Busted

Only when you get close enough do you see it - that his eyes, as my Russian grandmother would put it, are "full of devils frolicking."

And that he has really nice hands.

He is wearing the business casual uniform - dress pants, light blue shirt, no jacket or tie. He is sitting at the bar, drinking something brown from a lowball, keeping an eye on the television where grown men are chasing a ball around. As I walk toward him, I find myself wondering what his voice will sound like in real life. Will it sound familiar, or will it be disappointing, or will it be - Jesus Christ, he's a real person, he's right there. I could touch him right now.

I clear my throat, and he turns his head, sees me, smiles. I see him look me up and down, briefly. There is a moment when it might turn either flattering or creepy, but it doesn't edge into either direction. He slips from the bar stool, extends a hand.

"Rachel. Nice to properly meet you."

His hand is large, warm. He has a good handshake, firm, lingering. I like the way his smile just edges around being a smirk.

"Nice to meet you too, Charlie."

We sit at the bar; I order a drink - one of the signature cocktails, because I can never resist tasting an unfamiliar combination of familiar flavors. It surprises me how quickly it becomes easy to talk to him - he makes a crack about the drink I've just ordered, I make fun of the color of the uniforms on the TV. He doesn't sound quite like his audios, his voice doesn't have the slow insinuation of his romantic scenarios nor the put-on clinical firmness of his more "interesting" ones. He just sounds like a normal, ordinary person. Friendly, warm, non-sexual. The dissonance strikes me over and over - how can he be the same man I've listened to for months? He doesn't say "pussy" once. He never even swears.

But the laugh is exactly the same, natural and infectious and frequent. He is more dynamic than I'd expected, more irreverent, fun to talk to. He responds to any topic that comes up, expands on it, offers opinions, asks for my thoughts, responds to those. He is, what do you call it, a good conversationalist. This used to be something people tried to be, before we switched to texting tiny cartoon eggplants to one another.

We talk about the music we like and he tells me about the time he saw Pearl Jam and Robert Plant at the House of Blues, near here. I am jealous, and tell him about the time I saw Leonard Cohen play a tiny high school auditorium in a small Canadian town. Now he is jealous. We talk about our favorite places to travel - he describes the forests of California, and I talk about Venice.

He tilts his head, wrinkles his nose a bit. "I'd like to see Venice, but some of my friends were there recently, and they said the food was terrible and the canals stunk."

"Your friends are dead wrong," I tell him. "Venice is gorgeous and otherworldly and the food is great as long as you stay away from the tourist traps. And the canals, they are so beautiful, and they are never still, everywhere you go you hear water flicking. They do have a smell, but it's not a bad smell. It smells like - " I catch myself, suddenly remembering that this is still someone I am about to face across a conference room tomorrow.

"Like what?" He is looking attentively into my eyes, as he has been all evening. Really listening for what I am about to say. There is a small piece of hair curling near his ear, right above a tiny spot he has missed shaving. His upper lip is turned out a bit at the tip. There is an infinitesimal scar near the corner of his mouth. The light from the bar touches the side of his face, picks up the lines in the soft-looking skin around his eyes. I suddenly want to touch him. I want my fingers on his face. I swallow, look down, feel my neck turning warm, make an effort to look back up at him. My dark side takes over for just a second, an irresistible impulse to do exactly the wrong thing, and I can't not say it.

"Cunt. The canals. That's... that's what they smell like."

He blinks, doesn't look away. "Cunt," he repeats, quietly. There he is.

I clear my throat, stare at the bottles behind the bar, take a long sip of my drink, use my cocktail napkin to very carefully wipe the condensation off the glass surface. I can't think. My vision seems to be tunneling, I am barely aware of the scrape of his bar stool sliding closer to mine.

When he speaks, it's soft and right by my ear, his breath just brushing against the side of my neck. "Why are you here tonight, Rachel?"

I raise my head, switch instantly into my broad, practiced, professional smile. "I am here to present _____ with Bill tomorrow!" I say in my brightest voice, with a good dose of sarcasm. I think I am expecting him to laugh, to go in on the joke. He doesn't. He slides closer. The hairs on his forearm brush against my wrist on the bar, and that tiny bit of skin blazes through me like a lit match.

He moves his mouth closer to my ear. I can hear him inhale, pause. I don't move away. I can't see his face, but I swear, I can hear him smile. "Why. Are you here tonight. Rachel."

