“Alright?” he asks.
“Oh yes,” I whisper, into his ear. “We’re perfect.”
And we’re off. He carries me down College, and takes a right on Chapel. I use the opportunity to explore the edges of his ears, his neck, the place where his shirt meets his skin. He smells not just like Irish Spring, but also like clean laundry and hair gel and all the most delicious things. No fancy cologne assaulting my nose, just rugged, real masculine yumminess. Every time I run my tongue over a particular spot on his right ear, he grabs my ass a little tighter and makes this perfect dark moan.
When we get to his hotel—it’s called the Study, the nicest place in town—he carries me right through the lobby on his back. The lady at the front desk stares and then smiles.
“Hi!” I say, bouncing along through the foyer.
“Have a good night,” she says and grins down at her laptop on the concierge’s desk.
I cling on tighter to him as he bends to press the button for the elevator. Inside, it’s mirrored. He stares at my reflection and digs his fingers into my thighs a little harder.
The vision of him making love to me on the floor of this elevator is outrageously tempting. Hitting the emergency stop and making the security guards blush? Oh yes, that sounds just lovely.
“Keycard is in the left front pocket,” he says. He’s shaking his head at me in the mirror. He knows what I’m thinking. “No way am I taking you right here.”
“Why not?” It comes out as a whisper. “Because we need space.”
“And time,” I add, widening my eyes at him.
“Exactly,” he says. “I need to lay you down and make you come the right way.”
The only sound is my breath, coming out in a rush, and the sound of the elevator taking us up. I wonder if he can feel how wet I am through the back of his shirt.
Then the elevator dings, shocking me back into the world. I feel around in his suit coat for the keycard. I feel his wallet beside it, soft and worn leather. I take the keycard in my fingers as we head down the hall.
“Well done,” he says, squeezing my ass. We make our way down the hallway, past a handful of rooms, and then he stops in front of one of the suites. He tips forward to let me put the key in the reader. With a beep and a click, we’re inside. He drops me and turns around, pressing me up against the door. With one hand he pulls up my dress, and I reach up and slide the lock closed.
I’m undoing his tie. His jacket falls from my shoulders, and I draw his belt through the loops, filling the front entryway with a zipping whoosh. His big hands deftly undo the zipper on the side of my dress. It gets caught on the waistline, and then it too falls to the floor.
There I am. Exposed. Naked. My very least favorite way to be. Please, God, don’t say anything about the scar. Please, please, please.
He notices it, I can see he does, because he has eyes and it’s impossible to miss, but instead of mentioning it, he says, “You’re fucking gorgeous. Fucking,” his eyes trip up my body, “unspeakable.”
My swallow is audible, a clicking gulp. I feel a flush run up to my face, hot and instantaneous as he hoists me back up into his arms, face to face. Who’s touching what gets all mixed up in my head. We are hands and skin and need. As we smash into the minibar, the Keurig and all the little tiny K-Cups go flying.
I slip off his tie, but keep it in my hands, using it to leverage his head as close to me as I can. He moves down my neck, sucking and biting all the way to my collarbone. He undoes my bra. As my breasts come free, he shakes his head, the way people do when they just can’t believe what they’re seeing.
Placing me on the bed, he finishes undoing his buttons, takes off his shirt, and stands over me a minute. He is unbelievable. Not an ounce of fat on him and a summertime tan to die for. He’s got this tattoo on one shoulder, small tight black letters, Illegitimi Non Carborundum.
Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Oh, this guy. This guy. He’s perfect. I've still got his tie in my hands, tight in my fists in anticipation.
Carefully, he holds my wrists together in one of his hands. Then he loops the end of his tie around a finger.
I think I know what he’s thinking. I sure hope I do. So I nod. “Yes please.”
He puts my wrists one over the other, and then runs the tie around and around, finally knotting it at the top.
“That good?” he asks.
I clench and unclench my wrists under that silk rope. “Perfect.”
With one hand on my chest, he pushes me back and pulls down my panties. He kneels on the floor and slides me by my knees into his mouth.
