by Kilby Blades
“You’re beautiful.”
For a pregnant moment, Darby wondered whether she’d had completely imagined this man whose performance in bed was the stuff of legends, and who seemed to connect with everything about her. She had never questioned her own sanity, but there was a first time for everything.
Drawn away from her thoughts by the familiar heat in his eyes, her body had a nearly Pavlovian reaction. Apparently, trading lines from 80s movies got him hard. She flashed with her own heat and, suddenly, her throat felt dry.
“We’re not going to make it upstairs, are we?”
He shook his head slowly.
“You’re wearing too many clothes.”
His pants were fitted enough to show the beginnings of an erection. By the time he had pulled off his V-neck, she was halfway to him. He was throwing the shirt aside as she tugged the tongue of his belt loose, slower than she needed to as she admired his physique. Once his fly was open, she didn’t push his pants down over his hips, but instead dipped her left hand deep inside. His breath faltered and he angled his hips toward her, either to give her better access within the tight space of his pants or seek more friction.
They were standing in the middle of her living room floor, but Darby needed him against something. She walked him slowly, and a little forcefully, backward and out of the room. He was pliant to her silent demands, and she got the sense that he liked the fact that she was taking charge. Up until then, he had been making good on his promise to deliver an astounding number of orgasms, a fact that meant the few times they’d been together he had been very focused on her. Still, there was something Darby had been wanting to do.
Pressing him more roughly than necessary against the wall in her rotunda, she removed her hand from his pants and ground her lower body against his. He gasped a bit, grinding back, moving his fingers on her hips until he found her silken robe’s sash, bending to kiss her as he began to push the robe off her shoulders. He did notice the bra and panty set she wore underneath the robe, and he cursed under his breath when he saw them.
Oh, yeah, Darby thought. Definitely a fetish.
Darby turned her cheek before his next kiss could land. She shook her head as she looked into Michael’s confused eyes before shifting her own to his erection. “Not you. Him.”
Not bothering to wait for his reaction, she reached down then to push his pants down his hips. He shook them off, letting them join her discarded robe on the floor. She sank to her knees and helped him out of his socks, because socks on during any kind of sex was just wrong. And she ran her nose along his thick, beautiful length before grabbing him at the base and laving him thickly with her tongue.
“Fuck.” She didn’t think his strained whisper had been one she was meant to hear.
He was big, and he knew it, and he stood still enough to give her complete control. She took him into her mouth, sliding wetted lips down his shaft and taking him in deeply, as much of him as she could. She knew by then how he liked to savor it, to torture himself slowly with every gratifying sensation. So she made sure her ministrations were exact and that her strokes and sucks were more slow than fast.
Darby wasn’t just doing this for him, though she’d been told she was quite good at it. Fellatio was one of her favorite things to do in bed. The feeling of him filling up her mouth to the back of her throat, his moans when she scraped her teeth against his sensitive head, even the way he smelled were making her wonderfully wet.
But she wanted even more. So when she sensed he was close, she showed him how she liked it. She slid her hand up to find his, where it was splayed against the wall and pulled her mouth off of him long enough to place his fingers on the back of her head and look up at him to voice her quiet demand.
“Fuck my mouth, Michael.”
His cock twitched a second after the words were said, and she knew for sure at that moment he got off on her bossing her around, even though she was ordering him to take control. She dove back in then, catching the head of his cock in her mouth, yet refusing to resume her motions until he began. He cursed again as he started to oblige her, beginning tentatively, but emboldening himself with her every approving moan. Soon he was thrusting harder and faster than she could have done on her own but still not hard and fast enough.
“More.” The plea was whispered when she pulled off of him for a single stroke before going right back in. He was moaning now, louder, and did as she said, penetrating her more quickly and deeply. She loved this feeling too, of giving up this piece of her control to give him his, and she itched to be touched for as turned on as she was.
His fingers threaded in her hair in a way that gave him better leverage, better precision that she suspected had both of them nearly undone. Wanting to give him even more, she maneuvered her free hand so that the pads of her fingers could graze his balls. It set him off.
“I’m gonna come.” His voice was thick with warning and he tugged at her hair a bit to pull her off.
But that wasn’t what she wanted. She removed his hand from her hair then, replacing it back on the wall as she resumed setting the pace. Her hand returned to stroking him while she sucked and he nearly roared when he came, shooting into her mouth. She let him fall from her lips slowly after he’d finished, and as he had done each time for her, she stroked his legs tenderly as she let him come down.
He was still out of breath when his strong arms lifted hers up, and brought her to her feet. He kissed her deeply, and when he pulled away he murmured, “If I didn’t have a plane to catch, I’d fuck you all night.”
Yet, apparently, Michael’s idea of a pre-flight quickie was to spend the next hour with various parts of himself lodged deeply inside her. They didn’t make it to her bedroom that night. But he did splay her out on her staircase and bury his mouth and his fingers between her legs. She was still pulsing with pleasure after he’d made her come that way when he pulled her panties off but left her bra on. A minute later, he had her bent over the sofa, one hand on her hip as the other gripped her shoulder, fucking her slowly but thoroughly, and God, so hard. She’d never had anything remotely like this before, not with anyone. Sex hadn’t ever been this good.
