The List

by Anne Calhoun

  He coaxed her next orgasm out of her using just his fingers, blowing gently on her clit, watching the nub swell and redden again as he stroked and curled. His pinky finger pressed into her cleft so when she started to come the second time, he felt the contractions inside and out.

  After the third orgasm, she cried out, “Stop. Oh, please, no more!”

  He was lightheaded with need, blood pooling dangerously in his cock and balls. She filled his senses, taste and sound and smell and vision and touch, so much touch he thought she was seared into his skin. He couldn’t remember anything but her, this room. He crawled up her body, clumsy with desire, fumbling with the cords until she had one hand loose. Then he collapsed beside her, half crazed, wanting her, refusing to take her.

  She unfastened the second cord and rolled him to his back. “That was,” she murmured against his mouth, “unbelievably hot.”

  He couldn’t answer, because her tongue was lapping at his lips and jaw while her hand went to his belt buckle. His brain couldn’t process multiple stimuli, so he forced himself to focus.

  She was licking her juices from his face, chasing every smear of fluid down his jaw, across his throat, kissing it back into his mouth. He groaned, then heard a zipper, felt her hand shove at his trousers and underwear, trying to lower them down his hips. He used the hand not wrapped around her shoulder to help her, and groaned again when his cock sprang free.

  She palmed the tip, spreading his precome to ease her way. He jerked and groaned into her mouth when she gripped him firmly and began to jerk him off, starting out loose and fast until he tightened her grip and slowed her movements.

  She was a quick learner. “God,” he groaned. “Like that.”

  It was over embarrassingly quickly, his shoulders lifting off the bed, his fist tight in her hair to hold her mouth to his as the contractions clenched muscle to bone. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

  He slumped back against the bed. “Sorry,” he muttered, aware that he was gripping her shoulder hard enough to bruise and was holding her by the hair like a caveman.

  She kissed him gently. “Stay where you are.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, because only a citywide emergency involving helicopters and SWAT and maybe the National Guard could get him off this bed in the next few minutes.

  She disappeared through a door he assumed led to a bathroom because he heard water running. When she returned she was wearing a gray silk robe and had a wet washcloth in her hand. He took it and cleaned himself up, then collapsed again. When he opened his eyes next, she was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Yeah.” His hearing was almost back to normal. She didn’t sound like she was at the far end of a tunnel, and he could hear car traffic on Perry Street. He breathed for a little longer, just to remind himself he still could, until he realized she wasn’t lying down next to him. “You want me to go.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have a breakfast meeting.”

  He laughed at the outright dare in her words, and struggled into a sitting position, then assessed her. “Going to walk me out?” he asked, seeing her dare and raising her one of his own.

  “If you insist on it,” she said, and reached for his shirt. Her thigh muscles quivered tellingly when strained.

  “Your legs not quite up to the stairs?” he asked as he shouldered into his shirt.

  “A gentleman wouldn’t point that out.”

  “Let me know when you find one and I’ll ask for etiquette lessons.”

  He fastened everything that needed to be fastened to avoid sidelong stares on the subway, then hooked his jacket with one hand and his shoes with the other.

  Using the bannister for support, she followed him down the stairs, and sat on the steps while he untied his shoelaces. A soft, satisfied smile curved her lips.

  “You didn’t try to have sex with me.”

  “I didn’t,” he agreed as he worked his foot into his shoe.

  “I’m surprised,” she said, watching him with all the self-consciousness of a cat.

  He looked up from tightening his laces, and smiled, then leaned forward to graze a kiss along her cheek. “Good.”

  Her breath caught. He heard the snag, the soft, unconscious, longing noise she made with the air left in her lungs, and drew back just as she turned her mouth to his.

  “Thank you for a very enjoyable evening, Tilda.” The words should have felt stilted or ridiculous, but he meant it. He should be sleepy and relaxed. Instead he was humming with adrenaline.

  She leaned back on her elbows, the soft robe pooling at the tops of her thighs, her hair a tousled wreck, falling to her eyebrows, snarled at the back. Her eyes were lazily amused. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  He almost asked if he could see her again, could see the way her eyebrows lifted, anticipating the question, but he didn’t. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that he would fall farther, faster, and harder than she would. She would have to make the next move. He didn’t need much, a text, a call, a casual request for coffee, and he had no idea whether or not she would make that move. With this woman, darkness and danger walked hand in hand.

  “Lock up after me,” he said, and stepped out into the hot summer night.

  – FIVE –

  September, Autumnal Equinox

  “Paper? You sell paper? Who uses paper anymore?”

  Tilda tore her attention from the door and focused on the small group gathered back of the expansive, high-ceilinged SoHo loft. A man, tall, heavy, squinted at her in what she assumed was an effort to be charming, but came across as a leer. The man withdrew his cell phone from his pocket and waggled it at her. “I have everything I need here. Paper kills trees, and you have to store it and carry it around.”

