Читать книгу Stranger - Меган Харт - Страница 7

I was looking for a stranger.

The Fishtank wasn’t my usual hangout, though I’d been inside it once or twice. Recently redecorated, it sought to compete with a bunch of brand-new bars and restaurants that had opened in downtown Harrisburg, but though the tropical theme and aquariums were pretty and the drinks cheap enough, the Fishtank was too far away from restaurant row to really compete. What it did have that the other, newer bars didn’t, was the attached hotel. The Fishtank, “where you hook ’em,” was sort of a joke with the young and single crowd of central Pennsylvania. Or at least with me, and I was young. And blessedly, purposefully, single.

Scanning the crowd, I wove my way through the closely set tables toward the bar. The Fishtank was filled, literally, with people I didn’t know. One would be the perfect stranger, emphasis on perfect.

So far, I hadn’t seen him, but there was still time. I took a seat at the bar. My black skirt rode up a little and my stockings, held up by a garter belt of wispy lace, slipped on the leather stool. The sensation whispered up my thighs, bare above the tops of my stockings. My panties, of even wispier lace, rubbed me as I shifted.

“Tröegs Pale Ale,” I told the bartender, who passed me a bottle with a nod.

Compared to many of the women in the Fishtank, I was dressed conservatively. My black skirt was cut fashionably just above the knee, my blouse silky and formfitting, but in the sea of low-riding jeans and navel-baring T-shirts, spaghetti straps and hooker heels, I stood out. Just the way I wanted.

I sipped my beer and looked around. Who would it be? Who would take me upstairs tonight? How long would I have to wait?

Apparently, not long. The seat next to mine had been empty when I sat, but now a man took it. Unfortunately, it was the wrong man. A stranger, yes, but not the one I was waiting for. The guy had blond hair and a gap between his two front teeth. Cute, but definitely not what I wanted. Also unfortunately, he didn’t seem to take a hint.

“No, thanks,” I said when he offered to buy me a drink. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

“You’re not waiting for your boyfriend.” He said this with unshakable confidence. “You’re just saying that. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I have one already.” I gave him points for persistence, but I wasn’t here to go home with a frat boy who thought “not” jokes were the height of humor.

“Okay, I’ll leave you alone.” Pause. “NOT!”

He laughed, slapping a thigh. “C’mon. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I—”

“Are you hitting on my date?”

Frat Boy and I turned, and both our jaws dropped. I’m pretty sure we each had different reasons. His was probably surprise at being wrong. Mine was in delight.

The man standing next to me had the dark hair and blue eyes I’d been looking for. The earring. The jeans, deliciously worn in all the right places and the white T-shirt with a leather jacket over it. I was seated on a high bar stool and he still towered over me. I guessed him to be at least four inches over six feet, if not more.

Very, very nice.

My stranger flicked his hand like he was brushing away Frat Boy. “G’wan, now. Go.”

Frat Boy, to give him credit, didn’t try to make excuses. He just grinned and got off the stool. “Sorry, man. You can’t blame me for trying, can you?”

My stranger turned to look at me, and his blue-eyed gaze roamed over my every inch before he answered. “No.” He sounded considering. “I don’t guess I can.”

My stranger took the vacated seat. He held out the hand not gripping the glass of dark beer. “Hi. I’m Sam. Don’t say Sam I am, or I’ll toss you back to that doofus.”

Sam. The name suited him. Before he gave it I might’ve imagined him as anyone, but once he did I could think of him as nobody else.

“Grace.” I shook his proffered hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“What are you drinking, Grace?”

I lifted my bottle. “Tröegs Pale Ale.”

“How is that?”

I sipped. “Pale.”

Sam held up his glass. “I’ve got Guinness. It’s not pale. Let me buy you one.”

“I haven’t finished the one I have,” I said, but with the smile I hadn’t given Frat Boy.

Sam leaned in. “C’mon, Grace. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Uh-huh. Do I look like I want hair on my chest?”

