The hotel lobby is quiet. Discreet. All palm fronds and polished marble. The men at the desk don’t even look up as you head straight back to the elevator banks. Do they know? Do they care? Do they see this kind of thing all the time? The questions excite you and prickle your skin with nerves in turns.
The elevator doors swallow you up into a gilded cage, the walls so clean, so gleaming, that you can see yourself reflected. A little windswept, a little disheveled, your lips slicked with gloss and your eyes bright with need. You look like someone half-done, not quite awake. But that will all change soon enough.
You watch the numbers on the strip light up as the floors fly by. Thirteen. Of course it’s thirteen. Because you make your own luck.
The hallway is dark, narrow, accented by the occasional standing vase filled with flowers, but the beige patterned carpet is lush enough to sink with each step you take. It must be a bitch to clean. But that’s not a thought you need to concern yourself with. Not here. Not now.
Two turns, one right and one left, and you’re at your destination. The key is suddenly slippery in your hand, but you fit it into the slot and when the indicator turns green, your breath expels in a whoosh. The tension of the day goes with it. The day, the week, the month, the year.
As he knew it would.
He’s kind of a gorgeously prescient man that way.
When the door swings open, it’s to reveal a modest-size, tastefully expensive room. And him. Waiting.
He’s sprawled across the king-size bed, careless only on the surface. Because everything he does is deliberate. He staged this just for you: pristine white sheets wrapped around his narrow hips, just below the sharp cuts of bone that point like arrows to his hidden erection. Because he is hard. As hard as you are soft.
All he’s wearing is the watch you got him for your last anniversary, his ring and the smile he’s given you every day for the past six years.
You wouldn’t have it any other way. You wouldn’t have him any other way.
His dark eyes go half-lidded with knowing, with need, as you walk all the way into the hotel room and kick off your shoes. “Surprised?” he murmurs, the word muffled by how he rests his cheek against his arm.
“Always,” you say.
He’s not relaxed. Not really. He’s…leashed. Waiting. Hiding his inner thigh because he knows you want to press your mouth to it. Shielding his cock because he knows you want to get your hands on it. Teasing you because he knows how much you like it.
The keycard was in an envelope on your desk when you got to work, a room number and a time scribbled on the front in his unruly hand. You don’t know how it got there, and it doesn’t really matter. Messenger. Courier pigeon. Owl. A late-night break-in. You can picture him writing, hunched over a pad of paper, his long hair falling into his eyes. Just the thought of the bare patch of skin between the edge of his sleeve and the base of his palm is mesmerizing. There are bits and pieces of him that, by themselves, could fascinate you for hours. The whole package is almost too much. But it’s all yours. Naked and golden and dusted with fine dark hair.
You want to sink your teeth into the firm flesh of his shoulder. Bite his thigh and nibble on the curve of his asscheek. Not yet. So you focus on the teeth of your zipper instead. Buttons. Laces. You strip for him as he watches you, still with that sheen of sensual abandon, of languor. Like he’s already been fucked into glorious submission.
Laughable, considering he’ll turn on you the moment you’re in his arms. He’s your sher, your lion. It’s all the pretense of repose and then the leap. He’ll go for the jugular, tearing incoherent moans and pleas from your throat.
“Rough day?” He tugs at the sheet, turns just enough for it to slip down over the rise of his cock and the wiry thatch of hair that nestles it. He’s never been shy about his body. You’ve never been shy in your appreciation of it. You’re certainly not going to feign the vapors now.
“It’s getting better all the time,” you laugh, finally closing the space between you. A little swing in your step and sway to your hip. A devil in your grin.
He reaches out and catches your fingers, pulling you the last few steps. The friction of the thick silver ring on his thumb against the side of your hand is almost enough to make you come.
The anticipation alone has had you on the edge of orgasm all day. You wanted to escape the morning staff meeting, lock yourself in a bathroom stall and touch yourself. You wanted to call him at noon just to hear him whisper in unprintable Hindi. But you didn’t. You held out.
Because this is better. Going to him. Skimming across the mattress on your knees. Until they meet his chest. Until his lips find the ticklish spot under your left arm. His mustache drags along your skin, his beard stubble rides the goose bumps in its wake. But you don’t giggle. No, you just gasp and lean in to his open mouth and his wet tongue, his hello kiss in the strangest, sweetest of places.
And then you push him down, straddling his hips, finally divesting him of the stark white bedsheet. A model without a shoot. That’s what he is. Art without an artist. And a lover with only minimal patience. “Tease,” you whisper.
He folds his arms behind his head, stretching out beneath you like a vast array of warm sand. “Nahin. I am no tease.” His voice is a wave hitting the shore, all gorgeous ebbs and flows of consonants and vowels. “Teases don’t follow through.”
He always does. A key on your desk. A filthy voice mail. Two simple words in a text message. A caress, a tap, a squeeze. They’re all promises he keeps. Like to love, to honor and to cherish. And sometimes—only sometimes—to obey.
You reward him, and yourself, with everything you’ve wanted to do since you walked in the door. A lick of his flat, hard belly. A nip at his shoulder…just sharp enough to make him buck upward between your thighs. And then you take hold of him, hot and throbbing and ready, and you stroke until all his playing at calm turns wild. Until he turns wild. Your sher, your lion…your man-turned-beast.
“Surprised?” you ask against his lips.
“Always,” he gasps into your mouth.
Everything he does is deliberate.
Everything you do together is effortless.
Loving each other like this is at the top of the list.