I glanced at the full, creamy-white breasts of the draped nude and then back at Allee. “It turns me on,” I said breathily. And makes me want to tear off your clothes.
“That’s a very profound effect.” Her mouth curled into that wickedly seductive smile.
I wanted her. Badly. Nervously checking for onlookers—there were none as everyone had gathered at the other end of the gallery to hear my mother’s speech—I moved in close, so close that our hipbones touched. Allee didn’t flinch. I raised my arms above her and pressed my hands, still holding those two damn glasses of champagne, against the cold marble. Closing my eyelids halfway, I leaned into her and felt her warm, sweet breath heat my cheeks. My lips latched onto hers—oh, how delicious they were! —and as my kiss deepened with her moan, I felt my collar-length, sandy hair yanked from behind.
“What the fuck?”
Startled, I pulled away and spun around, sending one of the glasses of champagne crashing to the floor.
It was Charlotte. Her face was red with rage, her eyes narrowed into angry slivers. She grabbed the other champagne flute out of my hand and tossed the chilled bubbly contents into my face. Her eyes clashed with Allee’s. “You lowlife whore,” she screamed. Hurt washed over Allee, but she remained silent and still.
Charlotte grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket. “We’re leaving.”
As she jerked me away, I turned my head. Allee still hadn’t moved. Her gaze locked on mine as if we’d never see each other again. I felt sickened.
Charlotte made me take her to her Sutton Place co-op; the air between us during the ride was frigid. She stormed into her luxurious apartment and stomped straight to the bedroom. When she returned, she was holding a pile of my clothes that I had left there. She dumped them onto the floor. She disappeared again, returning with a large pair of scissors. Still in her slinky gown, she plunked down on the floor and immediately started shredding each and every piece. Every shirt. Every pair of jeans. Every pair of boxers. Every tie and tee. There wasn’t a single tear shed. Or even misty eyes. Just pure, manic madness. She’d had her moments, especially when we bickered about getting engaged—she was ready, I was not—but I’d never seen her like this before. I watched with my eyes frozen wide.
“You fucking asshole,” she shrieked. “Get the fuck out of my life.”
I’d never heard her curse before tonight. Never. I didn’t move.
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” she screamed, her voice shrill.
Suddenly, it hit me. She was breaking up with me. And not the other way around.
“GO!” Leaping to her feet, she grabbed one of her many Lalique figurines and hurled it at me. It hit me hard in the head, narrowly missing my eye, before it smashed to smithereens on the polished hardwood floor. I rubbed my throbbing forehead and felt warm blood trickle beneath my fingers.
The vicious assault left me dazed. But one thing was clear. That was it. I was out of there, and she was out of my life.
The breakup. That’s how it happened. As simple and as fast as that.
FIVE
The next day I was again the center of attention at my office with the Band-Aid I was wearing above my right brow to cover my nasty gash, courtesy of Charlotte.
“What happened, dude?” asked Duffy, stifling a smart-ass smile. “You get into a fight?”
“I broke up with Charlotte.”
His eyes popped. “She did that to you?”
“Yeah.” I told him the details of her rampage.
“Man, she’s one crazy bitch.” He high fived me. “You should be happy it’s over.”
The truth is, I was. I was a free man. Free to see another. Over lunch at my desk, I called the Metropolitan Museum of Art and asked if they could get a message to a tour guide named Allee. “A-L-L-E-E,” I spelled out.
“You mean Allee Adair?” asked the operator, clearly impressed by who I was.
So, she was probably Irish. I should have guessed that by her coloring. “Yes,” I said, sure that there wasn’t another tour guide with her unusually spelled first name.
“Please tell her that I’d like to meet her for dinner. Have her call me on my cell phone.” I gave the operator my number and hung up.
All afternoon, it was difficult for me to focus. My head hurt from the cut, and I waited anxiously to hear back from Allee. Finally, at four p.m., my cell phone rang. I recognized the caller ID number. The Met’s. It had to be her.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly.
