fic: New Year's Eve
quickie note: this is longer and slightly more schmoopy than i was expecting. also i meant to write and post it yesterday, but, well. also also bear in mind i have almost no practice writing het smut. yes, there's smut. :D this is sortofkindof almostbutnotreally lily's dress.
For New Year's Eve, Danny says no to one dinner party invite (from his friend Shelley), one cabaret invite (from Columbia and Adrian), and an offer to join his roommate and her friends at a bar. He loves them all, but he has Plans, with a capital P, and that means drinking, dining, and most importantly dancing in an event space (probably a converted warehouse) in Chelsea with his amazing, elegant girlfriend.
The doors (and the bar) open at seven-thirty but dinner isn't until nine. He shows up at Lily's apartment a little before eight in his three-piece tux, with a red pocket square and a red bowtie, bearing a dozen pale pink peonies. Lily invites him in long enough to put the flowers in water and let him pet the dog, and then they're off.
“I thought the invitation just said 'formal,'” she comments, as they wait for the elevator.
“Tuxes are formal,” he says. “You don't look very casual.”
Her dress is long and black and strapless and satin, with a flared skirt and an enormous velvet bow on her hip. The tails of the bow form wide velvet panels down the front and back of the dress. She's wearing a diamond necklace with a sapphire in the center, and sapphire drop earrings, and her hair is swept to the side and held back with a vintage diamante comb. She's not wearing a watch, just a silver chain with a silver heart hanging from it - one of his Christmas presents to her.
He pulls her close in the elevator and kisses her neck, just to see what she smells like. She smells like jasmine.
She laughs and gently pushes him away.
“Are you worried people will see us?” he asks, as the elevator doors open.
“Of course not.” She takes his hand. “But you have all night to kiss me.”
He kisses her on the mouth in the cab, just to prove her point.
The event space in Chelsea has been furnished in an eclectic combination of Moroccan bazaar, Turkish harem, and speakeasy, with two bars, dining tables of various sizes spread around the edges of the dance floor, velvet couches, a few groupings of armchairs and small tables, and, incongruously, a swing band. It looks a little schizophrenic to Danny, but Lily seems to enjoy it.
The partygoers are an equally idiosyncratic mix, most of them seeming to be in their twenties or thirties and dressed in a broad spectrum of “formal”, from people in black tie through to the couple dressed as a flapper and her 1920s-gangster boyfriend, and the guy with the Brooklyn hipster beard and jeans to go with his suit jacket and two-tone laceup shoes.
But there are also men and women who could be in their forties and fifties, and more than one couple who could be Lily's age.
“How did you find this place?” Lily asks.
“Columbia told me about it,” Danny says. “May I take your coat?”
She's wearing a yellow scarf over her coat, a giant silk square with a decorative Chinese print and eight inches of fringe. She takes it off, shrugs out of her coat, folds the scarf into a triangle and drapes it over her now-bare shoulders, and hands her coat to Danny.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you look?” he asks, his arms now full of black wool coat.
“Not yet.” She smiles. “And you look very handsome. I'll find us a table.” And before he can protest, she's off.
He drops off the coats and spends at least ten minutes trying to find her, stymied by the growing crowd, the black-jacketed waiters wandering around with trays of hors d'oeuvres, and the fact that three separate people think he looks like someone they know. “I must have one of those faces,” he tells the second person, who coincidentally looks like a slightly younger version of someone he knew in high school.
Lily has claimed a round table for two not far from the edge of the dance floor. She's sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, watching him as he makes his way over to her.
“Why are you smiling?” he asks her. “Three people thought I was someone they know.”
“I'm having a really nice time,” she says.
“And we just got here.” Danny grins. “Imagine what it will be like by midnight.”
Her smile changes to a more secretive, sly smile, and he notices that she must have dusted her eyes and her collarbones with glitter, because all of a sudden she sparkles.
“Would you like a drink?” he asks, to distract himself. “Some hors d'oeuvres? I thought I saw chicken on skewers.”
“A dry martini with extra olives would be lovely, thank you. I'll see if I can catch a passing tray.”
The ticket price includes an open bar until nine, so Danny gets a dry martini with extra olives (the bartender reaches for a bottle of vodka and he has to remind her that he wants a classic martini) and a Manhattan and makes his way back through the crowds to where Lily has managed to acquire a small plate of hors d'oeuvres - two skewers of chicken satay, spicy lamb meatballs, Boursin-stuffed mushroom caps, and some fried green olives.