Sam blatantly eyed the front of my blouse. “Without seeing the chest in question, I’m afraid I can’t say.”

I laughed. “Riiiight. Try again.”

Sam gestured to the bartender and asked for two more bottles of the pale ale. “For when you’re done with that one.”

I didn’t take the second bottle. “I can’t, really. I’m on call.”

“Are you a doctor?” Sam tipped back the last of his beer from his glass and pulled a bottle toward him.

“No.”

He paused, waiting for me to say more, but I didn’t. He drank, swallowed. He gave the sort of manly grunt and lipsmack guys make when they drink beer from bottles and are trying to impress women. I watched him without speaking and sipped from my own bottle, wondering how he meant to do this. I really hoped he’d make it convincing enough for me to go upstairs with him.

“So. You’re not here to drink, then?” Sam eyed me, then turned on his stool so our knees touched.

I smiled at the touch of challenge in his tone. “Not really. No.”

“So…” He paused, as if thinking. He was very good. “So what you’re saying is, let’s say a guy, oh, bought you a drink.”

“Okay.”

“Before he knew you weren’t here to drink.”

I smiled again, holding back a laugh. “Sure. Let’s say that.”

Sam swiveled on his stool to fix me with an intense gaze. “Would he already have fucked up too bad, or would you give him a chance to make it up to you?”

I pushed the bottle he’d bought me toward him. “I guess that would depend.”

Sam’s slow grin was a heat-seeking missile sent straight between my thighs. “On what?”

“On if he was cute or not.”

Slowly he turned to show off his profile, then to the other side until he finally looked at me head-on. “How’s this?”

I looked him over. His hair, the color of expensive black licorice and spiked on the crown, feathered a bit over his ears and against the back of his neck. His jeans had rubbed to white in interesting places. He wore black, scuffed boots I hadn’t noticed before. I looked back up to his face and the quirking mouth, the nose saved from being too sharp only by the way the rest of his features came together. He had brows like dark wings, arched high over the center of his eyes and tapering to nothing at the outside corners.

“Yes.” I leaned closer. “You’re cute enough.”

Sam rapped the top of the bar with his knuckles and wahooed. The noise turned heads, but he didn’t notice. Or he pretended not to. “Damn. My mama was right. I am purty.”

He wasn’t, really. Attractive, but not pretty. Still, I couldn’t help laughing. He wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but…wasn’t that the point of meeting a stranger?

He didn’t waste any time.

“You’re very pretty,” Sam, beer finished in record time, leaned to murmur in the vicinity of my ear.

His lips tickled the sensitive skin of my neck just below my lobe. Already primed by the fantasy, my body reacted at once. My nipples pushed against the lace of my bra and outlined themselves in the silk of my shirt. My clit pulsed, and I squeezed my thighs together.

I leaned close to him, too. He smelled a little like beer, a little like soap. A whole lot like yum. I wanted to lick him. “Thanks.”

We each sat back on our stools. Smiling. I crossed my legs and watched his gaze follow the hem of my skirt as it rose to give him a glimpse of bare thigh. His eyes widened in satisfactory appreciation. His tongue slid along his bottom lip, leaving it glistening.

He looked into my eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re the type of girl to go upstairs with a guy she just met, even if he is cute as all hell?”

“Actually,” I told him, matching his low, breathy tone, “I think I might be.”

Sam paid the bill and left a tip big enough to make the bartender grin. Then he took my hand to help me down from the stool, holding me steady when my foot came down wrong as though he’d known all along I’d stumble. Even in four-inch heels I had to tilt my head way back to look into his face.

“Thank you,” I said.

“What can I say?” Sam replied. “I’m a gentleman.”

He stood head and shoulders over most of the crowd, which had grown considerably since I came in, and he led me without faltering through the maze of tables and bodies toward the door to the lobby.

Nobody could have known we’d just met. That we were strangers. I was going upstairs to a stranger’s room. Nobody could know that, but I did, and my heart thumped hard and harder the closer we got to the elevator.

