by Martin, M.
“And before you run and get hotel security, let me explain.”
A culmination of my deepest fantasies and darkest fears, there he sits snuggled into the alcove of my doorway, seated on the floor with his bold-striped socks and floppy black locks that catch me in a fright.
“Oh my god … David?” I gasp.
“I didn’t get a chance to really talk with you as Kelly was rambling on with all that nonsense,” David says, rising to his feet.
His shirt is unbuttoned and jacket collar pitched to reveal a stripe of color beneath his Etro lapel. His scent returns and leaves me spellbound, so intense and intoxicating that I open my door and pull him inside by the cuff of his jacket. He follows without strain as he slams the door shut and pushes me across the room and up against the wall with the force of a man.
“You didn’t e-mail me after that incredible afternoon,” he whispers in my ear while biting at my neck and thrusting me into the wall again and again.
“What are you talking about?” I insist. “You never gave me your information.”
“I left it for you at the hotel in Rio, and you didn’t even write to say thank you for that amazing day.”
“You have one of me in every port, Mr. Summers. Don’t try to fool me.”
No information had been left for me at the hotel at the Fasano, but like most of Rio, hotel attendants can tend to be unreliable. I believe David to be a man who fully means what he says.
“I liked that port, and I liked it with you, Catherine.”
He kisses me down my neck and on my breasts; his hands caress my lower back, grip the lip of my skirt, and unzips the back. He has the force of a man in control and the passion of a well-practiced boy ravenous for the flesh.
“Do you know I’ve thought about you every day since Rio, checking my e-mail nonstop, waiting for you to remember that day, recall me holding you in the water?”
“David, I didn’t know. I had no way.”
Words do not matter at this moment. Within a matter of seconds, I am standing in the middle of the room naked. He kneels before me kissing up and down my legs while in between them I am already wet. All modesty and shyness vanishes as each kiss seals his desire for me. I feel like a goddess under his forceful hands, which explore every inch of my body as though it were the first he’s touched.
Without him removing a single article of clothing, not even his jacket, he buries his face beneath me. I arch my back to the wall in a fit of ecstasy as his fingers explore my most private parts. My hand falls on a cold slab of marble surrounding the fireplace as he twists me around and explores every crevice of my body with his tongue, forcing his thumb down the middle of my spine, and then inside me only to pull it out again. His every movement has an intention just for me, finding those spots within me that torment and send me into a fit of ecstasy.
“David, I need you inside me!” I scream.
“Not yet,” he replies in a sexy rasp.
“I’m going to explode if you don’t.”
“We only have this moment once. From now on you will know me completely, but not just yet.”
My mouth meets his as I suck on each perfectly drawn lip and touch my tongue to his teeth. He slaps my ass with both hands to thrust me closer. I tug at the buttons of his crisp white shirt to reveal the speckling of hair across his lean chest and his deep muscular stomach framed by his pelvic muscles that I lean down to lick. He pulls me up with a forceful tug and shoves his finger into my mouth jarring it to the back of my mouth as if trying to reach my soul before inserting his tongue.
Like the guilty aware of her impending corruption, I drop to my knees into my crime and pull at the top button of his jeans. I look up at a body that would humble Rodin and an equal face with sweat forming on his brow. David’s crafty hands pull his jeans down in one swift movement. His legs and feet coordinate to reveal him standing in his sexy-striped underwear and an erection he can’t contain.
He grabs my arm and leads me to the windowsill. The visual of the distant Paris rooftops feels like a dream, and all that matters in life is right here inside this room. His long hair smells of the most intoxicating potion as he wraps his head over my shoulder. I reach behind to get a feel of what is to come.
I turn to face him as he pulls off his boxers to reveal all that is he, long, thick, and rising straight up against his stomach, even when standing with its fleshy uncut head and perfect pinkish-white coloring. I grab it before he takes over again, and he forces his finger into my mouth. I rush down for a taste before he pulls me away. He is all I desire at this moment, and I must taste him. The skin wraps over the entire head, a rubbery perfection that I pull back with my lips with taste that is sweet and sticky to the tongue. He is in control here; he pulls me up again and toward the window in an instinctual force that is irresistible as I lean forward onto the windowsill, and he drops once more to his knees.
David’s tongue is as sweet to the touch as it is to the taste, penetrating me ever so gently with soft gyrations as I pull at the walls, grab at his hair, and collapse into and out of ecstasy. He knows no time as he finds every corner of my inhibition and licks it away sending me into my first orgasm with him, but it only increases his resolve to continue exploring me deeper and deeper. He’s unlike any lover I’ve ever had, almost insatiable in his desire for me as I hear my own unrecognizable shrieks of ecstasy echo across the room as if it’s someone else entirely.
The window above me fogs up from the heat of our bare bodies. I can no longer separate my eyes from his and I turn to face him. His mouth envelops mine, and I taste my own sweetness on his lips.
“I wanted you in Rio so bad, but this is even more than I imagined.”