“I don't know who's catering,” Danny admits, by which he means that the invitation said but he doesn't remember. “To a new year.” He raises his glass and they toast.
They talk about the food and the décor and the other partygoers and the music, and after a while Lily pulls Danny onto the dance floor, where the band is playing something with a good beat that he doesn't recognize.
At nine the bandleader announces dinner and after a rush for the bar and their last free drinks, everyone eventually sits. The food seems vaguely Turkish, several plates of it, and by the time dessert rolls around Danny is stuffed. He has had a second cocktail and he Lily drink wine with dinner, and then little cups of Turkish coffee, and then it's eleven and people are dancing.
Danny took swing dancing lessons in college and likes to think he knows what he's doing. Lily thinks otherwise. He manages to lead most of the time anyway. She laughs at him and kisses his cheek when the band pauses between songs, and he tells her he loves her even if she won't led him lead.
“Next year you can take me somewhere with music you can dance to,” she tells him cheerfully. “You can show me how to dance.”
“It almost is next year,” he says. “Let's learn ballroom dancing.” He swings her out and back, dips her, pulls her back up, and kisses her on the lips. “Maybe the tango. I'll put a rose between my teeth.”
“I have a whole bouquet of peonies at home that you can practice with.”
“It's not the same.”
“It was just a suggestion. I'll buy you a rose.”
“That would be perfect.”
The song comes to an end and everyone applauds. Lily pulls Danny's arm close. He wants to wrap his arms around her and kiss her breathless, but the next song is starting and Lily is taking both his hands and starting to step around the dance floor.
At five minutes to midnight the band comes to a halt, the bandleader announces the time, and waiters move around the tables and sofas and through the crowds, passing out flutes of champagne. Danny and Lily clink glasses. He can feel the girl standing on the other side of him vibrating with excitement as everyone counts down the last ten seconds of the year, and at “One!” balloons fall from the ceiling and everyone - partygoers, musicians, bartenders, waiters - yells “Happy New Year!”
Danny drains his champagne, and with the stem of his now-empty glass held between his fingers, he takes Lily's face in both hands and kisses her. The party falls away as her mouth melts against his, as he tastes champagne and fried Turkish doughnuts, as he smells the lingering scent of her perfume and whatever products she uses on her hair. She cups the back of his head with one hand, her other hand evidently still holding her champagne glass, and kisses him back.
He wants to pull the comb out of her hair and run his fingers through the soft strands. He wants to kiss her neck and her shoulders, wants to run his hands down her arms and down her sides and up her thighs. He wants the world to stop so they can have the rest of eternity together, so he can hear her laugh in his ear and feel her breath on his skin and know he will always, always have that.
Eventually they pull apart, just far enough to take a breath. She laughs softly against his lips.
“This was wonderful,” she murmurs.
“The night's not over,” he answers, smiling. “It's a whole new year.”
“So it is.” She kisses him again, briefly this time, because the band has kicked into gear and people all around them are starting to dance.
They dance and laugh and drink some more and at two, when the party starts to wind down, they get their coats and go outside to wait for a cab. He takes her hand and kisses her cold cheek and tells her he loves her, and she turns her head, her face flushed with the cold and the drinks and the dancing, and tells him that she loves him too.
“Happy New Year, darling,” she says, “and thank you for such a perfect evening.”
“It's still not over.” He can't help but grin. He's a little drunk on cocktails and the simple nearness of this woman he loves, and while part of him wishes the party was still going so they could dance some more, because she so clearly enjoyed it, part of him is glad to be going home.
She leans against him the cab back to her place, her hand in his and her head on his shoulder, and says “Last year a friend of mine had a dinner party at her house for New Year's. There were ten of us. It was very civilized. There was no dancing, though.”
“Columbia made me go to a bar. I drank too much, but it was fun.”
“Did you get to kiss a pretty girl at midnight?”
“I did.” He kissed Columbia, and then, because it was only fair, he kissed her husband. “Did you get to kiss a nice boy?”
“No. I kissed my friend on the cheek.”
He strokes the back of her hand. “What a difference a year makes.”
“Indeed.”
He gives the cabbie a big tip and wishes him a Happy New Year. Dolley is beside herself when Lily and Danny walk in, her entire back half wagging with excitement.
