Part 1
Anne was the first to wake the next morning. Bright, easterly morning sun streamed through the open blinds. Hovering over the ocean horizon, the sun was gold like a dandelion, and it simply looked like it was going to be a much hotter day than the one before. In her grogginess, she didn’t remember where she was. She saw the unfamiliar laptop on the desk, the gray rollaway carry-on bag sitting on the armchair, unzipped with things that were most definitely not hers spilling out. She noticed her lack of night clothes, or any clothes for that matter, and noticed her underwear tossed to the side, just next to the desk.
Then it unfurled to her in a series of vivid flashbacks, flashbacks her body felt in the way that only underlying, undying arousal could do. The way the air had tingled in the elevator, where the tension between them had been strung so tight it could have been snapped with the slightest pressure from a butter knife. His breath on her neck, his lips on her—all over her. The way he pleasured her with his mouth between her legs like he hadn’t eaten in days, his hips making contact with hers and the way he filled her so deeply, so perfectly. The way she cried out his name. The way he held her as they fell asleep. And they had been…sober, right? Mostly. One glass of wine. That qualifies as sober, right? Oh God.
Oh, God, yes, don’t stop.
She rolled over to find Damien’s bare back to her, and for a few moments found herself contemplating how many years it had been since she spent the whole night beside a man, if ever. Laid on his side, Damien was still very much asleep. She watched his sides rise and fall, his breathing deep and steady with only the subtlest of snores. His brown hair was messy and fanned out across the pillow. His shoulders were broad, and while he was lean and not exceptionally defined, the muscles of his back and shoulder blades were molded clearly on his skin. She followed the curve of his spine until it disappeared underneath the sheets—sheets he had pulled much of over to his side—just above the dimples of the small of his back.
Typical, she thought in amusement of the sheet hoarding. But she had the greatest compulsion to just reach out and touch him. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. He looked handsome at rest like that. She glanced at the clock on the table—6:28. Too early.
He exhaled deeply, and his shoulder shifted slightly. “I can feel you watching me,” he said a few moments later, his voice grittier and deeper than she’d ever heard it.
“I thought the Mythbusters disproved that,” she replied, finally deciding to brush her fingers against his back, trailing down the ridges of his spine, one vertebra at a time. She watched as goosebumps trailed behind the path her fingers took.
“Smartass.” He rolled to face her, taking the hand she had touched him with and kissing her knuckles. He gazed into her eyes, a tired smile crossing his face. “Good morning, Anne from Domestic Marketing Department.”
“Good morning yourself, Damien from C-Suite.”
He scooted a little more towards her, placing his hand on her face, his thumb caressing her lips with the slightest of brushes. He moved it down her jaw, to her neck where he painted gentle circles in one place.
“There’s a hickey there, isn’t there?”
“Hm. I think it looks great on you, personally. I would go as far as to say you look beautiful with it, actually.”
She felt a sheepish blush burgeon across her face, then creeping lower, dragging warmth as it went.
“How many did you leave me?”
“Probably four. Maybe five.”
“Great. I only brought enough concealer for two hickies.”
“Pretty sure there’s a Walgreens around the corner, if you really want to cover them up that badly. But I’ll be offended.”
“Shut up.”
He kissed her then, gentler than he had the night before, but the degree of intent was the same—desire.
“I have morning breath, you know.”
More than morning breath, actually.
“The first of many, I hope.”
He… hopes.
He put his arm over her waist, grabbing her underneath the thigh. He deepened the kiss. In the daylight, it felt just as good to occupy the same space as her as it did in the dark. He slipped the hand between her legs. “Do you want to go again?” he asked playfully. “Because I want to.”
She did want to, biting her lip as his fingers explored her vulva again. She could feel her arousal already slicking his fingers. She closed her eyes, rocking against his hand. “We shouldn’t. We'll be late for—”
“For check-out? I'll pay the fee. For our flight? I'll rebook. For work?” Damien flashed a mischievous smile. “I'm sure your boss will understand.”
“Strike three, Damien from C-Suite. I’m calling HR.”
In response, one of his fingers curled gently into her, and she exhaled sharply in pleasurable surprise.
“That’s too bad,” he muttered, putting his mouth to her neck. “Does that feel okay?”
She nodded in response as excitement rippled from where his mouth met her neck, down her spine, until it reached the point of her body where Damien’s palm was already rubbing against her.
“Will my boss understand if I want to spend the afternoon at the beach?”
“Sex on the beach could be arranged, though I’m pretty sure it’s frowned upon if we do it during the day. Though Miami does have its kinky side.”
