The Last Room

It wasn't as if I went to extraordinary lengths to watch a football game on TV, but my sister was having a Super Bowl party at her house in Rochester — New York — not Rochester, Michigan, which was only a twenty-minute drive from my house.

My sister moved out there a few months ago, and it seemed as if it were a good excuse as any to take a road trip out there to spend some time with her and her family provided that the weather was fine and the roads were clear along the route, which they were expected to be through the next few days.

But lake effect snows could be sudden and tricky if cold northern winds decided to blow across the warm and shallow water of Lake Erie between Cleveland and Buffalo. This past winter, it rarely happened. Most days this winter usually hit somewhere in the mid '30's in the region and left what little snow that fell to melt and evaporate by one in the afternoon on those days. That was fine, very fine with me. I hated the cold and snow. If it wasn't for my work, I would have moved to someplace more temperate years ago.

Of course, just outside of Buffalo Mother Nature decided to turn into a nasty frigid bitch and started to go on a rampage whipping winds and flakes of snow all over the place. I figured she would let up, but as the sky grew darker, the snow got deeper and the roads got icier. My sister called to warn me, "Don't come out. Get to a hotel as soon as you can. We're getting hammered out here. They're calling for ten to twelve inches and we already have five."

"Great. Just great," I thought as my car started to slide on the pavement.

I pulled into the first hotel I saw off the freeway. It looked big enough and figured they'd have a room.

I couldn't have been more wrong. As I waited in line at the front desk, I heard the clerk tell a man he had gotten the last room.

"Oh fuck," I said out loud, thinking I had kept that epithet to myself.

The man who checked into the last room heard me as he turned around.

"I'm sorry," he said.

He wasn't only pleasant and polite, but he was gorgeous in a Marlboro Man kind of way with thick and wavy chestnut brown hair, a neatly-trimmed beard, and a hint of a Boston accent. The combination didn't seem to make sense, but it made him interesting.

"That's OK," I said. "I got this far. It shouldn't be a problem finding another hotel nearby."

"It's not worth the trouble," he said. "There's already six inches outside, maybe seven and it's not letting up anytime soon. Tell you what. I have two beds in my room. I'll be happy to let you have one of them if you buy dinner."

I smiled at him, sighed, and said, "Umm ... I don't know about that. This is really awkward, and I don't even know your name and don't know if you're a priest or Jack the Ripper."

He laughed and said, "Well, I'm far from being a priest, but I'm not Jack the Ripper, or Jack in a Box, or Jack Mehoff. I'm Brad."

I started laughing my ass off. That's the kind of answer I would have expected from one of my best guy friends and not some polite and gorgeous stranger offering to share his hotel room with him.

"OK, Brad," I said, shaking his hand. "I'm Beth, and you have a roomie for the night."

I'm normally a pretty serious wine and foodie chick, but given the food choices at the hotel restaurant in the armpit of the country known as Buffalo, I didn't know whether to deep fry and burn my guts twelve different ways and sideways on chicken wings or starve.

"Well, I was kind of counting on a Polish sausage sandwich and a Great Lakes Commodore Perry IPA in Cleveland , not popcorn shrimp and Bud Light for dinner tonight," Brad said. "There's only one thing that will help us forget that we ate something bad: kamikazes."

For the first time since my last Spring Break in college many years ago, that sounded like a mighty fine idea, especially with the group of businessmen who had an excellent chance for being heckled as really bad American Idol contestants hijacking the karaoke machine.

"Well, I could get up there and do my best MC Hammer or Run DMC," Brad said.

The tequila amplified my laugh.

"A white guy from Boston with that accent?" I asked. "Are you high?"

"I could be if you want me to throw some Snoop Dogg into the mix," he said. "Besides, you're the one with the accent. You have one of those uppity, proper Midwestern accents like some kind of TV newscaster."

"Uppity? Proper?" I asked, getting rather cocky on my second drink. "And don't tell me that I sound like Megyn Kelly from Fox News."

Brad grinned in a playfully wicked way.

"Well, you do kind of look like her but with nicer tits," he said.

He was right on both counts.

I gave my blonde tresses a quick toss, crossed my arms over my breasts, and said in mock defiance, "Can't touch this."

He reached over, copped a quick feel on the bottom of my right breast, and said, "Just did."

"Fuck you," I snapped back, covering my tits tighter.

"Your tits say, 'No,' but that uppity, proper TV newscaster voice says, 'Yes,'" he said.

I wanted to laugh, but feigned rolling my eyes. He was bringing out a smart-ass sense of humor that excelled at twisting words for kicks that only my best friends knew, and a crazy libidinous side of me that I didn't even know existed.

"Sounds like Mr. Cuervo is talking a bunch of shit," I said, eyeing his half-empty second Kamikaze.

"Are we negotiating, because if you're suggesting a threesome with me and some Mexican guy or scat, I won't touch that, but I do enjoy anal," he said.

I released my arms from my breasts and clasped my hands tightly between my ass and the seat of my chair. The blood that normally kept my brain fully functional was now revving up the inner hidden petals between my legs like an engine of an Indy race car. Instinctively, I crossed my legs tight, too.

Brad didn't say a word. He just smiled and let his eyes cruise me from head to toe and back up again until they locked on my eyes. I was sure he understood every word of my body language. In fact, he did.

"I bet I can make you come without fucking you," he said.

