Anything She Wants by Unknown

another, similar but different.  
    “Just can,” she responds, but her voice is almost lost in the sound of the music. I breathe in, waiting for her to move away.
    “Come on,” she says then, seizing my elbow. My crossed arms slide apart. I wasn’t expecting her to grab me, and I’m helpless. In an instant, she has me by my free hand, the other clutching the empty cup like a life preserver.
    “What?” I ask, but she’s already leading me out onto the dance floor. My blood thunders in my ears, louder than the bass.  
    “I don’t know if it’s obvious,” I manage, leaning in. I have to get my mouth close to her ear to be heard, and I can smell her shampoo—something tropical, with notes of coconut, making me dizzy. “But I can’t dance.”
    Her hands go to my shoulders, reaching up so that her breasts look at risk of popping out of the top of her dress. My blood pulses even harder, painful at my wrists and groin.  
    “Just move,” she commands, and I drop my cup, fingers pulsing like a palsy, so I can rest my hands on her hips, curved out at almost an impossible degree from her waist.  
    “See? You’re a natural,” she purrs, pushing closer.
    “That’s all it takes?” I ask, rocking from foot to foot stiffly, trying to follow the music, the way her body swings, the communal movement of everyone around us.
    “That, and the desire for it.” She pushes her fingers up to wrap around my neck so we’re pressed together.  
    “Desire for what?” I have a Master’s in mathematical theory, and I sound like a dullard.
    “Me,” she says, simply, mouth curled in a smile that says she knows very well how this works.  
    My knees quake for an instant, and I have an impulse to pinch myself. She’s far from my type, but exactly it, too: too much of everything, past perfect into something other, something created out of fiction.  
    “So I’ll magically be able to dance?” I ask, snorting softly through my nose.
    “You tell me,” she says, and I swallow, the sensation almost painful, fingers rippling against her dress.
    She moves like a snake, like the sound the bass makes, like the beats of a drum. I follow as best I can, and she’s right: the more I want her, the better I seem to do. I stop rocking from foot to foot like a sixth grade boy at his first dance, and when her hands slide from my neck to my shoulders, down to the slope of my breasts, I raise my eyebrows.
    “Is the reverse true?” I ask, licking my upper lip where sweat has managed to bead. “The more you want me…?”
    She laughs and traces one of the buttons of my shirt with the edge of her thumb. “You tell me,” she says, again, tugging at the same spot to pull me closer, pull me down, so she can press her mouth to mine.
    She’s salty and sweet, rum and mango and lipstick, and, mind of their own, my hands go to cup her ass, the sheer briefness of her dress making my fingertips brush against her bare thighs. I’ve never been shy, but this is something on a level I’m not quite used to, as though I’ve already had ten drinks and am bolder than I knew I could be.
    Our mouths break apart, and she gasps a little, clutching at me in a way that proves I’m not the only one feeling intoxicated.  
    “Take me home.” Her eyes shine in the flashing lights. “Right now.”
    The boldness stays adhered to my tongue. “What’s the magic word?”
    Her grip tightens on my shirt, goes a little painful, the pulling fabric under my arms biting at the soft flesh there.  
    “Now,” she breathes out.
    We weave through the club like a single unit, my hands on her waist and her arm extended behind her so that her fingers stay hooked in my vest. The night air outside is as warm and heavy as the club. She turns to me abruptly, and we crash together, stumbling into the building next door at the mouth of a putrid alley. The glare of car headlights reflects off windows and the rough texture of the brick.
    I jerk her skirt upward, enough to find