by Lexi Whitlow
I’ll keep that in mind when the next sketchy thing comes up. I won’t know him long enough for the drama to get to either of us. When whatever is chasing him catches up and finds him, I’ll be long gone, and he’ll be the one dealing with it. I press my body closer to him, wishing desperately that I could will away all the people in their adjoining private cubbies. It feels like too long since he’s touched me, even though it was just this morning that I watched his face as he came. For a moment, I doze, lulled by the continuous rhythm of the train, sailing over the tracks and taking us into a different country. I imagine that Matthias’s hands are roaming over my body, his fingertips traveling over the skin of my neck and down to the flesh of my breasts. In my state of half-sleep, I think about the many hours I spent worrying about the shape and size of my body, particularly my breasts. And when I fell into this man’s bed, it seemed that my body actually pleased him, that the shape of it, its curves and planes, turned him on to no end. The vision of him entering me for the first time flashes through my mind as I fall into a deeper sleep, and all at once, my body starts to soar with arousal, like there are actual hands and fingers searching over my body.
I wake with a start, but my eyes stay closed. There is, in fact, a hand under my shirt and moving slowly up my back. Fingers find the clasp of my bra and unhook it, and I sigh softly before coming to the full realization that anyone could come into our semi-private cube at any moment.
“Matthias—” I hiss. “What the hell are you doing?”
His hand, still under my shirt, pulls me closer. He laughs. “You look really nice in that shirt. But I feel like your bra is a hindrance. I want it off.”
I feel my face growing hot. “But we’re on the train—there are people—” His other hand sneaks around to my front and tugs up on my underwire. In a quick—and perhaps too expertly executed—move, he moves the straps beneath my sleeves and helps me out of the bra. I’m too stunned to resist. He holds the lacy bit of lingerie in his hand, and when I reach for it, he pulls it away and stuffs it in his backpack. Against the silky fabric of my shirt, my nipples grow stiff and obvious, and I blush even harder.
“That’s so much nicer. I’d get your panties off too if you weren’t wearing jeans, Mal. I should have told you that’s what I wanted before we left the house, but it was so much more fun on the train.” He leans in and whispers in my ear, his breath hot against my neck. Shivers run through my body, and my nipples grow even stiffer, if that’s possible. “Maybe I’ll get you to go take your panties off in the bathroom. I’ll get you a new skirt in Brussels so I have easy access whenever I want you.” He nips at my earlobe, and he groans slightly, bringing his hand to my right breast and cupping it through my shirt.
“What if someone sees?” He moves his hand to the other breast and then back again, focusing on one nipple and then the other. The feeling is heady, hallucinogenic, dizzying. Instinctively, I spread my legs. And hell, now I wish I were wearing a skirt too.
Just as I imagine his fingers moving lower, I feel a hand at the button of my jeans and then at the zipper. They fall free, and fingers slide into my panties, using the long hemline of my skirt to very barely cover what we’re doing. He makes contact with my clit, and I whimper, my voice coming out louder than it should.
“Then they’re in for quite a show, because I’m going to make you come. If we take a night train back—” He leans in again and kisses my neck, his voice rumbling in my ear. “I might have you sit on my lap, straddle me…”
I want to manage a protest; to tell him he’s being ridiculous. We couldn’t—but the image is stuck in my head now. His fingers circle my clit and slip lower, pushing my jeans down more, making the heat pool between my thighs. “And?” My voice comes out, silky and strange to me, communicating in a tone I’ve never before heard. “Then what?”
He laughs and turns my face to his, kissing me deeply, tongue exploring my mouth as he slips one finger inside my sex, accessing my wetness. I’d be ashamed on any other day, ashamed that I let someone do this, that I gave in so easily, that I was so wanton in my desire. But I’m not. Instead, I’m hungry, needy. I want to come for him, show him what a good girl I am.
