Here Without You (Between the Lines #4)

‘Oh, my gosh – my stomach,’ she says, holding on to me and laughing.

‘No need for the elevator to waste time when it doesn’t plan to stop anywhere along the way. I promise that’s the last rushed experience you’ll have tonight.’ I kiss her nose as the doors slide open. ‘Everything else will be unhurried and deliberate. If you want something faster,’ I bend to whisper in her ear and she gives a gratifying shiver, ‘you’ll have to say so.’

Her lips part when she sees the suite, and she’s speechless for several minutes, standing in the doorway and scanning from one side to the other and back. Finally, she leaves the entrance, tentatively, and moves into the room. ‘This is all … ours? This is one room?’

I shrug, enjoying her amazement. ‘It’s a suite.’

Within minutes, we’re enjoying an unobstructed view of a breathtaking sunset over the bay – judging by the fact that she seems to stop breathing, watching it. I couldn’t have timed this better if I’d actually scheduled our arrival time to coincide with the sun’s measured retreat.

True to my word, I set her up at the desk and let her do her thing while I put our stuff away and order a dinner of champagne, Nasi Goreng and Singapore Noodles – to be delivered in an hour and a half.

‘Time’s up.’ I lean over her and nuzzle her cheek. ‘I’ve given you a very generous half-hour of study time.’

She leans her head back on my shoulder and closes her eyes. ‘I can’t only study for half an hour – I’m going to fail …’

I pull her chair away from the desk and kiss her behind the ear, eliciting a soft moan. ‘If you’re a good girl, I’ll allow you another half-hour tomorrow.’

‘I’m always a good girl, Reid,’ she says, and the ear I’m attending to warms under my tongue. ‘I mean … uh …’

‘No explanation needed,’ I chuckle, kissing down her neck before releasing her hair from the clip and slipping her sweatshirt off. Underneath, she’s wearing a white tank with a scooped neckline trimmed in lace – which I can see straight down from my vantage point behind her. A sweatshirt … with this hidden beneath it?

‘Jesus, Dori.’ My head is swimming with wanting her, and I’m determined to pay her back in kind, and then some. Cupping my hands over her shoulders and sliding forward, my thumbs follow the line of her collarbone while my fingers brush over the curves of her breasts. ‘You’re perfect.’ She starts to object and I place two fingers over her mouth, slipping my other hand into the top of her white lace bra. She arches back and gasps, giving me better access to her warm skin, her heart beating against the palm of my hand.

Pulling her up and kicking the chair out of the way, I turn her and am kissing her deeply before she can take a breath. Her tank follows the sweatshirt to the floor. Gripping her hips, I ask, ‘Shower before, during or after? Since you’re the birthday girl, your wish is my command.’

‘During?’ Her brow creases. ‘During wha– oh. Oh.’

I release her long enough to pull my T-shirt off, and then lift her until she settles her legs around me and hooks her ankles at the base of my spine. Carrying her into the bathroom, I say, ‘What you’re doing right now? Yes.’ I kiss her. ‘Exactly this. In about three minutes.’

She slides down the length of me when I put her down to switch on the hot water and then turn to remove her jeans. I’m kneeling, tugging her jeans from her feet when she says, ‘I thought you said something about … unhurried …’ She steps out of them, nibbling her lower lip and standing in front of me in nothing but scraps of white lace.

‘So I did,’ I answer, rising. Unbuttoning my jeans while my eyes skim over her curvy little body, I whisper, ‘How is it not my birthday? Because I’m definitely getting my wish.’

Once my jeans are off, I back her to the wall and she squeaks.

‘Cold?’ I laugh, pulling her away from the chilly marble and kissing her while I unhook her bra and slide her panties over her hips. ‘It’s warmer in the shower. And be prepared to be very, very wrinkly – because if you want slow, by God, you’re getting slow.’

We barely have time to get our robes on before dinner arrives an hour later. Curling up on the sofa with her legs beneath her, Dori pretends to read while the room service attendants set up the table by the window. Her hair is still damp and shoved back behind her pink-tipped ears. I struggle not to laugh at this girl who is the most mind-blowingly responsive lover I’ve ever had – while also bizarrely bashful in the presence of hotel personnel.

While we trade bites of our meals, placing chopsticked morsels into each other’s mouths in a way that would be impossible to get her to do out in public, I coax her into sipping a glass of the champagne – just enough to render her languid and periodically giggly after dinner, mostly when I kiss her somewhere ticklish, like the bottom of her foot, or the curve of her waist, or the top of her inner thigh. For the most part, she sighs and smiles impishly, her hands wandering over me, gentle and teasing, until I pin her to the bed, at which point she grips my biceps and makes the most incredibly satisfying sounds I’ve ever heard her make.

Note to self: stock a case of Mesnil Sur Oger ASAP.

18

DORI

A month ago, I woke up with Reid in my narrow dorm bed, and it was like a dream – spending an entire night with him next to me. Burrowed under the covers, back pressed to his warm chest, his arms surrounding me – I wanted to stay there forever.

Waking up with him in this suite feels like – what’s better than a dream?

A fantasy. That’s what.

