I look across the table at the woman sitting there. All she's doing is drinking a class of ice water but she's doing it like it is the best damn water she had ever tasted. God I want her so fucking bad, it's a sin and a shame. It seems like all I ever want now is her; a lifetime of want, desire and longing all fulfilled by five feet and six inches of majestic woman. See already some of you are thinking that I'm exaggerating, but it's only because you've never had the pleasure of her presence.
She sets the glass down and meets my eyes, she's laughing at me but she never makes a sound. She's talking about the latest news but I know that she knows exactly what I want. She always knows and the sparkle in her eyes tells me that even as she speaks she's got more on her mind than current events. I watch as she lifts her hand to the glass in front of her, she doesn't pick it up, she just lets her fingertips follow the gentle curve of the wine glass, parting the wet beads of condensation that have formed there in the heat. My eyes drift back up to her face just in time for me to catch her full lips curving into a teasing smile. She holds me in her gaze, there's no telltale smoke or even a hint of flames but she's setting me on fire like matches to drift wood and I'm burning up.
"What are you thinking?" She asks me.
I'm more focused on the way her lips move and hug the words as she speaks, than what she's actually saying and for a moment I don't speak. It's a moment to long because she asks me again. This time I don't hesitate at all.
"You."
The single syllable leaves my lips like a breath instead of a word, as images of her and I intertwined skin to skin in sweaty embraces flood my mind I blush.
"What about me?"
Without any conscious decision on my part I drop my eyes and shift slightly, pressing my thighs together for just a second as I move in the chair. Before I have time to put my thoughts into words the waiter approaches with menus in hand. I shift again, he's suspended somewhere between the little boy he once was and the man he is becoming. I recall baby sitting him, at the time he seemed so much younger than I did but in truth only four years separate us.
When I had booked our reservation for lunch I had no idea that Julian worked at the country club. Decorum and policy kept him from trading anything except for a polite greeting with me but when he'd seen me his smile had been big and broad. Even as he presented us with menus and went through the daily specials he was grinning, while I idly wondered if he was still a cheat at Chutes and Ladders. When he departed I set my menu aside without so much as a glance, what I wanted wasn't likely to be on the menu anyway.
The woman across from me studied the menu at great length, as if it were the latest best seller, I hated when she ignored me like this and I tried to compose my features so my emotions wouldn't be right there on my face. I could have fooled anyone but her, most people didn't look me right in the eye but when she set her menu down she did just that. She hadn't acknowledged me in fifteen minutes and then suddenly I was her main focus.
"Are you mad?" Her tone was slightly mocking which pissed me off a little more. I am not a woman used to tempering her emotions or anything else for that matter, but I'm also no fool. A display of dissatisfaction would not result in her appeasing me and I was well aware of that fact, I was also aware that she knew exactly what she was doing.
"No" I said in answer to her question.
She smiled "yes you are."
Not trusting my abilities to behave I kept silent. If she'd been any other man, woman or child I'd have walked away without a second thought, no one had ever pushed me because I'd always walked away from the slightest sign of resistance. But something in me longed to please her no matter how I sometimes wanted to fight against that urge. Half of the time my urge to fight against her was nothing more than the acting out of a querulous child. I am admittedly a petulant brat princess and condescension is not my first response to control, after all I have not often been denied and never quelled. She was teaching me all kinds of lessons, the ones I didn't know I wanted to learn, the ones that must be taught and some that I very simply needed to know.
She asked me again "Are you mad?"
I repressed a sigh and said "yes."
She nodded and spoke again "do you still want me?"
Without pause I answered "yes," and I did.