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“It is a yes, but I wanted the whiskey anyway.”
“My kind of guy. Who, what, where, when, and can you draw me a picture?”
Zach leaned back in the armchair and felt the heat from the drink and the memory quickly rushing to his head.
“I will admit I barely remember the evening. It was when I was at university, as a student not a professor, and I was at a birthday party. I believe there was some Irish whiskey involved in that night, as well. I was seeing a young lady, and her rather liberated flatmate decided to join us in bed after the party. Lovely girls, both of them. One’s married to an M.P. now.”
“I’m jealous,” she said. She left her chair and crawled up onto her desk and sat on top of it cross-legged. “I’ve never had a threesome with two other women. All of mine have been with one man and one woman. Or two men.” She looked down at him and winked.
“Can’t believe there’s anything you haven’t done. Is there anything else?”
“One or two things. Keep asking, you might find out what they are.”
Zach knew she expected a question about her sex life. He decided to try a different approach.
“Apart from the occasional heroic rescue you don’t really seem to need the services of a live-in personal assistant. Why did you ask Wesley to move in?”
Nora blinked and reached for her shot. Her hand pulled back and she met Zach’s eyes.
“Wesley… That kid blew my mind from day one. He was so damn sweet. I’m not around sweet people very often. When I had him in class I found myself doing something I hadn’t done in a long time.”
“What was that?”
“Smiling. I’d been working so much, living a pretty hard life. Wes was the opposite of me in so many ways—soft where I was hard. Probably hard where I’m soft, too.” She laughed again. “He made me feel human again…like the kind of person who could stay up too late watching stupid movies and talking. I’d forgotten how to be normal, or maybe I never knew how. My life got weird at a pretty young age and it’s been weird ever since. But Wes came along and suddenly I had another reason to get out of bed in the morning besides money.”
“Are you in love with him?” Zach asked.
“That’s two questions,” Nora said, wagging a finger at him. She downed her shot. “That wasn’t me admitting to being in love with the kid. That was me being driven to drink yet again by that twerp.”
“Frustrating roommate, I imagine.”
“Very. No one that sexy should be that off-limits. I could say the same about you.”
“I’m your editor, Nora. I don’t think we should be involved,” Zach said, squirming a little in his seat. “J.P. would kill us both.”
“You’re not scared of J.P. and we both know it. It’s me you’re scared of—why?”
Zach gave the question some thought. The three shots had gone quickly to his head on his empty stomach. He felt light-headed and warm. He knew Nora deserved an answer no matter how badly he didn’t want to tell her.
He picked up his shot glass.
“Again, I’ll answer. But not without some liquid fortification,” he said and took his drink. He bent over for a moment and breathed. He looked up and saw Nora looking down at him, waiting patiently. “You’re beautiful enough and wild enough that you make me think things I never thought I would think again and feel things I didn’t think I’d ever feel again. And you make me afraid I’ll start forgetting things I don’t ever want to forget. You’re dangerous.”
She nodded her head and didn’t look flattered.
“You’re not the first man who’s called me that. When I was sixteen, S?ren told me that there were suicide bombers on the Gaza Strip who were less dangerous than I was. At that age, I took it as a compliment.”
“Were you engaged in domestic terrorism at the time?”
“No, I told him I knew he was in love with me. That was his response.”
“You were sixteen. How old was he?”
“Thirty.”
“I thought S?ren was off-limits for discussion.”
“He was. But I’m getting drunk fast and have very little self-control under the best of circumstances. You could get S?ren ten times as shit-faced as we’re getting and he’d still have the self-control of a desert father.”
“He must not be that disciplined if he made love to you at such a young age.”
“Young age? That bastard made me wait until I was twenty years old, Zach. You are sitting in the office of probably the most famous erotica writer since Ana?s Nin and she’s telling you that she didn’t lose her virginity until she was twenty,” Nora said and shook her head.
“I’m aghast. Why so long?”
“If he just wanted sex he would have taken me on day one, I have no doubt. But with D/s couples, the sex is the least of it. He wanted obedience, total submission. Keeping me a virgin waiting for him for so long proved he owned me even more than fucking me would have. He was also preparing me for everything he had planned. S&M is not for children or the faint of heart. He had to wait to make sure I was neither. My question now—how old were you?”
