Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures)

by Talia Quinn

  “I don’t do relationships.”

  “I don’t either. One bad marriage was enough.” He sat back. My body missed him already.

  “That doesn’t mean I want to stop doing this.”

  “Good. Because we’re not going to stop. Lie back.” He indicated the bed.

  I lay back. With his hands, he urged me to turn over, onto my stomach. I did. “But I don’t need to know your favorite meal or your childhood pet or whether you’re close to your parents.”

  His hands on my back felt slick with massage oil, his touch firm. Warming. “I’d have to go with sushi, but it depends on the restaurant. There’s a place on the Upper East Side where you can only order omakase—chef’s choice—and the chef decides based on your face what you’d like to eat that day. He reminds me of you. Full of rules and restrictions and very, very good at his job. I’d take you there, but that would be a date, wouldn’t it?”

  The thought felt almost okay. Almost imaginable. Sitting with Dylan at the sushi bar, joking and tossing down tiny cupfuls of hot sake. No doubt the bone-melting massage I was getting was messing with my head.

  His voice got soft as he continued, like he was talking to himself, wrapped in memories. “For my fifth birthday, I got a gray cat named Oscar. He had a white splotch on his chin, like an old man’s goatee. He used to pounce on my toes when I was in bed. He died while I was away at art school. I’d planned to get an off-campus apartment that spring so I could bring him back with me after winter break, but I never got a chance. He got hit by a car on our country road. And no, I’m not that close to my parents. They’re good people, but we don’t have much in common.”

  My breath hitched, and it wasn’t only because of his skillful hands, now stroking down my back, soothing and arousing both in equal measure.

  “So? Now that you know a few facts about me, do you want to go running out the door?” He sounded teasing but wary.

  I looked over my shoulder so I could see his face. It was shadowed; the soft light from the bedside lamp flared behind him. “And Persephone? How did you meet her? Why did you decide to get married?”

  Dylan’s hands stilled. “I thought you wanted to have sex, no questions asked.”

  I sat up. “See? It crosses a line, right? It makes you uncomfortable. It’s not just me.”

  He grabbed the champagne bottle from the nightstand and took a big swig. “We met in school. I was building a big wood frame for a sculpture project. I couldn’t do it all on my own, so my roommate roped the entire ceramics class into helping. Persephone was this tiny thing. I thought she was going to collapse under the weight of the wood beam she was carrying. When I went to help her, she gave me a faraway smile and recited Auden. I was done for.”

  “You were a romantic.” It fit. The hunger I’d felt in him, that constant yearning below the assured surface. Even the fact that he’d reached out to me after our night together. “You still are. You just don’t want to be.”

  He leaned in and kissed me, tasting of champagne. Bubbles and bitterness. A fierce kiss. I felt it in my chest, in the back of my throat, in my gut. In high school, we used to call it a soul kiss, but it felt more like a soul-churning kiss. Intensely sexual but oh so scary. Still, I couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.

  It was only a kiss, not full-on sex, no fancy moves. A kiss. How did it have any right to feel this good? I curled my fingers around the edges of his suit jacket and enjoyed the feel of the hard buttons of his shirt pressed up against my bare torso.

  He groaned, deep in his throat. Groaned like he meant it.

  “Samantha. I can’t take much more.”

  “Good.”

  I slipped my hand beneath his shirt, heading south, dipping below his pants line.

  He pulled my hand away. “I’m servicing you, remember? Not the other way around.” He stood, shedding his suit jacket in a lithe, quick move, and tossed it on the chair in the corner of the room. Then he began to unbutton his shirt, revealing smooth skin with a light dusting of hair in the cleft between his pecs. When he glanced at me, I closed my mouth. I’d forgotten how beautiful the male body—this man’s body—could be.

  Dylan grinned, wicked. “You like that?” He slowed down his fingers. Unbuttoning one button and then the next, gradually revealing what lay underneath, smooth skin and rippled muscle. A businessman’s striptease. The shirt sailed across the room to join the jacket. Now he was bare above the waist, like me. “Like what you see?” He cocked his hip, and for the first time, I saw the teenager he must have been. Serious, but with a mischievous streak.

