An Evening at the Hotel: An Affair in 51 Rooms

by Suanne Laqueur

  The back of his leg hit the box spring and he let go, a magnificent swoon backward with her caught up tight in his arms. A moment’s crushing weight on top of his chest before he rolled her down beneath him, ripping up spread and blankets, shedding off the last bits of clothes, the last shreds of reserve.

  And then they were in bed, naked and tangled, and he had nothing more to hide behind, nothing left to stop him from assuaging her passionate curiosity and showing her the man he was.

  Room 15

  He burst into her like a sunrise, like a ten-fingered chord on the piano, slid straight into her (Like he was born to, she thought), hot, golden and syrupy, and she thought she would fly apart at her joints, splash in puddles of joy on the walls.

  He made some indescribable sound, and she made yet another. For ten seconds all was madness: they grappled wildly, twisted, writhed, trying to kiss, trying to breathe, trying to be everything. And then he stopped, his hands took hold of her, pressed her against the mattress until the universe came to a slow halt.

  “Shh,” he said. “Wait a minute.”

  He lay still within her, hard and huge, filling her up to her eyes. Up on his elbows like a cobra, cradled in her thighs, he held his forehead to hers.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered, running her palm along his jaw. He nodded but didn’t say anything, didn’t open his eyes, and she understood: this hadn’t been the plunge, not yet. He was still poised at some final edge.

  She knew him then. Knew that beneath his desire to do right by her was a fierce and sometimes uncontrollable passion, and he was about to unleash it on her. He, who had never touched or treated her with anything but cordial respect, was about to hold her down and fuck the top of her head out into space, or scoop her up and love her with glorious tenderness, or both—quite possibly all those things at the same time. His sexuality was going to be so intense, so all-consuming and reckless, so multi-faceted, it would be impossible for him to be inside her without losing himself.

  She knew he wanted to be all things to her, and he wanted all of her selves with him, or else none. Anything in between simply would not work. He was trusting her. He could not jump halfway.

  Room 16

  “God,” he sighed. “You feel . . . I’m so . . .”

  No words in the world could finish that thought. He was in it now. Here she was. For years quietly at his side, discreetly behind the scenes. Not always visible but forever present in a thousand small ways that sweetly oiled the wheels of his job. They’d always marched in step. Not co-workers, they joked, but dance partners. And now, here, undeniably here, this tiny dancer underneath him, face to face, soft hair, sugar and oranges, her lithe body hungry and open and completely attuned to his. Everything she’d always been to him, but now in the dark.

  It was still the dance, only turned horizontally.

  He tried again. “This is . . .”

  Once again he failed to find any words for it.

  He was inside her.

  She brushed a finger across his lips, then kissed him, deep, slow and perfect.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  He looked down at her, looked in her open, confidently adoring eyes. She was in it, too, she was with him, and she knew. He grabbed her hands, grabbed her mouth in his kiss and jumped.

  Room 17

  In the days that followed, she could not reconstruct that night with him as a linear event. She could only island-hop from one pleasurable highlight to the next, out of order and overlapping.

  He rolled down onto his back, pulling her with him, up and onto him in a cartwheel of arms and legs and a seamless, unbroken kiss. His hands came up, brushing the hair back from her face, then burying his fingers at the back of her head.

  He was good. Fuck, he was so good. He moved like quicksilver from tender to fierce and back again, weaving together his strength with his sweetness, power with vulnerability, passion with skill. Holding her so hard, kissing her so softly, loving to kiss, he kissed like a dream.

  Knees hugging his sides, she had him deep in her and she couldn’t tell where she stopped and he began. And then he said . . .

  Room 18

  “Christ,” he whispered hoarsely.

  The air roaring in his head, eardrums bulging against the dark, firework flashes of yellow and orange behind his closed eyelids, her scent dancing up his nose and teasing the back of his throat. The taste of her mouth in his, and through it all he was sliding and pushing inside her and she was sliding and pulling him in. She was beyond belief. No sooner was a desire in his head—for her to go faster, go slower, come down and cover him, or sit up so he could see her—than she was right there. Right time, right place, as if she’d been made for no other purpose than to be his lover.

  She was onto him and all over him and she was so damn good at him. God, he could writhe here forever, just being gripped from within and without by her body on top of his, firm flesh and soft skin, shifting muscle and bone, so small but so strong and coaxing from him words he didn’t even know he had.

  “Christ,” he whispered as he gasped out of their kiss, holding her head, holding her mouth still against his, fighting for breath. “Christ, you are so fucking tight . . .”

  Room 19

  . . . In the days after, the weeks and months, all it took to make her eyes close with wet, weak-kneed recall, was that single word, in any context:

  Tight.

  Room 20

  . . . (Tight) . . .

