Chapter Ten: “Snowed In”
Chapter Ten
“Snowed In”
NICK AND SEWANEE DIDN’T STAY IN THE SUITE
.
She was content at first, enjoying their conversation in their little snow globe. Then she’d decided to give him a tour, Nick following her so closely she could hear his breathing. But when they’d entered her bedroom and he’d placed both of his palms on the bed and pushed deeply into it, as if testing its buoyancy, she turned heel and beelined back to the safety of the living room.
When he rejoined her, hands thrust casually in his pockets, not a care in the world, she announced that she wanted to go down to the club, which was news to her.
She did her best to package her butterflies in the festive wrapping of a good idea. There was a table, with bottle service, waiting for them. She hadn’t been to a club in years. She was, you know, dressed for it. Why waste the opportunity? After some confusion about whether Nick was invited to join her (of course he was; oh, because it had sounded like she’d wanted to go by herself; oh, had it, she hadn’t meant it that way), they silently left the suite, silently waited for the elevator, got on the elevator silently, got off on the wrong floor, got back on the elevator, laughed to break the silence, got off on the right floor, found the club’s nondescript entrance, spoke with the host, and were led
through the three-story warehouse-style venue to a low-slung silver velvet horseshoe banquette with a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket on the glass table surrounded by various mixers.
They sat on opposite sides of the U.
The condensation rolling down the ice bucket mirrored the sweat she felt rolling down her lower back. The lights were low and vaguely purple. The occasional strobe. It was still early by club standards and the dance floor beyond the table was only half-full. Sewanee wouldn’t call what was booming through the room music so much as a succession of beats with some occasional screeching. But it entered her body and pounded inside her chest cavity.
She realized she hadn’t looked at Nick once since they sat down. She glanced up and he was looking at her. He smiled and raised an eyebrow, like,
well?
She couldn’t help it; she chuckled a little and shrugged, butterflies still fluttering.
He gestured at the vodka bottle and she enthusiastically nodded. He got to work, filling one of the glasses with ice, splashing vodka in, and pointing to the different mixers. He seemed relieved to have something to do. Sewanee gestured at the club soda. He obliged and squeezed a wedge of lime for good measure. He handed it to her and she mouthed “thanks.” He made himself the same drink and then slung his arm over the back of the banquet, crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, and gazed out into the crowd.
What. The hell. Are we doing here? she thought.
She took a significant gulp, was about to set it down, caught his eye, smiled tightly, brought the drink back to her mouth, and finished it. Then she set it down. He’d looked back out into the crowd so she matched him. Whatever he wasn’t looking at, she could not look at, too.
A server appeared next to Nick. She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned down to his ear, her corset overflowing.
Sewanee clocked this, thinking, really? I am literally right here. But then she took stock of just how much space was between them, even though they were directly opposite each other. She was as far away from him as the banquette would physically allow.
Nick pulled his head back and looked at Sewanee. He held up a hand, beckoned her toward him.
God, that hand. Those fingers.
She began scootching around the U, but her dress twisted around her thighs. She changed tactics, making small hops, an inelegant frog attempting to move laterally between lily pads. Eventually, she arrived.
He dipped his head so close to her ear she couldn’t tell if it was his breath or his lips that touched it. Either way, a shiver ran through her. “She’s saying we can have a bottle of champagne, if we want. That it’s included.”
They pulled back and she looked into his eyes. His focus racked to her mouth. All she said was, “oooh,” because it was a word that pushed her lips into a pout. He turned back to the now-standing server and nodded. She left and they were alone. Glued to each other’s side. He pivoted back to her ear. “I think I’m too old for this.”
She laughed and yelled back, “Same.”
His eyes were bright. She watched him take her in, her mouth, her chin and cheeks and neck and chest. Like he was memorizing her. Mapping her for future exploration. He sat forward, picked up his drink and took a sip, never taking his eyes off her. Then he was back at her ear. “You going to dance?”
She shook her head and brought her lips to
his
ear, enjoying
the rush of gratification she felt when she saw goosebumps appear on the side of his neck. “Are you asking me to?”
“Yes.”
“Are you joining me?”
“No.”
“Oh, I’m supposed to dance alone?”
“Well, if you insist.”