“You'd think we'd been gone a week, rather than an evening,” Lily says, laughing, kneeling in her formal satin and velvet dress so Dolley can lick her face and practically knock her over. “We're home, we're home! A Happy New Year to you too!”
Danny gets down on his knees as well, mostly so Dolley can transfer some of her affection to him and so Lily doesn't have to worry about being pushed over by her dog's enthusiasm. “Didn't the dogsitter come over?” he asks Lily.
“Of course she did. Dolley just loves us.”
Eventually they manage to calm the dog down enough to take off their coats, go into the bedroom without her, and shut the door.
Danny shrugs out of his tuxedo jacket and drapes it across the chair in Lily's bedroom, followed by his bowtie. Lily kicks off her black heels, turns her back to him, and asks him to unhook her.
He does her one better and unzips the dress, letting it fall to the floor and revealing a black corset and red stockings. He kisses the back of Lily's shoulder. She pats his head, then turns back around, stepping out of her dress, and starts unbuttoning his waistcoat.
He watches her undo the buttons, wanting suddenly to make love to her with her hair still pinned back and her jewelry still on. He wants to pick her up and wrap her red-stockinged legs around his waist and kiss her until she can't breathe. He wants to peel the corset off her, although how he's going to do that he doesn't know, and he wants to cup her breasts in both hands and tongue her nipples and trail his tongue lower and lower down her body until he reaches her inner thighs, and he wants to press his lips to them and flick his tongue inside her, and he wants to make her beg and beg and then he wants to enter her and make her whimper and moan and cry out -
She pushes the waistcoat off his shoulders, breaking his reverie, and then starts on the buttons of his dress shirt. Halfway down she stops to untuck it. He watches her hands, mesmerized. She's not wearing any rings, not even her wedding band. How had he not noticed that? When did she stop wearing it?
He pulls her hand away from his shirt and folds his fingers around it. He can feel the heart charm on her bracelet brush against his hand.
“You're not wearing your wedding band,” he says.
“No,” she answers.
“When did you take it off?”
“Tonight, when I was getting dressed.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don't know.”
She reaches up with her other hand and strokes his cheek. “I didn't want any reminders that I used to belong to anyone else but you. I didn't want anyone to look at my hand and think I was married to someone else.”
“They could've thought you were married to me.”
“You don't have a wedding band.”
“You didn't have to take it off. I don't care that you were married.”
“I know, and I love that about you. This was for me.”
He pulls her hand up to his lips and kisses the palm. “Are you going to put it back on tomorrow?”
“I don't know. Does it matter?”
“Not to me.”
He can't explain to her what it means to him that she would take off her wedding band to go to a party with him, and that she would do it because she doesn't want to remember she's ever loved anyone else. He can't explain what it means to him that she would deliberately erase such a big part of her past for him, so he can be her only love.
He picks her up instead, carries her over to the bed, and lays her down. She smiles up at him, her fair skin pale against the black corset and the bright blue sapphire in her necklace. Her hair is starting to come out, but most of it is still tightly pulled back. He's impressed at the skill of her hairstylist.
He lies down next to her, half on top of her, and kisses her deeply, his hands on her face and his leg hooking behind her calves. His shirt is untucked, only half unbuttoned, and he's still wearing his shoes. He doesn't care. Right now this is the best way he knows to show Lily how much he loves her, how much she means to him, how important it is to him that she's such a big part of his life.
She pulls at his dress shirt, somehow pushing him off her so he can unbutton it the rest of the way, struggle out of it, and toss it over the side of the bed. His shoes are next, followed by his pants and undershirt and briefs. Her stockings are easy, her corset less so, but soon they're both naked and he's succumbed to the desire to run his hands through her hair and has pulled out the comb and a bunch of hidden pins and spread the pale blonde strands over her shoulders.
She looks up at him, her face open and smiling.
“I love you, Danny,” she says. “Do you understand that? This middle-aged woman loves you to a ridiculous degree.”
“Only if you understand that this boy doesn't think he deserves you.”
“Of course he does. He makes me laugh. He doesn't see my age when he looks at me, and for that he deserves more than I can ever give him.”
“You've given me a lot.”
“Shh.” She brushes her hand through his hair. “Enough talking. Kiss me.”
So he does. He covers her face and neck with kisses, presses her hair to his lips, slides down to kiss the dip between her collarbones and the skin between her breasts, and he's too overcome with desire for her to care who else might have laid claim to the nipples he rubs with his thumbs and gently takes between his teeth, or that she carried babies inside the body he touches with reverence, or that her voice might have sung lullabies to her own small children or been raised in desire for another man.