She groaned, but it was more in response to his wisecrack than the stimulation he had intensified. “Never understood sex on the beach.”
“How’s that?” He pulled his fingers out, and she almost protested. He licked them again, an act which was no less arousing now as it had been the night before. This time, however, it seemed more tentative and curious and even somewhat absent-minded rather than outright lewd and titillating.
“I can’t possibly taste that good.”
He looked at his hand and flexed his fingers, shrugging. “Good enough.” He flattened her onto her back.
“And I mean the concept of sex on the beach.”
“The concept?” He ducked under the sheet, planting kisses all the way down her body. Collarbone. Breasts. Each kiss was more and more exciting.
“It seems awfully messy. Where are you going?”
It was rhetorical.
“I suppose.” Navel. Pubic bone. “And I’m going down on you, obviously.”
“I mean, if you get sand up in there, it doesn’t make pearls.”
“True,” he said, lifting her legs up, “but you’ve already got one.” He put his mouth on the “pearl” in question, already innervated and ready for him.
God. She moaned in response.
“Did I find it?” he said, the smug smile of his own amusement could be heard in his tone.
He did indeed. She groaned as he kissed her clit, then rolled it between tongue and tooth. His hot breath tickled her sensually between her thighs.
“Smartass,” she said, biting her lip.
“Smart. Ass. Two words.”
“Gives a whole new meaning to pearl diver.”
He laughed, a gentle, warm sound like a fresh pour of hot coffee, and she giggled along with him.
Erik’s bedroom advice, which apparently had not failed Damien yet with Anne, was scrolling like a ticker tape through his mind, so in a less feverish space, he asked a question he had been taught to ask since his last partner: which oral technique she liked. She told him, and he obliged and acknowledged, responding by doing just what she preferred.
“Would you come up for air, pearl diver? We have things to do.” She didn’t want him to stop at all. She hoped he would ignore her.
There was a long, delightful suck on her flesh, one that pulled her into a moan, before he said, “Yeah, each other.”
So far, it was working. Her breathing was starting to get heavy, the ache of desire swelling within her.
“You do taste good.”
“That’s your dick and the pheromones talking,” she said through a deep breath he had drawn out of her. Her fingers were back in his hair, her pelvis oscillating like a wave against him. His one hand reached up and squeezed her breast, the other wrapped around one of her thighs, resting gently in the space between her navel and where his mouth was playing. The tickle of his teasing tongue on her labia was somewhere between pleasurable, anticipatory agony, and ecstasy.
She wasn’t sure if he agreed or disagreed with her remark, not that it actually mattered, but all she knew is he said it with his mouth full and the vibrations from it felt so good. She was grateful for the way he asked her for directions on what felt the best, and even more grateful still when he listened to her.
She let him stay there for a while longer, reveling in the way he navigated her body, swimming in the way he pleasured her again. And he genuinely seemed to enjoy being between her legs like that. Despite being very aroused, nearly on the precipice, she eventually pulled the sheet up, looking at him from under the white tent, nudging him with her knee. She was saving the remaining arousal for the intercourse she knew, and would ensure, was inevitable.
“Come up here, you.”
He obliged, not without an adorable pout, crawling up next to her and laying on his back again. She rested her head on his chest, and he rested his head on hers, while she twirled her fingers through the triangle-shaped thatch of chest hair between his pecs. His fingers began to absently and tenderly trace her skin, beginning at her hip to the swell of her breast, then back down again like she was a book of braille needing to be read.
She could hear the rhythmic drum of his heartbeat as she took in details of him she hadn’t seen the night before—the lightbulb shape of his navel, and the narrow happy trail started just above it and that fanned out from it into the diamond shape of his pubis.
She loved the cut of his hip bones, and the small cafe au lait birthmark on the right one. The slightly raised red lines were stripes down his sides where her nails had marked him the night before.
The rest of Damien, much like his back, was unobtrusively sculpted; he was softer around the abdomen and hips, lacking the crisp definition of someone who frequented a gym. But the gentle lines of his muscles were embossed on his skin. And his arms and hands were big, and strong, and so very attractive.
He was imperfect. He was beautiful, achingly so.
Noticing it for the first time, she traced her fingers over the dark ink on the left side ribcage—the one and only tattoo he seemed to have. It was a vertical band about five inches in length and an inch wide. It was geometric and almost of futuristic letterforms that she couldn’t quite see from her angle. “What’s this?” she asked, glancing up at him. “It almost looks cyberpunk.”
