6. Stop Consulting
STOP CONSULTING
LEO
The window across the alley belongs to Sal. He has been there since one o’clock.
His job is to stand in the dark and tell me whether it stays empty. So far, it has not.
Twice tonight, a man with a camera has walked past her building, and each time he has lingered too long at her vestibule to be on his way anywhere. By two, Tommy had a name. By three, the name had a paymaster.
The paymaster is a problem.
The procedure would have me call her at a civilized hour, brief her in code, and have a fresh face on her tomorrow while I deal with the paymaster from a clean distance. That is not the move I make at 3:47 a.m. when I put on my coat and leave my desk lit behind me.
The drive to her block is short at this hour. The elevator is unchanged. New York hallways smell the same at 4 a.m. as at any other time, like someone's old life.
My fist closes once before it knocks.
The door opens before the second knock has a chance.
She is wearing whatever she sleeps in. My eyes have orders.
Wrecked hair. Eyes that have been awake too long. The careful version of her, the noon writer who polishes her sentences, isn't the one who opens the door.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, which is the truest thing either of us has said in five days.
Pulling the door wider is her next move, not mine.
Inside, the apartment has the look of staged rest. The lamp is on, the bedroom door is open, the bed is disturbed, and then abandoned. There is a smell I am not going to name, because doing so would be a tactical error of the worst kind.
"A man has been watching your building." I lead with the work when I am about to do something else. "Since the photographer called, Sal has been in the alley. Twice tonight, he has seen something he didn't like."
Her arms are crossed, which she always does when she is going to lie. "Sal."
"My man."
"The window." Her voice is empty, the way the page is when the heroine is doing math she would rather not show. "The lit one."
"My man. You've been watched all night by people who work for me, and by at least one who doesn't."
Her arms come down. The look on her face is the same as it was on the page when I told her to write the scene about a woman waiting for proof.
"Why are you here, Leo?"
My name is on her lips. The first time, with the lights on, I was asked directly.
The professional answer sits ready on my tongue. None of it comes out.
"You know why." My voice is the wall-voice, the one she heard in daylight yesterday, the one I have not used on her, not once, in five weeks.
Her breath catches. Not loud. Just a hitch, the kind she's learned to listen for, because it’s the sound her body makes before it decides.
"Then say it," she tells me.
The boundary between professional and non-professional has been wearing thin for weeks. It snaps without a sound.
Two steps toward her, then a third. The next is hers, coming into me.
She grasps the front of my coat with both hands.
My hand finds the back of her neck the way I find something I have been thinking about for an hour, a year, or my entire competent life.
And I kiss her.
It is not a careful kiss. I have stopped negotiating.
Her mouth is open when mine is on it. There is no shyness in her, only the quiet that follows when she's stopped lying to herself, with heat behind it. The combination is going to take me apart unless I take her first.
My back foot closes the door, my other hand slides the deadbolt, and the hand at her neck remains still.
"Color, Emilia." My voice is rougher than it has any right to be, my mouth at her ear. "Green, yellow, or red. Right now."
"Green." She breathes it against my throat. "God, green, Leo."
My hand fists in her hair at the base of her skull, just enough to tilt her head back. Her throat is exposed, her pulse already at my mouth before she finishes saying my name.
"Good girl."
The wall behind her is cold against the back of my hand when I put her there, my body the only warm thing in the room. She makes a sound when her shoulder blades hit it, not pain, the other one.
My free hand finds the hem of her shirt and slips under.
Her skin is the first place I’ve allowed myself to touch since the day she gave me the ugly mug. Bare. Warm. The line of her ribs under my palm closes my eyes for half a second, like a first sip does when I've been thirsty for an hour.
Uneven breath, hands in my hair. There is something soft and ruined in the noise she lets out when my mouth comes down on the column of her throat, and I coax the same noise from her once more, on purpose, because now I know how.
"Hands up."
She lifts them.
The shirt comes off in one motion, over her head. What escapes my throat at the sight of her is neither professional nor careful. Just the breath I've been holding for too long.
Her tits are small and beautiful, the kind of body she would invent if she did not have a mirror. The nipples are already tight from the cold or from me, and I do not waste time.
My mouth is on her nipple before she has finished gasping, my hand on the other, rough, learning the weight of her in my palm.
The sound she makes when I bite, careful, calibrated, is the one a hundred heroines have made on her page.
This one is real, and she is wearing my hand on her ribs and the back of her head.
"Up against the wall, Emilia." My voice is barely my own anymore. "Hold on."
I drop to one knee.
The waistband of her sleep shorts is at my eye level. The skin above it is what I have been writing notes on for the better part of a month.
I pull the shorts down with both hands. She steps out of one foot. The other foot is left in the pile because I am not letting her move that much.
She is bare to me now.
The view is exactly where my mouth wants to be. Her pussy is open to me. She has spent a decade writing other women into being undone, and she is about to discover she did not have to imagine any of it.
"Look at me."
Her eyes meet mine. The way she looks down at me, half-undone already, hand braced against the wall, her body opening for me without my asking; it is going to be something I think about every time my hands are empty.
My mouth is on her clit before she breathes.
She makes the sound from her dream, the one she will deny to her grave.
The mouth returns. Slow at first, learning her.
Her hand is in my hair, her hips working against my mouth without permission.
