…She walks the way you would imagine a woman who looks like that would walk: like warm chocolate melting over cold ice cream…and it’s a show for everyone. Not just the fellas. Black silk clings for life on porcelain skin, but dies in a puddle around smooth ankles, professionally bound in thin leather straps atop thin spiky heels.

She’s blonde, but they always are.

I met her in Las Vegas but it wasn’t her home. I couldn’t imagine where a woman like this would come from; they don’t make’m like this back in Jersey. Her eyes were the color sapphires would be if you could almost make them not blue and everything about them was inviting. You can drown in eyes like that. I’ve know a few poor saps who dove into those pools and couldn’t handle the current. It happens. But it wasn’t her eyes that swallowed me up: it was that smile. Her lips parted the way she walked, and in an instant redefined “wicked grin.” The walk may have been for the crowd but that look was just for me. I could feel it in my chest, the way you feel between the time someone startles you and the moment you start to laugh about it. In luxurious limbo. Live. Die. Sink into the Earth. You don’t care, just so long as those lips keep smiling.

Wicked grin shifts to coy guise but it’s caught because I’m looking so hard I’ve forgotten how to blink. It breaks into genuine laughter and it’s nice: warm milk on a rainy night.

Oh yeah. This girl is trouble.

We find a quiet spot in the gray corner of a gray room and just look at one another. Nothing to say yet, but it’s coming. I try not to show her what she’s doing to me. It’s not her fault she moves in waves. Tanqueray and tonic for me. I’m going to need it. Cosmopolitan for her. She doesn’t need it, but orders it anyway. The alcohol comes and I drink the gin the way you would drink anything that you know is going to give you bad dreams but you are going to drink anyway. Her lips touch the glass like she’s seducing it. I know it and she knows it. The glass doesn’t know what the hell happened. The look on my face tells her more than I ever could. She bites her lip and replies without making a sound and all I can see for a brief moment is her, naked, her skin covered in a fine dew, blue-gray in the infinite light of the Vegas skyline at night. It creeps through the window shades like slinky animal, on the prowl and good at it.

The vision passes. They always do.

“Are you just going to stare at me like that?” she says, no contempt, only curiosity.

“I might,” I say. Hell, I actually might.

She leaves the empty cervesa on the glass table and I wonder for a moment just how long I’ve been gone. It passes. She’s standing up and the black silk is going with her. I start to stand but she’s there already, hand on my shoulder, keeping me in my place. Her body is so close to me now I can feel the warmth slipping off of her skin. She smells like subtle perfume and something original. I like that and it shows. Wicked grin again and before I know it the silk has a life of its own again and is climbing those porcelain legs.

It’s dark and I’m thankful. This show isn’t for anyone but me and I don’t intend to share it. I can’t see what the slippery material was hiding in the dark but I don’t need to see. She’s managed to find her way to my lap, sitting facing me, arms draped over my shoulders, body draped over me. No hiding how I feel now. No desire to hide it anyway. I swallow hard because I don’t know what else to do. She has me and I want her to have me. She’s biting her lip again and all I want to do is kiss it. I tell her as much and she sighs the way you think your soul would sigh if you could only hear it.

I do as I promised. I always do.

Her lips feel like glossy satin as they meet mine and a delicious quiver runs through my body, escaping my mouth as a sigh. I realize she’s moving her body against mine with intent. She’s warm and I’m warm and the whole damned room might know it soon but I don’t care. My hands find her back and wind their way up to her hair. It falls in golden arcs, shimmering as slats of light intersect its path and I can’t help to run my fingers through it. I could get lost in that hair, and I might but the rhythm of her hips is purposeful and it’s not lost on me. She’s quiet because she has to be but I don’t want her to be. Nothing should hold a woman like this back.

I’m losing focus but not control. Standing at the brink of a fantastic place, the edge of a great precipice where she holds me with ease. I like it here. Limbo again. Rhythm becomes deep pressure and gentle hands become claws. She bites down on my shoulder because there is just no other way not to scream. I’ll check later to see if I’m bleeding; this is no time for trivialities. We’re surrounded by a scent only two people can make and it’s intoxicating. Heavy eyelids couple with heavy breathing that’s slowly finding its way back to reality. She kisses my cheek and kisses my lips and then stands up. She lingers for a moment longer than she has to and I get a brief glimpse of damp things and this time the wicked grin is on my face. Silk slithers back into place and she walks out, a trailing finger caressing my shoulder and cheek as she heads for the door. I take a deep breath to clear my head as I stand on unsteady legs to follow her. Only a fool or a dead man wouldn’t.

Everyone in the room looks at us. They always do.