Текст книги "Sweet Filthy Boy"

Автор книги: Christina Lauren

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

He releases a husky feral sound before pulling back, wrapping a fist around his cock. “Undress.”

I stand on shaky legs, peeling the stockings off, removing the skirt, the bustier, and finally, the frilly underwear. He watches me, eyes dark and impatient, and growls, “Allonge-toi.” He lifts his chin, repeating quietly in English, “Lie back.”

I scoot farther up on the bed, eyes wide and pinned to him as I lie back and spread my legs. I want to feel him. Just him. Right now—I can see it in his eyes—he knows I’ll give him anything, give him everything. He lurches forward, bracing a hand on my spread inner thigh and entering me in a single, long push.

All the air leaves me and for a few overwhelmed seconds, I can’t get it back. I try to remember how to inhale then exhale, try to remind myself that his cock isn’t actually pushing all of the air out of me, it only feels that way. I’d forgotten what it feels like to have him inside me like this: confident, commanding. But the feel of his warmth, nothing between us . . . it steals my air, my thoughts, my clarity.

He doesn’t move for an eternity, just stares down, eyes moving over every inch of me he can see from his vantage. He’s so hard it has to be edging discomfort for him, and I can feel the shake of his hand gripping the sheet near my head.

“You need to be reminded?” he whispers.

I nod frantically, hands grasping his sides as my hips move off the bed, hungry. He pulls back so slowly I feel my nails digging into the skin of his sides before I even realize what I’m doing. He hisses, stabbing back into me with a low groan.

And then he snaps back again, and then forward, hard and tormenting, his pace nearly punishing. Punishing me for the handprint, punishing us both for the distance that got between us. Punishing me for forgetting sex with us is like this, and nothing is better. He leans over me, his skin rubbing mine where I need him, sweat dampening his brow and the smooth expanse of his chest. I curl into him, licking his collarbone, his neck, pulling his head to mine to feel the deep rumble of his pleasure against my teeth, my lips, my tongue.

My thighs shake at his sides, pleasure climbing, and I need harder and more of him, my fingers are desperately pulling at his hips, my words begging and unintelligible. I feel my release twisting in me, tighter and tighter until it snaps, bursting wide open in a jerking, clutching lash of sensation and I’m arching from the bed, crying his name over and over.

He pushes up on his hands, watching me come apart under him, and through the fog of my orgasm, I watch him climb. His strokes are long and hard, our skin slapping together in a crude sound that makes me wilder, makes me wonder if I really am on the verge of coming again so soon.

“Aah,” I cry out. “I’m . . .”

“Show me,” he growls, dropping a hand between us, petting my clit in tiny, perfect circles.

I bow off the bed, my entire body clenching in a second orgasm so sharp my vision blurs.

Ansel’s neck becomes corded and tense, teeth clench and eyes narrow and he hisses, “Fuck,” before his hips become brutal, loudly pounding against my thighs. He collapses on top of me and I can feel the way he twitches inside, the way he shudders under my hands.

I let out a shaky gasp, winding my legs around his hips when he begins to pull back. “No,” I say into the skin of his neck. “Stay.”

He bends, his mouth latching on to my breast, sucking, tongue roaming up my neck to my jaw as his hips rock slowly back and forth. He seems insatiable, and even though I know he’s already come, I don’t sense that we’re done. Once his mouth finds mine, I’m lost again, lost in the wet slide of his tongue, the slow press of him in and out of me. It feels like only a second that his body relaxes inside before I feel him stirring again, lengthening until he’s moving in earnest, long curling thrusts with his body pressed all along mine.

This time it’s slow, and he kisses me every second of it, deep and searching, letting me hear the agony and pleasure of our bodies so thoroughly that it makes me delirious.

HE ROLLS OFF me, groaning in relief. I curl to him in the dark, my heart racing still, skin damp with sweat.

“Ah,” he whispers, kissing the top of my head. “There she is.”

I kiss his throat, tongue sliding over the hollow where I taste the faint salt of his sweat and mine.

“Thank you for this,” he says. “I love that you did this tonight.”

My hand drifts up his stomach, across his chest, and I close my eyes as I ask, “Tell me about the window.”

Beside me he freezes for a beat, before exhaling a long, slow breath. “It is complicated, maybe.”

“I don’t have anywhere I need to be,” I say, smiling into the darkness.

