She had a lot of fantasies. OK, not exactly. More like forcefulness against ... More like wild animal power overtaking delicate shyness. Taking it by force. It should go like this: "Please, could we go a little more slowly?" Or "I've never done this before." But there would be no waiting. She dreamed about breaking into a place where emotions were soft and unprotected. He'd just slowly put his hand over hers and hold it with a tentative strength. She would try to unbutton his shirt -- no, his fly. He'd hesitate, as if he had an embarrassing mark on his chest, right near his left nipple, or just under his pubic hair that he wouldn't want her to see right away. A scarlet letter; a yellow arm band. He'd give her a kind of frightened look. No, a vulnerable look ... like, if she did what she was planning -- reached into his pants, slid her hand down his moist belly, followed the hairline and felt around, softly, and took hold -- his whole inner planet might go meteor and disintegrate.
Yeah, right.
Guys are not coy; "can't a guy, bla, bla," she thought as she smoothed her hands across her stomach. She was wet. The stretchy band of her lace-patterned underwear made a firm bridge across her navel. She pulled up her nylons. And as she rose, the band of her undies slid down to where her pubic line would have been -- before she shaved it into a neat little triangle. Oh, she knew how to play the vixen, the hot tart, the ripened fruit ready for picking. She was planning to be all that for Marco. Of course, he would take the lead. She did think he was the bomb -- otherwise she wouldn't be going through this contorted dressing ritual. Painting her toe nails; smoothing oils up and down her long legs and feeling ever so carefully for any missed stub of hair that might spoil the silky feel of her legs against his skin when they wrapped around him. Still, sometimes she just wished she could feel like the brute instead of the doll; like the occupier instead of the oil-rich territory.

The wining and dining of her first date with Marco was all she'd expected from the way he had wooed her -- confident, forward. They worked together at the magazine. He was in layout; she in editing. When he spoke to her, he had the air of a recording artist speaking to his band. She didn't mind it. She knew --they were equals. They spoke two different dialects in the land of Magazine, but they had each earned the same degree of respect and position in their departments. So though he could have talked to her as one artist to another, the fact that he didn't, that he came at her all cock-sure, didn't bother her. She knew deep down that he felt out of place in editorial. That was enough. No need to rub his nose in it. Never need to rub anyone's nose in their weaknesses.

He asked her out just after he'd told her she'd have to cut the cumulative word count of her columns down by about a thousand words. Not good news. The order had come from Advertising; he was just the messenger, not the ax weilder. And he could simply have forwarded the email from Advertising. But he was giving her the heads up, as a favor. When he showed her the mock-ups, he stood very close over her shoulder, pointing. She wished she'd been wearing a silky low cut blouse in which every slight movement of her body came across as a shimmer of breasts. She smelled his cologne -- very subtle. She liked subtlety.

"I did everything I could do to save your space," he said, pointing at she-cared-not-what in layout symbols.

"What was that again?" she asked. No. She hadn't decided to care about the layout symbols. She just wanted to watch the veins in his brown fingers as he pointed. They flickered when a finger moved. And she liked the line of his fingers.

"Does that mean I take your breath away?" he was in the middle of saying.

"What?" she tried to remember what he was saying. Who gets that distracted over fingers?

"Did the idea of having dinner at La Paz with me take your breath away or are you trying to think of a way out of it?" he said.

Some part of her had heard it, dinner at LaPaz. Marco's expression was open, warm, and he wasn't doing the rejection shuffle -- looking away or busying himself.

"Dinner at LaPaz?" she repeated, dumbly. How do you miss a babe asking you to dinner? Uh, dumb blonde, she scolded herself. But really, it was that she'd always just known he'd get around to asking her out.

"You and me," she clarified, not meaning for it to come out sounding like a challenge -- but it did.

"Uh, yeah. You do eat dinner on occasion?"

A nasty comeback popped into her head and she thought how easy it would be for her to throw him off balance, him and his cockiness. But that was only because she'd spied his underbelly once or twice and knew he wasn't as cocky as all that. She didn't want to make him feel off-balance, but she did want to yank his head back by the sandy brown hair of his quasi-Euro hair cut, and force his mouth open with her tongue, and pry and lick the soft, parts as they recoiled reflexively.

"C'mon. My treat," he said. He hadn't lost the cockiness. She was glad. He could probably smell her hunger. And that hunger wasn't about dinner, either.

"Yeah, sure," she said. "Dinner sounds good to me."

And that was it. Simple. Like they'd both already known.

When he picked her up, he wasn't dressed for the office. The suit was Italian, pants all about fluid movement. The jacket fell, swirled, and swooned over his chest and hips, but under it a gray broad-necked sweater said, I'm not a stuffed shirt; I'm so, so warm.

He ordered the wine; he knew the waiter, asked for special seats, made recommendations. All the stuff the urbane guide, "the man" would do.
Of course, she was enjoying all that. She knew he approved of her bare shoulders, the amount of exposed leg, the extra glimpse of thigh peeking from a slight slit up the side of her black dress, which hugged her breasts so that if the air grew chill he could see her nipples.

She tried to stay with the enjoyment of it all, but her mind slipped off to where she would unbuckle his belt, whip it dramatically through the loops and drop it on the floor. She would push him back, then, against the wall, one hand firmly cupping him between the legs, the other pressed against his chest.
Nah, she thought. How it would really go: He would push her dress up and pull her panties down. She'd be exposed, but also free. He'd stand back for just a click to take it all in, the pale, nude skin where she had shaved, the small triangle of fur, the patient slit. He would put his fingers there. Heat would be coming from his neck; desire would blanch his face. And cool air would tickle her where she was wet and a little opened by his touch.

To be continued...