Perfect Strangers

We end up closing the place down.

We eat, drink, laugh, and talk until we’re the last ones in the restaurant and the wait staff are clustered near the kitchen doors, collectively glowering in our direction.

Not that I care. I’m having the best time I’ve had in years. I never want the night to end.

I say, “Ugh, I can’t believe you like Hemingway! He’s so unbearably macho.”

I’m rolling my eyes but smiling as I lick from my spoon the last morsel of a delicious chocolate mousse we shared. James ordered no less than four different desserts, because I couldn’t decide on just one.

“And I can’t believe you’re such a literary snob,” James shoots back. “Macho or not, the man was a genius. Look at his legacy. Look at his body of work—”

“Genius? Please. He was a bully and a braggart and wrote some of the worst fake biblical prose ever to hit the market. ‘I am thee and thou art me…’ What bullshit. Combine his love of three word sentences with a pathological aversion to adverbs and the man is insufferable. I can’t believe he’s still being taught in schools.”

“Do you object more to his writing style or to his personal character? Because you have to separate the artist from his work. Otherwise we’d have to burn every Picasso. Now that was an arrogant asshole.”

I nod in agreement. “A womanizer, too. Like Hemingway.”

James shrugs. “Many famous and successful men are. Imagine having beautiful women constantly wanting to sleep with you—”

“I’m straight, but thanks,” I interrupt drily.

“—literally throwing themselves at you day and night. A man would have to be a saint to resist that kind of temptation.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I thought about you the first time I saw you. Every woman in the café had a spontaneous orgasm when you walked in.”

He scoffs. “You’re exaggerating again.”

“If I am, it’s only a teeny bit. Even some of the men looked at you like they wanted to lick you from head to toe.”

When his expression sours, I laugh. “C’mon, James, don’t be modest. You must know how gorgeous you are.”

He pauses for a moment, staring at me in a strange, weighted silence. Then he drops his gaze to his empty bourbon glass and says darkly, “Only on the outside.”

A tremor of recognition passes through me. It’s the same feeling I had when I looked at his portraits. The animal sense of awareness of one’s own tribe.

Birds of a feather flock together. Though we’re still not much more than strangers, I know intuitively that he and I are alike.

Suffering is the great equalizer of humankind.

I recall him standing there surrounded by admiring women at the party, looking miserable and alone, and how oblivious he was to all the stares he received walking into the café, and realize with a jolt that this is a man for whom most other people have ceased to exist.

The happy ones, anyway. The normal ones who still have light in their eyes.

It’s only people like me he can see or connect with. People submerged in their own darkness, the way he’s submerged in his.

I say urgently, “Whatever bad thing happened to you, it hasn’t made you less beautiful. There’s beauty in darkness, too. It just takes a different kind of vision to see it.”

When he lifts his head and looks at me, the anguish in his eyes pierces my heart. His lips part. For a moment we simply stare at each other, our surroundings forgotten.

Then he reaches around the table, grasps me by the arms, and drags me onto his lap.

He kisses me with a fierce desperation that takes my breath away. With one arm wrapped around my back and a hand gripped around my jaw, he eats me with kisses, his mouth hard and demanding, until I’m shaking and making soft noises of need low in my throat.

He breaks away, breathing roughly, and mutters, “Fuck.”

My fingers are clenched in the front of his shirt. My armpits are damp, my nipples are hard, and there’s a throbbing ache between my legs. I’m dizzy and panting, my taste buds and nose full of him, my skin in flames.

Without opening my eyes, I whisper, “More. Please, more.”

He doesn’t hesitate. His mouth slides back over mine. Gentler this time, slower, but somehow even hungrier. He takes my head in both hands and makes fists in my hair, holding me still for his tongue to probe deeply as he takes what he wants and gives me what I need, his erection big and stiff against my bottom.

This time when he breaks away, he’s softly groaning.

And I’m about to explode with desire.

Someone clears his throat. “Ahem. Excusez-moi.”

My lids drift open. Standing beside our table is our waiter, smiling politely. He says something in French, pats the leather billfold he’s holding, places it at the edge of the table, and leaves.

I say breathlessly, “I think that’s our cue.”

James gazes at me, his face inches from mine, his eyes hazy and hot. He adjusts my body on top of his, using a belt loop in my jeans to pull me closer and a little lower, so I’m leaning back in his arms, my face tilted up toward his. I’m a purring kitten curled up in his lap.

