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“It’s cleaner than my place,” she said. Her apartment in LA was neat enough, but there was no hiding the fact that her furniture came from IKEA and yard sales. It was a mishmashed collection, one that passed muster for a single adult, but it was clear that there was no singular aesthetic behind it.
“Maybe,” he said, going to the kitchen. He opened a cabinet and took out a bottle. “Do you like Glenfidditch?” he asked, pulling down two glasses.
“I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure,” she said. “Johnny Walker is about as classy as whiskey gets for me.”
“Johnny Walker isn’t bad, actually,” he said, peering into the cabinet. “But I haven’t kept that for ages. It tends to be the one that gets filched.”
He poured out two glasses and handed one to her. “It’s nice,” she said, smelling it. The peaty scent burned her senses in just the right way as she took a sip. “You can almost taste Scotland.”
“Do you like Scotland? Say the word and we’ll go.”
“I’ve never been,” she said, feeling her buzz in her head intensify ever-so-slightly.
“Would you like to go?” he asked.
His sincerity caught her by surprise. In her (admittedly limited) dating experience, most men, even those who could afford it, would ask her these questions in a rhetorical way. And she’d usually say something like, “I guess, but that’ll have to wait,” but she knew that if she were to ask him that he’d merely ask, “Why?” as if it would never occur to him to wait. And true to form, he continued, “I can call my pilot right now; he can have a flight plan filed by tomorrow morning and we’d be ready to go by that afternoon.”
She blinked, wondering why he was so generous with her, wondering what he was expecting in return. “I’d—I’d have to get my things,” she began.
“How long could that possibly take?”
“Don’t you have to work or something?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That’s my business,” he said.
“Well, I have some more members of Congress to talk to—”
“That’s been taken care of. I’ve been buttering up House and Senate reps all day today. The Matrix will never pass.”
Her excuses were gone, and as she looked into his eyes she realized that she had no more reasons to refuse the doors he could open, the life he could give her, however temporary it might be. And for some reason, he liked her, and she had to admit she did find him rakishly charming and adventurous—but was it enough to surrender to him?
He reached out and tilted her chin up towards him with one finger, and then he leaned into her and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t entirely unexpected—she could see it coming from a mile away—but all the same the intensity behind it surprised her, leaving her breathless when he pulled away.
“Wow,” she breathed. She could feel her cheeks flush, and a warm sensation growing inside her.
“I’m usually not this forward,” he murmured, as he took her in his arms. Around them, artfully hidden speakers came to life with classical music, and they swayed together in time to the music, “but you have a way of awakening my senses in ways that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I can only hope that you feel the same way about me,” he said, moving her hands to his tie, guiding her finger around to loosen the knot.
“I have to admit, I’ve never met a man who knows more about what he wants,” she said softly, as she finished loosening his tie. He held her gaze as she slipped the end out of the last loop, a quiet desperation in his eyes.
“Does it—does it arouse you?” he asked, as she pulled the tie off around his neck.
“I don’t know about ‘aroused’,” she said, reaching for the first button of his shirt. He lowered his gaze, to watch her fingers at their work. “‘Curious’, certainly.” The first button slipped out of the hole. “‘Interested’, even. But aroused? It takes a lot to excite me in that way,” she continued, softly. “I’ve been told that I’m almost impossible—”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
Out came buttons two and three.
“I—I don’t think you’d really like to find out,” she said, astonished that she was actually doing this to him. How much further would they go?
“You’d be surprised,” he said.
He’d been guiding her towards the bedroom, one step at a time, and as she slid his shirt off of his body he took her hand and kissed them. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Say you’ll stay and everything of mine will be yours—”
She looked around, her heart pounding in her throat, the warmth that he’d ignited spreading into a liquid heat that coursed through her veins. His body was well-muscled, like a ballet dancer’s, and as he turned towards the dresser and opened one of the drawers she found her mouth watering at the way he moved, smoothly and graceful, reminding her of flowing water, clear and cold and purposeful.
He turned back to her, holding something in his hands. It was a moment before she realized it was a blindfold.
She felt her eyes grow wide. “I—I’ve never—” she began, but he crossed the room and placed it in her hands, kneeling at her feet and shh-ing her as he took her hands.
