An Evening at the Hotel: An Affair in 51 Rooms

by Suanne Laqueur

  “I love making love with you,” he whispered.

  The quicksand of desire was closing over his head, pulling him down. Her breath was catching in her throat. Her hands had come undone and were drooped by her collarbones, fingers folding down into fists and then curling out again, holding onto the air. He caught them in his.

  “Come for me,” he said. “Let me see it.”

  She drew his hands down, pressing them to her spine.

  “Scratch my back,” she said.

  Room 33

  It was easy to tell him secret things. Privileged, sexual things. Only the smallest flicker of shyness as she asked him, “Scratch my back,” and the hope he wouldn’t question her.

  He didn’t. He only said, “Like this?” As he did to nearly everything she’d shown him, so curious and willing.

  “Like this?” he said, scratching the small of her back and the curve of her waist.

  She moved his fingers down to the flat plane of her sacrum. “Here,” she said. “Not hard. Just . . .”

  And then he got it. He had it perfect, his short nails drawing across the small of her back and around the first bump of her tailbone. Triggering that wonderful whatever-the-hell-it-was that felt so damn good. She rocked down on him again, felt him grow harder and more excited by pleasing her, from far away a dire groan from him.

  “God, you’re going to make me come.”

  She pulled him up into her as her belly contracted down, like a flower closing up petal by petal. He cried out into her chest as her back opened up to the room under his fingertips.

  He had her.

  He just got her.

  Room 34

  “I love your body,” he said, even as a magnificent yawn threatened his jaw. He lay on his stomach, in a state of spent, unhinged bliss, one arm around a pillow, the other palm running circles around her butt.

  “I can’t keep my hands off your ass,” he sighed.

  A contented hum in her throat. “I pegged you as an ass man a long time ago. Remember?”

  He wished he could. When did a teasing familiarity begin seeping into their exchanges? When did she start firing those small, intriguing shots over his bow? How long had she been slowly weaving a web around him before he realized the special attention she paid him was only a small part of an incredibly larger picture?

  She’s flirting with me, he thought. But that was dissatisfying, not to mention inaccurate. First of all, she flirted with everyone—men and women, old and young. Second, flirting was too shallow a concept. What she did to him was something much more complex. She’d been watching him. For years, apparently. Not only watching, but cataloging all their little moments in her prodigious memory.

  His own analyst, analyzing him.

  Her capacity for total recall was astounding, surpassed only by her ability to make a moment into a story. What he could vaguely recall as an ordinary, everyday interaction, she memorized, applied a little poetic license, embroidered it, took it in here, let it out there, and gave it back to him as a breathtaking, perfectly-captured vignette. It redefined attentive.

  It redefined everything.

  Never in his life had a woman seduced him so cerebrally. She hadn’t burst through his front door and blatantly come on to him with an offer of physical delights. She slipped in a side entrance of his brain and waited quietly on the other side of his desk. Won him with wit and words and in return, offered precisely nothing but this ongoing, affectionate attention.

  Never in his life, never had there been anything like this.

  He ran his hand up her body, weak with wanting it. Beneath her hair, he caressed the shape of her head, wanting what was in there just as badly. He wanted to talk to her about everything, but the yawns were breaking through. Lying here was too wonderful, luxuriating under the hand caressing him so expertly, rubbing his head and neck and shoulders. Her touch was gorgeous. He wanted to tell her how insanely lovely she was, he had a thousand questions to ask her.

  Talk to me, tell me things, he thought, even as the edge of his awareness was beginning to unravel.

  Room 35

  She watched him sleep, her fingernail lightly tracing the edge of his sideburn. The neat line at the top of his ear she’d studied so intently for so many years, wondering what it would be like to kiss him there.

  She kissed him there now, softly. He made a small sound in his chest, moved further into the ring of her arms, and then was still again. She ran her hand along his neck, a curve she’d often imagined beneath collar and tie. Her hand moved softly down the arm that lay heavy across her body. Often he would come over to her cubicle to talk, standing in the adjacent cube with his arms crossed on the low wall between them. She could discreetly take note of which shirt he’d donned that day, which tie, which cufflinks. Happily admire the little bit of skin showing between his cuff and the button on his sleeve.

  Sometimes, she mused he did this on purpose, that he knew damn well she liked him and under the pretense of conversation, he came over to her cube to be checked out.

  On a deeper, wiser level she sensed he liked her, liked her attentions, perhaps liked them a little too much, and out of his own deeper wisdom, he always kept something between them—a wall, a desk, a conference table, four feet of space.

  Now his body lay full against hers and he was sleeping. And she could look at him all she wanted to. Other than random, pleasurable observations, her head was peacefully empty. She felt no need to deconstruct this. She just wanted to collect it, remember it all, every word, every touch. Never did she think it would happen, yet here he lay, exhaling softly onto her skin, the edges of his hairline damp with sweat.

