Her dark hair hung long and straight past her shoulders, almost covering one eye as she spoke to the bartender. She didn’t smile, but neither did she look grim as she faced forward and waited for her drink.
Sean sidled over to her. Up close, her features were striking, set in smooth pale skin surrounding dark-brown eyes. She met his gaze in the mirror behind the bar without turning to him, and he smiled.
“Hi,” he said easily. “I’m Sean.” He held out his hand.
She faced him at last, looking in his eyes for a beat before shaking his hand. “Kelly.” She wore little makeup, and the edge of a tattoo peeked out above the top button of her blouse. He smiled wryly when she caught him looking.
“I’m sorry. I was just noticing your tattoo.”
She nodded and casually hooked her fingers over the edge of the lavender fabric, pulling it to the side so he could see the tattoo fully. It was positioned high enough above her left breast that showing it was not inappropriate.
The design was a round clock face, intricate with its twelve Roman numerals and solid black hands positioned at just after seven o’clock. Sean studied the precise numerals and tiny black indicators between each one, struck by their meticulous resemblance to those of a genuine clock. Each hand blossomed from its respective black arm into an elaborate tangle of swirls and then back to a pristine point. The ink around the border gave the impression of a shiny casing, and the entire thing was about the size of a silver dollar.
“Interesting,” he said, his curiosity piqued. “I’ve never encountered a clock tattoo before. What made you choose it?”
She was watching him steadily. “It’s the time my daughter died. 7:02. My way of showing her I’ll never forget her.”
Startled by the revelation, Sean took an involuntary step back, then immediately regretted it. Kelly smiled a tight, tiny smile and turned to accept her drink as the bartender brought it to her. Sean put a hand up when she got out her purse and ordered one for himself, pulling cash from his wallet and handing it to the bartender. Kelly had paused, and for a moment he thought she would argue, but then she lowered her hands and nodded his way.
“Thank you.”
Her voice, like her expression, was neutral. She had not yet seemed unwelcoming, but Sean found himself more unsure than usual whether his presence was desired. His gaze flicked up to the mirror behind the bar again, where he watched her surreptitiously as she looked away from him toward the sun blazing in through the wide window. The lobby doors behind them were swishing steadily, hotel patrons leaving for the day or bustling to check-in. Sean detected a trace of weariness in Kelly’s face that was more than momentary, as though it had been etched in over time. There was something familiar about her as well.
“When did she die?” Had it been recently? Her daughter must have been very young, as Kelly couldn’t be older than thirty, though people sometimes thought that about him, and he had turned thirty-two earlier in the year.
“Two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” The words sounded pathetically inadequate, but he wasn’t about to not say them. They might not be sufficient, but they were true.
Was she married? Sean looked and didn’t see a ring on any of her fingers. Her short, unpainted nails looked delicate somehow, contrasting with the rest of her appearance and everything else he’d seen about her thus far.
As she faced forward again and took a drink, Sean felt at a sudden loss. He didn’t know how to comfort her or if that was what she was even looking for. Feeling a wave of defeat, he opened his mouth to excuse himself. At best, it seemed he was in her way; at worst, he was presenting an unwelcome nuisance.
Before he could speak, she said, “Don’t go.”
“What?”
She glanced at him, then turned back to her drink. “I know you’re about to leave. I don’t want you to.”
He stared at her. She looked back at him. “I’m not very good at talking to people. It’s taken me a while to learn that I give the impression that I don’t want them around. Sometimes that’s true, but not always.” Her eyes flicked to the ground, then to the row of liquors lining the mirror behind the bar. “It’s not true now.”
Sean blinked. He wasn’t sure he had ever met someone so simultaneously enigmatic and direct. Being around her was putting him through paces he was unused to: in a span of twenty minutes, he’d felt attraction, curiosity, sympathy, awkwardness, defeat, and something like poignancy. Was whatever was going on in this encounter worth what might come out of it?
Even as the question arose in him, Sean was aware he couldn’t know the answer. He was surprised to realize it didn’t feel as important to him as he expected.
“Well, I—”
She interrupted him by standing up and kissing him. It shocked him more than anything she’d done so far, and she was already pulling away by the time his arms reached around her waist. She turned, leaving him more baffled than ever as she sat back on her stool.
Unsure what to say, Sean angled his body back toward the bar as well and took a drink. He met her eyes again in the mirror, and this time she held his gaze. Her blouse sat such that her tattoo was about half visible now, and her hands were gathered around the glass in front of her.
He shifted a bit. The suddenness and unexpected intensity of her kiss had caused his cock to harden, and the smell of her hair that now lingered in his memory wasn’t helping.
Kelly slid off her seat toward him. Sean backed up to give her room, and she looked up at him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He blanched. What was he supposed to say? As he started fumbling for an answer, the question struck him: what did he want?
