he said again. His lips twitched to hold back a slight smirk that was struggling to be set free on his features. “Where could I find such a man?” Encouraged by her growing smile, he continued on this theme, making a pretense of looking around the room curiously. “I wonder where,” he murmured.
Maryanne decided to play along. She, too, began to look around the room, but more skeptically than he was doing. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “It doesn’t look promising.”
“Well, then,” he suddenly announced with conviction. “I guess I’ll just have to prove it to you myself !”
Maryanne threw her head back and laughed. Game, set and match! she thought, admiring how he’d handled it. But when she recovered, she looked him over doubtfully, one eyebrow raised high. “You?” she asked. But she was only teasing him, and they both knew it.
“Sure, why not?” he replied with a casual air. “I always say, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.”
“So who’s the lucky girl?” she now wanted to know.
“Ooh.” He tried to look a little put out. But he recovered quickly. “You realize the only way you’re ever going to know for sure whether or not I’m proving you wrong is if you’re right there, seeing it for yourself.”
“Mmm.” Now it was Maryanne’s turn to consider. “I guess that seems fair.” But truthfully, aside from this bantering, which was engaging and fun in and of itself, she really had no idea if he was serious about it. Was this just a line to get her home for the night? Probably. But what did it matter? If it was just a line, it was certainly one of the more original ones she’d encountered.
Just then, the waiter came to offer them dessert.
“You’ve barely touched your food,” Dan observed. “Was everything all right?”
“It was fine,” Maryanne told him. “I just wasn’t very hungry.”
He looked at her suspiciously for a moment, but didn’t say anything more. But she knew what he was thinking. People accused her all the time of being anorexic. But she loved her body the way it was.
As they left the restaurant together, she was suddenly filled with that jittery excitement that comes with a new romance.
“How about a little dancing?” Dan suggested. “Would you be into that?”
Maryanne smiled. “I would.”
She was not, however, a confident dancer, and she was pleased when Dan seemed content to slow-dance. Being close to him and having all of his warm, undivided attention directed at her as he led her across the floor acted like a cathartic for her libido. She felt ready and even eager for a more intimate embrace. But he appeared to be in no hurry and she, too, felt remarkably at ease and relaxed. Before she even realized it, they had danced and talked and laughed the night away.
She was surprised when he drove her back to the restaurant.
“Where did you say you were parked?” he asked.
“Oh! Uh, let me see.” She had fully expected him to want to take her home, or at least somewhere private. She was so taken aback by his casual manner that she momentarily forgot where her car was. She glanced at him, confused. She knew she had given him all the right signals. She was certain he was attracted to her. What on earth was going on? “It’s that street over there. Yeah, that one. And it’s the black car, a few blocks down.” She was completely flummoxed, and not a little disappointed.
“I had a wonderful time,” Dan told her, and she noticed that there was surprise in his voice. She wondered if he had felt some of the same misgivings about their date that she had.
“Me, too,” she said, blushing when it came out sounding like an accusation.
Dan chuckled knowingly. “Believe me,” he said with emphasis, “I would love nothing more…”
Maryanne stared at him, surprised that he had read her mind.
“Oh!” she said again. It was disconcerting—albeit refreshing—to be confronted with such honesty.
He parked behind her car and shut off his engine. “If I’m gonna get around this whole male instinct thing and prove you wrong, I’m going to need a strategy,” he told her. “My plan is to let the anticipation build for a while, you know, kind of work my way up to sex. I actually believe in the old adage that the harder you work for something the more you appreciate it.”
She stared at him, stunned. “Are you serious?” It was hard to tell because he was grinning at her.
“Sure. Kind of. Yes!” He opened his car door and got out. She didn’t even reach for her handle, knowing him well enough already to realize he was coming around to open her door for her. He even took her hand and helped her out of his car. But once she was outside, he blocked her from going anywhere. “Of course there’s another part to my strategy, too,” he admitted.
“Oh? And what might that be?” she asked, a little breathless.
“Well, I figure if I kiss you—and I’m not talking about a tight-lipped little prim-and-proper good-night kiss here, but a full-fledged, no-holds-barred, French, Italian and Portuguese all in one, make-out kiss—it’ll help build my anticipation and keep me on pins and needles until the next time I see you.”
“Portuguese?”
“Don’t question me,” he said, gently cupping her face in his hands.
She was still laughing when his lips touched hers, brushing them ever so lightly at first, but the laughter suddenly died in her throat, because he really did kiss her then, just like he said, with a full-fledged, no-holds-barred, French, Italian and Portuguese all in one, granddaddy of a kiss. She clung to his shoulders for support. His strong arms held her up as his hands moved possessively over her back and hips. His lips and tongue seemed to be consuming her. When he finally pulled away, she stared up at him in surprise.
And later, as Maryanne tossed and turned in her bed into the next morning, she wondered if it was for himself or her that he was building anticipation.
Whatever Dan’s intention, they were both eager to see each other again after that, and they made plans for the following night and then the night after that. It went on like this for several weeks. They spent more time together than Maryanne had ever spent with a man, and yet they had still not become intimate—at least not in the truest sense. Dan always refused to take her home. Sometimes he would even go so far as to please her right there in his car, when what started out as one of his good-night kisses ended with her trembling in absolute pleasure after he somehow managed to get beneath her clothing and find just the right places to touch her.
“But I want to please you, too,” she’d say, really meaning it, and not just offering herself because she felt that she ought to because he’d pleased her.
“Not yet,” he’d tell her. “I want you know how much I appreciate you. I want you to believe it.”
And she did. By the time he finally took her home for their first real night together, she was utterly convinced that she had somehow breached the ordinary parameters of relationships as she had come to know them and discovered something truly different and exceptional.