The walls inside reflected us both, our faces blurred by the dim lighting and the abstract pattern of gold in the mirrors. His T-shirt had rucked up out of his jeans. I couldn’t look away from his belt buckle or the hint of bare skin just above it. When I looked up again to meet his gaze in the mirror, Sam’s smile had shifted.

I saw him put his hand on the back of my neck before I felt his touch. The mirror had created that distance, that second of delay. Like watching a movie or TV, but somehow that small disconnect made this seem all the more real.

At the door to his room Sam took his hand away from the back of my neck to dig in his pockets for the key card. He tried both front pockets and came up with nothing but a few coins. He fumbled. His nervousness charmed me even as it prompted my own. He found the key inside his wallet, tucked into a back pocket.

I liked his laugh when he pulled it out and fit it into the door. The lock blinked red, and he muttered a curse I deciphered by tone, not by word. He tried again, his hands so big they engulfed the slim plastic card. I couldn’t stop staring at his hands.

“Fuck,” Sam said clearly, and handed me the card. “I can’t get the door open.”

I reached for the card. Our hands touched. Then somehow his hand had encircled my wrist and my back pressed against the still-closed door. Sam pressed against my front. His mouth found mine already open for him. His hand discovered my leg already cocked to fit his grasp just behind my knee. He fit between my legs like the key ought to have fit in the lock, without hesitation, opening my door. His fingers slid higher beneath my skirt above the edge of my stockings and found bare skin.

He hissed into my open mouth and his fingers tightened on my wrist. He lifted an arm above my head, pinning me with his hands and body and mouth to the door. There in the hall he kissed me for the first time, and there was nothing slow or easy about it. Nothing soft or hesitant.

Sam stroked my tongue with his. His belt buckle pushed my belly through my silky shirt. Lower, his cock nudged me, too, through the barrier of his jeans. He let go of my wrist.

“Unlock the door.” He stopped the kiss just long enough to speak into my mouth.

His hand hit the door handle as I rammed the key, without looking, into the lock. Behind me the door flew open with the pressure of our bodies, but neither of us stumbled. Sam was holding me too tightly for that.

He moved me, mouth still glued to mine, two steps into the room and kicked the door shut behind us. The slam of it echoed between my legs. Sam, breathing hard, pulled away to look into my eyes.

“This is what you want?”

I found the voice to rasp, “Yes.”

He nodded, just once, and took my mouth again. His kiss might have bruised me, had he not pulled back just enough to keep it from hurting. Without the door holding me up, I had to rely on Sam’s arms around me. One slid behind my shoulders. The other left the secret treasure of my thigh to go around my lower back. He pulled me along with him even as he step-by-stepped me back toward the bed. It hit the back of my legs. He broke the kiss again.

“Hold on a second.” Sam reached around me to tug down the comforter, tossing it unceremoniously into a pile on the floor.

He grinned at me. His cheeks looked a bit flushed, his eyes a trifle sleepy-lidded. He reached for me again, and I stepped again into his arms. Mine went around his neck. His went around my waist.

We made it to the bed in a tangle of limbs and laughter. Sam was as long lying down as he was standing, but on the bed I could move up to kiss him without having to tilt my head so far. I found his throat, the jut of his Adam’s apple. His skin tasted of salt. I rubbed the first poking bristles of his beard with my lips.

My skirt had ridden up, helped by Sam’s hands. He pushed the material higher. One large hand cupped my thigh. The edge of his fingers brushed my panties, and my breath caught.

I looked up to see him looking down with an expression of mingled amusement and something else I couldn’t quite decipher. I took my mouth from his skin and sat up a little, pushing back but not pulling away.

“What?”

His hand on my thigh shifted higher while his other went to prop his head. Stretched out that way, his clothes askew and our limbs tangled, he looked enviably comfortable in his own skin. Men often did. Sometimes they had to put it on, that confidence, the way they put on cologne. Sam’s seemed more innate, an awareness of himself as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or those long, long legs.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It can’t be nothing,” I said. “You’re looking at me funny.”

