“I told you, none of your fucking business.”
God, she was beautiful. He thought he'd noticed before, but he hadn't. Not like this.
“Why?” he said again, his voice lower.
“I'm not going to tell you,” she said. She tried to go around him and he put his other hand against the wall next to her, boxing her in on both sides.
“I want you to tell me,” he said.
“No.”
Was she breathing harder now? He knew he was. He could see her nipples, hard through the fabric of the camisole.
He took a step closer and inclined his head so that his lips were only a few inches from her cheek.
“Maybe I already know,” he said.
“You don't know anything about me.”
“I know something,” he said, moving closer.
She looked at him, her gaze angry, defiant, her lips parted, her breath whistling in and out from between them. He felt his heart pounding, heard it in his ears.
He leaned closer and she turned her head sharply away. His cheek was against hers now, the sound of her breathing loud in his ear. He could smell her hair, her skin. He moved in closer still and pressed against her, and the soft, full warmth of her breasts against him was a kind of madness.
He took one hand from the wall and put it on her hip, then let it glide up, caressing her ribs, the swell of her breast, her neck, her cheek. He eased her head inward. She resisted for a moment, then turned with a strange sound, half growl, half cry, and met his lips, her mouth open, her tongue on his.
He took her head in both hands and kissed her hard, his heart pounding, a buzzing in his ears. He felt unmoored, as though he ‘d lost his hold on something and was rushing away through the dark. He was still pressed against her and now she was pressing back. He was so hard it actually hurt.
He wasn't thinking anymore, he just needed her naked, needed it. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was real. He took hold of the top of the camisole with both hands and pulled hard in opposite directions. The sound of the fabric tearing filled his ears, and then her breasts were in his hands, and they were beautiful, she was beautiful.
She put her fingers through the gaps in the front of his shirt and pulled, and the buttons popped off with a machine gun cadence. A part of his mind thought, Shouldn't be surprised, look at the way she patted you down at Vesuvio, tit for tat, and then she was leaning forward, her mouth on his neck, her fingers working at his buckle. He dropped the holster as she was pulling his belt free. She fumbled with his zipper while he shrugged off his jacket and shirt, and then fuck it, he couldn't stand it anymore, he couldn't wait, he got his own pants open and stepped out of them. He kicked them aside and took her in his arms again. She wrapped a hand around him and squeezed and he felt it all the way through his abdomen.
He put his arms under her ass and lifted her. She gave a cry of surprise and wrapped her legs around his waist. He spun around, took two steps from the wall, and lowered her to the floor. He kissed her again, kissed her neck, her breasts, then broke away. Her panties were stretched taut across her hips and he wrapped his fingers through the fabric and pulled, tearing one side, then the other, then tossed them aside, watching her, looking in her eyes, seeing the hunger in them, the want, and then he was touching her, making her groan, making her writhe, and she was so wet this had to be real, it had to be, no one could be this kind of actress. He brought his knees forward, spreading her legs, then lowered himself onto her, wanting to fuck her so badly it obliterated everything else in his mind.
And then he was inside her, and thank God, there was nothing more, there was nothing better, he was like a drowning man gulping down mouthful after mouthful of lifesaving air. She gasped and moved against him, her ankles coming together behind his back, her hands on his face, pulling him to her, kissing him. They moved that way for a while and he willed himself to try to slow down, to be more gentle, and then he couldn't anymore, and he reached down with both hands and took hold of her ass and brought her up against him while he moved more deeply inside her, again and again and again. He closed his eyes and saw swirling colors, black and violet and green, heard her moaning and felt her hands in his hair and on his face and the heat of her body everywhere. Her legs tightened and she moved against him more urgently and she cried out into his mouth and he could feel her coming, coming under and all around him, and then he was coming, too, all the danger and uncertainty and insanity of the day tightening around him like a vise and then suddenly, miraculously, bursting open and letting everything go.
Slowly, carefully, he let go of her ass and brought his arms up, taking some of his weight on his elbows. She said, “No, I want to feel you,” and he let himself relax a little. She circled her arms around his neck, her legs still around his back, and he could feel a sound coming with each of her panting breaths that was almost a purr. They lay like that, his heart slowing, his breathing coming back to normal.
He rolled off her onto his back and turned his head to look into her eyes. He wanted to say, You're beautiful, but he didn't. Instead he said, “I'm sorry.”
She laughed. “I'm not.”
“No, I meant-”
“I know what you meant.”
He sighed. “I've had a bad week.”
She turned on her side to face him, her elbow on the floor, her head propped against her hand. “I get the feeling it's been going on longer than a week,” she said gently.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated for a moment, then said, “You have a daughter, an ex-wife, and a brother, and you never see any of them, never even talk to them. That's more than a bad week.”
“It's complicated.”
“You know what they say: ‘Take heart. The common denominator in all your dysfunctional relationships “ ‘Is you.’ Yeah, I've heard that.”
Christ, she was tough. He imagined what it would be like to be in some kind of relationship with her. He wouldn't win many arguments, that was for sure.
“Look,” he said, “you were right in the bar. I can't… I can't have them depend on me. I mean, what's worse, popping in on my daughter a few times a year, or just being gone entirely? All the first would do is make her aware of my absence, make her aware of some loss. With the second, there's no one to miss. So no loss.”
“I don't get it. If no one depends on you, you can't let anyone down, is that it?”
“That's not what I'm saying.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“Alex always asks me that. I always tell him no.”
“Does he tell you anyway?”
“Of course.”
“Then I will, too. What you're describing? It's like stealing. Stealing an inheritance the person doesn't even know she has. Will she miss the money? Will she even know it's gone, or feel diminished by its absence? No. But just because the person isn't aware of the theft doesn't make you any less a thief.”
“They teach you that in law school?”
“What happened with you and Alex, anyway?”
“We drifted.”
“Come on, no one drifts like that. He doesn't even know you were married, or that he has a niece.”
He looked away from her for a moment, trying to decide what, or whether, to tell her. He didn't know where to begin. “We had a sister,” is what came out. And he went on from there. He didn't mean to say much. But once he started talking, he found it hard to stop.
“Your poor family,” she said, when he was done. “I thought mine had problems.”
He laughed harshly. “What family? There's no one left.”
“There's you and Alex.”
“Alex blames me for the whole thing.”
“He told you that?”
“Not in those words. But he does.”
