If the Shoe Fits (4 page)

“I’m a little skittish, I guess. It’s been a while…” She let her voice trail off with uncertainty.

He perked up with a jaunty smile. “Like how long is
a
while
? Are you one of those revirgins?”

“What?!”

“You know, someone who hasn’t had sex in so long, it’s like being a virgin again… a
re
virgin.” Devon held Sarah’s eyes.

She smiled cryptically then answered with a broad smile and a slow nod. “It’s
exactly
like that. How have I never heard of that phrase?”

“I think I heard some bloke on the tube using it a couple months ago. I am so pleased to be the one who gets to repop your cherry, then!” He reached his hands around her backside and rather forcefully moved her hips to the edge of the seat, nearly growling as his lips made their way up her inner thigh.

She had to balance herself with one hand, the other grasping his thick hair as he resumed his task with avid purpose, his hands holding her very firmly in place and gleefully ignoring all future jumps and starts from his very willing, if restless, accomplice.

She was so responsive and ready for him, in fact, that he almost took her right there on the window seat, but since it had been such a long while since her last toss, he decided to be chivalrous and get her properly and well taken care of before moving to the bed. He let his tongue tease her mercilessly, first with long, leisurely strokes, then with deep, penetrating thrusts, then narrowing to her tender, swollen center. He felt her nearly cresting several times and cruelly returned to the long, slow pass. She was becoming desperate.

He was about to bust out of his pants.

He finally gave her exactly what she wanted and what she was, by this time, quite boldly begging for. With a thrust of his tongue that caught the edge of her entrance, then a harsh little sucking tug, he cast her into wave after wave of shrieking bliss. He tried to go in for one more lick, or even a quick kiss, but she pushed his head away with almost primitive ferocity.

“Too much…” she forced out, her voice raspy from her hot, dry breathing. “Holy… oh… my…”

He rose back up on his knees, quite pleased with himself really.

“Come on, love,” he murmured softly. “Let’s get your quivering, delicious body over to the bed.”

He helped her up. She pulled her dress back down over her hips, and then Devon turned her around toward the enormous tester bed with its turned mahogany posts.

“Lean here, lovely.”

He guided her hands to the smooth wooden post so her back was toward him. Then he ran his fingers down her neck, the curls of her disheveled blond hair coming loose in delectable disarray. He wrapped one curl around his finger and brought it to his lips, then he let it drop and continued toward his original goal of removing her dress. He unzipped the long side zipper then raised the surprisingly light woven fabric over her head. He turned and put it down gently on the window seat, then turned back and paused in astonished appreciation.

Sarah was standing there, arms extended languidly against the bedpost, head resting against her upper arm: a wilted, satisfied, wanton woman, slowly stretching out her back, in nothing but bra, stockings, and the most erotic black fur, ankle-cuffed shoes he had ever come across.

The moon was limning every curve.

“Where are you?” she whispered into the darkness.

“Right here, goddess.”

“I am so
not
… a goddess…”

Her voice trailed off weakly as the waves of pleasure were starting to dissipate and the cool air from the centuries-old windows started to chill her skin. She stretched her back and started to look over her shoulder, her confidence waning.

“Stay!” he barked, before he realized what he was saying.

She stopped in the exact spot, her head partially turned, her hands tightening their grip on the hard post, her hips tilted by the unnatural angle of her four-inch heels.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked, no longer minding the cool gooseflesh that was creeping up the undersides of her arms. His voice had a demanding, predatory timbre that warmed her from the inside out.

“I could think of a few things.”

She could hear the sound of his clothes unbuttoning, unzipping, and flying in various directions across the room. She closed her eyes in anticipatory delight.

His warm, strong hands took her by the waist, slowly coming up under her breasts, then back around again, unhooking her bra and taking the shoulder straps slowly down her arms. She let her hands fall away from the bedpost, and her head fell back gently into his chest. He reached around to her stomach, and she had a moment of feeling like Ingres’s
The
Source
, all loose flesh and unmuscled torso, a Botticelli long after that shape was considered beautiful. And then she felt the deep thrum of his voice as he cooed in her ear and the strength of his pleasure against her back as he stroked her skin and pushed himself against her. The pure pleasure. No social mores. No visual prerequisites. His simple—their simple—mutual gratification. This was heaven. At long last, for the first time in her life, her body was a trusting friend, rather than an insecure enemy.

