Working the Room

The reception is in a converted barn outside Lisbon and I am watching him from across the room before I know his name.

He is tall, dark-haired, dressed like a man who has been told he photographs well and believes it. He moves through the crowd the way some men move through crowds - chin up, shoulders back, the particular confidence of someone who has never once ended a night alone if he didn’t want to. He touches a woman’s elbow. Says something that makes her laugh too loud. Moves on before the laugh finishes. He is working the room the way other people work a spreadsheet: efficiently, with the outcome already decided.

I want to wreck him.

Not metaphorically. I want his mouth on my toy before he knows what’s happening. I want him in my panties looking up at me while I decide whether he’s earned the next inch. I have been thinking about it since the second glass of vinho verde, which is earlier than I usually admit to anything, and my body has been keeping score - heat low in my belly, a specific wetness I can feel when I cross my legs under the table. I look good tonight. I know I look good tonight. The rose dress, the stockings I will make him wear later, the harness bag in my hotel room with the big toy already snapped in place because I packed it before I flew in for Marta’s wedding and I always pack for the version of the evening that interests me.

His name is Stefan. I learn it an hour in when he finally reaches me.

---

He slides into the conversation beside Marta’s cousin with the ease of a man introducing himself somewhere he already belongs. His smile is excellent. His hair is excellent - thick, dark, swept back with product that will matter later. He looks at me the way he has been looking at women all evening: direct, certain, already halfway to the conclusion.

“You’re Maya,” he says. Not a question.

“I am.”

“Marta says you’re dangerous.”

“Marta says a lot of things when she’s had enough champagne.”

He laughs. It is a good laugh - practiced, warm, designed to make you feel chosen. He asks what I do. He asks where I’m staying. He asks, with his hand already angling toward the small of my back, whether I want to see the terrace.

I step out of his reach without breaking eye contact.

“I want another drink,” I say. “You should keep working.”

His smile doesn’t move but something behind it does - a half-second recalculation, the first small crack in the performance. He has not been told no tonight. He covers it fast.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and moves on to a blonde near the bar.

Good.

I watch him work for the next two hours. He is very good at it and I enjoy watching him be good at it because I know how the evening actually ends. Every time he glances back at me - and he does, four times that I count - I give him nothing. No smile. No encouragement. I talk to Marta’s brother. I dance once. I let a groomsman get me a drink and do not go home with him either. Stefan’s jaw gets tighter each time he sees me still there, still unavailable, still not part of the inventory he is running through.

By midnight the dance floor is thinning and he is at the bar alone with a whiskey, sleeves rolled up, hair slightly undone in a way that is probably also calculated. He has not found a girl to hook up with. I can see it in how he holds the glass - still performing ease, but the ease is costing him something now.

I finish my wine. I cross the room.

“You look like you’re having a terrible time,” I say.

He looks up. For one unguarded second he is not smooth. He is a man at a wedding who has been rejected by the woman he wanted the most and is trying not to show it.

“Is that an offer?” he says, recovering.

“It’s an observation.”

I lean one hip against the bar. Close enough that he can smell my perfume. Not close enough to touch.

“My hotel is ten minutes away,” I say. “You can come if you dare but you don’t get to lead anything once we’re there.”

He stares at me.

“Why would I agree to that?”

“Because you’ve been watching me watch you all night,” I say. “And you’re hard right now thinking about what I might do to you if you say yes.”

He doesn’t deny it. His throat moves. I leave. He follows.

---

The taxi is quiet. He tries twice to put his hand on my thigh. I remove it twice without comment. By the time we reach the hotel he is flushed and angry and aroused in a combination I find extremely useful.

My room is on the fourth floor. I unlock the door, step inside, set my bag on the chair.

He stands in the doorway like a man waiting to be told the rules.

“Come in,” I say. “Close the door.”

He does.

I look at him for a long moment. He is still wearing the confidence like a jacket. I am going to take it off him piece by piece.

“Get naked,” I say. “Everything off. I want to see what you’ve been selling all night.”