I don't answer. I can't answer. My pulse is in my throat, my breathing has gone shallow, and I'm trembling, really trembling, and I wonder if he can tell.

He gets even closer. He puts his hand on my shoulder, his fingertips resting against the back of my neck. They feel cool against my sudden heat. "I want to be alone with you, Rachel. Do you want to be alone with me?"

I turn my head to look at him. His face is inches from mine. I scan his expression, waiting for it - for that smirk, that sub-second muscular twitch that always appears at this moment - when they know they've won. And, by implication, that you've lost. His gaze is steady, black and liquid in the dim light and the shadows cast by our faces. I could move away now, I could laugh, I could make another joke, I could tell him anything, I could easily let him think that it's not that I don't WANT to, it's something else - early morning, our professional relationship, anything - that's how this dance always ends, that's how I've learned to make it end, otherwise it will hurt one way or another, and I refuse to let it. I flash forward on what I should do, what I ought to do, and I can already see it: the distancing of our faces, my deliberately friendly laugh, the sweetly ingratiating explanation, the lingering hug goodbye, the smooth cool hotel sheets and predictable morning. It's what I should do. It's what I ought to do.

I nod, once. I keep looking at him, waiting for the smirk, that smug narrowing of the eyes, the wolfish grin. But it doesn't come. He just looks happy.

* * *

The elevator ride up to my floor is uneventful. I've long had a thing about elevators, and I am kind of hoping that, the minute we step in, he will throw me against a wall and kiss the daylights out of me, but he doesn't. He asks, mildly, for my floor, presses the button. Stands on the other side of the elevator from me. Smiles politely at another couple who gets on, bids them good night when they step out.

On my floor, he motions for me to go ahead of him. I walk toward the room, fishing out the key card. He is walking behind me; I can't resist swishing my hips a little bit, and I hear the tiniest snicker from him, echoing off the walls of the hallway. I key the door - my mind plays a scene from a dozen movies, the awkward fumble, the comic relief - but the lock whirrs immediately, and we walk inside.

My chest feels tight, I am ridiculously nervous. He makes the room feel small, or something. I slip off my shoes, toss my handbag onto the armchair, make a show of clearing the desk of the usual travel debris, babble something about air conditioners and counter space, I am so fucking nervous, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, so I putter around like a crazy person, picking things up and putting them down for no reason.

"Do you want a drink or something?" I ask too loudly, the perfect hostess, only maybe a little demented.

"Nope." He is leaning against the heavy wooden dresser, looking like he is holding back a laugh, and also possibly wondering if he should be running out the door. Maybe I want him to. I have no idea what I've gotten myself into. I have no idea what to say. I'm the one who always knows what to say. I talk for a living. But my mind has gone blank. What am I supposed to do - do I just jump on him? Do I start undressing? I am not the kind of woman who knows how to strip. I'm the kind of woman who knows how to talk. Except, right now, I don't.

"Rachel?" He sounds comically nonplussed. "Do you want to talk about Venice some more?"

I start laughing, some of the tension leaving me. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry - I really don't do this. I am not sure how I am supposed to - uh, do this."

"I think you are supposed to... just do whatever you want. I'm no expert here, but I think that's the general idea. We can just sit and talk, if you'd like?"

"That's not what I want," I say very quietly, almost to myself. He hears me. His eyes snap to mine, narrowing, like something has just clicked. He peels himself off the dresser, walks toward me, slowly, until we are almost touching. The fabric of his shirt is brushing against the fabric of mine, blue cotton whispering on black silk.

"What do you want, Rachel?" he asks. He is so close, I can feel his breath on my forehead, my eyebrows. My heart is racing. I can't speak. He smiles, leans right into my ear, and there it is - that toe-curlingly familiar "Baaaaaby...." He pulls back, smiles. "Is that what you want?"

I don't know why I do this, but I shake my head. Five minutes ago, I would have sworn that was exactly what I wanted. But it's not.

He angles around me slightly, takes a strategic step, and I find myself backed against the mirrored sliding door of the closet. His hands close around my wrists, pull them up over my head, pinning them to the door. His fingers are hard against my bones. His voice changes, drops half an octave, loses its gentleness. "Is this what you want?"

I shake my head. Again, I shock myself. This used to be exactly what I wanted. This used to be all I ever wanted. But right now, this isn't what I want.

