by C. C. Morian
She wasn’t exactly sure now if he was joking. “Too pedestrian,” she said, and got in the car.
Melissa sunk into the supple leather as Marcus started the car and headed out of the garage. Her skirt had slipped up to reveal more of her thighs, and she self consciously pulled it down, realizing how ridiculous that was, wondering if Marcus had noticed.
To hide her apprehension she asked, “What model is this?”
“An R8.”
“I thought you were a Jaguar man.”
“The Germans are better at what’s underneath. And too many Jags out there these days.” He paused a beat. “Too pedestrian.”
Melissa turned slightly in her seat to face him. He still drove the same, with a casual elegance, fully in control of the powerful vehicle yet not working at it. Just like he controlled himself.
“This seems a little flashy for you,” she said.
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
Melissa didn’t know how to respond to that. Everything seemed to be moving too fast; an hour ago she was wondering if she would even see him, still not sure of what she would do, and now she was in his car, driving to her hotel, bantering like they hadn’t missed a beat.
Maybe I should slow this down, she thought. But she couldn’t decide how. Or if she really wanted to.
At the garage exit Marcus pulled into the attended lane, where an old black man gave him a nod and lifted the gate.
“No ticket?” asked Melissa.
Marcus nodded back at the attendant and pulled out into the street. “I’m a regular.”
What does that mean? Does he come to this hotel to meet his women?
Melissa didn’t think he had changed at all.
He drove for a while, the silence both tense and comfortable at the same time, at least to Melissa. She remembered that Marcus, unlike most people, had always been comfortable with silences; he didn’t feel he needed to always be saying something, and he didn’t feel insecure if no one was saying anything to him.
So she was surprised when he spoke first. “I never thought this is something you would do.”
Melissa thought she knew what he meant, but, suddenly scared, decided to deflect it, to give things a chance to cool down. “The reunion? It’s more surprising that you are here than me.”
Marcus shot her a quick Cut the bullshit glance, then ignored her comment. “You being married and all.”
Melissa turned her eyes back to the road. “We haven’t done anything.”
“You’re thinking about it. You want to.”
She looked back at him and said sharply, “You’re so sure of yourself. Obviously that hasn’t changed.”
The corner of his mouth moved a hair, a grin on Marcus. “You wanted me to change? That’s not the Melissa I remember. Me being sure of myself, that used to get you going, you got off on it.”
“Maybe I’m the one who’s changed.”
“That wouldn’t explain why you are here.” He meant in the car with him.
Melissa knew she would have to deal with this, it was a reasonable question. For him, and for her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us.”
“There is no us,” he said.
She couldn’t read his voice at all. It had grown dark, and as they drove the street lights played on his face, sometimes in shadow, other times in stark relief. It made it even harder to judge his mood.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
He didn’t answer. Was he waiting for her to explain herself?
Melissa wasn’t sure she could, not in her present condition, not in a way he’d understand. She stalled. “Why do you think we didn’t end up together?”
Marcus glanced over at her, just the briefest look of surprise in his face, something she had rarely seen. “We were together.”
Had they been? Fully? Melissa thought about her suspicions, of him seeing other women when they were a couple, if couple is what you could call what she and Marcus were. “I meant still together.”
Marcus lifted his hand off of the wheel and briefly touched her left hand, brushing by her rings. She shivered, even that momentary contact giving her a thrill. A gleam from a streetlight hit her diamond and it sparkled, an accusation.
“You wanted one of those from me?”
Melissa stared at her wedding ring. “Are you married?” she asked, holding her breath.
“Does it matter?”
“It should.”
“To whom?”
“To both of us.” She didn’t mean to make it sound accusatory, but it came out that way. Melissa waited for him to make a judgment, or tell her she had no right to dictate to him what should matter, but he said nothing.
It should matter, she thought. It should matter to him, it would matter to Richard. Richard would never be in a situation like this. And it certainly should matter to her; she shouldn’t be with another man beside her husband, and even if she had been single, she shouldn’t be with a married man.
Yet here she was.
She studied his profile as he drove, his eyes on the road, yet she knew he was fully attuned to her and their conversation. Marcus had the ability to be everywhere at once. Melissa still felt it, even when he was not looking at her, his presence so potent that it blotted almost everything else out. He could concentrate on more than one thing at a time, but it was barely possible for anything else to register for her when she was near him.
At times it was downright scary.
He seemed so much the same. As if they were as they had been, almost a decade ago. But Melissa knew she had changed. How would that affect what she would do?
One thing hadn’t changed, how he affected her physically. To say that he aroused her didn’t do justice to it. It had all come rushing back, the desire, the weakness, the almost complete lack of control.
Back in the garage, if Marcus had shoved her down over the hood of the car she didn’t think she would have been able to resist him. She wanted to think she could, but she didn’t trust herself.
Is this really what she wanted in her life? To be wildly out of control, to be with man who had such an effect on her?
She missed it so much.