I took a hearty swig to finish off my second drink, moved in closer to him, and asked, "What makes you think you can?"

He was well on his way. My panties were getting moist and I was doing the best I could to shift myself so he wouldn't notice that the outline of my nipples were piercing through my bra. Hiding the flush that was creeping up my chest across the open neckline of my shirt to my cheeks was impossible.

"Because it looks like I'm already halfway there," he said, slipping a fried mushroom between my lips.

Greasy bar food, alcoholic drinks created solely for the purpose of getting stoned, and bad karaoke music would have never been my idea for the props for being seduced by a stranger with whom I only agreed to share a hotel room, but this was already one of the sexiest nights of my life. We just stared at each other and didn't say a word. He left a $50 bill on my behalf on the table, took me by the hand, and led me up to our room.

Brad closed the door behind us, pinned his weight against me up against a wall, pulled my hands above and started kissing me with a vengeance. Our tongues wrapped around each other like wild serpents. Our hot and heavy breaths could have melted the snow outside or at least there was enough heat between our bodies to make it feel that way as we ripped our clothes away. The only piece of clothing that remained was his belt that wrapped and locked around my wrists.

He picked me up and threw me face-down on the bed. I spread my legs open as if to bypass his challenge to make me come without fucking me. Instead, he laid his hands into the small of my back and slowly plowed their way deep into my tissue all the way up to my shoulder blades, then down my arms all the way to my fingertips, taking time to explore every muscle and contour.

My hips began to shift and sway to his touch and underneath the way he positioned himself over me, almost embraceful and cocooning. I didn't want his body to let go until his fingernails started dragging lightly over my skin back up my arms to my shoulders where his fingertips lightly fluttered. My breath slowed to this gentle and lulling sensation. He kept repeating the pitter-patter-tap-tap-tap sensation down to the middle of my back until I fell into a wide-awake dream space. I could no longer feel a thing until he pulled on my hair with one hand and dragged his nails to my ass where he gave me a quick whack.

I stiffened my body and clenched my ass cheeks together from the shock of his sudden change of touch until he let go of my hair and rubbed rounded, cushy tissue of my ass to dissipate the pain. A trickle of slickness seeped through the closed slit between my legs as my body began to relax again.

He hovered over me as he ran his hands up my back, and then leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "Feeling good, baby?"

All I could do was let out a quiet, content hum that sounded something like, "Mmm-hmm."

Then he held my forearms down on the bed and smacked me on my other ass cheek, this time harder. The sting immediately turned into a pleasurable twinge deep inside of me.

I wasn't aware that I was shifting my hips until he pressed his hand on the small of my back, forcing the front of my body onto the mattress as his hand glided slowly and subtly down the back of my right leg. As his hand ran up the back of my left leg up to the curve of my ass with his thumb only inches from my dampened pussy, he asked, "You like this, don't you?"

I fought against his hand pressing me down on the mattress. My hips wanted to buck to draw his thumb inside of me. My legs were kicking and shaking in lieu of my hands that were secured and out of reach from being able to touch myself. The only thing I couldn't do was to tell him, "Yes! I like it, and I'd like it more if you would just fuck me!" The words couldn't come out, only undecipherable moans that were turning into screams.

He lifted his hand from my back but held me captive by his tentacle-like fingers that mercilessly flicked at the both sides of my torso. I couldn't tell if I was being tickled on the surface of my skin or by the constant stream of sticky creaminess that was cascading over my inner walls and seeping out over the tops of my inner thighs. My mouth opened, but nothing came out. It felt like every nerve in my body was in overdrive but I couldn't tell which one of his touches were setting them off.

Then everything went silent and black.

I woke the next morning to the bright white reflection of snow beaming into the room and the steamy and the nutty smell of coffee under my nose.

"Here, you look like you can use this," said Brad, handing me a cup of joe.

I slithered upright and pulled the blanket over me to keep me warm and modest only to find that I was fully dressed.

"Did you sleep OK?" he asked. "You're quite an active sleeper."

My head was a jumbled mess. My body felt stretched and sore. And what was this about me being an active sleeper?

"Uh, I hope I didn't wake you up," I said.

"Not at all," he said. "I pulled the covers over you as soon as you crashed on the bed when we got in last night. You were out like a light except for all the thrashing around."

"Um ... I-I-I ...," I started to say, not knowing what to say.

"You're funny when you drink, but you're a lightweight," he said. "I was having one of the best times making fun of the karaoke guys with you, especially that white guy trying to sing like Snoop Dogg and MC Hammer, until you said you wanted to go up to the room and get some sleep. I went back down to get my giggles and let you sleep in peace and quiet."

I was embarrassed. All I could do was make contact with my palm against my forehead.

"I thrash in my sleep?" I asked.

Brad laughed.

"When I came back in, you looked like you were having quite the workout," he said.

I did my best to divert the conversation from my embarrassing sleeping habits and asked him what he knew about the roads. From what he heard from the guy at the front desk, he said the highways should be clear and safe enough to dive on by check-out time.

"You never said where you were off to," he said.

I told him Rochester to visit my sister to watch the game. He said he was off to Cleveland to watch the game with a client and stay a couple of days to work on a project.

"If you're passing through Cleveland on the way home, I'd like to do dinner; a real dinner this time," he said. "And I'd like to make good on my promise to make you cum without fucking you."

How could I tell him that he already did?