He pulls away from my mouth and continues fingering me, watching my face. “Then, I’d pull my cock out and have you stroke it until I’m very, very hard. Since you’ll be wearing that skirt, I’ll have you slip forward and lower yourself down, inch by inch.”
He slips a second finger inside of me. “Oh God.” A person passes in the train hallway outside, perhaps on their way to the dining car. I cut my eyes over to the glass, and Matthias’s fingers pump inside of me, curving and catching my g-spot inside. “Oh God—” I moan. “Someone’s going to see us. They’re going to kick us off the—oh Christ—”
The base of his palm rocks against my clit, fingers deep inside me now. “Then I’ll watch you, your beautiful body giving me pleasure. Until I can’t bear it anymore and I—” His fingers hit my g-spot, tapping it in quick rhythmic bursts. “Come. Hard. Deep.”
“Faster,” I moan. “Faster—I’m—”
His fingers obey my demand. “Inside of you. Filling you.”
Another person walks by, eyes ahead, not seeing us through the thin layer of glass that separates us from the outside world. The orgasm soars through my body, sparks flying, eyes growing dim as I watch the other passenger head through the door to the next train. It closes behind him, and I’m still bucking against Matthias’s hand, whimpering, tears trailing over my cheeks. “Holy hell. Matthias.”
He pulls his hand away and helps me back into my jeans. “What? Isn’t this what everyone does on trains? Or are Americans puritanical about public transportation too?” He grins and kisses me again, lips warm and strong. “I think that last guy was purposefully looking away, Princess. But he should have watched. My God, you’re beautiful when you come.”
I feel color rising in my cheeks, but it’s not the same as it was when I first slept with him. My blood isn’t rushing as hard, the embarrassment and shame far less thick than it was. Instead, I’m almost pleased with myself.
Why?
The train pulls into the station at Brussels before I have a chance to contemplate the reason I let a strange man bring me to orgasm in a nearly public place, so the thought rolls away, like all the protests and concerns I had when I first met him.
Yes, some things about him are strange. There are parts of him he’s carefully hidden, but that doesn’t matter.
There’s nothing to tie us together after these next few days, and I’ll be making a decision soon about where I’m going to graduate school. I won’t see him again after that because there will be no reason.
Isn’t this what Kim meant when she told me to have a fling with someone I met in Europe? She’d be proud.
Hell, I’m proud.
As we get off the train, Matthias swings my pack over his shoulder and takes my hand in his. It feels warm and right to touch him like this, to let him guide me.
For a brief moment, I wonder how it would be if we were real—if these encounters didn’t add up to a simple fairy tale. Would I fall in love with him? His body, his sharp, observant mind, the simple, unabashed arrogance he uses to address the world?
The thought isn’t a good one, and I throw it away.
Instead, I take the city in, smiling, warm September sun hitting my face as we walk toward the city center.
“Brussels isn’t quite like Amsterdam, princess. But it’s a good place to be right now, trust me. Good food, nice shopping. I’ll turn you from an innocent girl to someone who fits right in wherever we are.”
“I wouldn’t call anything we’ve done very innocent,” I whisper.
He laughs and leads me on to the hotel we’ll call home until I depart for yet another country, the one I’ll make my permanent home for the next few years. It’s all so simple, so decadent, something I thought was so deeply forbidden. But a brief affair—it can be all of those things, can’t it?
There doesn’t have to be a single complication.
Matthias checks his phone several times as we cross the courtyard in front of the hotel he’s chosen. A nagging feeling comes over me as I watch him click it off again.
But it isn’t any of my business or any of my concern. Whatever he has going on doesn’t affect me at all.
Chapter Nine
Matthias
I shouldn’t want this. I’ve never taken a girl with me on a trip like this.
