Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures) (10 page)

“I know. And if we break up, I mean, if we decide to live separately, I’ll be the one to move out, I promise. But we should talk through it first. Not make any hasty decisions. I miss you, and I’m sorry I got angry. I know you had my best interests at heart.”
 

“You only like me for my apartment.”
 

“Well, duh.”

We both laughed. An uneasy truce. I leaned against the wall, looking out at the potted plants and marbled wallpaper.
 

“So what did you call about?” She still sounded wary.
 

“Do you have a corset I could borrow Friday night?”

This time her laugh was loud and entirely genuine. “Sam! What have you gotten yourself into?”

By the time I got off the phone, we’d agreed to go clothing shopping in Midtown on my lunch break tomorrow, and my head was clear enough to go back to work, though my body buzzed like I’d stuck my finger in an electric socket.
 

Was it Friday yet?

Chapter Nine

My heels struck the cement with sharp, distinct strikes. Under my light jacket, I wore an ensemble that made me feel like a goddess. The leather zip-up top fit me perfectly, and the multicolored skirt floated around my ankles. My shoes were gold, a fitting touch. I’d left off the panties again.
 

I hoped Dylan liked the outfit.
 

The Keats was a boutique hotel in the far West Village, amid the warren of cobblestone side streets. I walked through the ironically old-fashioned lobby with its inlaid tile floor and swirling cherub ceiling, and stopped by the gleaming mahogany check-in desk.
 

“I have a reservation. Samantha Saffron.” A mellifluous mouthful. Did it sound as fake to her as it did to me?
 

She handed me a card key. “Room 302. Your husband checked in already, Ms. Saffron.”
 

My hand spasmed, clenching the card key.
Husband
. This wasn’t marriage or anything remotely close. This was an assignation.
 

There were no mirrors in this elevator, just dark wood paneling. It was like a tiny but perfect room. The doors opened to reveal the third floor before I was quite ready.
 

I paused before the door to room 302. Dylan was on the other side, waiting for me. Would he be in his bathrobe like last time? Wearing tight leather pants and a wifebeater? What was the male equivalent of a corset?

I fit the card key into the lock. The light blinked green, and I opened the door.
 

Dylan stood by the window, a slim fluted champagne glass in his hand. He turned from the view when he heard me at the door. He gave me a cool smile. “You’re on time. Excellent. I prefer a punctual client.” He was wearing a charcoal gray suit. Like the blue one he’d worn on Monday, it looked like it had been specifically tailored for his broad shoulders and tall frame.
 

I put my bag down by the door and stood uncertainly.
 

He gave me a slow, calculating smile, the kind that showed off his dimple but didn’t light up his face, and proffered the bottle. “Champagne?”
 

“Sure.” It might take the edge off.
 

He poured me a glass, then came over with it. Glided, more like. He had this
down
. “Take off your jacket.”
 

After I shrugged it off, he tossed it onto a chair without looking. “Drink.”

I took the glass from him, wrapping my fingers around the cool stem, and took a sip. Champagne bubbles in my throat, tickling the roof of my mouth, dancing on my tongue. “Dylan…”
 

“Shh.” He came around behind me and massaged my shoulders. “Don’t talk. Don’t think. That’s what you’re paying me for, Ms. Saffron. To think for you.”
 

That name. So deliberate. All of this, so deliberate. Not a seduction, not exactly. Something else.
 

I closed my eyes and relaxed into the sensation. His thumbs kneaded my shoulders through the fabric. It hurt, and because it hurt, it felt good. I leaned back against him. “If I’m paying you, why are you still dressed?”
 

His hands stilled. “Do you want me to…?”

I turned, put my hand on his chest.
Mine.
The thought was fiercely possessive and absolutely terrifying.
 

“Not yet.” I gulped down the champagne. “First I want you to take my clothes off.” I touched the zipper nestled between my breasts.
 

