Page 50 of When We Believed in Mermaids

It’s dawn when I awaken again. Buttery light spreads across the water beyond the windows, splashes into the high-rises around us. Within, Javier is sleeping next to me, his arms flung out in front of him, his face in repose. Beneath the sheet, he is naked, and I lift it up to look. It’s a gorgeous body.

“Do you like it?” he says in a soft voice.

“Quite a bit,” I say. I glance at him but don’t lower the sheet, instead making a show of staring. It stirs me, and I can tell it’s stirring him too. I smile and drop the sheet. “Good morning.”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you cheerful in the mornings?”

“Not usually. I can be downright surly. How about you?”

“I have been working nights a very long time, and in Madrid that can be very late indeed.”

“You haven’t told me what you do,” I say.

He lifts up the sheet, looks at my body, and makes a softooofbefore he moves closer. He tosses the sheet away from us with irritation and goes back to his task. I let him, enjoying the tilt of his back, long and muscular as he examines me.

“Your body is a wilderness,” he says softly, and brushes his fingers over my ribs, my belly, slides between my thighs, kisses my belly button, continues down my leg. His buttocks, strong and high, are in my reach, and as he explores my curves, I shape my palm around his and slide down the back of his thighs, dipping between his legs to hear his rumbling. I laugh softly, and he rises up on his knees, offering himself.

I reach for him. “Full-frontal nudity. I like it.”

And now, we make love more playfully, taking time to stop and admire and ask with a glance or a sound if this or that, that or that, is the best thing. He lingers over my body, stroking and kissing, and as I imagined, his mouth is everywhere, all over me, and I return the exploration, and then we’re falling into each other as the sun slides into the room through glass doors.

Lying against him in the puddles of sunshine, thoroughly and deeply sated, I realize what I never understood about grown-up men is how much more they would have learned about women’s bodies on their journey.

Or perhaps it’s only Javier himself, who raises his head and leans on his elbow, brushing my hair out of my face with one hand, carefully tucking it behind my ears. An ache hits my chest at that, but I don’t move. Light cascades over his powerful nose and backlights his hair, and there are marks on his shoulder from my biting him. I touch one spot. “Sorry about that. I got carried away.”

He blinks slowly, moves his thigh against mine. “I don’t mind. It will warn the women away.”

“Do they come at you in droves?” I ask with some amusement.

“Not so much as when I was a little younger, but yes, still a lot.”

I give him a frown. “Are you being serious right now?”

He lifts one index finger and rolls sideways to pick up his phone, opens an app, and then shows me the screen. On it is an album cover and a photo of a man bending over his guitar. A woman in the shadows stares at him. The title of the album is in Spanish, but I can read the name, Javier Velez, and I recognize those hands. “This is the work that keeps you up late?”

He nods almost sadly.

I look around the enormous suite of rooms, recognition dawning. This is a very expensive suite. “Are you famous?”

“Not here.” He leans on his hand, splendidly naked, and I wonder if anyone from the office buildings is looking in, seeing his well-shaped behind.

I grin. “Are you famous somewhere?”

“Perhaps a little. In the Latin world, they know my songs.”

The idea sinks in slowly, and rather than making me nervous, it eases my worry. If he’s some big star, then I’m a distraction for him just as he is a distraction for me. “I suppose I will have to listen to more than one song next time.”

He dips a finger over my navel, draws a circle around it. “Will you come tonight?”

I rise up, pushing him backward and spreading my body over the top of his like icing on a cake, my hands on his arms. “I might have to shop for something nicer to wear.”

He lets himself be frosted with me, his eyes shining, his lips ever so faintly tilted into a smile. “I like the red dress.”

I kiss his neck. “I’ll find another red dress.” I crawl up to kiss him, long and slow, enjoying the plumpness of his lips, the scent of his skin. “You smell better than any man I’ve ever met.”

“Do I?”

Burying my face into his neck, I inhale deeply. “Like the ocean and dew and...something.” I try to figure it out, something spicy, but I can’t pull it in, and then we are switched, he icing the cake of my body, his hands in my hair.