All he cares about is that they're together now, and she took off her wedding band to be seen in public with him. All he cares about is that her moans are for him, and his heavy breathing is because of her, and as he spreads his hands across her and parts her thighs and enters her, all he cares about, all that matters, is that she wants him.
She wraps her legs around his waist and rises to meet him as he moves inside her. She's quiet, but she doesn't need to make a lot of noise for him. His last girlfriend was a screamer, and the first time he and Lily slept together, he was oddly relieved that she wasn't. It's just another in a list of things that he likes about her, that make her different from previous girlfriends. Her breathing is shallow, her moans soft, her eyes fixed on his face and her earrings glittering in the tangle of her hair. He drops a kiss on her lips, a quick, distracted peck, and she smiles.
She's always smiling around him. She's always smiling at him.
Well, of course she is. He makes her happy.
She breathes his name, or at least he thinks she does, and her legs tighten around his waist and he wraps his arms around her head and pushes himself deeper into her. He can't get enough of her. He buries his face in her neck as he thrusts, smelling her sweat and her hair and the very faint vestiges of her perfume. He feels her hand in his hair, cupping the back of his head, her other hand on his ass. He can't help himself, can't stop, and his hips pick up speed, faster and deeper until he's coming hard, groaning into her skin.
It takes a minute or two before he comes back to himself enough to realize that he climaxed but she didn't. He lifts his head. Her face is flushed, her eyes dark. She licks her lips and smiles at him.
“I'm sorry,” he says.
“Why?”
“You didn't - did you?”
She shrugs and brushes a finger across his lips. “Your pleasure gives me pleasure, didn't you know that?”
“It's not the same.”
“It is to me.” She pulls his face down and kisses him, a light, quick kiss. “Do you want to keep going?”
“I don't think I can.” He tries to shift himself, suddenly worried he might be crushing her. But she doesn't look as if she cares. One of her hands is resting low down on his back, the other now laid against his cheek. “I mean, I can't, but I can, um, I can - for you.”
How do you tell your older, elegant, cultured girlfriend “I can get you off”, in those words?
You don't. But you do pull out of her, and roll off her, and show her.
Danny is entirely empty, but the sound of Lily's pleasure and the look on her face and the way she tenses right before she opens completely as he makes her come is almost enough to get him hard again.
Afterwards he kisses her mouth and tells her she's beautiful and perfect and he loves her.
“I've had such a delightful evening,” she says, propped up on one elbow so she can look down at him. “From the minute you came to my door with flowers.” She kisses his forehead. “You're the best thing that happened to me all year.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. If you'd told me last New Year's Eve, when I was saying goodbye to my friend, that a year later I'd be in bed with a man half my age, after a night of drinking and eating and dancing, and that this young man was in love with me and I with him, I would have laughed at you.”
“But that's what happened.”
“That's what happened.” She lies down and puts her head on Danny's chest. He strokes her hair.
“Who would've guessed,” he says. “I wasn't expecting to find you either. But next New Year's Eve shouldn't be a surprise. We can probably both guess how it's going to go.”
“Drinking, dancing, kissing?”
“Something like that.” He grins, already planning ahead.
Lily sits up, dislodging his hand from her hair and interrupting his thoughts, to suggest he put his pajamas on. She climbs out of bed, puts on panties and the satin pajamas that were another of his Christmas gifts to her, takes off her jewelry, and goes into the bathroom, presumably to brush her teeth. Danny stretches, luxuriating in the heat and scent lingering in the bed, before getting up as well to put his pajamas on, collect his clothes, and stack everything neatly on the chair. Lily is done in the bathroom by the time he's ready for it, and afterwards they curl up together under the covers and share a couple of minty goodnight kisses before wishing each other a Happy New Year for what feels like the tenth time, and going to sleep.
In the morning Danny wakes first, much to his surprise, but that gives him time to throw his coat on over his pajamas, take the dog for a quick walk, and make Lily pancakes for breakfast. She's surprised and pleased, and very hungry.
He doesn't leave her apartment until late in the afternoon, feeling a little bit like he's doing the walk of shame in his tuxedo and wrinkled dress shirt, full of love for his astonishing, beautiful girlfriend and the whole year stretching out in front of him.
