“On your knees,” I tell her, guiding her before positioning myself behind her perfect apricot ass.
Dragging the tip of my cock along her slick seam, I tease her before impaling her with one hard push. She gasps and I wrap my arms around her, pulling her body against mine as my hips thrust harder, faster, finding the perfect rhythm.
Cupping her breasts and filling her to the hilt, I squeeze my eyes and lose myself in the moment, appreciating the way her body molds to mine and relents to my every wordless command. It’s like we’re finally speaking the same language, even if that language consists of breathless gasps and whispered compliments in the form of sacrilegious profanities.
“Don’t stop,” she pleads, her arms reaching behind her and cupping fistfuls of my hair.
Brushing her dark hair aside, I kiss the side of her neck. “I won’t.”
I can go all fucking night long.
My phone vibrates, pulling me out of my sex-induced coma. Maritza’s naked body rests on top of mine and the living room is still dark, though the slightest hint of pre-dawn peeks through the blinds.
Moving her gently to the side, I slide out from under her and cover her up with the blanket we shared the past several hours. Stepping into my jeans, I tug on the zipper while scanning the room for my shirt.
“What time is it?” Maritza’s groggy voice cuts through the silence. “Why are you up right now?”
“I have to go,” I say. I place an apologetic tone in my voice, but it’s genuine. Sex with Maritza was good last night. Really fucking good. So good that I’d be willing to break my one-and-done rule and go for round two, but Mom needs her morning meds and her coffee, and if I stay too long Maritza might offer to cook me breakfast and I don’t want to do that whole awkward, morning-after-sex routine. I’ve done enough of those to last me a lifetime.
“You’re deploying next week, right?” She sits up, brushing her dark hair out of her pretty face.
“Yep.”
“What are you doing until then?” she asks.
I locate my t-shirt hanging off the back of an armchair and tug it over my head, trying to buy time so I can think of the best way to imply that this is the end of the road for us.
“We should hang out.” She sits up, leaning over to click on a lamp, illuminating the living room with gentle light before lifting her palm. “And before you go jumping to conclusions, I don’t mean we should hang out like that. Or because of what we did last night. I just mean … I had fun with you. And you should have fun before you leave. We could do, like … I don’t know … a week of Saturdays or something.”
“A week of Saturdays?”
“Yeah. A week where we treat every day like it’s a Saturday and we pal around the city and do fun, stupid stuff,” she says. “Not dates. Nothing romantic. Just a couple of … dare I say … friends.”
I smirk, adjusting my shirt into place. “I don’t know.”
It’s hard enough to be friends with a woman and harder still to be friends with a woman once you’ve fucked her.
Maritza stands, wrapping the blanket around her naked body, and ambles toward me. “I don’t want to date you, Isaiah, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re not my type for one and for two, I really, really like being single.”
I slip my phone and keys into my pockets and eye the door.
“What do you say?” she asks. “One week. No romance. No lies or bullshit or games. Just a couple of people hanging out and having fun.”
I’ll admit she’s dynamite in bed and maybe “hanging out” a few more times with her before I leave would be better than finding some fast and loose girl at the sports bar down the street from Ma’s, but I don’t know.
Once you sleep with someone a few times and get to know them, shit changes and sometimes you have no control over how it’s going to change—if it’s going to be better or worse or complicated or the kind of thing you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to recover from.
I’m leaning toward the inclination that no good can possibly come of something like this. Someone’s going to catch feelings and get hurt and more than likely it’s not going to be me.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” I say.
Her expression doesn’t waver. “I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
I exhale. I just want to get the fuck out of here, get through the rest of the week, and get my ass overseas where I belong.
“I can get some of my shifts covered for the week,” she says, stepping closer and wrapping the blanket so tight the tops of her breasts practically spill out. It’s a silent bribe, I fucking know it is. “Come on. We could have fun.”
“No romance or dates?” I ask.
“None.” She makes an ‘x’ across her chest.
“No bullshit or lies?” I ask.
I can’t believe I’m even considering this. It’s got to be those eyes. Those big brown eyes. She’s luring me in, casting a spell or some shit. I don’t know. For some reason, I feel almost powerless around her. Or maybe it’s nothing more than curiosity and an amazing sex hangover that left me wanting more.
“Zero.” Her full lips turn up at the sides, like a girl who knows she’s about to get what she wants.
Running a hand through my messy hair, I exhale, locking eyes with her. “Fine.”
This marks the first time in the last ten years that I’ve been defeated by a woman, that I’ve given up control of a situation when every fiber of my being is screaming at me to walk away, to say no while I still can, before this gets messy.
She wraps her arms around my shoulders, bouncing before pressing her body against mine. “Go home. Get some sleep. Saturday number one is tomorrow.”
I just hope I won’t live to regret this.
And I hope she won’t either.
Five
Maritza
Saturday #1
“I never realized how small Miley Cyrus was,” I say as I pull Isaiah toward her wax likeness Sunday morning. “I think I was twelve last time I looked like this.”
Isaiah doesn’t seem amused and he doesn’t seem to care.
“Hey, look, you’re the same height as Ryan Gosling,” I say, pointing.
Yesterday morning a courier delivered my phone from The Mintz at approximately seven AM, and I can only imagine Isaiah arranged that.
This morning I texted him as soon as I woke up and told him to meet me at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard by 9:30 AM. I met him with two coffees in hand—two creams and a half of a sugar pack for him—because somehow I remembered.
“You don’t find this shit creepy?” he asks.
“I find real celebrities creepier than their waxy counterparts.” I take a sip of coffee. “They’re so … all over the place. You never know if they’re going to be nice or rude or in a good mood or a bad mood or if they’re nothing like the last fifteen movie roles they played. These wax people are more real than any celebrity, and I speak from experience.”
He doesn’t ask, but he doesn’t have to. When you live in LA, people just assume you run into famous people on a daily basis. And sometimes you do. Depends on where you work or where you spend most of your time.