Zach stared at her. She reached out and he handed her his shot glass. She refilled it and handed it back.
“Younger than twenty,” he said and raised his glass to drink.
Nora cleared her throat and waved her hand in a “give it up” gesture. Zach put his glass down.
“Oh, very well, I was thirteen,” Zach said and had a sudden memory of running off into the trees behind his school with his best mate’s pretty older sister and coming out ten minutes later with a smile on his face.
“Holy shit,” Nora said, laughing. “Good thing Wes is watching those middle school kids tonight.”
“She was only fourteen and while it was a rather awkward and quick affair, it was hardly traumatizing or particularly scandalous.”
“My first time was orchestrated and took all night, and I could barely move for a week after. I guess since I put S?ren back up for discussion, we can talk about your wife.”
“Not drunk enough for that.”
“Well, keep drinking and at least tell me why it’s so hard for you to talk about her.”
While they’d been talking, the sun had set. Zach sipped at his whiskey while Nora flipped on her desk lamp. Warm light suffused the dark room and cast amber shadows everywhere he looked. Turning his head, Zach saw his reflection in the window. But he didn’t see himself. He saw the door behind him and the door opened and in the doorway stood Grace who should have been anywhere in the world but standing in his doorway…
“Talking about how it ended, why it ended…it feels too much like it ended. And I don’t know if I’m ready for that, Nora. I’m sorry.”
“I understand not wanting something to be over. Can you at least tell me how it began?”
Zach tapped his knee with his half-empty shot glass.
“It began very badly. I would say we were doomed from the start.”
Nora slid off her desk and sank to the floor in front of him. He thought it looked like an excellent idea. He joined her on the floor and leaned back against the chair.
He watched Nora take down the whiskey bottle and pour another shot.
“That year after I left S?ren, I became obsessed with one question—when was it, when were we, irrevocable? When did all the little tumblers fall into place and our fate was locked in and it became impossible for us to be anything other than what we became? When was the guilty moment?”
“Did you find your answer?”
Nora shook her head. “Never. I suppose doom and destiny are just two sides of the same coin.”
“I don’t have to ask or wonder. I know my guilty moment. But you left your lover and mine left me. You could go back to yours, couldn’t you?”
“Zach, S?ren isn’t some boyfriend you have a fight with and then kiss and make up. He’s the invading army you surrender to before it burns your village down.”
“He sounds even more dangerous than you are.”
“He is. By far. He’s also the best man I’ve ever known. Tell me about Grace. What’s she like?”
Zach paused before answering. How could he describe his wife to anyone? To him Grace was the open arms he fell into when he crawled into bed at 2:00 a.m. after staying up reading a new manuscript. She was the laughing water thief in the shower at least one morning a week. She was the quiet comfort and the hand he’d been unable to let go of at his mother’s funeral three years ago. Unable to get the words past his throat, Grace had taken his notes from his hand and read his eulogy for him. She was every evening and every morning and every night, and during the day when they were apart he was always happy knowing evening and night and morning were coming again.
“Grace is…well-named. She’s intelligent, far smarter than I. A poet and a schoolteacher,” Zach said as the alcohol swirled around his head. “She has red hair and the most perfect freckles I’ve ever seen on a woman.” Zach closed his eyes. The first time he’d seen her completely naked when they’d made love in his bed the first time, he’d almost stopped breathing. “Even on her back all the way to her hips…the most perfect dusting of freckles.”
“Freckles? That’s just ruthless, isn’t it?”
“Merciless. No woman that beautiful should also have freckles.” Zach laughed mirthlessly. “She would lie across my lap in the evenings and read her obscure Welsh poets while I worked on a manuscript. Once she fell asleep on my lap. I used my red pen to connect all the freckles on her lower back. She was livid. We laughed for days about it.”
“You had a good marriage. What happened?”
Zach stared at Nora. She sat two feet away from him but it seemed an ocean of truth and lies and memories lay between them. He held out his shot glass. She refilled it with a shaky hand. Zach drank the whiskey and enjoyed the burn all the way down.
“This is a terrible game.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair.
“I know a better one.”
Something in Nora’s voice sobered him up momentarily. He opened his eyes and Nora now sat even closer to him. She had something behind her back.
