Crazy for you.
“Yeah. I think I am.”
“I think you are. You are lucky.” He is stern, not letting me draw my arm away from his flinch-inducing attentions. “This mans—they want to kill me.”
“They didn’t though.”
“No.”
I try to lift my head, peering around. We are somewhere unfamiliar, with peeling wallpaper and a jumble of bunk beds squeezed in any old how.
“Is this…what is this place?”
“I live here. You like?”
“It’s not…the West Cliff Grand. Is it?”
He laughs, and it is half a real laugh. Real progress there.
“We are not in Kansas, Toto,” he misquotes, seeming to relish his ability to say the line. “No, this is not the West Cliff Grand.”
“How did I get here?”
“I bring you.” He mimes the action of hefting a sack of flour. Not a flattering gesture, but I still strongly regret being unconscious for that particular experience.
“Then…what happened? In the bar?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they are still there. I call Security and I go, with you. They are fighting so much they don’t even see.” He chuckles and puts a palm over my forehead, sucking in a breath when he feels the egg-sized bump.
“Oh, my god. You just left…with me?”
“I should stay and be killed? You think?”
“I…no. I guess not.”
“For myself, I don’t care. They can kill me if they like. But for you…is not right. You do nothing wrong. Instead…no, except…yes, except stand in front of me. Why do you do that? So dangerous!”
“I didn’t want to see you hurt.”
He sits back on his heels and frowns at me, as if trying to work out if I am joking.
“I mean it! God, Karel, not everyone is a miserable bastard like you!”
His eyes widen and he stares for a few seconds before breaking into—yes!—a genuine smile. It’s a little bit roguish, a little bit devilish, but it’s definitely genuine.
“You try to help me because you are good person? Eh? Maggie?”
Oh, no. He is onto me. He knows I fancy him. And I’m sure my face is giving me away, a big fat tomato on top of my neck.
“Yes, I bloody am,” I huff, trying to throw him off the scent. “I’m a good person.”
“You would do the same for any man? Like the man with the glass?”
“No, not him. Because he was a violent lunatic.”
“And what if I am a violent lunatic?”
“You’re…not. Are you?”
“I think you’re a good person, Maggie. I think you…I think I like you.”
“You don’t like anyone!”
“I like people who tell me the truth. Who aren’t afraid. Of me, or of a man with a broken glass. I like that.” One finger, slightly skinned, comes to rest beneath my earlobe, stroking it slowly. He puts his face close to mine. I can smell blood and maleness and cigarette smoke. It’s a strangely intoxicating combination. “You,” he whispers, his hot breath inside me, travelling along my ear canal, wrecking my chemistry for all time, “need to go to a hospital.”
The Saturday night wait at Accident and Emergency is long enough for Karel to tell me his entire life story, from a boyhood spent playing in the shipyards of Gdansk at the height of martial law, to an escape to university in the post-Cold War era, to a succession of ill-paid jobs and unsuitable, crumbling apartments.
“It was the only choice. England,” he says, cradling my head against his shoulder, stroking back my hair over my throbbing bump.
“You resent it, don’t you?”
“I suppose. I should go to classes—but I feel like…” He shrugs, unable to find the words. “I am too…”
“Stubborn.”
“What is stubborn?”
“It’s what you are. And bloody-minded. And wasting your time brooding when you could be enjoying life.”
He seems to take this in, or at least the last part of it; the eyes with which he fixes me are troubled.
“I should enjoy my life,” he says slowly. “Yayss. Is so simple?”
Sent away from the hospital with a clear bill of health and some handy painkillers, I am suddenly too shy to make a next move. I should just get a taxi home, shouldn’t I? I should call the hotel and explain my absence. I should…
“Come with me!” says Karel, and he takes my hand, leads me at a swift march across the road and onto the pine-scented Common that lines the top of the cliffs, breaking into a run as our feet hit the grass, pulling me along behind him, laughing and shouting, “Run, Maggie, let’s run!”
