Sweet Filthy Boy, стр. 26

Heat crawls up my skin and I pretend it’s the heat of the spotlight.

“Oh, let me see,” he whispers. “Let go.”

“Aah,” I gasp. My orgasm takes shape around the edges, the sensation crystallizes and then builds, crawling up from where his thumb now circles frantically against my skin until my orgasm is hammering through me. Clutching his arm in both hands, I cry out, rippling around his fingers. My legs and arms and spine feel fluid, filled with liquid heat, molten as relief floods my bloodstream.

I open my eyes. Ansel holds still, and then slowly pulls his fingers from me, slipping his hand back out from under the covers. He watches me as consciousness eventually pushes sleep completely aside. With his other hand, he hitches his bag higher on his shoulder. The room seems to tick in the quiet, and even though I try to grasp on to my feigned confidence, I can feel my chest, my neck, my face grow warm with heat.

“Sorry, I—”

He silences me with his wet fingers pressed to my mouth. “Don’t,” he growls. “Don’t take it back.”

He traps his fingers with his lips pressed to mine, and then slips his tongue across his fingers, across my mouth, tasting me and releasing a sweet, relieved exhale. When he pulls back enough for me to focus on his eyes, they’re full of determination. “I’m coming home early tonight.”

Chapter NINE

IT SEEMS HARDER to keep track of what I’m spending when euros still feel like play money. Given how different things feel with Ansel from how they did in the States—and even though I’m in love with this place—part of me thinks I should stay for two weeks, see everything I possibly can in that time, and then fly home to make amends with my father so I don’t have to resort to prostitution or stripping when I move to Boston and begin apartment hunting.

But the idea of facing my father now makes my skin go cold. I know what I’ve done was impulsive and maybe even dangerous. I know any loving father in this situation would have a right to be angry. It’s just that everything makes my father angry; we’ve all grown desensitized over time. I’ve been sorry enough times when I didn’t need to be; I can’t find it in me to be sorry this time. I may be scared and lonely, not knowing whether Ansel’s schedule will let up, what will happen with us tonight, tomorrow, next week, or what will happen when I find myself in a situation where I can’t communicate with someone, but this was the first decision in my life that feels like it’s only mine.

I’m still completely lost in my head, overthinking my wake-up call with Ansel, when I step out of the shower. In front of me, the bathroom mirror dries perfectly, clear of any stray water droplets, any streaks, as if it’s been treated with something. I’d offer to clean to pull some of my weight but there’s absolutely nothing that needs to be done. The bathroom window gleams, too, sun shining directly inside. Curiosity prickles at the edges of my thoughts, and I walk around, inspecting everything. The apartment is spotless, and—in my experience—for a man, strangely so. Before I get to the living room windows, I know what I’ll find.

Or, rather, what I won’t find. I know I pressed my hand to the glass my first real day here, watching him climb onto his motorcycle. I know I did it more than once. But there’s no handprint there, only more unblemished, crystal-clear glass. No one has been here but us. At some point, in his sliver of time at home, he took a minute to wipe the windows and mirrors clean.

THE OLD WOMAN who lives on the bottom floor is sweeping the doorstep when I walk out of the elevator and I spend at least an hour with her on my way out. Her English comes in fragments, mixed with French words I can’t translate, but somehow we make what could be an awkward conversation into something surprisingly easy. She tells me the elevator was added in the seventies, after she and her husband moved in here. She tells me the vegetables are much better down Rue de Rome than in the market on the corner. She offers me tiny green grapes with bitter seeds that give me goose bumps but I can’t seem to stop eating them. And then she tells me she’s happy to see Ansel smiling so much now, and that she never really liked the other one.

I push this bit of information and the twisting, dark curiosity out of my head and thank her for her company. Ansel is gorgeous and successful and charming; of course he had a life before I followed him to the airport, a life that no doubt included women. It doesn’t surprise me to know someone was with him before. It’s just that I realize I’m still waiting to learn anything about him, other than what he looks like with no clothes on.

I SPEND MOST of the day looking around our neighborhood and making a mental map of the area. Streets go on endlessly, shop after shop, tiny alley after tiny alley. It’s a bit like diving down the rabbit hole, but here I know I’ll find my way out; I simply need to find the telltale M of the Metropolitain and will be able to get back to Ansel’s street easily.

My street, I remind myself. Ours. Together.

Thinking of his home as mine is a little like pretending a movie set is home or learning that euros are real money. And every time I look down at my wedding ring, it only feels more surreal.

I like this view of the street at dusk. The sky is bright high above me, but beginning to fade where the sun has started to slip low on the horizon. Long shadows cut across the sidewalk, and colors somehow seem richer, more saturated than I’ve ever seen before. Buildings crowd the narrow road and the cracked, uneven sidewalk feels like a path to an adventure. In daylight, Ansel’s building looks a little shabby, touched with dust and wind and exhaust. But at night it seems to brighten. I like that our home is a night owl.

As I follow the crooked sidewalk, I realize this is the first time I’ve walked all the way from Rue St.-Honore to the metro, gotten off at the right stop, and then made it all the way home without needing to check the app on my phone.

Behind me I hear cars on the road, motorcycles, a bicycle bell. Someone laughs from an open window. All the windows are open here, balcony doors and shutters thrown wide to catch the cooler evening air, curtains billowing out into the breeze.

There’s a lightness in my chest as I near our building, followed by a distinct jump in my pulse when I spot Ansel’s motorcycle parked on the sidewalk just out front.

I fill my lungs as I step into the tiny lobby and walk toward the elevator. My hand shakes as I press the button for our floor and I remind myself to breathe. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Keep it together. This will be the first time Ansel has arrived home before me; the first time we’ll actually be in the apartment together without one of us half asleep or vomiting or working into the early hours of the morning. My cheeks burn as I remember him growling, “Don’t take it back,” only this morning after I got myself off with his hand.

Oh dear God.

My stomach erupts into butterflies, and a mix of nerves and adrenaline propels me out of the elevator. I fit my key into the lock, take a deep breath, and swing open the door.

“Honey, I’m home!” I bounce into the entryway and stop at the sound of Ansel’s voice.

He’s in the kitchen, phone pressed to his ear and speaking in such rapid-fire French I’m not sure how the person on the other end of the line can possibly understand him. He’s clearly agitated, and repeats the same phrase, louder and more irritated each time.

He hasn’t noticed me yet and although I have no idea what he’s saying or who he’s talking to, I can’t help but feel like I’m intruding. His annoyance is like another person in the room and I quietly set my key on the table and wonder if I should step back into the hall or maybe excuse myself to the bathroom. I see the moment he catches my reflection in the living room window: he stiffens and his eyes go wide.