by Meg Maguire
“No, maybe not.”
“But it is all beside the point. Finding the remarkable woman is the problem.” He gave Fallon a look so poignant that she chose to write it off as sarcasm. “I would have to find a woman who could put up with all of my weirdness.”
She nodded. “Yeah. That’s a liability, I suppose.”
“And we are having chicken fricot for dinner, since you asked.”
There was a twisting in her chest, as if unseen hands were wringing her heart. Not a good feeling. As unlikely a conclusion as it seemed, Fallon decided then that Max would make as good a parent as she would make a lousy one. Bingo, the comedown. The inevitable tree that snagged her kite from its thoughtless, happy drifting.
Fallon fixed her eyes on the long stretch of gravel as they turned off the main road. Max stopped at his mailbox and pulled out a few envelopes and circulars. So utterly normal, for an instant.
As they returned to the studio and Max flipped on the lights, the unfinished statue greeted him like a resounding accusation. He set the mail and groceries on the counter while Fallon arranged her pumpkin in the bay window. He wondered if she had any clue how far he’d fallen behind their schedule.
Next week it would be November. Soon after, December, and at this glacial rate that statue would still be weeks from completion, even then. He glanced fearfully from Fallon to the marble and back again. She smiled at him from across the studio. She wouldn’t be smiling like that if she knew how extravagantly he was failing her.
Each chip, bringing them closer to the end of this affair. Each sliver ticking away the moments until this statue was delivered into the hands of some horrible man that neither of them could stand to speak of. Each knock of a hammer against a chisel bringing closer to fruition some terrible, mysterious compromise Fallon was making for some unknown reward. All those little chips, grains of sand in an hourglass, draining slower and slower as Max stretched out these moments before the inevitable end arrived. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to fail her but neither did he want to succeed.
“Can I help with anything?” Fallon asked, approaching the counter. Max looked down to find he’d been standing motionless before the grocery bags for over a minute.
“No, thank you. I’m just trying to remember this recipe.”
She passed him and uncorked a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. There was a strain in her too. Fainter than his but there, nevertheless. Wine and sex—medication to help them forget these unspoken worries until the sun rose again.
Fallon sat on the counter and watched Max’s hands work as he prepared dinner. She fixated on them. Such wondrous things, strong and scarred and so talented it was unnerving. Those hands could render flesh so real it boggled the mind. They could make Fallon feel things her own hands were only just beginning to master. And they could save her childhood home. So goddamned powerful.
“You should get your hands insured by Lloyd’s of London.”
Max glanced up from the cutting board. “Like Keith Richards?”
“Ha—I hadn’t heard that. Yeah. Like Fred Astaire’s legs, I was thinking.” She sipped her wine.
Max shook his head and went back to chopping onions. “No amount of money would make life worth living if I could not use my hands.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic.”
“Well, it’s quite true. Maybe that’s why I have these thoughts about a family, sometimes. To fix my troublesome priorities.”
“A baby never fixed anybody.” A second too late, Fallon realized how callous her tone was.
Max held her eyes for a moment then began peeling garlic, seeming deflated.
“Sorry. I don’t mean you shouldn’t want those things.” Although she wished he didn’t.
“I know what you meant. I’m sorry I brought it up. We’re trying to have an illicit affair, and I’m ruining it with all this talk about families… I miss my family. Having you here these last few weeks is the closest I’ve been to anything resembling that in a long, long time. Nothing personal,” he added to the cat, perched on the fridge. “It makes me sentimental.”
Fallon nodded.
“And it makes you uneasy,” he said.
Fallon hopped off the counter before he could begin to question her. She gathered utensils and napkins and set the table, leaving Max to his sentimentality and vegetables.
She started a fire and drew a bath while dinner cooked, and Max joined her. As she melted into him in the warm water, her back against his chest and her wet hair draped over his shoulder, she wondered if this—if they—could ever work. That way. The two least qualified people she knew in some woeful attempt at domestic functionality. She looked into the window at their reflection, tricked for a moment by the firelight that it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
Beneath her, Max grew hard. Whatever melancholy had been visiting him faded, replaced by lust. She reached down to stroke his erection where it stood between her legs. He made seductive noises behind her ear and his hips tensed against her backside.
“You’re taking away my sanity,” he moaned into her temple. Before she could reply he slipped her hand from him and bade her to stand. “Dinner will burn.”
“Let it.”
“Up with you, temptress.”
She complied, smiling to herself as she toweled her hair.
“You never smiled like that when we first met,” Max said, studying her.
“No, probably not.”
“I like the person that you’ve become. And I liked you before, back when you still hated me.”
“I never hated you,” she corrected. “You just take a lot of getting used to.”
“And you take a lot of work, to break through all that crust.” He squinted an eye at her and mimed a hammer and chisel motion with his hands. “Chink, chink, chink. And just look what’s underneath.”
She surveyed his dripping body for a moment before handing him the towel.
As he dried himself he asked, “Is it true…when you said you’ve never loved anyone?”
