I FEEL THE air slide under the sheets and sweep over my skin as Ansel climbs back into bed. He smells like him, like grass, like salt and spice. I roll to his side, my mind still foggy and full of heated dream images . . . and as soon as his cool skin touches mine, longing flares low in my stomach. I want him with a kind of instinctive, barely awake yearning. The clock beside the bed tells me it’s nearly four in the morning.
His heart is pounding under my palm, chest smooth, hard, and bare, but he traps my wandering hand with his, stilling it so that I can’t slide it down his stomach and lower.
“Mia,” he says quietly.
I gradually recollect that he had to go to the door. “Is everything okay?”
He exhales slowly, clearly trying to calm down, and I sense more than see his nod in the darkness. The skylight over his bed lets in a bright slice of moonlight, but it cuts across our feet, illuminating only the very edge of the bed.
I press my body along his side, sliding my leg up over his. The muscles of his quads are defined and firm beneath smooth, warm skin, and I stop when I’ve reached his hip, gasping slightly when he arches up into me and groans. He’s still wearing only boxers, but beneath my thigh he’s semi-hard. Beneath my palm, his heart is slowly returning to normal.
I can’t be this close to him—even half asleep—and not want to feel more. I want the blankets tossed away and his boxers shoved down. I want the heat of his hips pressing to mine. As I hum quietly against his skin and rock against him—half conscious, half instinct—it’s several long beats before I feel his body fully stir.
But it does, and with another quiet groan he rolls to face me, shoving his boxers down his hips just far enough for him to pull his erection free.
“J’ai envie de toi,” he says into my hair and rubs the head of his cock over me, testing, before pushing inside with a tight sound of hunger. “I always want you.”
It’s sex without words or pretense, just both of us working to get to the same place. My movements are slow, full of lazy sleepiness and that middle-of-the-night bravery that makes me roll on top of him, rest my head on his shoulder as I slide along his length. His movements are also slow, but because he’s being intentionally gentle, careful with me.
He’s usually so much more talkative. Maybe it’s that it’s so late, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s working to pull himself out of the hallway and back into the bedroom.
But then Ansel’s hands drift down my sides, clutching my hips, and any uneasiness dissolves, replaced with a mounting, crawling pleasure.
“You fuck so good,” he growls, rocking up into me, meeting my movements halfway. It’s no longer sleepy and relaxed. I’m close, he’s close, and I’m chasing the sound of his orgasm as much as I am the pleasure I can feel sliding up my legs and down my spine. I’m so full of him, so full of sensation, it’s all I am anymore: crystalline and hot, hungry and wild.
He pushes me so I’m sitting upright, his hands jerking my hips back and forth over him, urging me to ride him roughly as he shoves himself deeper and harder into me.
“Fuck me,” he growls, reaching up with one hand to grip my breast roughly. “Fuck me harder.”
And I do. I find anchor with my hands on his chest and let go, slipping down onto him over and over again. I’ve never been so wild on top, never moved so fast. The friction between us is amazing, slick and rough, and with a sharp gasp I start to come, my fingernails digging sharply into his skin and tight, desperate sounds falling from my lips.
I want
So
Coming so
Hard oh
Oh my God
My incoherence tears a savage growl from his throat and he sits up, fingers clamped to my hips and his teeth pressed to my collarbone as he pushes roughly up into me, coming with a hoarse shout after a final, brutal thrust.
His arms form a tight band around my waist as he presses his face to my neck, catching his breath. I feel dizzy; my legs are sore already. He doesn’t seem to want to let me go but I need to shift my position, and I gingerly lift myself off and slide down next to him on the bed. Without speaking, he rolls to face me, pulling my leg over his hip and slowly rocking his still-hard cock along my clit as he kisses my chin, my cheeks, my lips.
“I want more,” he admits into the dark room. “I don’t feel done.”
