She swiped furiously at her face as a tear spilled down her cheek. She nodded. “All right.”
He avoided the subject of their date earlier that week for the whole ride home and for the whole time they sat in the basement coffee shop. Ina gave up trying to steer the conversation and just let herself enjoy being with him. It all would have been a pleasure if every twinge of physical attraction she felt hadn’t brought a fresh sense of rejection on its heels.
He took her to dinner after coffee, and still Saeed seemed in no hurry to make good on his promise of an explanation. As she pushed away her dessert plate, Ina drilled her gaze into his. “Thanks for all this, but I’m not going with you for after-dinner drinks or dancing or whatever until we talk about the other night.”
Saeed ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Why don’t you walk me home, and we can talk about it at my apartment?”
“Are you serious? You wouldn’t be ashamed to have a slut like me at your home?” Ina hadn’t realized how angry she was until she heard the bitterness of her words.
He grimaced. “Please. I never intended—” He gave a brief shake of his head. “Please.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
He shrugged, pushed back from the table and stood. She took the hand he offered, shivering at the grace with which he guided her to her feet.
Saeed lived just a few blocks away from her but on a much nicer street. While Ina’s neighborhood was full of mouse-infested, cheap, student apartments, Saeed had an apartment on the top floor of someone’s real home. Flowerpots lined the porch, and the name QASIM was painted on the mailbox.
“I rent from relatives,” he explained, leading her up the stairs to his private entrance. The small apartment was overstuffed but neat, the bookshelves crammed and the walls covered with photographs and decorations. “I’ve never had a woman in here before,” Saeed said.
“Usually, you do it at her place.” Ina felt a pang of guilt when she saw the hurt that flashed across his face. She pressed her hand to her eyes. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t—”
He sighed and flung himself into a red armchair in the center of the living room. After a pause, Ina took a seat on the couch across from him.
“Ina, I’ve never dated in the American way.”
She stared at him, studying his handsome features for any sign of a joke. “You don’t mean you’re a virgin?”
He shook his head sharply. “No, in college I would hook up with girls sometimes. It was never anyone I’d have wanted to be seen with the next day.”
“So what do you mean when you say you’ve never dated?”
“The way I was raised, it would be scandalous for us to be sitting in my living room alone together.” He smiled. “I’ll hear about it tomorrow from my cousin downstairs. According to my parents, I shouldn’t have been out to dinner with you, I shouldn’t have asked you to share that cab with me.” Saeed swallowed. “I certainly shouldn’t have touched you the way I did that first day. Yes, I’ve slept with women I didn’t care about as part of my adolescent rebellion, but this thing with you is different. Or I want it to be, anyway.”
Ina rose and stood next to his chair. After a moment, he wound one arm around her waist and pulled her down to sit on the armrest. “Saeed, I don’t want to be your secret or your mistake. And I don’t want to feel like you disapprove of me for wanting to be with you.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his face against her stomach. “I’m glad you want to be with me.”
She stroked her hand through his hair. “What happened last time?”
He exhaled. “I wanted you so badly that I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know what to do.”
“What about now?” Ina whispered.
“I’ve thought about it. A lot. I still want you that way. But I also want you to be my girlfriend. Does that sound ridiculous? I could see myself telling my family about you.”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous.”
Saeed stood, bringing her up with him. “I believe I should choose what parts of my tradition to follow, but I did grow up a certain way. My family thinks I’m too American, and Americans always think I’m too Saudi. What about you?”
“I think you’re wearing too many clothes,” Ina said, wanting to test him.
Saeed’s face turned serious, and she worried that he would cut their night short again. After a long moment, a slow burn of a smile spread across his face. “You’re probably right.” He reached to unbutton his shirt.
Ina grinned and stepped closer, brushing his hands aside. She stripped off his shirt, running fingertips and fingernails over his chest and following her hands with her lips. Saeed pulled her head up to meet one kiss then another, his tongue gentle but insistent against hers.
