A Is for Amour

AS SOON AS SPENCE CRUZ saw the blonde coming like an angel out of 1812, he stopped dead in his tracks. A natural instinct for subtlety told him he shouldn’t stare, but he couldn’t help himself. She was a knockout.

Not to say that she was classically beautiful, the way you’d expect from a model or actress. There was just something special about the shape of her face, the smolder of her eyes, the curve of her body under the well-tailored black suit. The hem of that suit was maybe just a tad shorter than propriety would have dictated, showing Spencer that the blonde had a pair of the most incredible legs he’d seen in a long time. She carried a black purse over her shoulder and an Elmore Leonard paperback in her left hand.

There was something intriguing about her, something that said she was too classy to touch the Earth, and definitely too classy for the Harrison Arms, a third-rate business hotel that was anything but classy. Sure, it had history, but it’d needed remodeling since at least 1960. Whereas the blonde in 1812 wasn’t in need of any remodeling at all, that was for damn sure.

The blonde gave him the cold look of a woman who’s just been checked out, knows she’s just been checked out, and isn’t giving an inch.

Spence watched, enraptured, as she walked down the hall and disappeared around the corner to the elevator.

He felt like an idiot.

Spence couldn’t believe his luck, or maybe his lack of it. This late on a Tuesday night, the hotel restaurant was totally empty. But the maitre d’—if you could really call someone a maitre d’ when he looked so badly in need of a good night’s sleep (or a couple of uppers, maybe)—seated him one booth over and facing her. Her. The blonde in 1812. And she was even more of a knockout in the flickering candlelight, even sexier with her little round reading glasses on as she studied the menu.

Spence ordered Glenfiddich, thinking it might offset the effect of the threadbare red carpet and sleazy booths.

Dawdling over whether to get a steak or a Caesar salad, Spence tried hard not to look at her, but failed. Engrossed in the menu, she gave no indication of noticing him—except for the faint upward flicker of her eyeballs when he was imprudently staring at her with dreamy eyes. Finally, Spence decided this was ridiculous.

Picking up his drink, he took the few steps over to the blonde’s booth.

“Excuse me,” he said, as politely as he could manage.

The blonde put down the menu, stared at him as if only slightly perturbed.

“I…ah, I noticed you were on the same floor as me—I figured since we’re both dining alone…maybe you wouldn’t mind some company? I’d even love to buy you dinner.”

She stared for a few seconds, as if amazed at his gumption. But then she smiled.

“Especially since it’s Valentine’s Day, is that it?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “And besides, it’s not Valentine’s Day.”

“Yet,” she said with a glance at her watch.

“Yet.”

“All right,” she said. “Why not? But mine’s on my company, so don’t bother.”

“Mine, too,” he said, and winked.

Her name was Julia—no last name. She lived in New York. He told her his name was Steve, from L.A.; two lies. She looked suspicious, and thereafter on the two or three occasions when she referred to him by name, it sounded like she was putting quotes around it.

“You know, there’s a lot of history in this hotel,” he told her.

“Is that right?” She toyed with the stem of her wineglass. Cabernet sauvignon, to go with the steak she’d ordered.

“In nineteen-sixty, Sam Giancana had Jacob Anzer killed in the barbershop. Same way Albert Anastasia got killed in New York—hot towels on his face and everything.”

“I take it Sam Giancana is some kind of gangster.”

“Was. Boss of all bosses, at least in Chicago.”

“And…are you some kind of gangster?”

“I would hardly go spouting obscure tidbits of Chicago Mafia history if I was, would I?”

“Wannabe mystery writer.”

“Bingo. How’d you guess? It’s the white socks, isn’t it?” He was wearing black silk socks and Dexters, or he never would have made the crack.

“No, that’d make you a cop. Well, if you’re not here to kill anybody or bust gangsters, what is it you’re in Chicago for? Oh, damn, sorry—I ended my sentence with a preposition there.” Her voice dripped sarcasm, but she didn’t crack a smile.

“You should never end your sentence with a proposition,” he said, and regretted it the second he’d said it.

Julia laughed, as if vaguely amused by his forwardness. She toyed with her wineglass some more.

“Sorry, that was in bad taste,” he said, reddening.

“Oh, so you’re saying you want me to end my sentences in propositions.”

“I sell computers for interstate trucking companies,” he said quickly, smiling broadly to make it painfully obvious that he was changing the subject. “I was here closing a deal.”