“Shit, holy, holy shit,” I say. All my experience with oral sex has been a bit awkward and clumsy. This? This is not those things. This is artful, careful, patient, but also so deliberate I don’t know if my pussy is dripping more or if it’s him salivating.
He pulls away from me for one second to say, “You taste incredible,” and then plunges back in. I pull my dress up a little higher to get a better look at him between my legs. His thumbs just come over my thighs, and his fingers grip my ass.
As he works me with his tongue, I feel my eyes start to roll backwards a little, that tense feeling on either side of my eyes. I grip his hair. “I’m close…” Of course I am. I was right on the edge in that stairwell. Now, I can feel my clit swollen and needy under his hands. So close. Right, right there…
With one finger followed by a second, he hooks his hand inside me. The noise I make is outrageous, vulgar and surprised. Then, I think, he introduces a third finger. I’m not entirely sure because everything begins to shimmer around the edges.
I grind my hips into his mouth. I feel my clit give that undeniable flicker.
He must have felt it, because he pulls away just long enough to say, “Let go, beautiful. Let me feel you let go,” his breath warming my clit all the while.
When he touches his tongue back to me, the orgasm comes immediately. Everything turning to gray and then bright white. He’s groaning into me as I come, and I pull so hard on the bedspread that I undo two hotel sheet corners at once.
6
I need to drink whiskey from that belly button. Screw every other idea I've ever had. Jack Daniels. Belly button. Naomi. That’s the only fucking philosophical logic I will ever need.
She’s still on the heels of her orgasm, and I want to leave her there just like she is, but I have to take her with me. I have to keep her close. I hook my head under her bound wrists and take her off the bed to bring her with me as we kiss—because I cannot stop kissing her, will not stop kissing her. With my hand behind me, I fling open the minibar and fumble around blind. Chips, nuts, pretzels, what is that, a roll of Mentos?
Jack Daniels, where the hell are you?
Grabbing what feels like the right little bottle, I turn to look down. Gin. I toss it towards the desk. Second try, and bingo. I've got it.
But I’m going to have to let go of her to open this damned bottle. Proof that the world is an unfair and unkind place. It’ll have to be done. I let go of her face, and it makes her moan, but she doesn’t pull away. Instead, she grips onto the back of my neck with my tie and hangs on even tighter through the kiss.
As I crack the lid, her eyes widen, inches from mine. I feel her cheeks rise as she smiles. With one last dip into her mouth, I force myself to break the kiss, ducking down to get my head out from under her bound arms.
We stand there staring at one another for an instant. Her pupils dilate, and that’s when I press her to the bed. “Hope you’re not ticklish.”
Even as she lands with a cushy thunk on the mattress, she’s giving me that all-trouble smile. She scoots back towards the pillows, her long black hair a gorgeous tangle behind her, the same color as my tie. There’s a tan line at her stomach, and it’s killing me.
“So ticklish. But I can take it.”
I lie down at a right angle to her body, with my cheek to her stomach. I can smell her wetness in the air and on my fingers.
“Ready?” I ask. I sink my cheek deeper into her skin. God, this skin. God damn, this superfine skin. I tip the bottle towards her stomach.
“Ready,” she says. I feel her whole body quiver. The ticklish before the tickle is the agony of agonies.
When the whiskey hits her, she grips my hair tight. For one second, I resist all temptation: I watch it all unfold. The whiskey shivers, her body shivers, and then the shivers come out as a jagged gasp.
I lick it off, and she squirms and sucks air through her teeth. I suck it from her and growl into her body. Her feet hook around my calves. I move to her nipples, dribble on a few drops and smear them around with my tongue. I move to that perfect little depression at the base of her neck. Straight-up Naomi. Fucking heaven. Her skin, that hair, her sounds, the way her body moves under my mouth? Lemonade, when it’s too hot for anything else? I can still feel my first orgasm deep in my cock, but I’m hard again. She’s not only wrecked all my philosophies. She’s turned me into a goddamned teenager.
