Beautiful Stranger

in Chicago and am not looking to be involved with anyone.”
    “But then you found me at the club,” he said.
    “If I remember correctly,” I said, dragging my finger down the front of his shirt, “you found me.”
    “Right,” he said, and smiled, but for the first time I could remember, his eyes didn’t do it first. Or even later. “And here we are.”
    “Here we are,” I agreed. “I figured it was my one wild moment.” I looked out the window, at the billowing white clouds, looking for all the world so solid, and hearty as if I could leap from this floor and catch one and go somewhere, anywhere, where I would feel sure of what I was about to say. “But I’ve seen you a fewtimes since then and . . . I like you. I just don’t want things to get crazy, or off track.”
    “I understand you perfectly.”
    Did he? He couldn’t possibly. And in truth, it didn’t matter whether he understood that even more important than my life staying on track was my need for it not to be as safe as it had been in Chicago. Safe was a nightmare. Safe was a lie.
    “One night a week,” I said. “I’ll be yours one night a week.”
    He stared at me with that calm reflective expression and I realized that every time I’d seen him before this, he’d been showing every card he had. His smile was complete honesty. His laughter was him being perfectly real. But this expression was his mask.
    My stomach tightened painfully. “If you even want to see me again, that is.”
    “I absolutely do,” he assured me. “I’m just not entirely sure what you’re saying.”
    I stood up and walked over to the window. I felt him move behind me and I said, “I feel like the only way I can handle it right now is to give it a clear boundary. Outside that boundary, I’m here to work, to build a life. But inside that boundary . . .” I trailed off, closing my eyes and just letting the idea take hold. The idea of Max’s hands, and his mouth. His sculpted torso and the thick length of him pressing into me again andagain. “We can do anything. When I’m with you I don’t want to worry about anything else.”
    He moved to the side, so that I could turn my head just slightly and look right at him, and stared directly into my eyes. He smiled. The mask was gone, the midafternoon sun blazed into the room, and his eyes looked like green caught on fire.
    “You’re offering only your body to me.”
    “Yeah.” I was the first to look away.
    “You’ll truly only give me one night a week?”
    I winced. “Yes.”
    “So you want to have . . . what? Some sort of committed fling?”
    I laughed and said, “I certainly don’t like the idea of you whoring your way across the boroughs. So, yes, that’s part of the deal. If you even do that.”
    He scratched his jaw, not answering my implied question. “What night? The same night all the time?”
    I hadn’t really thought this part through, but I nodded, winging it. “Fridays.”
    “If I’m not to see other women, what if I have a work function, or an event on a Thursday or a Saturday that requires a date?”
    My chest twisted with anxiety. “No. No public appearances. I guess you can take your mom.”
    “You’re a demanding little thing.” His smile followed his words and grew slowly, like a low-burningfire. “This feels so organized. That hasn’t been our modus operandi, to date, little Petal.”
    “I know,” I allowed. “But this is the only way that felt sane to me. I don’t want to be in the papers with you.”
    His eyebrows pulled together. “Why that specifically?”
    Shaking my head, I realized I’d said too much. I murmured, “I just don’t.”
    “Do I get any say in how this goes?” he asked. “Do we just meet at your flat and fuck all night?”
    I ran my index finger down his chest again, venturing lower, to his belt buckle. Here was the part I hoped he was up for and the part that scared me most. After the club, the restaurant, the fund-raiser, I was starting to feel like an adrenaline junkie. I didn’t want to give that up, either.
    “I think we’ve done pretty well so far. I don’t want to go to my apartment. Or yours, for that matter. Text me where I should be, and generally what to expect so I know what to wear. I don’t care about the rest.”
    I lifted myself on my toes, kissed him. It started out teasing, but then turned deep enough to make me want to take back everything I’d said and give myself to him every night of the week. But he pulled