They were both breathless when they broke apart. He stroked down the side of her neck and across her collarbone then cupped her breast. Ina pulled off her shirt and bra. Saeed dropped to his knees and kissed and nibbled across her stomach as he teased her nipple with his fingers. She swayed a little, feeling the powerful desire that pooled between her legs.
When he reached for the button of her jeans, Ina stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Are you sure about this, Saeed? I don’t know if I’ll be able to get over it if you reject me again.”
He pulled her onto the floor with him, wrapping her in the exact sort of embrace she’d wanted on the day she’d met him. She breathed against him, enjoying the warmth of his body and the hard heat of his cock as it pressed against her stomach through his pants. When he moved again to take off her jeans and underwear, she let him.
“What we did the other night meant that much to you?” he said.
Ina sighed and gripped his face so that he looked into her eyes. “What are you worried about? You think this might just be a hookup to me?”
“I wouldn’t want you to take advantage of me.” Beneath the surface of his humor, she saw the flash of real insecurity that crossed his face. He looked younger to her now, so uncertain compared to the confident and unapproachably handsome professional man on the bus.
She stroked the side of his face, loving the sight of his big, warm eyes and the tiny curls of dark hair above his ears. “Dating is weird,” Ina said. “It’s just a decision. It’s something more than sex because we say it is.”
Saeed ran his hand down the length of her body. “No,” he said. “To me, it could never be just sex with you, no matter what I decided.” His fingers trailed over her thighs, found their way to her cunt and dipped inside. Ina let out a loud moan, gripping his arm.
Saeed stiffened, and Ina shook her head to clear it. “God, I’m sorry,” she said. “Do we need to be quiet?”
He looked at her for a long time, his face hard to read. Then he grinned and pulled her closer. “Let them hear it.”
He rolled onto her. Ina wound her legs around his waist, bucking her hips up against his erection. They both fumbled to open his pants, getting in each other’s way with playful, desperate fingers. Ina peeled off his pants and underwear as soon as she could, throwing them across the room. “Do you have a condom?” she panted.
“In my pants pocket.”
She groaned. Saeed kissed her and went to retrieve his clothes. He came back wearing the condom and knelt between her legs. “Is it too fast?”
“Feel how wet I am.”
He settled into her arms and pushed into her. Ina arched her back at the sharp sensation of his cock pressing in deep. They were both still a moment. Even through the condom, she could feel his pulse pounding through his cock. “I’m really inside you,” he said, trailing off into a groan as she angled her hips and tightened around him.
Ina moved under him, curling her pelvis up and down, pressing her clit against his pubic bone and dragging his cock against her inner walls. At first, he held himself up on his elbows and just watched her face. She tried to keep her eyes open and focus on his face above hers. The citrus smell of him grew stronger as their bodies heated toget
her.
Then Ina’s movements grew sharper and Saeed began to move, driving slow and deep into her body. She let his rhythm take over, pressing her hips up and spreading her legs wider. She couldn’t stay quiet anymore, her voice rising in little sounds that became pleas and then cries.
Instead of centering on her clit, this orgasm bubbled up slowly from deep in her womb. She grabbed his shoulder blades and thrust up against him, whimpering. Every inch of him felt excruciating to her as her body softened more and more around his hard length. Saeed murmured something not in English and thrust hard. Ina breathed in as the pleasure struck her brain with shattering clarity. “Please, please, please,” she gasped incoherently, her voice all breath now.
Saeed whispered her name and slipped his hands under her body, lifting her to meet his thrusts. He moved faster, every stroke drawing out the orgasm until it seemed to go on forever. When it finally passed, the excruciating sensations remained, and Ina continued to press desperately against him.
His whispers grew loud and hoarse. She clawed at him, pulling him deeper into her as her hips moved frantically to match his pace. He seemed to grow inside her. Saeed put his lips right up against her ear, letting her hear the catch in his throat and set of soft moans that accompanied his pleasure. Ina threw her head back as Saeed’s increasing excitement made her come again. He joined her in orgasm.