I grab a condom, from my wallet this time, and tear it open. “We’re going to need more of these.”
But she shakes her head into the pillows. She holds my stare as she slides her hands all over her body, red polish on porcelain. “Put it here. Put it everywhere.”
Christ. It’s official. I've been pussywhipped in record time.
And I don’t even know her last name.
7
Morning light wakes me up, and the first thought I have is that these sheets, they aren’t mine. They’re fancy and starchy and smell like hotel. There’s this delicious, manly smell too. Warm, hot skin. I open my eyes. Ben.
Delicious, sexy Ben. He’s a stomach sleeper, and I lift up the sheet to get another look at his back. Oh, yes. Just as gorgeous and rippling now as it was last night.
The room looks like a small natural disaster blew through here. There are K-Cups everywhere, a condom on the floor. The sheets are a wreck, lampshades crooked, a chair overturned. I remember colliding with the chair as he carried me across the room. I remember it all like the sweetest sucker punch to the face.
It went on for hours. I have no idea when we fell asleep together, but I know I was in his arms. Just like I am now.
My ass is still sore from the spanks. Over his shoulder, I see his tie is still knotted around the bedpost. The whiskey, the belly button, the way he came. We’d said all sorts of things. Best. Need. Fuck. Mercy. Yes. More. Now. Please, please, please.
Beg me to come. Beg me.
Whiskey bottle overturned on the nightstand, my clothes strewn around under his.
Some of his cum is still there on my belly, white and dry like spilled milk. I stare at him next to me, his hair all messy, his eyelashes touching his cheeks.
They say a woman who does what I just did is a whore, a slut, a sinner. Let them say it. I don’t believe that at all. Never have, never will. Screw the world that sees only whores and virgins, bad girls and good. I’m all of it. And proud.
And yet, I don’t feel much like trekking across campus in my evening wear while everybody’s heading to breakfast. If I hustle, I won’t be spotted walking across the quad in this tiny dress and carrying my shoes while the rest of my residential college puts syrup over their Eggos.
So very carefully, I maneuver out from under his arm. I’m trying to be quiet as I shift the sheets, but the starch doesn’t make it easy. I creep across the room and grab my dress and underwear. Pulling myself together quickly in the bathroom, I rub the mascara out from under my eyes.
I’m just about to go, but I can’t. Not like this. I pad back to the bed. I scrawl my number on the notepad by the phone, with a heart next to it. And then I lean down and kiss him on the cheek. As I pull myself away, I quietly untie his tie from the bedpost and his mask from the dresser. There’s no way I’m leaving without these.
On my way out the door, I see the hotel bill on the floor.
Another sucker punch, and this one not so sweet. He’s leaving today. So this was a fleeting thing, a chance collision. One in a million. But even as I hit the button on the elevator, I’m wishing lightning would strike twice.
I live on the fourth floor of Yale’s Durham College, in a tiny Dickensian room barely wide enough for my bed, with four mullioned windows that don’t close all the way so that rain and leaves and the occasional ladybug come right on in. The windows are open now, and the shifting of the leaves outside reminds me of the sound of his necktie. I smell the whiskey and Irish Spring, somehow caught in my hair.
My independent study swirls in front of me on my computer screen like an amateur crossword puzzle.
His hands on me, the way he laughed and smiled. The dancing. The way he sent Isaac packing. The way we set off that alarm, the way he tangled his fingers into mine. His face when he came.
Oh God. God, God, God.