“Start as you mean to go on,” she said to him over their pancakes. And this is exactly how he means to go, for as long as it's granted him - in love and happy and fully content with his life.
For New Year's Eve, Danny says no to one dinner party invite (from his friend Shelley), one cabaret invite (from Columbia and Adrian), and an offer to join his roommate and her friends at a bar. He loves them all, but he has Plans, with a capital P, and that means drinking, dining, and most importantly dancing in an event space (probably a converted warehouse) in Chelsea with his amazing, elegant girlfriend.
The doors (and the bar) open at seven-thirty but dinner isn't until nine. He shows up at Lily's apartment a little before eight in his three-piece tux, with a red pocket square and a red bowtie, bearing a dozen pale pink peonies. Lily invites him in long enough to put the flowers in water and let him pet the dog, and then they're off.
“I thought the invitation just said 'formal,'” she comments, as they wait for the elevator.
“Tuxes are formal,” he says. “You don't look very casual.”
Her dress is long and black and strapless and satin, with a flared skirt and an enormous velvet bow on her hip. The tails of the bow form wide velvet panels down the front and back of the dress. She's wearing a diamond necklace with a sapphire in the center, and sapphire drop earrings, and her hair is swept to the side and held back with a vintage diamante comb. She's not wearing a watch, just a silver chain with a silver heart hanging from it - one of his Christmas presents to her.
He pulls her close in the elevator and kisses her neck, just to see what she smells like. She smells like jasmine.
She laughs and gently pushes him away.
“Are you worried people will see us?” he asks, as the elevator doors open.
“Of course not.” She takes his hand. “But you have all night to kiss me.”
He kisses her on the mouth in the cab, just to prove her point.
The event space in Chelsea has been furnished in an eclectic combination of Moroccan bazaar, Turkish harem, and speakeasy, with two bars, dining tables of various sizes spread around the edges of the dance floor, velvet couches, a few groupings of armchairs and small tables, and, incongruously, a swing band. It looks a little schizophrenic to Danny, but Lily seems to enjoy it.
The partygoers are an equally idiosyncratic mix, most of them seeming to be in their twenties or thirties and dressed in a broad spectrum of “formal”, from people in black tie through to the couple dressed as a flapper and her 1920s-gangster boyfriend, and the guy with the Brooklyn hipster beard and jeans to go with his suit jacket and two-tone laceup shoes.
But there are also men and women who could be in their forties and fifties, and more than one couple who could be Lily's age.
“How did you find this place?” Lily asks.
“Columbia told me about it,” Danny says. “May I take your coat?”
She's wearing a yellow scarf over her coat, a giant silk square with a decorative Chinese print and eight inches of fringe. She takes it off, shrugs out of her coat, folds the scarf into a triangle and drapes it over her now-bare shoulders, and hands her coat to Danny.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you look?” he asks, his arms now full of black wool coat.
“Not yet.” She smiles. “And you look very handsome. I'll find us a table.” And before he can protest, she's off.
He drops off the coats and spends at least ten minutes trying to find her, stymied by the growing crowd, the black-jacketed waiters wandering around with trays of hors d'oeuvres, and the fact that three separate people think he looks like someone they know. “I must have one of those faces,” he tells the second person, who coincidentally looks like a slightly younger version of someone he knew in high school.
Lily has claimed a round table for two not far from the edge of the dance floor. She's sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, watching him as he makes his way over to her.
“Why are you smiling?” he asks her. “Three people thought I was someone they know.”
“I'm having a really nice time,” she says.
“And we just got here.” Danny grins. “Imagine what it will be like by midnight.”
Her smile changes to a more secretive, sly smile, and he notices that she must have dusted her eyes and her collarbones with glitter, because all of a sudden she sparkles.
“Would you like a drink?” he asks, to distract himself. “Some hors d'oeuvres? I thought I saw chicken on skewers.”
“A dry martini with extra olives would be lovely, thank you. I'll see if I can catch a passing tray.”
The ticket price includes an open bar until nine, so Danny gets a dry martini with extra olives (the bartender reaches for a bottle of vodka and he has to remind her that he wants a classic martini) and a Manhattan and makes his way back through the crowds to where Lily has managed to acquire a small plate of hors d'oeuvres - two skewers of chicken satay, spicy lamb meatballs, Boursin-stuffed mushroom caps, and some fried green olives.
