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Alice was super nervous about her review. All of the interns had an exit interview…some of them were hired after the fact. Being in Paris was nerve-wracking, because she was terrified that she would do something wrong and she really wanted to work with Polly. There was room for Pollyto hire an assistant, and she wanted that to be her.
She went to a reception in Polly’s place, where there were sumptuous hors d’oeuvres and creative cocktails. Polly was having dinner with the client that they had met with earlier, Alice guessed that their families had been friends.
Some people knew the latest music artist, Alice knew the newest artists. When she noticed a photographer that she admired, she took a sip of her drink and tried not to shake. Her friends laughed at her when she fan-girled an artist, but this was her groupie base. In the art world.
Seeing Fiona Méret, made her pause. Aside from her stunning photographs, Fiona herself was stunning. The first time Alice walked past her to get a cocktail–a rye whiskey concoction mixed with Lambrusco–she almost had a nervous breakdown. But it was Fiona’s hand on her shoulder that soothed her.
“Come on in honey,” she said pushing Alice forward.
Alice smiled and got her cocktail, which she sipped faster than she normally would have. For her second one, she again walked past Fiona who had never moved away from the bar. Fiona who this time, fanned away from the rest of the crowd to invite her in.
“Come on honey,” Fiona welcomed her like it was her own home. “Another one for the pretty girl,” she said to the bartender.
Alice blushed, she knew that Fiona liked women, she had read an article about her. But she was not expecting the particular nervousness she felt when she walked past her.
Fiona was gorgeous, and additionally charismatic and charming as evidence by all the groupies around her. Alice felt flattered that she went out of her way to allow her in to get her drinks. And at that close range, she saw how striking Fiona was. Everyone around her, looked at her like she was otherworldly. Like she had come down from the stars.
Maybe there were stars in her eyes as she lingered, just a bit where Fiona was. She took a soft sip of her cocktail, and observed her, closer but she was not quite near her. Fiona took out her phone, to take a picture, of a lacy decoration on the wall.The decoration was lace, somewhat Victorianesque in its look.
Alice moved closer. Without words, she and Fiona had a full conversation.
“So you know I am a photographer,” Fiona said to her after they had started actually talking. “What do you do?”
Alice did not tell her she was an intern, she just told her where she worked.
“Well cool, I am going to be there next week. Here’s my card.”
Fiona’s skin whispered against Alice’s palm as she handed her the card. Suddenly Alice was not thinking about Polly’s review of her, or her exit interview.
She was thinking of Fiona Méret’s cool card burning a hole in her hand.

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louise dahl-wolfe photo via duck duck go images

