Versed in Desire Read Free

around his left wrist when his peers wore Cartier or Patek Philippe. His tie, seemingly subdued until you noticed the manga character at the bottom. The spot at the edge of his jaw he’d missed shaving. I substituted readily visible features for pectorals and shoulder blades, the ridges of his abdomen, the girth of his cock. Long accustomed to drinking in the world in order to create, I was searching for inspiration in the mundane.
    I couldn’t help myself. “Bony?”
    He shrugged, but a hint of color stained his cheekbones. “ Skeletal ’s probably a better word. Got a water for me?”
    I reached under my desk, opened the dorm-sized fridge that cooled beverages for Tony’s meetings and handed Luke a bottle.
    â€œThanks.” He cracked the plastic seal on the cap. “I thought you might be at the party.”
    I loved being desired. Not having might kill me, but all I could do was shrug. “I needed to write,” I said, adding, “I gather you had a good time,” to head off any questions about the work. Friday night I’d put two hours into the latest draft of a poem, then let it sit over the weekend while I ran errands in Alphabet City and walked through Tompkins Square Park. Rehearsing it under my breath this morning as I lurched and swayed in a crowded car on the 6 train, I realized it was marginal, lacking an original metaphor, a rhythm I could feel in my bones.
    Luke drained half the bottle with two long swallows, then said, “I’ve had better.”
    â€œThe magazine editor?” Or one of the God knows how many in between…
    He paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth and cut me a look. I bit my lip. Much more of this and I’d come across as the cock tease who wouldn’t put out but went psycho when the guy looked elsewhere. But honestly, the accessories editor hadn’t weighed a hundred pounds. Last weekend’s winner was skeletal . He brought me cupcakes the size of salad plates.
    Luke finished the bottle and deftly replaced the cap. “You were my best time,” he said, the words pitched for my ears alone. “Standing up, fully clothed, just talking. I liked the way we breathed together. Made me wonder how you’ll sound just before you come.”
    With that, I felt the wall hard against my shoulder blades. A rush of heated longing surged through me, all the more intense for three months of denial. Despite the bold come-on at the party, Luke in real life possessed a completely calm, rational demeanor, so when he said something outrageous, either for a laugh or to shock, it worked. He surprised you the way a good poem did, in the last stanza, with something so unexpected and delicious it split your mind wide open. To date he’d acted the part of a gentleman at the office, but he was rogue enough to walk through the door I’d opened.
    He spoke before my silence attracted attention from my cube-dwelling neighbors. “Hit me again,” he said, handing me the empty.
    I recovered and slapped a fresh bottle into his palm then followed him into Tony’s office. “I’m going to get some lunch,” I said as they unwrapped sandwiches and opened bags of chips at Tony’s conference table.
    Tony tossed me a wave. Luke smiled…and watched me slip out the door. I felt his gaze on my back as vividly as I’d felt the wall.
    I went for a walk, hoping that the tempo of heels-to-cement and rhythmic breathing would reconnect me to Manhattan. The long hours I spent suspended in weightless air, forty-four stories above the city’s turbulent beat, were slowly severing a bond I’d taken for granted during my less-structured days as a waitress and occasional temporary receptionist. Set hours and a steady paycheck improved my finances but left me with too little time on my feet, breath and pulse and movement merging with words and phrases to form poetry.
    Today I found the city a poor substitute for