“They send you all the way to Chicago from L.A. in the middle of February for that?”

“Well, I would prefer it if they sent me in May, sure, but it’s a halfa-million-dollar system. In this business, what the customer wants, the customer gets.”

She whistled, her eyes sparkling. “You don’t say.”

“You?”

“Considerably less than a half a million dollars.” She smiled.

“Uh…no, I mean what do you do for a living?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that….” She smirked. “I’m in advertising. I have a new client in Chicago.”

“In town long?”

“I have a six a.m. flight.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ouch.”

“Well, I’ll be glad to get home. I hate the Midwest this time of year.” She got a crazy smile on her face. “Are you married?” she asked.

He wrestled with that one for a full five seconds. “Yes. I’m married. Happily, to a great woman.”

“Well, well,” Julia sighed. “She’s lucky to have a husband who speaks so well of her. I wasn’t making a pass at you, just curious.”

“Well, thank God for that,” he smiled, trying hard to pump up the mojo and not succeeding very well. “And you?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes not.”

“That’s convenient.”

“I’m a woman of convenience. You have any kids?”

“Not yet,” he said. “We’re planning to try, but we haven’t really started yet.”

“Uh-huh. Casanova’s trying to get his wife pregnant. Soon to be a father, but he has dinner with strange women while on business trips.”

“Hey! I thought you said you weren’t making a pass at me.”

“I’m not,” she said, her tongue teasing the rim of her wineglass. “Yet.”

He laughed, awkwardly, expecting her to say something more, but she didn’t. She just let him squirm.

“This is getting…interesting,” said Spence.

Julia finished off her fourth glass of red wine.

“To answer your question—yes, I’m married,” she said. “And very much in love.”

“With your husband?”

She mocked offense. “Of course, you cad. Of course I’m in love with my husband.”

“Which is why you aren’t making a pass at me.”

“Yet.”

“Of which you keep reminding me.”

“I’m very much in love with him, he’s very much in love with me. That doesn’t mean…well, I’m sure you know how it goes.”

“No, actually, I don’t really know how it goes. Want to tell me?” he said, staring at the way she ran her fingers through her lustrous blonde hair. “You have the most beautiful hair.”

“Oh, let’s not start that,” she sighed.

“Yet?”

She giggled, an oddly girlish sound from a woman who smoldered as much as this one. “No promises.”

“I’ll save up my compliments, but it’s tit for tat. If you’re so much in love with your husband, why are you having dinner with me?”

“Because you came up and invited yourself, ‘Steve.’ ”

When she saw his face reddening, she giggled again. The waiter cleared away the remains of steak and lobster, asked if they wanted coffee. Julia motioned for another glass of wine, a wicked look on her face.

“I’ll have Valium and a joint,” said Spence.

“Sir?” The waiter looked genuinely confused.

“Just a cup of coffee.” He polished off his second Glenfiddich.

“You think that’s wise?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hotel coffee can be deadly. It’s ten o’clock.”

“Oh, the coffee. I thought you meant the Valium. You’re the one with the six o’clock flight.”

“Oh, I sleep like a baby on long flights. I could stay up all night if I had to.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Still getting interesting?”

“More interesting every minute.”

She gave him a suspicious sidelong look, and toyed with the rim of his tumbler. Spencer felt himself getting hard under the table.

“So you didn’t answer my question. If you’re so in love with your husband, why are you having dinner with me?”

“I did answer your question. If you’re so in love with your wife, why are you having dinner with me—especially the night before Valentine’s Day.”

“Now, I didn’t say I was in love with my wife.”

“Oh, you bastard! So you don’t love your wife, and you spend Valentine’s Day with strange women in hotels.”

“No, I do love my wife. But what I said was that we were very happy, and she’s a wonderful woman. Besides, I’m hardly spending Valentine’s Day with a strange woman in a hotel, am I?”

“You tell me,” she said. “So let’s put it another way. Why are you having dinner with a strange blonde and making eyes at her?” She giggled. “Oh, did I say that? Sorry, it must be the wine.”

“Must be. I’m not making eyes at you.” He regretted it the moment he said it, because they both knew that he was making eyes at her—for God’s sake, it would have been awfully hard to miss.

“So, then, why?” Spence felt her leg brushing up against him—probably by accident. The waiter brought Julia’s wine and Spence’s decaf.

“Who’s seducing whom here?” Spence said.

Her leg vanished. “Nobody’s seducing anybody, Romeo. Answer the question.” She sounded offended, but she was smiling a little.