Zach reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. He raised his hand to her hair, pulled the ink pens out and watched the dark curls fall around her face.
“How long has it been?” Nora asked, her voice soft and insinuating.
“Thirteen months.” He didn’t have to ask what Nora meant by her question. He didn’t have to think before he answered it.
“How long’s it been for Grace?”
Zach took a hard breath.
“Less than thirteen months. Friday…she emailed me. Bill questions, addresses, all sorts of marital flotsam. She casually mentioned some bloke named Ian.”
Nora winced.
“How casually?”
“Not casually enough for me to not picture them in bed together. It’s my own fault. When we decided there was a chance our marriage was going to work—we made each other promise no secrets and no lies. I told her I could get over anything, even straying, as long as she didn’t lie to me about it. I hate lying more than anything.” Zach shook his head. “Here we are eight months separated and she still can’t lie to me about anything, damn that girl.”
Zach looked at Nora and saw something flash across her eyes, some secret worry of her own.
“I’m sorry,” Nora said and Zach could tell she meant it. Zach ran a single finger over Nora’s forehead and down her face. With his thumb he caressed her full bottom lip.
“Thank you. So what’s the new game? This one’s about to drive me to quit drinking.”
“Perish the thought. Ever played ‘I’ve never’?”
“I’ve never played I’ve never.” Zach knew he was as drunk now as he’d been in a long time.
“Fun game. Very easy. I say something I’ve never done, and if you’ve actually done it then you take a shot.”
“What haven’t you done?”
“A few things. For example, I’ve never…” She leaned in toward him. She moved close enough he could smell her perfume and even taste it on his burning tongue, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. “I’ve never let an erotica writer handcuff me to her desk and go down on me.”
Something caught in Zach’s throat. He looked into Nora’s eyes and felt the foundations of his resolve shudder. He’d never let a woman handcuff him and do anything to him. But tonight…he looked down at his shot glass.
“Never done that. Never will.”
“You sure about that?” Nora stared him down. He reached out to touch her knee, and she slapped the handcuffs on his right wrist. “Look familiar? I thought we should put your prankster’s gift to good use at least once.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“And you’re so turned on right now you can hardly breathe. Your pupils are dilated, your skin is flushed, and it’s not from the whiskey and we both know it.”
Zach met her eyes and said nothing.
“Thirteen months, Zach. You don’t need to be afraid of me anymore.”
He had a vague memory of standing on Nora’s porch thinking that if he crossed her threshold tonight for any reason other than her book everything would change between them. Zach took the shot glass in his hand. He looked down at the amber liquid and then back into Nora’s eyes. Raising the glass to his lips, he downed his shot. He watched a grin spread ear to ear across Nora’s face. For a single moment she was all smiles.
“Good boy.”
For someone he thought was as drunk as he, Nora moved with a swiftness and precision that almost terrified him. She pushed him on his back, yanked his arms over his head and cuffed his wrists around the leg of her desk. Straddling him at the stomach, Nora unbuttoned her black silk pajama top and let it slide off her arms. He felt the wisp of silk brush his face before she threw it aside and on top of his coat. Under her shirt she wore a black bra that revealed far more than it concealed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her curves, off her pale skin and shoulders.
Nora slid her hands under his T-shirt. Her hands on his bare skin sent every nerve firing. She bent over and kissed the center of his stomach. Unzipping his jeans, she worked them down low enough to expose the top of his hips. Zach inhaled sharply when she bit his hip bone.
“Nora—”
Nora rose up and covered his lips with one finger.
“S?ren used to call me his Siren,” she whispered, bending over him until she hovered an inch away from his face. “He said the things I did with my mouth could blow any man off course. Don’t you want to know what he meant by that?”
Zach didn’t answer but Nora didn’t seem to care. She started at his neck and kissed her way down his body. A soft sigh escaped his lips as she took him in her mouth. Not even all that alcohol could blunt the pleasure of what her tongue, her lips did to him. Her hair covered her face like a veil. The tendrils of her curls tickled his stomach.
So long…it had been so long since he’d felt something so intense, so sharp that he could almost mistake the pleasure for pain. Zach ached to touch Nora but when he tried he remembered the handcuffs.
“Relax, Zach. Just enjoy.” Nora paused to kiss his stomach again. “Your only job right now is to surrender.”