“Hi,” she said back in that raspy voice that completely undid me.
“So, would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“Sure. As long as I pay for my share.”
Man, she was a strange bird. “Fine. I’ll pick you up. What time do you get out of work?”
“Six.”
“Great. Meet me in front of the museum.”
“Look for me.” CLICK.
I hit “END” on my iPhone and sucked in a deep breath. It had been a long time since I’d asked a girl out on a first date. That tingly excitement I’d felt as a teenager surged inside me. I knew the perfect place to take her. And since she insisted on going Dutch, it wouldn’t cost her an arm and a leg on her meager salary.
The restaurant I took Allee to was a small Greek diner on Madison Avenue, just a few blocks away from the Met. It had been there forever. My nanny Maria used to take me and my sister there when we were kids. I remembered it having the best hot fudge sundaes in the world.
We sat facing each other in a red leather booth. The restaurant, which was extremely popular at breakfast and lunch, was not too busy at this time of day. It was filled mostly with older, neighborhood residents, many of them dining alone with a newspaper or book. After perusing the menu, we both ordered the Tuesday special—chicken potpie. When I added a glass of the house white wine, Allee followed suit.
I immediately imbibed the wine after the waiter set the two glasses on the table. My stomach bunched with nerves. What do you say to a girl on your first date? It had been such a long time. The stuff I used to talk about in high school and college would probably come across as plain out stupid. Like what’s your major? Or what are you going to do after you graduate?
Allee didn’t touch her wine. Instead, she scrutinized my face, zeroing in on the Band-Aid on my forehead. “So, Golden Boy, what the hell happened to your face?”
Although I really was tired of talking about it, I was glad she had started some form of conversation.
“Shaving mishap.” Embarrassment mixed with shakiness as I flashed back to my violent breakup with Charlotte.
“Bullshit. I don’t know any guys who shave their forehead.” She paused as she studied my face further. “It was her. That blond psycho-bitch.”
I grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Your girlfriend? She looks like your type.”
“Ex-girlfriend.” It actually felt good to say that. Liberating.
She nodded pensively and took a sip of her wine. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Finally, she said, “I hope she looks worse.”
I couldn’t help smiling. Her wicked sense of humor made her even sexier.
“So, Madewell, tell me something I don’t know about your life.”
She hardly knew a thing about my life. I told her how I was born into privilege, or at least, that’s how others perceived it. Actually, it was more a life of neglect. “My mother was never there for me, and I literally had to make appointments with my father to see him.”
“That’s whacked.” She chuckled. Her laugh was deep and sexy, and it made me smile again. I continued.
“My sister and I were raised by our nanny, Maria. I think if she hadn’t been there for us, we would have run away or turned to drugs. She was loving and kept us grounded. When I turned thirteen, my parents sent me off to boarding school—Andover.”
She snorted. “Bet they couldn’t wait to get rid of you.”
“Yeah. Seriously, if there was a boarding school for preschoolers
, I would have been there.”
She laughed again. I liked the fact that she enjoyed my sense of humor. Charlotte never had, finding my off-color comments totally unnecessary.
“So then what, Golden Boy?”
“No choice. Off to my father’s alma mater, Harvard. He wanted me to major in finance. I wanted to major in English. After a long battle, we finally compromised. He let me major in English as an undergraduate as long as I went to Harvard Business School for grad school. His goal has always been to groom me to take over Madewell Media when he retires.”
“And is that what you want to do?” asked Allee, leaning in closer to me.
“No. I want to be a novelist. But that’s never going to happen. Okay, your turn.”
Allee’s life story was so different from mine yet, in some ways, so similar. At the age of three, she lost her parents, both artists, in a tragic auto accident. From that point on, she went in and out of the foster care system, landing with one unloving family after another. We were both orphans of sorts. What kept her going was education and books. She dreamed and worked hard, earning the grades to get her a partial scholarship and student loan to Parsons, a college known for its fine arts program. On a field trip to the Met in high school, she had fallen in love with art and vowed one day that she would work in a museum.