His lips press to my temple before he says, “My mother, as I mentioned, is American.” I look up at his face from where I rest on his chest, but it’s hard to make out his features in the dark. “She moved to France when she was just out of high school, and worked as a maid.”

“Oh,” I say, laughing. “Maybe my costume choice was a little weird for you.”

He groans, tickling my side. “I assure you, you did not make me think of my mother tonight at all.” After I’ve stilled at his side, he says, “Her first job was working in the very regal house of a businessman named Charles Guillaume.”

“Your father,” I guess.

He nods. “My mother is a wonderful woman. Caring, fastidious. I imagine she was a perfect housekeeper. I suppose I get those tendencies from her, but also my father. He required the house to be spotless. He was obsessive about it. He required that I never leave a mark, anywhere. Not on mirrors, or windows. Not a crumb in the kitchen. Children were neither to be seen nor heard.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is lighter. “Perhaps our fathers are not very nice, but would get along well?”

I hold my breath, not wanting to move or blink or do anything to break this moment. Each word feels like a gift and I’m so hungry for every little piece of his history. “Tell me more about them?”

He shifts me closer, sliding his hands into the hair at the back of my head. “They began to have an affair when my mother was only twenty, and my father was forty-four. From what my mother has told me, it was very passionate. It consumed her. She never planned to stay in France for so long, but she fell in love with Charles and I don’t think she has ever recovered.”

“‘Recovered’?”

“My father is an asshole,” he says, laughing a little dryly. “Controlling. Obsessive about the house, as I mentioned. As he’s aged, he’s only gotten worse. But I think he must have a charisma, a charm that drew her in.” I smile into the dark when he says this, knowing he may be a better man, but he certainly got charm from his father. “During this time that he and my mother were together, he was married to another woman. She lived in England, but my father refused to leave his home to live with her, and my mother didn’t know this wife existed. When Maman became pregnant with me, my father wanted her to remain in the servants’ quarters, and didn’t let her tell anyone it was his child.” He laughs a little. “Everyone knew anyway, and of course I turned three or four, and I looked exactly like him. Eventually, the wife found out. She divorced my father, but he did not choose to marry my mother.”

I feel my chest tighten. “Oh.”

“He loved her,” he says quietly, and I’m obsessed with the way he speaks. His English is perfect, but his accent lifts the words, tilts them so his h’s comes out nearly inaudible, his r’s always slightly guttural. He manages to sound both polished and crude. “He loved her in his strange way, and made sure to always provide for us, even insisting on paying when my mother wanted to attend culinary school. But he’s not a man who loves very generously; he’s selfish and didn’t want my mother to leave him, even though he had many other women in those years. They were at the house, or at his work. He was very unfaithful, even while he was possessive and crazy for my mother. He said he loved her like no other. He expected her to understand that his appetites for other women were not personal against her. But of course she was never to sleep with another man.”

“Wow,” I say quietly. In truth, I can’t imagine knowing so much about my parents’ marriage. Theirs feels like a bleached, sterile landscape compared to this.

“Exactly. So, when my grandmother became sick, my mother took the chance to leave France, to go home to Connecticut and tend to her until she died.”

“How old were you when she left?”

He swallows, saying, “Sixteen. I lived with my father until I began university.”

“Did your mother come back?”

I can feel him shake his head beside me. “No. I think leaving was very hard for her, but once she was gone she knew it was the right thing. She opened a bakery, bought a home. She wanted me to finish school here, with my friends, but I know being so far away ate at her. It’s why I came to the States for law school. Maybe she would have come back here if I asked her to, but I couldn’t, no?”

When I nod, he continues, “I went to Vanderbilt, which is not so very close to her, but much closer than France.” He turns his head, pulling back so he can look at me. “I do intend someday to live there. In the States. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

I nod, tucking my face into the crook of his neck and overcome with a relief so enormous I feel light-headed.

“Will you stay with me?” he asks quietly. “Until you need to be in Boston?”

“Yes. If it’s what you want, too.”

He answers with a kiss that deepens, and the sensation of his hands in my hair and his groan on my tongue fills my head with an emotion that feels a little like desperation. In a flash, I’m terrified of having true, intense feelings for him, of having to end this marriage game at some point, let real life back in and try to get over him. But I push it aside, because it feels too good to let the moment turn down at any corner. His kisses slow and tame until he’s just pressing his smile to mine.

“Good,” he says.

