Propositioning Love

Now it’s time to show myself to the door.

The elevator dings and I cringe. As soon as the doors slide open, I jump inside. I jam the button for down, and breathe a sigh of relief when the doors start to close.

Pushing away the guilt I feel for sneaking out on him, I try to focus instead of the things I need to do today.

Then it hits me.

Shit. Yeah. I totally forgot.

I’m probably going to be fired.

Bryce

For the first time in a long time I wake up without feeling numb to the world. I wake to the bright sun filtering through the window and I don’t want to punch myself in the face because of it.

I haven’t felt this relaxed in years, even before my self-imposed celibacy. My mind whirls through the night before, the smells and the tastes. Her teeth biting at my neck, her nails digging into my back as I thrust myself as deep as I could between those heavenly thighs.

Rolling over, I grab for the warm body that brought me such happiness, the mind that melded with my own as we shattered worlds together.

But my hands grasp nothing but cold sheets.

I can smell her scent in the linens of the bed, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

Sitting up, I look around frantically. Where the hell did she go?

Jumping out of the bed, I call out, “Zoe?”

Nothing but the empty quiet of my apartment calls back to me. The emptiness that has been slowly suffocating me since I moved in here.

“Zoe!” I raise my voice, hoping she’s in the kitchen.

No words are spoken back as I trot through the apartment. It’s not a huge apartment, there’s not many places she could be hiding in. But just in case, I search every room and every closet, even under the bed.

All I can find though is her scent on the sheets. That all-powerful musk of raw sex and heated passion. On the pillow, I smell the sweet scent of her hair.

Shit. Where the fuck did she go?

Then it comes to me, the word that fled my mind last night as soon as she said she had no rules.

She’s a prostitute.

Even if it had been her first time… She left me without a goodbye.

I don’t think I even paid her.

Another search through the apartment and my wallet shows everything that was there still is. Nothing’s been taken, all the cash and credit cards are there. The expensive rental decorations of the apartment are all in their rightful places.

Nothing’s out of place, nothing is missing except Zoe.

What the fuck?

Glancing at the clock, I see it’s already a quarter till eight in the morning. Fuck!

I haven’t slept this late in years. No matter the hour I go to sleep, I wake up at six-thirty. It’s like my body has its own internal alarm clock. No matter what, I wake up. Except for this morning.

The morning after the best night of my life.

The raw passion alone was so much more amazing than anything I have ever experienced. I’ve never felt so satisfied or elated. Every move I made, she loved. Every move she made, made my body roar with desire. Something like last night was so intense, so damn unnerving, it has left me shaken to the core.

Shaken to the core and completely alone.

For the first time, like so many other firsts over the last twelve hours, I don’t want to go to work. I want to scour the city, looking for my other half.

The one woman who connected with me so deeply on an emotional level that words were hardly needed.

I know rationally I can’t scour the city for her, it’s flat out impossible, but my heart sure wants to. I also know how silly it sounds to myself that I could find someone who completes me and only know her first name…

“Fuck!” I shout out into the closet as I stand here, staring at my suits and ties.

Nothing in there works for me. Nothing in there is what I want.

I want a prostitute named Zoe.

One night of unbridled passion and I’m so completely hooked I know I’m fucked if I don’t find her again.

The great and mighty Bryce Ericsson brought low by a woman of the night.

I must get through this day, get through it and start my search. Maybe driving by the streets I was on last night will work. It’s a start. Fuck, I could try a missing persons report, but without a last name I’m fucked.

Shaking my head, I grab my charcoal gray suit, white dress shirt, and a black tie. It’ll have to be my battle armor for today.

Cursing myself over and over, I head out of the apartment only to stop right in front of the elevator. There, I find the one piece of her that she forgot to take with her.