My other hand rests at her hip, holding her open for me, because she is too good at moving away from what she wants.
I slide one finger inside her.
She is so wet that she does not even bend the rhythm. I add a second.
"Leo..."
"Tell me." My mouth lifts just enough to make her work for the next stroke. "Out loud."
"Don't stop. Please. Please, Leo..."
"Don't stop what, Emilia?" I curl my fingers, and her knee almost buckles.
"Don't stop..." She breaks off, the pulse in her throat going. The dirty, beautiful noise coming out of her is the one she will have to put on the page someday, and credit to the imagination, even though we both know better.
My tongue comes back to her clit. The fingers don't stop. She comes apart against my mouth a few breaths later, with my name on her lips. She told me yesterday afternoon that she has never been undressed the way she writes it. Tonight, she is in her own apartment with a man in a coat.
Her knees give. I catch her, lift her, and walk her three steps to the desk.
The desk has been doing more work for us than the laptop on it.
My hands are at her hips, lifting her onto the wood. Her back hits the desk with a sound I'm not going to apologize for. The pen she keeps on her left is still warm from her hand.
Coat off in three motions. Shirt in four.
She is propped up on her elbows, watching me. The expression on her face is the one she gets when a sentence she has been writing for an hour finally lands. Hunger, a touch of wonder, the kind of attention she pays when she realizes she is not making this up.
My belt is unfastened before she breathes. The buckle clatters to the floor.
Her legs wrap around my waist, her hands at the back of my neck, her mouth on mine.
"Condom, Leo," she breathes into my mouth.
Inside pocket. Always. The reason has never been clearer to me.
My trousers go down. The wrapper opens, and the latex goes on. Both take about as long as a slow exhale.
Back to her neck with one hand, the other at her thigh, lifting it, opening her to me.
"Color."
"Green," she says, with no humor in it, no negotiation. "Green. Please."
I push into her in a single slow line.
The sound she makes is one I will take to my grave.
She is tight and warm, and there is nowhere on my body that is not at the center of her attention in that moment. Her forehead meets mine, and her hands fist at my collar.
"Move," she breathes. "Leo, move."
My hips do exactly that. Slow at first, learning her. Then unforgiving.
"Take it, Emilia. All of it."
Her back arches, and her cry is in my mouth before her body decided what to do with the wave.
My hand is on her clit between us. The other is at the back of her neck, keeping her mouth on mine, because the noises she is making are the property of this room, and I am not letting them leave.
She comes on me hard, and the squeeze of her around my cock is the closest I can get to forgetting my own name.
I lift her off the desk.
"Bed," I tell her. "Now."
Her arms are around my neck, her face on my shoulder. The walk to the bedroom is six steps, and my mouth is at her temple with each one. She is shaking against my chest from what just happened, and I am not going to pretend that does not undo me a little.
The mattress takes us. Her hair is on the pillow. My weight is over hers. The condom is changed because I am a careful man, and because I want her to know I plan to be inside her for the next hour.
She laughs once, soft, almost surprised. "An hour."
"At minimum."
She laughs again, longer this time. Her smile is the most dangerous thing I have ever climbed on top of.
My hand is at the back of her thigh, raising it, making her wider for me. The other is in her hair, on the pillow, keeping her where I want her.
I push in again, slower, deeper, watching her face.
She is unguarded. Wrecked already, and we are not done. The shake of her breath is the only thing the room knows.
"Eyes on me, Emilia. Don't close them. Don't."
Her eyes stay.
My hips work into her in a rhythm she has earned. Slow when her breath catches. Hard when her fists are in the sheet. My mouth is at her throat, at the hinge of her jaw, at the column of her clavicle where she once said the sound a woman makes when she stops pretending lives.
"Mine," I tell her against her throat, low, and her body answers before her mouth does.
She is going to come a second time. Her body is telling me before she knows.
"I... Leo..."
"I know. Let it."
"I want..."
"I know what you want. You are going to have it. Eyes on me."
She comes apart underneath me with my name on her lips, real this time, not a dream. The moment her body tightens around me, I am gone, deep inside her, my forehead against hers, a sound in my throat I have never made for any other woman.
For a long time after, there is only breath.
My weight is half off her. Her hand is on the back of my neck. The lamp in the next room is the only light, and through the open door it casts a soft yellow line across the bed, across her shoulder, and across the inside of my wrist where the ink stain is.
She is the first to speak.
"I think," she says, in the voice she uses when she is still finding the words, "we may have stopped consulting."
My laugh is rough. "Yeah."
She turns her head to look at me. Her expression is the one she wears before asking a question. I have not figured out how to answer.
"What are we doing, Leo?"
My hand finds her face, and the pad of my thumb traces her cheekbone. The ink line I memorized on Monday is faintly visible. The place where it was can be felt, even if no one else would notice.
"We are going to figure that out tomorrow," I tell her. "Tonight, sleep."
"Will you stay?"
"Yes."
Her eyes close, her breathing slowing. She is asleep in my arm in two minutes. I’ve spent five weeks pretending to be professional around her. Now she is bare in my arms, my coat on the floor.
My phone is in the coat pocket, where it has been buzzing against the wood floor for the past hour.
The reach for it is slow. The screen lights up at my touch. Tommy's name sits on top.
Photographer ID'd. Confirmed paymaster.
Gianna.
The hand that has been on Emilia's hair goes still.