It’s enough for now. I can feel the heavy weight of sleep behind my eyes, in my thoughts. My body is sore and feels perfectly used. Within only seconds, I hear the slow, steady rhythm of his sleeping breath.

Chapter TWELVE

I’M DIMLY AWARE of a fist pounding heavily on the door and I sit up, disoriented. Beside me, Ansel bolts upright, looking at me with wide eyes before tossing back the covers, pulling on boxers, and sprinting out of the room. I hear his voice speaking to whoever is there, thick with sleep and so deep. I’ve never heard him sound stern before. He must have stepped out into the hallway and close the door behind him because his voice disappears after a heavy click. I try to stay awake. I try to wait for him and make sure everything’s okay and tell him how much I enjoy his voice. But I must be more exhausted than I thought and it’s the last groggy thought I have before my eyes fall closed again.

I FEEL THE air slide under the sheets and sweep over my skin as Ansel climbs back into bed. He smells like him, like grass, like salt and spice. I roll to his side, my mind still foggy and full of heated dream images . . . and as soon as his cool skin touches mine, longing flares low in my stomach. I want him with a kind of instinctive, barely awake yearning. The clock beside the bed tells me it’s nearly four in the morning.

His heart is pounding under my palm, chest smooth, hard, and bare, but he traps my wandering hand with his, stilling it so that I can’t slide it down his stomach and lower.

“Mia,” he says quietly.

I gradually recollect that he had to go to the door. “Is everything okay?”

He exhales slowly, clearly trying to calm down, and I sense more than see his nod in the darkness. The skylight over his bed lets in a bright slice of moonlight, but it cuts across our feet, illuminating only the very edge of the bed.

I press my body along his side, sliding my leg up over his. The muscles of his quads are defined and firm beneath smooth, warm skin, and I stop when I’ve reached his hip, gasping slightly when he arches up into me and groans. He’s still wearing only boxers, but beneath my thigh he’s semi-hard. Beneath my palm, his heart is slowly returning to normal.

I can’t be this close to him—even half asleep—and not want to feel more. I want the blankets tossed away and his boxers shoved down. I want the heat of his hips pressing to mine. As I hum quietly against his skin and rock against him—half conscious, half instinct—it’s several long beats before I feel his body fully stir.

But it does, and with another quiet groan he rolls to face me, shoving his boxers down his hips just far enough for him to pull his erection free.

“J’ai envie de toi,” he says into my hair and rubs the head of his cock over me, testing, before pushing inside with a tight sound of hunger. “I always want you.”

It’s sex without words or pretense, just both of us working to get to the same place. My movements are slow, full of lazy sleepiness and that middle-of-the-night bravery that makes me roll on top of him, rest my head on his shoulder as I slide along his length. His movements are also slow, but because he’s being intentionally gentle, careful with me.

He’s usually so much more talkative. Maybe it’s that it’s so late, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s working to pull himself out of the hallway and back into the bedroom.

But then Ansel’s hands drift down my sides, clutching my hips, and any uneasiness dissolves, replaced with a mounting, crawling pleasure.

“You fuck so good,” he growls, rocking up into me, meeting my movements halfway. It’s no longer sleepy and relaxed. I’m close, he’s close, and I’m chasing the sound of his orgasm as much as I am the pleasure I can feel sliding up my legs and down my spine. I’m so full of him, so full of sensation, it’s all I am anymore: crystalline and hot, hungry and wild.

He pushes me so I’m sitting upright, his hands jerking my hips back and forth over him, urging me to ride him roughly as he shoves himself deeper and harder into me.

“Fuck me,” he growls, reaching up with one hand to grip my breast roughly. “Fuck me harder.”

And I do. I find anchor with my hands on his chest and let go, slipping down onto him over and over again. I’ve never been so wild on top, never moved so fast. The friction between us is amazing, slick and rough, and with a sharp gasp I start to come, my fingernails digging sharply into his skin and tight, desperate sounds falling from my lips.

I want

So

Coming so

Hard oh

Oh my God

My incoherence tears a savage growl from his throat and he sits up, fingers clamped to my hips and his teeth pressed to my collarbone as he pushes roughly up into me, coming with a hoarse shout after a final, brutal thrust.

His arms form a tight band around my waist as he presses his face to my neck, catching his breath. I feel dizzy; my legs are sore already. He doesn’t seem to want to let me go but I need to shift my position, and I gingerly lift myself off and slide down next to him on the bed. Without speaking, he rolls to face me, pulling my leg over his hip and slowly rocking his still-hard cock along my clit as he kisses my chin, my cheeks, my lips.