His eyes got that feral look. “Whatever the client wants.” He moved in, so close I could smell the sweet alcohol tang on his breath, and snagged the zipper pull. I braced myself, but he merely teased the pull, sliding it down a few teeth, then stopped. His fingers played along the top edge of the tight-fitting bodice, dipped underneath.
 

I closed my eyes, savoring the sensation.
 

“Open your eyes.” A whispered command.
 

I opened them. “Who’s the client here?”

“You need to stay focused. Get your money’s worth.” He leaned in and licked the edge of my ear. Sensation slicked through me, hot and urgent.
 

To hell with this. I turned my head and kissed him hard. He groaned, deep in his throat, but disengaged.
 

“First things first.” He pulled my zipper down another inch, then kissed and licked down the exposed bare skin. Unzipped, licked, unzipped, licked, unzipped, and then he pulled my top off entirely, exposing my torso. He bent to take my nipple in his mouth, palming the other with his hand. It felt delicious.
 

It also felt entirely too controlled. Like Dylan was the professional he was pretending to be. Was he even enjoying this?
 

I tangled my fingers in his hair and gently tugged. He tilted his head, looking up at me questioningly. “Is my technique acceptable?”
 

I sat on the bed, my breasts tingling from the exposure to air. “I get it. You want to show me what it’s like if it’s just sex.”
 

“I want to have sex with you, however that needs to happen. You’re the one who doesn’t want more.” He sat on the bed beside me and stroked down my bare belly with one finger, then slid that finger beneath my skirt, skimmed the top edge of my pubis. I melted against his touch. A single finger. And he was still fully dressed. And it was sex and nothing more, no personal entanglements. The way I wanted it.
 

And yet… “When I came to your apartment in May, you asked me about myself. You wanted to know who I was before I—before we—”

His finger stilled. “I’d expected it to be a simple physical release. A way of exorcising Persephone screwing my best friend from my head. But when you walked in, all bravado and vulnerability, I had to know who you were and why you were there. What it meant to you. It turns out that sex
is
personal.” He smiled, brief and wry. “At least, to me it is.” He sounded more like himself now, and I was surprised how much that mattered to me.
 

“Does it have to be, though? Can’t we just enjoy the way it feels?” I crossed my arms in front of my breasts, acutely aware of my seminudity.
 

Dylan laced his fingers through mine and pulled my arms back down to my sides. “We can pretend whatever you want. As long as it means we get to do this.”
 

He leaned in and kissed me, his tongue seeking, probing, promising. His chin rubbing against mine, rough bristles against tender skin. I wanted to cry, and I didn’t know why.
 

When he broke away from the kiss, I murmured a protest, but he trailed a line of kisses down my neck, down my chest, and it was all good again. I sighed against him. But…

“I don’t do relationships.”

“I don’t either. One bad marriage was enough.” He sat back. My body missed him already.
 

“That doesn’t mean I want to stop doing this.”
 

“Good. Because we’re not going to stop. Lie back.” He indicated the bed.
 

I lay back. With his hands, he urged me to turn over, onto my stomach. I did. “But I don’t need to know your favorite meal or your childhood pet or whether you’re close to your parents.”
 

His hands on my back felt slick with massage oil, his touch firm. Warming. “I’d have to go with sushi, but it depends on the restaurant. There’s a place on the Upper East Side where you can only order omakase—chef’s choice—and the chef decides based on your face what you’d like to eat that day. He reminds me of you. Full of rules and restrictions and very, very good at his job. I’d take you there, but that would be a date, wouldn’t it?”

The thought felt almost okay. Almost imaginable. Sitting with Dylan at the sushi bar, joking and tossing down tiny cupfuls of hot sake. No doubt the bone-melting massage I was getting was messing with my head.

His voice got soft as he continued, like he was talking to himself, wrapped in memories. “For my fifth birthday, I got a gray cat named Oscar. He had a white splotch on his chin, like an old man’s goatee. He used to pounce on my toes when I was in bed. He died while I was away at art school. I’d planned to get an off-campus apartment that spring so I could bring him back with me after winter break, but I never got a chance. He got hit by a car on our country road. And no, I’m not that close to my parents. They’re good people, but we don’t have much in common.”
 