Spence shrugged. “We have an agreement. Things happen. You’re married; I’m sure you know that as much as I do. There’s no point in pretending that they don’t, and there’s no point in letting them affect a lifetime commitment, right?”

“As long as you wear a biohazard suit.”

“Well, this is the twenty-first century.”

“So what you’re saying is that cheating on your wife is okay as long as you go back to her.”

“Jesus, it’s not as coldhearted as that. It’s not really cheating if you both agree to it, is it?”

“Ask Hillary Clinton. It’s not really cheating if you both do it.”

“Now that’s coldhearted.”

“Is it? Then I guess I’m coldhearted.”

“And you did not answer my question. You said you were having dinner with me because I came up and invited myself, but that’s bullshit. You could have told me to fuck off.”

“Do you become progressively more foulmouthed as the evening wears on?”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Oh, I was hoping you do.”

“Give you something to look forward to?”

“Uh-huh.” She sipped her wine.

“So why are you here?”

She laughed, almost bitterly.

“Because I figured it might be fun to fuck you.”

It took a minute for that to sink in.

“You mean fuck with my mind?”

Julia rolled her eyes, and Spence felt her hand, warm and firm, finding its way into his lap, discovering his hard-on. An instant’s embarrassment was replaced with a flood of excitement as he stared into her gorgeous eyes, as she smiled at him.

“Jesus Christ, ‘Steve,’ what do they teach you in the computer industry? I mean fuck you. You do do that sort of thing in Los Angeles, don’t you?”

Her place was three doors closer to the elevator, so they went there. Looked like she’d left for dinner in a hurry: the bed was a tangle of expensive lace panties, bras, camisoles in navy blue, forest green, deep burgundy. She killed the light and swept her sweet nothings from the bed with a single graceful movement. She took an instant to take out her long gold earrings.

“The way I like to do things,” she said in a soft, husky voice as she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, “these would definitely get ripped out.” She set the earrings on the nightstand, kicked off her shoes, then put her arms around him. The warmth of her body enticed him; as they came together, she could no doubt feel he was still hard—maybe harder than ever. She kissed him once, lightly, on the lips, and then grabbed him around the waist and pulled him hard onto the bed. He went down easy.

She smelled like cinnamon, just a hint of it under the faint smell of her clean silk suit. The first kiss felt electric; the taste and texture of her lips and tongue were like nothing Spence had ever felt. She kissed him hungrily, nipping at his lower lip like she was badly in need of a second meal. Meanwhile, her hands crawled slowly but insistently up his chest—not undressing him, just touching, feeling, exploring. He put his fingertips on her face and kissed her hard, thrilled at the way her jaw worked gently as she coaxed him with her tongue. He ran his fingers through her blonde hair and she shook her head just enough to scatter her mane fetchingly on the pillow as the light from the window scattered over them. Her hands found his shoulders, gripped them as if measuring, weighing him.

Spence kissed her hard again, harder, unbuttoning her blazer and slipping his hand inside to run it over the firm, small swells of her slight breasts under the thin silk camisole. Her nipples were hard—very hard—and he stroked them gently at first before pinching them experimentally, those two actions coaxing a low moan of increasing volume from her pretty lips. He kissed her again and slid his hand up into her camisole. The feel of her naked breasts against his fingertips sent a shiver through him; she arched her back as he pulled up the camisole and lowered his mouth to her neck, kissing his way gently down.

He was heading for her nipples—she knew it, both of them knew it—but he saw no particular reason to rush things, and he lingered over the delicate slope of her throat, the line of her collarbone, even her shoulders. Then his tongue trailed a path down toward her breasts, and he took one sensitive nipple into his mouth.

“Oh God,” she said, squirming her way out of the blazer, the camisole. “Jesus, don’t stop that.” The tangle of camisole and blazer fell to the floor, and Spence’s left hand roamed over the naked curves of Julia’s upper body while his right cupped her breast, guiding it into his mouth rhythmically as Julia squirmed. She groped at his shirt, got it unbuttoned, pulled him down closer so she could feel his chest against her belly as he suckled on her breast. She could no doubt feel his erection pressing against her leg, and probably wished she could get his pants off without having him take his mouth off of her breast. But she couldn’t, so she pushed him back slightly, saying, “Promise me you’ll go back to that in a minute,” and her hands found his belt. She unfastened it quickly, trying to get his pants right off, but her hand just sort of slipped naturally into them, like it was meant to be there, and as she curved her fingers around his hardness she guided him onto his back, and then her lips were around his thick head.