He looked down to where her fingers were trailing. “It’s an ambigram. Reads as Taurus from one angle and Gemini from the other.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Astrology? That’s unexpected.”
He chuckled, a sound that rumbled pleasantly in his chest. “While applicable, I suppose it’s not really about the signs themselves.”
“So what’s the deeper meaning?”
There was a long silence as he found his words. “It’s what they represent,” he said after a moment. “Erik and I got this tattoo together. To me, it’s a reminder that there are always multiple ways of looking at what shapes you. In this instance, how we’ve shaped each other.”
Anne’s fingers paused as she absorbed his words. “That’s quite profound.”
His voice took on a softer, more reflective tone. “He’s more than my brother; he’s my best friend. He’s my counterpart. My literal twin.”
“Twin? In all of this time I’ve known you and of all the conversations we’ve had, how has this never come up? You mean to tell me that it’s actually two of you smart asses?” The quickest of fantasies flashed through her head.
“Fortunately there’s only one. Please stop thinking about an Eiffel Tower. Anyone but him,” he chided playfully, taking her hand, sucking her fingers, and spitting into her palm before putting it over his cock—sitting partially at attention since his snorkeling excursion between her legs. At his silent request, she began to stroke slowly.
“That's gross, by the way.”
“Oh, now you want to start complaining about an exchange of body fluids?” he admonished with a smirk, spitting into his hand again and giving a quick squeeze of her breast. “We’re fraternal, and don’t look anything alike.”
“Not sure that’s for you to decide. Hold up, you said you’re twins, but you also said that there’s two signs here.” He was starting to firm up beneath the pressure of her movements.
“Mhm. We’re sixteen minutes apart and were born on two different days and under two different star signs. I’m a Taurus, he’s a Gemini.”
“You are most definitely a Taurus. Hardworking, practical, stubborn…”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Gentle, sensual…”
She gave his inflating dick a squeeze of her own. He grunted in delight, then continued. “Where I am reserved, he’s outgoing. Where I’m cautious, he’s spontaneous. We balance each other, yet challenge one another. This tattoo—I guess it’s a bit like what you and I have started here, isn’t it? Something that might seem simple or impulsive, but carries a lot of weight.”
She let that sink in, the comparison not lost on her. Their actions, like the ink permanently etched into his skin, was a series of decisions that would define them in ways they didn’t yet fully understand.
He shifted slightly, pulling her closer. “You know, you could see the tattoo a lot better from both directions if you straddled me.”
So she gave in to him, gladly, interlocking their bodies in sex far more casual and less rapacious than the night before, with equal determination in their quest to give pleasure and enjoy the company of the other. He felt so different buried in her from beneath; he felt fuller, and more complete. She loved the way he shuddered and grunted from her labors, her hands planted sturdily on his chest and the headboard for leverage and his hands on her hips and curve of her ass as she moved against him. They helped each other finish in their own time, ending up sitting against the headboard with his hands wrapped around her waist and hers around encircling his neck. Their mouths were locked together, panting and tasting the passion that had swaddled them since that incendiary moment in the elevator the night before. They separated only in a moment of panic when housekeeping opened the door, yanking the sheets around themselves in a futile attempt at modesty, shouting “Sorry! Still here!” and then in hysterics as soon as the door closed.
They sat there in tranquil silence, holding each other. With her head on his shoulder, she got that overwhelming feeling of needing to cry again—then realized she was. The warmth she felt was not just the result of being post-coital. It was a different type of warmth, an emotional intensity that was alien to her. It was a feeling of safety, of comfort. Of ease. But also there was an undercurrent of fear—of the feelings she’d had, ones that were now a lot more real and complicated now that sex had been introduced into their dynamic, and that was something that couldn’t be undone. A hot tear fell down her cheek, landing on his shoulder. It was unclear if he noticed—he didn’t say a word at all, but the way he held her tighter said a lot more than words would have.
“We have to talk about this,” she said quietly after a while. “We can’t just fuck and call it a day. We need to talk about what this was. What this is.” She didn’t quite know how that was already a loosely-shared understanding of what had happened between them, but she just knew. She knew that to the both of them, last night had been needy, eager, carnal sex rooted in that compounding of tension between them. It had been an intense, cat-five hurricane of hot desire. That much was undeniable. But the way they had just been intertwined felt an awful lot like what could be described as “making love.” It was sensual and connecting, and dare she say… romantic. She heard him in her head, The first of many, I hope.
He pulled back from her. “I know. It doesn’t have to happen now. We can do it on the plane, which we actually should try to catch if we haven’t already missed it.”