I reach down, slide him carefully back inside me. It won’t last long, but there’s something about feeling him like this—just barely rocking, no space between us, the black of night spread across the bed like a velvet blanket—that makes my bones ache with how intense it is between us.
“I just want to make love to you all day,” he says against my mouth and rolls on top of me. “I don’t want to think about work or friends or even eating. I want to exist on you alone.”
With this, I remember wanting to ask him what happened at the door. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I just want to fall asleep inside you. Maybe our bodies will make love again while our brains sleep.”
“No, I mean,” I start carefully, “who was at the door?”
He stills. “Perry.”
Perry. The friend who wasn’t in Vegas with the rest of them. “What did he want?”
He hesitates, kissing my neck. Finally, he says, “I don’t know. In the middle of the night? I don’t know.”
Chapter THIRTEEN
I DON’T HAVE TO open my eyes to know it’s still dark out. The bed is a nest of warm blankets; the sheets are smooth and smell like Ansel and laundry detergent. I’m so tired, floating in that place between awake and dreams, and so the words being whispered into my ear sound like bubbles rising up from underwater.
“Are you frowning in your sleep?” Warm lips press to my forehead, a fingertip smoothing the skin there. He kisses one cheek and then the other, brushing his nose along my jaw on his way back to my ear.
“I saw your shoes by the door,” he whispers. “Have you walked all of Paris by now? They look nearly worn through on the bottom.”
In truth he’s not that far off. Paris is an unending map that seems to unfurl right in front of me. Around each corner is another street, another statue, another building older and more beautiful than anything I’ve seen before. I get to one place and that only makes me want to see what’s beyond it, and beyond that. I’ve never been so eager to become lost in a place before.
“I love that you’re trying to learn my city. And God help the poor boys who see you walk by in that little sundress I saw hanging in the bathroom. You’ll have admirers following you home and I’ll be forced to chase them off.”
I feel him smile against the side of my face. The bed shifts and his breath ruffles my hair. I keep my features relaxed, my exhales even, because I never want to wake up. Never want him to stop talking to me like this.
“It’s Saturday again . . . I’m going to try and be home early tonight,” he sighs, and I hear the exhaustion in his words. I’m not sure I’ve fully appreciated how difficult this must be for him, to balance what he sees as his responsibility to me, and to his job. I imagine it must feel like being pulled in every direction.
“I asked you to come here and I’m always gone. I never meant it to be this way. I just . . . I didn’t think it through.” He laughs into my neck. “Everyone I know would roll their eyes at that. Oliver, Finn . . . especially my mother,” he says fondly. “They say I’m impulsive. But I want to be better. I want to be good to you.”
I almost whimper.
“Won’t you wake up, Cerise? Kiss me goodbye with that mouth of yours? Those lips that get me in trouble? I was in a meeting yesterday and when they called my name I had no idea what anyone was talking about. All I could think about was the way your cherry lips look stretched around my cock, and then last night . . . oh. The things I’ll imagine today. You’re going to get me fired and when we’re penniless on the street yo
u’ll have no one to blame but that mouth.”
I can’t keep a straight face anymore and I laugh.
“Finally,” he says, growling into my neck. “I was beginning to contemplate pulling the fire alarm.”
EVEN AS I wake alone, a couple of hours later, I remember the way he whispered against my shoulders, and finally into my ears. I’d rolled to my back, eyes still closed as I wrapped myself around him in a drowsy hug, the fabric of his suit rough, the silk of his tie suggestive as it dragged between my naked breasts. Had I been more awake I would have pulled him down, watched as he matched his fingertips to the bruises pressed into my skin.
Ansel left me breakfast. There’s coffee and a wrapped croissant waiting on the counter, and along with the lace cap that went with my maid costume, a new list of scribbled phrases rests beneath my plate.
What time is it? Quelle heure est-il?
What time do you close? A quelle heure fermez-vous?
Take your clothes off, please. Déshabille-toi, s’il te plaÎt.
