28:Us

Charlie finished pinning her hair and twisted her neck left and right to inspect the work. 

“It’s as good as it’s going to get,” was her final determination.  It wasn’t the loose, flowing look she’d planned on for the evening, but it mattered more than she didn’t look or smell like the embodiment of uninhibited sex.   She wanted to erase every possible reminder of what happened out there.  

Both of them were abnormally quiet in the wake of their sofa screw finale and, when he got off her, Charlie hadn’t been able to put her legs together fast enough.  Why, she wasn’t really sure, but her psyche suggested that being physically closed off from him would dull the effect of the oversharing he had forced from her – and that tender kiss.

It didn’t work, though.  Even after dropping both feet to the floor and pushing to a standing position a good six feet away from him, she had still felt raw and overexposed.  The only thing she could focus on was getting out of there, and she gathered her things with a vague comment about showering for dinner.  

He didn’t stop her from going, but he did call after her with a solemn warning. “We will not fight in public tonight.  Is that understood?”

Unbalanced and simply wanting to get away, she hadn’t quibbled about it.  It was with only a slightly disgusted shake of the head that she succumbed with a disinterested, “Whatever.”

It had been her hope to make good use of the shower time by finding a positive take on the situation.  There had to be some silver lining to revealing a fear she didn’t know existed until it fell out of her mouth at the height of orgasm.  Right?

Wrong.

With the way their “relationship” worked, he would find some horrific way to exploit that delightful little chink in her armor, and she had only herself to blame.  She’d personally handed him that kind of power and she knew, without a doubt, that he’d use it.  What reason did he have not to?  She’d repeatedly exerted any and all advantages she had over him, and he would be justified in doing the same.

“Chiara?” 

The knock at the door was loud and startling enough to have her jumping out of her skin, and Charlie put a bracing hand against the heart that pounded like a bongo drum.  Closing her eyes, she indulged in one more cleansing breath before easing open first her eyes, and then the door. 

“We’re here.  You ready?” The lazy inquiry was offered with one hand braced high on the doorway while he conducted a detailed inventory of her face.

She took the liberty of doing the same and, while she wasn’t able to tell whether he had showered, his appearance was as put together as it had been at the beginning of the evening.  The only discernible difference between now and then was the pair of sunglasses hooked into his shirt instead of seated on his face. 

“I’m ready.” 

The answer was obviously considered rhetorical because, despite the affirmation, he continued to watch her and lounge outside the doorway.  She was on the verge of asking him what in the hell his problem was when he stepped, placing a cradling hand behind her neck and descending for a slow, thorough kiss. 

That kiss was lazy, indolent, lethargic, sluggish, dawdling, unhurried and every other synonym she could conjure for “slow”.  It was a seductive eternity in which he took full possession of her mouth yet didn’t seek to consume her.  Jon caressed and explored, tasting each hollow and crevice until he was sated, and then gradually backed away.

Wiping the sheen away from his mouth with one hand, he retained his stoic presence in the doorway and left her dazedly deliberating the experience.  They didn’t exchange kisses like that, even when they were having sex.  Their style had always leaned one of two ways – hard and fast or passionately devouring.  Never… an erotic indulgence. 

She couldn’t imagine that the dynamic between them shifted from anger and awkwardness to this in the time she showered.  “What was that about?”

His mouth hitched up on one side in one of those “I know how sexy I am” smiles.   “Last time you had that look, I stuck my hand up your dress.  Considering how that ended, a kiss seemed safer.”

Charlie thoughtfully scrubbed the side of one thumb across her bottom lip as she considered that explanation and ultimately dismissed it.  “You just want to make sure I’m not in a fighting mood at the restaurant.”

“Maybe.”  The other side of his mouth joined in on the smile and he finally backpedaled far enough to wave her through the door.  “Now get your ass moving, Counselor.  The sooner we eat, the sooner I can eat you.”

The muscles at her core clenched sharply.  It didn’t matter that they should be smoking a cigarette in the afterglow; when that man mentioned getting down and dirty, they snapped to attention.

Guess he didn’t think my little revelation was as big a deal as I did.

He didn’t seem to be staging a diabolical plan of revenge that would emotionally scar and devastate her.  Jon was engrossed with systematically working through his own personal Kama Sutra in twelve hours or less.

Too bad she wouldn’t be in the Hamptons long enough to work through the real one. 

J J J J J

This "date" so far was... almost surreal.

By taking her hand to help her from the skiff and guiding her with a light hand at her back toward the restaurant, he proved that he knew how to be a gentleman and had the willingness to do so.  There was no animosity as he engineered polite and casual conversation, making Charlie believe he could actually be interested in getting to know her.

