JESUS. I HOLD Maple tight because she feels good and I can smell her when I breathe in. There’s the perfume she likes, the vanilla one that reminds me of cookies, and a trace of roses because she “hydrates her face” with a rosewater spray. And then there’s the sweetly salty scent that lets me know louder than any words or porn-star screams just how much Maple enjoyed what she let me do to her. It makes me want to lick her from head to toe.
“Maple?” She shifts against me, her mouth pressing against my chest, and I need to be naked with her. “Dare me to hook up with you?”
The seconds tick by, one after the other. The ocean comes in and goes out. Her breathing settles into a gentle rhythm. I should regret that last dare, but I don’t. This isn’t a game of spin the bottle or even a tease. I know Maple isn’t a hookup, but I’m not ready to let her go yet. So instead, I smooth my hand down her amazing hair. It’s all looped and twisted and tucked into itself like an infinity symbol or some deliciously complicated bit of highway and overpass.
“Maple?”
She breathes out, soft and steady, deep and oblivious against my chest. She’s asleep. I guess that’s a good thing because I shouldn’t be asking her to hook up. It’s just that we’ve both had a few drinks and we’re on a beach—and we’ve touched each other.
I know the sounds she makes when she comes.
I know—
Math.
Shit.
I calculate the number of cocktails she’s drunk since she arrived (four) and the better part of a bottle of champagne. For just a moment I wish she’d been taller, bigger, less tired, had a full stomach. Anything so that we could keep playing our game. I want her so badly.
Instead, I shift her so I’m holding her with my left arm, leaving my right arm and hand free to text. Two texts later, my team is shutting the party down. I forgot that she’d worked this week and now it’s late and she’s tired. Of course she’s going to fall asleep after she comes.
My pop-up parties are notorious for their abrupt endings. One guest described them to all of Instagram as “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” parties and it stuck. I get mine, my guests get theirs, and then everyone goes their separate ways. There’s no hanging around or hanging out, so no one up there will care if I pull the plug and send them home.
Maple mutters in her sleep, shifting, and I stroke her hair, her arm. It’s probably the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, the way she lets go. First she let me make her come and now she’s letting me hold her while she sleeps. I can’t stop touching her even though it’s not going to end up with me inside of her driving us both mad. Her arms are toned and strong. I noticed them when she waved from the top of my stair earlier tonight. She was fucking gorgeous then, and now—now she’s even more so.
When the noise finally dies way above us, I stand up, shifting her in my arms. She settles in as if she belongs there, and I file the sensation away. I’ll analyze it later. Right now, I need to get her somewhere she can sleep. Plus, the tide’s really coming in now and we’ll be out of beach soon unless we pull a Survivor and camp out on the rocks.
Tomorrow I’ll tease her about having to carry her up the stairs like Sleeping Beauty or one of those movie princesses who always needs rescuing by a prince in disguise or a white knight. Not that I’m either of those things. I’m fairly certain I don’t know how to be. Turns out I can climb the stairs holding her just fine, though, even if I don’t have my knight errant license and no one would ever mistake me for a hero.
Security nods at me when I reach the top. For a moment I wonder what he may have heard or seen, but it doesn’t matter. He’s signed an NDA and I’ve learned that Maple likes being watched. The possibility of getting caught gets her off.
Since I’m not getting off tonight, however, I carry Maple upstairs to my bedroom. She’ll have to spend the night with me because it’s not as if I can send her home in the car like a package. Or a hookup. I feel off-kilter, but I like having her here, so I decide not to examine things too closely.
I gently kick the bedroom door open. A quick scan reveals that my housekeeping team has done its job and everything is in its place. The white cotton sheets are folded neatly back on the enormous bed, and the gray duvet Maple talked me into is folded into a neat rectangle at the foot of the bed. And then there’s the ocean. I open the French doors that lead out onto a small balcony, so that the ocean air can pour through the room. The ocean smells amazing. Like salt and something wilder, freer and less permanent.
When I set Maple down on the bed, she curls into a ball and buries her face in the mattress. Okay. I can figure out a plan. Just because I’ve never had a hookup put the brakes on before we finished the date doesn’t mean I can’t do this. Whatever this is.
Just don’t panic.
Two minutes later I’m still clueless and Maple’s even more soundly asleep. Her position doesn’t look comfortable to me, but maybe dancers are more flexible than us mere mortals? And suddenly, even though this isn’t a date and we haven’t quite had sex, I feel like tonight might just be okay. I want to wake her up and tell her how much fun I had. How much I’d like to do it again and is she busy tomorrow?
Or the day after. I’ll take any day she gives me.
But Maple sleeps on, oblivious. It would probably creep her out if I stripped her down and put her in one of my shirts, so instead I set out a pair of clean sweats and my favorite UCSC T-shirt where she’ll see them when she wakes up. I also put a spare toothbrush on the bathroom counter, along with three towels and a new bar of Irish Spring in its bright green wrapper.
I realize she has sand on her feet when I make a round-trip back from the bathroom and QA my handiwork. Sand I can fix. I lift first one and then the other while I run a warm washcloth over them. Getting sand in the bed sucks and I think she’d like it better this way. It’s not as if I have a foot fetish—I think—but my dick didn’t get that memo. Maple has the most fucked-up feet I’ve ever seen. High arches, calluses, a permanent arch that’s both unnatural and strangely beautiful. For most of us, hard work maybe makes itself seen and felt through ulcers. Or gray hairs. Or a honking big bank account. All of Maple’s hard work, however, is written right there on her bare feet. She’s not afraid to let her passions change her.
Eventually, when her feet are clean and I can’t think of anything else to do for her, I tuck her into my bed and then I lie down next to her. I don’t quite wrap myself around her, but I want to.