Versed in Desire (2 page)

 

Morrison, Luke, to Metcalf, Tony: She was bony.

 

Tony and I let out simultaneous barks of laughter just as Luke rounded the corner from the elevator, his BlackBerry in one hand and a brown paper sack from the deli across the street in the other. He paused by my desk, his gaze flickering from my hair, tucked as always in a heavy bun at my nape, to the swell of my breasts just visible inside my shirt placket. One dark eyebrow lifted in an unspoken question as he pocketed the BlackBerry.

I folded my arms on my desk, leaned forward and smiled up at him. “Like any good retainer, I see all and say nothing.”

Though the words were teasing, my smile faded as I spoke. Faced with Luke's lean body and the mental image of my dark-eyed devil making love to a lingerie supermodel, angel wings and all, heat and jealousy pumped in equal portions through my veins.

For a lunchtime strategy meeting with Tony, Luke had left his jacket back in his office and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows. I admired broad shoulders, a promising smile or strong thighs as much as the next woman but the oddest things about Luke sent heat searing through me. His long fingers and broad palms. The twenty-dollar Timex sports watch around his left wrist when his peers wore Cartier or Patek Philippe. His tie, seemingly subdued until you noticed the manga character at the bottom. The spot at the edge of his jaw he'd missed shaving. I substituted readily visible features for pectorals and shoulder blades, the ridges of his abdomen, the girth of his cock. Long accustomed to drinking in the world in order to create, I was searching for inspiration in the mundane.

I couldn't help myself. “Bony?”

He shrugged, but a hint of color stained his cheekbones. “
Skeletal
's probably a better word. Got a water for me?”

I reached under my desk, opened the dorm-sized fridge that cooled beverages for Tony's meetings and handed Luke a bottle.

“Thanks.” He cracked the plastic seal on the cap. “I thought you might be at the party.”

I loved being desired. Not having might kill me, but all I could do was shrug. “I needed to write,” I said, adding, “I gather you had a good time,” to head off any questions about the work. Friday night I'd put two hours into the latest draft of a poem, then let it sit over the weekend while I ran errands in Alphabet City and walked through Tompkins Square Park. Rehearsing it under my breath this morning as I lurched and swayed in a crowded car on the 6 train, I realized it was marginal, lacking an original metaphor, a rhythm I could feel in my bones.

Luke drained half the bottle with two long swallows, then said, “I've had better.”

“The magazine editor?”
Or one of the God knows how many in between…

He paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth and cut me a look. I bit my lip. Much more of this and I'd come across as the cock tease who wouldn't put out but went psycho when the guy looked elsewhere. But honestly, the accessories editor hadn't weighed a hundred pounds. Last weekend's winner was
skeletal
. He brought
me
cupcakes the size of salad plates.

Luke finished the bottle and deftly replaced the cap. “You were my best time,” he said, the words pitched for my ears alone. “Standing up, fully clothed, just talking. I liked the way we breathed together. Made me wonder how you'll sound just before you come.”

With that, I felt the wall hard against my shoulder blades. A rush of heated longing surged through me, all the more intense for three months of denial. Despite the bold come-on at the party, Luke in real life possessed a completely calm, rational demeanor, so when he said something outrageous, either for a laugh or to shock, it worked. He surprised you the way a good poem did, in the last stanza, with something so unexpected and delicious it split your mind wide open. To date he'd acted the part of a gentleman at the office, but he was rogue enough to walk through the door I'd opened.

He spoke before my silence attracted attention from my cube-dwelling neighbors. “Hit me again,” he said, handing me the empty.

I recovered and slapped a fresh bottle into his palm then followed him into Tony's office. “I'm going to get some lunch,” I said as they unwrapped sandwiches and opened bags of chips at Tony's conference table.

Tony tossed me a wave. Luke smiled…and watched me slip out the door. I felt his gaze on my back as vividly as I'd felt the wall.

I went for a walk, hoping that the tempo of heels-to-cement and rhythmic breathing would reconnect me to Manhattan. The long hours I spent suspended in weightless air, forty-four stories above the city's turbulent beat, were slowly severing a bond I'd taken for granted during my less-structured days as a waitress and occasional temporary receptionist. Set hours and a steady paycheck improved my finances but left me with too little time on my feet, breath and pulse and movement merging with words and phrases to form poetry.

Today I found the city a poor substitute for the visceral rhythm I really wanted.

When I came back an hour later with a salad, Tony's door was closed and Luke was gone. A dark-chocolate cupcake with fudge frosting sat on my desk, a scrawled note propped against it.