I watch Mallory as she wanders around the hotel lobby, investigating the fountain and the plants that make the place look more like a tropical villa in Brazil than a grand old hotel in Brussels. She purses her pink lips, furrows her dark brows, and I wonder what she’s thinking. These aren’t things I notice, and I rarely have time to contemplate a woman’s thoughts. The quick affairs I have aren’t conducive to such romantic thinking.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that I’m this way—my parents have been pushing me toward romance since I was eighteen years old. Not a normal version of romance—a royal version. This version includes arranged dates, slight girls of sixteen cooing at me and listening to every word I say with wide eyes, marriages that occur promptly at nineteen, and supervised doctors’ visits that assess the girl’s egg quantity and quality, and worse yet, her virginity. Last time I went home—two years ago now—my mother even mentioned that I could select the sex of my first-born child. That way, she said, we could assure that a boy would be in line for the crown, and then I could go on my merry way back to Amsterdam and leave the poor girl—my potential wife—while I occupied myself with tourists and whores.
This was my mother’s solution to the marriage problem. Marry a woman in name, have doctors impregnate her with a healthy boy, and send me on my way to the life I “preferred to lead.”
The thought makes me even angrier than it normally does, though I can’t quite place why. It was the last time I went back to the North Islands. Since then, I’ve been lobbying for them to ex-communicate me permanently. Take my money, take my name, put my sister on the throne. She’s about to turn nineteen—she can legally marry, and they could appoint her husband as the prince. Or if they were feeling generous, hell, they could actually make it legal for her to be queen.
That’s not the kind of thing my parents do, though.
They want me on the throne. And because of the old laws in the North Islands, they want me married before I take my father’s place.
Mother and Father haven’t agreed to any of my solutions. Father is getting old, and there are rumors that he’s sick, and they want me as their pawn. As for my sister, Celeste, they likely want to keep her to sell off to some other royal bloodline so they can keep the North Islands “pure,” as they say. Every text, every email, every phone call—it escalates in intensity. The ten messages on my phone are each worse than the last.
I knew this day would come, and somehow, it coincides with meeting Mallory. Lovely, pure, unabashed passion surrounding her like light surrounds saints in ancient engravings. None of this will touch her. I’ll send her off in four days, and she’ll be gone.
I turn off my phone again, and Mallory walks over to me, putting one arm around my waist. There’s a slight shock when she touches me, like it’s something forbidden I shouldn’t be doing out in public. I’m Matthias Albring, after all, and I don’t do this sort of thing out in public with women. Then a second sensation settles in—one more closely akin to pleasure, but it’s more than that too. Comfort, contentment, pride at being close to a beautiful woman in the heart of one of my favorite places on the continent.
“You have your camera?” She walks with me to the front desk, and I drape my arm casually over her shoulders.
“Yes. For photographing you at the fountains, like you said. And at the Musée. The cathedral.”
She nods. On the surface, my itinerary seems boring and acceptable, but I don’t reveal the other things I have planned. If I told her what I normally do in the city, she never would have hopped on that train. I’d never have the memory of today. When we approach the counter, the concierge looks at us blankly. My friend might own the hotel, but again, no one knows who I am in this city. And all the better. My French, rusty since living in Amsterdam, pours out haltingly at first. But the switch in my brain occurs, and my words become more fluid, easier and more comfortable in my mouth. He hands us the key, and we walk to the elevators, a bell boy following us close behind.
“How many languages do you speak?” she asks.
“Four, maybe five if you count Italian. I usually don’t because I don’t know it as well as the rest. English, French, Dutch, German—those I can handle on any day. Not so much Italian.”
“That’s a shame,” she says as we get on the elevator. “I’d love to meet you in Italy sometime. I might be there for school, so I’ll have to learn Italian.”
I shift uncomfortably in the elevator. By the time she’s in school for a year or so, my mother and father will have succeeded in marrying me off, or I’ll be wandering through Asia or South America, staying as far away as possible from Europe. “I’m sure you’ll be great at it. You know French, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, un petit peu.” Her eyes wander around the glass elevator, and she pulls away slightly. “I’m not supposed to talk about seeing you again. I forgot. Don’t worry. You’re a little too shady for a regular sort of relationship. Very fun for a one-night stand.”
