Chapter Six
Six
Julian guides me out of the gallery, through its swinging glass doors, and down the amber-lit hallways.
His pace is brisk, his hold on my wrist tight, and he barely acknowledges the cries of “What’s up, Julian?
” and “Hey, Mr. Conrad!” that trail us as we storm past. His back is tight with tension, and though I can’t see his face, I imagine that his mouth is taut, his brows furrowed.
It’s a single-mindedness that should scare me.
A man I barely know is dragging me off a dance floor and into an undeclared, unseen space, and I am going with him not only willingly, but gleefully, like a silly, horny coed in a horror movie headed to her certain doom.
But that concern feels irrelevant, now that I’ve had a taste of him.
I don’t particularly care where Julian is taking me, as long as it’s out of sight.
Eventually we come to a door. Julian pulls a key fob from his pocket and lifts it to the knob. The door is barely open before it’s shut again, and I’m pinned against it, Julian’s mouth open against mine.
He tastes like scotch and smoke, like breathing deep next to a bonfire, and my body sags at the feel of his against mine.
Distantly, I recognize that this is just a kiss, that I’ve had a thousand before it.
But I’ve never felt a kiss like this, never been so aware of the searing sweetness of a tongue sliding against mine or a body pressed close.
Kissing Julian feels like a revelation, like how, as a studious adolescent with an obsession with romance novels, I’d imagined it to feel, and I become greedy, desperate to dig deeper, discover more of him.
Mindlessly, I help him shove off his jacket, scrabble at the buttons of his shirt to gain access to the sculpted chest I know is hiding underneath it.
His cufflinks clatter to the floor, and I run my lips along a neck that is now properly exposed.
Julian’s groan is guttural, and in the next second, he’s palming my ass and lifting me into the air. I squeak—I’m heavier than I look—but I wrap my legs around him and let him carry me farther inside.
We’re in a conference room, I realize. The long oak table is elegant, the black leather chairs expensive. Julian kicks one away, then lowers me carefully onto the table, and finally, we’re looking at each other.
His eyes are smoldering. Like he’s about to eat me down to the bone.
He hardly seems like the same man who picked me up from my apartment earlier this evening, and I can’t tell if it’s alcohol that has unleashed this beast or if he’s been this way all along.
He takes my hand, presses it to his lips.
Then, with an aching slowness, he drags it down his chest, over the ridges of his taut stomach, the trail of dark hair, until finally he’s cupped in my palm.
Good lord. Is that even going to fit?
“Do you want this, Sean?” Julian breathes wildly, hips roving in a steady grind against me. “Do you want me?”
If I’d known that I was going to end the night getting fucked on a conference table, I might have elected to wear a skirt.
“Yes,” I say, sighing when Julian lowers himself to kiss me again, when he slides the V of my camisole open to expose my breasts, drags himself down my body to trail kisses down my sternum—
“Oh my,” a voice that isn’t Julian’s says.
I feel like someone has just dunked me into a vat of ice. Reflexively, I tuck myself back into my top, then push against Julian with a firm hand to give me space to sit up and face our intruder.
It’s Margaret. I thought she’d left hours ago with the rest of the over-sixty crowd, but here she is now, tapping her chin thoughtfully with one finger as if finding Julian topless and bent over his date is as shocking as happening across a stray cat.
“Not wasting time with this one, are you, Julian,” she says with a smirk.
“Have you heard of knocking?” Julian says, his voice still husky.
“It’s a conference room, dear. Not exactly private.”
My face feels hot. Julian doesn’t seem mortified by Margaret’s interruption, like her insinuation that she regularly catches him in flagrante with his dates has weight.
“Get out, Margaret,” he says.
Margaret’s eyes glint with amusement.
“Sure, sure,” she says. “Have fun, kids.”
The door clicks closed, and suddenly we’re alone again.
“We got carried away, didn’t we,” Julian breathes. He drops his head onto my shoulder and laughs, then presses a soft, indulgent kiss onto the damp skin of my neck. “Would you like to take this somewhere more private? I live close by.”
His suggestion jolts me back to life. I think about my behavior over the last few hours and wince, because what the hell have I been doing all night?
Grinding on the gallery’s owner in full view of all his friends and colleagues.
Almost letting him have his way with me on a hard table that would have definitely given me bruises, in the middle of a party, with a crowd of guests a stone’s throw away.