  Heat streaked through me. I got the sense that I was seeing a side of him he rarely showed people. This playfulness, this openness, it was only for me. My body thrummed with awareness, giddy and wild.

  Dylan caught my gaze, and something changed in his. The rest of his clothes got shed in a moment. No more striptease, no more silliness. He practically attacked me, pushing me back into the mattress. Kissing, fondling, his hands between us, my hands slipping down his bare back to his firm buttocks.

  Dylan’s phone rang. I stilled, expecting him to reach for it.

  He ignored it entirely. Not even tightening in response. He was fully with me. And after a moment, the phone stopped ringing.

  But we still had one barrier between us. My skirt. He yanked it down, nearly tearing it in his haste.

  “Wait.” I unzipped it and let it fall to the floor. Now we were both naked, skin to skin, heat to heat, his cock stiff against me. I opened my legs, slick and ready for him. Throbbing for him.

  He pulled back.

  I reached for him. “Now.”

  “I’m not done.” He slid his hands between my legs, spread them wide, and knelt to kiss me there. “I want you to get what you paid for. All of it. Every single act, every single drop of pleasure.” The promise in his voice was like a solemn vow. “I want you to enjoy this. Enjoy us, what we can do together.”

  “But it’s not a relationship.” It came out as a gasp as I levitated my hips against his mouth, an almost-involuntary reaction to the intimate pleasure of his tongue.

  “Not a relationship. Sex.”

  “Sex.” What he was doing felt so good. Like ice cream and ocean waves and all good things.

  “With me.”

  “With you.” I was melting, spiraling, tightening against his fingers, his mouth, his earnestness, his determination.

  “Only with me.” His voice stuttered, dark with passion.

  “Always with you.” And I came, a sudden sharp spasm of sensation and emotion, overwhelming and abrupt. I sighed into the diminishing contractions. “Always with you.” It was a whisper.

  Dylan nodded, almost grim in his intensity. He rolled on a condom, then sheathed himself inside me as I opened my body to him. All my nerve endings were still quivering from the aftermath of my orgasm. Taking him inside me was like a continuation, a prolonging of the pleasure, part of the receding waves of pleasure. I was hyperaware of his harsh breaths, the way his hair fell over his eyes, the way his legs rubbed against mine. I wrapped my hands around his hips, relishing the sharp strong movement as he grew sloppy and fast, gasping with the energy gathering in his body.

  He pulled back. “But you—” Meaning: you aren’t ready to come again yet.

  “I’m good.” Meaning: I want you to come, I want to feel your pleasure. Meaning: do it.

  And he did. A few rotations of his hips and buttocks, then I felt him pulse inside of me, his whole body clenching. “Oh God. Samantha. Ohhh.”

  And he collapsed on top of me, nuzzling my ear. “Yes. Perfect.” It was a whisper.

  A whisper that sounded too much like warmth and coziness and comfort. I felt my body tense, losing the lazy boneless feeling too quickly. “It’s just sex, right?”

  “Just sex.” Dylan sounded drowsy, almost drugged. He kissed my shoulder, then nipped it gently. “Just mind-blowing, awesome sex. What else would it be?”

  Chapter Ten

  When I got out of
the luxe bathroom after freshening up, I expected to see Dylan where I’d left him, extravagantly sprawled across the bed, resting up for round two. Instead, he was struggling into his pants one-handed.

  “When I said ‘just sex,’ I didn’t mean you should leave after only—”

  He turned toward me, giving me a shushing gesture, and I saw the phone held to his ear.

  Deflated, I sat in the armchair, deliberately crushing his suit jacket under my bare bottom. If he was going to slip back into work mode, I’d leave a few telltale creases as a not so subtle reminder of our escapade.

  Then I caught his words and forgot my pique.

  “How badly was she hurt? Is she conscious?” He sat on the bed, his pants half-zipped. “I see. No, I understand. Yes, I’ll come over now. I’m downtown, so it could take a while, depending on traffic.” He looked around, clearly searching for a pen. I grabbed one off the spindly desk, and a pad of hotel stationary to go with it.

  Dylan nodded his thanks and jotted down some information. A room number and a doctor’s name. “Okay, I’ll be there when I can.”

