The door to our hotel room closes behind us, falling shut with a sound of finality. Isaac turns on the lights. They’re set for the evening and cast a dimmed shine over the tastefully decorated room. Minimalist and comfortable.
I step out of my heels and watch as he opens the door to the minibar. “We haven’t tried the spa area yet,” I say. My throat feels dry.
He closes the door again. “Is that what you want to do?”
“No, not really.”
His mouth curves. “Me neither.”
“We’ll have time for that tomorrow.”
“Plenty of it,” he agrees.
“Are you making a drink?”
“Looking at the options,” he says. “But I’m not sure if more alcohol is the best route for us now.”
“Well, it’s been known to… ease the way.”
“Do you think we need it?” he asks. “The last thing I want to be tonight is too buzzed to savor you properly.”
My stomach tightens. “Oh.”
His mouth tips up again into that smile, the one so unlike the professional ones I’ve seen him exploit in meetings, at conferences. It makes it hard to breathe.
“Too much?” he asks.
I shake my head and sit down on the edge of the bed, bracing my hands against the soft cover. It takes me a few breaths to speak. “Isaac,” I say.
“Yes?” He’s watching me like he’s been from the very beginning. Sometimes casually, sometimes intensely, across his hotel lobby and conference rooms and suites. And now I finally understand what his gaze means, and the weight of it is delicious.
“Do you feel like having a shower?” I say.
“You know what, I wouldn’t mind one, if you’re in it.”
“Me neither.” I get up off the bed, nerves and adrenaline pounding through me. The world feels slightly off-balance. “It’s best to be thorough, you know, in evaluating the hotel.”
He reaches out, curving a hand around my waist. “Sophia,” he murmurs.
I rest my hands on the lapels of his suit jacket. The solidity of him is reassuring, anchoring, bringing me back to earth. “Yes?”
“Are you okay?” he says. “We don’t have to do this.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it? Talk to me.”
I shake my head again. The words flashing through my mind aren’t ones I want to share. That it has been a year, that the last person was Percy, and only Percy. That I know he was never faithful, but I always was, and this feels like I’m leaving him behind, finally. And that I want that so badly, but I’m also scared of it.
But I don’t say that because I don’t want Percy anywhere close to this hotel room.
“Just the past,” I say and slide my hands up to wrap around his neck. “But it belongs right where I left it.”
His eyes are hard to read, thoughtful and intent on mine. He runs a hand along my jaw and slowly tips my head back. “You don’t need to pretend around me.”
“I know,” I say, because I do. “That goes both ways.”
He kisses me. It’s slow, a brush of lips against mine. Another step in the conversation we’re having.
“I know,” he murmurs. “It always has with you and me.”
I tug at his lapels, and Isaac shrugs out of the suit jacket, letting it drop to the ground. Then, his hand is back, cupping the side of my face, and he kisses me again.
This time, his mouth slants over mine, and I sigh into the warmth, my lips parting. He’s there with a sweep of his tongue, and heat spreads from the touch. It’s heady and liquid, softening my muscles, and I sink into the embrace.
Isaac’s fingers find the zipper of my dress. Slowly, inch by inch, he pulls it down my side. The touch of his skin follows, his hand slipping into the hole to touch the bare skin of my back.
“You have no idea,” he says, “how long I’ve been thinking about this.”
“You have?”
“Yes.” His hand fits itself under the strap of my bra. “The shower was just an appetizer.”
I chuckle, feeling drunk on the scent of him—his cologne and clean, warm man. “I was offering you the main course on Saturday, you know.”
Isaac makes a sound, somewhere between a growl and a groan. “Leaving you in that bathroom was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
He tugs down the shoulder straps of my dress. The fabric cascades down my body, and I shimmy my hips to let it fall to the floor.
Isaac looks down. “No shorts this time.”
“No.” I feel naked, in only my black bra and lacy panties. And I feel beautiful, vulnerable yet strong, choosing to do this again with a man I know understands me.
His hands trace the shape of my body. There’s such heat in his gaze, it burns. “The shower,” he says, “let me look. But I didn’t get the chance to linger.”
I take a step toward the bed, but Isaac has a different goal in mind. He sits down in one of the armchairs and pulls me on top of him. I brace a leg on either side of him, gripping his shoulders for support.
“And lingering,” he says and pulls down one of my bra straps, “is my favorite part.”
He peels the bra off me. Strap by strap, and then cup by cup, until I’m bared to his gaze… and his touch.
He leans in, mouth closing over a nipple. His dark hair is a stark contrast against my skin, and I weave my fingers through it, trying to breathe through the building heat. His body is beneath me, separated only by fabric, a few insubstantial layers.
He bites down on one of my nipples. “Oh,” I say. “Oh.”
He chuckles softly, his hands gripping my hips. I start rolling them into his hands, pushing my lower body against him in a slow grind until I feel the hard outline beneath me.
“Sophia,” he mutters. His thumbs dig in sharply at my hipbones as if torn between slowing down my movements and egging me on.
I find the buttons of his shirt and open them one by one until I can rest my palms against the warm skin of his chest. “You’re so gorgeous,” he says, dark eyes nearly black.
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me how long you’ve wanted this.”
A smile cuts through the tension on his face. “You like praise, sweetheart?”