Afterward, she felt dazed as she leaned against the wall, first hearing the water run as he cleaned himself up in the powder room, then watching him collect his clothes and redress to magazine-perfection. He even found her discarded robe, slid it back onto her shoulders, and gently tied its sash. He picked up his phone, his fingers moving swiftly and she surmised that he was calling an Uber. When he pocketed his phone, he turned his full attention back to her.
Coming to stand in front of her, he cupped her face in his hands, looking between her eyes before kissing her deeply. And not for a minute, either. For a good long time.
“To be continued. I’m back in a week.”
GET IT TOGETHER, GIRL.
Darby tossed her phone down on her desk and swiveled in her chair until her back was to the offending device. Out her window, the sun shone brightly—a rarity for a fall day in Chicago—and the light dress of the people walking on the streets below confirmed that it was warm. It was the first time in a month that she had time to take a real lunch hour and she should have been outside on a walk.
But she wasn’t outside. To her horror, she was holed up in her office preoccupied with thoughts of why Michael hadn’t called. She hated herself for it a little bit more each time she checked her phone.
“I’ll be back in a week.” That was what he had said. Today was day nine. And it bothered her that he hadn’t called. She didn’t know what was worse: the fact that she hadn’t heard from him, or the discovery of her backwards expectation that he should be the pursuer. The rational part of her reminded herself that he’d initiated everything so far. Maybe it was her turn to step forward. Maybe he was somewhere waiting for her to call.
But even if he called that second and they fucked that night, this line of thinking hinted at bigger problems. He’d gotten under her skin in a way that d
idn’t feel casual at all. Wondering where the other person was, what they were doing, and when you got to see them again was something dating people did. She wasn’t quite there yet, but she had begun to crave him, which meant that she’d come to care about his whereabouts more than she would have liked.
It troubled her deeply. How could somebody she had just met, who meant so little to her in the grand scheme of things, make her feel that their connection was everything? The way he looked at her, touched her, fucked her…in those moments, he felt like someone she couldn’t live without. She wanted to believe that she could adopt an attitude as laissez-faire as his—of living in the moment—but she found herself caught up in old beliefs. She thought about Dave. She didn’t want to be anybody’s girlfriend, but it seemed she still didn’t know how not to act like one.
She was roused from her thoughts by the buzz of her phone. The accompanying ringtone—the Death Star Theme from Star Wars—signaled that it wasn’t Michael. It would have been pointless to ignore the call, so she figured she’d better get it—whatever it was—over with.
“Senator,” she answered with trained cordiality.
“Dad would be fine too, Darby.” Frank Christensen sounded as petulant as ever.
“To what do I owe this call?” She kept to her formal tone, already mining her brain for excuses to get off the phone.
“Can’t a father call his daughter just to see how she’s doing?”
“Yes, a father could,” she agreed, emphasizing the third word. “But that’s not like you, so why don’t you tell me what you want?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and Darby was sure he was weighing whether to continue the ruse or to drop false pretenses. Ever the politician, he chose the former.
“Honey. I want to see you, and I thought it might be nice for you to come to the Silberstein’s son Jonah’s wedding in February. Did you get the invitation?”
“I haven’t seen any of them in, like, ten years.”
“It would be nice to reconnect.” He sounded optimistic. “You and Jonah played together as kids.”
Darby rolled her eyes. The only time her father wanted her to attend an event was when he was desperate to keep up appearances. It was good business for a senator to show off his wholesome family, and she was all the family he had left. But Frank Christensen was the most depraved man Darby had ever known, and given the motley crew of politicians, pimps and drug dealers she’d come across over the years, that was saying a lot.
“I’m busy that night.”
“With plans that are better than attending one of the most important weddings of the year?”
“I have to wash my hair.”
The enthusiasm left his voice. “You knew this was part of the deal. There are big things coming and we need to saddle up.”
Her heart beat a little more quickly at that. “Big things” for her father always meant running for another office, or an appointment to a major post. Any new office would come with a vetting, and any elected office would come with opposition research on top of that.
“Define big things.”
“They’re talking about putting me in the White House, honey.”
He didn’t even have the decency to sound regretful about what it would mean for her. On top of every other reason she had to hate him, he had always been unapologetic about invasions of her privacy.
“You can’t win,” she said bluntly. “You’d have to get through Prescott and Sanderson, and neither of them—”
“Prescott’s out of the game,” Frank interrupted. “And Sanderson has roadblocks that I am uniquely positioned to remove. He’ll make me his VP. I’ll be on the ticket.”
Darby wondered what scandal had befallen the Texas governor, who had been groomed for the past year to become the Republican nominee. She hadn’t seen anything on the news, but she knew how these things went. There was a good chance the world would never find out.
She set her phone down and put it on speaker so that both hands would be free to rub her tired eyes.
“Three events…I told you I’d give you three events a year. This is number two.”
“So you’ll come?”
