Page 125 of The Bargain

I move through the cloud of confetti before it’s even finished fluttering away. I catch Desdemona up into my arms and kiss her right on her triumphant smile.

“What’s all this, then?” I ask her between kisses.

“You said you wanted to celebrate in style, didn’t you?” she says, breathless with kissing. She tears herself from my embrace only long enough to grab a bottle of champagne that’s waiting in a silver bucket, so cold it’s sweating, but I drag her back to me even as she speaks. “I got us some champagne, and I’ve booked⁠—”

I take the champagne away from her, put it back down. “Forget about that.”

“Are you kidding?” She laughs, turning to free her mouth from mine, but that’s fine, because I love kissing her cheek, which I do, her jaw, her neck, where her perfume smells sweetest. “It’s that restaurant downtown we’ve always said we should try, the one with a three-hundred-year waitlist.”

“Only one thing in this world is worth waiting three hundred years for,” I breathe against her neck, sucking gently on the spot right above her pulse.

“Then you can wait until we get back,” she says, but she’s shuddering, and beneath the stiff satin of her dress, her nipples have pebbled, pushing against the fabric, and I give one of them a not-so-gentle swipe of my thumb, and Desdemona’s back arches.

Outside the windows, the sun has almost disappeared behind the horizon, leaving one final ruby ray behind. And because this is our bedroom—Desdemona’s tennis skirt folded over the arm of the chair next to the window, and my old Carl Sagan paperbacks stacked on the windowsill, and Desdemona’s hairpins and brush on the silver tray next to the bed—our pillows, our bed, our space, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d want to be right now.

“That dress is too nice to ruin, love,” I murmur against her shoulder, kissing a line along her collarbone.

“Then don’t ruin it,” she murmurs back, squirming against me, her thigh pressing against me, feeling how hard I am.

“Take it off, sweetheart.” I brush her hair back from her other shoulder, kiss that, too. “Please.”

“But the reservation.” She wraps her arms around my neck. “I know how much you wanted to celebrate, and you’ve worked so hard, and I’m so pr⁠—”

“This is how I want to celebrate.” I tilt her face to mine, gaze down at her. “Just the two of us.” I stroke her jaw gently. “Remember when you won that trophy last year, what you said to me?”

She suppresses a laugh, rolls her eyes. “Ugh, don’t bring that up. So embarrassing.”

“I didn’t think it was embarrassing.” My voice is low and warm. “I loved it. Say it.”

“I’m not saying it.” She shakes her head. “I had far too much champagne that time.”

And because she’s just as proud and stubborn as the day I saw her, I say it for her.

“Nothing in this world feels as good as being with you.”

She shudders and tries to pull away, cheeks flushed a deep pink. “I did not say that.”

“Desdemona.” I catch her hand, kiss her knuckles, gaze at her from beneath lowered eyelids. “Take off your dress.”

She doesn’t melt into obedience: she huffs and tosses her hair and rolls her eyes.

And then she takes off her dress.

Turns out I’m not that tired after all—but then, I’m never too tired to fall into bed with Desdemona. Since I made her take off the dress, which counts as a victory for me, she has to counterattack by pushing me back onto the bed. I drag her down with me, squeezing her hips, her ass. I pluck her bra off one-handed, smirking, and she rolls her eyes once more. She pulls impatiently at the buttons of my shirt, and ends up giving up with my shirt pushed halfway down my arms, rubbing herself impatiently against me.

I laugh and flip us around because I like her on her back, pinned and defiant. I like seeing her hair spread like spilt sunlight on the deep blue blanket, and I like it when her back arches off the bed and when her thighs shake just as she’s about to come on my tongue. And since making her come counts as another victory for me, somehow, she has to get back on top, balancing herself with one hand on the wooden headboard, riding my cock with her head thrown back and sweat rolling like tiny crystal pearls down her neck, between her breasts.

When my breath grows hitched and rasping and I start breathing her name like a prayer, she gazes down at me with hooded eyes, and she smiles ever so slightly, that same triumphant smile as when she popped that ridiculous confetti cannon. So I have no choice but to surge up, catching her off-guard, and put her on her back once more, and drive myself into her hard, with my hands pinning her hips down so she can’t squirm, can’t escape. And since Desdemona, deep down, enjoys my victories as much as her own, she fists her hands into the blanket, and cries of pleasure come singing out of her throat, and her back arches off the bed, a mathematically perfect arch.

She comes just before I do, and our orgasms, this time, are neither loss nor victory, but a white flag waving, a total surrender. Take me for your captive, you terrible, gorgeous woman, my body says to hers, even as she claws me as close to her as she can, even as she moans my name in my ear, and spasms uncontrollably around me, squeezing every drop I have to give her.

Afterwards, we lie naked in bed with the bottle of champagne. It’s been three years since I smoked my last cigarette, but champagne and Desdemona lying on my chest with her pretty tits glistening with sweat, sparkly silver confetti stuck to her hips and ass and shoulders like a mermaid’s scales, is one hell of a consolation prize. Outside, night has fallen, but you can still hear birdsong, which feels a little fucking magical, and since there are no clouds in the sky, you can see tiny pinpricks of stars.

“We’ve definitely missed our reservation,” Desdemona says, following my gaze out to the dark sky.

“Guess we’re gonna have to wait another three hundred years, then.”

She laughs. “I’m never planning a surprise for you ever again.”