Versed in Desire Read Free Page A

the visceral rhythm I really wanted.
    When I came back an hour later with a salad, Tony’s door was closed and Luke was gone. A dark-chocolate cupcake with fudge frosting sat on my desk, a scrawled note propped against it.
    I dream about voluptuous.
    I made the treat last all afternoon. With each bite I imagined Luke’s deft fingers spreading the icing on my lips, my nipples, his tongue licking it off again. Heat slicked my thighs as I played out my own turn with the icing, painting the broad head of his cock with rich chocolate, lapping it off while I looked up into eyes the same color as the cupcake.
    When I got home I sat down to work on the sixteenth draft of the recalcitrant poem. An hour later, frustrated, I set it aside and tried to channel some of the longing seething inside me into erotic verse. Two hours later, my head full of images I was unable to articulate, I went to bed, where I tossed. And turned. Around midnight, I kicked free of my tangled sheets and went to stare out my front window, past the pools of streetlight illuminating Avenue A to the still trees of Tompkins Square Park.
    The break at the party wasn’t as clean as I’d thought it was. Luke and I had unfinished business and that left me in limbo—I wanted him but shouldn’t have him. The risks were simply too high. It was bad enough that I’d ruin my reputation at Cooper Bensonhurst. Worse, I could lose my job. Even worse, I could cause tension between lifelong best friends.
    Limbo’s a dark place for an artist. I couldn’t, but I ached. I shouldn’t, but oh, how I needed . I was up in the air, literally at work, metaphorically with Luke, increasingly disconnected from the ground of my being.
    The worst risk of all? Choosing Luke and having it mean nothing to him.

Chapter Two
    November…
    I’d made a choice.
    For months I’d chosen to live, to work, to create, to simply exist without having Luke. Work weeks passed, spreadsheets and presentations, lunch orders and travel arrangements punctuated by fever dreams of Luke and me doing what we hadn’t done. Weekends should have been better, with free time, friends, the beauty of fall in Manhattan. Instead, they were somehow worse, a slow crawl through longing to the ache of Monday.
    I’d made a choice, and I suffered the consequences.
    Things might have continued this way indefinitely if the Yankees hadn’t won the World Series, giving Tony sufficient reason to throw another party. Of course I declined the invitation. But come Saturday night I was strung tight. Aching. Disconnected from anything that mattered to me. You didn’t need battering rams and catapults to destroy fortifications. The simple drip drip drip of water against stone would do it, if allowed enough time.
    I wasn’t made of stone.
    Before me lay another choice, remain in limbo or surrender to what felt inevitable. I consigned the consequences to Monday and dressed in black leather pants, a lacy, stretchy white camisole, and a tight velvet jacket. After pushing through the crowd at Tony’s front door I got a glass of wine the same shade of deep, rich red as my jacket. From my position by the floor-to-ceiling windows I watched Luke work his magic on another woman.
    The new face of J’Suis Cosmetics stood in front of him, her bony, bird-wing shoulder blades and white pants pale against Luke’s black sweater and dark jeans. He leaned negligently against the grand piano and gave every appearance of listening to the smoky-eyed, leggy model/actress, his head tilted attentively as she chattered away about God-only-knew-what, but when she threw back her head and laughed, the high-pitched giggles tinkling merrily under the eighteen-foot ceilings, he looked past her at me.
    You still want me to put you up against a wall.
    I heard the words as clearly as if he’d spoken them. My heart jumped and kicked for a few beats, straining against the prison of my ribcage. I