  She stroked his head, and lay awake beside him a long time.

  Room 36

  He awoke and she was sleeping, curled on her side facing him, her head arched back a little. Gently he touched the base of her neck. It was too dark to see, but he knew right here was a scar, a faint, horizontal ridge of flesh that dipped in and out of the notch of her throat.

  She had cancer years ago. A lifetime ago when she worked for him but there was no them. Not yet. Certainly there was mutual admiration, and, being human, he thought she had great legs. But the dance hadn’t begun when she was diagnosed.

  “Well, if you’re going to get cancer, they say this is the right one to get,” she said.

  Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of the right cancer to get, and she took a leave of absence for treatment. Quickly, he realized it was extremely difficult to do his job without her. Soon after, the idea of her not coming back, ever, made it difficult to fall asleep.

  Was that when it changed for him?

  She came back to work in time for a re-org, and for a few years, she didn’t work for him. Then another re-org and hey, the band was back together! By then, it was the age of telecommuting and she only came to the office on Mondays.

  One week, Mondays were nothing but dreaded Mondays. The next week, they were her Mondays. Suddenly he was reserving his blue shirts for Mondays because she mentioned he looked good in blue, a comment that put an unaccustomed spring in his step.

  There they were and there they went: co-workers and dance partners. Compiling a history, building an arsenal of private jokes and inside buzzwords. He came to rely on her funny, affectionately sarcastic remarks as much as he relied on her for reports and stats. Her little strokes and compliments began to be part of the daily business. After five o’clock on Mondays, when she left to catch her train, his phone would start burning a hole in his pocket as he wondered when her final text, her parting shot, would ping in.

  He’d always been a ritualistic creature. He liked his little routines, liked when things happened in the same way at the same times. But sometimes that Monday Parting Shot didn’t come and he’d be bewildered at the disappointment. Yet more often than not, her shots came at a better time: she had an uncanny, almost telepathic ability to text him at the nadir of a crappy day, and if not turn him around, at least make him smile. She knew
how and when to reach him. Some days she flat-out saved his ass.

  Now, lying in bed with her, he touched the scar on her neck and wondered, being indulgently maudlin, how both his professional and personal life might’ve been different if she hadn’t survived.

  Nice, he chided himself. He brushed away the useless drama and he decided to wake her up instead, because she was here and his life was now.

  Room 37

  She came back to now, up through levels of consciousness, forgetting where she was, then remembering. His head dipped below her chin, covering her neck and breasts with long, lingering kisses. She sighed with him, her hands roaming.

  “Tired?” he whispered.

  She hummed, neither yes nor no, simply content to be present and let him do what he wanted.

  “I’m so hard for you,” he said softly.

  She reached down, closed him up in her hand, and desire settled thickly in her chest, along with the damp ache of wanting to feel him in her again. Again, again, she wanted to make love all night with him.

  She rolled and put her back to his chest, snugging her butt up into his lap, guiding him into her. “Slow,” she said. “Put it in me slow.”

  Inch by inch he took her, her hipbones snugged in his palms. He wrapped his arms around her waist and groaned into her hair, “God you make me crazy.”

  She was beside herself with pure, primal want. He rolled up on his knees, bringing her with him. She reached and flung her arms around his neck, loving the feel of him against her back, he was so strong. They kissed deep, mouths soft, slippery and reckless. His hand slid down between her legs. He ran his lips over her back, whispered to her, encouraged and cajoled her, bringing her around.

  “I love making you come,” he said against her skin. “Want to get in you so deep and fill you up . . .”

  Her back arched as an explosion rocked her pelvis, made all the feeling leave her hands and feet, made every cell in her body detonate with blue and white feathered shivers, and reduced the entire universe to nothing more than two pleading, primitive words.

  Fuck. Me.

  He took her by the hips, held her hard, held her open and gave it to her, fucked her, gave it to her good. Until together they went sprawling into the sheets, gasping, coming and clinging to each other.

  She cried a little afterward. She couldn’t help it.

  “Nothing to see here,” she said, trying to hide her face but he wouldn’t let her. So unbearably sweet, he held her head and kissed the wet trails on her face.

  “It’s all right,” he said, before he enveloped her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. She could feel his heart pounding against hers.

  Room 38

  He lay on his back and she lay on him, fingertips playing in his chest hair. A remake of Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay” played from the speaker of her phone.

  “You think we’ll be all right on Monday?” he asked.

  “I think so,” she said. “I won’t pretend nothing will change because of this.” She put her chin on her crossed forearms, expression mischievous. “I mean, staff meetings are going to be slightly different now that you’ve seen me naked.”

  He dragged his fingers through her damp hair, thinking of all the ways he’d seen her tonight, wondering how the hell he was going to compartmentalize all this on Monday.

  “It’ll be interesting,” he said.

  It was the best he could do. Really he didn’t want to think of it yet.

