Forbidden Delights

Chapter Five

Seduction has always come naturally to Lorelai. Beauty, charm and wealth will get you far in life and even farther with men. A few suggestive touches and comments and a flutter of the eyelashes and she has launched a thousand ships. There's something about her that makes men want to break her. There's something about her that makes her want to let them try.

Seducing Dante would be trickier, though. There is no illusion of innocence after what he had seen — he knows her game and is no doubt unwilling to play it. He's a married man, and she has been unable to spot any cracks within it so far that she can exploit. She will have to begin subtly, or else risk him telling his wife — or worse, her father.

Lorelai can play the long game. Cater to male fantasies, pretending she is everything he could ever want and pretending to be unaware of it. Perform for him and pretend to be unconscious of him perceiving her. She knows the act all too well — sit a certain way, talk a certain way, cement herself in his mind until he convinces himself he needs her.

It is a game of push-and-pull, give-and-take. Figure out what he wants, present it to him on a plate, and let him think he is taking it.

And so, Lorelai gets ready. She brushes her long brown waves, applies makeup in a way that men who don't know any better think is natural, and puts on her sundress that is the perfect length — showing off her legs while being just teasingly short enough to make men want to see more.

She then watches next door through the kitchen window, waiting for either of the Ciceros to emerge from the house to help the workers carry more stuff from the moving van parked outside. It is Margot who emerges first, in her mom jeans and linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The typical girl next door.

Lorelai approaches her, a warm smile plastered on her face. "Hi, Margot," she greets. "Do you want any help?"

Margot startles slightly at the girl's sudden emergence, then beams back at her. Sweet, naive Margot who doesn't know that Lorelai is trying to fuck her husband.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly ask you to do that," the woman says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"You're not asking, I'm offering," Lorelai insists. "I've got nothing better to do anyway."

"Thank you," Margot replies, touched. "That's really kind of you."

Margot then leads her to the back of the open truck, less than half-full of their belongings. Internally, Lorelai rejoices that she missed most of the labor.

"We're nearly done now — just the last few boxes," Margot explains. "Each of them are labelled with what room they belong in, but it doesn't really matter if they get mixed up. I'll show you where each one goes."

Margot then grabs a box from the truck and Lorelai follows suit, picking up one that doesn't look too heavy before being led into the house. As they walk towards the living room, Margot babbles on about which room is which and where to put each box, but Lorelai is only half-listening. Instead, she is inspecting the house's interior and wondering where Dante is.

The woman finally comes to the end of her spiel and Lorelai pretends she was listening to it. "Got it," the younger girl affirms.

The two then return to the van and begin to carry more of the boxes into the house. Lorelai was hoping to work in companionable silence, but it seems that Margot has other ideas and continues to chatter. She floats from topic-to-topic with seemingly no rhyme or reason, talking about interior design, pollution in the city, Italian cuisine, and an obese pigeon she saw in New York a few weeks ago.

Quite frankly, the conversation was more exhausting than the manual labor. Though, Lorelai supposes that Margot's energy is something she is going to have to try and emulate — clearly, something about it appeals to Dante and Lorelai's more cynical nature will have to be put aside.

While Margot is having a hushed discussion with a worker who dropped a box labelled 'FRAGILE', Lorelai picks up a box for the bedroom and makes her way upstairs, mentally recalling Margot's earlier directions. Third door on the right.

Lorelai walks down the hallway, before an open door catches her attention. Through the door, she can see that it is the room opposite her own bedroom. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she walks inside despite knowing that it was not the correct room. She's not doing anything wrong, she reasons. No room was made to be off limits to her.

It appears to be a home office — most likely Dante's based off the furniture. A brown leather couch, a sleek mahogany desk, an expensive black leather chair, and a large bookcase. It didn't seem to be Margot's style at all. Immediately, Lorelai's interest is piqued. A man's office is a window into the soul — her father always keeps his locked for this exact reason.

She places the box on the floor and stands in front of the window, peering into her own. She is curious what exactly could be seen from here, and finds that her vanity and the end of her bed are clearly visible. Brilliant.

"What are you doing?" A voice rumbles from behind her.

Lorelai startles and turns. Dante is stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her.

"I'm helping," Lorelai answers, smiling sweetly.

"You're helping?" Dante repeats, dubious. "Why would you do that?"

Lorelai rolls her eyes. "I'm not actually the devil you think I am. I'm being a good samaritan."

"You're being a nosey samaritan," Dante corrects. "Snooping through my office."

"I'm not snooping," Lorelai insists, petulant. "The door was open and I got lost."

Dante looks at the box labelled 'bedroom' on the floor, then back at Lorelai with a raised eyebrow. "Does this look like the bedroom to you?"

"That couch could be a futon, for all I know," she shrugs.

Dante rolls his eyes. "This is very clearly an office."

"Yeah, an office," Lorelai says. Then, because she can't help herself — "What were you doing in your office at 12am the other night?"

Dante pauses, and Lorelai's heart stutters in her chest. Could she be about to discover something she could exploit?

But he meets her gaze easily, quirking an eyebrow. "What were you doing sneaking an older man into your bedroom at 12am the other night?"

She purses her lips. "Touché."

"Exactly," Dante says, then nods his head towards the door. "Now get out."

Lorelai rolls her eyes, then carefully bends over to pick up the box. She knows that the length of her dress means that it will have risen just enough to show the bottom of the curve of her ass as she bends. She picks up the box before slowly standing and turning to face Dante, who is looking away with a tight jaw, eyes fixed pointedly out of the window.

"Care to show me the bedroom, then?" Lorelai requests, a slightly suggestive lilt to her voice.

Dante looks at her for a moment, suspicious, but he doesn't chastise her or demand that she leave the house altogether, which she counts as a win. She tries to look as unassuming as possible, and she knows that Dante is trying to figure out if she is being intentional in her behaviour or if he is misreading it.

"It's the third door on the right," Dante replies, carefully. Clearly, he doesn't trust her — rightfully so, but it is still an inconvenience to her plans of seduction. "Think you can manage that?"

"I shall try," Lorelai promises, exiting the room. She purposefully brushes past him as she passes him in the doorway, so close that she can smell him, looking up at him as she does so. He looks down at her, expression indecipherable, and she wonders if he can feel the racing of her heart where her chest touches his.

As she leaves the doorway, the physical and eye contact breaks and so does the tension between them, crackling like a phone wire.