New Year in Manhattan(23)
“Okay, you get the subway and I’ll get a cab and meet you there. That feels like a day-to-day compromise.”
We stood on the sidewalk laughing at each other. “Oh baby, when did I say anything about compromise? Come on, we’re going on the subway.” I dragged the sleeve of his coat and started walking. He reluctantly followed.
“You know we’re going in the wrong direction for the subway.”
“Ethan!”
He grabbed me by my waist and kissed me hard.
* * * * *
“What was your favorite bit of the day?” I asked Ethan as we got home from several hours at the Met and what Ethan described as a reconnaissance trip of the Guggenheim.
“What do you mean? The day’s not over and I enjoyed all of it.”
“I’ve done favorite things since I was a kid, play with me,” I said. “What was your favorite bit, the favorite thing you saw or step you took or conversation you had.”
“Let me think. Just one?”
“We used to do top three.”
“Okay, my favorite three things of today . . . one, I like that I got to see you in flats.”
I grinned at him. Was he serious? Flat shoes sucked.
“And then I liked how I got to kiss you in the street.”
“Ethan! We’ve just seen some of the most beautiful art ever to have been created. Your top three things of the day can’t all be about me.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you get to choose, or do I get to choose?”
“I want a no-bullshit response.”
“The other two were no-bullshit responses, Anna. I won’t lie to you.”
“Okay.”
“The last of my top three is a painting. The Velasquez. The one of his Moor slave. It’s my favorite in there. I feel like he’s trying to tell me something from the canvas. How he captured that is incredible.”
His eyes softened as he spoke, but his face was serious.
“You like art?” I asked.
“What is fascinating about it was that it was a practice run for Velasquez’s portrait of the Pope at the time. He was just prepping and that’s what he came up with. Fucking brilliant.”
“Have you been to Madrid? To see, you know, the one that Picasso did as well . . .”
“Las Meninas.” He finished my sentence for me and looked at me as he nodded. There was something different in his eyes. “You like art?” he asked my question back to me.
“A bit. I’m spoiled in London, there’s so much. I like baroque stuff—Caravaggio, Rubens and your man Velasquez. Did you get to see the Boy Bitten by a Lizard when you were in London? God, I love that painting. It’s tiny, but wild.” I caught myself making shapes in the air with my hands and quickly dropped my arms self-consciously. I looked across at Ethan to see if he had that ‘is she crazy?’ look on his face that he sometimes wore.
“You couldn’t be any more beautiful to me than you are right now, Anna,” he said as our eyes met.
My cheeks heated and he closed the distance between us and slid his arms around my waist.
“Can we stay in tonight?” I asked. “Unless you had plans? I’d just like to be with you tonight.”
“That sounds perfect.”
He skimmed his hands down my back and began to harden against my stomach.
“Me talking about gay boys and lizards gets you hot?”
“Anna,” he growled in that disapproving tone he had that always made me laugh. He cupped my ass in his hands and he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around him. “Come on, pretty monkey.”
Chapter Nine
Ethan
Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t been the lizard talk that had gotten me hot. It didn’t take much around her, I had an almost permanent hard-on when she was nearby. But hearing how she liked art, that she knew of Las Meninas and liked Baroque—that was fucking hot. I guess I never thought that this was how it could be with a woman. Anna’s brain could turn me on as much as her body could—she created one new experience after another in me.
“What do you think?” She flashed me a smile over her shoulder as she shook her black-lace covered ass. She’d insisted on getting changed in the bathroom so I was trying to be patient, as much as I could be with a hard on and a beautiful woman who was about to move in with me three steps away.
“I think you would look incredible in a garbage bag. Get over here already.”
She stayed where she was, and ran her hands up over her body, cupping those perfect tits and pushing them together. “Do you know what would make these look even better?” She looked up at me from under her eyelashes.
“My dick between them?”
She bit her lip and nodded. It took everything I had not to come right there.