  “Jesus, what time is it?” He instinctively looked at his wrist before remembering his watch was long gone, lost somewhere in the flotsam and jetsam of clothing by the window. He reached to turn the digital clock toward them and she swatted his arm.

  “Put that down,” she said. “No watching the time.”

  “You’re right.” He shoved the clock off the side of the bedside table and turned toward her. He put his hand on the side of her face, played with her hair again, singing softly.

  Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile . . . Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile.

  Room 39

  She turned her mouth into his palm, then nestled into his touch again. Savoring it, storing it, not daring to muse about when, or if she would feel it again.

  He asked, “Remember when you said I needed to buy you a drink before I turned forty?”

  “Mm.”

  “I never did.”

  “Forget it,” she said. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “It wasn’t about the drink,” she said, and yawned into the back of her hand. “Or about you turning forty. I didn’t care if we actually went, I just wanted you to ask.”

  “Ask?”

  “Yeah. Unprompted, without me hinting at it. Of your own spontaneous volition, just ask me one night if I wanted to go grab a beer.”

  He looked at her a long moment, lifted a finger and pointed at her face. “I’m buying you a damn drink.”

  She stared back. “You gave me eight orgasms, I don’t need the damn drink.”

  His eyebrows jumped up his forehead. “Eight? Really?”

  She shrugged and lay her cheek on her arms. “I lost count . . .”

  Room 40

  He thought about going for one more, but he was exhausted and the last time, he could tell she was getting sore. Instead he nudged her off him and turned onto his stomach, careening gently into the mattress, utterly spent.

  “Lie on my back,” he said.

  She slid on top of him, tucking the covers around their bodies. Her arms around his arms, her head on his head, her feet on his calves.

  “Is this comfortable?”

  “It’s perfect,” he said, weaving her fingers in his. “Can you stay awhile?”

  “It’s my room, dumbass.”

  He pulled her embrace closer, wrapped in her arms, in the smell of her perfume and sweat and sex. “I love this,” he said softly.

  “Me too,” she said against his head.

  A beat of silence. Then, “Eight?”

  She nibbled on his ear. “Ish . . .”

  Room 41

  She got another when they were in the shower, when he held her hands pinned to the cool tiles and slid into her from behind. Gently, because they were both sore and stinging. But pain shared a blurred boundary with pleasure and the pain of wanting often defeated the pain of excess. And by now, he knew what to do with her.

  In the swirling steam, with the hot water cascading down her back, his hands full of soap and full of her breasts, he made her come one last time . . .

  Room 42

  This time it was her voice that finally turned inside-out and ricocheted off the walls while he threw his head back and made nearly no sound at all.

  Room 43

  She texted him, late Sunday night: Sir?

  She set the phone down and while waiting for a reply, thought about their text message exchanges over the years.

  Sir, she always began.

  Yes ma’am, he always replied.

  When did all the banter start? She remembered that once, they were wrapping up a conversation and she typed, Beautiful. Thanks.

  He replied, You’re welcome. And you don’t need to call me beautiful.

  This was unexpected. She smiled out loud, and without thinking wrote back, Oh, but I do.

  Not long after, they’d had another exchange: some important file had been due on a Friday, something she needed his time and input to complete. He’d been frustratingly unavailable for days. Repeatedly putting her off—not unkindly, but with a distracted air she found worrisome. She couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.

  Finally at the eleventh hour, she pinged him: I’m sorry to bother you but we’ve got to do this now.

  Silence for five minutes, followed by a long block of text:

  I’m sorry its been a really really bad day . . . An awful week . . . I can’t even think anymore, I’m sorry . . . Please can you just take care of it . . . You can do it, yo
u know what to do, work your magic . . . I trust you completely. Please, just do this for me.

  Startled by this unusual outpouring, she typed back, Don’t give it another thought, I’ll take care of it. Go home.

  He replied, On the train, second beer in . . . Don’t know what I’d do without you.

  She stared at the screen, stunned. Reached out a fingertip and touched the words I trust you completely. They filled up her eyes, caressed something inside her, flooded her with a fierce pride.

  I trust you . . . Don’t know what I’d do without you.

  The words felt profoundly intimate. She couldn’t have been more pleased if he said he loved her.

  In a funny way, he had.

  From that day forward, by some unspoken agreement, she began taking things out of his hands. From that point on, she could divine his moods out of his texts. She could read between the lines and know immediately from the words, acronyms or emoticons exactly where his head was. The ability became more honed when they started to gently carry on with each other—not quite flirting, not quite not flirting.

  She picked her opportunities to engage him carefully. When she pitched him a parting shot, she knew instantly if he had the time or inkling to play with her, or if he couldn’t be bothered. She knew a genuine LOL from a polite, disinterested one. All it took was one word typed. Or the lack of a word. The time it took for him to answer her. Or not answer her. And she knew.