Sweet Filthy Boy, стр. 35

“Yes. I just want to fall asleep inside you. Maybe our bodies will make love again while our brains sleep.”

“No, I mean,” I start carefully, “who was at the door?”

He stills. “Perry.”

Perry. The friend who wasn’t in Vegas with the rest of them. “What did he want?”

He hesitates, kissing my neck. Finally, he says, “I don’t know. In the middle of the night? I don’t know.”

Chapter THIRTEEN

I DON’T HAVE TO open my eyes to know it’s still dark out. The bed is a nest of warm blankets; the sheets are smooth and smell like Ansel and laundry detergent. I’m so tired, floating in that place between awake and dreams, and so the words being whispered into my ear sound like bubbles rising up from underwater.

“Are you frowning in your sleep?” Warm lips press to my forehead, a fingertip smoothing the skin there. He kisses one cheek and then the other, brushing his nose along my jaw on his way back to my ear.

“I saw your shoes by the door,” he whispers. “Have you walked all of Paris by now? They look nearly worn through on the bottom.”

In truth he’s not that far off. Paris is an unending map that seems to unfurl right in front of me. Around each corner is another street, another statue, another building older and more beautiful than anything I’ve seen before. I get to one place and that only makes me want to see what’s beyond it, and beyond that. I’ve never been so eager to become lost in a place before.

“I love that you’re trying to learn my city. And God help the poor boys who see you walk by in that little sundress I saw hanging in the bathroom. You’ll have admirers following you home and I’ll be forced to chase them off.”

I feel him smile against the side of my face. The bed shifts and his breath ruffles my hair. I keep my features relaxed, my exhales even, because I never want to wake up. Never want him to stop talking to me like this.

“It’s Saturday again . . . I’m going to try and be home early tonight,” he sighs, and I hear the exhaustion in his words. I’m not sure I’ve fully appreciated how difficult this must be for him, to balance what he sees as his responsibility to me, and to his job. I imagine it must feel like being pulled in every direction.

“I asked you to come here and I’m always gone. I never meant it to be this way. I just . . . I didn’t think it through.” He laughs into my neck. “Everyone I know would roll their eyes at that. Oliver, Finn . . . especially my mother,” he says fondly. “They say I’m impulsive. But I want to be better. I want to be good to you.”

I almost whimper.

“Won’t you wake up, Cerise? Kiss me goodbye with that mouth of yours? Those lips that get me in trouble? I was in a meeting yesterday and when they called my name I had no idea what anyone was talking about. All I could think about was the way your cherry lips look stretched around my cock, and then last night . . . oh. The things I’ll imagine today. You’re going to get me fired and when we’re penniless on the street you’ll have no one to blame but that mouth.”

I can’t keep a straight face anymore and I laugh.

“Finally,” he says, growling into my neck. “I was beginning to contemplate pulling the fire alarm.”

EVEN AS I wake alone, a couple of hours later, I remember the way he whispered against my shoulders, and finally into my ears. I’d rolled to my back, eyes still closed as I wrapped myself around him in a drowsy hug, the fabric of his suit rough, the silk of his tie suggestive as it dragged between my naked breasts. Had I been more awake I would have pulled him down, watched as he matched his fingertips to the bruises pressed into my skin.

Ansel left me breakfast. There’s coffee and a wrapped croissant waiting on the counter, and along with the lace cap that went with my maid costume, a new list of scribbled phrases rests beneath my plate.

What time is it? Quelle heure est-il?

What time do you close? A quelle heure fermez-vous?

Take your clothes off, please. Deshabille-toi, s’il te plaIt.

Fuck me. Harder. Baise-moi. Plus fort.

I need the large dildo, same size as my husband. Je voudrais le gros gode, celui qui se rapproche le plus de mon mari.

That was the best orgasm of my life. C’etait le meilleur orgasme de ma vie.

I’m going to come in your mouth, you beautiful girl. Je vais jouir dans ta bouche, beaute.

I’m still smiling as I step into the bathroom and shower, memories of last night running on a reel inside my head. The water pressure in Ansel’s apartment is terrible and the water is barely lukewarm. I’m reminded once again that I’m not back in San Diego, where the only person I needed to battle for hot water this late in the morning was my mom after her morning yoga class. There are seven floors of people to take into account here, and I make a mental note to get up earlier tomorrow, and sacrifice an extra hour of sleep for a hot shower. But that’s not the only thing I’d miss out on. Those few, unguarded moments in the morning when Ansel thinks I’m still sleeping might just be worth a cold shower. Lots of them.

GRUESIMONE IS OUTSIDE having a cigarette when I walk past the patisserie toward the metro. “Today has already been a fucking nightmare,” she says, blowing a plume of smoke out the side of her mouth. “We sold out of the scones everyone loves and I spilled a fucking coffee on myself. FML.”

I’m not sure why I sit with her for the duration of her break, listening to her vent about the trials of being a poor twenty-something in Paris, how her boyfriend can never seem to shut the coffee off before he leaves, or how she’d give up smoking but it’s cigarettes or customer homicide—their choice. She isn’t very nice, to anyone, really. Maybe it’s that she’s American, and it’s comforting to have regular conversations with someone who isn’t Ansel in a language I actually understand. Or maybe I really am that starved for outside human contact. Which is . . . really depressing.

When she’s finished her last cigarette and my coffee has long grown cold, I tell her goodbye and head toward the metro, and then explore as much of Le Marais as I can in a morning.

Here there are some of the oldest buildings in the city, and it’s become a popular neighborhood for art galleries, tiny cafes, and unique, pricy boutiques. What I love most about the neighborhood are the narrow winding streets, and the way tiny courtyards pop up out of nowhere, begging to be explored, or simply for me to sit and fly through a novel, getting lost in someone else’s story.

Just when my stomach is rumbling and I’m ready for lunch, my phone vibrates in my bag. I’m still surprised by the delicious lurch in my chest when I see Ansel’s name and face—the dorky selfie of him with pink cheeks and wild grin—flash across my screen.

Is it fondness I feel? Sweet Jesus, I’m definitely fond, and whenever he’s close I basically want to molest him. It isn’t just that he’s gorgeous, and charming, it’s that he’s kind and thoughtful, and that it would never occur to him to be sharp or judgmental. There’s an inherent ease to him that’s disarming, and I have no doubt he leaves a trail of unintentionally broken hearts—male and female—wherever he goes.

I’m almost positive the old woman who runs the store around the corner from our apartment is a little in love with him. In truth, I’m pretty sure almost everyone Ansel knows is a little in love with him. And who could blame her really? I watched her one evening tell him something in rapid-fire French and then pause, pressing her wrinkled hands to her face like she just told the cute boy about her crush. Later, as we’d walked down the sidewalk eating our gelato, he’d explained that she told him how much he looks like the boy she fell in love with at university, and how she thought about him for a moment every morning when he stopped by for coffee.