“Am I?” He sat up a little but didn’t take his hand from my thigh. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “Was it like this?”

I burst into laugher. “Not quite.”

“Ah, good.” Sam nodded and leaned to catch my mouth in another kiss, speaking without taking his lips from mine. “That would have been embarrassing.”

Then he laid me back onto that big, soft bed and proceeded to kiss me breathless. His hand stayed on my thigh, sometimes slipping down closer to my knee and moving up again, but though his fingers occasionally brushed the lace of my panties, he never actually touched me there. He didn’t lie on top of me, either, squooshing, but kept his weight to the side. Nothing was going quite as I’d expected…but wasn’t that what I wanted? To be surprised?

He kissed me fast. He kissed me slow. He nibbled and nuzzled and licked, and all the while his hand stayed in its maddening position so close to where I wanted it, but never quite making it there.

“Sam,” I whispered finally, hoarsely, unable to take it any longer.

He paused in kissing me to look into my eyes. “Yes, Grace?”

“You’re killing me.”

He smiled. “Am I?”

I nodded and slid a hand between us to tug on his belt buckle. “You are.”

His hand inched higher. “Can I make it up to you?”

I unhooked the buckle. “I think so. Maybe.”

He turned his hand as he moved it. When he touched me, finally, the heel of his palm pressed flat to my cunt, and my mouth parted in a gasp I didn’t bother to try to keep silent.

“How’m I doing so far?” he asked, his head bent so his mouth brushed my cheek.

“Good. Very…good.” Speaking took the effort of concentration I found difficult with his hand on me. So far he’d done no more than press against me. Hadn’t even rubbed. But primed by the long, slow minutes of kissing and the hours of mental foreplay I’d gone through already, my body was more than ready for him.

His lips slipped down my neck to center over the pulse in my throat. Sam sucked, gently, then took the skin between his teeth. The bite didn’t hurt, but it did send sensation ripping through me. I arched beneath him. My hands found the back of his head, the smooth silk of his hair, and I wound my fingers in it. Pressing him to me, keeping his mouth there while he sucked my skin. I would bruise. I couldn’t, just then, care.

“I like the way you say my name,” he murmured. His tongue slid along the place where he’d left his mark. “Say it again.”

“Sam.” I breathed it.

I heard the smile in his voice when he spoke again. “I am.”

Then we were laughing again, until he took his hand from between my legs and used it to tug open the buttons on my blouse, one at a time. Then I stopped laughing, too breathless to do more than sigh. He eased open my shirt. He pushed himself up on one elbow and folded back the material to show my bra. His fingers traced the lacy edges over the tops of my breasts.

My nipples had gone tight, hard, aching. When Sam’s thumb passed over one, I sucked in a breath. I watched his face as he looked down at me. When he bent to kiss my exposed skin, I bit my lower lip. My body moved beneath him.

Sam sat up. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and pulled his shirt off over his head, leaving his hair standing up all over the place. His body was as long and lean as his legs. He knelt beside me, one hand rubbing his chest almost absently. His other hand toyed with the open belt buckle, then the button beneath. He undid it, but left the zipper alone.

I watched him, enjoying the show. “Are you going to take those off?”

Sam nodded, solemn. “Absolutely.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Tonight?”

Sam laughed. “Yes.”

I slid one stocking-clad foot up over his thigh and rubbed the front of his jeans. “Are you shy?”

Sam’s hips pushed forward at the touch of my foot, and his mouth parted. His hand paused in its rubbing, fingers going flat over his heart. “Maybe. A little.”

Holy hell, that was hot. I didn’t believe him, really. He hadn’t acted shy anytime tonight. “Want me to go first?”

Sam’s grin melted me. “Okay.”