My cheeks flare with embarrassment. The sentence had just slipped out of me, and now I can’t take it back.
But Isaac doesn’t miss a beat. “When you walked into that conference room,” he says and tweaks one of my nipples, “the first thing I imagined was how good your body would feel against mine.”
My breath is coming fast. “Oh.”
“I knew it was inappropriate, of course. But that’s where my mind went on its own. And when I saw you on the tennis court in that skirt and ponytail?” He trails his hand over my hip and rests it between my legs, his hand cupping me over the lace. “My first thought was what you looked like beneath it.”
“Not winning?” I ask. The words sound breathless.
He curls his fingers, brushing them against sensitive flesh. “You know I love to win.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say. “So do I.”
“But I wanted you more,” he says and tugs the lace of my panties aside. His fingers brush against my bare skin, and he gives a hoarse groan. “This still feels like victory, though.”
He’s touching me like he had been in the shower, only now he’s watching me as he does it, his eyes roaming between mine and the movement of his fingers.
It’s intimate in a way the shower hadn’t been.
His fingers circle, finding the spot he’d so expertly manipulated last weekend. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “God, you’re so soft.”
I roll my hips against his hand. He taunts and teases, sends me rising. Lingering, as he put it, until I can’t take the teasing hands anymore. I reach between us for the belt on his pants.
He lets me undo it, his hands drifting up to my hips.
“You wouldn’t let me take off your shorts last weekend,” I say.
He groans when I pull the zipper down over the distinct hardness beneath. “No, because condom or no condom, I would’ve wanted to get inside you if you had.”
I run my nails over the bulge in his boxer briefs. “You’ve teased me a lot,” I say.
“Only fair,” he murmurs.
I slide down from the chair between his splayed legs. My hands have a goal, and he must be anxious to help because it takes us less than five seconds to tug at his pants, to pull the elastic down, and then he’s there.
Bobbing hard and big in front of me.
“Sophia, I—”
His words end when I start to stroke, and when I close my lips around him, he draws a sharp breath. From the corner of my eye I see his hands curving around the armrests of the chair, the knuckles turning white.
Excitement races through me at the sight.
Knowing he’s coming undone by me, because of me, is thrilling. Losing control, being vulnerable… I know without asking him that’s not something he allows himself often.
His hand runs over my head, strokes over my bare shoulder. It tightens over my skin when I add fluttering strokes of my tongue.
“Fuck. Okay, you’re too good at this,” he says. “Like you are at everything.”
I want to smile. I want to laugh, I want to live in this moment forever, but I sheath my teeth and grip him tighter instead.
He groans, and his hips flex, involuntarily, beneath me. “No more,” he breathes, and hands beneath my arms tug me upwards with too much strength to resist. “Come, I need… here, sit on me. Let me—” Then his hands pause on my waist. “Fuck, the condom.”
I chuckle. “Not again.”
He sighs like a man settling down to a task, hard and cumbersome, and stands with me in his arms. “Waiting,” he mutters, “for a good thing is getting old.”
I brush his hair back as he carries me to the bed. “Where is it?”
“My wallet,” he says. I stretch out on the bed and luxuriate in the heat of his eyes. He barely looks away from me as he fishes the wallet out of his back pocket and shucks his pants off entirely.
His eyes trace every part of me. The modest size of my breasts, the stomach I can never quite get flat, and my long legs. While he takes me in, I watch as he rolls on the condom. There’s not a single trace of hesitation in his movements.
Isaac gives himself two slow strokes before he climbs onto the bed. “Finally,” I say. It’s meant to be half-teasing, half-sincere.
But the look on his face takes all the amusement out of me. Need, so sharp it’s almost painful, marks his stark features. He pushes my leg to the side and lifts the other up along his chest.
We both watch as he takes himself in hand and aligns us. He pushes in slowly, disappearing inch by inch inside of me. The view is delicious and the stretch even more so. We both exhale in relief when he’s fully in.
He grips my hip. “Finally,” he breathes and starts to move.
The need has been building inside of me since we entered the hotel room, and longer still, lingering from the shower last weekend. It’s been heightened by the dinner and the knowledge that he’s here, with me, without time restraints or pretense. Anticipation has kept my body in a constant state of readiness for just this moment.
Isaac rolls his hips in deep, steady movements, and his hands never stop touching me. I can’t look away from his eyes, and it doesn’t take me long to hover on the edge of an orgasm. I feel full, and half-sated, half-needy.
“You’re close,” he mutters.
I nod. My breath is coming fast, and I’m holding on to the sheet, to him, to anything I can grab. His eyes glint, and then he sits up, spreading me wider, and his hand speeds up its tight, small circles between my legs. It takes me four more seconds to explode. My back arches up off the bed, and I stare unseeing at the ceiling while pleasure flares out from the spot where we connect.
Isaac groans at the feeling of my body convulsing around his. He lowers himself down, arms resting on either side of my head. It takes him a few more thrusts, and then he’s there, too, his hips sharp against my inner thighs when he explodes.
I close my eyes and luxuriate beneath the delicious weight of him. Only one weekend, I think and tighten my legs around him. I have to remember every detail.
He lifts himself onto an elbow. Dark hair falls mussed over his forehead, now unlined, his brows unfurrowed.
“Hello,” I whisper.
Isaac smiles. “Hi.”
