The List by Anne Calhoun

soft fall of hair. She made a soft sound, then turned her face away from the rain and kissed him, an openmouthed brush of lips interspersed with flicks of tongue. She turned onto her side on the narrow chaise, the cashmere throw crumpled between their bodies as she tucked her leg over his. He worked his lower arm under her shoulder and draped his upper arm over her hip and pulled her as close as he could get her. The throw tangled between their legs until Daniel impatiently tugged it from between their bodies.
    Tilda gasped when he rolled her to her back, and he had to put out a hand to stop them from tumbling to the floor. Her hands fumbled with his belt and zipper. When he regained his balance he took off her sweater. Her hair sparked and crackled in the gray light, and stayed in an eerie halo around her head even as he tried to work her jeans lower on her hips.
    “Not here,” she said. “It’s silk. I’ll never get the stain out.”
    He slid to his knees on the floor in front of her, gripped her jeans, and pulled them off. “Fuck,” he said. “My wallet’s in my jacket pocket.”
    Naked except for her bra, she crawled to her desk and pulled open the top drawer, tore a packet off a strip, and handed it to him, then wrapped the throw around her shoulders as he sheathed himself. “Off,” she demanded, pulling at his shirt hem.
    Sweat made the cotton cling to his back as he yanked it off, but the moment he did Tilda straddled his thighs and gripped his cock. He steadied her with both hands on her hips, looking down between their bodies for that indescribable moment of lush, hot pressure, groaning as what he saw and felt blended in his mind.
    She wrapped her arms around his neck, enfolding them both in the throw, and started to roll her hips into his. Even with miles of leg, she couldn’t get her knees on the floor for the leverage she needed so she clamped them to his hips. He thought of horseback riding and orgasms and groaned again. She gave a little laugh, as if she knew what he was thinking, and he opened his eyes, because he had to kiss her and the last thing he wanted to do was head butt her while blindly trying to find her mouth.
    But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking over his shoulder. He turned to see a pale reflection of them in the glass. His back, bared to his backside, the throw’s fringe clinging to his skin, Tilda straddling him. She looked like a fierce anime character, big eyes, pointy chin, jagged edges of hair, a red mouth that pressed to his as he watched. She was staring at him, unblinking, unflinching, eyes as dark as they were that night on the ledge. His head dropped back and he groaned, felt the sound start between his hipbones and rumble through his chest, into the air. She laughed like a witch or a wild woman and kept up her pace. He had to be hurting her, as tightly as he gripped her, thrusting up into her body in short, sharp jerks, thinking of
nothing, nothing at all
in a desperate effort to stave off the inevitable, until her head dropped back and she cried out. The pulsing contractions around his cock set him off. He held her hard against him and ground up into her body, tremors ripping through him.
    The aftershocks left him light-headed and curled around her. “You’re going to kill me one of these days,” he said.
    Her smile curved against the spot where his neck and shoulder met. “I hope not,” she said.
    She didn’t so much get up as tumble backward onto the Turkish rug. He got to his feet and hitched his jeans up enough to let him walk to the bathroom, where he flushed the condom. When he got back to her office, she was dressed and running her fingers through her hair in an attempt to tame the curls. He braced his shoulder against the doorframe and folded his arms. “I expected you to be back on the chaise.”
    “I thought we might see a film.”
    He cocked his head and looked at her. “Really,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “I thought you