The One in My Heart (22 page)

Daff’s eyes bulged. “Seriously, E.
You
brought this one?”

I shrugged. “I went out to the wilds of Manhattan and bagged him all by myself.”

My fake boyfriend extended his hand. “I’m Bennett. Nice to meet you, Davina.”

Daff shook his hand, still goggle-eyed. She pulled up a chair and squeezed in next to Carolyn. Carolyn draped an arm over her. “I know what you’re thinking, Daff. He’s an escort E hired for the evening.”

“Right?” said Lara. “Evangeline, we thought you donated your vagina to science ages ago.”

“That’s how I first saw her vagina,” said Bennett. “I was still in medical school, on the West Coast. And her vagina was so unforgettable that I tracked her down across the country—and here I am.”

I decided I might as well go along for the ride. “It’s true. And if a man shows up at your door, saying, ‘Hi, Dr. Canterbury, I’ve brought your vagina back,’ it’s only polite to invite him in and have him help you test out whether said vagina still works after all these years.”

Lara all but spit her drink into her napkin. Daff and Carolyn leaned on each other, cracking up.

A server came by and took orders from the latecomers; then Carolyn was all business. “Lara, did you bring the questionnaire? We have to put him through the questionnaire.”

“Oh, yes,” seconded Daff. “Release the questionnaire.”

“What is this Kraken of a questionnaire?” asked Bennett.

Carolyn cackled. “Ask your girlfriend. It was her brainchild.”

Last year, at our usual all-female Boyfriend Roundup, I’d not only suggested that we come up with a list of questions with which to torment our eventual victim, but contributed a large share. It seemed a foregone conclusion that somebody would reel in a sucker someday; I’d just never imagined I’d be that someone.

In fact, I’d forgotten about the questionnaire altogether.

As had everyone else, apparently. Nobody could even remember what we’d done with the questions we’d come up with. I breathed a sigh of relief—from what I could vaguely recall, some of those questions had been highly personal.

“Yes!” cried Carolyn triumphantly. “I knew I had it. I typed it into this list-making app on my phone and it’s still there.”

I pulled a face.

“Now I see what I’m in for,” murmured Bennett.

Carolyn literally rubbed her hands together before she picked up her phone again. “Okay, here goes. What’s your full name?”

“Bennett Oliver Stuart Somerset.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon.”

“Where were you born?”

“Ten blocks from here.”

Phew. Maybe I’d misremembered. The questions were all right.

“How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

Nope, not mistaken after all.

“Sixteen.”

“What’s the most number of times you’ve had sex in a twenty-four-hour period?”

Oh, God. That was one of my questions.

“Seven.”

“Jesus,” said Daff.

“There might have been some kind of drug cocktail involved,” Bennett told her gleefully. “And multiple women.”

And a yacht in Saint-Tropez, no doubt.

For some reason, all the women around the table stared at me as if I were responsible for Bennett’s excessive fucking.

“Come on,” I said. “Did you really think the ultimate good girl would hook up with someone who wasn’t a freak?”

Daff accepted her drink from the server. “I guess there’s that.”

“Okay, back to the questionnaire,” ordered Carolyn. “What do you think of anal sex?”

Daff promptly choked on the first sip of her drink: The question had been one of her contributions.

“Depends on the anus,” said Bennett.

“Good answer,” said Carolyn. “Have you ever been married?”

“No.”

“Incarcerated?”

“No.”

“Are you paying for all our drinks tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Are you rich?”

“Yes.”

“How rich?” asked Daff. “When Evangeline’s done with you, can I use you for a sugar daddy?”

“Sorry, Daff, that’s not on the questionnaire,” decreed Carolyn. “Now, Bennett, have you performed oral sex on our Evangeline?”

“Yes.”

“Has she returned the favor?”

“No.”

“Make the boy work, E,” said Lara. “Good for you.”

I could probably fry an egg on my face. “That’s right, grasshopper. Watch and learn.”

Carolyn continued. “What is Evangeline’s favorite position?”

Hoist on the petard of another one of my questions.

“She likes them all.”

This had Daff whistling. “Oh, E. We never knew ya.”

“Sorry for being undiscriminating,” I said.