My breath hitched, and it wasn’t only because of his skillful hands, now stroking down my back, soothing and arousing both in equal measure.
 

“So? Now that you know a few facts about me, do you want to go running out the door?” He sounded teasing but wary.
 

I looked over my shoulder so I could see his face. It was shadowed; the soft light from the bedside lamp flared behind him. “And Persephone? How did you meet her? Why did you decide to get married?”

 
Dylan’s hands stilled. “I thought you wanted to have sex, no questions asked.”

I sat up. “See? It crosses a line, right? It makes you uncomfortable. It’s not just me.”

He grabbed the champagne bottle from the nightstand and took a big swig. “We met in school. I was building a big wood frame for a sculpture project. I couldn’t do it all on my own, so my roommate roped the entire ceramics class into helping. Persephone was this tiny thing. I thought she was going to collapse under the weight of the wood beam she was carrying. When I went to help her, she gave me a faraway smile and recited Auden. I was done for.”
 

“You were a romantic.” It fit. The hunger I’d felt in him, that constant yearning below the assured surface. Even the fact that he’d reached out to me after our night together. “You still are. You just don’t want to be.”

He leaned in and kissed me, tasting of champagne. Bubbles and bitterness. A fierce kiss. I felt it in my chest, in the back of my throat, in my gut. In high school, we used to call it a soul kiss, but it felt more like a soul-churning kiss. Intensely sexual but oh so scary. Still, I couldn’t stop,
wouldn’t
stop.
 

It was only a kiss, not full-on sex, no fancy moves. A kiss. How did it have any right to feel this good? I curled my fingers around the edges of his suit jacket and enjoyed the feel of the hard buttons of his shirt pressed up against my bare torso.
 

He groaned, deep in his throat. Groaned like he meant it.

“Samantha. I can’t take much more.”
 

“Good.”
 

I slipped my hand beneath his shirt, heading south, dipping below his pants line.
 

He pulled my hand away. “I’m servicing you, remember? Not the other way around.” He stood, shedding his suit jacket in a lithe, quick move, and tossed it on the chair in the corner of the room. Then he began to unbutton his shirt, revealing smooth skin with a light dusting of hair in the cleft between his pecs. When he glanced at me, I closed my mouth. I’d forgotten how beautiful the male body—this man’s body—could be.
 

Dylan grinned, wicked. “You like that?” He slowed down his fingers. Unbuttoning one button and then the next, gradually revealing what lay underneath, smooth skin and rippled muscle. A businessman’s striptease. The shirt sailed across the room to join the jacket. Now he was bare above the waist, like me. “Like what you see?” He cocked his hip, and for the first time, I saw the teenager he must have been. Serious, but with a mischievous streak.
 

Heat streaked through me. I got the sense that I was seeing a side of him he rarely showed people. This playfulness, this openness, it was only for me. My body thrummed with awareness, giddy and wild.
 

Dylan caught my gaze, and something changed in his. The rest of his clothes got shed in a moment. No more striptease, no more silliness. He practically attacked me, pushing me back into the mattress. Kissing, fondling, his hands between us, my hands slipping down his bare back to his firm buttocks.
 

Dylan’s phone rang. I stilled, expecting him to reach for it.
 

He ignored it entirely. Not even tightening in response. He was fully with me. And after a moment, the phone stopped ringing.
 

But we still had one barrier between us. My skirt. He yanked it down, nearly tearing it in his haste.
 

“Wait.” I unzipped it and let it fall to the floor. Now we were both naked, skin to skin, heat to heat, his cock stiff against me. I opened my legs, slick and ready for him. Throbbing for him.
 

He pulled back.
 

I reached for him. “Now.”
 

“I’m not done.” He slid his hands between my legs, spread them wide, and knelt to kiss me there. “I want you to get what you paid for. All of it. Every single act, every single drop of pleasure.” The promise in his voice was like a solemn vow. “I want you to enjoy this. Enjoy us, what we can do together.”