“I want more,” he admits into the dark room. “I don’t feel done.”

I reach down, slide him carefully back inside me. It won’t last long, but there’s something about feeling him like this—just barely rocking, no space between us, the black of night spread across the bed like a velvet blanket—that makes my bones ache with how intense it is between us.

“I just want to make love to you all day,” he says against my mouth and rolls on top of me. “I don’t want to think about work or friends or even eating. I want to exist on you alone.”

With this, I remember wanting to ask him what happened at the door. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I just want to fall asleep inside you. Maybe our bodies will make love again while our brains sleep.”

“No, I mean,” I start carefully, “who was at the door?”

He stills. “Perry.”

Perry. The friend who wasn’t in Vegas with the rest of them. “What did he want?”

He hesitates, kissing my neck. Finally, he says, “I don’t know. In the middle of the night? I don’t know.”

Chapter THIRTEEN

I DON’T HAVE TO open my eyes to know it’s still dark out. The bed is a nest of warm blankets; the sheets are smooth and smell like Ansel and laundry detergent. I’m so tired, floating in that place between awake and dreams, and so the words being whispered into my ear sound like bubbles rising up from underwater.

“Are you frowning in your sleep?” Warm lips press to my forehead, a fingertip smoothing the skin there. He kisses one cheek and then the other, brushing his nose along my jaw on his way back to my ear.

“I saw your shoes by the door,” he whispers. “Have you walked all of Paris by now? They look nearly worn through on the bottom.”

In truth he’s not that far off. Paris is an unending map that seems to unfurl right in front of me. Around each corner is another street, another statue, another building older and more beautiful than anything I’ve seen before. I get to one place and that only makes me want to see what’s beyond it, and beyond that. I’ve never been so eager to become lost in a place before.

“I love that you’re trying to learn my city. And God help the poor boys who see you walk by in that little sundress I saw hanging in the bathroom. You’ll have admirers following you home and I’ll be forced to chase them off.”

I feel him smile against the side of my face. The bed shifts and his breath ruffles my hair. I keep my features relaxed, my exhales even, because I never want to wake up. Never want him to stop talking to me like this.

“It’s Saturday again . . . I’m going to try and be home early tonight,” he sighs, and I hear the exhaustion in his words. I’m not sure I’ve fully appreciated how difficult this must be for him, to balance what he sees as his responsibility to me, and to his job. I imagine it must feel like being pulled in every direction.

“I asked you to come here and I’m always gone. I never meant it to be this way. I just . . . I didn’t think it through.” He laughs into my neck. “Everyone I know would roll their eyes at that. Oliver, Finn . . . especially my mother,” he says fondly. “They say I’m impulsive. But I want to be better. I want to be good to you.”

I almost whimper.

“Won’t you wake up, Cerise? Kiss me goodbye with that mouth of yours? Those lips that get me in trouble? I was in a meeting yesterday and when they called my name I had no idea what anyone was talking about. All I could think about was the way your cherry lips look stretched around my cock, and then last night . . . oh. The things I’ll imagine today. You’re going to get me fired and when we’re penniless on the street you’ll have no one to blame but that mouth.”

I can’t keep a straight face anymore and I laugh.

“Finally,” he says, growling into my neck. “I was beginning to contemplate pulling the fire alarm.”

EVEN AS I wake alone, a couple of hours later, I remember the way he whispered against my shoulders, and finally into my ears. I’d rolled to my back, eyes still closed as I wrapped myself around him in a drowsy hug, the fabric of his suit rough, the silk of his tie suggestive as it dragged between my naked breasts. Had I been more awake I would have pulled him down, watched as he matched his fingertips to the bruises pressed into my skin.

Ansel left me breakfast. There’s coffee and a wrapped croissant waiting on the counter, and along with the lace cap that went with my maid costume, a new list of scribbled phrases rests beneath my plate.

What time is it? Quelle heure est-il?

What time do you close? A quelle heure fermez-vous?

Take your clothes off, please. Déshabille-toi, s’il te plaÎt.

Fuck me. Harder. Baise-moi. Plus fort.

I need the large dildo, same size as my husband. Je voudrais le gros gode, celui qui se rapproche le plus de mon mari.