It kind of felt like going on an interview, Eliza stared in a store window one more time to make sure she looked perfect before going into the apartment building.
When she had decided to open up her relationship with Rafe, she realized it meant that she acknowledged that there would be other people in their lives. Transient lovers were not an issue, but people that were going to be ongoing was different.
She had never had a conversation with Severine, she had been in the same place with her or heard her on the phone but never really engaged her. For Eliza, to be fully open, she wanted to meet Severine when she was in Paris. So she could know her as more than just an idea, or a shadow.
The door opened, and there was a soft smile on Severine’s mouth. Her beauty was obvious from quick glimpses in New York, but here in Paris it was offsetting.
“Bonjour,” she offered warmly and put her arms around her.
“Bonjour,” Eliza said, and put her arms around her.
“It’s lovely to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Eliza said primarily because she did not know what else to do.
Severine looked at her with wide eyes. She saw that the other woman was insecure too and that soothed her. She smiled,
“You’re nervous too.”
Severine smiled even more.
“Oui, sorry! I tend to speak in French even more when I nervous…”
The conversation ended up being very different from what she was expecting, especially after some aromatic Malbec was introduced.
“What made you change?” Severine asked her. “Rafe told me that you are now also participating in the open relationship part.”
“I fell in love with someone else, that was how I learned that relationships are more fluid that I thought. It is not easy, but there is definitely a difference in deciding that there is more than one person I want to be with. You were involved with Oscar…”
It was still so hard for her to say Oscar’s name since she left Shanghai. Left him and…
“Yes, I feel like if it had just been Rafe that we shared that that would be one thing, but Oscar too…”
Eliza smiled, and looked around at Severine’s apartment which reflected her extensive travel. Postcards and exotic knickknacks everywhere.
“Well you are beautiful, it is not surprising to me that men find you attractive. Want to be with you.”
“So are you, I can imagine that Rafe is scared as hell that you want to be with other men. He could lose you.”
After a huge sip of Malbec, Eliza smiled.
She was not thinking about being lost to Rafe. Right now she was lost to herself.
She was still drinking Malbec later, in a cafe not far from her hotel in Montparnasse. Adrian was late. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she felt alone and abandoned.
It was so easy for her to feel like that now, and she hated it…Maybe she wanted Rafe to say he only wanted to be with her? But then she was in love with someone else, who was she to fuss?
She was more than tipsy when Adrian walked in, but between her legs pounded soberlt as soon as he walked in.
He sat next to her, and she put her hand on his thigh. He brought it up further along his thigh and she pushed that boundary too.
His kisses ignited her body. She loved the feeling of his hard body that wanted hers, kept demanding hers. Sex with him was like drinking too much Malbec. Savoring, taking everything in.
When the waiter spoke to them, her French was sharper than usual. Did she have to drink too much to be fluent?
Eliza felt fluent in lust, as Adrian pulled her legs over his. She looked him in the eye. He felt sweeter to her because he had not been shared with Severine. He was only hers. At least she did not know who else he had been with. She liked that she thought, as she licked his lips that tasted like the Malbec on hers.
When she opened her eyes, they lingered on all the French words around them and she thought how freeing it felt to be in Paris. Rafe and Oscar were not her utmost thoughts. She was not feeling like the Sylvia Plath poem, The Applicant.
She had not spoken a word to Adrian or he to her, but tangled up in each other their bodies spoke all of their volumes.

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vins photo by f dot leonora

Polly did not know if she could trust Colin. His mouth was not on her body anymore, so she was able to think better than she had a moment ago.
“That cannot happen again. I am with someone now, and I can’t…I don’t want to,” she declared.
“It did not matter when you were with that other guy, the one you were living with.”
She looked down at her hands, folded neatly like they would have been when she was a schoolgirl.
She was always the good girl.
“That was different, things were different.”
“So you are in love?”
Polly pounded her folded hands gently on the table.
“What does it matter to you? I don’t have to explain anything to you. Especially when you are going to throw things back in my face. You know it was not easy with Greg. You said you would console me, it got out of hand…I was sad. I’m not sad anymore.”
“So I am only for when you are sad?”
Polly shook her head.
“This is why we could never be together because you do this. You always do this. Try to manipulate me. I am not who I was when you met me, but you haven’t noticed have you?”
Colin laughed.
“Because you are all conventionally pretty and successful now? And how were you different from when we talked about art, went to museums and I drank your blood like wine Polly?”
When he said that she was transported for a moment. She had trusted him so much at that time, trusted him with her mind and her body. They used to go to auctions with his parents, dressed goth and people wrote about how they looked in the papers. No one knew how dark they really were.
She remembered the taste of his blood, if she closed her eyes very tight. It was all just sort of a whim to him though, and she was along for the ride.
“And who are you now Colin? A poor little rich boy? The tortured artist? The fashion impresario? CEO of your father’s company?”
He looked uncomfortable. She had not really meant to hurt him, but he had gone for the jugular first and she was more of a fighter now than she used to be. Without words, she communicated to him that she was sorry. He nodded his head.
“I started collecting Dubuffet.”
Polly shook her head, unfolded her hands.
“You did?”
Colin stood up, and she followed him as he walked and showed her the Dubuffet.
“I thought you did not like his style.”
“I was having dinner with a new artist, who was telling me her style was like Dubuffet. She wanted me to buy one of her paintings, and it made me revisit Dubuffet and said I might as well buy the master.”
“Smart. You have always been so smart about art.”
He ran his hand over his head.
“Not so much about women.”
Polly looked at him. The usual way that she consoled him was with her body, but now she was with Oscar. Oscar was not like anyone she had been with before. Not that her relationships had been bad, but Oscar made her feel lighter in her heart than she had ever felt before. Being in Shanghai with him, doing karaoke, kissing him and lying in bed with him for hours…days before they actually had sex. He made it so light for her, had swept her off of her feet in a way that she had not been swept before. With Colin, at some point she was so desperate for him that it felt less like love, than some kind of dependency. Even now. It was hard to trust if her emotions for him were real, or just remnant of something she used to crave so desperately with him.
“I love you Colin, will always love you. But you and I, you know what it was…”
“What was it Polly?”
She could not read his eyes, she looked at the Dubuffet, the fecal colors she almost felt. His work was gritty and earthy.
“I am surprised that you are collecting Dubuffet…”
“You don’t really know me Polly.”
Looking from the Dubuffet to him, she realized she did not.

