Emma wants sex

The night was just settling in, the sky in the west was a forlorn and tattered pink under low gray clouds as I turned off the blacktop and pulled into the motel parking lot. A glance into my rearview mirror showed Emma's headlights behind me, dipping and rising as she made the turn and followed me in. We were out in an unincorporated no man's land stuck between the far end of the airport runways and a suburban industrial park, a strip of motels and weedy fields that squatted in the shadow of the expressway, a place where no one stayed, where nothing was permanent.

I slowed down and cruised beneath the motel's huge and garish neon sign and past the front office, then headed back through the sparsely-filled parking lot. When I slid down the car window I could hear the distant whining of jet engines and see the strobing of the runway landing lights reflected in the low cloud clover. It looked like heat lightning. My tires crunched on the dry gravel as I pulled into a spot and Emma pulled in right next to me and when we cut our engines it was quiet enough to hear the crickets in the weeds and the soft hum of the motel's air-conditioners.

This night was soft and close and smelled of Midwestern earth and fertility. The place was so nowhere, Emma and I might as well have been the only people in the here.

I got out of the car and took my briefcase with my school papers. I'd already stopped here before class to set up some things and this was all I had. Emma popped her trunk and got out of her car and locked it. She didn't even look at me as she got a tote bag out of the trunk and then closed it. She'd taken off the blue sweater she'd worn in class and draped it around her shoulders, revealing the tight, pink tank top she wore beneath. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and sandals and her long chestnut hair was pinned up on top of her head. I'd made her go into the ladies' room and put her hair up before we'd left the campus. I'd also made her take off her bra and panties and put them in her bag so that she was naked beneath her shorts and top. With the arms of the sweater hanging over her breasts I couldn't tell for sure whether she'd followed my instructions, but I had no reason to doubt it. Emma never disagreed with me.

When I'd called her the night before and told her I'd be taking her to a motel tonight, she'd agreed as well. It wasn't easy for her to talk at home because she had two roommates who didn't know about us, and she couldn't take calls on her cell because she had to keep that clear in case her boyfriend called from Atlanta. He was very jealous.

I took her arm. "We're on the second floor," I said.

I'd intentionally picked this forlorn, anonymous motel not because she didn't deserve better, but because at this stage in our relationship it seemed appropriate—someplace seedy and furtive, a place that used its proximity to the airport as cover for what it really was: a rendezvous for people who wanted to have sex or meet for other small-time illicit activities. The nice downtown hotels with the rich carpets and silk sheets could come later. For now I wanted something more from Emma than I'd been able to get from meeting her after hours at school. So far, for all we'd done it had still been basically a student-teacher affair and I wanted it to be more. This seemed to be the logical next step and I was excited, and my excitement showed in the tight control I kept on myself.

Emma was excited too and I knew her well enough to recognize it. She showed it the same way I did, hardly saying a word, barely looking at me.

I gestured to the stairs and she started to climb, and I followed her, aware that she was naked under her clothes, aware that she must know very well what she was getting into. Her face was passive, but I noticed a glint of excitement in her eyes. Somewhere between here and the school she'd found time to adjust her makeup because her face was flawless and despite the harsh, yellow-tinted lights. I'd never seen her looking more beautiful, placid and perfectly composed.

I directed her down and to the left. We passed by silent, firmly closed doors, the stucco walls tinged a sickly green from the motel's neon marquee. I stopped in front of 232 and swiped the keycard, pushed open the door and we stepped into a typically generic motel room, so bland and featureless as to be almost invisible, the carpet brown, the walls orange. It looked clean enough, everything orderly and tidy—two beds, tightly made up, a closet, dresser with mirror, chest, television. It was only on second look that Emma noticed the end of a rope hanging over the top of the closet door, the collection of sex toys neatly arrayed on a towel on the dresser.

I watched her face as she looked at the dresser. I'd laid everything out earlier—cuffs and chains, rope and clips, vibrators and dildos clamps, whips and floggers—all neatly arrayed like a surgeon's instruments.