He lowers my wrists, looks quizzically into my eyes, and I finally manage to say it: "I don't know what I want."

To my horror, I find that what I am feeling is something very much like sadness, something old and buried clawing up inside me, and I'm ready, I am fully expecting him to conclude that this is too much trouble, women are fucking crazy sometimes, to bid me a friendly good night and leave, but instead he just sighs softly and says, "Well then, I guess we'll have to settle for doing what I want," and he kisses me.

His lips feel fuller than they look, and exquisitely soft, and they match mine perfectly. I open my mouth to let in his tongue, which he swirls leisurely around mine. His mouth tastes cool and vaguely fruity. I can smell a hint of something piney on his skin. I nip that sweet upper lip between my teeth and am rewarded with a delicious little sound from deep inside his throat, so I nip it again. I love it, that sweet pouty fleshiness of it. The firmness of his lips when he uses them to open mine up wider, the playful flick of his tongue against my teeth.

My arms are around him, my hands on his back, then in his hair. I finally get my fingers on his face, as I've wanted - I realize now - all night. That soft, soft skin around his ears. The rougher stubble around his cheeks and chin. The outline of his jaw. I catch the pulse at the side of his neck in my fingertips. It's racing as fast as mine.

His mouth is fantastic. He kisses so slowly, so passionately and yet with such restraint. I love kissing, I love it more than almost anything else, and I hardly get to do it anymore, not for longer than a few minutes. He kisses like he has all night. He sucks on my lower lip, lightly, then just a little too hard, and licks the tiny pain away. His tongue moves like it is dancing to vintage Eric Clapton, deliberately slow, perfectly paced. It has the texture of a summer plum. I never want it to leave my mouth.

His hands, those wonderful big hands I'd clocked as soon as I saw him, feel even better than I thought they would. He flexes them on my waist, slides them over my shoulder blades, uses them to cradle the back of my head and gently palm my face as he guides my mouth under his. He doesn't cup my ass or handle my breasts. I am so used to that lowkey anxiety of kissing - there is always the moment when the hands land someplace where they mean business, always too soon for my liking, but what do you expect, we're not teenagers to make out for hours are we - that it takes a long time before I realize that I'm the one who wants to move this along.

I tilt my pelvis gently toward him, brushing his cock with my lower belly. He makes a rough sound deep in his throat and grinds himself against me - I feel the thrilling hardness and length of him against my body for only a moment before he inhales quickly and angles himself away, detaches his mouth from mine. Our lips separate with a wet pop, like a seal breaking. We are both breathing hard. His eyes are glittering. He grins, and says "Rachel... I think maybe that was what you wanted."

I want more, but what I also want, I realize, is to talk to him. "I love your mouth," I murmur, tracing the wet contour of it. "I love how your tongue feels. What the hell were you drinking, why does it taste so good?"

He laughs, runs his hand through his mussed hair. "I ate a maraschino cherry. Old pro trick."

"Excellent trick. Brilliant." I reach up to kiss him again, to get more of that taste, that firm glide. "Put your hands on me."

He complies immediately, wrapping his hands tight around my waist, but as we draw close, he suddenly says, in a breathy falsetto, "Draw me like one of your French girls."

And that's it. That's perfect. I start laughing uncontrollably, literally into his mouth. I have to pull back, I am quaking with it, because it's all so ridiculous, isn't it - the movies, the myth, the ubiquity and uniformity of it, the way nobody can say anything remotely romantic or sexual anymore without sounding ridiculous or trite or saccharine, so we all finally stop trying and settle for "that's hot" and "fuck yeah" and "take it, you slut." We have to imagine that we are getting fucked by vampires or werewolves, just to feel something. Just to avoid laughing at the silliness of it all.

It feels good to stop avoiding it.

I smile at him, place my hand on the side of his neck. I love feeling his pulse. "Charlie from fucking procurement. Anonyfun35. How the fuck?"

He shrugs, modestly. "It started out as a hobby."

We detach from the door. He sits on the bed while I open a couple of bottles of water for us. I sit next to him, tuck my foot under me. He takes a few sips, eyes me up.

"So do you really like listening to them?"

"I really, really do. Really, really."

"Who else do you listen to?"