  Room 21

  Then he sat up, locked his arms around her waist and rolled her again. Now she was down in the tangle of sheets and blankets and he was rising up and over her. The light from the window glinting on his bare back and shoulder and pooling in the hollow of his collarbone. He was silvery and magnificent and completely undone, his hungry mouth against her skin, his hair sliding over his forehead, and it was how she’d longed to behold him—no longer groomed, combed, shirted-and-tied and formal, but on his knees, messed up and fierce and ardent and intent on being her lover. There was an edge to him she’d never seen before, and yet she didn’t fear his passion for she felt, deep beneath it, his inherent gentleness, and deeper than that, the weighted history of their years, their instinctive understanding of each other, her devotion to him and his implicit trust in her.

  She slid her leg up and around his body, drawing him further down into her.

  Room 22

  In his own aftermath, it seemed there was a bullet of memory lodged in his brain. A golden capsule containing the single sensation of her leg, and how the secret skin behind her knee felt as her leg had arced up and around his side. The warm, smooth weight of her calf in the small of his back, followed by its pull. She dragged him down into her heat.

  He could still feel it. Still hear what she said before her leg had moved like that:

  “You feel so good in me.”

  Then she hooked him, pulled him deeper into her, and with her calf hugging his back she ran her mouth up his neck and whispered, “I knew you would . . .”

  Room 23

  She knew he would. She’d always known he would be sensational in the dark. His prowess was no surprise, neither was their sexual affinity together. Still, his utter inhibition had some legitimate shock value, for this was one of the most guarded men she knew.

  He was neither cagey nor unapproachable, but what was given forth he chose to give forth, and what was kept behind was sacrosanct. There was no swaying him to give up what he didn’t want to.

  Over the years, he’d only spoon-fed her details of his private life. Despite their easy rapport, even with all the playful and thrilling banter lately, most of his true feelings remained beyond her grasp. She couldn’t quite tell if he was intrigued by her, or just mildly amused. Did her attentions please him, or was he used to fawning female company, and so was ambivalent to hers? Did he count her among his blessings or among his worries? Did he ever take her out of the context of their work relationship, or did he just take her for granted as b
oth a co-worker and a woman?

  Why tonight? she wondered. What changed? What made it happen?

  At the client dinner and the crush afterward at the bar, they’d barely interacted. Their glances met a few times, and each time his sweet smile unfolded for her. She smiled back, noticing their eye contact always seemed to go beyond superficial. Still, nothing was remotely flirtatious or sexual about the smiles and glances. No hint he was pursuing her or she him. No definitive moment of “It’s on.” Nothing more than her telepathic Sir across a crowded room, and his returned Ma’am.

  Walking through the lobby at the same time to meet at the elevator bank had been pure coincidence. And now he was in her room, in her bed. In her body. Looking at the world through her eyes and for tonight, for these precious hours, he belonged to her.

  She knew it would be sensational, but had no idea it could be so incredibly soulful.

  Room 24

  They lay facing each other in the tangled nest of sheets. She’d moved her leg over his but otherwise stayed very still, eyes closed, expression unreadable.

  Her silence didn’t bother him. In fact, she was one of the few people with whom he could sit in silence and be perfectly comfortable. She often sat that way on the other side of his desk—present, slightly aloof, quiet, but in a manner that was companionable, not exclusionary. She was a cat dozing on his hearth. Not apathetic to him, but content with what he was and what he was giving.

  He enjoyed having her sit with him very much.

  I like her company, he always thought when she left his office and the room seemed dimmer.

  Once he’d been on the train home, about to doze off, when the image of her sitting with him leaped unexpectedly in his head. For an incredulous moment, she was there, in the seat beside him, dozing as well, her lolling head falling onto his shoulder.

  The fantasy appealed to him. He almost told her about it but, as was with so many of his deepest thoughts, he couldn’t find the words. Words were her forte, not his.

  She lay with him now, his quiet and clever friend, wearing that slightly feline and, to his rather pleased ego, totally satisfied expression. She was lovely. Lovely and wild.

  Soon her stillness undid him, and he ran a fingertip down the bridge of her nose, across her lips and off her chin.

  “Are you sleeping?” he whispered.

  Her mouth curved up but her eyes stayed closed. She shook her head. She took his hand, pressed it flat to her chest and then slid it down her body, due south, moving her leg further up his hip. His fingers found her, found she was wet as all hell, still wide open, still wanting.

  “Do that again,” she murmured from behind her closed eyelids, her hips pushing toward him, her hand on his.

  Room 25

  “Show me,” he said.

  She said, “Like this.”

  “Here?” His fingers were long and warm.

  “Yes, like . . . Slow . . . Like that. There. Just like that.”

  The words fell apart in her mouth, and he hardly needed her direction anyway. He had it. Perfect.

  “How old were you when you let a boy do this to you?” he said. His fingers slid deeper in her and his mouth ran hot over her breasts.