  He clicked off and stood, properly fastening his pants. “I have to go. I’m sorry. Can we pick up next week where we left off? After all, you gave me the whole night, right?” His smile was lopsided and strained.

  “What’s going on? Someone’s in the hospital?”

  He hesitated. “It’ll be fine.” But it clearly wasn’t.

  “Dylan. What’s going on?”

  He snagged his shirt and shrugged into it. “Persephone was in a motorcycle accident.” His face twitched, an involuntary wince, and I was thrown back. My grandfather’s serious face. “I’m so sorry. Your father was rushed to the hospital last night. Your mom is there with him now.” He’d winced at my dismayed gasp. “He’ll be fine,” he’d said reprovingly.

  Dylan frowned at me now. “Are you okay?”

  I rubbed my face. “Of course. Is she—do you know how bad it is?”

  His mouth thinned. “Concussion. Fractures. A broken leg. She got lucky. She wasn’t wearing a helmet. If she hadn’t been thrown into the bushes…” He stared down at his shirt, which he’d buttoned wrong in his haste. “Crap.” He started unbuttoning all those tiny buttons, fumbling with the holes.

  I stepped forward, brushing his hands out of the way. “Let me.”

  He fidgeted under my ministrations. “I need to get going.”

  “Why did they call you? Aren’t you officially divorced?”

  “I’m still listed as her next of kin. Probably from the time she broke her arm two years ago. Her parents live in Minnesota, and her brother is in South Dakota.” His body was taut, like a violin string strung too tight, ready to break. “Dammit. I shouldn’t care. We’ve both moved on.”

  Tentatively, awkward as hell, I put my arms around him. It was the closest I’d come to a real hug in years. Decades. He hugged me back, so fierce I thought I’d lose my ability to breathe.

  After a moment, he stepped away with a slightly embarrassed look and ran his hands through his hair to smooth it down. “I should get going. I’ll let you know when we can pick this up again.” He grabbed his jacket out of the closet.

  I crossed my arms over my breasts, a feeble attempt to cover my nudity. Good-bye seemed inadequate. So did I hope it goes well.

  I’m sorry might work better. Or even I understand, because I did, at least a little.

  Instead, I said, “I’ll come with you.” And that, surprisingly, felt exactly right.

  He paused, his arms halfway into his jacket sleeves. “Why would you do that?”

  I grabbed my top and shrugged it on. “Because nobody should go to the hospital solo. Because I’m here. Because I have nothing else planned for tonight.”

  Dylan slid his arms all the way into his sleeves and grabbed his bag. “Come on, then.”

  ~*~

  We made an odd couple, with Dylan all business in his charcoal gray suit and me all sexual suggestiveness in my leather bustier and diaphanous skirt. The clerk in the hospital lobby didn’t seem to notice, but the nurse behind the counter gave me a sidelong look when Dylan announced himself as Persephone Krause’s husband. I nearly told her I was the slutty mistress but stopped myself in time.

  When we got to the room, it was empty. Not even a bed. And certainly no ex-wife.

  “Maybe she’s stepped out.”

  Dylan gave me a look.

  “She’s going to be okay. She’s not in ICU or surgery, or the doctor would have said. She didn’t tell you it was critical, right? It’ll be okay.”

  I never went to the hospital after my father’s heart attack. I was too young. But the image in my head was this: A sterile room, with monitors and tubes and mysterious machines. An empty room, no patient, the darkness outside like a tangible thing.

  Beside me, Dylan huffed a sigh and grabbed me, kissing me so fiercely my chin felt bruised and my lips smashed. So fiercely I couldn’t breathe. And even though it wasn’t a remotely sexual kiss, I felt a flame lick up my insides. I was alive. He was alive. And here we were, kissing in a hospital room out of a creepy indie drama. It felt like it meant something.

  “Dylan! What are you doing here? And who is she?”

  We broke apart as a frail blonde waif of a woman was wheeled into the room on a gurney bed. She had a cast on one leg and a big, dark bruise on her cheek. As the orderlies positioned the bed properly in the room, she raised herself up on her elbows, wincing. Her wrists were painfully thin. It didn’t look like they could support her. “Who are you?”

