May's 18th Birthday

This might be a bit slow and far too sweet for many people's tastes, but if you like a man who takes his time....

————

Raoul's library, suffused by the soft, warm tones of Rubinstein's 1965 recording of Chopin's nocturnes, rests in the moonlight filtering through its stained glass ceiling.

He sits on one of the sofas at the near end of the room, trying to read in a cone of light cast by a floor lamp. His eyes flicker between his watch and the doors, back to his watch, then the doors again, and finally back to the book for a sentence or two. He loses his place, listens to a few bars of the music, realizes he's watching the doors, then checks his watch again.

So when one of the doors finally begins to open, he knows that it's exactly seventeen minutes and ten seconds to midnight.

She's early.

————

"Hi," she says, her voice trembling just a little with nervousness and excitement.

As he stands to greet her, his "male gaze" travels her body.

May is absolutely the most beautiful woman — it's fair to call her that now — he's ever seen, and she's never looked sexier. A low-cut, lacy, bright red dress hugs her wondrously small waist and the graceful curves of her hips. It ends high on her long, thin thighs, but her legs disappear inches later, laced into tight high-heel black leather boots.

Longing to put himself between those beautiful legs, he can barely force his eyes away from that delicious gap between the top of those boots and the bottom of her dress. On their way back up her body, they are mesmerized by the seductive motion of her hips as she walks, awed by the fragility of her waist, tantalized by glimpses of her soft, dark skin through the lace of her dress, and then arrested by her breasts, pushed up into firm, round pillows.

When he finally manages to pull his eyes all the way back up to her face, he sees her smiling up at him, shy and submissive, uncertain and yet assured, but, above all, warmly affectionate and eager to please.

Glorying in the flattery of his admiration, and longing for more, she unleashes the full power of her beauty, her virginal innocence, her tender affection, her feminine hunger to feel safely loved in the arms of a powerful man.

In that instant of eye contact through the near-darkness, they understand each other perfectly. She perceives the intensity of his lust, sees him struggle to overcome it to treat her — for the moment anyway — like a gentleman. He sees her basking in his desire, surrendering herself, entrusting herself to his care.

"My god," he gasps, shaking his head. "You look amazing."

"You like it?" she coos happily. His words send shivers of delight through her body. She unconsciously arches her back, making her breasts and hips even more conspicuous.

"I...," he swallows. "Yes. Wow."

When she reaches him, he takes her hand, bends to kiss it (noticing that she's wearing a ring he'd given her), and then twirls her around to appreciate the curves of her body.

————

If you already know Raoul or May, you might skip ahead a few paragraphs, but if this is your first time too, let's give them a moment of privacy while we notice the first mundane fact that everyone else initially notices about these two:

They're very tall.

Raoul is 209 centimeters and about 21 stone (that's about 6' 10" and 294 pounds for our American friends) of densely packed muscle. Now that he's 41 years old, he no longer has the chiseling that once made him the body of Barry Schwartz's Obsessed for Men, but he still has the presence and power of a heavyweight boxer.

Even before people hear his thunderingly deep voice, or find out how wealthy he is, they instinctively signal deference, ducking a little, shrinking their shoulders, hiding their hands. With the bearing of a man accustomed to command and assured of obedience, he doesn't interrupt anyone because people cease speaking when they suspect he might have something to say, often apologizing as if they were wrong not to stop sooner. People move when they see him coming, often apologizing for having been almost in his way.

He's just a big, big, powerful man.

If you do get to know him, you find out not only about his intimidating wealth but about his affinity for violence. Having striven to be a protector of the weak, a defender of the oppressed, and a bringer of justice, he bears the physical and psychological scars of combat, the pride and regrets of a warrior who has laid down his arms, the humility of a man who has seen too much, done too much, and not always lived up to his own ideals.

But he is no brute. Fluent in several languages, he has traveled the world exploring the great traditions of religion, philosophy, literature, theater, music, dance, art, architecture, food, and drink. If he has supped full with horrors, he has also surfeited himself with pleasure, and learned to consider nothing human, good or evil, alien to himself.