Her words sting more than they should. “We’re officially headed into two nights, and more. I’d call it more of a brief affair.”
“Never had one of those. Just boyfriends who weren’t any good in bed.” She smiles, but her eyes are distant. “I like the sound of that. I won’t mention seeing you again. It’s just an Amsterdam and Brussels thing. Not an Italy thing.”
I catch her hand. “I would. It’s just that—” I pause. Would I see her again? “Things are complicated.”
“Your phone.” She taps her forehead like she’s working something out. As long as it isn’t the full truth, she’s welcome to think I’m as shady as she likes.
“Yes, there are complicated things on the other end of the line. Let’s just say that. Things that will keep me occupied until I figure them out.” I tap my phone, willing my mother and father to forget about me when their men don’t find me at my place in Amsterdam. If they’d wanted to find me, they never should have told me they were coming. I smile at the thought and then look to Mallory. “For now, we can pretend there’s nothing complicated at all, for either of us. I can take you to our room on the top floor and…”
“And what?”
“We’re here,” I say as the elevator draws to a halt. “I’ll show you when we step inside.” I pull her through the door, and another bell boy on the top floor brings the cart with our suitcases inside the suite. It’s what Americans would call a honeymoon suite, but for us, there’s no wedding. There’s plenty of sweetness, but no years to look forward to. I have the passing thought that perhaps I could marry Mallory right here in Brussels and get my mother off my back that way, and then this would be a true honeymoon, however brief my American marriage might be. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that to her.
My thoughts are interrupted as Mallory takes a deep sigh and sinks into the king size bed. Maybe it’s my imagination, but there’s no trace of embarrassment on her face when she lies back, bra still off, looking as beautiful as any fine work of art. “It’s amazing.”
She lifts up onto her elbows and looks around, her face young and fresh and excited. The bed itself is expansive and covered in a white cloud-like coverlet. The gleaming hardwood floors suggest that tropical feel, made of materials that I might guess were harvested from Africa a hundred years ago, before people started to understand that owning other countries wasn’t the best thing for the health of the world. There’s a sitting area with two sofas covered in crushed velvet. Beyond that, there’s a huge, claw-foot tub that easily seats two people. The ceramic tile is gleaming white, just
like the bed and the furniture. It’s all so well cared for that one couldn’t possibly tell if it was all built this century or sometime in the distant past.
“There’s something I need to tend to here, Mal. And then we must get going. There are appointments we need to get to.”
“Let me guess,” she says sleepily, falling back onto the bed. “You’ve got something to do with your person on the other line. And then—appointments? What are you on about?”
“You’re wrong this time. What I have to do—” I say the words slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Has everything to do with you and absolutely nothing to do with the person on the other end of the line.” While she’s still lying on the bed, I take out my camera.
“What are you doing? God if I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that to you in the past two days…” Her voice trails off and she laughs. “I can’t possibly be that good a model for your camera.”
“You’re a good model for me. I told you that when I first photographed you. You have that thing.” I snap a picture of her lying on the bed, short hair splayed like a halo around her head. Her breasts are free under her shirt, and I catch the light and shadow on the fabric, outlining them. My cock twitches in my jeans. It likes what it sees, and it didn’t get the relief it needed when we were on the train. I draw closer to her, snapping just a few photos of her face while she closes her eyes.
I want her again. Now.
I put my camera down and through my jeans, I begin rubbing my cock. It’s already hard for her, and even harder when I remember the bag in my suitcase.
“Close your eyes, Mal.”
“Why—”
“We’re out of the country, aren’t we?”
She laughs, silky and throaty. It’s utterly unlike anything I’d heard from her before we slept together. She closes her eyes, and to my surprise, she spreads her legs ever so slightly. “We are.”