One Night Only (6 page)

I grinned and tipped a wink as I stepped through the doors.

“I'll tell you tomorrow.”

 

 

 

 

 

T
he single droplet trailed its lazy way down the curve of the model's bare, goosefleshed ass. It shone amber like bottled sunset, too thin to be honey, but too viscous to be wine.
Nectar,
Julie thought, and suddenly she could taste its burst of sweetness and imagine the texture of the cool, aroused skin it traveled. The golden droplet was so large and clear on the high resolution screen, such a contrast to the gray scale of the woman's skin, that Julie found her breath catching in her throat, caught up in the suspense of waiting for the quivering drop to fall. A small pond on the museum's floor below the projection screen rippled outward from its center in perfect synchrony, accompanied by a delicate
plink
of sound.

Julie smiled. The illusion was seamless, and she felt her own inner moisture stirring in response. Instead of seeing the thin line the liquid was leaving behind, she imagined the broader swath that would be evidence of her tongue's passing. What would it feel like to be so wet; to be so aware of the fall of every individual drop?

After an afternoon of wandering through explicit art installations, she was dangerously close, she thought, to finding out.

It was a rainy European day, the sort that the guidebooks had warned her about, but that she hadn't really taken seriously enough when she'd made the impulsive decision to stay an extra few days past the end of the conference.

Outside, the afternoon was as gray as the model's black-and-white ass, though not nearly as clearly focused or as inviting. Few other tourists had chosen refuge in the gallery, perhaps because of its theme. A handful or two milled about, a room or so ahead, and another scattered few wandered at her pace. None of them seemed to be responding to the exhibits as she was.

On the screen, another amber droplet had started its slow, inevitable glide. She longed for it, as if some part of her thought that catching it on her tongue might fill her with the brilliant heat that the day—the whole trip, so far—had lacked. The Lucite-protected plaque on the wall, mounted nearby but out of the way, would contain a description of the medium. She browsed her way toward it. She had to know what kind of liquid trailed single file down the woman's lush cheek.

And the plaque might have held such information. But not in English.

Julie frowned, tugging at faint, distant strands of highschool French. The restless simmer of arousal made it hard to think.

“Excuse me.” A voice came from behind her ear—smooth, male—along with the faintest touch to her shoulder. “
Fran-çais?”

Julie inhaled a shallow breath.
Plink:
another drop of nectar. She shivered.

“No, sorry,” she answered quietly, turning. He was just a little taller than she was, slender, with black hair that had dried in short, unruly curls from the rain. She associated the combination of blue eyes and dark hair with Europeans, but his voice was a welcome piece of home.

Her cheeks burned. She lifted her cool hands to them. But he only smiled. He wore layers: open jacket over a dark sweater, and a collared blue shirt and a black T-shirt underneath.

“American?” he asked. He was in his midthirties. Professional. Confident. A lawyer, or a writer, maybe. She glanced down at his hands when she nodded. No ring.

“San Diego,” she answered, and her stomach fluttered. She wasn't sure if she hoped he'd turn out to live near, or far.

“Portland,” he said. Then, “David.”

“Ju—
Je m'appelle
Sarah,” Julie answered. Why had she done that? He was so close she could smell his expensive cologne, and she could barely think over the swell of anticipation that filled her chest and buzzed in her ears, waiting for the next drip of golden nectar. She floundered a moment, caught in his eyes, then smiled sheepishly. She blurted out the next thing that occurred to her, to cover her stumbled deception: “That's the only French I know.”

He laughed politely. “You know more than I do, then. But I love to listen to it. It's a beautiful tongue.”

Tongues… She wasn't imagining her tongue gliding up that model's flesh anymore; she was imagining his tongue, on her.

When she turned away to move on, she could almost feel her wetness pooling. Overflowing.