With the dark, rugged, brooding features befitting all that, he may even be as handsome as he is powerful.

May on the other hand is 191 centimeters (~ 6' 3") of beauty (even taller in those high-heel boots), and though she's minutes away from being the sweetest 18-year-old girl you've ever read about, we're not going to venture to disclose any information in the form of kilograms, stone, or pounds.

Not that she has anything to be ashamed of, for she's one of those bird-boned girls, exceptionally petite yet still softly feminine and curvy, with breasts and hips perhaps on the smaller side but an absolutely tiny waist. Indeed, she looks as fragile as he does powerful.

No, the problem for May is that too many women — understandably — look at her with jealousy verging on rage, and, kind as can be, she wouldn't want us to incite any of those feelings unnecessarily.

With that startling figure, and her golden-bronze complexion, her upturned brown eyes, her wide smile and disarming dimples, her high hollow cheeks, wavy ombre hair flowing down to her waist as it gradually shades from dark brown to almost blonde, she seemed destined for a glamorous modeling career, almost against her will, until he rescued her from it and from so much else besides.

Her experiences of life and the world are not of course as broad as Raoul's, but she has known more than enough of fear, abuse, and neglect. She has seen the emptiness of too many of the world's promises, felt the sting of too many betrayals, too often found ruthlessly selfish imperatives where she needed to find acceptance, forgiveness, and love.

She is more than a match for him, though. Heir to a fortune many times greater than his (though from a family more given to ostentation than taste), she is also fluent in several languages, as steadily oriented to compassion as he is to justice. Sharing so many values, assumptions, aspirations, and even experiences, they intuitively understand each other, sometimes communicating more in a moment of eye contact than most people (your unfortunate author, for example) can express in entire paragraphs.

He may even have been the first person to appreciate her impressive intelligence and thoughtfulness. Consistently underestimated throughout his life because of his size, his handsomeness, and his athleticism, he quickly realized that May's unequaled beauty concealed a razor-sharp mind and a tender heart, features most people would never notice.

For May, to be admired for her intellect and complexity and kindness as well as for her astonishing beauty — appreciated for all of that, and by a man capable of real discernment, without any regard at all for who her father was or how rich she is — was frankly ravishing.

What finally unites them, however, is simply the need to love and to be loved. He only recently rediscovered this long-forgotten need, just in time to meet this special young woman who can perhaps even meet it for him, while she feels it so keenly that she fears it is some kind of irremediable deficiency in her soul. She hardly dares hope that it could be met, even by this extraordinary man.

They've known each other over a year now, and have gone through some ordeals together in that time. But everyone who has seen them together has realized that though they might not already be "a couple" in a technical sense, it's only a matter of time. The forces pulling them together are too powerful to stop.

Raoul and May have felt the magic from the moment they met. They are both aware that their stations in society allow them to take almost anything they want without suffering any consequences except scandal, but she has had more than enough public humiliation in her young life, and he has cared for her enough to restrain himself... at least until tonight...

————

We resume our account at the point when, having beheld the elegance — the relentless sexiness — of her twirling body, his bedazzled eyes rise to meet hers.

"Dear god," he gasps, and she giggles shyly.

"I hoped you would..."

"Yes."

"But I was afraid you might think it was too... "

"No. Not at all."

An incorrigible womanizer until recently, Raoul usually greets beautiful women with an arrogant, almost commanding smirk, but not now. Something of the smirk remains, but his mouth hangs slightly open in unaffected shock. Decades of experience seducing the world's most beautiful women have not quite prepared him for the way she looks now.

Of course he realizes some of the tricks she's used — a push-up bra, contouring her breasts, her catwalk strut — and women do those things for good reason! But the intensity of beauty that she has achieved tonight cannot be fabricated from nothing.

"Is the necklace pretty?"

She arches her back and lifts her chin to draw his attention... well, supposedly to the pendant nestled in the center of her décolletage.

