Cat In A Topaz Tango

“I didn’t sign up for sexy. And she’s right. I don’t have that Old World Spanish temperament. I don’t preen at killing tormented bulls. I don’t want to sling women around the floor. I don’t get it. At best, it’s hokey. At worst, it’s abuse.”

“Sure. It’s all those things. It’s theater. Look at me! Zoe Chloe is theater. It’s hokey, but Zoe Chloe thinks she’s sexy. I don’t need to be her but something out there in Internet land needs to think she’s special, that she is what they could be if they had the nerve.

“Sexy is in the mind of the beholder, Matt. You spent half your life not allowing anyone to see you that way. It worked great while it lasted, and that you still don’t need to strut makes you sexy in a whole new way to all those dear hearts and lost souls on late-night radio.

“But to me”—Zoe Chloe slid nearer on her ridiculous shoes— “you are ultrasexy because you love me, because you dare to feel. And that’s what the dances demand. Feelings you can show. These Spanish dances ought to be a cakewalk for you.”

“No way on earth! Why?”

“Because . . . they are all about control. Self-control. And self-control is very sexy, because it can be lost.”

“You’re talking about virtue lost.”

“Or love found.”

“In the tango, the couple barely look at each other through most of the dance. It’s sublimated violence.”

“Yeah. You do get it. But she’s as powerful as he is. She can reject. We are twelve millennia from the cave days when a guy in an animal skin could drag a woman by the hair into his bachelor pad. These ritual Spanish dances explore the power of ‘no.’ The man can be gloriously egotistical and commanding, and still get shut down. It was a great leap forward for the species.”

“So . . . you’re saying?”

“Passion makes life earnest and real, the arts revealing, spiritual, affecting. I know you’ve got it. In what you believe in, in other people, in what you feel for me. I ask you. In your place. Here. Now. What would Max do?”

His head reared back as if slapped. “Temple—”

“And you think Tatyana is a demanding taskmaster.” She kissed her forefinger and pressed it to his lips to shut him up. “You’ve got the same smoldering dark brown Latin eyes José Juarez does, and a swimmer is as supple and strong as a fencer. You can out-tango him any day. The pasodoble is yours if you want it. You got me away from Max, didn’t you?”

Talk about pressing someone’s buttons. Talk about motivation.

He looked shocked, angry, turned-on.

He looked ready for the pasodoble.

Hell, he looked ready for Max.

But all he had at hand was her.

Matt seized Temple and pasted her to him like a paper doll, his long gliding strides propelling her backwards while he stared into her eyes as intently as a cobra practicing hypnosis. He spun her left and then right, ending each dizzying twirl with a full frontal embrace that hot-glued them together from neck to knee. This dance should be banned in Boston.

Temple wasn’t aware of her feet touching the ground and they didn’t need to. Matt flung her around with such skill and authority that she couldn’t think of anything other than being caught in a sensual eddy of motion that had her stomach lurching like she was plummeting over the scary top of a Ferris wheel or experiencing sudden serial stabs of pure lust, pardon the oxymoron. . . .

He dipped her parallel to the floor, leaning closely over her, never breaking their gaze, and let her settle there gently, only his braced arms on either side of her shoulders keeping him from pinning her to the hardwood in an R-rated hip-lock.

Temple, as breathless as a Victorian virgin, felt her bosom heaving in and out in the prescribed manner. They were alone. They were engaged. There was no reason this dance shouldn’t have a very personal climax.

Matt’s face with its seriously hot expression drew near to hers. Surrender was the only reasonable option.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, grinned, and pushed himself up to extend a hand and pull her upright again.

“And?” he asked.

“I want a really private rematch later, Valentino.”

Temple patted her hair and heartbeat into place again.

José Juarez was chopped pico de gallo.

Mercedes Pasodoble

The Internet had been as unrevealing as his memory.

He’d visited the Hummerbar again for a nightcap. He was revved. Revienned. Couldn’t sleep. An Internet search for the Mercedes license plate had gotten him nowhere. A Bailey’s Irish Cream and coffee in the bar only deepened his phony Celtic accent. He was a faker without a memory.

He limped out of the hotel onto the Bahnhofstrasse, still teaming with foot traffic a lot more sound than his three-way thump of cane and then two footsteps.

He’s paced this expansive, expensive tourist trap avenue for a day and a night. Was he grinding his legs to permanent disability? He sensed he never knew when to give up.

And then, there it was, a gift of the teeming night.