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soul of the underground by jean dubuffet photo fragment by f dot leonora

q

Polly took Alice to Paris. She was not sure if her intern was going to think that it was because she knew about her and Oscar, or if it would be reflective of her leadership that Alice constantly raved about.
She really did like Alice, she was smart and discreet. Reminded her of herself when she was that age.
But that was not the reason that she had invited her along, not by a long shot.
She was picking up a de Lempicka from Colin, and she felt that she would be a lot safer with the younger woman with her. Polly was not sure that she wanted the dark and deep flirting that coming to Paris always bought. Having Alice with her, would prevent anything.
Or at least she liked to believe that. Colin had never been afraid of much, and certainly her just seeing Oscar would not distract him from anything that might be on his mind.
It was not every time that she ended up with him, she had mixed business with pleasure a few times…but now she had no intention of that.
The view of Paris from his apartment was gorgeous, and she was glad that Alice had looked away to gawk at it when Colin saw her. He was startled by her intern, and the look in his eyes was of such disappointment. He took her by the arm, and his lips grazed her neck. She looked at him sharply, as Alice suddenly realized she was gawking.
“This is my intern Alice,” Polly smiled, and she could see that pleased Alice.
“It is lovely to meet you. I love the de Lempickas so much, and am happy to be here,” Alice said as they looked at the guest of honor.
A stunning de Lempicka.
“It makes sense then that you are Polly’s intern because she has been a de Lempicka fan for decades. Even before she was doing this.”
Alice turned to look at Polly with a question, but it was Colin that answered.
“I have known Polly for a long time.”
Polly’s smile was tight, but she gave it.
“Alice is also a huge fan, which is why I brought her to Paris.”
Alice smiled, and Polly thought to herself how many of the other women there did not want to work with her because she was very pretty. She half wished that Alice’s beauty would distract Colin, but it did not.
When Alice was in the bathroom, Colin cornered Polly. His expression was perplexed, but he stood closer to her.
“When can I be alone with you? Dinner tonight?”
Polly smiled, nodded. She looked out at the view that had captivated Alice.
The last time that she had been in Paris with Colin, she had watched that view naked to her waist. He did not bite into her skin, but the way he sucked at her would leave deep bruises.
Polly wrapped her arms about herself.
Dinner was at Colin’s. Paris was dark now, and he had loosened his tie.
“I missed you,” he said cornering her again.
“Colin…”
“I don’t care who he is…”
“You know?”
He paused, and looked at her.
“I guessed.”
“You know me too well.”
“I know your blood…”
She could smell the heat she used to smell when he wanted to suck the blood from her. He pulled her close, and held her chastely for a long time. Polly did not expect that he would suddenly kiss her neck, and gnaw at her skin gently almost to the breaking point…
When they were younger she had been so eager to give him her blood, to give him her whatever he wanted. He was the leader, and she had followed.
Paris grew all the darker outside of the window.

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the vampyre by edvard munch via wikipedia commons