“I would take you up on that generous offer, but I can’t dance to this noise. Are these actual songs?”
As if the DJ had heard her, the music morphed into a clubby remix of Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.” Nick cocked his head:
You were saying?
The gauntlet had been thrown. He tucked his knees to the side, giving her room to pass, and extended his hand. Taking it, she levered herself to standing. She didn’t immediately move past, but paused before him. At her stillness, his head came up and she looked down to meet his eyes, hand still in his. A timeless configuration, a Lady and her knight-errant. A timeless connection, clear and comfortable and right. An understanding of their respective place in this eternal dance, instinctively knowing when to lead and when to follow.
She moved to the dance floor and his eyes never left hers, not for a second.
She started dancing.
It should have been awkward. She was so out of practice. A well-preserved vintage car garaged for too long, its battery drained. But the music was a key slipped into the ignition and, to her surprise, the engine turned over. She began to move. The avidity in Nick’s eyes burned off whatever insecurity remained and the butterflies finally settled. She had no idea why he was so into her, but he was, and it was freeing. Freeing from something. For something.
She moved deeper into herself, her moves becoming small, intimate, private. In these matters, while other women might be overt, she’d always found that covert operations yielded the best results. Give him just enough to guess the rest. Make a man use his imagination and he couldn’t help but be curious. They didn’t need the explicit version. What they wanted was Pictionary. And she knew how to draw.
When the server returned with an ice bucket of champagne and placed it on the table in front of Nick, he shifted to see around her, to keep watching Sewanee, and had she ever felt more powerful? Had she?
The cast of his eyes shifted. From watching to thinking. A secret tugged at his lips. With the thumb of his right hand, he spun the ring on his middle finger.
The song didn’t end so much as become something else, back to unrecognizable noise.
She stopped moving. She stood there, people stepping around her as if she were a spilled drink.
Nick’s silent grin reeled her to him. As she drifted off the dance floor a strobe light began throbbing. She watched it fracture him. He grew larger in pulses as she came closer. She could only imagine what she looked like, coming toward him in fits, skipping ahead. Instead of swinging his knees to the side, this time he simply parted them. So she slipped between them, the outside of her legs kissing the inside of his. His hands stayed on his thighs. She saw them clench the fabric.
Once again, they looked at each other.
He had the sweetest look on his face when he said something she couldn’t hear over the music.
So she yelled, “What?”
He laughed. Shook his head. Yelled back, chagrined, “I said I miss talking to you!”
She laughed, bowing her head, dropping her hands to his shoulders to steady herself. Chuckling, he reached up, cupped the back of her neck. His fingers slid through the fine hair there and his cheek slid along hers until his mouth was back at her ear. “Would you like some champagne?”
Her cheek still touching his, she turned to his ear and said, simply, “No.” Then she took his lobe into her mouth.
In response, he gathered her hair and squeezed.
She stepped back, took his hands as she straightened, and pulled him up. As she led him away from the table, she noticed a group of young women loitering at the periphery of the dance floor. They looked unmoored. Dinghies left to bob in a rising tide. Their dresses too short, heels too high, hair too glossy. One kept shifting her weight, already regretting her choice of footwear; another, with the shortest dress of all, kept tugging it down, drawing more attention to the very things she was trying to hide. The sharks were beginning to circle.
She dropped Nick’s hand and stepped over to them. She pointed at their table, at the nearly full bottle of vodka, at the unopened champagne. She caught the server’s eye and gestured at the girls, then back at the table. She nodded. The girls’ mouths dropped open. One pulled her into a hug. Another jumped up and down, hands to her chest, nearly collapsing when her ankle buckled.
They exited the club, but on their way to the elevator, Nick suddenly took her hand and guided her into a vestibule, through double glass doors, and outside. The blast of cold, snow-scented air hit Sewanee like an adrenaline shot and she gasped, but it was instantly muffled by Nick’s hands taking her face, his mouth taking hers, his body backing her up until her ass hit an icy wall. She melted into it as his body melted into hers.
She remembered they were on a public walkway when she
heard the unmistakable hoots of a pack of boys. Nick broke the kiss, his hands moving from her face to the wall behind her, fencing her in. She dropped her head into his chest as he located the offenders, growled good-naturedly, “Feck off, yeah?”
