“You’re going to come for me,” he said roughly.
And then it was all too much, the water, the steam, the dark, Lucas’s command in my ear, his fingers between my legs, his c**k buried inside me. All the pleasure coiled low within my body rocketed skyward, and I dropped my head back, wanting to say his name but unable to speak.
Lucas came moments after I did, grabbing my hips with both hands and jerking me back against him, our wet bodies slapping together, our breath leaving our bodies in strangled gasps, our desperate need to take and be taken by one another momentarily satisfied.
#
Thanks to round two, Lucas and I didn’t leave the hotel room for another hour and a half. By that time, his friends were already leaving the restaurant to meet us, so we decided to head straight for the bar and worry about getting food later. I wasn’t all that hungry anyway. My stomach was jittery at the thought of two things: meeting Lucas’s friends, and having to deal with Jessica all night. Lucas asked me repeatedly if I was OK with her being there, and I assured him I was.
“Good.” He took my arm as we made our way through the lobby. “Because you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I know.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “I’m not a crazy jealous person,” I said, thinking that crazy jealous was, in fact, exactly how I’d felt when I saw her standing there in a robe. “I totally understand being friends with your ex. Just not the living in your apartment thing.”
Cringing, he hung his head. “I get it. Boy, I’m gonna suffer for that for a long time, huh?”
I elbowed him gently in the side. “Nah, I’m not one to hold a grudge. I believe in forgive and forget. Moving forward.” Moving in together.
With his hand on the small of my back, he guided me into the dark, noisy bar. “Have I told you I love you? How beautiful you are?”
“Not in the last ten minutes.”
He leaned in to whisper in my ear, and his hand slid lower. “You’re gorgeous. And I f**king adore you.”
Chills swept down my bare arms. Everything about the moment felt perfect, from his hand on my ass to his breath on my neck. My only regret was that Jessica wasn’t there to see it.
The seats along the bar were all taken, so Lucas and I ordered drinks and wandered into a large adjacent room to look for somewhere to sit. It was spacious but still intimate, lit almost solely by candles and a roaring fire at the far end of the room. The couches and chairs were plush red and gold velvet, the cocktail tables were dark wood, and the walls were painted some kind of amber color that glowed like a sunset in the flickering candlelight. A jazz trio played softly in one corner.
He studied the musicians for a moment. “Hey, I know the pianist. Let’s go sit over there.” We made our way to a table near the trio, and Lucas pulled out a chair for me before lowering himself in the one to my left. I laughed when he scooted his chair closer to mine.
“I can’t get close enough.” His smile was sheepish.
“I don’t mind.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You look good enough to eat in that suit.” It was charcoal gray, and he wore it with a white shirt that I’d ironed for him after we got out of the shower. He told me I didn’t have to but I’d insisted, and the mundane task felt so personal—OK, so wifely—that I’d grinned like an idiot while I worked. It was crazy how happy it made me to do simple things for Lucas.
He was, of course, sans necktie. I didn’t think that thing would ever recover.
About ten minutes after we sat down, his friends arrived, and I stood for introductions. Besides Jessica, who conspicuously took the chair on Lucas’s other side, there were three other guys and two other women, all of whom looked to be in their late twenties. Lucas had told me earlier he knew some of this crowd from grad school and some from the college where he taught, but I forgot three of their five names almost immediately. I have a horrible memory for names. But I was pretty sure the really tall blond guy who sat across from me was Craig, and to my right was Andrea, a petite Asian woman with a blunt bob haircut.
“So this is Mia.” Andrea shook my hand and smiled. “Lucas is always talking about you.”
My heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings, and I shot Lucas a grateful look. He does talk about me!
“I work with Andrea.” Lucas sat at my side and picked up his scotch. “She teaches ed psych.”
“How nice.” I sat down again, crossing my legs toward Lucas, and he rested a hand on my knee. Picking up my wine glass, I hid a satisfied smile behind my Bordeaux. Maybe it was juvenile and petty, but it wasn’t enough tonight to know that Lucas adored me—I wanted people to see him adoring me.
Mostly people named Jessica.
I snuck a quick peak at her to see if she’d noticed the hand.
She had. She was staring right at it.
Yessss. I’ll drink to that!
“Well, he certainly kept her a secret from me.” Jessica smiled deviously at Lucas and gave him a slap on the shoulder. “Silly boy. And you should have told her that I was staying with you until I find an apartment.” She turned to the group. “Poor thing was shocked to find me there this afternoon when she showed up to surprise him. In my robe, no less! Can you imagine?” She laughed as if it were the funniest joke she’d ever heard, but everyone else was silent. A more awkward moment in conversation had surely never occurred in the Gramercy Park Hotel, possibly in all of Manhattan. I gripped my wine glass so hard I thought I might crush the glass to shards.