Earlier today, during her party, he'd given her a jewelry set — earrings, bracelets, a ring, a choker, and a princess necklace — of platinum, diamonds, rubies, and pearls, woven together in delicate lacey flourishes. Only days after first meeting her, he'd commissioned this from Chaumbergé, and he'd bothered the team of designers assigned to the task until he felt every detail was perfect, with the brilliant artistry tempering the profusion of jewels. The result looks worth every cent of the 2.5 million euros he paid for it.

When she'd opened it, everyone around gasped. She'd held up the necklace briefly, but then felt it was somehow too precious for the moment, and far too fine for the jeans and t-shirt she was wearing then.

Carefully putting the necklace back in its place in the box, she'd passed it to her mother, instructing her to put it away in their room.

He'd felt disappointed then because he'd waited so long to see her wear it, but now, seeing her shimmer in the dim light, he realizes she was right to save it for a more intimate occasion.

"It looks so much better than I'd imagined," he says, pretending to look at it. "You really make it shine."

"Thank you," she sings, thrilled and bashful.

It took courage for her to put on this outfit, revealing so much of herself, to ask so frankly for his admiration, and receiving it now seems to affirm her entire existence.

"Would you like to sit down?" he gestures to a sofa. "You're, um," glancing at his watch he discovers that although he feels like he's been gazing at her beauty for an era, only a few seconds have actually passed, "several minutes early."

"I thought it'd be nice to chat for a bit," she says, lightly, but stopping herself just in time from saying "before."

Before what? They both know, of course, but she can't say it!

As if to stop the word from escaping, she's bitten her lower lip, but when she glances up at his wide eyes, she realizes what a sexy thing she's done. Making the most of the moment, she smiles and flashes her eyebrows as seductively as she can, but then, blushing, she has to look away and sit down immediately.

Something predatory awakens in Raoul, a hunger that he will finally, finally, finally sate tonight, wreaking his desire on her amazing body, but for the moment, though his heart pounds ferociously, he politely pretends not to notice her embarrassment.

He sits on the sofa perpendicular to hers, and watches, charmed the grace of her flowing movements, as she pulls her hair around her shoulder, as if to hide her body behind it, and crosses her long slender legs towards him. The slit in her dress opens slightly, revealing a few more inches of her thigh, and for a full second, or maybe even several seconds, he just cannot pull his eyes away.

When he finally manages to look into her eyes again, she greets him with a knowing grin.

He can only shake his head. "May, you're always beautiful, but this is...."

"Thank you," she says again. "You're so sweet. You look nice too."

"Me?" he chuckles.

His clothing is finely tailored at jaw-dropping expense, and every detail from the gold buckles of his monk strap shoes to the fold of his pocket square has been fashioned with the assistance of three personal stylists and four image consultants. If he doesn't look like a million dollars, he hasn't gotten his money's worth.

"I'm sure I look fine by any reasonable standard," he concedes, "but you are not setting a reasonable standard."

Her bubbly laugh reminds him yet again of wind chimes he must've heard long ago, standing on a porch somewhere on the prairie enjoying a pleasant afternoon. A short shower has just ended, not enough to cover the sunshine but just enough to summon fresh scents from the earth and sprinkle tiny rainbow sparkles all around. Now the blue sky gently nuzzles aside the clouds, a dove coos somewhere out in the rustling grass, and the cool breeze wafts up to him, tickling the chimes like an ebullient pianist.

He cannot exactly remember that moment, but her laugh summons its pastoral serenity so vividly that he can't have entirely imagined it. Something about May — perhaps her gentleness, her wholehearted kindness, her unbroken hopefulness — repeatedly reminds him of that scene.

Her wholesome goodness breaks through his lust, offering a serenity, a healing, perhaps even a rebirth that he needs far more than mere sex.

But he needs the sex too. Don't doubt that.

"What were you reading?" she asks, her voice soft and pure like that dove on the prairie.

He blinks, needing a moment to remember that he was reading something before she came in.

"Oh. Conversación en la casa verde. Do you remember it?" He hands the book to her.

"Of course. It was the first book we read together."