Fuck me. Harder. Baise-moi. Plus fort.
I need the large dildo, same size as my husband. Je voudrais le gros gode, celui qui se rapproche le plus de mon mari.
That was the best orgasm of my life. C’était le meilleur orgasme de ma vie.
I’m going to come in your mouth, you beautiful girl. Je vais jouir dans ta bouche, beauté.
I’m still smiling as I step into the bathroom and shower, memories of last night running on a reel inside my head. The water pressure in Ansel’s apartment is terrible and the water is barely lukewarm. I’m reminded once again that I’m not back in San Diego, where the only person I needed to battle for hot water this late in the morning was my mom after her morning yoga class. There are seven floors of people to take into account here, and I make a mental note to get up earlier tomorrow, and sacrifice an extra hour of sleep for a hot shower. But that’s not the only thing I’d miss out on. Those few, unguarded moments in the morning when Ansel thinks I’m still sleeping might just be worth a cold shower. Lots of them.
GRUESIMONE IS OUTSIDE having a cigarette when I walk past the patisserie toward the métro. “Today has already been a fucking nightmare,” she says, blowing a plume of smoke out the side of her mouth. “We sold out of the scones everyone loves and I spilled a fucking coffee on myself. FML.”
I’m not sure why I sit with her for the duration of her break, listening to her vent about the trials of being a poor twenty-something in Paris, how her boyfriend can never seem to shut the coffee off before he leaves, or how she’d give up smoking but it’s cigarettes or customer homicide—their choice. She isn’t very nice, to anyone, really. Maybe it’s that she’s American, and it’s comforting to have regular conversations with someone who isn’t Ansel in a language I actually understand. Or maybe I really am that starved for outside human contact. Which is . . . really depressing.
When she’s finished her last cigarette and my coffee has long grown cold, I tell her goodbye and head toward the métro, and then explore as much of Le Marais as I can in a morning.
Here there are some of the oldest buildings in the city, and it’s become a popular neighborhood for art galleries, tiny cafés, and unique, pricy boutiques. What I love most about the neighborhood are the narrow winding streets, and the way tiny courtyards pop up out of nowhere, begging to be explored, or simply for me to sit and fly through a novel, getting lost in someone else’s story.
Just when my stomach is rumbling and I’m ready for lunch, my phone vibrates in my bag. I’m still surprised by the delicious lurch in my chest when I see Ansel’s name and face—the dorky selfie of him with pink cheeks and wild grin—flash across my screen.
Is it fondness I feel? Sweet Jesus, I’m definitely fond, and whenever he’s close I basically want to molest him. It isn’t just that he’s gorgeous, and charming, it’s that he’s kind and thoughtful, and that it would never occur to him to be sharp or judgmental. There’s an inherent ease to him that’s disarming, and I have no doubt he leaves a trail of unintentionally broken hearts—male and female—wherever he goes.
I’m almost positive the old woman who runs the store around the corner from our apartment is a little in love with him. In truth, I’m pretty sure almost everyone Ansel knows is a little in love with him. And who could blame her really? I watched her one evening tell him something in rapid-fire French and then pause, pressing her wrinkled hands to her face like she just told the cute boy about her crush. Later, as we’d walked down the sidewalk eating our gelato, he’d explained that she told him how much he looks like the boy she fell in love with at university, and how she thought about him for a moment every morning when he stopped by for coffee.
“She thanked me for making her feel like a schoolgirl again,” he’d said a little reluctantly and then turned to me with a flirty little smile. “And was glad to see me married to such a pretty girl.”
“So basically you make the old ladies a little frisky.”
“I really only care about this lady.” He’d kissed my cheek. “And I don’t want to make you frisky. I want you naked and begging to come all over my mouth.”
I’ve never known someone who is such a mixture of brazen sexuality and feigned innocence before. So it’s with a combination of excitement and fear that I read his message now, while traversing the busy sidewalk.
