She’s been waiting her whole life for him, she thinks, and she raises the coffee to her lips.

They’ve been eyeing one another across this diner for the better part of an hour, all while he’s pretended to read his paper and eat his late night bacon and eggs, and she’s forgotten to finish the soup that grew cold not long after she ordered it. She’s been distracted by the rules skipping through her head—don’t stare too much, cross your legs like a lady, don’t forget to eat with your mouth closed—but with the gazes they keep casting back and forth, she doesn’t think these things are really all that important anymore.

Anna pays her check and rises from her booth. She imagines she’ll be the first to leave. That he’ll follow her outside, giving her a moment to reflect on whether he’s stalking her, and if she’s supposed to run. Or if instead she should give away everything she’s actually feeling—the unsteady ticking of her heart inside the safe housing of her chest, the unusual race of her once regulated breathing, or, more than that, the heat that’s slickened at the peak of her thighs, making all this thought a perilous landscape of impossible, inexplicable desire.

But the man is the first to leave. He walks right by her, deliberately meeting her gaze. The brush of his hand on hers cannot be a coincidence, nor the look in his heavy-lidded eyes. And so it’s Anna who follows him outside, Anna who walks in measured steps behind him, Anna who glances up at the stars, just once, reminding herself how small she is in this world as he turns the corner and she’s left to decide one way or another.

Don’t talk to strangers, her mama said.

But mama’s been dead a long time now.

Anna finds him leaning against the backside of the building, staring beyond the edge of the bluff at the water below, where the waves ebb and flow like the surge in her veins. In her head, as she comes to face him, she anticipates the things he might ask of her. What’s your name? Why have you followed me? What are you looking for tonight?

He asks none of this. What he does is take her wrist and pull her to him, so that her breasts are flush with his chest and he’s breathing down over her face. She believes he’s asking for her approval, which she gives in the one kiss they will share—their lips merging, opening, exchanging the bitter trace of coffee, the hint of greasy bacon, and the sweet, sweet taste of spit. His hands are on her ass, molding her flesh, squeezing her closer. She welcomes this, then the way he swings her round to face the building, sliding behind her so his entire body lines her back. Anna gasps when his fingers slip under her skirt, because now he knows just how anxious she’s been for this. For him. Never show a man how much you care she remembers, but his fingers are in her, riding up and hot in the wet desire she doesn’t know how to hide. His teeth find her neck as he wedges her tight to the wall, and Anna’s open mouth grazes the fading building finish. She tongues the wood as he unfastens his pants, then the salty air that kisses her lips and makes her feel alive when he presses his cock to her ass.

“Okay?”

This is the murmur she’ll remember him by, a quiet, desperate groan that elicits the wild bob of her head. We don’t take risks. Good girls don’t take risks she’d been told, but as he drives inside she wants nothing more than to risk it all, again and again. Every thrust of his cock brings another moan, another moment, another physical expression she held buried so far inside. She spreads her fingers on the building and arches her back, letting him sink deeper, closing her eyes while the waves sing behind them and he moves faster inside her. He bites her neck again, surely tasting the glisten of sweat that’s broken out along her chin. Her body shakes when he slides a finger in her mouth and she closes her lips around it, the taste of her cunt on his skin. She’s only partially surprised she comes before he does, her whimpers preceding the muffled grunts he makes into her hair. He fills her with the honest, heated greeting of a perfect stranger.

For a minute, they stand like this, Anna smashed between his body and the building. His come is seeping out around his slowly softening shaft, dripping onto the panties barely pushed aside before he marked her as who she really is. Who she’s wanted to be.

The man places a kiss on the edge of Anna’s mouth. It’s tender and indifferent all at once, but she understands the intention behind it, what he’s learned, too. Thank you.

She is still standing against the wall after he tucks himself away, pausing like he’s supposed to, waiting to see if she wants to say something, or if there’s anything else she needs. But there isn’t.

When he’s gone, Anna spins around, her back to the building as the chaos of her belly becomes a soothing warmth that brings a smile to her face.

She’s never taken a risk before.

And she’s been waiting her whole life for this one.