Eliza walked along Rue Edgar Quinet toward the Montparnasse Cemetery. She was not going there to visit any of the famous graves. In all her time in Paris, she had never visited any of the cemeteries there.
She was going because Adrien had asked her to meet him there. That was the effect that Adrien had had on her since he had brought her into the city for hire. The effect that he had had on her since they had sex in the basement of her hotel. He asked her to meet him here, she guessed to get a rise out of her? or because her hotel was close by?
He stood just outside the entrance, with an electric cigarette that emitted a sweet scent she was not accustomed to them giving. Maybe she was not exposed to enough of them. She smiled at him, and he broke into an immediate grin. He nuzzled her, and she tilted her neck to receive him.
“Tell me something filthy in English…you promised to help me with my English.”
Eliza got goosebumps from the way he whispered it just below her ear.
“Fuck me again…I can say it in French too if you don’t understand me…”
He clutched her so hard about the hips, that she was sure that he bruised her.
“Mais oui,” he breathed against her neck.
And he did. They did. Over and over while she was in Paris, after she would meet him at the cemetery. Well outside of the cemetery, then they would have dinner on Rue Edgar Quinet or Boulevard Montparnasse. Often they would have sushi.
She studied Adrien that night over sushi. He was sexy and charming, and even more so because he kept her mind off of Oscar.
She wished that she could say something horrible had happened, that Oscar had thrown her to the side and had stepped on her heart. But he was graceful even as he was breaking her heart. When he held her close to him like a butterfly, pinning her down before he let her go…it was nothing that he said. He let her know that he always loved her, and she said that she loved him…
But he let her go.
There was no reason for her ever to return to Shanghai.
“So you were in Shanghai you told me?”
Eliza looked at Adrien with a smile, and nodded. She was not immune to his charm even with Oscar haunting her, and having been in and out of bed with him made him all the more irresistible.
“Why did you pick the cemetery to meet me?”
Adrien looked at her, and she realized even though she had been in and out of his pants that she did not know him.
“I like cemeteries,” he shrugged eating a piece of sashimi. “And it let me know for sure that you are not squeamish. You just came.”
Eliza smiled at the double entendre she dwelled on silently.
“Depends…”
She started to pick at her roll, when she heard the soft noise of Adrien’s chopsticks hitting his plate. He squeezed her thigh, his fingers not high up her thigh but close enough.
“On what?”
“You do not scare me,” she said.
Eliza picked up a piece of sushi, let her tongue glide over it while looking in his eyes.
She was not the same Eliza she used to be.

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chopsticks via wikipedia commons

Alice tried to remember who had given her the key, but she could not remember exactly. She was in charge of watering all of the flowers being delivered to Polly while she was out of the office, while she was in Shanghai with Oscar.
She closed her eyes when she thought about Oscar. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Even though she was an intern, she had an intensive interview and was sent to work with Polly. Polly was lovely to her, but she worked hard for her. It was much more than going to Starbuck’s to fetch coffees like other interns did. Polly took her when she went to pick up a say for example, Tamara de Lempicka from a client.
Polly was as gorgeous as a woman de Lempicka would paint too. She had an impossibly gorgeous stylized look, and it was something that was going to be branded on Alice’s psyche for the rest of her life.
Walking into Polly’s office like the Maxfield Parrish Mary Mary Quite Contrary, she paused.
Polly had her blouse open, and Oscar kissed her bare breasts slowly moving to her stomach. Polly looked stylized even in an intimate moment. Her eyes closed tightly, and her sharply bottom on the edge of her desk fighting to stay there as Oscar pulled up her skirt. Alice realized her mouth was open, as she eyed Polly’s dancer’s thighs topped with thigh high lace parting…She stepped back intending not to be seen, but she had spilled water watering the floor as she had intended to water the flowers.
The thunk of her heels made Polly gracefully stand up.
“I am sorry!” Alice stammered. She spilled the rest of the water, and a pile of nerves, used her jacket to wipe up the water from the floor.
“Alice.”
Alice looked up to see Polly standing over her, buttoning up her blouse.
“Call maintenance to clean up the floor and get your jacket dry-cleaned. Then come into my office. Thank you.”
Alice could not help but admire the grace with which Polly walked back to her desk, and stood in front of Oscar who gazed at her with tremendous concern. She could not see Polly’s face even from the side, but Oscar looked at her with love and adoration.
After she called facilities, she remained at her desk until she saw Oscar walk out. She avoided his eyes, and took a deep breath before she walked into Polly’s office. Polly sat on the edge of her desk as she had when Oscar was kissing her body. How could she look so calm and collected, when she was wet just from watching them?
Polly walked across the room and closed the door, she returned to the edge of her desk and looked at her with sober eyes.
“I am sorry about what you saw Alice, it was incredibly unprofessional and I understand if you want to work in another department.”
“You don’t want me here anymore?”
“Alice, you are a bright girl, but if you are going feel awkward with me…”
“I don’t.”
Polly looked at her even more soberly.
“I would love to continue our working relationship, and would ask for you discretion then. I am in a relationship with Oscar, but I did not intend to flaunt it. Certainly not in the way that I unintentionally have.”
Alice sat back in her chair.
“You’re a beautiful couple…”
Polly smiled at her, and for one second she felt like they were equals. Then Polly stood up.
“Who gave you a key to my office Alice?”
“It was on my desk while you and Oscar were in Shanghai. Someone wanted me to water your delivered flowers.”
Polly looked out of the window, and she picked up card after card. Something was off, Alice could not tell what. But something was off. She was just glad that she was going to keep working with Polly. She wanted to be just like her, and hopefully find her own Oscar.
Alice was ashamed when she felt herself getting wet again thinking about what she saw.
The sun fell on Polly, making her look like all the more like a de Lempicka painting…

