“No, they might be stinky.”
“They’re not.” He grabbed hold of the bare foot and began manipulating it, using his knuckles in the arch, kneading with his thumbs.
“Oh.”
“And I bet what you’re really worried about is, how will you remember it all when you’re driving?” He pulled the sock off her other foot. “But you don’t need to worry about that, because when you start driving, it’s all going to start to make sense.” He massaged up toward her calf. “Okay?”
“Mmm.”
“Okay, let’s start with something basic. What color and shape are most warning signs?”
“Can’t remember.”
He stopped rubbing and removed his hands. “You can do better than that.”
“Yellow and diamond?”
“Very good.” He worked the taut muscle of her calf. “You have strong calves. Smooth, too. I bet you didn’t shave for me, either.”
“I didn’t.”
“All right, then. What does a double yellow line in the middle of the road mean?”
“Do not pass or change lanes.”
“Except when?”
Zoë frowned. “There’s an animal in the road?”
“Well, yes, but only if you’re not going to hit anyone head-on. Still, the answer they’ll be looking for is to turn left in order to enter or leave the highway.” He looked at her foot. “Did you just paint your toenails?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because that means you thought I might be seeing your feet.”
“No, I do it for myself all the time. Because I have ugly feet.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. See? I have a bunion and arthritis in my big toe. Comes from dancing.”
“You dance?”
“Used to.”
“What kind of dancing?”
“Stripping.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“Yes, I am. I danced with an Israeli folk troupe in high school, and I’ve taught ballet and tap. And I used to belly dance.”
“Okay, now I know you’re joking.”
“No, that was serious.”
“Would you ever do that for me? No, wait, don’t answer that right now. We need to focus. Now, tell me what do you need to do before making a left turn?”
“Look right?”
Mack kept a perfectly straight face, which he thought was quite an accomplishment. “Why would you want to look right, Zoë?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was one of those counterintuitive things, like speeding up when you’re entering a highway and you’re scared someone’s going to wham into you and all you really want to do is stop and get your bearings. Oh, stop laughing at me, I’m never going to remember all this shit.”
“You know, I felt like that when I was trying to learn how the engine works. The instructor kept talking about how the Otto cycle had four phases: induction, compression, combustion, and exhaust. And I couldn’t even remember the name Otto.”
“So what did you do?”
“I asked the instructor if he could break it down any easier, and he said, ‘Sure. It’s like really good sex. You just remember: suck, squeeze, bang, blow.’ ” He grinned at her, anticipating her response.
But Zoë just raised her eyebrows. “That’s great, and if I ever decide to become a mechanic, I’m sure that’ll come in handy. But do you have a salacious mnemonic for making left turns?”
Mack considered. “Approach your turn with your left wheels as close as possible to the center line” did not lend itself to any sexy shorthand. “How about, if you get it right, I’ll suck your toe.”
“You’d better hope I get it wrong, then. I haven’t washed my feet since this morning.”
“What are you, a neat freak? That’s only two hours ago. They’re perfectly clean.”
“I still don’t want you shrimping me.” The fire crackled, as if punctuating her remark.
“Oh, fine.” Ignoring her protests, he picked her up and carried her over to the bathroom, where he deposited her on the edge of the bathtub.
“What are you doing?”
“Washing your feet, you prude.” He rolled her jeans up, then turned on the taps. He could feel her watching him as he soaped her toes and rinsed them. “There,” he said, pulling the towel down from its hook.
“That tickles,” she said as he dried between her toes.
He picked her up again, which was easier when she didn’t struggle. “What is a solid line?”
“You may pass other vehicles or change lanes,” she said, burying her face in his neck.
He sat her down on the couch, then placed her feet over the bulge in his jeans. “But only if…”
“Only if you need to…ah.”
Mack bit her big toe, then suckled it.
“Are you a foot fetishist?”
“No. Are you?”
“I think I might become one.”
Mack deliberately put her feet down. “Back to business. What does it mean if a cyclist stops in front of you and sticks his arm straight out?”
“He’s going to make a left turn. Aren’t we going to do any more with the feet?”
“Not right now. You need to focus.”
“I want more feet.”
“First answer the question. What does it mean if his arm is up at a right angle, like this?”
“He’s saying, Screw you, gas guzzler, get on a bike.”
“Try again.”
“Why, what are you going to do, spank me?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I was just joking, Mack.”
“Because I would spank you if you wanted me to.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I was just saying that to be, you know, provocative.”
Mack looked at Zoë’s flushed face, thinking that it had been more than fifteen years since he’d spent this long touching a woman before actually having sex with her. Back then, of course, he’d been entirely focused on himself, and how far he could get. Now he was learning that you could find out quite a lot about a person by taking things slow. For example, he was learning that however sophisticated Zoë might be about art and politics, she was not as experienced as he was in bed.
“Tell me what you like,” he said, indicating that she should lie down next to him. Mack put his arm around Zoë as she lay across him, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t know. The usual.”
“There’s a pretty wide range of usual, Zoë. Do you want me to be gentle? Slow? Do you want to be in control? Or do you want me to be on top? Overpower you? Hold your wrists down?”
