“Having fun?” he asks. I feel the brush of his stubble at the corner of my jaw, and I close my eyes and hum in the affirmative. Most days I enjoy my solitude, my quiet apartment, the full breadth of the bed I sleep in alone. But there are small things that I miss. The heat of a man’s chest against my back. The feeling of being wanted, desired. Of being wrapped in strong arms and held tight.
Julian pulls me in closer. My ass tucks into the cradle of his hips,his firm thighs. The song changes to reggaeton, and he tilts his hips in an exquisite suggestion.
I hiss, eyes still shut, and accept his invitation. The last time I threw it back on an almost-stranger at a party, I was twenty-three with knees that didn’t click on the way down. But apparently wining is like riding a bike, and it only takes a few beats for me to find a dangerous rhythm.
Julian is clearly not new to this type of dance. He follows my lead with ease, not just along for the ride but an active participant, our bodies rolling together in perfect harmony. It’s like we’re in the room at Edison Mansion again, but instead of making music we’re responding to it, transforming it from sound into movement.
Maybe this is why he’s been chasing me so doggedly. Maybe he realized back then what I’m just realizing now, that we’re compatible in a primal way, possessing the kind of organic, inescapable chemistry that only comes around every blue moon. Maybe the reason why I keep seeing him in my dreams is because my subconscious knows just how sublime it would feel to take him to bed.
I can’t tell the exact moment when our dancing shifts to something else, just that suddenly Julian’s breath becomes labored, his grip on my hips becoming a downward press. I swallow a gasp. He’s hard against me, and the full extent of what he’s working with is simultaneously shocking and enticing. As if he can hear my assessment, he rocks into me, slowly, sensuously, and I drop my head back into his shoulder.
“Jesus,” he mutters, and I find myself pleased by the fact that he’s losing control too, that I am affecting him as much as he is me.
“ ‘Sean’ is just fine,” I tease.
I feel his smirk against the side of my face as his hands begin to trail slowly higher and higher, dragging up my rib cage until they stop just under my breasts.
“Do you want to do something crazy?” he croons into my ear.
I don’t realize that I’m panting until I try to answer. My body burns with warmth and want and wildness. I feel like an iron thrust into coals, a freshly spun pot glowing hot in a kiln. I feel like I’m about to be transformed or destroyed or both.
“Yes,” I manage, and Julian snatches my hand and drags me off the dance floor.
Six
Julian guides me out of the gallery, through its swinging glass doors, and down the amber-lit hallways. His pace is brisk, his hold on my wrist tight, and he barely acknowledges the cries of “What’s up, Julian?” and “Hey, Mr. Conrad!” that trail us as we storm past. His back is tight with tension, and though I can’t see his face, I imagine that his mouth is taut, his brows furrowed.
It’s a single-mindedness that should scare me. A man I barely know is dragging me off a dance floor and into an undeclared, unseen space, and I am going with him not only willingly, but gleefully, like a silly, horny coed in a horror movie headed to her certain doom. But that concern feels irrelevant, now that I’ve had a taste of him. I don’t particularly care where Julian is taking me, as long as it’s out of sight.
Eventually we come to a door. Julian pulls a key fob from his pocket and lifts it to the knob. The door is barely open before it’s shut again, and I’m pinned against it, Julian’s mouth open against mine.
He tastes like scotch and smoke, like breathing deep next to a bonfire, and my body sags at the feel of his against mine. Distantly, I recognize that this is just a kiss, that I’ve had a thousand before it. But I’ve never felt a kiss like this, never been so aware of the searing sweetness of a tongue sliding against mine or a body pressed close. Kissing Julian feels like a revelation, like how, as a studious adolescent with an obsession with romance novels, I’d imagined it to feel, and I become greedy, desperate to dig deeper, discover more of him. Mindlessly, I help him shove off his jacket, scrabble at the buttons of his shirt to gain access to the sculpted chest I know is hiding underneath it. His cufflinks clatter to the floor, and I run my lips along a neck that is now properly exposed.
Julian’s groan is guttural, and in the next second, he’s palming my ass and lifting me into the air. I squeak—I’m heavier than I look—but I wrap my legs around him and let him carry me farther inside.
We’re in a conference room, I realize. The long oak table is elegant, the black leather chairs expensive. Julian kicks one away, then lowers me carefully onto the table, and finally, we’re looking at each other.
His eyes are smoldering. Like he’s about to eat me down to the bone. He hardly seems like the same man who picked me up from my apartment earlier this evening, and I can’t tell if it’s alcohol that has unleashed this beast or if he’s been this way all along. He takes my hand, presses it to his lips. Then, with an aching slowness, he drags it down his chest, over the ridges of his taut stomach, the trail of dark hair, until finally he’s cupped in my palm.
Good lord.Is that even going to fit?
“Do you want this, Sean?” Julian breathes wildly, hips roving in a steady grind against me. “Do you want me?”
If I’d known that I was going to end the night getting fucked on a conference table, I might have elected to wear a skirt.
“Yes,” I say, sighing when Julian lowers himself to kiss me again, when he slides the V of my camisole open to expose my breasts, drags himself down my body to trail kisses down my sternum—
“Oh my,” a voice that isn’t Julian’s says.
I feel like someone has just dunked me into a vat of ice. Reflexively, I tuck myself back into my top, then push against Julian with a firm hand to give me space to sit up and face our intruder.
It’s Margaret. I thought she’d left hours ago with the rest of the over-sixty crowd, but here she is now, tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger as if finding Julian topless and bent over his date is as shocking as happening across a stray cat.
“Not wasting time with this one, are you, Julian,” she says with a smirk.
“Have you heard ofknocking?” Julian says, his voice still husky.
“It’s a conference room, dear. Not exactly private.”