I got off the bed to make it easier for myself. Without my shoes on, I was face-to-chest with him—not a bad view at all. Sam’s bare chest was smooth and muscled, with a hint of six-pack abs but nothing overdefined. I took a couple steps back. My shirt hung open, courtesy of his unbuttoning. I took my time sliding the fabric from one arm, then the other. I tossed the shirt onto the chair. Sam’s eyes didn’t even follow it. They stayed on me.

I’d chosen my skirt for the ease of getting it off, but though it would have taken me but a second to unhook and unzip it, I took much longer than that. Never taking my eyes from his, I slipped open the button at my hip. A second later I unzipped, inch by slow inch. Then I slid the fabric over my hips and let the skirt fall to the floor in a puddle at my feet. I stepped out of it and hooked it out of the way with my foot. I stood before Sam in my white lace bra and matching panties, in the wispy garter belt and nude, seamed stockings.

The look on his face had made every second worth it.

I would never win any beauty contests. Too many bulges in places I wanted to be flat, too little curve in places I wanted to be round. I also knew that really didn’t matter. Not really, not to most men.

Sam didn’t appear to have any shields on his expression. His pupils had gone large and dark, nearly swallowing the green-blue. His lips glistened from where he’d swiped his tongue. “…Wow.”

The compliment was all the nicer because it sounded so sincere. “Thank you.”

He didn’t move. One hand still pressed over his heart, the other hooked into the front of his jeans. He looked at me, his mouth pulling up on one side. “My turn, huh?”

“Your turn, Sam.”

“God,” Sam said. “I love the way that sounds.”

“Sam,” I whispered, stepping toward him. “Sam, Sam, Sam.”

I’d heard of kinkier fetishes, but he said he liked it, and…hell, I liked it, too. There was something sweet and sexy about the name. About him. The way each time the word purred from my tongue his smile twitched broader.

I reached for the front of his jeans. The metal button and zipper were cool compared to the heat coming through the denim. My heart skipped a little when my fingers traced the outline of his erection. He groaned. I wanted to get on my knees at that sound, but I didn’t.

I looked up at him, instead. Way, way up. I tugged open the button. Click-clicked down the zipper. Always watching his face, not his crotch. Sam hadn’t moved his hand from his chest, though his fingers tightened a bit on his skin. The pulse leaped in his throat, and a muscle in his cheek twitched. His smile had thinned. He reached to push the hair off my face.

I hooked my fingers in the denim at his hips and pushed. It didn’t snag. He’d worn a belt for more than just fashion, and the jeans were loose enough I had no trouble sliding them down. He moved a little, helping me. Our gazes never left each other’s as I bent to push his jeans all the way to his ankles and waited while he lifted one foot, then the other, to pull them off. I stood then, swiftly, running my hands along his endlessly long legs as I did.

I couldn’t look at his crotch.

I didn’t know why I had suddenly become shy. I wasn’t a stranger to bulging boxers. Something in his face stopped me.

There is always a moment when the final barrier has to come down.

“Sam?”

He nodded. He stopped holding his heart and reached for me, instead. He bent, I stretched, and we met somehow in the middle with our mouths.

This time he covered me completely when he laid me on the bed, but I didn’t feel crushed. I felt…embraced. Enfolded. There was so much of Sam he surrounded me.

I should’ve panicked, maybe. Felt trapped. But too busy with his mouth and his hands helping me off with my underwear, too busy reaching to free him from the cotton boxers, I didn’t have time. I couldn’t think of anything but the silky heat of his cock in my hands when at last I found it.

Sam made a small, helpless noise when I touched him there. I slid my hand along his erection. Sam’s prick, like the rest of him, was long. His fingers closed over mine. There was no room to stroke him, not with him on top of me that way.

He buried his face in my neck. The rise and fall of his breath pushed our bodies together. The seconds ticked out between us, only a few. He moved down my body to kiss my breasts. His tongue stroked my skin and teased my nipples. He moved lower, over my ribs and the curve of my belly. He mouthed my hip, then down a little farther to my thigh.