He holds my chin as he confesses into my eyes. He props me on the windowsill in a single lift as my knees splay to the side and all that I’ve fantasized and dreamed of in the moments since Rio is plunged to the deepest reaches of my body in a single, exhilarating thrust as I take all of him within me.
“Catherine, you feel even better than I dreamed.”
There’s an intoxicating rhythm as he fills me over and over again before pulling out, waiting, and then going back again. I can feel him getting harder inside me, conforming to the contour of my body, as his dick gets so thick it feels as though it might explode. His movements are like a dance where his eyes close for only an instant and then return to mine. He doesn’t retreat into his own mind, and we connect so deep that for an instant I feel as though we are a single being. As I feel him increase in force, I pull him closer and shatter in ecstasy yet again as he watches in such awe that it pushes him over his own eruptive edge.
David pulls back the sheets of the tightly tucked bed of starched linen and slides me inside before slipping in behind me, still fully erect, as if eager to go again. I still feel among the fog and clouds as I hold David so tight to me that he adjusts himself against my exposed back.
“That was, I mean, wow. I wasn’t expecting that, really,” he says as his labored breath recedes to normal. I wait for that moment he does the typical male retreat that most men do right after sex.
“I don’t think I even know what day it is anymore,” I say.
I forgot how good sex could feel, the delectable exploration of an unknown body from the inside with moves that aren’t of a familiar routine, but that of an unbridled lover you want over and over and over again. Then, the rabbit hole of guilt takes me away in an instant as I see Matt’s face and that of Billy. I will never again be able to call myself faithful to my husband, even if it’s something only I know. I will forever be a wife who has cheated, even if this all ends as I plan to do here and now. What is done is done, but now this must end.
“It’s the first day, that’s what day it is,” he says without hesitation.
“The first day of what?” Anger sweeps over me as if he is to blame for all that I have done.
�
��The first day we ever made love, and in Paris, no less.”
David has a way of making things seem permanent, even though I know his type likes anything but. It has to be torture for the women he dates. Perhaps that’s why they fall for him so easily, believing he will catch them mid-fall and live happily ever after only to find out otherwise.
“Is this the first time you’ve had sex in Paris?” I turn over and ask with a tinge of spite as if he is to blame for my infidelity. However, with a single look, I’m taken aback by the brightness and alertness of his perfect blue eyes against the pure white sheets.
“It’s the best sex I’ve had in Paris.”
His answer jolts me back to reality and alludes to the broader truth that it’s probably just the best sex he’s had in Paris today. My eyes return to the city that lies just outside the window. The truth vibrates like a percussion orchestra in my head. You don’t leave your husband for a man like this; you cheat with him once and leave.
“So tell me more about the David who lives outside of hotels.”
“The David who lives outside of hotels? Well, I don’t get to see him very often because of my job. But when he’s in London, he likes to see his mates from university and go out to dinner and the likes.”
“And in terms of love?”
“I love a lot, I quite like love.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say as I nudge him in the shoulder. “Have you ever been married?”
“God, no.”
“All right then, who was your last girlfriend?”
“Is this what I have to look forward to from a journalist?” he says with a wide smile. “Well, that was awhile ago, but I was dating a woman named Ana who was a model from near my hometown.”
“Model named Ana. Got it,” I say with sarcasm.
“She wanted something far more serious than I was ready to commit to, so we thought it best to part ways.”
“So she moved out?”
David laughs at my question with some dismissal as if I said his skin was purple and not the most aristocratic of pale, perfect alabaster white.
“We definitely didn’t live together. I’m home so seldom that I like to keep my house off-limits.”
“You mean bachelor pad?”
“So, what about you? How long can I linger in bed with you at the Ritz?” He doesn’t seem comfortable with anything that broaches the emotional, so his boyish grin guides me onto another topic.
“I should really get some work done; I have an early flight back.”
David jumps to his knees and on top of me with a boyish playfulness that juxtaposes his masculine body and the long silhouette of his dick, which I cannot take my eyes from as it lingers above me.
“Wait! This is your last night in Paris, and we’re lying here talking about crazy model Ana?”
“I’m already behind on my work, so I guess this is where we say our good-byes.”
“Good-byes?” he says in smug disbelief. “I just found you in the middle of Paris after thinking about you every day since Rio. I believed I would never hear from you again, never.”
“Really, you don’t have to tell me those kinds of things.”
“Well, you’re absolutely not getting rid of me so easy, so you better accept it.”
“Is that so?” I ask, seduced again with his adolescent tenacity that has probably never had a woman tell him no.
“So listen, I want to take you somewhere, but I don’t want to waste time running back to my hotel to change or anything.”
“I’m fine just staying here. I mean, it’s the Ritz.” It’s my one last attempt to end this here and now before a careless infidelity becomes a full night or perhaps even more.
David becomes silent thinking a second. He falls back onto the bed next to me and tucks under the sheets with his head against the pillow next to me.
“Listen, if we weren’t in Paris, I would say let’s just stay in the room and go at it like rabbits all night. But part of me wants to show you off to the world, especially if I only have tonight.”
“One night in Paris; it kind of sounds like a movie.” I realize there is no retreat.