She recalls the first time she attended one of his book club meetings.

How intimidated she'd been!

She was accustomed by then to spending time with supermodels and famous fashion designers, or with wealthy and powerful men, but she'd never before found herself in such culturally elite company. Vargos Babenco himself was there, along with several other famous authors and a legendary film director, all right there in Raoul's library!

She'd come so prepared, determined to impress Raoul, but she couldn't speak during the entire discussion. She just listened, fascinated and intimidated.

Only afterwards, as people stood around chatting and enjoying his wine, did she manage to participate in a little conversation.

She'd been standing in a small group of USCLA grad students, the least intimidating people she'd found. They were saying surprisingly critical things about what the others had said earlier, but their criticisms seemed petty to May. They seemed to be tolerating her presence in their circle, clearly assuming (as most people usually do) that she had nothing but air in her pretty little head, and she was trying to work up the courage to leave them to join one of the more, well, prestigious groups, hoping to find more interesting conversation there.

Then Raoul walked up, followed by his own entourage. He listened to them for a minute or two (and you won't be surprised to read that their tone immediately became more respectful), and then he turned right to May to ask what she thought!

Suddenly everyone's attention was on her. The entire room seemed to hush. Most had cold eyes, obviously hoping to humiliate her for any mistake she made, but Raoul's attention was warm and encouraging. He really seemed eager to hear her opinion. If she hadn't known better, she could've almost believed that he'd held this entire event just so he could find out what she thought!

Hedging her comment with self-deprecation, she'd shared what she thought was her finest insight into the story, carefully calculated to intrigue him. Almost immediately one of the grad students criticized her, even laughing scornfully.

May wanted to disappear, but Raoul rescued her!

"Actually, that's interesting," he'd said, nodding thoughtfully. Then they discussed it for several minutes, and he even suggested that she should talk to Vargos Babenco about it — which of course she could not possibly do!

"I'm glad you came," he said, at the end of that conversation. "I hope you'll come again."

Sunshine had filled her whole body. He'd affirmed her intelligence. Nothing anyone else said mattered.

That was over a year ago, just before her seventeenth birthday. What a year it had been!

"You impressed me so much," he says, drawing her back to the present. "I was reading it again just now, thinking about that."

"Really? You remember that?"

"You had so much insight into the story. You must've read it so carefully."

"To tell the truth," she laughs, "I think I read it three times to get ready. I was so afraid that I'd sound stupid!"

This is why she likes him so much. Everyone gushes about her beauty — not that she minds, though if she were being honest she could do without some of the jealousy — but for a man, and especially this man, to desire her so much and yet also take interest in the other aspects of her character, with compassion and admiration, not assuming she's a happy-go-lucky airhead — for a man to offer her, implicitly, admission into a society of people who are not merely good-looking or rich but educated, sophisticated, worldly...

To him, and with him, she is exactly who she wants to be; and she wants so much to be who he thinks she is!

Which might be why she loves him so much. Who can resist that?

"You've probably never sounded stupid," he assures her as they laugh together. "But what really impressed me was how empathetic you were. To see this story from different characters' points of view, to sympathize with all of them. You really understood the tragedy. You were able to feel deeply and to think deeply. That's rare for anyone at any age, let alone — were you really just sixteen?"

She smiles.

"Technically, I'm still only seventeen." But that reminds them both....

Her eyes flicker away briefly, but almost instantly back to his face. She can't look away from his affectionate gaze for more than a moment.

"Do you remember the lady who was rude to you?" he asks.

"Was someone rude to me?" She fingers one of her bracelets absentmindedly. She'd like to hear his version of the story.

"She was a grad student. USCLA. I think she was jealous of you. She was always the prettiest young woman in our club and then you showed up."

May begins to protest, but Raoul won't have it.

"No, I think that was part of it. Anyway, she interrupted something you were saying with kind of a crude joke. She meant to be making fun of you, but you just kind of smirked, as if she'd classed herself or something. You were so confident, so at ease, and you instantly had everyone on your side. It was masterful. I think that's why she stopped coming."