“I don't know who's catering,” Danny admits, by which he means that the invitation said but he doesn't remember. “To a new year.” He raises his glass and they toast.
They talk about the food and the décor and the other partygoers and the music, and after a while Lily pulls Danny onto the dance floor, where the band is playing something with a good beat that he doesn't recognize.
At nine the bandleader announces dinner and after a rush for the bar and their last free drinks, everyone eventually sits. The food seems vaguely Turkish, several plates of it, and by the time dessert rolls around Danny is stuffed. He has had a second cocktail and he Lily drink wine with dinner, and then little cups of Turkish coffee, and then it's eleven and people are dancing.
Danny took swing dancing lessons in college and likes to think he knows what he's doing. Lily thinks otherwise. He manages to lead most of the time anyway. She laughs at him and kisses his cheek when the band pauses between songs, and he tells her he loves her even if she won't led him lead.
“Next year you can take me somewhere with music you can dance to,” she tells him cheerfully. “You can show me how to dance.”
“It almost is next year,” he says. “Let's learn ballroom dancing.” He swings her out and back, dips her, pulls her back up, and kisses her on the lips. “Maybe the tango. I'll put a rose between my teeth.”
“I have a whole bouquet of peonies at home that you can practice with.”
“It's not the same.”
“It was just a suggestion. I'll buy you a rose.”
“That would be perfect.”
The song comes to an end and everyone applauds. Lily pulls Danny's arm close. He wants to wrap his arms around her and kiss her breathless, but the next song is starting and Lily is taking both his hands and starting to step around the dance floor.
At five minutes to midnight the band comes to a halt, the bandleader announces the time, and waiters move around the tables and sofas and through the crowds, passing out flutes of champagne. Danny and Lily clink glasses. He can feel the girl standing on the other side of him vibrating with excitement as everyone counts down the last ten seconds of the year, and at “One!” balloons fall from the ceiling and everyone - partygoers, musicians, bartenders, waiters - yells “Happy New Year!”
Danny drains his champagne, and with the stem of his now-empty glass held between his fingers, he takes Lily's face in both hands and kisses her. The party falls away as her mouth melts against his, as he tastes champagne and fried Turkish doughnuts, as he smells the lingering scent of her perfume and whatever products she uses on her hair. She cups the back of his head with one hand, her other hand evidently still holding her champagne glass, and kisses him back.
He wants to pull the comb out of her hair and run his fingers through the soft strands. He wants to kiss her neck and her shoulders, wants to run his hands down her arms and down her sides and up her thighs. He wants the world to stop so they can have the rest of eternity together, so he can hear her laugh in his ear and feel her breath on his skin and know he will always, always have that.
Eventually they pull apart, just far enough to take a breath. She laughs softly against his lips.
“This was wonderful,” she murmurs.
“The night's not over,” he answers, smiling. “It's a whole new year.”
“So it is.” She kisses him again, briefly this time, because the band has kicked into gear and people all around them are starting to dance.
They dance and laugh and drink some more and at two, when the party starts to wind down, they get their coats and go outside to wait for a cab. He takes her hand and kisses her cold cheek and tells her he loves her, and she turns her head, her face flushed with the cold and the drinks and the dancing, and tells him that she loves him too.
“Happy New Year, darling,” she says, “and thank you for such a perfect evening.”
“It's still not over.” He can't help but grin. He's a little drunk on cocktails and the simple nearness of this woman he loves, and while part of him wishes the party was still going so they could dance some more, because she so clearly enjoyed it, part of him is glad to be going home.
She leans against him the cab back to her place, her hand in his and her head on his shoulder, and says “Last year a friend of mine had a dinner party at her house for New Year's. There were ten of us. It was very civilized. There was no dancing, though.”
“Columbia made me go to a bar. I drank too much, but it was fun.”
“Did you get to kiss a pretty girl at midnight?”
“I did.” He kissed Columbia, and then, because it was only fair, he kissed her husband. “Did you get to kiss a nice boy?”
“No. I kissed my friend on the cheek.”
He strokes the back of her hand. “What a difference a year makes.”
“Indeed.”
He gives the cabbie a big tip and wishes him a Happy New Year. Dolley is beside herself when Lily and Danny walk in, her entire back half wagging with excitement.
“You'd think we'd been gone a week, rather than an evening,” Lily says, laughing, kneeling in her formal satin and velvet dress so Dolley can lick her face and practically knock her over. “We're home, we're home! A Happy New Year to you too!”