“I mean, there must have been a reason you came over to talk to me,” she continued. “What was it?”
Emboldened by her straightforwardness, Sean went with the truth. “I found you attractive.”
“And do you still?”
Sean was waiting to see some form of expression in her face. The neutrality, especially in contrast to that kiss, was a bit unnerving.
“Yes.”
Her mask slipped then, and he sucked in a breath at the sudden and unequivocal softness he saw. The placidity moved back into place quickly enough, but that moment was like the crack in an invisible door letting through a tiny beam of purest sunshine. And suddenly what Sean wanted more than anything else right then was to see it come out again.
“Come upstairs with me,” he murmured. Not a demand. A request. Perhaps even a plea.
He allowed himself to hope that her falling into step beside him was an acceptance. His hand hovered over the small of Kelly’s back as she walked with him to the elevator, and by the time they stepped into it, Sean wanted to push her to the floor and cover her body with his. He flushed, feeling inappropriate at the primitive musing. He glanced over and found her staring at him. Kelly’s eyes seemed to have deepened somehow, and for a second he thought he saw the same urge reflected in them. He looked away, working to convince himself he was mistaken before he made an ass of himself.
Seconds later they walked side by side to the room he had checked into only a couple of hours before. Sean opened the door and reached for the light, then turned when he felt her hand cover his before he could flip the switch.
“Leave it off,” she whispered.
When they emerged from the entryway, he saw that the natural light spilling through the half-open curtains made the lights superfluous anyway. He turned to Kelly, and before he could say anything, she was kissing him again, pressing against him this time with an urgency that, though understated, was unmistakable. He reached for the buttons of her blouse as she backed onto the bed and pulled him on top of her.
Kelly reached up and undid the front clasp of her bra as her blouse fell open. Her tattoo looked sedately out from her chest, and without meaning to, Sean reached and brushed over it with his thumb, registering a strange tightening in his heart as it reappeared from beneath his skin. His hand slid down and caressed the breast below her tattoo with a reverence that surprised him, and as he replaced the fingers that skimmed over her nipple with his lips, his touch was more delicate than he’d known it could be.
Kelly’s chest surged with her inhale, and he heard her breath hitch as his tongue slid over her skin. Then she spoke.
“You don’t have to be gentle with me.”
He pulled away at the directive, both startled and yet not surprised by it. He realized he had been being gentle, not because he wanted to but because he felt like he should for some reason. An uncertainty that was becoming familiar filled him, and he paused.
Kelly slid out from underneath him and rolled him over. Straddling him, she sat up and let her shirt fall the rest of the way off. Sean’s erection was straining against his jeans even as he felt a lingering trepidation. Kelly held his gaze, and he found he had trouble meeting her eyes. He felt somehow wrong for wanting her, as though she had enough to deal with without some lecherous bullshit from him.
“If you want me,” she said, the look in her eyes now demanding that he meet them, “I’m right here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Take me.”
It was as though the words reached through and pulled whatever was blocking him inside right out of him. Sean grabbed her hips, and her breath expelled as he ground himself up against her before lifting her so he could pop his jeans open. She backed off to give him room, and he almost came as she licked her lips, staring down at his cock as it sprang from his open zipper. He gritted his teeth against the urge to shove her head down onto it. He was desperate to be inside her—any part of her. Kelly sent him a sidelong glance filled with an unnerving knowingness.
“What did I tell you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” He was having trouble breathing through the pulsing in his cock, which was demanding attention with little room for intellect.
“I said you don’t have to be gentle with me.” Still kneeling next to his waist, she shifted so she was facing him. “You want to slam my mouth down on your cock.” She said it as though this was undisputed, and Sean sucked in a breath. “You are, for some reason, resisting doing that,” she continued. “Why?”
Sean thought his whole body might burst from the combination of resistance and frustration. He felt about as much like carrying on a conversation right then as he did hiking up Mount Everest.
“I don’t know,” he burst out.
Kelly didn’t smile. Shrugging, she said, “Have it your way, then. Put your hands behind your head.” He did as she said. “Keep them there. But know that what I wanted was for you to grab my hair with both hands and fuck my throat.”
Her words made his cock almost hurt, and he couldn’t hold back the sharp moan that escaped him. Kelly reached out and ran her fingers lightly up his hard length, and Sean thought he might cry. When she looked at him again, a smile played around her lips.
The next instant her warm mouth was covering him, taking him to the back of her throat, and he clenched his teeth and did everything he could not to come. Kelly arched her back, stretching her lithe body and lifting one leg over him so her pussy came to rest right above his face. As though the energy of not climaxing was shooting a fire right back up his core, Sean yanked his hands out from under his head and seized her hips, covering her velvety folds with his mouth. He took a breath and somehow amassed the precision to tap his tongue against her clit even as her moans against his cock made him feel he might explode. He shuddered beneath her for another few seconds before bucking up into her with a yell, unable to hold back anymore as he emptied himself into her mouth.