“Shouldn’t you be using—” he began, but it dissolved into a moan as she swallowed him. “Holy shit, that’s something else,” he sighed.

“It’s supposed to feel good,” she said a few seconds later when she came up for air.

“Oh, it does,” he said, and she went back to it. She was now lying partially opposite him, and his hand lightly trailed up her stocking-clad thighs, sliding up to her panties. He worked his fingers underneath, found her wet. She moaned softly as he penetrated her with one finger, then, using her whimpers as a guide, two. Her mouth never stopped bobbing up and down on him. God, it felt so illicit, so wicked to let a stranger do that to him. He hadn’t done that since…well, for a long time. But God, it was divine. Maybe that’s why he did what he did, so easily; he worked his hands under the waistband of her panties, started to slip them off—

Her lips lifted off of him, hovered perhaps half a millimeter away, and she panted, her breath warm on his spit-slick shaft. “Shouldn’t your mouth be full?”

And then she was back down on him, and squirming out of her panties as he pulled up her skirt and lifted her onto him. She shifted her body, settling down on top of him with her bare breasts on his stomach, her mouth on him, her legs spread around his face, finding that their bodies fit together perfectly, that with her back arched just so, his mouth was in just the right position to…

Julia shuddered, moaning softly as she felt his tongue wriggling into her, teasing her entrance, then on her clit. A surge of pleasure went through her, and Spence tasted a fresh flood of her salty juice. His lips pressed to hers, he let his tongue work, every now and then suckling on her clit gently and then a little more firmly as her moans told him she liked it—she liked it a lot. While she writhed, spread, on top of him, he kicked off his Dexters and socks. She shifted her body so he could lift his ass off the bed, and she wrestled his pants off of him.

Under the slightly-too-short-for-propriety skirt, Julia was wearing tasteful stockings, businesswoman-beige. But they were clipped to a lacy, skimpy garter belt that framed her ass beautifully. Spence’s hands caressed the contours of her buttocks as his tongue wriggled into her, worked her clit. Soon the thrusts of her mouth came more slowly, and then her head was lifting, her back arching as she squirmed herself down harder onto his face. She still had her hand around his shaft, but she wasn’t sucking him any longer.

She was pumping her hips up and down, rubbing her cunt almost violently on his face, but he stuck with her, his tongue feeling the swell and throb of her clit as she moved against him. She whimpered at him not to stop, not to ever stop, and then she came, hard, the spasms of her sex insistent against his lips as he rode her clit hungrily, listening to her come. God, she made a lot of noise when she came—screaming, almost at the top of her lungs, wordless, descending into a faint stream of positive expletives and a labored sob as she finished coming.

Then, before he could even recover from the motion of her pumping thighs, she was on him again. One hand gently caressed his balls while her mouth worked. He knew he was getting close, and he didn’t want to come yet—but Julia wasn’t about to stop. Clearly, she wanted his orgasm and she wanted it now, and the pumping motion of her hand around his base told him that it was pointless to resist. The sense of being utterly under this stranger’s control drove him over the edge, and he felt himself throbbing and spasming as he flooded her mouth—and he expected her to pull away, but she didn’t.

The vague sense of guilt he felt at letting this stranger taste him was offset by the fact that she’d all but demanded it. When she’d swallowed it all, she licked his softening cock clean, slowly in tiny strokes. But she didn’t stop, even then; she moved down to his balls, and gently licked those, giggling as she heard the surprised, slightly frightened moan from his lips.

“You like that?”

“I like that very much,” he said softly. “But it’s…intense.”

“Mmmm, intense,” she sighed. “Just the way I like it.” And she started to lick his balls, more gently than before, while she cradled his soft shaft in her hand. When Spence craned his neck slightly, she got the picture and snuggled down on top of him, her legs spread just so, and his mouth found her again, bringing moans from her lips as he teased her further. “Gentle,” she gasped at one point when he licked her a little too hard—“I’m always so sensitive after I come. But you guys know all about that, don’t you?”

Spence kept licking, as gently as he could manage, and her moans rose slightly in pitch as he did. The whole time, she caressed his balls with her tongue and even rubbed his organ gently with her thumb, which brought a violent spasm from Spence’s body the first four or five times, but when she asked if she should stop he said “No.” And the fifth or sixth time, he didn’t jerk. He started to harden.