She nodded. “That’s true. Not romantically, at least.”
“Me neither.” He secured the towel around his waist. “Does that make us discerning or pitiful, do you think?”
“I always thought of myself as allergic.” Fallon smiled at him before turning away to dress.
They ate in near-silence and as Fallon washed the dishes Max stoked the fire. Above them, beyond all the glass, the night was clear and inky-black and pulsing with stars.
She felt strong arms wrap around her waist as she stared skyward.
“There’s a better view from the bed,” he whispered and kissed her neck.
“I’ll bet there is.”
He took her hand and led her up the steps, fourteen of them. She’d learned each by heart, a countdown to her favorite moment of these recent days.
Max tugged her down onto the covers and into his arms. His kisses were deep and slow and romantic but deliciously obscene. Sometimes his kissing felt as explicit to her as penetration. She yanked his T-shirt up as he unzipped her jeans, patience overpowered by excitement. She kicked her pants off her ankles and he pulled her down to him.
“I want to know your fantasies,” he said between kisses.
She tensed. “My fantasies?”
“I want to make them real with you. I want to please you.”
That unrelenting dream flashed across Fallon’s consciousness. “You already please me. Obviously. I’m quite happy.”
He moved to straddle her. The way he braced his arms made his shoulder blades jut up sharply, an animal about to pounce. “Tell me what’s in there,” he breathed, brushing his lips against her forehead.
“You go first.” She touched her fingertips to his ribs, nervous for what he might say.
“You will shush me because it will be too sincere for you to hear. You’ll think I’m being too familiar. And it will make you uncomfortable.”
“Tell me anyway,” she said
, sick to death of her own predictable worries.
He closed his eyes, looking thoughtful. “I fantasize that you stay here, after the sculpture is done.”
She shifted. “You’re right. That does make me uncomfortable.”
His dark eyes opened. “There’s more, though. There are dirtier parts, if you want to hear those.”
“Yes, tell me those.”
“I fantasize that you stay,” he said, tucking his forearms tighter against her. “And every night after it’s dark, I climb those stairs with you and crawl into this bed and I make you moan for me. Right here. And when it’s summer, we walk to the beach at dusk with a blanket and I lay you down, and make you come against my tongue. Until the only things I can smell are you and the ocean.” He smiled down at her.
“That’s pretty good,” she admitted. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“How can you tell so much about me? Like how you know what’ll make me uncomfortable. All the little things you just know? Sometimes it feels like you’re reading my mind.”
“I have been told that before.” He thought a moment. “I think it’s because I spent so much of my life being told whatever it was people thought I wanted to hear. Back when everyone wanted to be my friend or my agent or my lover or my dealer. I had to get very good at finding out the truth without listening to the words people actually use. You do that too, you know. You do it to me, except your guesses are always wrong.”
“So can you already guess what my fantasies are?”
He shook his head. “I’m a detective, not a psychic. So you will just have to tell me.”
“Well…it’s not really a fantasy, even. I don’t really sit around and think about sex like that. Or I didn’t use to. But there’s this dream I keep having, almost every night.”
“For how long?”
“Since…since the first week I was here, I think. Since way before I wanted to dream about you. Then even worse, after that day you made me touch you.”
“How do I compare in actuality?” he asked, grinning.
“Well, it’s hard to say. You don’t always get to do much in my dreams.” She bit her lip, embarrassed that she was even considering telling him this.
“Oh, no?”
“No. You’re usually…tied down, in the dreams.”
She watched his reaction, a subtle raising of his eyebrows followed by another smirk.
“And what do you do, in these dreams?” He lowered himself and ran his tongue over her collarbone, kissed her neck.
“Um, all sorts of stuff.”
“Tell me.” His voice so close to her ear was like a drug. “No, wait—show me.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” Fallon said as he pulled away. She could see in his eyes that he was already anticipating the scenario. He knelt wide, straddling her legs, and with a distinctly evil smile he reached down and unbuckled his belt. He slid out the length of worn black leather and folded it neatly, handing it to Fallon.
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“Just try.” He moved to her side, lying down and looking expectant. “Right here? Is my bed okay?”
She nodded shyly. “Yeah, it’s always your bed.”
“That is very handy. What else?”
Her cheeks burned. “You…you have to talk in French.”
“I speak French in your dreams?”
“Well, kind of. Made-up dream French.”
“I wonder what it is I’m saying to you in these dreams,” he said, amused.
Fallon sat up and knelt. She ran her eyes over his bare torso and arms, baffled by what she might do with him if she agreed to this.
Max shifted, raising his arms. He slid them between the metal bars of his headboard like an invitation. “Go on.”
She stared at him a moment longer then finally said, “Okay. But I might panic and just sit here, looking at you.”
“You do whatever you want.”
She swung her leg across to straddle his chest and leaned over the headboard. Her hands shook as she wound the leather around his wrists and secured the buckle. Crawling backward, she knelt between his thighs, studying him for a long moment. This man, all hers. He watched her, then said something softly in French that she didn’t understand.