Zoë buried her face in his chest. “Yes.”
He stroked her hair, loving this feeling of being excited and yet holding off, filled with lust and tenderness and a teacher’s pleasure in having something to impart. “Yes to being held down?”
“Yes to all of it.”
The next day, Maya stayed home sick from school with a cold, and Mack came over with cans of chicken soup and lotion-coated tissues from the drugstore. Zoë sent him out again for cold remedies, and then he built up the fire and they made popcorn and watched Animal Planet.
The day after that, he came by at eight to drive Maya to school. The school bus came a full half hour earlier, and he’d wanted to give the kid a break. Zoë asked to come along, putting a jacket on over her nightgown. After they dropped Maya off, he drove to the entrance of the Oakdale Nature Preserve, slipped his hands under Zoë’s jacket, and started kissing her.
“You’re not wearing a brassiere.” Still a little intimidated by her, he sometimes found himself slipping into an incongruous formality.
“Of course not, I’m in my nightgown. Listen, Mack, maybe you shouldn’t kiss me, I think I might be getting Maya’s cold.”
“I know. I can taste it. No, don’t pull back. I don’t care. If you get sick, I’ll take care of you.”
“And what about when you get sick—oh.” She leaned her head back as he
exposed her bare flesh to the cold air. “Oh, my God, Mack, what are you doing, why are we doing this here?”
“Because if we go back to your house I’m going to fuck you.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, as his kisses dropped from her breasts to her belly, “Oh.” Hunched over her in the car, uncomfortable beyond belief, Mack tasted her intimately, smiling as her fingers tangled in his hair. “Please, please, please.”
He kept going until he did please her three times, and then he held Zoë in his arms while she said, “It’s not enough. I want you to make love to me.”
“When you pass the written test.”
Zoë punched him, then gave him a hard look. “Fine,” she said.
“Fine? You’ll take it?”
“I think I’d better get dressed first. And take a shower.”
Zoë passed the written exam on her first try, surprising herself but not Mack, who said she’d probably never failed a test in her life.
“Academic tests, no,” Zoë replied. “Practical, real-life ones, I don’t always do so well at.”
Mack grinned at her, his hands shoved down into the back pockets of his jeans. “Guess you just need the right motivation.”
“Speaking of which…” Zoë pushed Mack up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she knocked him down on her bed and started pulling off her sweater. Mack propped himself up on his elbows, enjoying the view. “Easy, Mama. I plan on taking my time.”
“We only have twenty minutes till Maya’s school bus is due back.”
“Maybe we should wait until…” The words died in his throat as Zoë pulled up her ankle-length denim skirt, revealing thigh-high black-and-rose-
patterned socks that extended six inches over the tops of her motorcycle boots, and nothing else. It was a memorable sight.
“You’re not wearing any underwear.”
“Do you have a condom?”
Mack thought about the past few hours, standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Milltown, making conversation with some folks he knew. He tried to swallow. “You were walking around like that all day?”
Zoë straddled him, still wearing her boots. “You’ve got a problem with that, soldier?” Her breasts were nearly spilling out of her black brassiere, her cheeks were flushed, and she’d just spent the whole day with him bare-assed under her skirt.
Mack grabbed her by the back of her head and kissed her like he was about to head off to battle, and they grappled with the foil packaging for a moment, and then he sank into her, his hands on her hips, and she moaned his name as if she found it unbearably exciting that it was him and not someone else sliding into her. Feeling as though the top of his head might explode, Mack thrust three times, and it was over.
“I’m sorry,” he said, panting as she looked down at him with a gentle smile. He was too embarrassed to meet her eyes. After all the buildup, a two-second race to the finish. She must think he was the worst lover she’d ever had.
“I love you,” said Zoë, wrapping her arms around his neck and half choking him.
“What did you say?” He pulled back, startled, and then they both heard the distinctive noise of the school bus reversing into the drive. “Oh my God,” said Zoë, pulling herself free.
“I’d better go,” he said. “Unless you’d rather…”
“No! Go! Go!” She pushed him out the door.
He thought about writing her a note, quoting Rilke:
A woman so loved that from one lyre there came
More lament than from all lamenting women
But instead, Mack called her up after he knew Maya was in bed that night and said, “I want to do that again. Better.”
“I’ll have to think about my conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“You know, some test you might need to pass.”
Mack groaned, then laughed. Then he said, “Was it just sex talk?”
“What?”
“What you said.”
“You mean, the kind of thing you say when the sex is so good you don’t know what you’re saying?”
Mack put his head under his pillow. “I can do better.”
“Why don’t you say what you really want to say, Mack?”
“What do you mean?”
Zoë sighed. “Why don’t you tell me not to get too involved, or not to get too serious, or whatever it is you’re building up to. But let me assure you, I didn’t mean it like that, I was just sort of overcome with…feeling good and tender and silly and warm to you. But I’m not planning any wedding here. I said something intimate. We did something intimate. That’s all it meant.”