He says in a guttural voice, “I’m not ready yet,” and takes my mouth again.

These kisses of his…they’re demanding and possessive. They’re hungry and deep. They’re the kisses of a man who wants more of a woman—who wants everything—and isn’t going to stop until he gets it.

I cling to him and tremble, knowing I’m going to give it to him. Knowing deep in my bones that whatever it is James demands of me, I’m going to give it, no questions asked.

He moans into my mouth. I arch into him, growing more desperate by the second, digging my fingers into his arms, then sliding my hands up around his strong shoulders so I can dig my fingers into his hair. All that thick, silky hair. And his neck—God, even his neck is beautiful, strong and hot, his pulse pounding wildly under my palm.

We slowly melt into each other, our lips fused, our bodies on fire, until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. He squeezes my ass and flexes his hips, breathing hard through his nose as he presses his erection against me and drinks deep from my mouth.

If he pinched one of my nipples right now, I’d climax.

Another throat clearing, this one louder.

Breaking our kiss, James turns his head and glares at the waiter as if he’s going to kill him with his bare hands. He says something low and sharp that makes the waiter’s eyes widen and has him taking a step back. Then the waiter recovers his composure, sticks his nose in the air, and whirls around and leaves.

Reeling, I watch him stalk away. “I hope he’s not off to call the police.”

James presses a kiss against my jaw, another—firm and quick—against my mouth. “If people could get arrested for kissing in public in this country, the police wouldn’t have time to do anything else.”

He takes me with him as he rises, sets me on my feet—steadying me when I wobble—and pulls his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. He throws a wad of cash on top of the billfold, then grabs my hand.

I barely have time to pluck my handbag from the back of my chair before I’m following James at a half run toward the front door of the restaurant, pulled along helplessly in his wake like a swimmer caught in a riptide, headed out into dangerous waters as the shoreline swiftly recedes.

Outside on the street, he hails a taxi with a whistle and bundles me inside. As soon as the door is shut and he’s instructed the driver where to go, we’re on each other again, frantic and grasping, as horny and hurried as two teenagers on a curfew, wild for each other, oblivious to everything else.

With a suddenness that’s shattering, he breaks away.

For a moment I’m so surprised, I can’t speak. When I do, my voice is a rasp. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Collapsing back into the seat on his side of the cab, he holds his arm out between us like a barrier. I’m not sure who he’s protecting, me or himself.

“Wait. Wait.” He swallows, gulping air and sweating, his hand shaking along with the rest of him. “We haven’t talked about—the rules—the terms you wanted—we didn’t go over any of that.”

I’m so bewildered I just stare at him as the city passes by the windows in flashes of light and color. “You want to talk about that right now?”

“I need to know…before we…I need to know what’s off limits. What’s allowed. What might drive you away—”

“Drive me away?” I repeat, growing more and more confused.

He just stares at me, his eyes wild, his chest heaving up and down. He appears as if he’s restraining himself from lunging at me.

His look of raw need is electrifying.

Whatever’s behind this hesitation, I understand instinctively that he won’t go any further with me unless I articulate what I want and don’t want from this situation.

From him.

“Okay. Here it is: don’t ask what happened to make my eyes sad. Don’t ask Edmond any more questions about me, either. No personal questions. No pressure. No strings. In fact, let’s not even exchange last names. Let’s just enjoy this while it lasts before I have to leave.”

He glances at my mouth, moistens his lips, then meets my gaze again. “That’s it?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s what I need to feel comfortable. If you’re not good with that, I completely understand.”

“I’m good with it.” He drags a hand through his hair, exhaling, and drops his arm to his side. “And you never have to apologize to me for being honest. It’s what I want.”

I stare at him for a moment before saying, “You seem relieved. What were you expecting I was going to say?”

His laugh is soft and husky. He shakes his head. “Nothing, it’s just…I haven’t had a woman…I haven’t been with someone in a while…a long time, actually…”

I arch my brows, watching him struggle to find words. Words I can’t believe I’m really hearing.

A man as desirable as he is hasn’t been with a woman in a long time?

Terror seizes me.

There are only a few reasons why a man like him would go without sex for a long time, and none of them are good. Especially the one I’m thinking of.

He catches the look on my face. “What?”

“Um…wow, this is awkward.”