Bennett touched a strand of my hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I like you horny.”

Carolyn and Lara hooted. Daff shook her head. “Wow, so you really are having sex again, E. Blows my mind.”

“Okay.” Carolyn resumed her most brisk tone. “We’re almost done with the questionnaire. Bennett, where did you first meet Evangeline?”

“At a sex party in Greenwich Village.”

What the hell? “That is not true!” I protested.

He had a dirty gleam in his eyes. “Prove it. Next question.”

“When did you fall in love with her?”

“It was love at first sight.”

“Wait,” said Lara. “First sight of her vagina at medical school, or first sight of her in person?”

“In person.”

“At the sex party?”

“Central Park. Last June. We wouldn’t meet at the sex party for another seven weeks.”

It was just like him to mix together enough likely-seeming tidbits with complete nonsense, so that I couldn’t tell how much was truth and how much bullshit.

“The penultimate question: Do you have your engagement ring all picked out?”

Another one of my inane contributions.

“Yes.”

“Last one: When’s the wedding?”

“August.”

“Why August?” asked Lara.

“‘Cause she’ll have passed tenure review and I’ll have finished with my fellowship. And we can have a nice long honeymoon before her schedule goes crazy again in September.”

I eyed him up and down. “Talk about perfect timing.”

He rubbed my arm through my sleeve. “Didn’t I say I’ll take care of everything, sweetheart?”

“Okay, lovebirds, flirt on your own time,” said Carolyn. “Now we have to tally up the score.”

There were scores?

“What kind of scores can a man get around here?” asked Bennett, vastly amused.

I had to give it to him: He was game and unflappable. A pretty high bar had been set for future victims of the Annual Boyfriend Roundup.

“Well, it starts at ‘He’s just using you.’ And then there’s ‘Okay, but not great.’ After that, it’s ‘I’d bang him too.’ Above that, ‘A real keeper.’ And if you score any higher than that—”

“It’s been a while. I can’t remember everything,” said Daff. “You can score higher than ‘A real keeper’?”

“Uh-hmm.” Carolyn looked straight at my fake boyfriend. “You scored higher than a hundred percent. According to our scoring table, that means you’re an actor from an off-Broadway show, and this is a gig for you.”

BENNETT WAS WASTED IN MEDICINE
: No actor from a show, off-Broadway or on, could have played a better boyfriend. My friends clearly found him something of a unicorn, but he was a fun unicorn, and two hours passed in no time at all as we chatted and laughed.

“So what color bridesmaid dresses for your wedding, E?” asked a tipsy Carolyn from the back of the cab. “I have—I shit you not—thirteen of them, and they cover the entire visible light spectrum.”

“We’re doing a hipster ugly-bridesmaid-dress wedding,” said Bennett. “Come in the one you hate the most.”

“Oh, God. I hate all of mine,” muttered Daff, who was drunker.

“Another delivery run for you,” I said to Lara, always the still-sober one at the end of the night.

She blew me a kiss. “I’ll get them home.”

As their cab drove away, I turned to Bennett. “A Greenwich Village sex party? Really?”

He was unrepentant. “Better than ‘I found her wandering the back lanes of Cos Cob and promptly took advantage of her.’”

Our cab pulled up. We got in. Bennett told the driver, “Park and Seventy-third.”

A frisson of excitement shot through me. “Why are we going to your place?”

“Ten minutes ago you said you were hungry. I have ravioli.”

The garish blue-green light from the TV screen installed between the two front seats shouldn’t have been flattering on anyone, yet the contours of his face were as beautifully lit as if a photographer’s assistant had been holding a reflector a few feet away. “I can have a snack at home.”

“But I don’t want you to go home yet.”

It was warm in the cab. He pulled off his ascot and my eyes were immediately riveted to that small vee of skin exposed by the opening of his shirt. “Then why didn’t you say so?”

“What kind of straight shooter do you take me for? Someone as skittish as you needs to be manipulated into my apartment.”

I looked back up at him, half smiling and all predatory.
I think I may safely call him a shark, your son.
Now the shark was circling me. By habit I clung to my raft—but a part of me, maybe most of me, longed to be devoured. “How are you going to do that? I could easily have this cab let you out and then drive me to my house.”