  “Stationery, actually,” she said, and wondered if she could sneak out to the balcony for a cigarette. “Good quality paper and your handwriting, in ink, on one hundred percent cotton paper, require discipline, self-control, clear thinking, and a fair bit of artistic interpretation. From fonts to apps, that,” she said, nodding at his phone, “is someone else’s artistic vision, even with your customized screen and cover.”

  “Handwriting isn’t art,” he objected.

  “It’s actually drawing,” another woman said as she cut herself a wedge of Brie to go with the crackers on her plate. “Forgers see not letters and words but strokes in certain angles and widths, and replicate them as they’d replicate an artist’s brushstroke technique. Your signature used to be seen as a measure of your education, your standing in society, your manner. An elegant hand was considered to be critical to a lady or gentleman’s persona.”

  The man downed the last of his beer and sidled off. Tilda glanced at the door, then reminded herself she wasn’t looking for someone in particular, and certainly not the very surprising Daniel Logan. No, she was here to meet people, make connections. Perhaps someone here was right for someone on her list.

  “Are you an artist?” Tilda asked.

  “I took some classes in college, about a hundred years ago,” the woman said. “I was repeating what my drawing instructor said. Do you sell anything besides stationery?”

  “Handmade couture paper, bespoke greeting cards, accessories, that sort of thing,” Tilda replied.

  “That’s not exactly what I was thinking,” the woman said, and licked a bit of Brie off her thumb. “I have a friend, an artist who lives in my building, who’s been out of the scene for a while. She used to be famous, then interest moved on, that sort of thing. She never stopped creating, and she wants to know if there’s a market for her current work.”

  Dollars to euros she’d end up sifting through the equivalent of dogs playing poker, but Tilda never turned down that kind of introduction. “I’d be happy to take a look,” she said. “If they’re not right for my shop, I might kno
w someone who would be a more appropriate distributor.”

  “Great, but she’s anti-gallery at the moment, so keep that in mind. Bathsheba Clark. Here’s her number,” she said, smiling as she used a pen from her purse to scrawl a phone number on a napkin. “Not quite art, but it gets the job done. I’ll tell her you’ll be calling.”

  “Ah, here she is.” Her hostess, Dierdre, peered around the wall separating the SoHo loft living space from the kitchen, a suit-clad young man in tow. “Excuse us for a minute, Lisa. Tilda, let me introduce you to one of your fellow countrymen, Colin Wilkinson.”

  Standing beside Dierdre was the perfect example of a cheerful public schoolboy. He had tousled brown hair, a slender frame clad in a Bond Street suit, and despite the fact that they were probably the same age, projected an innocence she’d never had.

  “Tilda sells gorgeous, unique stationery she finds all over the world,” Dierdre said in her best hostess form. “Colin heads up North American acquisitions for Quality Group.”

  Tilda’s smile never changed, even though her heart thunked hard against her breastbone. She’d been trying to get an introduction to someone at Quality for the better part of a year. The London-based arbiter of taste and style the world over tended to stick with known quantities like Smythson of Bond Street, Cartier, and Mrs. John L. Strong, but like any business serving the rapidly changing consumer market, they kept their finger on the pulse of the up-and-coming as well as catered to the traditional. Quality’s distribution channels and connections in the high-end sales markets could take her business from a single shop in Manhattan to a global entity.

  “Hello, Colin,” she said, and held out her hand.

  “A pleasure,” Colin said.

  Dierdre excused herself to greet a newcomer, leaving the two of them on the edge of the party. “It’s nice to hear a familiar accent,” Colin said.

  “Have you been in the country long?”

  “A few weeks. You?”

  “I went to university here, and never left,” she said. “How do you know Dierdre?”

  “Trent plays racquetball at my fitness club. He mentioned the party at the juice bar. I’m not sure I was meant to be included in the invitation, but he was quite insistent I come.”

  “He meant it,” Tilda said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do. They host parties like this every few weeks. It’s one of the few places you’ll find where New York’s social circles overlap.”

  “Dierdre says you’re in stationery?” Colin asked.

  She had her elevator pitch down pat. “Yes. I sell the standbys, Crane and Company, Dauphine Press, Smock, but I also search out companies with an artistic edge.”

  “Who are your latest finds?”

  “A couple of really interesting, independent letterpress companies in Chicago and Brooklyn, a papermaker just outside Paris, and another in Istanbul,” she said. This was not the time to go into specifics, but rather the time to radiate confidence and sophistication, not an easy task when the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world stood in front of her in wingtips and a Bond Street tie.

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Interesting.”

  “I’d be happy to show you my current stock,” she said. From her silver Cartier card case she withdrew a business card for West Village Stationery and offered it to him. “Stop by anytime,” she said, resisting the impulse to offer to put together a portfolio of samples eminently suitable for Quality’s distribution channels.

  With a smile he took the card. “I was there last week, actually. Your reputation precedes you. I’ve been here less than a month and heard ‘you really should meet Tilda Davies’ half a dozen times.”

  He’d taken the time to scope out the shop and determine if the introduction was worth pursuing. She respected the approach, as she would have done the same thing. “I’m sorry I missed you.”