“Choose wisely. That number won’t change even if you run,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, more sternly.
“That’s not an answer, honey.”
“I’ll come. Just don’t lay it on too thick.” He had a tendency to go overboard on the happy family façade.
She hung up without saying goodbye.
Darby spent the rest of the day with a different complicated man on her mind. Unlike Michael, she knew her father too well and understood exactly how she felt about him. ‘Hate’ was a strong word, but it applied. She wasn’t keeping up appearances for him—she was doing it for her. The less interested the press was in possible discord between them, the less unwanted attention.
When she got home that night, she kicked off her clogs in the mud room inside the garage door and shuffled into her office in nothing but her socks. It took her a minute to rifle through her mail and locate the RSVP card she had planned to return with her regrets. Instead, she pulled out her phone and took a picture. Apparently, the threat of facing her father alone was all she needed to make the next move.
Beef, fish, or vegetarian?
Calling up her chat history, she texted the photo to Michael. She was being a bit flip, her casual tone conflicting with her hope that he would be available and would agree to attend. She was relieved to have an overture that didn’t make her sound desperate to see him.
Waking some hours later to short buzzing sounds close to her head, her hand groped her nightstand for her phone.
Sorry. Business trip was extended. I’m in London now. Just finding time to respond. Sure I’ll come. Who’s getting married?
An old family friend. My father very much wants me to make an appearance.
You sound thrilled.
Oh, I am.
Do you really go to the movies every week?
Wow, that was a non-sequitur.
Are you sure you’re not a lawyer? You’re good at dodging questions.
Fine, I go to the movies once a week. I buy myself a ticket to the matinee, order a bag of small popcorn with butter and smuggle in a flask.
He didn’t answer for a minute.
Invite me sometime.
For real?
::eyeroll::
She laughed out loud and was embarrassed by her giddiness at finally hearing from him.
Alright, I will.
You’d better. Have a good day, cupcake.
She smiled at his term of endearment.
Have a good night.
SHE DIDN’T ASK HIM TO the movies the next time she went, which was just one day after they had texted. She doubted he was back in town and, besides, she didn’t know how she felt about inviting him into her routine. She tended toward independent films, which could be more serious than whatever Hollywood was offering. She usually ended up crying into her Kleenex by the end of the movie, and she didn’t think Michael needed to see her like that. But she did invite him to the one she was seeing a week later.
They’re screening Casablanca at the Siskel Center. I’m headed there after work. Want to join?
Casablanca seemed safe enough—touching, yes, but not quite a tearjerker.
What time?
8:00. Will you still be working?
No, I think I can make it. Save me a seat.
At 8:15, toward the end of the previews, a body settled in right next to hers. She noticed two things immediately. The first was the way he smelled. It felt as if she had sensed him through her nose before he actually sat down. She doubted he had stopped at home to shower, but his scent still wafted off of him like a second skin. The next thing she noticed was the enormous tub of popcorn in his hand. She surveyed it with interest before handing him the flask.
“Are you going to feed a small nation?”
He eyed her tiny bag.
“Are you go
ing to feed a small child?”
She reached off to her side and produced a king size pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
“I was going to offer you one of these, but now I’m not sure.”
“I’ll shut up.”
Yeah, he was definitely interested in her peanut butter cups. Though she paid moderate attention to the beginning of the movie, she noticed him looking at her candy five times. She ate the first three, slowly, painfully. As she picked up the fourth, she flicked her eyes to him. He was nearly pouting. She shook her head, and held it out in front of him.
“Your sweet tooth is embarrassing. I hope you know that.”
He leaned in and kissed her on her neck, in a way that wholly distracted her. It was the first physical contact they’d had in more than two weeks.
“Indulging in pleasurable things is not a crime, Darby.” She thought she heard him sigh softly when he slipped it in his mouth.
It was Darby who sighed softly when the movie ended. It had always been one of her favorites. When she looked over at him, ready to get out of her seat, he was smiling down at her.
“You’re cute when you’re starry-eyed.” He wasn’t shy about sharing his observation. “And when you blush.” Darby couldn’t help it.
“Mock me all you want. I live my vicarious love affairs in style.”
“Fair enough.” He took her haughty retort in stride. “Before Sunrise is your favorite movie after all…though I think you have a dark side. You love Heathers. And I saw the entire ‘Twin Peaks’ box set on your shelf.”
“Dark? Yes, but maudlin too. If you had analyzed my movie collection a bit more closely, you would have also found The English Patient and Out of Africa. I guess you could say I’m intrigued by characters who want what they can’t have.”
He studied her but didn’t respond. She could tell he was really thinking about this.
Three minutes later, they were outside the theater, the brisk air signaling that Chicago winter would soon begin. Chicago winter, unfortunately, imposed its chill as early as October. People who didn’t know the city thought that its reputation for extreme cold came from it being, literally, a windy city. More accurately, the winter was simply long. That late summer night on the beach was the last truly warm one she had known. The cool air caused her to think of how things would look a month from then. Fewer boats in the marina. Michigan Avenue lightly sprinkled with its first snow.