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the waitress who appeared beside us I ordered a sparkling water with lime. He ordered the same.
    I could not look at him, though moments before I had been unable to look away. Heat that had nothing to do with the room temperature crept up my chest and throat, along my cheeks and the back of my neck.
    I had done things in the past that would have made a hooker proud, but always in privacy. Never in public, and never with anyone whose name I didn’t know. Strangers to me, yes, with nothing but a few hours acquaintance to recommend them, but even when I gave them a false name I always learned theirs.
    He said nothing until after the waitress had brought our drinks and we had both sipped. I wanted to press the cool glass to my forehead, but refrained. I sat stiffly on the edge of the faux-leather bench, acutely aware of the closeness of his arm to mine and how he could have, but did not touch me.
    “What is this?” he asked.
    Back here the music muffled his voice but didn’t drown it out. He didn’t have to shout for me to hear him. He didn’t have to lean forward to murmur in my ear.
    I said nothing for a moment, uncertain how to answer. He reached for me. I thought he meant to touch my face, or put his arm around my shoulder, and I stiffened. His hand caressed my hair from crown to ends, brushing it off my shoulders to hang down my back and expose my profile to him.
    “What’s your name?”
    Such a simple question, the sort asked at cocktail parties and in parks, an international query you might hear anywhere. Not out of place in a bar like this, where names, vital statistics and phone numbers were exchanged between singles the way women will exchange recipes for pound cake. Recipes for love.
    “Elle.”
    He waited before answering, long enough that I broke and looked at him. He smiled at me. His fingers twisted a strand of my hair.
    “I’m Dan.”
    He held out his hand. Socially groomed to take it, I did. He curled his fingers around mine, held it tight, drew me closer.
    “Pleasure to meet you, Elle.
    “Thanks for the drink. I should go.”
    But I didn’t. I looked up at him. He looked at me.
    “What is this?” he asked, voice pitched low but still audible.
    “I don’t know.” I shook my head, and my hair fell forward again, over my shoulders.
    “Do you want to know?” He moved closer.
    Now we sat thigh to thigh, his hand still enclosing mine. The heat from his body seeped through my clothes, but I shivered.
    I knew arousal. I knew desire. Lust. This was something else, all three and something different, too. This was tumbling headfirst down the rabbit hole, this was standing on the edge of the cliff and preparing to leap, this was nothing and everything all at once.
    “Yes,” I whispered, sure he couldn’t hear me. “I want to know.”
    He took my hand and slipped it beneath the table, into his lap. I’m sure I gasped like a virgin, though I was anything but. He placed my palm flat on the bulge of his erection. He didn’t do anything so crass as to move my hand, not even to rub it against him. He leaned forward to speak into my ear, my hand on his straining cock and his covering it lightly.
    “I’ve known you forever, haven’t I?”
    I could only nod in reply and close my eyes. I curved my hand over him. His trousers were smooth under my fingers and beneath them I felt the outline of him. I moved my hand and he twitched. His other hand slid around under my hair, his thumb pressing the pulse on the side of my neck. His mouth brushed my earlobe, his voice tight, low, thick with need.
    “Who are you?” He asked me. “Some kind of angel? Or a devil, maybe…?”
    I turned my head to bring my mouth close to his ear. “I don’t believe in angels or devils.”
    I stroked him slowly, infinitesimally, a gentle curve and straightening of my fingertips undetectable to anyone watching. He got harder. Hotter. I traced the line of his cock, then lower, my hand cradling the softer bulge below.
    His hand