That was the best orgasm of my life. C’était le meilleur orgasme de ma vie.

I’m going to come in your mouth, you beautiful girl. Je vais jouir dans ta bouche, beauté.

I’m still smiling as I step into the bathroom and shower, memories of last night running on a reel inside my head. The water pressure in Ansel’s apartment is terrible and the water is barely lukewarm. I’m reminded once again that I’m not back in San Diego, where the only person I needed to battle for hot water this late in the morning was my mom after her morning yoga class. There are seven floors of people to take into account here, and I make a mental note to get up earlier tomorrow, and sacrifice an extra hour of sleep for a hot shower. But that’s not the only thing I’d miss out on. Those few, unguarded moments in the morning when Ansel thinks I’m still sleeping might just be worth a cold shower. Lots of them.

GRUESIMONE IS OUTSIDE having a cigarette when I walk past the patisserie toward the métro. “Today has already been a fucking nightmare,” she says, blowing a plume of smoke out the side of her mouth. “We sold out of the scones everyone loves and I spilled a fucking coffee on myself. FML.”

I’m not sure why I sit with her for the duration of her break, listening to her vent about the trials of being a poor twenty-something in Paris, how her boyfriend can never seem to shut the coffee off before he leaves, or how she’d give up smoking but it’s cigarettes or customer homicide—their choice. She isn’t very nice, to anyone, really. Maybe it’s that she’s American, and it’s comforting to have regular conversations with someone who isn’t Ansel in a language I actually understand. Or maybe I really am that starved for outside human contact. Which is . . . really depressing.

When she’s finished her last cigarette and my coffee has long grown cold, I tell her goodbye and head toward the métro, and then explore as much of Le Marais as I can in a morning.

Here there are some of the oldest buildings in the city, and it’s become a popular neighborhood for art galleries, tiny cafés, and unique, pricy boutiques. What I love most about the neighborhood are the narrow winding streets, and the way tiny courtyards pop up out of nowhere, begging to be explored, or simply for me to sit and fly through a novel, getting lost in someone else’s story.

Just when my stomach is rumbling and I’m ready for lunch, my phone vibrates in my bag. I’m still surprised by the delicious lurch in my chest when I see Ansel’s name and face—the dorky selfie of him with pink cheeks and wild grin—flash across my screen.

Is it fondness I feel? Sweet Jesus, I’m definitely fond, and whenever he’s close I basically want to molest him. It isn’t just that he’s gorgeous, and charming, it’s that he’s kind and thoughtful, and that it would never occur to him to be sharp or judgmental. There’s an inherent ease to him that’s disarming, and I have no doubt he leaves a trail of unintentionally broken hearts—male and female—wherever he goes.

I’m almost positive the old woman who runs the store around the corner from our apartment is a little in love with him. In truth, I’m pretty sure almost everyone Ansel knows is a little in love with him. And who could blame her really? I watched her one evening tell him something in rapid-fire French and then pause, pressing her wrinkled hands to her face like she just told the cute boy about her crush. Later, as we’d walked down the sidewalk eating our gelato, he’d explained that she told him how much he looks like the boy she fell in love with at university, and how she thought about him for a moment every morning when he stopped by for coffee.

“She thanked me for making her feel like a schoolgirl again,” he’d said a little reluctantly and then turned to me with a flirty little smile. “And was glad to see me married to such a pretty girl.”

“So basically you make the old ladies a little frisky.”

“I really only care about this lady.” He’d kissed my cheek. “And I don’t want to make you frisky. I want you naked and begging to come all over my mouth.”

I’ve never known someone who is such a mixture of brazen sexuality and feigned innocence before. So it’s with a combination of excitement and fear that I read his message now, while traversing the busy sidewalk.

Last night was fun, it reads.

I chew my lip as I contemplate my response. The fact that he understood what I was doing, that he played along and even suggested we do it again, well . . .

I take a deep breath. So fun, I reply.

Was it nice to get outside your head a little?

The sun is high overhead and it’s got to be close to eighty-five degrees outside, but with one sentence he’s managed to make goose bumps erupt along my arms and legs, my nipples tighten. Somehow talking about it like this, acknowledging what we did, feels as dirty as seeing that tiny costume hanging in the closet this morning, beside the clothes he wears to work every day.

It was, I type, and if a text could come across breathy, that is exactly how this would sound.