Kelly swung around and rose to her knees, and before he could even ask, she did as he was about to direct and straddled his face. Sean’s tongue found its way back to her clit like a magnet, his full concentration now on bringing out of her what she had just released in him. Kelly gyrated against him, beginning to whimper, and reached and grasped his hair. It was in her hands that he felt the combination of vulnerability and abandon that made him look up, let his concentration slip just enough so that he could see her face, eyes closed, features wreathed with an expression that was somehow hopelessly far away and immediate all at once. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a mask this time.
She tugged his hair, a silent urging, and he knew she knew he had stopped to look at her. He returned with vigor to the single-minded desire to make her come. Make her surrender. Make her fly.
And come she did. Seconds, or perhaps minutes—it all became the same—later, her body began to tremble, and he could feel the moment when she lost control and thrashed against him like a flag whipping in the wind, a beautiful, strangled cry wrenching from her throat. Sean held her hips to keep her steady, holding his tongue in place until her undulations stopped and she seemed to deflate, her sweat-covered body sliding down his until she landed with her head on his shoulder, more as though by accident than by design. He rested his hands on the warmth of her back and listened to her breathing until it evened.
“You still don’t know me, do you?”
Sean blinked. He wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed; it was possible he’d fallen asleep as they’d lain there. Kelly had lifted her head and shifted slightly so she wasn’t on him anymore but rather lay on her stomach beside him. He stared at her.
“I beg your pardon?”
She smiled softly. “That would be a no.” He was relieved to see she didn’t seem offended by this even as he racked his brain for a recollection of when he might have met her.
She spoke again after a few moments.
“You were at the retirement party for Benjamin Marcus three summers ago at Cobbs Park.” She didn’t state it as a question, but when she paused, Sean confirmed.
“Yeah, I worked at his company right out of college. He wasn’t the CEO yet then, and I worked with him personally on a fairly regular basis.”
“My husband at the time had worked at his company a couple years before, and I met you in passing near the fountain. You talked about the fountains you’d just seen in Paris.” Kelly ran a hand through her dark hair and flipped it over her shoulder. “I thought that might have been why you spoke to me downstairs. I thought maybe you recognized me.”
Sean almost winced in embarrassment. Not only had he not remembered her, he had just managed to engage in quite intimate contact with her and still not realized they had met before. Of course, now that she’d reminded him, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized her. He recalled their conversation clearly, how she’d said she hadn’t been to Paris but hoped to go someday. He wondered if she had yet.
“You changed your hair color,” he blurted.
“Yes, I was blonde then.”
A recollection accosted him with a sickening jolt. He didn’t speak it out loud. She’d had a little girl with her that day, a high-energy presence with a popsicle and long blonde pigtails hurtling around the fountain and surrounding grass.
Kelly was watching him, and though he didn’t know how, Sean was sure she knew what he had just remembered. Averting his eyes, he found them automatically drawn to the tattoo above her left breast. The intricacy of the hands really was striking.
“You don’t have to feel sorry whenever you look at it.” He started at her voice, but there was no harshness in her tone. There wasn’t even reprimand. “It’s not a symbol of sorrow. It’s a symbol of love.”
Somehow he hadn’t expected to hear something so seemingly sentimental come out of her mouth. He looked up at her, and her eyes instantly told him there was nothing sentimental about it. He had never associated love with such stoic equanimity, and once again his experience of her seemed to fly in the face of basic notions he hadn’t even realized he rarely questioned.
“So. You…aren’t married anymore?”
“I’m not.”
“Why are you here at this hotel?” Sean suddenly realized how odd it was that two local people would encounter each other at a hotel bar. “Don’t you live here anymore?” A tiny stab of consternation zipped through him as he said it.
She shook her head. “I moved about an hour and a half away from here. My sister just graduated from grad school, and I came back yesterday for the ceremony and her party. I didn’t feel like making the drive afterward, so I stayed here for the night.”
An hour and a half. That’s not so bad. Sean was startled to find the thought in his consciousness. Refocusing, he wondered why she hadn’t just stayed at her sister’s, but something held him back from asking as he glanced at her.
“What about you? Or do you make a habit of hanging out at local hotel bars to talk to women you find attractive?” Her smirk was overt.
Sean flushed and hoped she didn’t notice. The idea wasn’t unheard of for him. He was glad that in this case he had a legitimate excuse. “My company’s holding a conference here for the next few days. I’ll need to be up early tomorrow to start setting up, so it was easier to just stay here for the night. I was just in the bar to grab something to eat before some last-minute prep work. I had just finished and was on my way out when I saw you.”
