When Sage goes to the bedroom to shower and dress, she neglects to close the door. This doesn’t particularly surprise me. One could call her an exhibitionist, the way she invites attention.
The shower water turns off. She’s singing an old Gary Numan song, her voice dropping low and sooty as she delivers the wordsWe are not romantics…A minute later, she leaps onto the bed and springs across, hopping down on the other side to hunt for something on the floor.
I’m mesmerized, as always, by her combination of innocent unselfconsciousness and raw sexiness. She’s only partially dressed. When she drops to all fours near the bedside table and sweeps one seeking hand across the rug, pale blue satin tightens across her muscular bum. She’s bobbing along to her own singing, and the motion looks for all the fuckin’ world like an invitation. I recross my legs, adjusting for the enthusiasm of my suddenly half-rigid cock.
“Lovely knickers,” I call out. “Are they French?”
I’m surprised at myself for alerting her to the view I’m getting. Normally I’d just enjoy it, but for one thing, I need to sort out this inconvenient erection before we can leave, and for another… well, somehow it feels wrong.
Who am I?
“Nah, they were like three bucks,” she calls back, continuing to hunt for the elusive item on the floor, not fussed that I can see her. Finally she pops up, standing on her knees and holding aloft an earring. “Aha! There you are.”
She tips her head to one side, affixing the bauble as she rises to her feet. I can’t help marveling at her strength. Every muscle is cut hard as granite, and she seems impervious to gravity. Going from kneeling to standing, she doesn’t lean, doesn’t touch the floor, there’s not even a catch of breath.
I spend loads of time at the gym, but getting to my feet from the floor takes more effort than what Sage employs. The woman moves through space with the effortless three-axis physicality of a seal in water.
She rotates to face me as she adjusts the dangling earring. “What?” she says with amusement, planting both hands on her hips. “You’ve already seen way more than this.”
The way she’s flaunting herself is pure challenge. To my surprise, I kept my eyes mostly averted earlier when she opened the door naked—I was more concerned with whether she’d broken her foot, and it all happened so quickly. Now I accept her apparent offer to look my fill.
My gaze rakes every plane and sinuous arch. She’s compact, powerful, elegant, her posture proud, shoulders back. Like astatue of an athlete in ancient Greece. An uncharitable viewer might call her flat-chested, with curves little bigger than the bottom of a Jaffa Cake, but she’s every bit as sweet.
She’s more inked than I assumed, with a detailed underwater scene of a kraken exploring a shipwreck wrapped around her right side. There appears to be a scar hiding amidst the seaweed, but it may just be a trick of the light. Her left thigh has a spot-on reproduction of an old Art Deco–era racing poster:MONACO, 8 AOUT 1937.
I must look half-witted, because she laughs. “Whatsa matter, Sandy? Never seen a real live woman before? And I thought you were such a swordsman.”
I lift my chin. “You’re provoking me.”
She closes the distance to the doorway and lifts her arms to hold it, her body a suggestive letter Y. “If I were provoking you, you’d know.” With an impish wrinkle of her nose, she turns and darts out of sight.
It takes a minute of focused breathing to calm the effect her words have on my, erm… lap. She’s singing again, now Elvis Costello’s “Alison.” Her voice is off-key, breaking with that hint of raspiness I love on the high notes. I could listen to her all day.
“Hey, could you do this?” she calls out from around the corner.
Whatever it is, the answer is yes, I want to say. Instead, I take my time crossing the room, then lean in the doorway.
“You summoned, O seraph?” I say dryly.
She’s in front of a tall mirror, her hair pulled into a messy bundle that makes her lookmorepostcoital than when sheopened the door of the suite. Her jeans are all but painted on, and she’s wearing a tight T-shirt that readsENCHANTED FOREST, OREGON. The shirt’s neck is cut off wide and ragged, displaying the pale blue straps of her lacy bra.
“I can’t get the clasp done on this thing,” she mumbles, fiddling with a necklace, hands behind her head. “Can I borrow your, uh, fine motor skills?”
Drawing up behind her, I take the chain ends from her fingertips and have the clasp done in a second, but take longer to fuss with it just to be near her, breathing in the warmth of her neck. My eyes follow the tiny stepping stones of her vertebrae, and there’s a tugging in my chest—and below—as I imagine pressing my lips there, feeling the peachy softness of her skin.
“You know what’d be hilarious?” Sage poses. “You should stay here with me tonight to piss Priya off.” She meets my eyes in the mirror with a glimmer of mischief. “We can make sex noises and freak her out. Get super theatrical about it.”
I rest my hands on her shoulders. “Are you so practiced at feigning your pleasure?” I tease.
“Pff!I’m not polite enough to fake it. If a guy’s doing a shitty job, I just say so.” She moves away to get her shoes, and my hands feel empty. She sits on the bed and laces up her trainers. “Also, I don’thaveto fake—I’m highly orgasmic, and I’ve got a prominent clitoris.”
Were I taking a drink of anything, it would have launched through my sinuses. I cough and laugh at the same time. “You’re alarmingly candid.”
“Ain’t I?”
“But again I’d remind you that I want no part of youwinding up the best friend, who—by every indication—wants what’s best for you and is distressed by your… communication issues.”
“Psh!Why do you care? She doesn’t even like you, dude.”