“Who are your favorite painters?” I asked, intrigued by her passion.
“I know it’s mundane, but I love the French Impressionists. The Madewell Gallery is awesome, but it can’t compare to the Met’s Impressionist collection. I could hang out with those paintings all day.” Her face grew dreamy, and there was yet another level of beauty to her. I think she had no clue how beautiful she was, even in that drab Met uniform.
“Why haven’t you been to Paris?”
Her face turned somber. “I was almost going to go there my junior year in college.”
“Why didn’t you?” I immediately regretted my question because it probably had something to do with not being able to afford it.
She hesitated, running her forefinger around the rim of the wine glass. “I had to deal with some personal shit.”
My eyes widened. “Like what?”
She drained her wine. “Oh, just some crap I don’t want to think about.” Her eyes darted to the right. “Hey, look, here come the chicken potpies.”
She was obviously glad to change the subject. And I wasn’t about to pursue an obviously sensitive issue this early on in the game. We both dug into the steaming dishes. I admired the gusto with which she devoured her crusty pie. So unlike Charlotte, who picked at her food (usually meager salads) like a bird. She even wiped the bottom clean with a chunk of bread.
“Dessert?” I asked.
“Sure… if we split it.”
I ordered one of those delicious hot fudge sundaes that I so fondly remembered from my childhood. When the waiter set it down on our table, my eyes widened. It looked to be everything I remembered it to be. A mouthwatering, overflowing glass of vanilla ice cream, gooey fudge, and whipped cream.
“Do you want the cherry?” I asked Allee, remembering how my sister and I used to fight over it.
“Nope.” She lifted the bright red candied fruit off the heap of whipped cream by its stem and then twirled it around. “Open your mouth,” she ordered.
Taken aback, I did as she asked. She sensuously brushed the cherry around my lips and then dropped it into my mouth. “Swallow.”
Another command. I swallowed it whole. Jesus! The cherry thing was having a strange effect on me. I was getting a serious hard on! Plus, it gave me X-ray vision. I could see Allee’s tits right through her blazer and blouse. They were full and firm, dotted with rosebuds the diameter of the cherry I’d just consumed. I had the insatiable urge to tear off her uniform, lather the whipped cream all over her breasts and then lick it off.
“What are you waiting for, Madewell?” she said. Holy fuck! Was she a mind reader?
Her lips curled up into a saucy, dimpled smile that made me want her more. “The ice cream’s gonna melt.”
I was what was melting. Distracted by my arousal, I dug one of the long sundae spoons deep into the mountain of whipped cream and scooped up a heaping of vanilla ice cream that was dripping with rich chocolate fudge.
“Taste,” I said. My turn to be in charge.
She parted her lush lips, and I slipped the spoon into her mouth. She clamped her lips over the spoon and moaned. It was such a deep, sensual sound that I felt my erection press against my jeans.
After savoring the creamy ice cream a little longer, she spread her lips. I slowly glided out the spoon.
“Mmm. That was so good.”
“Let me give you another taste.” I was getting off on feeding her.
“No, Madewell. Let me feed you.” She reached for the other spoon and filled my mouth with a heaping portion of the hot fudge sundae. It was every bit as good as I remembered it. My eyes met Allee’s. There was only one thing my mouth watered for more —her velvety tongue.
We continued this sensuous back and forth feeding until we were scraping the bottom of the sundae glass. I don’t think I had ever shared a dessert with Charlotte as long as I’d known her.
Before the check came, I asked Allee if she wanted anything else.
“Yes.” She smiled wickedly.
A coffee?
“I want to suck you, Madewell.”
The temperature in the restaurant suddenly rose ten degrees, and my already hard cock boinged under my jeans.
