You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [31]
“Aren’t you cold?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She looked across the room at the open window. “Oh you can see the Eiffel Tower,” she said, standing and walking toward it.
I turned in my chair. She walked back slowly, looking around the room. “I love your place.”
“So why’d you come?”
“Why’d you tell me to come?”
“I was curious. Why’d you come?” I asked again.
She was nervous and walked to the long kitchen counter, leaned against it, her back to me.
Having her there calmed me. I felt suddenly in control. I could breathe.
“Do you like this, Marie?”
“Like what?” She asked turning from the counter.
“Showing me your body like you are, letting me watch you.”
She smiled. “You like my body?”
“I do.”
“What do you like?”
I looked at her facing me—arms spread out behind her, fingers on the countertop, her breasts full. I was absorbed by her body, all of it offered so certainly. And though I knew she was playing at seduction, I created her for myself, made her what I wanted.
“I’ll tell you precisely. Would you like that?”
She hopped up onto the counter, dangling her legs. “Yes,” she said.
I waited, studied her face, searched for some indication of fear. But there was only determination.
“I like the curve of your breasts, I like your ass, the way you move, as if wherever you’re going is the most important place you’ll ever go. I like your hair. I like your lips, how they’re full the way your breasts are. That’s what I like. Of what I’ve seen, anyway,” I said.
Her face had flushed, her cheeks made redder in the low light cast by the lamp on the dresser. She looked, before she raised her chin to speak, like a girl receiving praise from a proud parent. There were those wide pleading eyes and her face turned to me. I did my best to suppress my instinct to change course. But I felt the weight return softly to my chest, my heart began to pound and the clarity I’d felt minutes before was lost.
“I—” she said.
“Wait,” I told her, and walked into the bathroom. I closed the door. I stood above the toilet and took out my cock, which minutes before had begun to harden and was now flaccid in my hand. I pissed into the water and closed my eyes.
Finished, I stood in front of the sink and ducked the mirror.
I wet my hands with cold water and ran them over the back of my neck.
She was still sitting on the counter leaning slightly forward so that her hair fell across her face. I leaned against the open bathroom door.
“Do you know why I came here?”
I shook my head. She hopped from the counter and I felt the night slow and slow and slow until it looked as if Marie were flying, her arms propelling her outwards, her swinging legs bringing her toward me. I saw her hands leave the counter, her body arch through the air. She landed and I could breathe again. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “You know why I came here, Mr. Silver? I came here to fuck you.”
I laughed but she didn’t flinch.
“I did,” she said. “That’s why I came here.” I smelled cigarettes and that sweetness like overripe apples. I raised my hand and slid my fingers into her hair. At the base of her skull it was soft, but as I moved outwards there was the hardness of hairspray. I took a step closer so that my lips were inches from hers. She was breathing quickly, her eyes shone with a steady determination, as if she were playing a character she couldn’t quite inhabit.
And we looked at each other, the two of us in a room, in a building, in a city in the world. I was far enough away to see us there. I took a deep breath and then her knee was between my legs, her arms around my neck.
She held on tightly, desperately, moaning as if she were in pain. She turned her back. She moved up and down, stroking me, my hands cupping her breasts, my mouth at her neck. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her with strength until she slowed slightly.
She spun and faced me again, bit my lip, ran her hand over the fly of my jeans, felt how hard I was and smiled at me, victorious. I grasped her hair tighter, pulled her