I shrug, recall a few names. Truthfully, ever since I discovered his audios, I've tended to keep coming back to them. I don't know if his voice is a trigger, or if it's just that he is the only one I've found who knows that laughter isn't all that different from orgasm.

He is grinning. He is enjoying this immensely. It dawns on me that, in his own life, in real life, he is almost always Charlie, and only rarely Anonyfun35. There is something incredibly touching about the expression on his face, almost boylike in its delight. I find myself feeling irrationally happy at the thought of making him smile like that.

"Sooooo... do you have any fantasies about me?" he drawls flirtatiously. "What are your favorite scenes?"

I recite them: the one after the horror movie, the one after the nightmare, the angry one, the one about the early morning sex... "Although, honestly, it was hot, but if you wake me up that early for ANY reason, no matter how much you make me come, I WILL quietly resent you for the rest of the day."

He chuckles, inclines his head. "I'll keep that in mind. But really... if you had to pick one to do in real life, what would it be?"

I'm sitting there, looking at him across the bed, the messed hair and the rumpled blue shirt, and the strangest thing happens. It's like my eyes are zoom lenses, scoping in on his face, that sweet mouth, the tiny scar, the transparent points on his eyelashes. And I can almost see the transition - Anonyfun35 sort of recedes, and it's just Charlie. Charlie from Procurement. Charlie, who is funny, and tactful, and has great taste in music, and kisses like he is in training for the kissing Olympics.

And I like him.

I shrug my shoulders, and he laughs softly before reaching for me. He is kissing me again, his hand warm on my neck, pushing up into my hair, down over my clavicle, pushing my shirt collar slightly aside to palm my shoulder. I mirror his movements, running my fingers down into the collar of his shirt, beneath the T-shirt he has on underneath. His skin is warm, taut, the muscles of his back are bunched with tension. I take my hand out, grab handfuls of his shirt, urge him closer. He gets it, he tugs on the hem of my shirt, pulls it free from my jeans, runs his hands up under - God, it feels good, so warm on my skin, his hands are big enough and mobile enough to feel like I am covered by his touch. His fingers trace the edges of my lace bra, but go no higher; he runs them up into my upper arms, briefly grazes the sides of my covered breasts, returns to my waist, his thumbs pressed against my rib cage, making me giggle. He laughs too, motions at the shirt. "No pressure, I swear, but whenever you are ready to get that off, you just let me know."

In response, I unbutton the top few buttons, my eyebrow arched in a parody of a seductress. He laughs at the imitation, but the slight glazing of his eyes is completely unironic as I shrug the shirt down a bit to expose my red lace bra. (What can I say. Dress for the job you want.) I shimmy a little, letting the shirt slide down my shoulders to lightly trap my arms against my sides.

"Oh, yeah. Hold that, please," he directs, and puts his face almost up to my chest. I giggle a little, but he just stares for a moment, smooths my shirt down against my arms and my body, so that my shoulders and the red lace bra peep out from the deep vee of black silk, and moves back slightly to take in the view. I don't have much cleavage - the down side of defying gravity - but I do know that the bra is cute. I arch a little, my shoulders back, my chest thrusting out. I can feel my lips curling into an impish little smile. I love the way he is looking at me.

"That. Is really nice," he murmurs, and reaches for the few remaining fastened buttons. He pauses and looks at me. "May I?"

I nod. He unbuttons them without hurry, moves the edges of the shirt to the sides, pushes the sleeves a little further down my shoulders. My arms are slightly immobilized by the shirt's yoke - I could move them, of course, but I don't particularly want to - and he plays with the straps of my bra for a few seconds before moving his hands to cup my breasts. His hands are big enough - which is better than saying my breasts are small enough - to encase them completely, and he gently lifts and molds them before brushing his thumbs over the centers of the cups, over and over in short little strokes. The bra is unlined, and I feel it, every movement, the tiny fibers of the lace digging slightly into my skin as my nipples swell. The sensations shoot from my nipples and down to my pussy; it's almost like he is stroking across my clit, and I can see my own chest starting to move faster as a small, begging sound escapes me.

"I'm going to take this off you now, ok?" he asks, and I nod again, pressing my lips together to avoid asking him to go faster about this. He moves closer, and I think he is going to unsnap the back, but instead, he pulls the straps down, then gives the cups a little tug, so that my breasts peep out, the nipples exposed and teetering on the border of red lace. They are so hard, they ache.