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maxfield parrish mary mary quite contrary via wikipedia commons

Oscar was on his back, Polly semi-covered him. Her long hair tumbled over his chest, and her softness went through him. He wanted her so much, he felt like he had already had her. Faster than lightning, he was over her, her arms up over her head and her eyes shining up at him in the dim light like twin moons. Oscar felt the position was almost like the iconic one from the movie Blow-Up, with the Sixties iconic model Veruschka. Except he was not holding a camera. His hands moved along her modest breasts, they were small but enough to fill his palms. He rubbed them, the feeling of her hard nipples exquisite to him.
He wanted her, and with her eyes closed under his touch, it was clear that Polly wanted him too.
They had slept together the night before, and did not make love. But he damn sure knew that when he kissed her, she knew he meant it. He pulled her close and deeply in a kiss, until they pulled away from each other breathless and panting. Her lips were swollen after, and he could not resist licking them and touching them with his fingers while he was beside her. They slept fully clothed because they were both heavy with desire, and afraid to move. Each other’s movement was too arousing. But he watched her when he woke up, their bodies crossed with each other.
He remembered Eliza for a brief moment, and he fell beside Polly. Fell beside Polly, to savor her softness and newness. If they made love he thought, circling her tight nipple with his finger aimlessly, it would become an office affair.
People knew, people would know that they were together because he would not be able to hide it. He would need to touch her every time he saw her. He would need to mark her, and let all the other men there know that she was his. Men at the job used to tease him, how did he manage to get only Polly’s ire? They informed him what they would like to do to Polly…he knew from the moment he saw her how beautiful she was, but she resisted him. He realized now that he had harbored a crush on her all this time, but suppressed it because she did not seem interested in him.
But now beside her, or on top of her like a scene from Blow-Up, just being in the same room with her… Breathing her air, experiencing the world beside her…Oscar was beyond drunk with desire, he turned and kissed her neck. He knew she liked that, and he loved the way that she offered her neck to him. Like he was a vampire but instead of drawing blood, he gnawed on her desire, until he needed the quench of his desire and kissed her mouth. He loved the taste and feel of her. The moistness of her lips on his lips, on his fingers.
The entire office would know if they did, the moment they were together.
He closed his eyes tighter, and just savored this kiss.
This kiss.

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blow-up via wikipedia commons