Mack was silent. And then he said, “I love you, too.”
“Mack, you don’t need to…”
“No, it’s true. I just didn’t…I just didn’t understand what it meant before.”
In the end, he got Maya’s cold while Zoë remained healthy. He came over to her house, feverish and sleepy, so that she could heat him cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and put cool washcloths on his head. He remembered Jess complaining that he never let her take care of him, and realized that this was a different kind of chemistry, because when Zoë touched his uncomfortable skin, he felt comforted. She let him spend the night downstairs, covered with an old quilt that smelled like the back of her neck. Maya gave him a teddy bear to hold and he went to sleep thinking about Thanksgiving, and how they would spend it together, and after that came Christmas, if they celebrated Christmas, and this year he would need to really think about presents.
Twenty-two
I n all the books and movies and TV shows that Zoë could recall, the big emphasis was always on the first time a couple made love. Sexual tension ratcheted higher and higher, and then came the big payoff.
Except that after all the delicious buildup with Mack, the first time had been awkward and rushed. And even though Zoë had felt quite tender toward him afterward, it hadn’t exactly portended carnal bliss to come.
The second time had been better, but not perfect. Mack had been tense, and Zoë had felt more than a little self-conscious about her body, and the way her breasts spilled to the side when she was supine. She hadn’t been able to forget that she was ten years older than him, probably more than ten years older than his last girlfriend.
“You didn’t come,” Mack had said, clearly disappointed.
“Sometimes it’s not about that,” she said, curled around his side, his wiry arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t the only one who was a little shy about being seen naked. Mack had an army tattoo on his chest, American flag and frowning eagle, and a dagger high on his right biceps that he liked to keep covered. She didn’t blame him; they weren’t even particularly well drawn pieces. Otherwise, his body was almost too perfect, arms roped with muscle, belly taut and lean, his thighs so hard she felt like he was a member of a different species. Her own thighs were sticking together, and Zoë absentmindedly thought about how she’d have to change the sheets before Maya came home.
“Zoë, what’s this?” Mack held up a book he’d taken from her bedside table. The cover displayed a woman’s stiletto-clad foot and a man’s fanged profile. She’d hidden it under Thomas L. Friedman’s Longitudes and Attitudes, Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power, and Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary?
“Oh, that’s just…you know, bedtime reading.”
Mack looked at the back cover. “ ‘A hardened warrior from another time, Varek has not known a woman’s softness or a moment’s peace since the fateful day when he was cursed to be an immortal mercenary. But professor of archaeology Felicia Evans might just hold the keys to Varek’s release…in more ways than one.’ ” He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not apologizing for my fantasies.”
Mack flipped open to where she’d left her bookmark. “ ‘Pinning her wrists, Varek snarled, a white hot fury lancing through his veins. Yet Felicia continued to defy him, seemingly oblivious to the danger she faced. Did she not understand that for him, to
unleash his passion was to unleash his beast? “You would do better not to tempt me, Human,” he growled.’ ” Mack stopped reading out loud, his eyes flickering across the page as he scanned the scene. When he looked up at Zoë, there was a strange look on his face. “So this is what you like? I’m a soldier with a dark side, careful or I might fuck you to death?”
Zoë pulled the sheet higher over her breasts. “I’m sorry if you feel insulted, Mack, but there has always been a link between Eros and Thanatos, the urge for sex and the urge for death, and it’s hard to be politically correct in your…what are you doing?”
Mack grinned as he yanked the sheet down and moved over her, pinning her wrists. “I didn’t say I was insulted.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s just, my last boyfriend…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to compare them. She was also more than a little distracted by the fact that Mack was pressing up against her, and it was now abundantly clear that what he was feeling wasn’t insulted.
“Yeah, well, maybe your last boyfriend was a wuss. I can do soldier with a dark side.” He put his knee between her thighs, parting them. “But be careful, Zoë. Because I’ve been holding myself in check. But if you’re saying I can really let go with you…”
“Okay, now, when you say really let go, are we implying pain or subjugation?”
“I don’t know,” Mack said, nipping at her neck. “I didn’t read that far yet.” He winked, and Zoë realized that he could, indeed, do soldier with a dark side extremely well. And when he stopped smiling, and tightened his grip on her wrists, she felt a measure of trepidation mingle with her desire, intensifying it. But Zoë noticed that Mack continued to watch her carefully, his eyes more green than blue as he entered her with one strong thrust. His gaze never left her face, so she closed her eyes, experimentally twisting her wrists, to see how hard it would be to free them.
“Look at me,” he said, and she opened her eyes again. Apparently reassured by what he saw, Mack tightened his grip, and rocked his narrow hips into her. She said, “Oh,” and then it all changed. Mack did let something out, something wilder, more intense, more rough-edged and raw. It wasn’t dark, exactly, but it wasn’t gentle, and for the first time, Zoë really was aware that he was a soldier. She moaned, and he said, “Tell me and I’ll stop,” she wrapped her legs around his lean waist and said, “Don’t stop, don’t stop,” and impossibly, Mack kicked into a higher gear.
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