Before she knew what had happened, the two of them were a tangle of limbs, hair, tongues, fingers, and desperate caresses tossing around on the oceanic, faux-medieval, king-size bed. Perhaps the champagne had gone to her head after all, because, looking back, the rest of the night turned into a jump-cut viewfinder of some highly charged emotional snapshots interspersed with strangely beautiful, abstracted colors and shapes: the pleats and patterns of the maroon canopy-bed fabric above her in a flash; Devon perched in readiness, resting on his elbows, glaring at her silently the moment before he was inside her; the hourglass shape of the carafe of water with the matching glass resting upside down over the opening on the antique bedside table: a Vermeer still life captured in that split second when she turned her head away from the intensity of his gaze and felt him thrust into her in one clean, smooth stroke.

It was all happening.

It wasn’t happening too fast, she thought; it was just (finally) happening.

***

Sarah rolled over the following morning fully expecting an empty bed. She had known last night that Devon would have to leave early to make his way back to Dunlear to spend the day with his soon-to-be-married only brother. So when the knock on the door woke her from her delicious half-dream, half-reenactment of the night’s antics, she assumed it was room service with the breakfast she had ordered the day before. She rolled out of bed and made her way across the room, stopping at the closet to pull on one of the complimentary robes. “Coming,” she added.

Just as Sarah unlocked the door, Nelson James bounded into his daughter’s room, barely waiting for her to fully open it. His conservative steel-gray hair was combed to precision. His cashmere green turtleneck sweater and gray trousers were immaculate. He was in full captain-of-industry-on-British-holiday mode. Jane had probably organized his packing, individually wrapping each ensemble with a little note that read “Country Outing” or “Dinner in London.” He and his overeager wife were apparently ready to tour the local countryside, and he didn’t want Sarah wasting time lying around.

“It is well past 9:00,” he boomed. Sarah looked dazedly at her bedside table and saw it was 9:04. “And we agreed to meet downstairs in the hotel lobby at that hour.”

She was so disoriented, she couldn’t even think of anything to say. Enough was enough, his impatient silence seemed to suggest.

“Sarah! Wake up! What in the world are you doing just standing there…” His voice faded out from a bellow to a mere whisper as he looked around the expansive hotel room and noted a veritable spin cycle of clothes flung in every direction. “Uh… your mother, uh, stepmother, and I will…”

Sarah suddenly realized that it wasn’t just her clothes that were littering the floor. “Oh my God! Dad! What are you doing in here?! I thought you were room service! Don’t you knock?!”

“Of course I knocked!” He was making his way backward, comically, out of the room, when the previously immobile lump of sheets and blankets piled on the bed began to shift and groan.

“Dad! Get out!” She reached to quickly open the door before Devon revealed himself. For some lucky reason, he had burrowed under the whole pile of linens. Then Sarah remembered the reason Devon was cocooned under all the bedding and flushed anew, right up to her hair follicles. “Go! Now!”

“I’m going, I’m going!” Her father was out the door in seconds, muttering inanities about British weddings having the strangest effect on young people.

Sarah shut the door behind him and moaned with embarrassment.

Devon started rustling around and Sarah walked back to the bed, sitting at the edge as she waited for him to emerge. He pulled her back into his arms and slowly undid the belt of the robe. He smiled and said nothing as he reached his arms behind her and hugged her to him, ultimately settling his lips on her neck, then making his way lower still. She made a futile attempt to swat him away.

“Do you have no shame?” she scolded.

“Of course I have shame, but thanks to your fierce protection of my anonymity, I don’t have any shame as far as your
father
is concerned.” His voice was a muffled caricature of itself. His kisses resumed along the ridge of her breast, then lower toward her navel.

“Cut that out!” Sarah half laughed, half reprimanded. “You are relentless.”

“Isn’t that the idea?”

She turned and sat upright, pushing some pillows behind her and tucking the robe firmly back across her chest. He lifted his head on one elbow and looked up at her expectantly, his face boyishly framed under the bedding.