“Did you see him?”
“Yes,” Eliza answered Rafe. It was weird for him to ask her if she had seen Oscar yet, but that was the reason why she was able to go to Shanghai in the first place.
She was sitting in the airport, her legs and ankles crossed like a picture she saw of Anne Sexton. Jet lag was not usually something that affected her in a really bad way, she knew the exhaustion that she felt was from her time in Shanghai.
“But you are in Paris now?”
“Yes.”
Yes, she thought to herself.
Eliza was happy that she had gone to Paris after Shanghai for work. It gave her time to decompress. Time to not think about Shanghai, sitting in the bar that looked like fire with Oscar first time that she realized that she loved him. Bars were so essential in the development of her relationship with Oscar. They had met at a bar, and she last saw him at a bar.
She could not think about the last time right now, and there was no work to throw herself into yet.
“And you will call me when you are all settled in?”
“Yes.”
“Liza, are you okay?”
His affectionate short name for her over the phone, she knew it was going to be hard to hide her feelings from him. Rafe knew her over the phone, in the dark.
But she was going to pretend.
“Yes baby, why I called you. Your voice makes me feel loved.”
“I love you.”
“I love you,” she rushed, her eyes blurred with tears.
She scrolled on her phone after she got off with Rafe, wiped a tear on it as she tried to call the car service she used there. The number should have been in her contacts, but she had never put it there and always had to look it up. While she was looking it up, she saw something about a motor taxi and clicked on it. It was cheaper than her car service, would probably get her to Paris faster and she just wanted to do something that would take her out of herself.
When her taxi arrived, the guy got off of his motorcycle, took off his helmet and smiled. Eliza inadvertently licked her lips. He handed her a helmet, and she told him in a rush where she wanted to go.
He smiled at her they way that most Parisians did when she spoke in French.
“You are American!” he said in heavily accented French.
“Oui!”
“I speak some English. I will help you get to your hotel, and you will help me practice English?”
“Sure,” Eliza smiled as he bent over to pick up her luggage, and put it in the compartment on the motorcycle that could hold it.
They got on the bike.
“Are you ready?” he asked her as he put on his helmet.
“Yes, as I will ever be!”
He smiled, and they were on their way. Eliza closed her eyes at first, and then the the rush came over her from France flying by her, and at this point the closeness of her driver. His hair was curly and shaggy where the helmet was not covering it, and his scent was of a cologne that she did not recognize the notes of. The scent however was a sweet harmony for her senses. They did not talk a lot, but there was a smattering of English and French coming from both of them. Coming into to Paris like this was magnificent.
When she got to her hotel, they took off their helmets outside.
“You are here.”
“Oui,”
“You did not get to help me speak a lot of English.”
“No, I did not,” she smiled.
“Here is my card, in case you have time while you are here…or of course when you are going back to New York you said?”
She nodded, she felt so nervous because he was so good looking that she could not speak a word. English or French.
“Well, you have it.”
Eliza closed her fist about it.
“I do. Merci beaucoup.”
He smiled as he got on his motorcycle, and put on his helmet. His smile filled her in a way she had needed to be filled when she left Shanghai, and which she had sought when she called Rafe.

Adrien’s card would have burned a hole in Eliza’s purse, she had not forgotten him for her whole trip. She did not want to call him, but she knew that she had to.
When he arrived, he looked even sexier than when she had first met him. His hair was a bit wilder, and he had stubble on his face.
“What time is your flight?”
“Cinq.”
“You have time to kill?”
“I thought I would help you practice English.”
Adrien smiled.
She led him through the curtains that divided the lobby, and down the stairs to the door marked “Privé,” which he pressed her up against. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the stubble on his face, loving the burn, needing it to make her feel alive and know she was doing this.
The roughness of his stubble and his coarse hands under her dress,made her growl low in her chest. She did not know how to say condom in French, so she frisked him. Her hand grabbing at his ass, trying to feel for any signs that he might have one. He dangled the condom with a laugh above her face like mistletoe, and she laughed deeper than she usually did.
And what followed was more excitement than when the ball dropped in Times Square for New Year’s.

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times square via wikipedia commons

Polly was somewhere between wake and sleep, thinking to herself that Oscar did not really know her.
She did not tell him about the time that she was dressed as Little Bo Peep, she had kept it a seductive secret, and he had went along with it. But now she remembered that time, and driving with the guy that was with her.
Driving down a road that barely had any lights. All he could do was drive down the yellow line as the headlights shined on it. She was in the backseat of the car, quiet and dazed. There was a drop of blood on her white Little Bo Peep costume. Her finger kept caressing the tiny wound on the inside of her arm as she looked out of the window at the woods. She careseed where she had been opened, her flesh a tiny slice because Colin wanted to taste her. Taste her blood. The first time he told her, she thought he was joking. But when she had a paper cut, and he sucked her cut so slowly and sensually she knew otherwise.
She thought that Goth had to have a certain kind of look. But Colin did not have that. He was gentle and tender with her, but it was not her lifestyle.
But she let him cut her, and suck from her. She felt giddy that night driving with him, and it was a cute thing to do when she was young. They were young and in love and it was wonderful while it lasted.
She met him years later, an eclectic art buyer as a potential client…it was different that time when they were both adults, but she was too driven to really be committed to him, Colin accepted that of her.
He still liked to taste her, he was the only man she had ever been with who enjoyed making love when she had her period. No one else had ever liked that. But he did. His blood lust at that time was more incidental.
He was the one who loved de Lempickas, and he was still a client. But now he lived in Paris.
She was standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, and saw Colin. His intense face studying hers. When he touched her, so softly she was not even sure that he was touching her, her face got very damp. It was snowing and it felt like Christmas, but her face was more moist than the falling snow would have made it. She thought she was bleeding, but he was bleeding instead when he held his hand before her and she shook in the dream then opened her eyes.
Awake again, she touched her face, and all she felt was the soft drool that was on the side of her mouth and she could smell Oscar’s warm scent. She looked at him, and he stared at her. She smiled, as he touched her face the same way that Colin had touched her face in the dream. Shivering in a way that she played off more as desire, she remembered how every time she dreamt about Colin he would return in her life. Especially if she felt him the way that she felt him in her between and actual dream state.
But she was with Oscar now, Oscar who made her feel light, and who probably would never go to that blood place with her. That vampiric desire that she felt with Colin, a dark desire that she loved incredibly but that she could never live with forever.
Blood was not forever.
Polly caressed Oscar and his warmth was so alive, so lovely. She pressed her body to him, and he held her close.
“You are pure as the driven snow,” he said to her.
Kissing him, his taste was lovely. Light. She flicked her tongue as if trying to catch snow as a child, returning his kiss.
Not quite, she thought, not quite so pure as that. But she loved that he saw her that way…now…

