Afterward, they ended up on the floor, Eli flat on his back and gasping, the woman curled against his side.
“So what’s your name?” she asked, in a lazy, amused voice.
Eli was hit with a wave of such paralyzing guilt, such awful, utter, all-consuming blackness, that he’d been, for a moment, unable to breathe. He’d felt his chest spasm, and he’d managed to force out a single moan.
“What?” asked the woman, rolling toward him. Her dark hair hung over her shoulder. “What is it?”
Eli couldn’t speak. He managed to shake his head, a negating side to side.
“No, what?” asked the woman. A hint of a smile curved her full lips. “No, you don’t have a name, or No, you don’t want to tell me?”
“I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m married,” Eli croaked. “I have a wife. She’s—”
“… not here,” said the woman before he could say pregnant. “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s her fault, for letting someone as handsome as you walk around on his own.”
Handsome. Unbelievably, Eli felt himself stirring again, as the woman slid her hand across his chest, then down, down, down.
“I can’t,” he muttered.
“You already did,” the woman pointed out. She removed her hand—Don’t, Eli kept himself from gasping, don’t stop. She got to her feet and stretched, with her arms extended over her head, standing on the tips of her toes. Her back arched, thrusting her breasts up. From the floor, he could see every inch of her: her toenails, painted dark red; the juicy, rounded curves of her calves and thighs and belly; the soft black curling hair between her legs; her breasts, tipped with sweet dark red nipples; and, oh, God, she had hair under her arms, gorgeous curling thickets of hair. Eli felt his mouth fill with saliva as he got to his feet. He reached out and touched her there, stroking with a single fingertip. She was so soft. He bet she smelled delicious. He wanted to bury his face there, to sniff, to lick, to kiss, to bite.
She looked up at him from underneath her long, curling lashes. “You got a bed in this place?”
He managed a nod. She arched an eyebrow.
“Think you could show me?”
He nodded again, then bent and scooped her, every warm, soft, sweet, fragrant, delectable, irresistible inch of her, into his arms. And if the first time had been incredible, the second time was a revelation.
The hair under her arms and between her legs was just as soft as Eli knew it would be, and its smell was the smell of sex itself, dirty and sweaty and intoxicating. Even better was the way this woman talked, murmuring the hottest, filthiest, most explicit commands in Eli’s ear, telling him what she was going to do to him, asking him to do things, telling him how all of it felt. Lick your finger. Now slide it inside of me, slow. Ohhh, like that, just like that. Her eyes had glinted with a devilish light as she’d grabbed his wrist, pulled his hand toward her mouth, and slipped his slick finger between her lips, sucking her own juices off Eli’s skin. Deeper, she said. Harder. More.
Eli thought his head was going to explode.
They’d had sex—no, Eli thought savagely, they’d fucked—three times that night. The last time he’d taken her from behind, on her hands and knees, with the warm weight of her ass smacking loudly against his thighs as he thrust and thrust. “I feel like an animal,” he managed to gasp. The woman turned her head, looking at him over her shoulder. Her white teeth glinted as she smiled.
“Baby, we’re all animals,” she’d said. Then she’d pushed herself upright, up on her knees, with Eli still inside her. Yeah, like that, like that. Faster. Faster faster faster. I want to come while you’re inside me.
After the third time, they’d fallen onto the sex-stiffened sheets, and both of them had slept. When he’d opened his eyes again, it was after eight o’clock, the apartment filled with early-morning light.
Eli stared at the clock. In that first moment of awareness, he hadn’t remembered what he’d done, and his first conscious thought was to wonder why his thighs felt so sore. Then he looked down and saw the woman, still asleep, hair tumbled over Annette’s pillow. Guilt crashed over him like a collapsing building. He must have made some kind of noise, loud enough to wake the woman, who yawned and stretched and slowly opened her eyes.
“Good morning, handsome,” she said. Then she’d dropped her eyes, from his face to his chest to his morning erection. “Mmm,” she’d hummed. The sheet had slipped down to show the curve of her breast. When she saw where he was looking, she’d brought her hand down, cupping her own breast, pinching her nipple, making it hard. She slipped her other hand under the covers, gliding it along his thigh until she found his erection and squeezed. “Looks like somebody’s glad to see me.”