I dream about voluptuous.

I made the treat last all afternoon. With each bite I imagined Luke's deft fingers spreading the icing on my lips, my nipples, his tongue licking it off again. Heat slicked my thighs as I played out my own turn with the icing, painting the broad head of his cock with rich chocolate, lapping it off while I looked up into eyes the same color as the cupcake.

When I got home I sat down to work on the sixteenth draft of the recalcitrant poem. An hour later, frustrated, I set it aside and tried to channel some of the longing seething inside me into erotic verse. Two hours later, my head full of images I was unable to articulate, I went to bed, where I tossed. And turned. Around midnight, I kicked free of my tangled sheets and went to stare out my front window, past the pools of streetlight illuminating Avenue A to the still trees of Tompkins Square Park.

The break at the party wasn't as clean as I'd thought it was. Luke and I had unfinished business and that left me in limbo—I wanted him but shouldn't have him. The risks were simply too high. It was bad enough that I'd ruin my reputation at Cooper Bensonhurst. Worse, I could lose my job. Even worse, I could cause tension between lifelong best friends.

Limbo's a dark place for an artist. I couldn't, but I ached. I shouldn't, but oh, how I
needed
. I was up in the air, literally at work, metaphorically with Luke, increasingly disconnected from the ground of my being.

The worst risk of all? Choosing Luke and having it mean nothing to him.

November…

I'd made a choice.

For months I'd chosen to live, to work, to create, to simply exist without having Luke. Work weeks passed, spreadsheets and presentations, lunch orders and travel arrangements punctuated by fever dreams of Luke and me doing what we hadn't done. Weekends should have been better, with free time, friends, the beauty of fall in Manhattan. Instead, they were somehow worse, a slow crawl through longing to the ache of Monday.

I'd made a choice, and I suffered the consequences.

Things might have continued this way indefinitely if the Yankees hadn't won the World Series, giving Tony sufficient reason to throw another party. Of course I declined the invitation. But come Saturday night I was strung tight. Aching. Disconnected from anything that mattered to me. You didn't need battering rams and catapults to destroy fortifications. The simple
drip drip drip
of water against stone would do it, if allowed enough time.

I wasn't made of stone.

Before me lay another choice, remain in limbo or surrender to what felt inevitable. I consigned the consequences to Monday and dressed in black leather pants, a lacy, stretchy white camisole, and a tight velvet jacket. After pushing through the crowd at Tony's front door I got a glass of wine the same shade of deep, rich red as my jacket. From my position by the floor-to-ceiling windows I watched Luke work his magic on another woman.

The new face of J'Suis Cosmetics stood in front of him, her bony, bird-wing shoulder blades and white pants pale against Luke's black sweater and dark jeans. He leaned negligently against the grand piano and gave every appearance of listening to the smoky-eyed, leggy model/actress, his head tilted attentively as she chattered away about God-only-knew-what, but when she threw back her head and laughed, the high-pitched giggles tinkling merrily under the eighteen-foot ceilings, he looked past her at me.

You still want me to put you up against a wall.

I heard the words as clearly as if he'd spoken them. My heart jumped and kicked for a few beats, straining against the prison of my ribcage. I did. I wanted my back flat to any unmoving surface, his body hard and unrelenting against mine. In mine.

Tonight.

He spoke to the model. Whatever he said wiped the smile off her face, but she recovered her poise and strutted off. My heart leapt as he pushed away from the piano and wound his way through the crowd. Fear and exhilaration warred inside me as he approached and I turned my back to him, hiding my anticipation, my
need
from the people gathered in Tony's living room.

Luke stopped behind me, so close I could feel the heat of his body through leather and velvet, and spoke to my reflection in the glass. “I'm surprised you're here.”

“I can leave,” I said, but the teasing note fell flat.

He threaded his fingers through the soft waves of hair at my temple, then slid it over my shoulder. The better to see my face, I suppose. I'd left my hair loose in part because I hoped he'd get his hands in it, in part because it helped hide the longing in my eyes. That he touched it, left his hand on my shoulder, within a minute of approaching me, shocked me. It shouldn't have.

“With me?” he asked.

I looked down, away from the dark resolve in his eyes. The butterfly wings beating under my skin were ridiculous. I was no virgin and we'd been circling around this for months.

But choosing wasn't easy. Choosing guaranteed action, not results. Certainly not security.

Endlessly patient, Luke waited until I turned and met his eyes before he said, “I'll get us a cab.”

The discordant noise of the party faded into a thrumming space where words, simple single-syllable words, met emotion and became meaning. In that moment, meaning was enough.