The next exhibit was a pair of screens. The top display, above Julie's eye level, featured a pair of feminine hands cuffed to either end of a Lucite spreader bar. At ground level, a pair of masculine feet were cuffed to another bar. Both sets of extremities
moved in unison, as if they belonged to a single invisible person—a person being thoroughly, roughly, unendingly taken from behind. This piece, like the ones before it, had a soundtrack: a looped recording of elevated breaths over the rhythmic clink of chain. Watching the straining, clenched hands made the sound of the breathing seem more feminine. Looking at the feet turned the perception of it more masculine.

Closing her eyes entirely, Julie perceived it as her own.

“Wow,” David murmured beside her. “That's…” He swallowed. “Hot.”

Julie's cheeks burned. “Yeah,” she whispered. Her lips felt dry and reluctant to move. She swept them with her tongue. “I'm glad I'm not the only one this place is…you know. Getting to.”

His hand brushed hers, radiating warmth. It couldn't have been an accident, no matter how hard her racing mind tried to convince her that it had to be. She spread her fingers, an invitation, and his returned to hers. They interlaced, and the touch tingled all the way through her and took her breath away. It was a long few minutes before she realized she was squeezing his hand in time with the thrusts of the invisible bodies before her.

He realized it, too. She started to pull away, feeling as though she should feel ashamed, but he gripped her hand reassuringly and let out a weighted sigh. It was low and uneven, almost but not quite a moan, and it was quite possibly the most sensual sound she'd ever heard. Suddenly she wanted more than anything to coax that sound out of him again; to know she'd been the cause of it.

They moved on, hand in hand. Occasionally he stroked the heel of her palm with his thumb. It made her shiver.

A close hallway was next, lined on both sides with hints that
anonymous figures rested nearly submerged in the plaster. The slight swells of breasts and thighs, chests and cocks, shoulder blades and rumps presented themselves for the fondling and amusement of all who passed. It was slightly discomforting, perhaps because Julie pictured herself as one of them, subject to random gropes, intimate yet thoughtless. There wasn't room for two to walk side by side, so David drew her hand behind her and let her walk ahead. Her boots were loud in the narrow corridor, and she said, “Excuse me” without thinking when her elbow bumped a plaster breast. She waited for David's laugh, but it didn't come. Instead he stopped, turned her toward the wall, and splayed her hand over one cool, subtle swell, squeezing the faux breast through her palm. Then, boldly, he shifted her willing hand to the curve of her own bosom and did the same.

Her heart caught in her throat. Somewhere far away a droplet of nectar fell, making an illusory ripple in an artificial pond. She could feel it.

The corridor ended in relative darkness, making a sharp left-hand turn. She heard the next piece before she saw it: soft wet sounds. An alcove was filled with flickering golden light to evoke the flame of candles, illuminating a mattress on the floor with punched-up pillows and rumpled white sheets.

Kissing. She was listening to slow, intensely intimate kissing. Beside her, David shivered and she moved closer, until their hips touched. It was wrong, what her senses were sharing with her. A couple was making out on that bed, she was sure of it; their invisibility was the illusion, not the lush sounds of lips meeting and parting.

Julie didn't at first realize that her chin was being lifted, that she was tilting her head, that she was sighing into David's breath. She wasn't aware of the moment his lips touched hers, only that the kiss was perfectly right. Now the sound fit. That
little sigh of his—or was it hers? Mouthing at his lower lip. The sultry sounds of lips meeting, exploring, parting only to meet again.

Thinking back later, she would be fairly sure that she was the one to cross the velvet rope, to pull him down on top of her on the mussed sheets, locking him against her with a leg hooked around the back of his thigh.

But only fairly sure.

 

The mattress was Jell-O-soft and thin, like a day-old marshmallow left out in the heat. It had looked fluffy, but it shrank instantly to the floor under the slightest pressure. Julie didn't care, and neither did David. Without a thought to the other patrons, he soon had her shirt unbuttoned down to her waist, and pushed it off her shoulders. He stroked her back while his lips found hers again. They kissed, kissed some more, kissed to match the sounds in the soundtrack, kissed to defy them, but always their mouths touched, teased, claimed.