I let the pleasure sweep over me, but at the odd motion of his head I had to look down. “What are you doing?”

“Writing my name,” he said without apology, and demonstrated with his tongue on my skin. “S-A-M-S-T—”

It tickled, and I squirmed. He grinned up at me briefly before dipping his head lower. His breath gusted over my trimmed pubic curls, and I tensed. I always did at that moment, waiting for the first touch of tongue on sensitive flesh.

Sam, perhaps reading the tension of my muscles as distaste, moved back up my body. He looked up past my face, stretched and hooked open the nightstand drawer with a finger. The movement brought his chest within licking distance, and I didn’t pass up my opportunity. He shivered. He pulled back to me and held open his hand.

“You pick,” he said.

I looked over the selection of condoms in his hand, thinking how sweet it was not to need to wonder if there was going to be an issue about using protection. “Wow. Ribbed for my pleasure, extra-lubricated…glow in the dark?” I laughed at the last one.

He did, too, and tossed it to the floor. He held up one of the ribbed condoms. “This one, then?”

“Looks good to me.”

He handed me the package, warm from his palm. Sam rolled onto his back, arms behind his head on the pillow. No more shyness, not for either of us. No point in it now.

His body was put together like someone had taken extra care to make sure everything fit just right. Legs and thighs and belly, hips and ribs and neck, shoulders, arms and hands. Each of Sam’s pieces fit. Clothed he’d looked a little gangly, but naked he was pretty near perfect.

He watched me looking, and his mouth tilted again. I couldn’t quite get a handle on Sam’s smile. It wasn’t a smirk, or smug. It was almost a little bemused.

Naked, I knelt next to his thigh. I stroked his erection, and he pushed his hips upward when I did. He untucked a hand from beneath his head and slipped it between my legs. His thumb pressed my clit, and it was my turn to shiver.

I stroked. He rubbed. In a minute we were both panting. He moved a finger along my folds. I knew he felt how wet I was. How ready. He slid a finger inside me and my grip on him faltered as I gasped.

“Grace,” Sam whispered, voice gone guttural and low. “I hope you’re ready, because I can’t wait much longer.”

Neither could I. “I’m ready.” I paused, then added, “Sam.”

I had no trouble figuring out what his smile meant that time. I shifted on his hand so he could slide free. I put the condom on him, and a moment after that, myself. His hands gripped my hips. I leaned forward, my hands on his shoulders.

We looked into each other’s eyes.

He moved me, at first, with slow, steady strokes. We found our rhythm almost at once. My clit rubbed him with every thrust, the pressure tantalizing but not quite enough. Sam solved that problem in another minute when he put his thumb against me again.

I didn’t care what came from my mouth just then. A string of words that made no sense, maybe. Something halfway between a prayer and a curse. But one thing I do know I said was his name.

Orgasms are like waves, no two alike. They ebb, flow, rise and crest. And crash. Mine crashed over me so fast it took me by surprise. Hard, almost sharp, the pleasure peaked as I moved on Sam’s cock. His thumb ceased its pressure, easing off just when I needed it to, but in the next moment he’d started doing this little jiggling motion that sent me up and up again. The second climax followed the first without time for me to catch my breath, but when it was over, that was it. Warmth rippled through me and languor crept along my limbs. I put my hand over Sam’s to keep him from moving it.

I didn’t know how close he was, but when I opened my eyes, his were closed. His hands gripped my hips again. His thrusts got harder. Sweat had broken out along his hairline. I wanted to lick it, and the sudden stab of fresh desire surprised me as much as the intensity of my orgasm had.

“Sam,” I whispered. I watched his face contort. “Sam…”

And he came. His face twisted and his fingers clutched, giving me more bruises. He arched and fell back onto the pillow, and let out one last, long and heavy breath.

He opened his eyes a moment later and smiled at me. His hand came up to twine in my hair. He tugged it, pulling me close to kiss my mouth tenderly. His pupils were still wide and dark, with nothing to reflect me.

