“Please don’t leave me like that again, Dirk,” she whispers into my neck. I’m taken back to the last time I held Saylor this close in my arms. She was sated, sleepy, talkative, and vulnerable. She’d told me about her promise to her mother. Her words were fresh in my mind and still had the same effect on my cock.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, tightening my hold on her. I will have to leave her again. I have a job. It’s my life. But that’s not what she meant. She wants me to give whatever this is a chance. I’m tired of waking up without her. So I tell her words I should have said the first time she asked me not to leave.
“I won’t,” I promise, and just like Saylor, I keep my fucking promises.
4
I WAKE UP what could be minutes or hours later and find that Saylor is still on my chest. She has scooted down my body and her grip has loosened around my neck. Her face is now in the center of my chest and her breathing tells me she is in a deep sleep. I cradle the back of her neck with one hand, grip her waist with the other, and stand. I lay her back down, and when I let go her eyes flutter open behind her glasses.
“Don’t leave,” she says to me, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’m not.” I remove her glasses, and her eyes close again. It’s two o’clock, which tells me we have been asleep for less than two hours. But I need a shower. There is dried blood on my cut, my hands need to be bandaged from the punching session with a wall I had after receiving Shady’s call, and I need to shave.
I walk outside, surveying the apartment as I unstrap the waterproof bag that contains almost everything I own. I retrieve my other bag from the hall and find the bathroom connected to Saylor’s bedroom. She is laying with her eyes open when I pass her.
“I thought you left,” she says, and the fact that she didn’t trust me when I said I wouldn’t hurts.
“I didn’t.”
I shower? shave, and make my way back to the bedroom in nothing but my boxers. I want to lay with her. I want to hold her and kiss her and whisper to her like she’d asked me to a couple weeks ago. But she isn’t here. She is gone. The bed is empty and I recognize the feeling welling in my chest. Panic. And then she walks in with a tray of food.
“Let’s eat. Picnic-style in the bed.” I’m starving, but even if I wasn’t, I would eat whatever she gave me because it would make her happy. I want to make her happy.
She sits cross-legged on the bed and I look down at the tray she is holding. Pasta with Alfredo sauce, garlic bread, and tea. My mouth is watering and it’s not for the food. It’s for the lips that press against the fabric of her panties. I want to eat her, devour her. I could survive off of her release. I reluctantly pull my eyes away from her * and find her staring at me. She knows I was looking. She knows that I want her, and she is turned on by it. I sit on the bed, my back against the headboard so that I am facing her.
“You shaved. It looks good,” she says, her cheeks reddening. She’s not embarrassed for admitting it, only by how much it pleases her. “I’m not a real good cook.”
I doubt that, but I just take the plate from her hands without comment. I’m sure it will be delicious, even if it is not. Just because her hands prepared it. I take a bite and she waits in anticipation for my reaction.
“It’s good,” I tell her and she relaxes—happy that it pleases me.
“Have you ever been to Mexico?”
“Yes,” I answer simply, wondering where the hell this is going. Is she going to ask me to go with her? Is she going to tell me she’s leaving? Small talk annoys me. When I’m with a woman, there is loud music because I don’t like small talk. We fuck, I enjoy it, she enjoys it, and we go on about our business with nothing more than a good-bye. But with Saylor, it’s different. I like to hear her talk.
“I’ve never been,” she says, and I watch her mouth as she takes another bite before continuing. “I want to go to one of those outside bars and drink tequila in the rain. I want to dance under a strand of Christmas lights like in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know the scene she is talking about, but I know a place that sounds a lot like it. “I want to wear a white dress with a flower in my hair.” I picture it, and it’s so beautiful that I’m talking before I can stop myself.
“I’ll take you.” I can’t believe I just said that. But I did, and I meant it. I don’t want her to go without me. I want to take her to Mexico. I want to watch her dance in the rain, in a white dress, with a flower in her hair while she is drunk off tequila. I watch her smile, and it is shy, and unbelieving.
I’ve lost my appetite. I don’t make empty promises, but someone did. That’s why she is so doubtful. I need to reassure her, but my words will fall on deaf ears. I will have to prove it with my actions.
—