The cackling faded and Sewanee chuckled into his shirt. She looked back up and past his shoulder. Billowy clouds of breath carried her words: “You have to see this.”
He turned his head. “My God.” He rolled off her, leaned back against the wall so they were side by side, facing the Strip, right above the small lake where the gondolas were kept. There was a bridge and the replica of St. Mark’s tower, the campanile. The lights of the Mirage and Treasure Island on the other side of Las Vegas Boulevard. Snow continued to fall over it all, though more gently than before.
She shivered and Nick snaked an arm behind her back, dragging her over to settle against his front. He swept her hair off her neck and, softly as snow, kissed her exposed skin. His fingers brushed her collarbone and the crevice below it. The sound she made was entirely new to her. “I don’t understand,” he murmured. “I don’t understand how this happened. How everything with you is magic.”
“I. Don’t. Know,” Sewanee huffed out. He took her chin and tipped her lips back to his and kissed her in ways she had either long ago forgotten or never experienced in the first place.
At some point, she managed to turn thought to speech. “We need to go.”
“Yeah.”
“Now.”
“Agreed.”
They didn’t move.
“Any time.”
“I’m going to need a minute.”
Sensing her confusion, he pressed ever-so-gently into her. She grinned and gave him a meaningful press back. Did it again.
“Not helping.” He grinned back. She did it once more. He pushed her away, slightly. “All right. Here’s what we need to do. Because I can’t be trusted to stop touching you. You go upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Methinks you’re already up–”
“Jaysus, no mercy with you, is it? No quarter given?”
In confirmation, she pushed back against him one more time.
“Witch,” he hissed, jumping to the side, laughing. “Go.”
She stepped away, turned back. “3524.”
“I know.”
As she opened the door she glanced back one more time and said, “You’ve got your key?”
“Worried I might not show?”
Honestly? Yes. She was worried she’d somehow imagined him. That she would go back inside and it would all disappear as magically as it had appeared. Her disappointment poised like a guillotine about to drop. But Nick said, “I’m the ’round-the-bend guy, remember? See you in five.”
SEWANEE WAS STANDING
in front of the window in the living room when she heard the key card turn the lock. She spun around, and the moment Nick came through the door with that energy he possessed that calmed the very air, she took off her eye patch.
That he had no reaction only affirmed her decision.
She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned against the window, saucily crossing one ankle over the other. The epitome of casual.
He smirked at her, fully aware of what she was doing. “Comfortable?”
She smirked right back at him. As he walked into the living
room, he took off his jacket, draped it on the back of the couch. He loosened his tie, took it off altogether, threw it on the jacket. Unbuttoned the first three buttons of his shirt. The lights in the room were low, but the neon seeping through the windows highlighted the leisurely striptease. He began to roll up his sleeves. Slowly, with all the hurry of a sadist. He shook his head slightly. Looked down at his task. “What am I going to do with you?”
His voice had taken on a grit she found she didn’t mind at all.
“What do you like?” he asked, his eyes finding hers.
“Everything?”
“Sounds good to me.” His smile nearly ran off his face. “Where to start, then?” He finished with his sleeves and put his hands on his hips. “You know what I want? To be James Bond right now. Not have to think about the next move. It’s just right there.” He snapped his fingers. Sewanee smiled. “Don’t worry, once we get going, I’ll be fine. It’s merely that first . . . you know. Move.”
She laughed. As far as she was concerned, he could start anywhere. She was a buffet. Take a little bit of everything! Start with dessert! Who cared? She needed to say that, to say something, he was waiting. But she wasn’t sure what.
And then she was.
“I have a question.”
“Oh, no worries,” he said, “I’m tested and clean.”
God, she hadn’t thought of that. What was wrong with her? She felt like the buffet had closed right as she’d gotten to it.
“And I have a condom. A few.”
The doors opened again, just for her. She took a breath. “Not what I was going to ask, but good to know.”
“Ask your question. I love your questions.”
She swallowed. “When I was dancing. You were watching me. And I think you were thinking something. Were you?”
The slight awkwardness of the past few moments evaporated.
The room got warm. He stared at her. His gaze went molten, as it had in the club. “Yes.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“About something you wanted to do to me?”