If that wasn't the case, he was a much better actor than that vampire movie made it appear.  In either event, she was stunned that her anxiety about being in public with him was proving to be so completely unfounded.  

“Tell me how you met Dorothea,” he invited as they strolled from the dock to an undefined destination – to her, anyway – down the sidewalk.  “If she ever told me, I can’t remember.”

Still polite and casual, but the conversation was taking a slightly unorthodox turn.  Bringing up the ex-wife while on a date with her divorce lawyer wasn’t exactly textbook.  Then again, neither was going out to dinner with your ex-wife’s divorce lawyer.

“We were in the same karate class for a while, until I decided I preferred kickboxing.”

The laughter that followed was short and barking, leaving him shaking his head.  “Guess I was screwed from the start.  I’m obviously attracted to women that can kick my ass.”

“We were doubly doomed,” she consoled with a smile, as they stepped into the second intersection of the journey.  “I’m attracted to musicians.”

That had actually slipped out without conscious thought, and Charlie regretted the words as soon as she heard them tripping off her tongue. With no way to take them back now, she was going to have to square her shoulders and deal with whatever fallout she'd just invited. 

The piqued curiosity in his eyes as he twisted to peer  at her didn’t do anything to dispel the notion that fallout was forthcoming, and he proved her right when probing, “Yeah?  Like posters-on-the-wall attracted or fuck-on-the-wall attracted?”

“Little of both,” was her brief answer before presenting a lame diversionary tactic.  “Have you ever been to this restaurant before?”

“Oh, no, Counselor,” he chortled, pulling her to a halt just shy of the entrance to a building identifying itself as Nancy's Restaurant.  “This just got interesting.  Which of my professional peers have you fucked?”

Directly meeting his pointed gaze, Charlie decided the only way to confront this was the same way she did everything else - head on.  She ratcheted her eyebrows up and her chin down to create an aura of disbelief. “Really?  You think I’m going to give you names?  Yours isn’t the first non-disclosure I’ve signed, Stud.”

It was the second, actually.  The first was at the request of a neurotic and narcissistic guitarist for a one-hit wonder band back in the eighties.  He looked good through half a dozen stadium beers, so she scribbled her name and had an utterly forgettable time.  The remaining cast of her colorful past hadn’t been quite so particular.  They were more interested in uncovering her ass than covering theirs.

“Names?  Plural?”

“Names.  Plural,” she confirmed without shame, her tone challenging him to judge her.  There were a few, but she could still count them all on her fingers and toes, with room to spare.  He would need a centipede farm.  “I did a short stint as a groupie during the break between undergrad and law school.  A couple of the guys were good enough to warrant a second, more exclusive stint.”

And one would’ve gotten a third, if he hadn’t met his future wife that summer.

Indecipherable thoughts churned in Jon’s eyes as he digested her revelation, and clear blue eyes went mottled with the effort.  When he didn’t bother to share those thoughts, she took the liberty of making her own assumptions.  It wasn’t hard to imagine that he was downgrading his already underwhelming opinion of her.

Pissed off at what he hadn’t even said, she tautly decreed, “Don’t give me that look.  That was a long time ago and you’ve thoroughly enjoyed the benefits of my experience, so don’t act like what I have to offer doesn’t meet your standards now.”

Mottled eyes went wide with shock and he drew his head back to say, “Jesus.  Defensive much, Counselor?  I was actually wondering if I met your standards.”

“Oh.  Well, I totally misread that, then.  Sorry."  With a natural hatred for being wrong - and a greater one for making an ass of herself - she quickly moved to gloss over the awkward moment.  Producing a tight smile, she suggested, "Let’s go to dinner.”

One broad hand planted against the building, turning his arm into a barricade that prevented her from going anywhere.  Apparently, he wasn’t going to let it go that easily.

“Do I?  Meet your standards?”

She snorted – out loud – and pushed at his arm.  The man who had seen a million panties and drenched them all was worried about meeting her standards?  When Hell froze over.  “Your sexual performance doesn't need my endorsement, Bongiovi.”

“No.”  He dipped his head to bring their noses with inches of one another, and the closeness of it fired up goose pimples on Charlie’s skin.  “But it would tell me if this thing we've got going on is because all men can't resist you...  or if it's something unique to us.”

The warm steam of his breath was almost enough to make her forget they were standing on a public street.  There was only one sliver of her awareness still available to acknowledge their surroundings, but it was just enough to keep Charlie from tipping her lips up for a kiss.  Barely.

“Us.”

That one soft word was enough to have him dropping his arm and returning the gentlemanly hand to her back.  He lightly piloted her toward the restaurant entrance with a quiet, “Thought so.”