Danny gets down on his knees as well, mostly so Dolley can transfer some of her affection to him and so Lily doesn't have to worry about being pushed over by her dog's enthusiasm. “Didn't the dogsitter come over?” he asks Lily.
“Of course she did. Dolley just loves us.”
Eventually they manage to calm the dog down enough to take off their coats, go into the bedroom without her, and shut the door.
Danny shrugs out of his tuxedo jacket and drapes it across the chair in Lily's bedroom, followed by his bowtie. Lily kicks off her black heels, turns her back to him, and asks him to unhook her.
He does her one better and unzips the dress, letting it fall to the floor and revealing a black corset and red stockings. He kisses the back of Lily's shoulder. She pats his head, then turns back around, stepping out of her dress, and starts unbuttoning his waistcoat.
He watches her undo the buttons, wanting suddenly to make love to her with her hair still pinned back and her jewelry still on. He wants to pick her up and wrap her red-stockinged legs around his waist and kiss her until she can't breathe. He wants to peel the corset off her, although how he's going to do that he doesn't know, and he wants to cup her breasts in both hands and tongue her nipples and trail his tongue lower and lower down her body until he reaches her inner thighs, and he wants to press his lips to them and flick his tongue inside her, and he wants to make her beg and beg and then he wants to enter her and make her whimper and moan and cry out -
She pushes the waistcoat off his shoulders, breaking his reverie, and then starts on the buttons of his dress shirt. Halfway down she stops to untuck it. He watches her hands, mesmerized. She's not wearing any rings, not even her wedding band. How had he not noticed that? When did she stop wearing it?
He pulls her hand away from his shirt and folds his fingers around it. He can feel the heart charm on her bracelet brush against his hand.
“You're not wearing your wedding band,” he says.
“No,” she answers.
“When did you take it off?”
“Tonight, when I was getting dressed.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don't know.”
She reaches up with her other hand and strokes his cheek. “I didn't want any reminders that I used to belong to anyone else but you. I didn't want anyone to look at my hand and think I was married to someone else.”
“They could've thought you were married to me.”
“You don't have a wedding band.”
“You didn't have to take it off. I don't care that you were married.”
“I know, and I love that about you. This was for me.”
He pulls her hand up to his lips and kisses the palm. “Are you going to put it back on tomorrow?”
“I don't know. Does it matter?”
“Not to me.”
He can't explain to her what it means to him that she would take off her wedding band to go to a party with him, and that she would do it because she doesn't want to remember she's ever loved anyone else. He can't explain what it means to him that she would deliberately erase such a big part of her past for him, so he can be her only love.
He picks her up instead, carries her over to the bed, and lays her down. She smiles up at him, her fair skin pale against the black corset and the bright blue sapphire in her necklace. Her hair is starting to come out, but most of it is still tightly pulled back. He's impressed at the skill of her hairstylist.
He lies down next to her, half on top of her, and kisses her deeply, his hands on her face and his leg hooking behind her calves. His shirt is untucked, only half unbuttoned, and he's still wearing his shoes. He doesn't care. Right now this is the best way he knows to show Lily how much he loves her, how much she means to him, how important it is to him that she's such a big part of his life.
She pulls at his dress shirt, somehow pushing him off her so he can unbutton it the rest of the way, struggle out of it, and toss it over the side of the bed. His shoes are next, followed by his pants and undershirt and briefs. Her stockings are easy, her corset less so, but soon they're both naked and he's succumbed to the desire to run his hands through her hair and has pulled out the comb and a bunch of hidden pins and spread the pale blonde strands over her shoulders.
She looks up at him, her face open and smiling.
“I love you, Danny,” she says. “Do you understand that? This middle-aged woman loves you to a ridiculous degree.”
“Only if you understand that this boy doesn't think he deserves you.”
“Of course he does. He makes me laugh. He doesn't see my age when he looks at me, and for that he deserves more than I can ever give him.”
“You've given me a lot.”
“Shh.” She brushes her hand through his hair. “Enough talking. Kiss me.”
So he does. He covers her face and neck with kisses, presses her hair to his lips, slides down to kiss the dip between her collarbones and the skin between her breasts, and he's too overcome with desire for her to care who else might have laid claim to the nipples he rubs with his thumbs and gently takes between his teeth, or that she carried babies inside the body he touches with reverence, or that her voice might have sung lullabies to her own small children or been raised in desire for another man.