Fallon ran her palms over his thighs, feeling all the strength there. Then his stomach, lean and muscular, and the hips she’d watched perform for her so capably. She smiled. She touched his cock, rock-hard behind his jeans, and felt his impatience mount with each caress, until the entire length of his body was tight and strained, just as she’d dreamed. His voice grew deeper, muttering more exotic words between dark sighs and moans. Fallon felt high in a way she’d never experienced before. Max’s arms tensed, tugging against the headboard.
“Wow,” she murmured, not meaning to say it out loud. She laughed. The reality of this situation energized her. She moved aside to unzip his pants and tug them down his legs.
“Fallon.” His face in the dim, warm light was hungry.
She scooted close between his thighs, coaxing his legs over hers, laying them open, making him helpless. For a long time she teased him, rubbing him through his underwear, fondling and pulling and reveling in the power she held in her hand. With every passing second he lost more control. With each minute he grew hotter and more desperate until his chest and stomach were damp with sweat and his hips were thrusting him into her hands, wild with need. His words came fast and harsh and she could guess a good many of them.
When she thought he’d suffered enough, Fallon slid back onto her knees and slowly, cruelly, eased his briefs down his legs. She breathed him in, his smell and his need and his mounting insanity. Intoxicating. She felt wicked, still safe in her underwear while this strong, willful man lay naked and bound and at her mercy. Those brilliant, helpless hands. She grinned at him.
His eyes were wild, jaw set. She watched his arms struggle as they did in her dreams. Between his legs she studied the spoils of this intimate war, irrefutable proof of her conquest. Hard and thick and beading with the evidence of his desire. She took him in her fist and stroked until he was writhing.
“Suce-moi.”
Fallon didn’t need a translation for that one. She teased him a few beats longer and took him.
Then she was lost. In his taste, in his guttural sounds, in a haze of the most divine pleasure she’d ever experienced. All while doing something she didn’t normally enjoy. This pleasure should have been his but she felt it selfishly in her own body. She took him, slow and deep and greedy, feeling invincible. She teased his head with her tongue until his bound fists rattled the headboard.
Fallon was so far gone she didn’t recognize the sound of the belt buckle hitting the floor. When Max’s strong hands grabbed her shoulders, she gasped. He pulled her up along his body until he was between her legs, hot and still wet from her mouth, big and hard against her panties.
“That’s cheating,” she whispered. As his hands guided her hips she abandoned the protest. His mouth took hers, rough and explicit as he made her ride him. When he finally broke away she stared at his face, his features transformed. Possessed. His lips and cheeks were flushed, eyes unsteady, brow slick with sweat. Between her legs, Fallon’s pleasure grew until she thought she’d catch fire.
“Oh my God.”
“Come for me,” he commanded, forcing the friction.
Her panties were drenched, her body aching for him, the motions so frantic, so rough. He drew her back a couple of inches and teased her with his head, threatening the penetration her core demanded.
“Max—”
“Come on.” His voice was cruel and triumphant.
Fallon felt gravity reverse and suddenly he was above her. Strong arms flanking her shoulders, hard cock rubbing with long thrusts then shattering her every last nerve as the climax not only arrived, but tore through her like a force of nature. She heard her moans blend with his in animal harmony, felt him push her shirt
up and then his hot, slick release as he shot on her belly.
He stayed braced above her for several long, panting breaths, his eyes closed, chest heaving. Eventually he rolled off of her to one side.
“Dear God, what are you doing to me?” He turned his head to hers, opened his eyes and smiled.
“Me? Doing to you?” She poked him inelegantly in the shoulder, still catching her own breath.
“You,” he confirmed. “More dangerous than silica inhalation and tendonitis combined.”
“How very poetic.”
Something in his expression as Max stared up into the skylight made her think he wasn’t joking. There was that tension in his face again, a worried quality to his darting eyes.
“Max?”
“Hmm?”
“Everything okay over there? You look…preoccupied.”
He rolled over and pressed his forehead into her shoulder. “Everything is lovely,” he said, warming her arm with his breath.
“You’re a crappy liar. Why do you look so anxious?”
He exhaled deeply. “Your statue is supposed to be done in the next month.”
“Yeah. Is that a problem?”
He didn’t answer for a very long time.
“Max?”
“After I finish it, you’re going away.”
She closed her eyes. “Yeah, I am.”
“That makes me feel rather self-pitiful, you see.”
She ran her palm over his cheek and his hair. “I didn’t used to be the sort of person who’d say something pathetic like this… But why? What’s so amazing about me?”
He pulled his face back a couple inches. “What do you mean?”
“What is it about me that you seem to find so compelling? Shouldn’t you be with some Parisian cellist or something?”
“I could say the same thing to you. Where is your engineer? Your golden retriever…? What’s your answer? Why are we in this bed together?”
“Pheromones.” Fallon laughed to let him know she didn’t have a real answer for him. “We’re biologically predisposed to each other. How about that?”
“That is as good an explanation as any. How strong are these pheromones? Will they let you go all the way back to New York and forget about me?”