There’s a long pause before he begins typing again and I wonder if it’s possible he’s wound as tight as I am right now. Think you’d want to do it again?

I don’t even have to think about it. Yes.

His answer comes slowly; it feels like he’s typing for an eternity. Go to the Madeleine station, line 14 to Chatelet. Walk to 19 Rue Beaubourg-Centre Georges Pompidou (the large museum, you can’t miss it). Take the escalators to the top floor. Wait at the bar at Georges Restaurant 19h00 (7:00 pm). Best view around.

I’m close enough to walk there, and a giddy thrill inches its way up my spine and slips like a warm bath along my skin. My limbs suddenly feel heavy, my body aches, and I have to step into an alcove in front of a small bookstore to pull myself together. I imagine this is what a sprinter feels like in those last moments before the starter pistol cracks through the air.

I have no idea what Ansel is planning, but I’m ready to find out.

THE CENTRE POMPIDOU is easy to find. Thanks to Google, I know it’s centered on Paris’s Right Bank, and sits in an area known as the Beaubourg neighborhood. After my days of exploring, I have a pretty good sense of where I am. But although I saw a photo of the museum online, I’m in no way prepared for the monstrous, skeletal curiosity that seems to rise up from the city around it.

It’s as if the massive building has been stripped of its outer layers, revealing the very pieces that keep it erect just underneath. Brightly colored tubes in green, blue, yellow, and red are interspersed with metal beams, and look as much like a piece of art as the items housed inside.

I follow a sign that leads me to a large paved plaza, filled with students and families and groups of tourists strolling about. Performers sit surrounded by small crowds and children rush by, their laughter echoing in the hulking empty spaces created by the enormous building.

Just as Ansel instructed, I take the largest escalators I’ve ever seen to the top floor. The entire ride up is encapsulated in Plexiglas tunnels, giving me a view of an enormous expanse of Paris, with buildings in the distance I’ve only ever seen in books. I spot the Eiffel Tower immediately, set against a backdrop of bright blue sky.

My reflection winks back at me, dressed in my simple jersey shift dress, my dark hair glossy in the late afternoon sun. My face is flushed with anticipation and I’m pushing away the tremor of anxiety that I have no idea what is happening, and I’ve left Ansel completely in charge. Am I still his maid? I pause, mid-step between one escalator and the next, as the possibility sinks in. Our balance of power is already skewed since we arrived here. What am I heading into?

But, I reason, when you let go last night, he took over and gave you the most intensely erotic night of your life. Trust him.

With a deep breath, I step off at the top and make my way into the trendy restaurant. A beautiful woman with tomato-red hair and a short white dress leads me through a space that looks more like a sci-fi movie set than a place to have dinner. Everything is brushed metal and gleaming white, steel beams and polished cavelike sculptures. The tables are sleek and industrial, each one topped with a ruby-red long-stemmed rose. The outdoor dining area is protected by low-slung glass so as not to hinder the view because wow . . . what a view it is.

I thank her and take a seat at the bar, checking my phone for any messages. I’ve just begun a text to Ansel when I feel a slight tap on my shoulder.

“Would you mind if I sat here?” he asks, nervous. And oh. This isn’t the same game as last night. The confusion must show in my expression because he continues, “Unless you’re waiting for someone, of course.”

Strangers. This I can do. This we know.

“No. Um . . . not at all. Be my guest,” I say, and gesture to the seat on my right.

Ansel folds all six feet, two inches of his frame onto the brushed aluminum stool and toys with the neatly folded cloth napkin. I didn’t get to fully drink in the sight of him before he left this morning, and try to covertly check him out as he fidgets, playing this new role.

He’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen on him, deep green with a pattern so delicate I have to peer closely to even make it out. His black dress pants fit him perfectly; there’s a touch of stubble lining his jaw and his hair seems a bit more disheveled than normal, falling forward over his forehead. I have the sudden desire to twist my fingers in it while I pull his face between my legs.

I actually have to look away to catch my breath. This guy is my husband.

You look amazing, I want to say.

How did I find someone so easy and perfect in Las Vegas of all places? I want to ask.

But instead, I stay quiet and let him show me how this night is supposed to go.

“I think I was stood up,” he says, and now that I’ve composed myself, I turn back to face him.

“That’s terrible. They didn’t call or text?”

He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair, righting it again. “It’s probably for the best,” he says with a resolute lift of his chin. “I don’t think we are that compatible anyway.”