“Mmmm,” said Julia rapturously. “That was easier than I expected it to be.” And her mouth descended on him again. But after a minute Julia lifted her body off of his and said, “I hope you don’t think I’m some slut who gets off on having oral sex with strange men in hotel rooms.”

“Um…well, I…” Spence stammered.

“Because that’s hardly all I like,” she smiled, sliding off of him and unfastening her garter belt.

He didn’t even question it as their naked bodies slid together between the clean, starched hotel sheets. Didn’t even think twice as she mounted him, took his hard cock and pressed the head naked against her entrance. Her face and breasts were flushed deep red. She looked more beautiful than she ever had.

He answered her with a moan, as she sank down onto him.

It was one of those experiences where every movement is magic, where the physical sensations mirror the sense of liberation, or maybe of union. Either way, they did it for forty-five minutes, first Julia bucking and pitching, erect on top of Spence while his hands caressed her breasts and then her face. Next he pulled her down onto him so his mouth could find her breasts, his tongue driving her to a second orgasm as she came down hard, thrust after thrust, on top of him and used her right hand to stroke her clit, harder than Spence would ever have dared. Then they rolled, smoothly and miraculously, so that he did not leave her body for an instant, and Julia wrapped her legs firmly around her lover’s body as he brought her to a third orgasm and then came himself, harder than the first time, inside her.

Afterward, she asked him if he minded if she had a cigarette. He looked shocked.

“What? Are you asthmatic?”

“No, you just…you don’t seem like the smoking type.”

“Well, I’m not… except after incredibly hot sex with strange men in hotel rooms.”

Which flattered Spence so much that he kissed her, hard, again, and Julia didn’t get to have her cigarette until after Spence had caressed her all over and entered her twice from behind, and their bodies had nestled together like spoons while he came inside her for the second time.

“I never come more than twice,” he said as he watched her full lips around the filter of the cigarette. “You’re incredible.”

Which is when she did it: proved she was even crazier than he’d thought she was. “Well if you sometimes come twice, then I’m hardly satisfied with only having made you come three times,” Julia smiled, and her hand cupped his soft cock. Spence had never come four times in one night, but after a short rest she managed to do it with her hand and mouth, climbing on top and guiding him into her barely ten seconds before his fourth orgasm shuddered through his sweaty, exhausted body, just as Julia’s alarm went off.

He fell asleep while she was in the shower. When he woke up, she was gone.

She’d left a note on lined pink notepaper, written in purple ink.

Danger is a drug
Best savored with loved ones.
Happy Valentine’s Day, “Steve.”
—The Blonde in 1812

To Spence’s surprise, Julia had written an email address—Hotmail, of course, which he found oddly illicit and thrilling. He showered in her bathroom, where he could still smell her scent. Then he put on his dirty clothes and walked three doors down to his room, to get ready for his eleven o’clock flight to Phoenix—to sell a six-figure system to a company that shipped Popsicles.

Spence and “Julia” probably wouldn’t have continued meeting, every Valentine’s Day, at the Harrison Arms in Chicago, if it hadn’t been for what happened six weeks later—oddly enough, on April Fool’s.

But in the meantime, Spencer Cruz didn’t feel the need to discuss what happened with his wife—except for one brief comment shortly after he returned home to their Berkeley house.

“Love the blonde hair,” he told her, and she just smiled, knowingly, and didn’t say anything. They screwed each other senseless that night.

He thought it was a joke at first, given that it was April Fool’s Day, after all. He thought it was Mandy’s idea of a practical joke to show him the little test strip with its oddly elliptical plus sign. But the rich blush of her face, and the broad smile she was trying, and failing utterly, to suppress, told him that it wasn’t a joke.

“And that’s not all,” she whispered into his ear as if telling him a great, illicit secret. “I can’t be one-hundred-percent sure, but I’m almost positive it happened that night….”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

She nodded, and kissed him, hard. He held her and smiled—just smiled, ear to ear.

Years later, when Harry Julian Cruz had to explain the derivation of his first name—“Harrison”—to casual acquaintances, he always claimed to be named after Harrison Ford and Julian Sands, which is what his parents had told him. The details would doubtless have been too weird for an adolescent to accept about his parents—but once he was old enough, he did start to wonder what possessed his folks to leave him at Grandma’s and visit Chicago every year for a single night in the dead of winter, the night before Valentine’s Day. He decided he’d probably figure it out when he was older.