He leaned a little closer. “Would you like to see the engagement ring I picked out?”

Had I been dropped on my head, I couldn’t have been more stunned. “Wh-what?
Why?
”

“I’ll tell you if you come up.”

It’s a trap
, shouted Admiral Ackbar from
Star Wars
.

It’s bullshit
, said my common sense.

Who gives a fuck?
countered the woman who couldn’t wait for the shark to drag her into the waves.

When I didn’t answer, Bennett took my hand in his and traced a fingertip along the edge of my palm. I bit a corner of my lip, embarrassed by the heat that speared into the crook of my elbow. He grazed the pad of his thumb across the back of my hand. Inside my high heels, my toes curled.

The urban canyon that was Park Avenue became quieter and emptier as we drove north. Our reflections were visible in the window of the cab, a man and a woman ostensibly behaving themselves: He looked down with the concentration of someone staring at his phone; my eyes appeared glazed, as if I already felt the lateness of the hour.

Except I was anything but weary. My heart drummed. My nerves sizzled. I had to count so my breaths wouldn’t come in too quick, too shallow. Bennett’s touch roamed along the lines of my palm, slowly climbing toward the tip of my index finger.

The next thing I knew, his palm had cut into the vee between my index and middle fingers. I almost gasped at the suddenness and, well, invasiveness of the gesture.

Did he hear my sharp, indrawn breath? Could he feel the tremors beneath my skin?

As soon as we were in his private elevator, before the doors had even closed, we were already kissing. At the top we stumbled out. Somehow he managed to get us up a flight of stairs to his bedroom.

He stripped off my coat. My clutch fell with a thump. Still kissing me, he pushed me down onto his bed. The impact of our bodies pressed together, shoulders to knees, made us both emit beastly sounds.

He pulled my dress over my head and made quick work of my bra. His teeth sank into my shoulder, the flood of sensation swift and fierce. I gasped.

“You are so fucking hot, Eva,” he whispered in my ear. “Last time I got home from work I had to get myself off twice before I could go to sleep—I kept imagining you in my bed and kept getting these raging erections.”

The words were as great a turn-on as his touches. Greater—when we were apart again it would be the words echoing in my head, an audible arousal.

I pushed his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders and kissed him below his jawline, an openmouthed nibble that had his hand tighten on my arm.

“You know what I want?” His voice turned raspy. “I want to fuck you before I go to work. And I want to fuck you right after I come back home.”

I might have ripped apart his vest. I definitely heard shirt studs pinging into the headboard.
Keep talking. Keep telling me how much you want me.

And don’t ever stop.

“I want to see you naked against a wall again. I want to see the way you look at me. You have such hungry eyes.”

I quaked—I didn’t want to hear about my all-too-visible yearnings. I kissed him, every inch of skin I could reach, as my hand slipped into his waistband and wrapped around him.

He discarded the rest of his clothes and peeled off my panties. We were now skin-to-skin everywhere. He kissed me, deeply, thoroughly. I whimpered in the back of my throat—the kiss was as erotic as anything he had ever done to me.

“When I have to take care of myself I imagine all the things I’d do to you,” he murmured against my lips. “And I think of all the sounds you’d make, from that first catch of your breath, to your screams when you come.”

I didn’t know how much more I could take. This was getting too intimate, and I was again feeling all too transparent. I closed my eyes and plunged my fingers into his hair. “Why don’t you make me scream again? Do it. Fuck me balls-deep.”

It was his turn to breathe harshly.

I nipped his shoulder, as he had done with mine. “You know I like it—every position, everything you do to me.”

His response was a low growl of such arousal that my own already tattered breath grew even more agitated. He pushed off me. I thought he was getting the condom, but he only repositioned himself to go down on me.

I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be the only one undone, the only one moaning and thrashing with pleasure. I begged him to fuck me. But he didn’t, not until I’d come several times. Only then did he bury himself in me, making me whimper and tremble.

He bit my earlobe. “Do you know what I
really
want?”

“What?” I gasped.

“I want to fuck you bareback. Every inch of me, feeling every inch of you.”

Damn him. Those words made me peak again—violently. At least he joined me this time, his orgasm equally untrammeled.