My eyes stayed wide as she gracefully slid under the table. I squirmed as she unzipped my fly. My dick shot out. She wrapped her moist, sweet lips around the crown and rolled her tongue, chilled from the ice cream, around it. Holy shit! She knew how to give good head! Slowly, her mouth descended on the thick hard shaft. I could feel my cock growing bigger, filling the hollows of her cheeks. I was shocked by how much of me she could take in. When she reached the base, she slid her mouth back up and then right back down, her velvety tongue trailing along the back of the shaft. I arched my back and dug my fingers into the leather banquet. The elderly woman in the booth next to ours looked away from her book and eyed me strangely. God knows what she was thinking. As Allee went down on me again, I chewed my lip to stifle a groan. She picked up her pace, exerting gentle pressure with her teeth. My cock was throbbing. A tingling feeling spread from my head to my toes, and my face felt flush. The pressure was quickly becoming unbearable. I was building to a climax. On her next visit to my crown, her tongue flicked the tip. I helplessly could not hold off. My cock spasmed, and I pumped into her mouth with a hiss of relief. She lapped up my release with her tongue as if were creamy, flavorful ice cream. Jesus. I had just gone to heaven. Charlotte had never done this to me. Never. She actually found oral sex repulsive. With a final titillating lick of my dick, Allee zipped up my fly and magically reappeared, her glasses perched atop her head. The little old lady across the way gaped, like she was about to have a coronary. Allee licked her upper lip and shot her a wicked smile. I stifled my laughter.
Man, this girl was too much. The check came before I could say a word. “Let me take care of dinner.” That was the least thing I could do for the mind-blowing blow job she’d given me. She reached for it before I could and, from her purse, pulled out two crisp twenty-dollar bills. “My treat,” she said brightly.
I thought about asking her to spend the night but, in the end, decided against it. Despite the outrageous blow job and my thirst for more of her, it felt too premature. I needed to slow things down, get to know her better, and wrap my head around this new relationship that was taking me to places I’d never been.
“Where do you live?” I asked once we were back on the city streets.
“Queens.” Just as I suspected.
“Can I take you home?”
“Nah. I’ll just take the subway.”
I didn’t like the idea of her going home by herself even though it wasn’t that late. “Are you sure?”
> “Yeah, I’m sure, Golden Boy.”
I ended up walking her to the subway station. She walked briskly and deliberately stayed a distance away from me, making it difficult for me to hold her hand or wrap my arm around her. Man, she was a hard one to figure out. One minute she was down on me, the next almost a stranger.
At the entrance to the subway, I gripped her by the shoulders and flipped her around so that she was facing me. A saucy, dimpled smile played on her face. Balls! It turned me on.
“Can I see you tomorrow night?” I asked.
“Maybe. I work some nights to help pay off my college loan and some other bills. It’s one of those jobs where I’m on call. Sometimes I know in advance, and sometimes it’s last minute.”
“What do you do?” I asked, intrigued and sorry that she had to work two jobs.
“I’m a masseuse.”
“That figures.” The memory of her delicious massage flashed into my head. I suddenly yearned to have her hands all over me. And her tongue.
“I’ll call you in the morning. What’s the best way to reach you?”
“Just call the museum. They’ll get a message to me, and I’ll call you back.”
I leaned in to kiss her but before my lips could reach hers, she gave me a peck on my cheek. “Keep your pants on, Madewell.” With that, she flew down the steps to the subway.
SIX
I woke up in the morning with another boner. I’d dreamt once again about fucking Allee’s brains out. This time she came around me with multiple orgasms. After kicking my covers off, I jerked off, peed, showered, shaved, and got dressed. In that order. Before I left for work, I peeled the Band-Aid off my wound. I glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror. The nasty gash was already healing. With luck, there wouldn’t be a scar to leave me with the memory of Charlotte written on my face for the rest of my life.
What surprised me most, however, about my reflection, was that I looked refreshed and relaxed. My bickering with Charlotte and sleepless nights had taken their toll. But this morning, for the first time in a long while, my blue-green eyes twinkled, and the dark circles beneath them had faded. What an effect this strange girl was having on me. I couldn’t wait to see her again. Hopefully, she would be free tonight.
Undying Love Page 4