  “Samantha Lilly. I work with your husband—I mean, ex-husband.” I started to proffer my hand, then rethought it. She must hurt all over. “If you want me to go…”

  She gave Dylan a reproachful look. “You didn’t need to bring protection from me. I’m hardly going to attack you.” She lay back down against the pillows as the orderlies straightened the pole and adjusted buttons around her, then withdrew. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I’m your next of kin on the form. The doctor called me.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. I’m fine.” She coughed, which clearly hurt. “Dammit.” She thumbed a switch that led to her IV drip, which presumably gave her a dose of some heavy-duty painkiller. “My throat is dry. All that poking and prodding and nobody offered me a drink. I missed lunch too. I went straight from the bike shop to the open road.”

  I poured water into a paper cup and handed it to her. She drank the water, then crumpled the cup in her fist.

  Dylan frowned at her. “You bought the motorcycle today?”

  She nodded. “A real beauty. You should have heard the engine purr. Like a big cat. A tiger or something.”

  “And you weren’t wearing a helmet?”

  “I ditched it.” She grinned. “The feeling of the wind in my hair as I flew down the FDR was amazing. You should try it.”

  He closed his eyes. Whether summoning patience or emotionally wrought, it was hard to know. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  For the first time, something like reality seemed to creep into her awareness. “I know. The EMTs told me.” She blinked hard. “But then, I’ve always been lucky, haven’t I?” She gave him a wan smile. “I met you. That was my first lucky break. I didn’t take good enough care of you. I took you for granted, messed around, and now you’re gone. Like everything good in my life.” She gestured for him to come over.

  He glanced toward me as if asking for my understanding. I nodded. What else could I do? She needed him. He needed to be here for her.

  Persephone hadn’t even glanced at me. As if she knew I was no threat. Unexpectedly, the thought made my chest hurt.

  When he got close enough, Persephone raised his hand to her lips. “My sweet Dylan, always looking out for me. You told me not to buy that motorcycle, didn’t you? If we were still together, I’d still be whole.”

  “You are. Or you will be. It’ll take time, that’s all.” He withdrew his hand, but gently. “You should a
sk your family to come stay with you for a while, until you heal.”

  “Family? I don’t need them. I have Laurent. Laurent understands me. He says I’m a Pre-Raphaelite angel, that I was born in the wrong century. Can you call him? He should know. He should come be with me.” She looked around. “Where’s my phone? They brought my things into the room, didn’t they?”

  I cleared my throat. “Your phone might not have survived the accident.”

  She gave me an irritated look. “Who are you again?”

  “Samantha.”

  “Are you Dylan’s girlfriend? Or, no, his fuck buddy, right? The one who talked to me on the phone that time.” Her voice grated, her tone such a contrast to her porcelain fragility, but the woman had been pummeled enough today. I clenched my fists against my sides and remained silent.

  Dylan pulled away from her. “Samantha is a friend. Don’t talk about her like that.”

  “Sorry.” She gave me a glance under hooded eyes, clearly not sorry at all. She clung to his jacket. “I’m so glad you came. I missed you.”

  Seriously? Laurent one breath and Dylan the next? There was an easy solution, thankfully. “Give me your boyfriend’s phone number. I’ll call him for you.”

  And indeed, Persephone let go of Dylan’s jacket. Her face brightened. “Yes. Laurent will come for me. He’ll want to be here to help me through this. He’ll change his mind. He didn’t mean it. I know he didn’t. My beautiful Laurent. He’s a poet, did you know that? His words are so exquisite.” She sounded dreamy. Drugged. The meds must be kicking in. “Yes, do that. He’ll come for me and leave that crazy lady he’s taken up with.”

  Which was how I ended up pacing past the nurse’s station with my phone to my ear, explaining patiently to a man I’d never met that his ex-girlfriend—no, not his ex? A short-term fling? Well, she didn’t know that—had gone on a mad motorcycle escapade and crashed into a sidewall off the FDR Drive, and would he come visit the hospital? “Yes, on the ninth floor. Tell the desk it’s room 914. Sure, bring flowers. That sounds nice. No, she doesn’t look terrible. Still pretty. Yes, like sunshine and the promise of spring. Exactly like.”