“Give me a few minutes,” I said, my voice as low as his.

He said his goodbyes and left. I waited exactly five minutes, then found Tony and pleaded a headache. There wasn't a hint of curiosity or risqué assumption in my boss's parting words, only genuine concern. Sometimes, in my more feverish moments, I felt as if the attraction vibrating between me and Luke was a figment of my active imagination.

I walked out of the lobby to find him leaning against a cab at the corner of Hudson and Jay. The streetlights cast shadows across his face, hiding his eyes, but his expression was intense, his mouth set. It was one in the morning in TriBeCa. No one was on the street filled only with Manhattan's eternal hum, the city's radiant energy I absorbed through my pores. He said something, but the soft husky murmur blended into the city's chatter.

I kept walking, my heels clicking against the sidewalk, stopping only when I was an inch from his body. I could have buried my nose in the hollow of his throat, seeking that familiar scent of lust rising from his open collar. I didn't, though. I tilted my head up, my lips parting as I did. His hands were deep in his pockets, his mouth not quite within reach so I went up on tiptoe and brushed my lips over his. They were firm and tantalizingly warm, the dry skin sliding easily against mine. Sparks popped and my breath halted in my throat.

We stayed like that for an eternal moment, our mouths pressed together, slightly open. I could taste the whiskey he'd drunk at the party, the slightest bite on his breath, even before I slipped my tongue between his lips to gently touch his.

Then one hand scudded up my velvet jacket, under the long fall of my hair as he slanted his head and kissed me. His fingers tangled in my hair, the tug sending tiny pinpricks of pain zipping along my nerves, but the heat of his wrist against my bare nape was what made me shudder.

His breath eased out with a shaky sigh when he came up for air. He opened the cab's door. “Get in.”

I slid across the torn vinyl back seat, Luke right beside me. He gave his cross streets to the driver, but I leaned into the opening in the plastic window. “No,” I said. “Tenth and Avenue A.”

I wanted him in my space, his body in my bed, his scent on my sheets. I didn't fool myself into thinking giving in meant permanence. Choosing Luke didn't guarantee a steady stream of poems, much less a lifelong commitment from a thirty-two-year-old male Manhattanite. He was getting what he'd wanted for the last six months and I felt safe assuming he didn't care where he got it. But I did. This night might have to last me a long, long time. Maybe forever.

He didn't question me, just waited until the cab rocketed away from the curb before pulling me across his body and into his lap. I moaned into his open mouth when our lips met, the sound involuntary and shockingly helpless. The kiss wasn't tentative or questioning. It was hot and slow, his tongue sliding over my lower lip then into my mouth, flickering over the sensitive roof of my mouth then rubbing against my tongue in a tempo so seductive and knowing my eyes fluttered shut.

I am all about rhythm. Every poet is. The cadence of words, the thump of a pulse or a palm, the simple ebb and flow of life around us forms the structure and beat of the stories we tell. The slow stroke-stroke-stroke of Luke's tongue against mine formed a counterpoint to my racing pulse and set off a torrent of images in my brain, all the ways we could fulfill the promise of six months of foreplay.

When the cab braked to a halt in front of my six-story brick walkup, I fumbled with the handle and slid out, keys in hand. Luke tossed a bill through the plastic divider and followed me across the sidewalk. I unlocked the front door and we hurried up two flights of stairs, his hand firm on my shoulder. My apartment was at the back of the floor and it took a moment to unfasten the two deadbolts and the door lock. As I worked, Luke swept my hair away from my neck and scraped his teeth against the sensitive skin at my hairline. I shuddered, then got the door open and pulled him inside.

Streetlight from Avenue A filtered through my blinds, but the apartment, heated by an aging steam-heat radiator, was dark, warm and close. Luke had the presence of mind to shut and bolt the door before I tugged him into the bedroom.

“Quick, oh quick!” I babbled as I reached for his belt.

He gripped my wrist and stopped me. “No,” he said, shocking the hell out of me. “Not quick. I've been waiting for this for six months. Nothing about this is going to be quick.” He closed the bedroom door and backed me into it. I let out a little
oof
as I bumped up against it and he stepped into my body.

He wove our legs together, one thigh pressed against my mound, the hard thrust of his cock against my hip pinning me to the door. He caught my hands as I reached for him, interlocked our fingers, then pressed the backs of my hands against the door at hip height. I arched against his heavier weight. An illicit, delightful thrill ripped through me when I realized I couldn't move him.