Julian was right about one thing: I am usually very intentional.
And tonight? I have been everything but.
I push him gently aside and propel myself off the table, snatching my discarded blazer from the floor.
“I think I’ve had enough for tonight,” I say, pleased to find that my voice doesn’t shake.
I don’t turn back to look at Julian, but I can hear him scrambling around the room as I slip through the door.
Outside, the hallway is empty, the only evidence of the ongoing party a steady thrum of bass from the DJ’s soundtracks.
My walk of shame, it seems, will be largely unwitnessed.
I make for the coat check, pulling my phone from my pocket to call for a ride and pretending not to hear the sharp clack of footsteps echoing behind me.
Just my luck—there’s a driver right around the corner from the gallery.
I make it to the counter and give the attendant a bright smile just as Julian stops beside me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the glint of his emerald cufflinks and marvel at how he managed to gather them up and still take chase.
“Sean, wait,” he starts.
“Look, Julian,” I say, not looking at him as the attendant disappears into the closet. “I had a great night. But that was very out of character for me, and I think that’s as good a sign as any that it’s time for me to go home.”
“It was out of character for me too,” Julian says, breathless. “Honest.”
I turn to him then, raise an eyebrow. He’s a bit flushed, and his shirt is gaping open underneath his blazer. It’s the first time I’ve seen him look even the slightest bit disheveled, and he more than pulls it off.
I’m struck, suddenly, by how little I believe him, and how much that pisses me off.
There’s nothing in his expression that should make me feel this way—he’s damn good at playing at sincerity, all desperate, wide eyes, parted lips, and upturned eyebrows—but I’m not stupid.
The man I met in the conference room has had practice, and I wish he’d stop pretending otherwise.
“It doesn’t matter to me, you know.” I dig in my pocket for cash for a tip, then hand it to the attendant as he gives me my coat. “If you do stuff like this often. We just met. You don’t owe me anything.”
Julian winces, and I’m not sure what he’s wounded by: my insinuation that we are strangers or that he’s a bit of a slut.
“You’re right. I don’t owe you anything.
But I think you could be someone special, and I want you to take me seriously.
And I think that maybe I got ahead of myself tonight and gave you the wrong impression.
I have to apologize for that.” His voice softens, and he shifts closer, leaning forward with one arm on the counter. “Sean, please. Look at me.”
I do. It’s obnoxious, really, how beautiful this man is—even more so when he begs. A weaker woman, a woman I was once, would have bent to a face like that long ago. She would have never left the conference room.
“No need to apologize, really. I had a great time.” Right on cue, my phone dings; my ride has arrived. “Have a good night, Julian.”
Julian doesn’t respond right away, not until my arms are through my coat and I’ve walked through the gallery’s glass doors. I hear his footsteps behind me, one, two, then a final, resigned third; he is letting me go.
“Get home safe,” he says.
His voice is thin, but it carries, whisps too loud past my ears and through my skin. I shiver, and not from the chill. I feel like mist, sifting through his fingers.
Outside the gallery, the air is crisp and cool. I tilt my head to the stars, then step into my car.
I don’t notice that I’ve left one of my favorite earrings behind until I make it home.
“You did what?” Winona says, hand clapped over her mouth.
On the weekends when Brandon has Sophie, Winona drives into the city after drop-off to hang out with me. Normally, we spend Sundays with our laptops out, catching up on patient messages and clinic notes, but today is different, because I have a development.
I.e.: getting caught with my tits out by a glamorous old lady I met at an art gallery while making out with a trust fund kid eleven years my junior.
Brunch talk.
“I’m not particularly proud of it,” I say, stabbing at the slab of fried chicken overlaying a waffle. It’s exactly the kind of meal that will land me on my own cath lab table in fifteen years, but damn it if it isn’t necessary right now.
“Are you kidding me?” Winona exclaims. “I am! In fact, I’m so proud that I could weep.”
I scoff. It’s hard to believe that the vixen who’d nearly hooked up with Julian in a conference room not even a full day ago is me.
I am boring, work-obsessed Sean Sullivan.
I can’t remember a time when I might have considered asking a guy if he had a condom on him, because all the sex I’ve had in the last decade was somewhat premeditated, in a controlled environment, and after careful review of my partner’s STD test results.