He hesitated for the space of a breath. “Yes.” He clearly interpreted her silence as embarrassment, because he prompted her with, “Would you like to know what I was thinking?”
“No.” He deflated slightly. “No, I don’t want to know. I want you to do it.”
Nick stilled. “Alice.”
Alice?
She had to remember who she was. “Wouldn’t you like to know–”
“No.”
“You don’t want to know–”
“Do. It. To. Me.” With each word her voice walked down a flight of sultry steps.
He took a long inhale. A longer exhale. “Feck me.” He assessed her. “Say stop at any point and I stop.”
“I trust you.” Lord knew why, but she did.
He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, thoughtfully. He jerked his chin at the lower half of her dress. “Are you wearing anything under there?”
A coquettish smile crept across her face. “What do you take me for?”
He matched her smile. “I’m not judging. I just need to get . . . the lay of the land.”
“The lay of the land? Yes, I’m wearing something under here.”
His eyes heated again. “What?”
Sewanee paused. She wasn’t sure she remembered. “Uh. A thong.”
“What kind?”
“Black. Lace.”
“Grand.”
“Not really.”
“Take them off.”
She paused again. “Just like that?”
He tilted his head again. “Unless you want to stop?”
In reply, she let her fingers slowly slide up the side of her thighs, hiking her dress enough to reach the sides of her thong, but not enough to reveal anything beyond the joining of her legs. She watched him watch her slowly, methodically slide it down, sure she’d never forget the image of him, tall, strong, fully dressed, in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, standing on the white marble floor, lit by filtered neon.
“Can I assume your . . . state of affairs . . . still resembles our bottle of wine?”
She got the thong to her knees and let it drop the rest of the way to the floor. “Lay of the land. State of affairs.” She didn’t move. She waited for instruction.
“Not the kind of euphemisms you find in your books? Kick them to me.”
One moment of hesitation, but she did. “I told you, we don’t use euphemisms anymore.”
“Right, sorry, I forgot.” He picked up the thong. Fisted it. “Wet.”
She couldn’t speak. Words had left her.
He put it in his front pocket. Then, as if his sole intention were to torture her, he lifted his right hand to his mouth and licked the top ridge of the ring on his middle finger. Eyes never leaving hers, he eased the ring off and put it in the pocket with her panties. “I would ask you to open your legs.”
She did, happily.
He moved toward her. She pressed further into the window.
When he was standing in front of her, she tipped her head
back to see him. He stepped closer. His right leg found a perfect stall between her open ones.
His now-ringless right hand slipped between them, under her dress, knuckles sliding up her left inner thigh, and continued upward until, without pause, his middle finger slid effortlessly inside her.
She inhaled.
He exhaled.
She bore down.
He crooked his finger.
She mewled.
He banged his left hand flat against the window beside her head.
She pulled him to her.
He pressed his chest to hers.
She pressed her lips to his neck.
He ground against her hip. Once.
She grabbed his ass.
He pulled back.
She wouldn’t let him.
He cursed.
She writhed.
He jackknifed his wrist, brought the heel of his palm right where she needed it.
And she shattered.
Under normal circumstances, this would be too fast, too foreign, too inappropriate, too embarrassing, not the way it was “supposed to be.” Yet, somehow, far beyond her ability to comprehend exactly how, something seemingly so much less became so much more. All the ways this was wrong were exactly what made it so right.
But there was no sense to be made of this now. Now, she
was beyond herself. Beyond consciousness. Beyond the ability to register all that was happening.
The siren wailing thirty-five floors below. The blue light pulsing on his shirt. His cologne. The grain of his slacks under her palms as she mindlessly kneaded, urging him on. His inner thighs clenching around her leg. The heat in the suite redundantly kicking on. Gasping his name against his neck. The feel of him thick at her hip. His head dropping to her shoulder as he gave in. That groan. Her heaving. His trembling. How they slowly slalomed back to earth like leaves.
Consciousness returned the way a sunrise returned light to the earth. A moan, a sigh, a shudder, a laugh, an apology, an
are you kidding
, a promise to go slow next time, a
so long as next time is right the fuck now
, a chuckle, a disentangling, an unhitching, a
Jaysus, you regressed me
, a strangled
right back atcha
.
A step away.
A good stare.
A swallow.
Another.
A step forward.
A kiss.
More.