reached for my purse, safe in the knowledge that it had been worth every penny. But when I tried to hand a wad of crisp $100 bills to Olivier, he shook his head and refused the money.
“I usually have to pretend,” he said, smiling. “I usually have to fake it. But that was the best fuck of my life. That one was on the house.”
“Thank you,” I said, flattered and pleased. I watched him dress, savoring my last glimpse of his body before he let himself out of the apartment and hailed a cab in the street. I waved to the taxi, wondering if I’d ever see him again. Probably not. Why risk spoiling a perfect memory? And I might never get another fuck on the house.
Turns out that the best things in life are free, after all.
SUCKER PUNCH
Do you believe in love at first sight? No? Well, what about lust? Okay, so what happens when you fall madly in love with someone who you’ve never even met? Does that count? Can it be real? I would have said a definite no before I heard Carrie’s story. You probably won’t know who Carrie is, but you will know the man she loved from afar for years. A champion boxer, a household name, she had known he was the man for her from the minute she saw him on television. But would meeting him in the flesh live up to her expectations? Yes. Oh, yes . . .
T he first time I saw him I felt like someone had reached a hand deep inside me and pulled all my organs in toward the bottom of my pelvis. Funny little hot and cold pangs I’d never experienced before manifested themselves between my legs. I was only fourteen. I didn’t know who he was or what he did. I had no interest in sports of any kind when I saw this beautiful, rugged man in a suit on a sports program that my dad was watching one Sunday night many years ago. There he was, this man whose body, voice, and very presence on the screen made me feel so strange I almost fainted. There was something about him I couldn’t explain. Of course, I now know that what I was feeling was my first thunderbolt of pure lust, that all I wanted was to feel his erect cock inside me. But back then, all I could have told you was that there was something special about this man who was fifteen years my senior, a world-famous athlete, and a perfect stranger. I felt a connection to him. I reckon anyone else watching that night just saw a tough guy, 200 pounds of solid muscle, a nose that had been broken a dozen times, and short, dark blond hair. But I saw something different. I saw vulnerability behind the tough-guy body language, softness beneath the scars.
They say you can’t love someone you haven’t met, but I knew differently. Overnight, he became my obsession, my focus in life. I, who had never been interested in any sport before, sought out his name and his entire career history. In short, I became an expert on boxing. I read the sports section of my dad’s newspaper and spent hours in the library searching the archives for every one of his past fights. Sometimes, when I looked at pictures of him that had been taken in the ring, I’d find that my hand had slipped down the neckline of my top or was between my legs and that I’d been touching myself without even realizing it. Certain pictures—the ones of him naked but for his shorts, covered in sweat, his blond hair so plastered with his own wetness that it was almost brown, those blue eyes puffy and swollen—would get me so hot that I would place my thumb on the special place between my legs, squeeze my thighs tightly together, and rock back and forth until that warm, liquid feeling engulfed my body. I taped his fights, waited until I was alone in the house, and played them back, touching myself as I gazed at his body. I was transfixed by his brute strength, his lumbering grace.
I was sixteen the first time I went to see him fight. I was so excited that I dressed as though I was going on a first date: I shaved my legs, had my bikini line waxed for the first time, wore matching underwear, washed and