Last night was fun, it reads.
I chew my lip as I contemplate my response. The fact that he understood what I was doing, that he played along and even suggested we do it again, well . . .
I take a deep breath. So fun, I reply.
Was it nice to get outside your head a little?
The sun is high overhead and it’s got to be close to eighty-five degrees outside, but with one sentence he’s managed to make goose bumps erupt along my arms and legs, my nipples tighten. Somehow talking about it like this, acknowledging what we did, feels as dirty as seeing that tiny costume hanging in the closet this morning, beside the clothes he wears to work every day.
It was, I type, and if a text could come across breathy, that is exactly how this would sound.
There’s a long pause before he begins typing again and I wonder if it’s possible he’s wound as tight as I am right now. Think you’d want to do it again?
I don’t even have to think about it. Yes.
His answer comes slowly; it feels like he’s typing for an eternity. Go to the Madeleine station, line 14 to Chatelet. Walk to 19 Rue Beaubourg-Centre Georges Pompidou (the large museum, you can’t miss it). Take the escalators to the top floor. Wait at the bar at Georges Restaurant 19h00 (7:00 pm). Best view around.
I’m close enough to walk there, and a giddy thrill inches its way up my spine and slips like a warm bath along my skin. My limbs suddenly feel heavy, my body aches, and I have to step into an alcove in front of a small bookstore to pull myself together. I imagine this is what a sprinter feels like in those last moments before the starter pistol cracks through the air.
I have no idea what Ansel is planning, but I’m ready to find out.
THE CENTRE POMPIDOU is easy to find. Thanks to Google, I know it’s centered on Paris’s Right Bank, and sits in an area known as the Beaubourg neighborhood. After my days of exploring, I have a pretty good sense of where I am. But although I saw a photo of the museum online, I’m in no way prepared for the monstrous, skeletal curiosity that seems to rise up from the city around it.
It’s as if the massive building has been stripped of its outer layers, revealing the very pieces that keep it erect just underneath. Brightly colored tubes in green, blue, yellow, and red are interspersed with metal beams, and look as much like a piece of art as the items housed inside.
I follow a sign that leads me to a large paved plaza, filled with students and families and groups of tourists strolling about. Performers sit surrounded by small crowds and children rush by, their laughter echoing
in the hulking empty spaces created by the enormous building.
Just as Ansel instructed, I take the largest escalators I’ve ever seen to the top floor. The entire ride up is encapsulated in Plexiglas tunnels, giving me a view of an enormous expanse of Paris, with buildings in the distance I’ve only ever seen in books. I spot the Eiffel Tower immediately, set against a backdrop of bright blue sky.
My reflection winks back at me, dressed in my simple jersey shift dress, my dark hair glossy in the late afternoon sun. My face is flushed with anticipation and I’m pushing away the tremor of anxiety that I have no idea what is happening, and I’ve left Ansel completely in charge. Am I still his maid? I pause, mid-step between one escalator and the next, as the possibility sinks in. Our balance of power is already skewed since we arrived here. What am I heading into?
But, I reason, when you let go last night, he took over and gave you the most intensely erotic night of your life. Trust him.
With a deep breath, I step off at the top and make my way into the trendy restaurant. A beautiful woman with tomato-red hair and a short white dress leads me through a space that looks more like a sci-fi movie set than a place to have dinner. Everything is brushed metal and gleaming white, steel beams and polished cavelike sculptures. The tables are sleek and industrial, each one topped with a ruby-red long-stemmed rose. The outdoor dining area is protected by low-slung glass so as not to hinder the view because wow . . . what a view it is.
I thank her and take a seat at the bar, checking my phone for any messages. I’ve just begun a text to Ansel when I feel a slight tap on my shoulder.
“Would you mind if I sat here?” he asks, nervous. And oh. This isn’t the same game as last night. The confusion must show in my expression because he continues, “Unless you’re waiting for someone, of course.”