I let my paw drop from the door. “James, please don’t say things like that to me. I don’t appreciate lines.”
He moved closer to me. “The first thing I wanted to know was how Moorish doors ended up on a Catholic monastery. I asked my interior designer, and she said they were a gift from a converted Moor who became an artist after he found Jesus. Then I asked her to find out everything she could about that Moor, because the minute I saw these doors, I wanted them in my life and I wanted to know everything about them. That’s how beautiful they are.”
He leaned down, his cinnamon breath warm against my face. “It’s not a line, Davie,” he said. Then he stepped away and opened the doors to his bedroom.
My eyes widened. His bedroom alone was bigger than two, maybe three of my entire apartments put together. The room also had cork floors, though here it was accented by the mostly wood furniture and dark blue wallpaper.
I hoped James had shown his interior designer proper appreciation, because she had somehow managed to make his bedroom masculine, yet airy enough to be a beach bungalow. Two sets of electric bamboo fans spun overhead, making the room cool, but not cold, and two corner walls were composed entirely of floor-to-ceiling French windows, all of which were thrown open to reveal a stunning view of the Los Angeles skyline, including Griffith Observatory and the “Hollywood” sign.
I walked around the room with my mouth open, trying to take it all in.
“Everything about this bedroom is perfect,” I told him. “If I were you, I would live here exclusively.”
“I’m glad you like it.” He came up behind me and unzipped the back of my bunny suit. “But if you were me, you would already be out of this costume.”
. . .
A few minutes later we were standing naked in front of a large glass-encased room with rows of platinum fixtures that James claimed was his shower.
“Did you special-order it from NASA?” I asked.
He laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “It looks like a spaceship. I’m afraid to get in there.”
James slipped the hair band off my wrist, and used it to secure my Afro in a lopsided ball at the side of my head. “This is the way you like it, right?”
Inside the shower, James hit a few buttons on a touch screen panel, and warm water sprays hit us from three of the four walls. It was disconcerting at first, but soon I got used to it, especially when James grabbed a bar of black soap and started rubbing it over my body.
“What, we have to do this ourselves? Your shower doesn’t soap us down, too, like a car wash?”
“There might be a function for that,” he said. “But I like this better.”
He kissed my neck and used his index fingers to get behind my ears, and he took extra care with my chest, lifting up each breast to get the creases underneath them. Then he handed the soap to me.
He seemed to enjoy having me give him the same treatment, but when I lingered too long on his penis, he removed my soapy hands and said, “I missed a spot on you, but I need a condom to get to it. Hold on.”
He climbed out of the shower and was back a few moments later, sheathed and ready to go.
He pressed me against the fourth wall, the only one without fixtures on it, but then he went still.
“I need to see you tonight. I want you to promise me.”
The haze of lust I had fallen into cleared a little bit. “You’re blackmailing me with sex?”
“I’m communicating to you that it’s going to be hard for me to enjoy this if I’m worried that I won’t be able to see you again.”
I glared at him. “I don’t like being manipulated by you.”
“Believe me, I’m not happy about this, either. It’s bad for my self-esteem.”