quickly.

"Okay, don't share." Octavius set the drink in front of me and left to ask the other patrons if they wanted anything else.

He finished up and came to lean in front of me, both arms on the bar. "You're doing it again."

"I'm daydreaming and staring off into space." A total lie, but I wasn't about to admit the connection. Not when I didn't understand it yet.

"So it's got nothing to do with the guy sitting in the wingback getting the blow job?"

I don't know why I'd fought it. Why did I care if Octavius knew who I was staring at?

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