We disengaged and took care of the things that needed to be done, but I hadn’t yet managed to rouse myself enough to climb out of bed and go to the bathroom when the distinctive jangle of my phone came from my purse.

“Is that ‘Smoke on the Water’?” Sam lifted his head to look at me.

“Yes.” I ignored it, too sated to think about getting up for a phone call, even though I knew I should.

Sam’s broad and hearty laugh shook the bed, and I looked over at him. “Awesome.” He made rock horns with his fingers.

I had to laugh, too. He seemed younger with postsex sleepiness lodged in his eyes and his hair all rumpled. Not that it mattered.

He yawned and of course, unable to help myself, so did I. He kissed my bare shoulder and rolled onto his back again, hands tucked under the pillow, to stare at the ceiling.

“I knew that fortune cookie was right,” he said without looking at me. “It said you will meet someone new.”

“My last fortune cookie told me I was going to find money,” I said. “So far, nothing.”

Sam turned his gaze to me, though his head stayed still. “You’ve got time. I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on fortunes.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wish it would hurry up, though. I could use some money.”

Sam’s expression shifted, subtly, as we stared at each other. My phone rang again, this time with the less awesome ring tone that meant I had a message. I couldn’t ignore that, since it was probably from my answering service. Someone must’ve died.

“I have to get that,” I said without moving.

“Okay.” Sam smiled.

I leaned over to kiss him quickly, on the cheek. I felt his gaze on me as I gathered my fallen clothes and my purse and went to the bathroom. I punched in the number of the answering service as I slipped into my panties and juggled the phone while I hooked my bra. The garter belt and stockings I tucked into my bag, not wanting to bother with them when I was going home.

I took care of the call and finished dressing, then patted some cold water on my face. Sam’s bathroom looked used, a rumpled towel on the floor by the toilet and a small toiletries bag on the sink. He used an electric razor and favored a different toothpaste than I did, but this peek into his private life seemed intrusive and personal and I stopped looking. I took an extra few minutes to freshen my makeup and tie back my hair.

When I came out of the bathroom, Sam had pulled his boxers back on. The remote lay next to him on the bed, but he hadn’t turned on the television. He sat up when I came out.

“Hey,” he said.

My phone beeped again with another message. Someone had called while I was on the phone. I pulled it from my purse but didn’t flip it open. “It’s been great, but I have to go.”

He got up, towering over me even after I put on my heels. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

I shook my head. “No. You don’t have to. I’m fine.”

“But I really should.”

I looked up at him. “Sam, it’s okay.”

We smiled at each other. He walked me to the door, where he bent to kiss me far more awkwardly than he had before.

“Good night,” I said on the other side of the door. “Thank you.”

He blinked and didn’t smile. “You’re…welcome?”

So cute.

I reached up to pat his cheek. “It was great.”

Sam blinked again, those dark brows knitting. “Okay.”

I waved and moved toward the elevator. He closed the door behind me, and I heard the blare of the television almost at once.

At my car I remembered to check my voice mail. Sitting behind the wheel, buckling my belt, I punched in my password and listened, expecting to hear my sister’s voice. Maybe my best friend Mo’s.

“Yeah, hi,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “This is Jack. I’m calling for, um…Miss Underfire. We were supposed to meet tonight?”

He sounded uncertain; I felt suddenly sick. Miss Underfire was the name I used with the agency, the name I used to keep everything discreet.

“But I’m here at the Fishtank, and…well…you’re not. Um…call me back if you want to reschedule.”

I listened to a very long pause while I waited for the call to disconnect, but it didn’t.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” said Jack. “Something got messed up, I guess.”

A click, and he was gone, and the pseudofeminine robotic voice-mail message was instructing me how to delete the message.

I closed my phone and put it carefully into my purse. I gripped the steering wheel tight, with both hands. I waited to scream, or laugh, or cry, but in the end I only turned the key in the ignition and drove home.

I’d wanted to sleep with a stranger, and that’s exactly what I’d done.