I hate them, as I hate sex,

the man's mouth

sealing my mouth, the man's

paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,

the low, humiliating

premise of union—

Louise Gluck, "Mock Orange"

* * *

She wakes with the thrum of balalaikas twanging top 40s hits in her ears and the fuzz of vodka and morning coating her teeth. Something soft, warm, and musky covers her face. She doesn't need to open her eyes to know it's red, plaid, and flannel.

For a moment she wishes life were more like a Carrie Underwood song (surely the first time that thought has ever crossed her mind). Then she could spring awake with a gasp, hand to throbbing temple (or forehead, or skull), and ponder the evidence of scattered lace and silk and sequins stretching from the bed to the open garage door and across the kitchen, eyes widening with increasing shock and horror until she bleated something inane and cliché like, "Please tell me we didn't do what I think we just did" or "Oh my God, where am I?"

But Blair Waldorf doesn't do Country. Not even in her dreams.

He tries to turn over in place without waking her. She can tell this by the way he holds his breath, gingerly shifts position on the mattress, and frantically mumbles near-silent curses as his legs catch in the sheets and drag them toward his end of the bed. The scratchy cotton (no more than 200 count) slides across her skin, falling to her waist. She feels her nipples pucker in the morning chill.

He stops, painfully motionless, and she considers being embarrassed but decides against it.

She opts for sarcasm instead. "Lost for words? That's a first. I guess I really am a mind-blowing lay."

In the silence, she uncovers her eyes (as she suspected, red flannel pajama bottoms) and turns her head to look at him: bare chest, morning-squashed curls, brown eyes fixed on the ceiling. His jaw clenches. He fists a hand against the sheet at his hip. He swallows.

She doesn't know why he bothers to write his thoughts down when every one of his frowns and sighs and furrows conveys his feelings more vividly than all the one-act plays his pen will ever issue put together and staged in a weekend-long festival. She knows what's he's going to say before he opens his mouth. The crumpled, dented wad of metal and bone that fills up the cavity where her heart used to rest throbs ominously, wrenches warningly, and forbidden subjects (like certain names and certain faces and certain loves of certain lives) threaten to push past the cardiac debris. Which is clearly unacceptable.

"I'm feeling generous this morning, Humphrey. Get ready for the second luckiest day of your life."

"Umm, Blair? Last night was—"

"—just the beginning? I agree."

She snakes her bare legs between his and rolls against his side, breasts pressed to arm, thigh sliding across thigh, toes skimming his calves. Her fingers wander down his torso and find him ready.

His hand wraps around her wrist and pulls her back.

"Blair, I can't—"

"—stop thinking about fucking me? I'm flattered, but not surprised."

Hips shift onto hips, legs straddle thighs, bare and wet meets hard and smooth. His breath catches, his eyes close, and she presses down a little harder just to watch him fight it.

"Look, Humphrey, if you want to be tied up and spanked, you don't have to goad me into it. All you have to do is ask."

His fingers are limp against her arm, so she pulls her hand from his grasp to stroke him, to lift him and slide him inside her. He bites the side of his mouth, lids narrowed into crinkled slits, brows slanted low over eyes and nose. She pulses up and down, hands braced against his chest, to get the feel of him and lets the shiver that starts low in her belly overspread.

He resists, the stubborn dork. His hands encircle her wrists and still her movements. His eyes open and stare at her, brown and confused and ashamed and worried but mostly turned on, mostly in thrall to the things she's doing to his cock, so she doesn't let herself freak out when he starts to say "This is wrong. It isn't fair to—"

She just eases down, sliding him in deeper, and slaps a hand over his mouth. Her lips part to suck on his shoulder for a few tender seconds before she bares her teeth and bites hard enough to leave a mark. He stifles a hoarse shout. She feels it rumble in his chest against the bones, against her breasts. He grabs her hips. And then he pounds as deeply as he can. Over. And over. And over.

If she could think coherently, she'd have a little laugh with herself over how predictable he is. Brooklyn likes being her bitch. Well, of course he does!

But this is the point when her mind shuts down and rides the waves of her body to her finish. This is the point when her thoughts usually flow in a stream of, "Right there. Right there. Right there."

And once in a while, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Today it's, "So strange. So strange. So strange."

Which isn't very poetic or soul stirring but is better than the threatened, "Not him."

His slick, sex-scented skin rubs against hers, their lips almost meet but don't, the grunts and sighs turn to moans and sobs, and with a few more slaps from her and strokes from him and nimble fingers finding just the right spots, they reach the inevitable culmination: the top of the wave, the fall from the tower, the sweet surrender, the little death.

A word—a name, more a curse than an incantation—rises to her lips, and she bites them until they turn white, until her body shakes with sex and sorrow and a lifetime of things unsaid and thoughts unvoiced.

His chest pillows her head as he finishes inside her, one hand molded to her ass, the other caught in the bed sheets. Her cheek rests on taut muscle (wrong) and springy, curly hair (wrong) while her nose breathes in a mixture of sweat and standard-issue, department-store cologne (wrong, wrong, wrong).

Mass-produced mediocrity. It's enough to make a girl cry.

"Hey?"

He tries to lift her chin, but she doesn't let him. She buries her nose against his arm, squeezes her eyes tight, digs her fingers into her palms.

His hand settles against the top of her head. "It'll be okay, Blair."

Of course it'll be okay. I'm Blair Waldorf, Queen of the Upper East Side. I don't need your pity. And who the fuck are you anyway to comfort me? Some asshole from Brooklyn who just cheated on his hairy, low-rent girlfriend. Twice.

Such a good response. Too bad her nose is full of salt water and her throat too tight to say it.

His hand is warm against her hair. She lets him keep it there.

When she rises, she doesn't look at him. She gathers up her silk panties, her corset bra, her stockings in silence. She feels him watching her as she dresses, but he doesn't speak or move.

"If you're thinking of offering breakfast, the answer is no." She clasps her bracelet one-handed, runs her fingers through her hair. "Just the thought of that waffle iron makes me ill." Her Louboutin winks at her from under the bed, and she lunges for the red of the heel. "Besides, I've had as much Humphrey as I can take for one day."

As she walks toward the door she braces herself for the crude joke, the ribald boast about just-how-much-Humphrey he's got to give. But she never hears it, and she smiles as gathers her purse from the kitchen counter.

Smiles until she opens the door. There would be no joke, would there?

Not him, remember?

Not him.