“Devon…”

“Sarah…” he said, mocking her serious-Sarah voice.

“Well, I mean, I’d rather not get embroiled in some family conflagration with my father and my stepmother and you all having some meet-and-greet in the lobby. Let’s just call it a night, or a day, or whatever, shall we?”

“It’s a bit early to call it a day… it’s just starting.”

“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” Sarah sounded like she was talking to a stray dog.

He looked almost crestfallen, then smiled.

“I get it. Over and out. Roger that. Pizza and a six-pack and all that. I’m not complaining!” Before she knew what he was doing, he was up and out of the bed, strolling stark naked around the chamber, looking through the shotgun spray of clothes and undergarments that littered the floor and furniture.

When he came upon her microscopic white lace underwear, he held them up with his curved pinky and asked, “Are these yours or mine?”

Sarah pulled the sheets up over her head and squirmed. “I am
so
mortified!” she squeaked from under the covers, then peeked one eye out to see him.

“I suspect they are yours.” He rubbed the fabric between his fingers, as if assessing the quality, then nodded his approval and tossed them onto the bed. He continued his naked parade around the room looking for his own kit, Sarah’s gaze following him with what could only be described as raw lust. His body was insane, the hard planes of his stomach, the sinewy pull of his shoulders. Every muscle screamed, “I’m alive!” His arms. His back. His legs. Sarah sighed and let herself enjoy the view.

“Enjoying the show, are you?”

“Mm-hmm,” she answered.

After a few minutes, he was more or less dressed and came to the edge of the bed to say good-bye. She loved the pressure and warmth of his body as he sat on the mattress next to her. All of a sudden, he tugged the sheet down until he had a full view of her flushed, beatific face, rather than that single roving eye. Her hair was a wild mass of mussed gold, honey, and barely brown loose curls, framing her cheekbones and jawline. Her eyes were… going to be the death of him. Cornflower. Aquamarine. Rimmed in a dark, mischievous cobalt. Devon let the back of his fingers trail down her cheek and neck, then came in for a farewell kiss.

“My breath!” Sarah squawked, pulling the sheet up to her nose.

Devon laughed, yanking the sheet down to her waist and pulling open her robe. Her hands flew up to her breasts.

“Didn’t you know lovers never have morning breath?” he whispered as he let his right hand rest warmly on her rapidly fluttering lower belly, his mouth taking hers for a deep, passionate kiss that felt more like the beginning of another seduction, rather than the good-bye it was clearly meant to be. Sarah went limp with renewed pleasure and he chuckled and pulled away.

“This is
not
over. By the way.” He got up from the bed and walked over to the window seat to put his shoes and socks on.

Sarah pulled the sheets back up to cover herself and he smiled and shook his head. His dress shirt was open at the collar and his tie was shoved halfway into the side pocket of his dinner jacket.

He looked delicious and he seemed to be enjoying Sarah’s endless gawking, a small half-smile playing across his lips. The shadow of his morning beard, the mussed hair falling into his face as he bent to tie his other shoe, the sparkle in his gray-blue eyes when he stood up.

Sarah sighed again.

“So, I’ll see you at the altar, then,” he crowed with a wicked smile and headed out the door, taking a moment to look right and left out into the hallway before he departed. “The coast is clear!” he called in a loud stage whisper, one hand forming the metaphorical megaphone on the side of his mouth. Then he blew her a kiss and whispered a soft, endearing, “Bye, lovely.”

And then he was gone.

Sarah was not usually one for kicking and screaming, but she couldn’t resist the urge to turn her face into the huge down pillow and squeal with adolescent delight. She pounded her legs and arms in a little horizontal victory dance. She had done it. It was done! She was officially
not
a virgin anymore.

The world seemed a lighter place, somehow.

Her father’s punctual arrogance aside, it was well after nine and she
had
ordered her breakfast to be delivered to her room at eight thirty. She reached over to the hotel phone on the far bedside table, getting a wonderful whiff of Devon as she made her way past his side of the huge bed. After being patched through to the kitchen via the main switchboard, the housekeeping staff apologized for the delay and said her breakfast would be up in about fifteen minutes. She didn’t want to antagonize her father endlessly so she called his room next to see if he wanted to go ahead without her.