“Actually, I think it’s a sex tape, but I don’t know how I know that exactly.”
David scurries into the shower as I watch him leave; his athletic torso looks as if it should preside over a rotunda all its own at the Louvre rather than wandering the mortal world with women like me chasing after it. Without moving from the bed, I see him stepping into the shower and turning on the water. He closes his eyes and lets it wash over his face and down his body. He takes my breath away, even after feeling every inch of him inside me.
I struggle under pressure when getting ready, but luckily, I planned this outfit in my head. I throw on my Rick Owens that now fits the way it should and not the way it did when I bought it on sale at Bergdorf’s. My makeup goes on sparingly, and I do a quickie blowout with the door closed as not to give away my beauty regimen to a guy who is used to women who can just put on lip-gloss and go. I look in the mirror and see a different person than when I arrived in Paris, ignited within by a passion I haven’t felt in years.
“You look incredible in that outfit … I can’t even stand it,” David says with an earnestness that has me glowing the minute I step out of the bathroom. He grabs my hand with a gusto that allows me to be the woman for the first time in a long time, and he leads me out of the room as the Ritz comes alive in a different way than I ever imagined. The lobby purrs with a sophisticated buzz of passing diners and hotel guests on their way to or returning from their fabulous adventures. Everyone seems to look at us as we pass. I smile, despite speculating if, perhaps, they wonder what a man like David is doing with a woman like me.
After such an incredible evening, I almost forgot that Paris waits just outside the walls of my room that became the perfect place in the world in those last hours. The lobby looks entirely different by night, as if dressed in the light of its best tuxedo. It dazzles with emblems of gold above grand seating areas illuminated by flickering candlelight. I have such a different feeling inside me as I pass through these revolving doors yet again, as the hotel car idles right at the curb.
“Monsieur Summers, your car is here for you.”
The chauffeur opens the door, and I sit once more in the same seat I took in search of David. I held the found treasure in my hand unwilling to let it go for even a second out of fear it might vanish in front of my eyes.
“How did he know you were coming?” I ask.
“I called down while you were in the shower.”
“Are you always a step ahead?”
I want to ask where we’re going or what’s in store for the night, but for once, it feels nice to allow someone else to take care of me. I imagine it will be somewhere modern and trendy, as David seems the type. Maybe he’ll take me to a sushi restaurant or somewhere new where it’s hard to get a reservation. The tinted windows of the car make it difficult to enjoy Paris by night, but who cares when David is next to me. It’s no more than a few minutes when the car comes to a stop and the door pops open in front of a red restaurant called Davé. David grabs my hand and leads me inside.
“Mr. Summers, how good to see you again,” says a handsome Chinese man who appears to be the owner. He takes his hand with a successive bow that David mimics in return.
“Davé, this is Catherine Klein.”
He extends his hand with a more genteel grip; his hands are as tender as soft butter.
“Miss Klein, welcome to my restaurant. David is a very good customer, and I take very good care of both of you.”
The restaurant isn’t at all what I was expecting, this retro-chic parlor of Maoist red walls dotted with black and white photographs of Carla Bruni, David Bowie, and the former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld dining throughout. There, in one of the photographs, next t
o a caricature of John Galliano, is a picture of my David in a group of attractive but not famous faces.
“Wow, you’re even on the wall. That’s impressive.”
“He puts all of his friends on the wall. It’s less about the people being famous and more about who he connects with.”
Dim lights lend the feel of a modern-day opium den. Black lacquer chairs surround closely packed tables of incredibly fashionable guests hovering over quiet, intense conversations, and a backbeat of Charlotte Gainsbourg. Our table is tucked in a corner with a Ming-looking lamp made out of a vase set on a white tablecloth.
“Is this okay?” David asks before sitting down.
“Yes, perfect actually.”
We both disrobe of our winter coats that the waiter takes with him without giving a numbered ticket in return. There are no menus. I tuck the overly starched napkin into my lap as my eyes once more return to David, who has long since returned his gaze. He grabs my hand and strokes it with his thumb in a rhythmic motion that’s soothing to my heart and tells everyone around us that I am his and he is mine— at least this one night.
“So, this is the type of place that doesn’t really have a menu, so I’ll just order for both of us, if that’s okay.”
“No, totally, I love that idea,” I reply.
“Is there anything you don’t eat?”
“Nope, just order away. I’ll try anything once.”
“Anything?” he asks with an arched eyebrow as his leg rubs against my inner thigh under the table.
“So, I want to know more about you, David Summers.”
“Uh-oh, what do you want to know?”
“Have you ever had your heart broken?”
“Sure, when I returned home from Rio and this woman I met didn’t even try to contact me,” he says with a sly smile.
“I’m being serious. Have you ever been head-over-heels in love?”
“I’m not sure. But I have to say that I really haven’t made it a priority in my life. Marriage has always petrified me, and I always felt like love was a one-way street in that direction. I just can’t imagine having to answer to another person or being responsible for keeping another human being happy and fulfilled for the rest of my life. That seems like an incredibly long time.”