From the squeals emanating from open window on the other side of the courtyard, I’m fairly sure I hear a game of strip poker getting started. I look out my window into the grassy quad. Durham looks like it’s three hundred years old, but it isn’t. Cinderblock walls made to look like old plaster, new brass aged with industrial acids. Still, it’s awfully pretty. We have a reputation for being wild with, and I quote, “no discernable intellectual tradition whatsoever.” That is not our fault. Nor is it our fault that our dean is utterly, unbelievably, painfully dreadful… He’s got this toupee that’s always shifting positions, and he’s made a career out of studying a single rare moth found only in Burma. Dean Osgood is his name. He’s the weird old uncle nobody wants to talk to but shows up everywhere. Not our fault. Nor is it our fault that our Master of College got himself fired at the end of spring term and they still haven’t replaced him. If they did, things would be more tame. He’d be like the stepdad who puts everybody back in line. But for now, Durham is an uncaptained ship on the very edge of a mutiny. I watch a pair of boxers fly from a third-floor window and go back to my desk.
The day ticks past, and I try to forget about Ben. He’s probably flying back to Santa Barbara or something—he had that kind of tan. But I keep checking my phone anyway. I clean my room, I listen to Spotify. I try to focus, but I can’t.
That stairwell. The growls. Every last thing. I open my underwear drawer, where I've hidden his mask, and run my fingertips over the curve where his cheekbone used to be.
Lucy, she hasn’t said anything, but she keeps coming down the hall and looking through my door at me. I’m sure she saw me dancing with him, I’m even sure she saw me leave with him. But she doesn’t come right out and ask. That’s not her style at all. She’s genteel, polite. Her family is the stuff of coming-out balls, ongoing SEC investigations, and a library on south campus with her family’s name on the door. All day, she watches me like I’m keeping some enormous secret, like I’m pregnant or getting married or getting kicked out of school. Every half-hour she pokes her head into my room to spy on me. I keep telling her to stop, but she just shifts her head to the side and twirls her braid and wiggles her nose, like suspicious a rabbit, saying, “Mmmmm.”
“Oh my God,” I say finally, really trying to be serious but totally unable to keep from bursting into a smile, “Yes. I went home with him. Yes, it was ahhhmazing. And yes, I know his name.”
“First and last?” she asks.
I shake my head. “First only.”
She wags her finger at me. “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
“We weren’t exactly exchanging business cards, Lucy,” I say.
She puts the finishing touches on a five-strand braid and smacks her lip gloss. She’s painfully pretty, with eyes shockingly big, the color of honey. “I’m just saying, first and last really facilitates stalking. So, for future reference…”
Duly noted. “It was you that invited me, wasn’t it?” I ask her.
She purses her lips. “Maybe.” She’s got cagey down to an art.
“Why, in God’s name?”
She shoves me a little, then starts co
unting on her fingers, thumb first: “Because you’re fucking brilliant. A shitload of fun. My bestie. You can dance. Fearless. Should I keep going?” She sticks out the thumb on her other hand and stares at me.
I hold my hand to my forehead, so freaking embarrassed. “No. That’s plenty.”
“So welcome to Lux et Veritas,” she beams. “The worst-kept secret on campus. And the most freaking fun you’ll ever have.”
At five, I shower, reluctantly washing his smell and cum off of me. I do my hair and makeup and get ready to work the Durham Fellows’ Dinner. This is the first one of the school year, and it’ll be busy. A lot of shuttling sad hors d’oeuvres around, a lot of plates of poached chicken and nondescript gravy.
To make ends meet, I work as many extra jobs as I can. I work at the library, but mainly I work events at the college, like Fellows’ dinners and Master’s teas.
As I slather my body with lotion, I realize that tonight, I’m pretty sure, I’ll get to meet our new Master. I know he’s some kind of big deal, but I can’t remember why. On one hand, I should care: The Master of College is a weirdly important job at Yale. Captain of the collegiate ship, surrogate father figure. Advisor. Boss. At least for me, as a Master’s Aide. Everything, really. But provided I keep my nose down, even as his aide, I won’t have all that much to do with him.
The last Master of Durham went down in a rather inglorious blaze after a mid-semester “reply-all” email snafu in which he revealed himself to be a raving lunatic He detailed his feelings on an assortment of things including, but not limited to, Israel, nuclear proliferation, the Second Amendment, and his pervasive distaste for every single person in the Yale Provost’s office. The administration snatched him out of his job faster than you could say Huffington Post.
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