She had thought about it, a lot, about what was absent from her life. Remembering the excitement, the thrill, the arousal.
Her memories didn’t come close to replicating what she was now experiencing. If anything, she had muffled the memories, or didn’t have the ability to bring them back to life.
“My husband knows I’m here.” Melissa didn’t quite know why she said that, it might have been a subconscious reminder of whatever morality she thought she should be having.
Marcus shrugged. “At the reunion?”
“No. He knows that I’m with you. Or might be with you.”
Melissa thought she might have surprised him, but Marcus seemed unperturbed. “He’s not one of those guys who get off watching their wife with a black man? I don’t do that. Lots of offers, but no thanks.”
How to respond to that? One of the reasons Richard had egged Melissa to see Marcus undoubtedly had to do with his newfound interest in exactly what Marcus had described. But there was much more to it.
She didn’t quite feel ready to get into all that. It would make her interaction with Marcus seem—artificial. “Why not?”
“I’m not afraid of much. But if I had to pick something to avoid, jealous husbands would be near the top of the list. Just not worth the hassle.”
“If they wanted to watch, they wouldn’t be jealous, don’t you think?”
“So is that it? Your husband knows you are with me, and he isn’t going to be jealous at all? Maybe that’s your problem.”
“Who said I had a problem?”
“Would you be here if you didn’t?”
Marcus still knew her. She hadn’t explained much of anything, but he knew her, he knew what drove her. What it must have taken to get her to do this.
The car stopped. Melissa hadn’t been paying attention, but they were at her hotel.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
Chapter 14
In the elevator Melissa’s phone buzzed, a text. At first she ignored it, then realized with a jolt that she had not let Richard know she had arrived safely, as she had promised. Helplessly aware of Marcus standing next to her, she reached into her purse for her phone.
The text was from Julie, telling Melissa she had landed. Melissa sent a quick response that she would be in touch later. Then, hoping that Marcus wasn’t reading over her shoulder, she texted Richard. ‘Arrived okay.’
Melissa hit send and put the phone back in her purse, but just as the doors opened her phone buzzed again.
Richard, responding. She felt even more guilty, imagining him staring at his phone, waiting for her to contact him.
‘How did it go? Didn’t want to disturb you.’
She hesitated briefly, then texted back as she led Marcus down the hallway. ‘Just reconnected.’
Melissa thought that would be the end of it, especially given how Richard had made a point of staying mostly incommunicado.
But her phone lit up again. ‘Do what you need to do. No matter what happens, I love you.’
Melissa stared at the words, so many complications, so many contradictions in those two sentences, those two clashing thoughts.
She slipped the phone back into her purse and took out her key. She hesitated before her hotel room door, staring at her key, as if it would give her the answers she needed.
There was only one way to find out. She slipped the key in the slot and opened the door.
Inside, Melissa flicked on the light and took a few steps into the room, the door clicking shut behind her. Her first thought was to hit the minibar, she could use a drink now. But she had something to say first.
She stopped, feeling Marcus behind her, but she didn’t turn to face him. “You asked me why I was here. In some ways it’s simple, in other ways it’s complicated.”
“That usually means it’s just simple, and there’s a lot of rationalizing going on.”
“Not in this case.”
“Give me the simple version.”
Melissa didn’t feel she could face him and maintain what little composure she had left. “I’m missing something in my marriage. I need to know if I should be with someone else, someone who—excites me more. Fulfills me.” That hadn’t come out just right, but it was the simple version.
His voice, when it came, was harsh. “So that’s it? I’m some kind of test case?” He sounded pissed.
Melissa shook her head. “No, that’s not it.”
She tried to think of a better way to say it, without getting into all the detail, but before she could speak Marcus grabbed her arm and spun her around.
Melissa looked up at him, her eyes wide, her body quivering. She was alone in a hotel room with another man, a man she had never stopped thinking about, a man she didn’t have to wonder whether sex with him would be good, instead a certainty, the best sex in her life.
Her pursed slipped to the floor.
Now Marcus seemed totally focused on her as he held her, one hand on each arm, his grip such that she was being more than held, but less than restrained. Just the perfect amount of pressure, and yet with the undercurrent of both safety and danger. Safety in that Melissa felt she could simply sag, and he would keep her from falling. And danger, in that she felt completely in his power.
Marcus turned her, effortlessly, and Melissa was half carried two steps to the wall, her legs not having the will or the power to resist. She felt the hard wall against her back, her hands reaching for it without thinking, a response to keep from getting crushed. Marcus followed her, giving her no quarter, and now his entire body was against hers. Melissa pulled her legs together, a ridiculous attempt at protection, ludicrously demure.
He held her like that for the longest time. Melissa felt her temperature rise, surely Marcus could feel it, surely he could hear her heart pounding. He moved even closer, and she was forced to turn her head, her hair brushing his neck, her cheek now against his chest, which seemed harder than the wall behind her.
