“Maintenant! Now,” she said, the only English word she remembered. She scrabbled a condom from her nightstand, handed it to him, and turned onto her back while he rolled it down his shaft. She spread her legs; he kneed them a bit wider; she lifted until the tip of his cock nudged into the slick, yielding heat of her sex. The connection was electric, focusing all of her attention on the slight twinge as he breached her. He blindly sought her mouth, his hands shifting from her hip to her shoulders, into her hair, around to cup her breast, finally settling on her breast and the back of her head.
“Oh, God,” he groaned as she slowly took him deep inside. Every nerve sizzled with the sheer erotic charge of his thick shaft stretching her open.
“C’est bien,” she murmured.
“Fuck me, now is not a good time for you to start in with the French. I’m not going to last as it is.”
“J’ai attendu si longtemps. Je vais faire l’amour avec toi maintenant parce que c’est le moment idéal. Un moment magique. Nous allons le faire encore et encore et encore,” she said, with a swivel of her hips as he started to move.
He claimed her mouth, effectively shutting her up, but she couldn’t stop the low purr humming in her throat. His tongue slid along hers before he tipped her head to the side and nipped at her jaw. She retaliated, gripping his tousled hair in one hand to expose his throat, then nipping at the pulse jumping in his neck. His cock throbbed inside her, and he curled one leg around hers and pinned her to the mattress.
His next thrust drew her legs up to clasp his hips. The one after that tightened every muscle along her spine until her back was arched like a bow. He set his mouth to the pounding pulse at the base of her throat and scraped his teeth over it. At that she lost her words in both languages, crying out as her orgasm flung her into blackness. He followed moments after, thrusting that extra bit deeper inside her as he came.
Untangling his hands from her hair and their limbs from the sheets took a rather concerted effort. When they were sorted out, the condom disposed of and back in the cocoon, she fitted herself to his side and sighed.
“Now you start speaking in French?”
“It’s my first language,” she said. “I lose English when I get worked up.”
He grunted comfortably and settled her a little closer. “I’ll pick up some language programs. I want to know what you’re saying when you’re worked up.”
“You’re back,” she said. “How long are you back?”
“I’m back for good. Preliminary hearings are coming up. The FBI wants me closer to hand.”
She tilted her head and studied him. His face was tanned, filled out from the hollowed, haunted look of the summer. He looked simultaneously younger and wiser, and impossibly handsome. “You look good,” she said.
“This is what I look like when I don’t have an ulcer,” he said, smiling at her.
She smiled. “It’s a good look on you. Where were you?” she asked, taking in his tanned face and arms, the ridges of muscle in his shoulders and legs.
“Remember that guy who said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was really visiting his mistress? I was actually hiking the trail. A friend had a cabin in Maine. I used it as a base for trips. A couple days at a time to start, until I toughened up, then a couple weeks at a time.”
That explained the tan, the youthful appearance tempered with hard-earned wisdom. They lay in a comfortable silence for a few minutes until she leaned over the bed and picked up the cellophane-wrapped flowers. “Thank you for the daisies.”
“You’re welcome. They’re all I can afford now.”
The blunt honesty rang as true as the comment about the ulcer. He was so calm when he said it. The man who could afford to give her twenty thousand dollars for a few hours’ work, who could swing the hottest ticket in town on three hours’ notice, could only bring her daisies now. Six dollars for a plastic-wrapped bouquet from the bodega up the street. No velvet ribbons, no hand-painted pot, no plant nurtured in a hothouse. But he looked so calm, so centered, so grounded in who he was. I’m a man who can afford daisies. Take me or leave me.
She’d take him. All day, every day, and twice on Sunday.
She opened the cellophane and spread the daisies out, fanning the flowers, stripping low leaves from the stems so they wouldn’t rot in the water. “I love daisies,” she said as she worked. “What happens next?”
“If the MacCarrens fight the indictment, there’ll be a trial. I’ll have to testify. I have to find a job.”
“Will that be difficult?”
“I won’t know until I start looking,” he said. “But I don’t know that I want to go back to Wall Street. What I do know is that I want to be with you. Like this, if this is all you want. More, if you’ll have me.”
“Do you think I went to bed with you to get you out of my system?” she asked.
“I entertained the possibility,” he said. “You might have come to your senses while I was gone.”
He’d worried, too, but was endearingly determined to do the right thing, and so he’d waited. Then bought daisies and walked up to her front door and kissed her like he meant it. Like he meant forever. “I thought what happened the night of the storm might have gotten me out of your system.”
“Crazy,” he said dismissively.