Abruptly, he took my face in his hands and kissed me hard. When I didn’t object, he kissed me again, this time long and slow, his teeth nibbling my lips, his tongue dancing against mine. It was a kiss filled with lust and desire, a kiss that was hot and vibrant. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into his body, his hands sweeping over my rear, his erection digging into my hip. I didn’t mean to do it, but the next thing I knew, I was stoking the engine, so to speak.

Not that it mattered, but the man was more than proportional.

Who the hell was I kidding?

It mattered.

He closed his eyes and moaned. “I am sweaty.”

“You smell like a man,” I told him. “That’s just fine with me.”

Eventually, he did shower. We both did… together… an act almost as intimate as the ones that preceded it. As he soaped my back, he kissed the nape of my neck, a sinewy arm snaking around me, his hand resting on my breast. I looked at his fingers, at his nutmeg-colored digits against my pale, freckled complexion, and for a moment, I fantasized about the progeny we’d produce-café au lait skin, with brown eyes and thick, thick hair. I always hated my complexion, and welcomed the thought of it changing in the next generation.

I got out first, toweling dry as I pulled off my shower cap, shaking out my hair. I shivered as water evaporated off my skin, then slipped under the crumpled sheets to get warm and catch my breath.

Several minutes later, he entered the room stark naked and eyed me in the bed.

“I’m just resting,” I told him. “I’m spent. At least, for a couple of hours.”

He picked up the watch on his nightstand, then slipped it on his wrist-still nude but now he could tell time. “Hungry?”

I sat up, letting the sheet fall from my breasts. “Actually, I am.”

His topaz eyes were still on my body. But he said, “I’ll get dressed then.”

He was one of those lucky people who looked great in or out of clothing, and I enjoyed watching him move. He opened a door to a tiny closet, his shirts hanging neatly inside. He stared at the array for almost a minute-something a woman would do-then picked out two shirts to show me. One was lilac, the other was tomato red.

“What color pants?” I asked.

“Black.”

I thought a moment. “The red.”

He placed the lilac shirt back in the closet. “Red to match your hair.”

“Then you’d need orange.”

He slipped the shirt on. “Not orange. The shirt would be the color of a sunset-brilliant and fiery with copper-and even that wouldn’t capture it.”

I stared at him shocked. “That was beautiful.”

He beamed. “Thank you. It took me twenty minutes to get the words right.”

I threw a pillow at him. He blocked it with an elbow. “Isn’t it the thought that counts?”

“Yes, that is worth something.”

“Worth a lot. I used a thesaurus. English isn’t my native language.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re totally fluent.”

He put on Jockeys, then slid into a pair of black jeans. “Nowthatis a very good compliment.”

His face was dead serious. I had hit something important. “How’d you learn?”

“I learned at first in Ethiopia, more in Israel, but mostly from my stepmother.” He buttoned his shirt. “She is English speaking… from Canada. I make her speak the language to me because I want to speakrealEnglish. I saw America as my ticket to freedom. I think my vocabulary is pretty good.”

“It’sexcellent,Koby.” I got up and started to dress. “I have Ivy League friends who don’t sound nearly as educated as you do.”

“Thank you, that means very much to me because I work very hard on it. Now I must work on my spelling. Other than medical terms, my English spelling is absolutely atrocious.”

“My spelling is atrocious and English is my native language.”

He smiled. “That is nice for you to say. English is the third alphabet I learned. There is little in common between Amharic and Hebrew, although both are Semitic languages, and English is totally different. When I first get here, I could speak and understand quite well, but I couldn’t read much except medical texts and that is only because the medical language in Hebrew is borrowed from English. There is an expression in Hebrew-to break your teeth, meaning to do a hard thing. I used to break my teeth reading the newspapers. Now I can read the words, but I still cannot spell them. That is the next hurdle.”

I tucked my blouse into my pants and began putting on my boots. “You’re very… driven, aren’t you?”

“You are first discovering this?”

I laughed and shook my head.

“What?” he asked.

“I know I keep harping on this, but”-I laughed again-“you are so like my father-just thinner and darker.”

“Don’t they say that girls are attracted to their fathers, as boys are attracted to their mothers?” He sat down next to me. “Now, my mother died when I was young. She is not so clear in my mind. So I can create whatever fiction I want.”

“What’s your stepmother like?”

He thought a moment. “Tall… strong… brown eyes… pale skin.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. “Red hair?”

He shook his head no. “Brown. Then after ten of us, it turned gray. Batya was tough as a mother, but fair-minded. No sense of humor, but I could make her laugh.” He eyed me intently. “I like when you laugh. It’s good music.”

I looked down and patted his knee.

He raised my face and kissed me gently. Did it a second time, but with more passion. His hands stroked my arms, lust in those incredible jeweled eyes. “Still tired?”

“We’re dressed.”

“An easy thing to change if the spirit is willing.”

I bit my lower lip. “If you’re convincing, I could be persuaded.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I like challenges. Especially this kind.”

“Go for it, Yaakov.”

He grinned and started by unbuttoning my blouse and unhooking my bra from the front. Then he unzipped my pants but kept them on. He laid me down on the mattress; then beginning at my forehead, he gently kissed a path downward, his lips traveling onto the tip of my nose, onto my mouth, between my breasts, and over my stomach and navel until he reached the top of my pubis. He lowered the waistband of my panties, his tongue dipping into my thatch of red hair. Softly, he bit the skin. “How do I do?”

My fingers dived into his kinky black hair as I moved his mouth lower. “Very convincing.” I sucked in my breath when he hit the right spot. “Oh Lord, yes, I amdefinitelypersuaded.”

19

We eventually made itto dinner, then hit a ten o’clock movie. The cinema was followed by drinks at a small jazz club, talking and talking until the wee hours of the morning. We had been together for over twelve hours, and though I was zapped, I politely declined Koby’s offer to bunk down at his place. I didn’t have to work until the afternoon, but I wanted to wake up in my own bed, on my own time. He didn’t look insulted. On the contrary, I felt he needed breathing room as well.

We were quiet on the way home, tapped out on ideas, and happy to let the stereo provide the background noise. We were sailing on Sunset back into Silver Lake, his car finally missing a light and gliding to a stop. There were no other vehicles about us, no cross-traffic in sight.

But there was a lone pedestrian crossing the street. A woman-hunched and wrapped in a heavy black coat. She was clutching a purse to her chest.

I was suddenly alert. I looked at my watch: three in the morning.

“Poor thing,” Koby whispered. “Can’t we take her to a shelter?”

“I don’t know if she’s homeless,” I told him. “No shopping cart, no bags… just a purse. She’s also wearing sheer stockings, and in this light, her ankles look normal.”

“Ankles?”

“Most of the homeless women have terrible ankles from walking in ill-fitting shoes. And also, the poor health.”