The spark she had felt when Marcus had first touched her in the elevator now grew into a cascade of snapping bolts, arcing between them, sending sparks not only onto her skin but inside her. If he had let her go, even with the weakness in her legs, she would have been locked there, welded in place by the sheer connection.
This was more than arousal, this was more than lust. Every nerve in her entire body was dangerously alive.
Still Marcus did nothing else except hold her, not in an embrace, but like he might a possession. Squeezed against him as she was, she couldn’t see his face, but it was indelibly etched on her mind.
Ever so slowly he rubbed his chin against her hair, just a whisper of contact, a promise of something more than just a physical connection.
Melissa longed for that to continue, for more of it, or anything like it that would signal something beyond the physical.
She held her breath, but Marcus didn’t repeat the stroke.
“Spread your legs,” he ordered.
That wasn’t what she wanted, it wasn’t what she was hoping for, so she tried to shake her head, but he was holding her so closely she doubted he even felt it.
Her legs seemed to move of their own volition, her knees spreading every so slightly, as if she had no control over her body.
“More,” he said.
Melissa pushed against him with all her strength, and even that was only enough to separate herself from him by an inch. “No. Stop it.”
Marcus waited just a beat, but he didn’t let her go. “I will if you aren’t wet.”
Melissa shook her head again, not to deny her wetness, she knew it and he knew it. “It’s too fast,” she said.
“It’s been ten years,” he said. “Time to end this charade.”
And with that Marcus slid his hands up her arms onto her shoulders, and pushed her down to her knees.
Even as it was happening Melissa knew she should resist, she should be stopping this, she knew he would stop if she told him to. Or begged him to; Marcus wouldn’t take anything but a sure no at this point, because he knew she wanted him, she wanted everything, right now.
Melissa slid down the wall, feeling it grab against her hair, feeling it pull at her blouse. Her hands reached around his back, her fingers grasping. It was like trying to grab a rock, slick and smooth. Out of habit she squeezed his ass, and the memory of that touch came back to her. Even his ass hadn’t changed, how could that be?
And then she was on her knees, her face just inches from his crotch, his erection reaching out to her through his slacks.
Melissa felt a rush, she knew it was stupid, feeling pride that she still excited him, knowing that any man with a woman on her knees in front of him would get hard. And yet just this single indication of his desire vindicated her, relieved her from all her worries that she wasn’t attractive, that she had lost it, that Marcus especially wouldn’t want her.
She would pretend that it was only for her that he was reacting this way, that no other woman would have affected him this way.
This position should have made her feel degraded, it should have made her angry. But all she felt was arousal.
Marcus didn’t move, he didn’t tell her what he wanted, he didn’t stroke her head or force himself onto her.
He was waiting for her to make the first move.
Melissa knew she could stop here. It would be so hard to deny her body and her desire, but she thought she could do it. They had touched, but they hadn’t had sex. They hadn’t even kissed. She could go back to Richard, confident in her sexuality, and bring this memory back with her, a renewed experience to hold in her head when she was having sex with Richard, maybe even telling him about it. Ma
ybe that would be enough.
She hadn’t crossed the line yet.
Still Marcus waited.
Melissa never would have imagined this, that she would be luxuriating in being on her knees, being so tempted by another man, and so help her, by the thrill of infidelity.
She’d come this far. Where exactly was the line?
She reluctantly let go of Marcus’s ass, only willing to do so because she wanted to touch something else. She deftly unzipped his fly.
His erection virtually sprang at her face, and she turned away, letting his cock caress her cheek. She made small circles against it, feeling it stiffen, letting the curve of his glans catch against her jawbone.
She glanced up, hoping he’d be looking at her, and he was, his eyes open. Focused on her.
On her. And not on someone else, or on just the feeling.
Melissa slipped her arms around his thighs, continuing to stroke him with her cheek, his cock so hard now the head of it reached her neck.
Had she crossed the line now?
She closed her eyes, moving her head back and forth, rubbing his cock between her chin and her neck.
“Spread your legs,” she said, mimicking his order to her.
Marcus hesitated briefly, and she wondered if he was resisting this giving up of control. Then he shifted his body slightly, his stance widening. Melissa used the movement to push him away just a little, so that she could see his entire cock.
She didn’t think it would be as big as she had remembered, just as when you were young everything seemed huge, but when you went back years later, things didn’t seem big at all. But it was. It was longer and thicker than even she remembered, than even she had fantasized about. And still it was not fully erect.
She reached up and unbuckled his belt, pulling his pants down, feeling him shimmy to help her. Melissa caught a glimpse of dark blue, he still wore boxer briefs, that hadn’t changed either.
Of all the men Melissa had slept with before her marriage, Marcus was the only one whose underwear she remembered.
She turned her head slightly and moved in on him, letting the shaft run along her cheek once again, but this time she didn’t stop, but kept going, her lips finding the inside of his thigh, kissing it, her eyes closed now, but fully aware of his manhood so close to her mouth, his shaft, his scrotum.