“I don’t want to have this conversation in a public space.”
Truth be told, she didn’t want to have the conversation at all. Conversations led to heartbreak, and a power dynamic like theirs would almost certainly end in one.
“Okay. We won’t. We’ll have it when we get back to Albany. Gives us time to cool down and think about it, although I’m admittedly not sure how I’m supposed to cool down after our vigorous sessions. I'm outrageously horny and I just want more of you.” He kissed her collarbone tenderly in the same place he had already left a mark.
“Was two times this morning not enough?”
“Absolutely not. I feel we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’ve admittedly been thinking nonstop about bedding you since San Francisco.”
“I knew you were being weird that weekend.”
“You opened the door in a bathrobe, still wet. What was I supposed to do besides get very, very acquainted with my hand that weekend?”
“Naughty man,” Anne giggled, then leaned in to whisper in his ear. “So did I.”
He gave her a peck on the lips, something sweet and affectionate, and familiar. Butterflies were churning up a cyclone in her stomach.
In between rounds, their skin tacky, Anne kissed Damien on the neck before breaking into a series of nervous giggles.
“What?” Damien had asked.
“I’m just thinking about that whole thing about cameras being hidden in hotel rooms. What if someone saw all that?”
Something very pointed flashed behind his eyes—eye—something wicked. “We gave them a good show.” He tilted his head back just an inch, and the corner of his mouth was curled in a nearly imperceptible way, and his eyebrow had the slightest lift. “Let them watch.”
Anne felt a hefty weight plummet from her chest, to her stomach, to low in her pelvis where it swam.
The room continued to brighten with the climbing sun, and after sharing a few more lazy kisses, there was a silence that settled once again between them—reality beginning to impose itself on their secluded bubble.
She sighed and begrudgingly peeled herself from him, climbing out of his lap, picking up her discarded underwear and sliding them over her legs. The rest of her clothes followed suit.
He propped himself on his elbow. “I think I like you better naked,” he said, watching her keenly with the lewd expression he’d been sporting all morning. “Are we not showering together?”
She gnawed on her lip. “We’d never make it home if we did.”
“Come on,” he egged. “I think it is only fair that you get to see me soaking wet after I got you soaking wet.” His smile was mischievous, and despite herself, she flushed bright red, which only made him grin wider.
“You've got a rather filthy mouth hidden under all those bespoke suits.”
“You didn't seem to mind my mouth at all.” The confident quirk of his eyebrow told her that he planned to use it again.
She hadn’t minded in the slightest.
Once the walls of Jericho had come down, uninhibited, he was so good at the flirting thing.
“Besides,” she added, choosing to outwardly ignore his latter remark, “my clean clothes and necessities are…” She tossed her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of her room.
All he offered in response was a grunt, his nose marginally scrunched in dissatisfaction.
She sat on the edge of the bed beside him, her own expression sobering, discomfort settling like a stone in the bottom of her stomach. A few long moments of silence gathered like puddles between them. Eventually, Anne raised the doubt she'd been running from all morning. “Regardless of what this is, can we agree this wasn’t a mistake?”
His eyes searched hers, a mix of relief and something unreadably intense flickering through them. “No, not a mistake. Impossible,” he affirmed softly, giving her hand a squeeze.
She nodded, and inexplicably understood that a weight had been shed for both of them.
“But what about ‘Todd?” he jest, fracturing the moment of solemnity with a narrowing of the eyes and a much more obvious lift of the eyebrow in a gesture of hesitant-but-playful curiosity.
“You remember Todd?”
“How could I forget about Todd? He’s competition. Is? Was?”
“Todd is a nothingburger.”
“Does he know that?”
“No,” she conceded with a pang of guilt, “probably not.”
Damien’s expression was a subtle one of triumph. “You should probably let him come see he’s been replaced.”
“Has he, now?” she asked, standing again. “You seem awfully confident for someone who I just told we were waiting to have this discussion.”
“Call it a horny man’s intuition,” Damien replied coolly before a cheeky grin opened wide across his face. It was a look that made her heart skip. “A horny man who gets almost everything he wants, I might add.”
“Because you bought it or because you earned it?” she teased.
The grin faltered as her humbling remark landed as intended.
“Oh the disrespect,” she remembered his voice had come through the phone, feigning offense.
She reached her hand into her back pocket, pulling out her own room key, waving it in his direction. She planted a featherlight kiss on his nose. “Okay. Now get dressed, horny man.”
She strode off towards the door, casting one last glance over her shoulder at him before it closed behind her.