“You still okay?” he asks, his eyes glazed and his body mercilessly, beautifully, wonderfully taking mine.
“Stop talking,” I reply. He hits a spot that couldn’t have been there all this time dormant inside me. That spot waiting for the just-right caress of him buried inside me to erupt. The feel so good obliterates the pain. “Just fuck me.”
The sound he makes is unintelligible. We are wound together so tight, a tangled tempo of limbs and hands and lips and sweat and tears.
Tears trickle from the corners of my eyes when he roars and shakes over me. I clamp my legs, my arms around him, holding him so close even the rhythm of his heart belongs to me. The sweat slicking his chest is mine.
Through a rain of adoring kisses he leaves on my face, my shoulders, and my breasts, I try to remember he is not mine. He told me it would be more—that it would feel like this. Like more than sex, and it does. It already does. If I plan to make it out of this week whole, I have to cling to the only promise Maxim made.
That when it’s time to walk away, he will.
15
Maxim
Tea.
I wondered how she takes her coffee, but she doesn’t. Lennix likes tea.
And her eggs? Scrambled hard.
And how she looks in the morning-after light? Thick, still-damp hair hangs over one shoulder, an unrelieved fall of inky black. Her skin, smooth dark gold, glows from her shower. I’ll never forget how she looks right now. I’ll never forget how she looked last night.
“You’re staring,” she says, not glancing up from the newspaper someone delivers to my door every morning, I assume courtesy of the last tenant.
“No, I’m not.” I turn my attention to the toast and away from her wearing some robe she found at the back of my closet. I don’t have the heart to tell her I have no idea whose it is.
“You weren’t?” She shifts so the robe falls open, gifting me shadowy glimpses of her breasts and long, firm thighs. “My bad.”
I eat up the sight, licking my lips, searching for traces of her taste.
“I said I like my eggs scrambled hard,” she says with a sweet smile. “Not scrambled burnt.”
“Shit.” I shift the pan from the bright red eye of the stove onto a cool burner. I’m still pulling toast from the toaster and scraping at burnt eggs when she walks up behind me and circles me with her arms.
“Made ya look,” she whispers, tipping up to kiss the nape of my neck. I turn off the stove and face her, linking my fingers at the small of her back.
“You were staring, too,” I mumble into our first kiss of the day.
“Was not.” Her smile against my lips calls her a liar. “I was minding my own business, reading that newspaper.”
“Oh, did you learn Dutch overnight then?” I ask, eyeing her abandoned copy of de Volkskrant with its distinctly non-English headlines.
Laughter shakes her shoulders beneath the robe, and I slide my hands over the slick fabric clinging to her body. She’s healthy. Fit. Tight bends and lush curves. I caress one of my favorite curves, her ass, and kiss down her neck, breathing in my shampoo in her soft hair. Me on her.
We may part ways next week—no, we will part ways next week. We have to—but I’ll remember this night and any more she gives me for the rest of my life. She’s that special. My body knows it. My heart, which I don’t consult in any of my decisions, won’t be far behind if I’m not careful.
“Spend the day with me,” I say.
I don’t want to sound needy, clingy, pathetic, but it only took one night for me to know I won’t be able to get enough of this woman.
“I’m here with my friends, remember?”
“They have you all the time. I only get a few days with you before you go back to the States.”
I lower until my mouth is level with her breast, and suck the curve and nipple through the silk robe. She groans and plunges her fingers into my hair, scraping my scalp.
“Please.” I nudge the lapel aside to find clean-scented, soft flesh beneath the robe. I slide the sleeves down her arms until the belt loses its fragile hold on her waist and falls open, catching at her elbows. She’s nearly naked in my kitchen, and I want to bend her over the table and take her from the back. Hard.
“I can’t just forget about them,” she says, sounding husky and unconvinced.
“Tell them good dick is hard to find. Surely they’ll understand.”
My fingers delve between her legs, searching for the nirvana I found last night.
“Are you sore?” I hope I don’t sound as desperate as touching her makes me feel.
“A little.” Her fingers tighten at my neck. “But I’ll be ready by tonight, if you want me again.”
Tonight. Damn. Not as persuasive as I thought I was. “So you won’t spend the day with me?”
“I have plans with Kimba and Viv,” she says, apology and regret in her eyes. “I promise tonight is yours.”
“Will you spend the night again?” I’m asking too much too soon. I know that, but everything feels compacted. Seeing her again randomly after four years, making love our second night together, whatever we get this week—it’s all shoved through a tiny window I want to toss a rock at and shatter.
“I’ll spend the night, yeah.” She draws the robe back and up and around her, tying it at the waist. She reaches past me to grab a slice of burnt toast. “But I have to go now.”
My arms and my kitchen are empty. She starts up the steps, and I take off after her. Her eyes widen over her shoulder when she sees me on her heels.
“No!” She laughs and speeds up, zigzagging down the hall like that will deter me. She makes the amateur mistake of running into my bedroom and trying to close the door. I push until it opens and stumble into the room. She’s giggling and spread out on my bed, the robe gaping to show me her supple curves and lean lines and pretty pussy.
“Come catch me,” she says, her arms extended to me.
I fall into the disarray of sheets scented with last night’s sex and pin her beneath me.
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” I ask, one last plea.
“No, my friends are waiting for me.” She reaches down between us to grip my cock, squeezing. “But I’m not that sore, and they can wait.”
16
Lennix
“Your dad or your boyfriend?” Kimba asks, dipping a trio of French fries into a dollop of mayo nestled in the red-and-white-checkered paper cone.
I glance at my phone.
“Maxim’s not my boyfriend,” I answer, giving her half my attention and the remainder to the call. “And it’s not him or Daddy. It’s Mena. Better see what she needs.”
“If you say so, Miss I Popped My Cherry by Spending the Night with a Stranger.” Vivienne laughs and takes a sip of her ginger beer. “We’ll just be here eating our weight in fries and rubbing our feet.”
We visited the Anne Frank House today and did a walking tour of the major sites. We’re sucking this city dry of every experience possible.
I leave them and their ribbing at the sidewalk café, and walk toward a low wall a few yards away.
“Hey, Auntie,” I greet Mena. “How goes it?”
“Fine,” she returns, a smile in her voice. “Enjoying Amsterdam?”