It is late now, very late, and the Common is empty; pinecones are shattered beneath my staggering feet, and then beyond the edge of the land I can see the sea, dark midnight blue with glints of reflected moon. The funicular has closed for the night, but Karel finds the zigzagging path that descends to the beach and drags me down it after him until, breathless and giggling, we collapse into a shelter on the seafront, falling into a kiss that makes the earlier stars from my head bump seem tiny and insignificant.
The fit of his face against mine is perfect; I have to grab him round the head, plunge my fingers into his tumble of hair, pull him closer, closer, into me. He has bundled me onto his lap and I lean back against the safety bar of his arm, letting him bend me back ever farther until I feel devoured, consumed, an extension of him. His evening stubble scrapes me raw, but I just don’t care, wanting our mouths to fuse, our skins to meld, the passion that pours in from him and out from me to take permanent root in us.
I never thought those laser-keen brown eyes would be looking at me with anything but animosity; to see them glazed with desire, the pupils enormously dilated, is almost strange enough to make me shiver. I think my body is already performing that response for me, though, quite without explicit prompting, and my heart is bumping against his in a call and response pattern, our pulses synchronized. The blood rushes through me so that I cannot tell if the roar in my ears comes from my own veins or the tide washing up on the sand a hundred yards distant.
I am no longer Maggie—I am the kiss, I am the sensation, I am longing and lust and need and something that might be love. As long as he is close to me, the whole world can fade to black.
His tongue pushes at mine, and it becomes a competition, a race to prove who is the most ardent, which neither of us can win. He concedes this, breaking lips for a moment, but only so he can hold my face still between his palms and drop kisses all over my forehead, my cheeks, my ears, my nose, even my eyelids, slowly and with a reverence I have never seen before from any lover, let alone this proud, ferocious man. I want to return the gesture, because I feel that I could kiss his face all night and every night forever, but he stops me, looking seriously into me, his hands still locked beneath my ears, thumbs on cheeks.
“I am your man,” he says solemnly, as if reciting a vow. “You are my woman. Is right?”
“Is…right,” I echo, almost expecting him to produce a gold band from somewhere, and then, to my stunned surprise, he does something very similar. From an inside pocket, he takes a chain with a pendant depicting a white eagle and he places it around my neck.
“You are welcome in my country,” he says. Does he want me to move to Poland with him? I start slightly, registering alarm. “No, don’t worry!” He smiles and rolls his eyes upward, in self-reproof. “We stay here. But you are…I can’t explain.”
He looks angry again, but angry with himself, for his lack of language skills.
“An honorary Pole?” I hazard.
“What is honorary?”
“Oh, god, I can’t really explain either. Like a Pole?”
“Yes. You are brave, like Polish. So I give you this. And also because I want you.”
Simple as his way of putting things was, it stirred me deeply. It came down to that and only that. Wanting. Wanting a person for your own, wanting everything good to come to them, wanting to hel
p everything good come to them.
“I want you, too,” I tell him, and I put the eagle pendant to my lips and kiss it. He seems intensely moved by this and ducks in to kiss me once more, lingeringly, gently.
“We have said everything,” he says. “I don’t want to talk now. I want to…do.”
“To act?”
“To do. To you.” His smile curls upward into breathtaking roguery. I know exactly what he means. He can say it all with that expressive face.
“Here?” I look around. It is getting cold.
“You have keys to the bar.”
“The bar!”
It only takes a few more kisses to persuade me.
The night porter is reluctant to admit us at first, but he gives up quibbling in the face of Karel’s fierce look, and we find our workplace much as we left it: glass on the carpet, half-drunk spirits, a cigarette butt in one of the tumblers.
“I wonder if Security threw them out?” For some reason I whisper, as if I don’t want to be caught in here.
He shrugs. “They are not important.”