After they caught their breath, she wrapped one arm around the back of his head, pressing her forehead against his. “Everything all right?” Ina said. “No regrets?”
“I should have taken you to my bed,” he said with a rueful smile. “I think I tore my knees open on the rug.”
“Next time.”
“Next time,” he agreed. He lifted his weight off her, gazing at her face in a way that made her heart pound. “Seriously, Ina, I’m glad. If you had never fallen on me on the bus…”
“You’re an easy guy to fall on,” Ina grinned, lifting herself up on one elbow.
Saeed snorted, touching her lightly to acknowledge the joke. His hand lingered and then wandered to her breasts.
“Looks like next time might be very soon,” Ina said.
“Mmm, seems likely,” Saeed said, drawing her into his arms.
LINGUA FRANCA
Justine Elyot
This one is sweet. This one is medium. This one is dry. Yes? Repeat for me, please?”
“Is sweet. Is m…” He hesitates over the pronunciation, and it comes out as “meddiom.”
“Medium.”
“Meeeeeedium.”
I cock my head at him, wondering if he is teasing, or genuinely struggling. But then I do a lot of wondering about Karel. And not all of it concerns his accent.
“That’s it,” I say, wishing I could sound less patronizing. His eyes are stormy; I think he truly hates me. And I really don’t want to be the overbearing boss woman. I hate this role. He is older than I am, and I think he has all kinds of Polish qualifications, and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to run through all this obvious ABC stuff with him. But I’m the bar manager. I have to do it. So I’m doing it. “And the last one?”
“Dry,” he says, with a flourishing rolled r, tossing his head and smiling insincerely. Even his insincere smile is stunning—I can only imagine how world-illuminatingly gorgeous his sincere one must be. It would be nice to see it sometime.
“Okay, and can you run me through the mixers?”
“Gin, vodka, white rum, dark rum…” He reels them off like a catechism, and when he reaches the end I want to stick a gold star on his shirt or clap or say, “Good boy,” but I know he would probably murder me, so I just smile tightly and say, “Right. Well, I’ve some accounts to do and the bar opens in ten minutes, so I’ll leave you to it, Karel. See you later.”
He says nothing, bending down to retrieve some glasses from the washer, but I catch a brief “Bye,” on my exit.
It is Karel’s fifth Saturday as a barman at the West Cliff Grand, and I’m no closer to knowing anything about him than I was on his first. I know that he is a man. I know that he is Polish. I know that he has the angriest, most beautiful face I have ever seen in my life. And that is all I know. Once more, the columns of pounds and pence swim before my eyes as I ask myself where he lives, what he likes, who he loves and whether he will ever say anything polysyllabic to me.
Every day (except Tuesday) we edge past each other, at the pumps or the optics or the glass washer, avoiding eyes and speaking a language that is reduced to its base elements: yes, no, right, okay, what, where, why. If I try to correct him, his eyes flash hot sparks of rage; if I compliment him, the rage is more intense still. If I try to talk to him, properly, as I have at the end of a few shifts, he checks his watch and says, “Must go, have meeting.”
Tempting as it is to leave him to solo bar duties this afternoon, I know there is a big wedding reception booked, and I would be derelict in my duty. Reluctantly I shut up my ledgers, stow them in the filing cabinet and head, slow-footed and full of familiar dread, to the bar.
There is tension in every single move he makes: in the washing of a glass, the jabbing of the till buttons, the scooping up of ice. It is disquieting but riveting, and, while the bar lazes in the early part of the afternoon, I find it difficult to keep my eyes off him. I want to know him. Actually, I want him. I wince at the stray thought and try to bat it away, but it is stubborn. For one despairing second, I consider resigning and looking for work in another hotel, just to wean myself off this weird addiction. It is like a lesion on my skin, growing there, needing lasers to remove it and cure me.