All he cares about is that they're together now, and she took off her wedding band to be seen in public with him. All he cares about is that her moans are for him, and his heavy breathing is because of her, and as he spreads his hands across her and parts her thighs and enters her, all he cares about, all that matters, is that she wants him.
She wraps her legs around his waist and rises to meet him as he moves inside her. She's quiet, but she doesn't need to make a lot of noise for him. His last girlfriend was a screamer, and the first time he and Lily slept together, he was oddly relieved that she wasn't. It's just another in a list of things that he likes about her, that make her different from previous girlfriends. Her breathing is shallow, her moans soft, her eyes fixed on his face and her earrings glittering in the tangle of her hair. He drops a kiss on her lips, a quick, distracted peck, and she smiles.
She's always smiling around him. She's always smiling at him.
Well, of course she is. He makes her happy.
She breathes his name, or at least he thinks she does, and her legs tighten around his waist and he wraps his arms around her head and pushes himself deeper into her. He can't get enough of her. He buries his face in her neck as he thrusts, smelling her sweat and her hair and the very faint vestiges of her perfume. He feels her hand in his hair, cupping the back of his head, her other hand on his ass. He can't help himself, can't stop, and his hips pick up speed, faster and deeper until he's coming hard, groaning into her skin.
It takes a minute or two before he comes back to himself enough to realize that he climaxed but she didn't. He lifts his head. Her face is flushed, her eyes dark. She licks her lips and smiles at him.
“I'm sorry,” he says.
“Why?”
“You didn't - did you?”
She shrugs and brushes a finger across his lips. “Your pleasure gives me pleasure, didn't you know that?”
“It's not the same.”
“It is to me.” She pulls his face down and kisses him, a light, quick kiss. “Do you want to keep going?”
“I don't think I can.” He tries to shift himself, suddenly worried he might be crushing her. But she doesn't look as if she cares. One of her hands is resting low down on his back, the other now laid against his cheek. “I mean, I can't, but I can, um, I can - for you.”
How do you tell your older, elegant, cultured girlfriend “I can get you off”, in those words?
You don't. But you do pull out of her, and roll off her, and show her.
Danny is entirely empty, but the sound of Lily's pleasure and the look on her face and the way she tenses right before she opens completely as he makes her come is almost enough to get him hard again.
Afterwards he kisses her mouth and tells her she's beautiful and perfect and he loves her.
“I've had such a delightful evening,” she says, propped up on one elbow so she can look down at him. “From the minute you came to my door with flowers.” She kisses his forehead. “You're the best thing that happened to me all year.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. If you'd told me last New Year's Eve, when I was saying goodbye to my friend, that a year later I'd be in bed with a man half my age, after a night of drinking and eating and dancing, and that this young man was in love with me and I with him, I would have laughed at you.”
“But that's what happened.”
“That's what happened.” She lies down and puts her head on Danny's chest. He strokes her hair.
“Who would've guessed,” he says. “I wasn't expecting to find you either. But next New Year's Eve shouldn't be a surprise. We can probably both guess how it's going to go.”
“Drinking, dancing, kissing?”
“Something like that.” He grins, already planning ahead.
Lily sits up, dislodging his hand from her hair and interrupting his thoughts, to suggest he put his pajamas on. She climbs out of bed, puts on panties and the satin pajamas that were another of his Christmas gifts to her, takes off her jewelry, and goes into the bathroom, presumably to brush her teeth. Danny stretches, luxuriating in the heat and scent lingering in the bed, before getting up as well to put his pajamas on, collect his clothes, and stack everything neatly on the chair. Lily is done in the bathroom by the time he's ready for it, and afterwards they curl up together under the covers and share a couple of minty goodnight kisses before wishing each other a Happy New Year for what feels like the tenth time, and going to sleep.
In the morning Danny wakes first, much to his surprise, but that gives him time to throw his coat on over his pajamas, take the dog for a quick walk, and make Lily pancakes for breakfast. She's surprised and pleased, and very hungry.
He doesn't leave her apartment until late in the afternoon, feeling a little bit like he's doing the walk of shame in his tuxedo and wrinkled dress shirt, full of love for his astonishing, beautiful girlfriend and the whole year stretching out in front of him.
“Start as you mean to go on,” she said to him over their pancakes. And this is exactly how he means to go, for as long as it's granted him - in love and happy and fully content with his life.