Instantly I am caught up in his embrace once more, my legs held up by his in case they give way, which is not unlikely. He walks me backward, painstakingly, until I fall onto one of the red plush sofas, and then he is looming over me, one hand next to my head, preventing my escape, and the other takes hold of my white uniform blouse and rips it open. A pearl button pings onto a nearby table and I gasp, part thrilled and part outraged. “Karel!”
“I sew it,” he grins, then his head is down there, his hair brushing my throat while he explores my cleavage with the full force of his lips and tongue. His hand works busily at my other buttons, undoing them in a less destructive way, until my lace bra is exposed to him, and his stubble prickles downward, seeking out the overspill of my breasts.
He lures my nipples out of the cups using the tip of his tongue, licking and sucking, taking his time, savoring the flavor. I plant my fingers in his hair, which is reddish-brown and falls over his brow, plentiful and sometimes a little lank. I stroke and knead automatically, my wits absent, all of me concentrated at my nerve endings, especially those between my legs.
He seems to understand instinctively that attention is needed there. He lays me down along the length of the sofa, pulling off my skirt and burying his face in my belly while his fingers stray down beyond the elastic waistband of my knickers. They almost dance, they are so light and nimble. I arch my back and squirm, inviting him to increase the pressure and move on downward, but he loves to tease me and watch my expression as it grows more frantic with need, laughing softly, looking up at me through the valley of my breasts.
“Touch me,” I gasp.
“No talk,” he admonishes, almost but not quite delving into the folds of my vulva. The fingertips are barely there on my outer lips, and I try to buck so that he is tricked into the fast-flowing juices, but he is wise to me and simply gives my thigh a light slap, laughing again, a laughing demon. “Okay,” he says eventually, relenting, and I ease out a low sigh at the sudden invasion of his fingers, properly in and on and around me, pressing and pushing, finding me more than ready for whatever he has in mind. While his fingers work, he watches me intently, catching every nuance of my response to him, every pained twitch, every flutter of my eyelids. “I see what you like,” he tells me, now using two fingers to skewer me, in and out, getting coated with the evidence of my arousal. “I like it, too. You want me? Inside?”
It seems a redundant question, given the rate at which I am flipping about on his fingers, but I am glad that he has asked it. He is not—as I vaguely feared—using me for some kind of sexual revenge. My pleasure matters to him just as his does to me.
“Excuse me,” he says, and I sit bolt upright, watching him disappear to the Gents’. Oh! The condom machine!
I put a hand to my mouth, quashing a hysterical giggle. This, I remind myself, is reality and not a fairy tale. Reality is full of these passion-dampening moments, but it does not make the passion any less intense. I have never wanted anyone as much as I want Karel tonight (and, if I’m honest, for a lot longer than tonight), and I want to hold that feeling close, living out every laden second of it.
“Take your clothes off!” He returns to the bar with a strange swaggering gait caused, I notice to my satisfaction, by the straining bulge at the crotch of his black work trousers.
“What if I don’t?” I flirt, shimmying out of my unbuttoned blouse all the same.
“You will,” he says, throwing off his torn waistcoat and getting to work on his shirt cuffs. His face is dark with purpose and he looks magnificent, stripping down to his taut, hard body, kicking off the shiny shoes, snapping the belt through its loops, his eyes on me. I am down to knickers and bra, the red plush feeling stiff and a little scratchy against my skin. I know there will be friction, but I don’t care. I just want that sexy beast right there, right on me, right now.
He skins on the condom and sits down, erection pointing to the ceiling, grabs one of my ankles and tugs at it. “Here,” he says gruffly. I scramble to my knees and he pulls me by the elbow until I’m straddling him, my arms around his neck, locked into a kiss again.