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highway via duck duck go images

Eliza was on her stomach on Oscar’s bed. She could smell him on the sheets, in the room.
That he was there, that he had been in the hotel room. Mindlessly she kissed the mattress, ran her fingers over the sheet like it was the path of Oscar’s chest hair. Balling the sheet in her first, she remembered herself.
It was wrong for her to be upset that he was with someone else, that she expected Shanghai to be their place because it had been so magical for them when they were there before. Even with Fiona in the middle of her crisis…
Fiona had not been surprised that she was going to Shanghai, nor was Rafe. Oscar was the reason that she had agreed to open their relationship in the first place, because she could not put away what she felt for him. Other things had happened since then. Marcus…she was not sure about that, but it was something she was not thinking about when she opened her relationship up. She was thinking about Oscar, why she had come to Shanghai now.
It had never occurred to her that Oscar would be with someone else. He was with someone else and she was lying on his bed in his hotel room alone, waiting for him.
On her back, her fingers ran absently over her own chest. Her fingers caressing her breasts, their softness soothing to her while she waited.
There was nothing else she could do.
The beep of him coming into the room, made her slip her hand out of her blouse where she had been fully caressing her own breast imagining it was Oscar doing it.
He stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her.
“I feel awkward, like I should say sorry. But there is nothing for me to be sorry about,” he sais
Eliza let her feet touch the ground.
“I am sorry, I can leave Oscar–”
Oscar put his hands on her shoulders when she stood up in front of him.
“Don’t guilt trip me Eliza.”
Eliza wanted to glare at him with hatred, but being close to him…it was all she had been fueled with coming to Shanghai. Why the long flight was manageable. Thinking about him looking at her, touching her.
She stared at him.
“I missed you.”
He pushed a strand of hair out of her face.
“You did not tell me you were coming.”
“If I had, would it have made a difference? Would I have found you alone?”
“Are you alone in New York? Were you ever alone any of the time that we were together? I have to be celibate while you are open?”
Eliza picked up her purse, and buttoned her blouse. She knew he was right, but she did want him to only be with her. It was awful, but that was what she wanted. Not another woman making Shanghai not their place anymore.
“I said I can go,” she snapped.
Oscar smirked.
“Go.”
Eliza walked past him, saw that she had misbuttoned her blouse and stopped to fix it.
“You’re going to let me go?”
“You said you wanted to go twice. You came here Eliza, you know your own agenda.”
“I do.”
She walked to the door, before her hand was on the knob, she turned to him.
“I know I am wrong, but it is how I feel. Can you imagine how I feel?”
She stared at him.
“And what about me? I was with someone new and you came to Shanghai. Our place. How do you think I feel?
“Look, here is my card. Call me. I know now is not the time, but I am here. I am here…”
Eliza stared at the Shanghai skyline, that was almost as familiar to her as the New York one. Familiar skylines and unfamiliar emotional territory.

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shanghai via fortykay.com