She thought nothing of the ticklish slide of her bra strap down her arm, nothing of the patrons wandering by with their tired expressions, glancing in at their flickering, mattress-clad world for a moment, getting bored and moving on. This wasn't for them. It was for her.

David's hands were spidery and nimble, perfect hands. They squeezed her breasts, weighing them in his palms, closing his fingers. At her encouragement, he pressed almost tightly enough to bruise. She moaned softly, a sound that caught the attention of a few of the browsers. She almost stopped, but he leaned in and caught her ear with his teeth. “Don't worry about them. It's only us,” he murmured against her skin. He bit down, and she shuddered. Yes. She could ignore them. For him, for this chance with him, she could do that. For that warm rush of
sensation and breath, the weight of him against her, she would have done anything he asked.

She snuck all his mismatched layers out of his waistband, finally finding warm chest to slide her hands against. The kissing sound resumed and they met it hotly, tongues playing and teasing. Her hips shifted from side to side in anticipation of having something between her thighs to ride, and she hurried his damned layers up past his chest. He stopped her, looked pointedly at her clothing—at the bra dangling off her shoulders, dark purple seeming black in the flickering gold of fake candlelight. The meaningful gaze moved downward, toward her waist.
If his clothes come off, mine come off? Okay. Small price to pay.

She nodded her assent and reached for his gathered hems again. He sat up, and in true guy fashion, he grabbed the back collar and pulled the shirts over the top of his head as one. Even thinner without the insulating layers, he was almost delicate.
Lovely,
Julie thought.
And hopefully delicious.
She rose and leaned forward to find out.

His nipple was pert and hard, not one of those male nipples that hides down flat. As her tongue grazed and circled it, his hands tightened at her back and a gasp escaped his throat.
Oh, good. I like men who like this
, she thought, and surrendered her full attention to the little nub. Now the kissing noises had their match again—her lips surrounding his nipple, pulling at it, pressing in and suckling at it with teasing swirls of her tongue. Oh, it was good. Judging by the arch of his back and the squirm of his hips, he seemed to deeply appreciate the noisy kisses. She trailed a hand down his writhing side and over the front of his hip, finding the object of her search in the opened fly of his jeans: Hard and smooth, with a wetness of its own. Wet like the kisses she was planting on his nipples. Wet as if
she'd already glided messy kisses down his cock.

Julie shuddered again, the curl of her hand tightening around his length. His fingers touched up under her chin, lifting her eyes. His were almost colorless in the uneven light, amused but also full of hunger. She shifted her hips. Her panties, soaked, clung to her.

“It's about desire,” one patron said to another, a rare and unexpected voice in English behind her. “See how they're touching each other and disheveled, but not completely undressed? See how they're looking at each other, over those sounds? It's like we're hearing them think about their desire.”

David grinned at Julie, and she grinned back. Still holding her chin, he leaned in to claim her lips in another dizzying kiss, matching the heated kisses filtering through the speakers. When her bra came off, Julie made sure to crumple it into an artful ball with her blouse. The air was cool on her nipples, and she felt her lower abdomen tighten. But a moment later his bare chest was against hers, warming her. The English tourists were still watching from the safety of the velvet ropes, accepting her anonymous encounter—her wanton, spontaneous, crazy display of random lust—because they believed it to be scripted for their entertainment.

David's fingers tightened on her chin. “Not for them,” he breathed at her lips between hard, humid kisses. “For us.”

Julie nodded shallowly. Her hand had stilled on him, and now she stirred it into motion again, fishing his cock fully out of his jeans and stroking his slickness along his shaft. He groaned into her mouth, surged in her fist. He was a little thicker than she was used to, she thought, and perhaps a little longer. She blazed with the need to know how he would feel inside her.

He slid a hand up under her skirt and into her tights, faltering with a sharp intake of breath when he reached her slippery
labia. The feel of his bare fingers sent a hard tingle through her core. If he'd had any doubt as to the extent of her arousal, he didn't any more. “Smooth,” he told her lips between kisses. One finger squirmed its way to the snugness of her entrance.