He didn't give way but rather leaned into me, his cheek by mine, the rough scrape of his stubble so incongruous when compared to the soft heat of his breath against my ear. Staying as close as possible he eased my velvet jacket down and off, then reversed his course, taking my lacy stretch camisole over my head. That easily, I was naked from the waist up, the ends of my tousled, witchy hair brushing the upper swell of my breasts. The purposeful movements, stripping me for him, sent a hot rain of lust coursing through me.

When he laid his hand flat against my belly, I flinched then gasped as he popped the snap on my pants and worked down the zipper. I gripped the edge of my dresser for support, breathlessly, completely in the moment, not sure what was coming but desperate to get it. He used his knee to widen my stance just a bit, then angled his fingers under the elastic edge of my thong.

My head dropped back. I'd often imagined how he'd take me up against a wall. Skirt to my waist and one leg wrapped around his hips as he pounded into me was a favorite. If I felt especially naughty, I imagined myself naked except for my heels, both hands planted against the wall, my ass arched toward him. In that darker fantasy, I liked him fully dressed, the brush of his jeans against my bare legs so deliciously dominating as he braced a hand at the small of my back and fucked me hard.

I'd never imagined this, face to face, chest to chest, hip to hip as he drew me into a maelstrom of lust. I flattened my other hand against the door for support, watching his pupils dilate as his fingers glided into my wet heat. His breathing slowed, deepened as he spread the bare lips of my sex, found my clit and began exploring. Slow circles became confident strokes as he learned what made me arch and gasp. I wanted to look at him, keep that connection as he touched me, but my eyes closed helplessly as pleasure began to coil tight and hot under his hand.

“You've got the sexiest hair,” he murmured, his no-nonsense voice deeper, rougher. “I saw it around your face first, so every single time I saw you in professional mode at work, I wanted to take it down. I saw you walk into the party tonight and all I could think about was holding it back while I watch your mouth slide down my cock.”

I made a throaty, needy sound that was the very definition of unprofessional and shuddered at the image–me on my knees, Luke's fingers tangled in my hair. My hips arched and twisted but he followed the movements with ease.

He bent his head and kissed me, his tongue flickering over my lips, then along my jaw. “It's the perfect length, long and dark around your shoulders but not so long it hides your breasts. Your nipples tightened when I described you blowing me. I think you like that idea as much as I do.”

“God, yes…later…Luke, please,” I gasped, then dropped my head back against the door and moaned. My thighs were quivering uncontrollably as he kept up the pace, and I'd forgotten how to breathe. Dots danced in front of my eyes, my body's reminder to inhale. When I did, my racing pulse sped oxygen through my veins and the fire flared higher. Helpless under his knowing hand, I turned my face to his, seeking his mouth. Another whimper drifted into the air when he kissed me, rubbing his tongue against the sensitive roof of my mouth at the same pace as his finger tormented my clit.

I gripped the edge of my dresser. My sweaty palm scudded against the door as my breath caught, held, shuddered out. I tipped my head up, drew in air and held it again, snared by the orgasm cresting under the relentless tempo of his fingers.

When the wave of pleasure broke, my breath eased from my lungs against the hot pressure of his mouth, a soft, keening moan drifting into the still, warm air of my apartment. Luke didn't speed his pace, rub harder or faster. He simply pressed the pad of his middle finger against my fluttering clit and absorbed my body's shudders with his own until I subsided against the door.

“Better?” he asked. I could hear a smile in his deep voice.

“Took the edge off,” I purred.

I still wanted to take him into me, feel his skin and the weight of his body against mine, hear his breath splinter and dissolve. This time when I went for his belt, he didn't stop me, just reached under his cotton sweater to unfasten a button at the top of his shirt and pull both sweater and shirt over his head. I guided him to lie back on the unmade bed, stripping off his jeans and boxers as I did. The Birkenstocks dropped to the floor with his clothes and I stood by the edge of the bed, gazing at Luke Morrison, self-proclaimed math geek with an athlete's body, spread out dark and lean, just as I'd dreamed.

When I stuck my thumbs in the waistband of my leather pants, Luke stopped me. “Leave them on.”

My eyes widened a little at the command, then I glanced at the mirror hanging on my bathroom door. My dark hair was tousled around my face and shoulders, my breasts and waist pale curves in the dim room. The pants rode evocatively low. I flashed him a look through my hair as I smoothed my palms down over the warm, soft leather cupping my ass. “You like these pants?”

He nodded, his hands linked behind his head as he looked at me, and right now the math geek was all rogue. “I like the contrast. So proper at the office, all leather and lace and velvet and silky hair at a party. You're distracting enough at work, but you drove me crazy tonight.”