The Travelers by Chris Pavone Page B

one of his many aliases. In the Spanish Pyrénées, he was apparently calling himself Taylor Lindhurst.
    “I’m Marina,” she says, giving her own false name. But he doesn’t know that she’s lying. At least she hopes not.
    She’s sitting on the low wall that separates the horizontal plane from the vertical, terrace from cliff, sea from sky. She puts down her glass, unsteady on the rough surface, tendrils of vegetation springing from the cracks and air bubbles of the volcanic rock. She shakes his hand, wonders if he can feel that her palm is moist, sweaty. He holds her hand a second too long, the unmistakable come-on, just as expected.
    She has never done this before. She has come close—everyone like her has come close, she supposes. But she’s never followed through, never gone all the way. She knew she’d be nervous at this point, but not this much, and it’s probably not going to get easier if it takes longer.
    It’s time.
    She picks up her glass to take the final sip, step number fifteen, and to initiate the most crucial sequence, the point of no return. But just as she’s raising the glass she senses movement, and she glances over her shoulder.
    It’s the waitress again, being solicitous.
    Marina supposes that the expected thing would be to ask the waitress for a glass, so this man can share her wine. She wants this man to stay with her, but she can’t invite him. That would seem too forward, unnatural. Suspicious.
    She cuts her eyes to her bottle, then away.
    He notices. “Would you mind if I had a glass with you?”
    “Um.” She cocks her head: a drunk woman realizing she’s a drunk woman who’s maybe about to make a mistake. “Sure?”
    “
Signorina,
” he says to the waitress,
“un bicchiere, per favore?”
    So now she needs to wait. Waiting is most painful when you don’t expect to do it.
    MENDOZA
    There is of course a bottle of wine in his room, and candles to help Will explore every inch of Elle’s body, shoulders and breasts and neck and ears, the exquisite torture of extended foreplay, the lengths of her legs and the darkness between, straining and aching and finally exploding with spine-shuddering release.
    And then, spent, a reassuring glow from within that lasts just seconds before regret initiates its counterattack, marching into Will’s consciousness and establishing a forward position, accusatory and unforgiving, even as he’s still short of breath, lying there on the soft sheets in the large bed, with this naked nubility straddling him, slicked with a sheen of sweat, the scent of sex. Will can feel the burning of scratches on his back, the soreness of his overteased cock, which he knows will soon be aroused again, sucked again, fucked again, because they will stay awake till sunrise, engaging every conceivable position, indulging every fantasy and scenario, extracting every possible memory from one night, because this won’t—this can’t—ever happen again.
    He has imagined this moment before, the fantasy of a hotel bed on the other side of the world, with a beautiful woman who’s not his wife. The reality is far better than he imagined, while at the same time much worse.
    Elle climbs off him, and out of the bed, her body golden in the flattering flickering light. She pops a bottle top and pours herself a glass of water, drinks.
    Will spins off his side of the bed, unlocks the French doors, pushes them open, a refreshing breeze fluttering the curtains, cooling his overheated, over-aroused body. He looks out at the full moon, then falls back onto the bed.
    But she doesn’t. Instead, she’s rooting around on the floor. She finds her panties, pulls them on. Her bra too.
    “What are you doing?”
    She locates the tiny pile of her dress.
    “Why are you getting dressed?”
    She pulls the little black dress over her head, shimmies into it. “Well,” she says. “Thank you, Will Rhodes. I didn’t expect to enjoy that.”
    He doesn’t understand what she can possibly mean.