Soon enough, the wedding guests begin to drift in—an advance party of beefy young men requiring lagers, followed by their fathers and uncles splashing out on the spirits. Swaths of vivid color among the morning-suit grays and blacks denote the presence of women, sipping at wines or cocktails with cherries.
“Oh, no, I think a Liebfraumilch might be too sweet,” an elderly lady in a feathered turban is telling Karel, to his expressionless disgust. “But that other one is certainly too dry. Perhaps a sherry. Do you have Harvey’s Bristol Cream?”
“Yayss,” says Karel. I love his accent. I want him to talk to me. I want him to tell me about his homeland while we walk along the beach at sunset, hand in hand… Yeah, get real, Maggie. There’s a whole mob of customers at the bar, and I’m completely ignoring them in favor of swooning over a man who hates me. I need to snap out of it.
I snap out of it for well over an hour, serving the postprandial bride and groom and guests until the majority of them disappear next door for the first dance and beginnings of the disco. I nod at Karel to take his break, then, thirty minutes later, I take mine on the terrace, smoking a much-needed cigarette and looking out to the darkening sea.
Back in the bar, only a few of the more hardened soaks are lounging at the tables. As I walk through the door, I notice one of them take a pack of cigarettes and lighter from his pocket and move to spark up in the room.
“Excuse me,” says Karel, in the middle of wiping a glass. “Is forbidden smoking inside.”
“You what, mate?” The tone is belligerent. I bristle. This sounds like trouble. “D’you speak English? What did he say?”
The man’s friends all pitch in. “Dunno. Some foreign gobbledygook. Can you say that in English, mate?”
This is a periodic difficulty at the hotel. Somebody, usually somebody very drunk, will want to start a fight with Karel on the basis that he is Polish. Karel has handled it well up until now, but he has never faced a whole table full of these lowlifes before.
“There’s a smoking area outside,” I tell them, walking over to the table in an effort to place myself between it and the bar.
“Thanks, love, but we’re talking to Count Dracula here.” There is ribald laughter. “Come on then? You got a problem with us? You got something to say? Say it in English, boy!”
“You don’t smoke in here,” says Karel, his chin defiantly set. “I think is stupid—I like to sm
oke, too. But is forbidden.” He shrugs and glares at me, as if telling me to get out of his fight.
“If you don’t like our laws, boy, you can go back home.” The smoker is on his feet now. No amount of ingratiating, or rationalizing or sympathizing is going to deflect him from his one avowed purpose tonight. His face is an ugly purple, and he has ripped off his tie and picked up a glass, holding it high in one hand.
“Get out! You’re barred!” I cry in a hopeless attempt to preempt the next move, but there is a huge splintering of glass and then the smoker has vaulted over the table, brandishing his jagged weapon at Karel.
“Come on then! D’you want some? Show us how you fight over there.”
“You really want to know?” Karel’s sneer is so frightening that it would make a Roman Legion turn tail—a sober Roman Legion, that is, not one that had drunk enough to fell an ox, like these boys. No matter how much rage and loathing might be boiling in Karel’s soul, he is one man against seven, and I cannot see a way out for him.
I leap for the aggressor’s wrist, trying to get the broken glass from him, but he throws me off with such force that I knock my head against the bar and see stars. All the same, I rise again, determined to come to Karel’s aid. Through my daze, I see that the glass has ripped his shirt and superficially cut his chest, but he is leaping over the bar, fifty suns’ worth of gleam in his eyes, feet first, fists flying, and I hurl myself into the middle of it and then…I don’t know.
“Stupid,” is the first word I hear on returning to consciousness. I recognize the accent and thank God, or whoever else might be responsible, that Karel must still be alive. “Stupid girl.”
“You can’t talk to me like that. I’m your boss,” I say weakly. I wince at a sudden sting on my forearm—it is witch hazel, applied by Karel, whose slowly focusing face bears down on me, looking as pissed off as ever and twice as sexy. “Where are we? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. But you. Are you crazy?”
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