“You are still dressed,” he grumbles, setting my lips free, but he improvises well, pulling my knickers aside and guiding me onto the wide tip of his cock. I lower myself slowly, feeling every inch as it travels up inside me, joining me to him and him to me. Here we are now, one being, connected at the pelvis, filling each other, giving to each other, taking from each other. And so we cross the frontier, becoming real lovers, sexual partners, a couple. Karel holds me by the hips, controlling my pace, keeping it slow and sensual. He bends down to tease my nipples with his tongue, or he sucks hard at my neck, hard enough to mark it, or he moves his hands around to cup my bottom, squeezing it hard, moving me a little faster now. I love to hear the throaty sounds he makes, the little gasps of joy or growls of lust. He is a very expressive lover; I think if he knew more English he would be talking dirty to me, but for now he contents himself with grunts and squeezes and a few light slaps to my behind while his tongue finds the places that melt me with unerring skill.
He is urging me on now, and it is hard work. I have to use all the strength of my upper thighs and abdomen to keep up the pace, but it is worth it. The friction sparks hotter and hotter sensations; his eyes are great gaping black pupils of lustful distress as his grip on self-control begins to slip. He shudders and shivers beneath my energetic assault. I dip my head and suckle his neck, feeling my climax approach, and he begins to make broken, helpless noises in his throat, and then I am there, and he is there, and we are there together, one explosion of fire-cracker heat, melting through us, burning us into one.
The man who was closed is open now. I am grateful as well as blissful when I lay my head against his sweating shoulder. We hold each other until we stop trembling and our hearts begin to slow; his lips are against my hair, mine down in the delicious flesh of his swanlike neck.
“You think we have job tomorrow?” he asks idly.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s summer. There are jobs like this everywhere. At the fairground, on the pier, at the kiosks, in the shops. We’ll be okay.”
“I know we will. We will be okay. We will take care of…you and me.”
“Each other,” I correct. “And I’m teaching you better English. Who knows, it could get you out of these dead-end jobs.”
He smiles broadly. “Which am I?” he asks. “Sweet, medium or dry?”
I laugh. “None of those. I think you’re a Polish spirit, served icy cold but able to set you on fire inside.”
He nods. “I like.”
We kiss again, amidst the glass splinters, which are starting to sparkle in the rising sun.
THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM
Charlene Teglia
When the elevator came to a halt and the lights went out, Lynn Taylor gritted her teeth and said, “This is going too far, don’t you think?”
&n
bsp; The elevator’s only other occupant snorted in the darkness. “Are you blaming me for this? Did I cause the latest stock market crash, too? Maybe this is your fault. Maybe you set this up because you want me back.”
“I want you back like I want a dozen donuts. It sounds like a good idea and the initial rush is fantastic, but then I’d be left with that sick feeling and the realization that I should have had a V-8.” Lynn blew out her breath and then said, “Okay, it’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. It’s bad luck and poor building maintenance. Our only fault here is in not moving out of these apartments fast enough.”
She groped forward, arms outstretched, until she found the control panel. She started hitting buttons at random in the vain hope that one of them would do something.
“Good, try to get the emergency phone,” Nick said. “It should be below the buttons.”
Right. I knew that, Lynn thought. She felt her way down and located the box with the phone and pulled it free. Then she swore. “No dial tone.”
“No problem,” he said in the calm, commanding tone of voice he was probably used to using in emergencies. “Don’t panic. Do you have your cell phone with you?”
Lynn pictured her cell phone, tucked inside her briefcase, sitting on her kitchen counter. It might as well have been on Pluto. “No.”
“No? Christ, Lynn, when are you going to start being more careful? I bought that for you so you wouldn’t ever be stuck in a situation like this and couldn’t get help.”
She felt her face stretch into an evil smile. “Well, where’s your cell phone, Mr. Prepared?”
“I dropped it yesterday. I was going to pick up a replacement on my way home from work and decided to stop off at the apartment first.” She heard him move in the darkness and then felt his hands close over her shoulders. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not my job to keep you safe anymore, is it?”
“It was never your job.” She shouldn’t have let him pull her back to rest against his chest, shouldn’t have relaxed into him when he did. But old habits died hard, and Nick Logan was a very hard habit to kick. She’d tried twice during their on-again, off-again relationship over the last year and hadn’t really succeeded yet.
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