“Just spit it out.”

“Do you…are you…contagious?”

He blinks. “Excuse me?”

Heat rises up my neck. My ears begin to burn. “I’m so sorry if this is indelicate, but we’re adults, and I guess we just need to get this conversation out of the way.”

He looks at me in obvious confusion. I square my shoulders and take a deep breath.

“Do you have an STD?”

In the front of the cab, the driver snorts.

Deep furrows appear in James’s brow. “That’s the first thing you come up with when I tell you I haven’t been with anyone in a while? That I’m diseased?”

“Not the first thing, just the worst, because that’s how my brain works. I wasn’t sure if you were trying to find a way to tell me I’d have to buy a special latex body suit to wear or get some powerful antibiotics or something.”

When James simply sits there staring at me in wordless dismay, the cab driver says in heavily-accented English over his shoulder, “You’re right to ask. AIDS cases are on the rise.”

I turn and give him the stink eye. “Thank you for that enlightening kernel of unsolicited information. You’re a gem. Now go back to minding your own business, please.”

He shrugs, turning away.

I look back and find James still staring at me. I say, “So it’s a no on the STDs, then.”

“It’s an unequivocal no. You?”

“Also no.”

After a moment of awkward silence, he sighs heavily. All the electrifying need from a few moments ago drains out of him. Now he simply looks tired.

“I just…I can’t do small talk anymore. I can’t do fake. I don’t have the energy it takes to flirt and pretend to be interested in all the shallow, superficial shit I have to wade through before I actually get to know someone. Before I can tell if she’s worth my time. Because that’s…”

After a tense moment, he goes on more quietly, his voice almost lost under the sound of the tires moving over the road.

“It’s like you said, Olivia. Life’s too short to mince words. Our existence is measured in minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, because it can never be replenished. Once it’s gone…it’s gone forever. And so are we.”

A powerful wave of emotion sweeps over me. That head-smack of recognition again, kicking me between the eyes.

I’m such a fool. He hasn’t been with anyone for the same reason I haven’t: desire is the first thing that grief kills, before it kills everything else.

I think of those portraits of his, all those lovingly detailed renderings of human anguish, and want to curl into a ball and cry.

Whatever happened to him, whatever toll life has forced him to pay, and has inspired his morbid obsession with immortalizing the faces of people grieving, and has drawn him straight into my arms like a moth to a flame, it’s just as terrible as what I’ve been through.

I exhale an unsteady breath and say in a tight voice, “I’m an asshole.”

He knows exactly what I mean. Shaking his head, he reaches for me. “No.”

“Yes. Oh God, I’m so sorry. I should’ve known you didn’t have an STD.”

“You couldn’t have known. It was a legitimate question. And stop apologizing, goddammit.”

He tucks me under his shoulder and winds his arms around me. I curl both my legs over his. Into his neck, I whisper, “Oh, James, I feel like such an idiot.”

“Why?”

“Because I sometimes forget that other people have had bad things happen to them, too. I forget I’m not the only one walking around with a hole in my chest where a heart used to be. I had no idea how self-centered I’d become…or how isolated. How I’d spend almost every waking moment feeling as if I’d been stranded on an alien planet and there was nothing left for me to do but take scientific notes about the hostile native life forms while I waited around to die.”

A sound breaks from his chest. A chuckle of amusement or a gentle snort of disbelief, I don’t know which. Then I feel his lips press against my hair and hear his sigh.

“God, you talk in long sentences. Hemingway wouldn’t approve.”

I nudge him with my elbow. “Shut up.”

“Make me.”

When I lift my head, he’s smiling. The heat is creeping back into his eyes.

“By the way,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to my mouth, “that was a very personal speech you just delivered. You little rule breaker, you.”

I tuck my head into the crook between his neck and shoulder and close my eyes. “Last one. Scout’s honor.”

“You were a Girl Scout?”

I gently tease, “Hello, personal question.”

“Shit. You’re right. Strike that.”

Smiling, feeling safe in his arms, I say, “I was in the Girl Scouts…until they threw me out.”

When I’m silent too long, he says, “That’s evil. You can’t just dangle that out there and not expect a follow up question!”

“Let your imagination run wild.”

He growls. “Oh, I’ll let something run wild all right, but it won’t be my imagination.”

He grasps my jaw in his hand and crushes his mouth to mine.