We left the heavy draperies pulled open last night. Without moving from the bed, I take in the cerulean blue of the bay, blending into the lighter horizon beyond it. Boats cross the water slowly – tiny specs of white or grey from this distance, without form.

The suite is perfectly temperature-controlled, and the pillow-topped bed is huge, so we weren’t required to sleep like two spoons in a drawer due to winter chill or lack of space. Still, my ankle is hooked over his. With the arch of my foot, I stroke the soft hairs on top of his foot and he utters a sleepy, ‘Mmm …’ Bare-chested, sheet pushed to his waist, his opposite arm is crooked under his pillow while the arm nearest me is parallel to mine, intersecting at our hands. His hand rests under mine, fingers folded loosely over the back of my hand.

Asleep, he looks so young, which is perhaps odd for me to think, considering the fact that I’m eleven months younger than he is. With his independent demeanour and his successful career, it’s difficult to view him as a boy who’s a month shy of twenty. Except when he’s unguarded, like now.

I slip from the bed to use the bathroom and brush my teeth, and a few minutes later, he pads in, still a bit heavy-eyed, his hair sticking in all directions. He’s pulled on the plaid Cal pyjama bottoms I gave him when he visited campus, while I’m wearing his Berkeley tank that completes the set. It falls to my mid-thigh, the arm openings extending almost to my waist.

It’s all I can do to concentrate on getting rid of any traces of morning breath instead of turning and twining myself around him like a ribbon. He grabs his toothbrush and the toothpaste, blearily squirting a blob on to the bristles and attacking his teeth. When he begins to brush his tongue, I stare at my toothbrush, running it under the water stream and willing my pulse rate to normalize. My hair looks like chaos incarnate, but thank goodness, it’s down and covering my ears, because I can’t stop conjuring memories of his tongue. Sweet baby Jesus.

Before I can leave the room, he captures my hand and pulls me back, tossing his toothbrush next to mine. ‘Good morning, baby.’ Slipping his arms around my waist, his lips meet mine as his hands inch the hem of the tank higher. ‘Should I call for breakfast now? Or do we want dessert first …’

Scraping my nails lightly over his hard pecs, tracing the sharp definitions and encircling each nipple with an index finger, I watch his eyes darken. ‘Dessert, please,’ I say, and he gathers me into his arms, walks to an overstuffed chair in the living area and settles me astride his lap, giving me a floor-to-ceiling view of the bay over his shoulder that I can’t quite take advantage of at the moment.

His hands alternately dipping into the sides of the tank or gripping the bare skin of my hips, he makes love to me with slight adjustments of clothing only, pushing his drawstring pants lower on his hips after producing a condom from the pocket.

‘That’s some confidence, Mr Alexander,’ I whisper, closing my eyes as he rains kisses down my throat and pulls the arm slit of the tank to my mid-chest, exposing one breast and making good use of his gifted tongue.

‘Um-hmm,’ he mumbles, completely unrepentant about his smug capacity to dissolve my reticence like a quick, hard summer rain dissolves chalk sketches from sidewalks.

I dig my nails into his shoulders and down his hard, muscled arms, holding him close and almost crying from pleasure. He chuckles, pulling me tighter – his confidence fully justified.

After a late breakfast on the terrace of our suite, wrapped in fluffy robes and soaking up the sun, we dress and head out for a day of attempted incognito shopping. Reid’s dark sunglasses, two to three days of facial scruff and the Cal cap I bought him, along with my standard ordinary-girl appearance, fool the general public just enough for us to remain anonymous, for the most part. We earn a few double takes – especially from clerks in the shops – but there aren’t any mob scenes.

In a boutique shop on Fillmore, he chooses several dresses and tells me to go try them on. ‘If you hate them all, we’ll go somewhere else. But I’m getting you something that will make you feel like royalty when we go out tonight.’ I start to object, but he hands the hangers to a shop attendant and presses me towards the dressing room. ‘No arguments, because I chose somewhere completely condescending and snooty for dinner, and that’s not your fault.’

His line of reasoning makes a peculiar sort of sense … until I look at the price tags. ‘Reid,’ I hiss, poking my face out from behind the dressing-room curtain. ‘I can’t wear this. It’s the price of a car.’ He smirks. ‘A used car, maybe,’ I qualify. ‘But still.’

‘I bought a car two months ago, and I will personally guarantee that nothing in that dressing room is anywhere near the price of a car. Even if you wanted all of them.’

‘I don’t!’ I gasp. ‘But –’

Crossing his arms, he says, ‘Let’s assume that for you, the price of a nice dress is the price of a decent new car, minus a couple of zeros. Yes?’ I nod. ‘That’s what this is for me. It’s all relative, Dori.’ He pushes the curtain aside enough to peek inside. ‘Let me see.’ Smiling, he asks, ‘You love it, don’t you?’

I chew the inside of my cheek, appraising myself in this dress – a soft, dark royal blue knit cut like it was made exclusively for me. It somehow upgrades every physical attribute I’ve got – enhancing the good and improving the bad. But I don’t want him to buy me something this un-reasonable. My life is made up of enough make-believe with him even in it.