He lowers me down carefully. I can’t imagine how I’ll let him go. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and press my mouth to his eyebrow and my chest has a cleaned-out feeling like I’ve run a few miles. He must feel like he’s done a triathlon.
He looks up at me. “How You Doing?” he whispers softly.
“I’m a ghost. I’m dead.”
“I didn’t know I was lethal,” he says and begins to pull away from me, achingly slowly. I beg and plead and say , No, no, no. I’m an addict, completely hooked, already wanting my next fix while the current one is still running brightly through my veins. My body tries to hold on to him but he kisses my forehead and apologizes.
“I’m sorry, I gotta,” he says and walks away into the bathroom. I watch his backside and drop back into the pillows.
Best sex of my entire life. Best backside I have ever seen.
“Is that a fact?” he says from the other room. Seems I said it aloud.
I lay my forearm over my eyes and try to regulate my breathing. I feel the mattress dip and he pulls the blankets up over my chilling skin, and turns off the lamp.
“Now you’re going to be unbearable. But goddamn, Josh. Goddamn.” I’m slurring.
“Goddamn, yourself,” he says, and I’m tugged into the cradle of his arms. I press my cheek against him, delighting in his sweat.
“Let’s work out a game plan for when we wake up. I can’t handle it if you go weird on me.”
“We’ll say good morning politely, then we’ll do it again.” I sound like I’ve had a stroke. I fall asleep with my ear pressed to his chest, listening to him laugh.
I SOMEHOW SURVIVE until morning. I’m washing my hands when I glance up at the mirror.
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
I open the door a crack. The room is dimly lit by strobes of light through the heavy curtains.
“I forgot to take off my makeup. I look like Alice Cooper again.”
My eye makeup is smudged black and it makes my eyes look milky-blue and lurid.
“Again? You’ve looked like Alice Cooper before?”
“Yeah, the morning after I was sick, I nearly screamed when I saw myself.” I brush my teeth and get my hair into a bun.
“I like you when you look a little wrecked.”
“Well, you’d like me right now then.”
I’m in the shower and trying in vain to get the tiny packet of soap open when I hear the door creak and he’s joining me, calmly, like we do this every day. Lust electrifies me; the strangest mix of joy and fear.
“It’s a Shortcake-sized soap,” he comments, taking it from me and biting the package. He pinches the little coin of soap out and holds it up between forefinger and thumb.
“I am going to enjoy this.”
I am so dazzled by the sight of his velvety gold skin being streaked with water I can’t do anything for a few minutes except stare, my tongue peeking out the corner of my mouth like a hungry dog. The water channels down between each muscle, before overflowing and sheening the flat planes.
The shading of hair begins in the center of his chest, fanning outward to his nipples, and moving downward in a thin line toward his navel. After being bombarded with a million billboards of shiny men in their underwear, I nearly forgot men have hair. I follow the water down, the thicker hair, the imposing jut of his erection. All of it wet. Beautifully veined, enough to make my knees lose their strength. He was inside me. I need it again. I need it so many times I lose count.
“You are . . .” I shake my head. I have to close my eyes, to remember how to speak English. He’s too much. I can’t have possibly captured this big golden creature inside a glass hotel shower, and he’s looking at me with those eyes I love so much.
“Oh, no, I’m hideous,” he whispers, mock tragic, and I feel the soap press against my collarbone. It starts to swirl in a little circle, sticky then slick.
“My personal trainer was so sure this disguise would help with women. What a fucking waste of time and energy.”
I drag my eyes open, and they must look like I’ve been in an opium den because he laughs.