Perfect Strangers

7

We endup closing the place down.

We eat, drink, laugh, and talk until we’re the last ones in the restaurant and the wait staff are clustered near the kitchen doors, collectively glowering in our direction.

Not that I care. I’m having the best time I’ve had in years. I never want the night to end.

I say, “Ugh, I can’t believe you like Hemingway! He’s so unbearably macho.”

I’m rolling my eyes but smiling as I lick from my spoon the last morsel of a delicious chocolate mousse we shared. James ordered no less than four different desserts, because I couldn’t decide on just one.

“And I can’t believe you’re such a literary snob,” James shoots back. “Macho or not, the man was a genius. Look at his legacy. Look at his body of work—”

“Genius? Please. He was a bully and a braggart and wrote some of the worst fake biblical prose ever to hit the market. ‘I am thee and thou art me…’ What bullshit. Combine his love of three word sentences with a pathological aversion to adverbs and the man is insufferable. I can’t believe he’s still being taught in schools.”

“Do you object more to his writing style or to his personal character? Because you have to separate the artist from his work. Otherwise we’d have to burn every Picasso. Now that was an arrogant asshole.”

I nod in agreement. “A womanizer, too. Like Hemingway.”

James shrugs. “Many famous and successful men are. Imagine having beautiful women constantly wanting to sleep with you—”

“I’m straight, but thanks,” I interrupt drily.

“—literally throwing themselves at you day and night. A man would have to be a saint to resist that kind of temptation.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I thought about you the first time I saw you. Every woman in the café had a spontaneous orgasm when you walked in.”

He scoffs. “You’re exaggerating again.”

“If I am, it’s only a teeny bit. Even some of the men looked at you like they wanted to lick you from head to toe.”

When his expression sours, I laugh. “C’mon, James, don’t be modest. You must know how gorgeous you are.”

He pauses for a moment, staring at me in a strange, weighted silence. Then he drops his gaze to his empty bourbon glass and says darkly, “Only on the outside.”

A tremor of recognition passes through me. It’s the same feeling I had when I looked at his portraits. The animal sense of awareness of one’s own tribe.

Birds of a feather flock together. Though we’re still not much more than strangers, I know intuitively that he and I are alike.

Suffering is the great equalizer of humankind.

I recall him standing there surrounded by admiring women at the party, looking miserable and alone, and how oblivious he was to all the stares he received walking into the café, and realize with a jolt that this is a man for whom most other people have ceased to exist.

The happy ones, anyway. The normal ones who still have light in their eyes.

It’s only people like me he can see or connect with. People submerged in their own darkness, the way he’s submerged in his.

I say urgently, “Whatever bad thing happened to you, it hasn’t made you less beautiful. There’s beauty in darkness, too. It just takes a different kind of vision to see it.”

When he lifts his head and looks at me, the anguish in his eyes pierces my heart. His lips part. For a moment we simply stare at each other, our surroundings forgotten.

Then he reaches around the table, grasps me by the arms, and drags me onto his lap.

He kisses me with a fierce desperation that takes my breath away. With one arm wrapped around my back and a hand gripped around my jaw, he eats me with kisses, his mouth hard and demanding, until I’m shaking and making soft noises of need low in my throat.

He breaks away, breathing roughly, and mutters, “Fuck.”

My fingers are clenched in the front of his shirt. My armpits are damp, my nipples are hard, and there’s a throbbing ache between my legs. I’m dizzy and panting, my taste buds and nose full of him, my skin in flames.

Without opening my eyes, I whisper, “More. Please, more.”

He doesn’t hesitate. His mouth slides back over mine. Gentler this time, slower, but somehow even hungrier. He takes my head in both hands and makes fists in my hair, holding me still for his tongue to probe deeply as he takes what he wants and gives me what I need, his erection big and stiff against my bottom.

This time when he breaks away, he’s softly groaning.

And I’m about to explode with desire.

Someone clears his throat. “Ahem. Excusez-moi.”

My lids drift open. Standing beside our table is our waiter, smiling politely. He says something in French, pats the leather billfold he’s holding, places it at the edge of the table, and leaves.

I say breathlessly, “I think that’s our cue.”

James gazes at me, his face inches from mine, his eyes hazy and hot. He adjusts my body on top of his, using a belt loop in my jeans to pull me closer and a little lower, so I’m leaning back in his arms, my face tilted up toward his. I’m a purring kitten curled up in his lap.

He says in a guttural voice, “I’m not ready yet,” and takes my mouth again.

These kisses of his…they’re demanding and possessive. They’re hungry and deep. They’re the kisses of a man who wants more of a woman—who wants everything—and isn’t going to stop until he gets it.

I cling to him and tremble, knowing I’m going to give it to him. Knowing deep in my bones that whatever it is James demands of me, I’m going to give it, no questions asked.

He moans into my mouth. I arch into him, growing more desperate by the second, digging my fingers into his arms, then sliding my hands up around his strong shoulders so I can dig my fingers into his hair. All that thick, silky hair. And his neck—God, even his neck is beautiful, strong and hot, his pulse pounding wildly under my palm.

We slowly melt into each other, our lips fused, our bodies on fire, until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. He squeezes my ass and flexes his hips, breathing hard through his nose as he presses his erection against me and drinks deep from my mouth.