  “Penny was very helpful. I’d like to talk to you further. May I call you?”

  She reclaimed the card and added her mobile number to the back. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  Colin tipped his head in an old-fashioned leave-taking and faded into the crowd. Tilda found Dierdre against the windows, pretending not to watch the conversation. “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “He asked to see you,” Dierdre said. “I just plowed through the crowd in search of you. Good connection?”

  “Maybe life changing,” she said.

  “We’re even, then,” Dierdre said with a nod at Trent. Tilda had introduced Dierdre to her adoring husband three years earlier, and toasted them at their wedding the previous summer. It wasn’t a formal list connection, simply a matter of chemistry. She’d thought they would be good together, and they were. “Get yourself a glass of wine and celebrate.”

  She made her way back to the island bristling with wine bottles and glasses. As she poured herself a fresh glass she felt a tremor ripple along her nape moments before a male voice spoke.

  “Hello, Tilda.”

  At the words her whole body went into a little humming alert, like a tuning fork gently tapped. She didn’t need to turn around to know Daniel Logan stood behind her, but she did anyway, peering over her shoulder to offer him a little smile. “Hello, Daniel.”

  He leaned against the island that formed the boundary between the loft’s kitchen and living space, a bottle of beer in one hand. Tonight he wore a lightweight linen blazer, Oxford, jeans so faded and washed they were white at all the interesting places, and a pair of running shoes. She’d not seen him, nor heard a word from him, since he left her town house. A dangerous spike of need shot through her at the sight of him. She wasn’t often wrong about people, but she’d been very wrong about Daniel.

  “I think there’s a fire escape at the back of the building,” he said. “If you’re feeling the need to get your feet off the ground.”

  After that conversation she felt like her feet were twelve inches off the floor. That was an introduction that could change her life. “We’re on the second floor,” she replied. “That’s hardly worth it.”

  “What is worth it?”

  “Ten flights,” she said, picking a number at random.

  “You pulled that number out of thin air,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I did,” she said archly. “Getting a rush is largely situational. The second floor might be enough, given the right circumstances.”

  “So these aren’t the right circumstances. But the last time I saw you was,” he said, not asked, the confident bastard, as if he were narrowing down the world into two categories: what got her off and what didn’t. How had she mistaken him for a college professor?

  Across the high-ceilinged room Dierdre directed two men carrying her rolled-up rug to the entryway while her husband pulled the iPod from the speaker dock, cutting off the background music mid-Adele. Trent scrolled through the menu, then set the iPod back in the speaker dock. Something heavily Latin pulsed into the air, and he swept his wife into his arms. Tilda felt an odd combination of emotions, satisfaction tinged with just a hint of envy. Normally she was satisfied to connect people who were meant to be together. Every time she sold someone the tools to memorialize everything from gratitude to love, every time she matched someone on her list, or simply introduced two people who might enjoy knowing each other, she’d proved that she understood that most basic of human needs, to see someone and be seen by them in turn. Tonight, however, she wanted the thing she’d resolved never to want: something for herself.

  “I introduced them,” Tilda said, apropos of nothing.

  Daniel shifted his weight, drawing close enough for her to feel his body heat, smell soap and skin. No cologne or aftershave, just his unique scent. Tonight his towhead hair was standing up in a crest that on a lesser man would have looked ridiculous but on Daniel looked effortlessly stylish. “As Lady Matilda?”
>
  “Yes.”

  “Stationery and introductions. I guess the two go together. Why do it?”

  “Connect people?” She flicked another glance at him. “I have a knack for it. I can tell what will work for someone, and what won’t.”

  “Yes, but why do it? Why do you do it?”

  “You said it yourself. Stationery and introductions go together,” she said, watching as loose groups of dancers formed among the couples.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  “I don’t dance,” she replied.

  At that he came to stand in front of her, feet braced, arms folded, obviously amused. “You don’t dance.”

  “I do not.”

  His smile widened. “Like Darcy.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. She tried not to stare at his mouth, or let her face flush as she remembered exactly what that mouth had done to her. “A Jane Austen fan?”

  “I wouldn’t go as far as fan, but I’ve read her.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got an English degree,” he said.

  “I wasn’t far off with a college professor guess, then, was I?”

  “I considered it, but academia wasn’t really right for me.”

  “But police work was?”

  “I want to understand why things happened, and do what I can to make them right.”

  And there was all the proof she needed that getting involved with him was a very bad idea. “Still, it’s an odd choice for a police officer.”

  “Not really. You wouldn’t believe how much writing goes into police work,” he said, then reached past her to set his beer bottle in a cluster of other empties. Her nerves lit up again, sparks trickling from the point of near contact between his upper arm and her shoulder. “Shame you don’t dance. I love it. Nice to see you again, not–Lady Matilda.”

  Then he walked away, his hair glinting in the lights as he said his good-byes to Dierdre, collected a sisterly kiss on the cheek, and walked out the door. Tilda told herself she knew exactly what she was doing, and why. She told herself she appreciated that he respected her wishes. She told herself that going home alone didn’t bother her at all.