Kelly nodded in acknowledgment and flipped onto her back. She stretched, her breasts thrusting upward with the arch of her pale back, and Sean shifted as his cock hardened again.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” she said when her body relaxed, turning back onto her side toward him.
“Why?” The question slipped from Sean’s mouth before he could stop it.
Kelly’s dark eyes turned to him, their neutral gaze now familiar. She paused an extra second before she said, “Why not?”
Sean detected more than a casual flippancy in her question. He looked into her eyes, searching for the light he’d seen in the bar. He was only slightly surprised to recognize that the urge that enveloped him again to entice it out of her went beyond the insistent tingling in his cock.
He remembered her earlier admonition that he didn’t have to be gentle with her. Without warning, he pinned her beneath him as his lips pushed against hers. The tiny shriek that escaped her, half arousal and half surprise, made his cock surge with the desire to be inside her. She pushed up against him, then pulled her lips from his.
“We need a condom,” she whispered.
Sean caught her gaze, and he nodded. “Of course.” He gave her a quick kiss before pushing himself up. “One second.” He fumbled in his small suitcase for the box of condoms he had brought with him, flushing again as he hoped she didn’t ask if he brought condoms with him to all the conferences he attended. He did.
As he ripped one open, she held out her hand. He stepped forward and handed it to her, watching as she pulled the wrapper off and rolled onto her stomach so she was sideways on the bed. She gestured for him to come closer, and he did, stopping with his knees touching the bedspread in front of her. With a sly glance up at him, Kelly slipped the condom into her mouth and rose up on her elbows. Positioning herself directly above him, she opened her lips and slid them down his cock.
Sean’s mouth fell open a little. When she pulled back, she smoothed the condom the rest of the way down with one hand and flipped back over.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” he breathed.
That elicited a little smile from the stunning woman on the bed, and Sean grinned back as he climbed on top of her, sliding his sheathed cock against her clit for a few seconds until her breath hitched. Then he sank into her, gritting his teeth to keep from coming again as her heat enveloped him. Kelly’s legs slid around his thighs, and Sean started to thrust slowly, knowing he would come if he moved faster.
When she pushed against him, he acquiesced and rolled over. Kelly sat atop him, keeping his slow pace at first; as he covered her clit with his thumb, however, she bit her lip and was soon bouncing on his cock like an exercise ball, her breath quickening as he sensed her nearing climax. Seconds later she squealed and fell forward to grab his chest, riding him in a frenzy as the orgasm swept through her.
As it had been the first time, watching her state of abandon was breathtaking. Sean’s release burst through any attempt to corral it just as Kelly’s subsided. Her body draped across his chest as he gripped her hips, burying his cock to the hilt as it pulsed inside her.
Sean watched as she got dressed.
“Is there anything you need to get home for right away?” he asked suddenly.
Her face impassive, Kelly answered, “No,” after a tiny hesitation.
“Would you stay here with me? Tonight?” He felt a tightness inside at the idea of her leaving. “I mean, I have to get up really early in the morning, but…” His voice trailed off. “I suppose you have to work tomorrow, too, though, and don’t want to have to drive an hour and a half to get there.” Something inside him deflated even as he said it.
“I’m off tomorrow. I’m a nurse. I don’t go back to work until Tuesday afternoon.”
Sean’s heart jumped a little. “Really? Well, if you wanted, you could stay here tomorrow night, too. I’ll be busy all day, but I’ll be done by early evening.” He looked down, suddenly embarrassed by his eagerness. She probably had things to do, and here he was asking her to sit around in an empty hotel room all day waiting for him. “I’m sorry. I guess you wouldn’t want to spend all day here by yourself.”
“I’m pretty sure I could find ways to entertain myself,” Kelly said dryly. “And quite frankly, I like to be by myself.”
Sean looked up. Kelly’s intent gaze was on him, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a little smile. “But not always.” She stood up.
“Yes, I will stay with you tonight.” The smile still gracing her lips belied the formality of the delivery, and he grinned up at her. Spontaneously she let out a giggle, and Sean caught his breath as the sunshine burst through again for the first time since they’d been in the bar. She composed herself quickly, but the brilliance of what he’d seen twice now wasn’t so easily forgotten. In fact, he wasn’t sure he ever would.
“I checked my bag in at the front desk when I decided to hang out in the bar for a while,” she said. “I’ll go down and get it.”
Sean walked her to the door, resisting the urge to grab her and drag her back to bed as she reached for the handle. There would be time. More time than just the next two nights if he had anything to do with it.
He watched from the doorway as she headed down the hall toward the elevator. Her gait was reserved, but it didn’t concern him. She had her reasons for the reserve and the impassiveness and the weariness, he knew. But it was the light they covered up that most interested—mesmerized, if he was honest with himself—him now. Sean stepped back into the room and let the door drift shut behind him, ready to spend his foreseeable future doing everything he could to help it shine.