Stronger as One Completed

Man onTop

I was holding my phone up, looking for a signal when I heard it. A soft mewling. The kind of sound a kitten makes when it’s in trouble.

Perking my ears, I scanned my surroundings. Behind me, four metal silo-shaped structures huddled together. Below me, the crowded rooftop bar pulsed with high energy. In front of me, the Empire State glowed prominently in rainbow colors (in honor of the LGBTQ rally happening that weekend), but the abundance of flashing club lights from the venue made the famous tourist site pale in comparison. It was loud too, which was part of the reason I’d snuck up the steel staircase to the building’s highest level, wanting to make a phone call. The other reason being that I had yet to get more than one bar to show on my screen.

The mewling, I determined, had to be coming from the silos, whatever they were. I imagined they housed mechanical items for the building—electrical, air conditioning, whatnot. Some top-notch architect had for some reason decided that bronzed cylindrical towers with tops that looked like Asian rice hats was the best way to pretty up the industrial equipment. Seriously, trendy New York City design style was beyond my grasp. They were weird, as far as I was concerned.

And they were also on the top of a building with sixty stories, so the likelihood that I’d heard a lost cat was relatively slim.

The sound had stopped, anyway. It had probably been just a squeak of a generator, or I’d imagined it. I went back to my phone. Two bars now when I faced this direction. I climbed the remaining three steps to the official top level. Three bars! That would work.

Except, now I heard the cat again.

Twice more. It definitely wasn’t mechanical. I lowered my phone and crept cautiously around one of the silos. If it wasn’t a cat—which it couldn’t be this high up, right?—then what was it? Did rats make those noises?

I cringed at the possibility. There was honestly no reason to look for the source.

But what if it was a cat? Maybe the hipster bar kept one up here to take care of the mice. It wasn’t the most ridiculous idea, and my curiosity was piqued, so against my better instincts, I continued around the curve of the second silo.

Then I froze.

It wasn’t an animal making those noises—it was a woman. She was about fifteen feet away, her back pressed against the brick wall that framed a smokestack on the other side of the silos. Her eyes were closed, her cocktail dress gathered up around her waist, and the sounds she was making were whimpers of pleasure, not distress. Probably due to the man standing in front of her. More specifically, his hand working between her legs.

And, wow, he was really working it if the expression on her face was any indication.

Quickly and quietly, I scuttled back around the silo and let out a slow breath. I didn’t know if I should laugh or...well. What other reaction should I have? Certainly the instantaneous buzz of arousal between my thighs wasn’t appropriate.

So laugh it was. A silent laugh, so as not to disturb the “lovers.”

When the impulse at humor had passed, though, the buzz was still there. It had been way too long since I’d gotten laid. My last real relationship had ended the previous summer, then there’d been that one rebound hookup over the Halloween weekend, and since it was currently early September... Oh my God, it had almost been a year. No wonder I was so intrigued by the rando couple getting it on in a dark corner of a rooftop shindig.

The vicarious stimulation was too alluring. Softly, I tiptoed back around the silo, my body pressed against the edifice so I could just...peek.

Whoa. The sight was just as sultry the second time as it had been the first. More so now, when the woman’s hips bucked up against his hand. It was downright filthy, the way he held her arms over her head, the way they didn’t kiss, the only points of contact between them at her wrists and the place between her legs.

The next time she moaned, I almost moaned with her.