  The question made her blush with vivid memory, recalling nights with her high school boyfriend: the exploration, the mixture of excitement and trepidation, the frustration of wanting, the frustration of not knowing what she wanted. Arching her breasts to his mouth, pulling her own shirt off. Not skittering away, no, from the hand undoing her jeans but pushing her hips toward it, yes, yes. And that astounding, pivotal moment when the idea of having a boy inside her, which had always seemed somewhat revolting, suddenly seemed conceivable. More than that, it was astonishingly and achingly desirable. How old had she been on those feverish, experimental nights?

  “Seventeen,” she said.

  He made a small sound of surprise against her collarbone. “And when did you go all the way?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “What a good girl.”

  She laughed. “It was a school night. A Tuesday, I think. Next day my French teacher said to me, ‘You look different today.’ I almost died.”

  His smiled flashed in the dark. “That’s hilarious.” His hand came sliding up her belly. “I don’t know why, but thinking about being in the back seat of a car with you is really hot.” His wet fingers brushed her chin. She opened her mouth for them, tasted herself, let them go slowly.

  She thought about herself at seventeen, alone with a younger version of him in the hot, steamy cocoon of a car. Windows fogged up and radio running the battery down. Letting him unhook her, unzip her, feel and touch her. She took his hand and pushed it down again.

  “Show me what you’d do,” she said.

  “No, I think we should wait,” he replied softly. She swatted his head and he laughed in the dark. She’d heard him laugh more times in the past few hours than in all the time she’d known him. It was wonderful.

  “Baby, please,” she said, playing along. “Please, I want it so bad.”

  She took his head and gently closed her teeth around his bottom lip, not wanting any more words or games, just wanting herself and his touch.

  Room 26

  They kissed and he touched her, up to his knuckles in her velvet depths. His mind was still fluctuating between their high school scenario and the forty-something reality. Thinking about girls, thinking about women, finally coming back to here and now and her. Here and now was where he wanted to be, and her writhing under his touch was something he’d always wanted to see.

  She wasn’t a conventionally beautiful woman, but her confidence, her talents, her wit, her ironic humor—often aimed at herself . . . All that combined with her looks had taken him slightly hostage, left him reeling in a helpless fascination. What did a woman as self-assured as that look like vulnerable? How would she sound in the throes, exactly how would her head twist into the pillow as you brought her around? These were among his own private wonderings, his own passionate curiosities.

  What do you look like when you come?

  How could I make you come?

  What do you want me to do, tell me what you want, show me, say everything.

  He’d always envisioned her being very explicit with him, but the reality was much different: she was telling him all right, but without saying much at all. He was struck by how little difference there was between how they worked together and how they made love. He was in charge, but she was the one behind the scenes, invisibly and wordlessly leading him where he needed to go.

  She was leading him to that place now, going deep within, not so much kissing him anymore as simply breathing through his mouth. And with the burning fury of eighteen, he was pushing aside the covers, pushing into her body, blind with the want and need to follow her.

  “Wait for me,” he whispered.

  Room 27

  “You’re so good,” she said.

  They were in the dim, magic hours of midnight now, taking their time. She was loving being on top of him, her belly filled with her man.

  “I’m not doing a thing,” he drawled indolently.

  He had his arms up, fingers interlaced with hers, letting her lean all her weight into him as her hips found a groove, the most perfect, languid rhythm, catching the sweet spot.

  Time stretched out like taffy. She became aware of the song coming from her phone’s speaker. And wasn’t that funny: she, usually so attuned to music, with a host of songs she associated with him in particular, couldn’t recall anything that had been playing this whole time. Only now she registered Joan Osborne’s smoky voice singing “Little Wild One.”

  How many times had she walked down Park Avenue, away from the office, away from him, listening to this album—Joan’s love letter to New York City. It was the soundtrack to her mental affair with him, the key to how she would invite him into it, if only she knew he wanted to come:

  Let’s make it simple, just for fun . . . Don’t speak of this to
anyone . . .

  Room 28

  All the while making love, the sound of her two silver bangles, sliding up and down her forearm, was a funny little xylophone accompaniment. A symphony of tiny clings and clangs every time she moved on him or under him. Whenever she brushed her hair back, when she reached up and around his neck. Up and down her arm, jingling like wind chimes in a summer breeze.

  Room 29

  (I’ve seen the way you look in my eyes, I know that you’re ready to fly) . . .

  Room 30

  Later on they were making love with her in his lap, in the wingback chair. Her long thighs closed him in like a second pair of armrests. She had her hands interlaced at the back of her neck, head lolling and eyes closed as she lazily rocked on him.

  He asked, “Is this Heaven?”

  Room 31

  She smiled, eyes still closed, pulling all her hair up high on her head and letting it fall again as she answered, “Hell.”

  Room 32

  Laughing, his hands moved in slow circles around her small breasts, down her sides, caressing the long, lean planes of her legs, the pretty cuts and curves of her shoulders.

  “Total hell,” she said, with a catch in her voice he was starting to recognize. He was beginning to know her, know her looks and sounds, feel the change in her body’s rhythm as she started to go somewhere. She moved more intently now, rising up along the full length of him, tilting her hips just so and driving down into his lap.