“You act as if I treat you like a slave. Like a mere . . . physical object.”
“You do!” I whirl, and you’re there, and my palms strike your chest, hard. “I am an object for your sexual needs, Caleb. Just like Rachel and the others. Make whatever excuses you wish, you cannot fool me any longer, not as you have them. They at least have the promise of finding value to someone else. Sold as so much chattel, perhaps, but at least they have a goal, a future, a promise of something more. I pace these rooms day after day, day after day, and yet I go nowhere. I accomplish nothing. I have no future. I am Madame X, yes. But who is that? Who am I? And to you, Caleb, who am I? What am I? You enjoy fucking me. I understand that much. But that is something you do to me, not with me. And yes, you’re very, very good at it. I enjoy it. I admit that, freely. But that is not shared, Caleb. And when it happens, it’s just you . . . doing. And then you’re done, and you leave. You leave. You leave. You always leave! You’re all I fucking have, and you’re always leaving me!”
You are strangely silent. How did I get here, up against you? Hands pinned between our bodies, palms to your chest. Leaning against you, as if I cannot stand without you.
I am not entirely sure that isn’t the truth.
You are absolutely still, your chest barely even moving with breath. Your eyes are on me, and they are blazing with heat, crackling with darkfire, as if behind those shadows within you there is an inferno, a sun, an ever-roiling supernova, but it can only be seen or felt when you deign to allow the veil guarding the world from your inner self to be swept away.
A mistake—there is motion, coming from you: Your jaw pulses furiously.
“You think”—a pause for breath—“you think all I do is fuck you? Did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes.” I will not flinch away. Cannot. Must not. “That’s all you’ve ever done to me: fuck. Base, meaningless, and empty.”
“You could not be more wrong, X. Am I monogamously faithful to you, sexually? No. And I will neither explain nor apologize for that. I am who I am. I am what I am. But my time with you, limited as it may be, has never been . . . base, or meaningless, or empty.” You freight those three words, my words, with such acidic venom I cannot help flinching. “So far from that, X. I am not a man to whom emotion comes easily, and that is not likely to change.”
My chin lifts. “I . . . don’t . . . believe you.”
“No?” An arched eyebrow. “Allow me to show you, in that case.”
Another moment that is seared into me: You, lit by the pale glow of the city, mammoth, a creature of raw sexual potency, seething, furious, your hands rising from your sides as if in slow motion, your eyes fixed on me, blinking every few fragments of a second, a slow sweep of long black lashes, and then your hands grip my shirt, lift it.
I expect you to rip my clothes from me, but you don’t. You remove them, carefully.
Reverently, almost.
The bra you roll upward until my breasts spill free, and then you tug it off my head, lifting it, forcing my arms upward. My jeans you unbutton, unzip, push down, removing my panties with the denim. And just like that, within seconds, I am naked.
And then, after a taut fortieth of an hour, your eyes roaming my shape, devouring my flesh, you take a step back. Away from me. And you look at me, your eyes daring me to glance away, to break the tensile fragility of this thing between us. What it is, I don’t know. I can’t stop it, though. This is your sorcery. Now I feel it. Now I am lost in its spell.
As I knew I would be.
You remove your suit coat, tossing it carelessly to the floor. Then the tie, ripped off impatiently. And then the shirt, one button at a time, with dexterous fingers. And then your belt, shoes toed off, socks. Even you look momentarily awkward, removing your socks; they are impossible to take off gracefully. But then you stand in just your underwear, black fabric stretched taut over pale skin, massive frame like a mountain of muscle, all crags of hard flesh. And now . . . thumbs in the elastic, not looking away, you shove them down, and you are naked with me.
Unmarred skin, perfectly proportioned. A god made flesh.
Your erection juts hard and proud, and I quake at the flash of physical memory that assaults me, the haptic knowledge of the way your engorged member feels, driving into me, filling me, piercing me.
I shake, but I cannot flee. Cannot speak, mouth dry, unable to look away, unwilling to try, knowing it is futile.
The way you close the space between us, moving slowly, so I know your intent, you reach for me. And I expect—I don’t know what. To be kissed? To be lifted and fucked right here, in this moment?
I do not expect what happens: You take me by the shoulders, and for a split second you just look at me, dark eyes blazing, jaw pulsing, a million words burning inside you, burning and always unspoken, as if they are consumed before they can reach your lips. And then you spin me, a rough, abrupt twist, and you shove me so I slam against the window, the glass cold against my naked breasts. And then you’re there, behind me, trapping me, and your shaft probes between my thighs, and your breath is in my ear.
“This is fucking you, X.” And you drive into me.
Hard, sudden, a brief stab of pain as you stretch me to aching. And then I gush, wet at the fullness of you, and I cry out, and sag, would fall but for your presence.
A thrust.
I feel it, that burn. The explosive upwelling. I tamp it down.
“Yes, Caleb. This is fucking. This is what you do to me. Just this. This is all it’s ever been.” My voice is strong, though I am weak.
“Look at the window, X.”
I do, but instead of the city, I see us. Reflected.
You, huge behind me, pale and heavily muscled, moving, skin flexing and shifting in the light as you fuck.
Me, palms to the glass, breasts flattened, areolae dusky circles around my erect nipples, hips wide and skin dark, hair loose and wild, eyes crazed. Moving as I am fucked.
“You see how we look together?”
“I need more, Caleb.” I push back into your body, into your motion, into what you are doing to me. “I need more than just this. This is all you give me, and it isn’t enough.”
Abruptly, I am empty, left gasping, as you rip yourself out of me. I remain collapsed against the glass, watching you in the reflection. A moment, then, of you, standing naked behind me, shaft glistening wetly with our essences, massive chest rising and falling heavily with conflicted breath. Your eyes glitter.
I am on the cusp of orgasm, shaking with it, full to choking with need for it.
“You ask the impossible of me, X.”
“All I’m asking for is you.” Until I say it, I never understood how true this is. It hurts to admit, the pain lancing deep through every molecule of me.
You are an enigma. You will not change, and I know this, but still I feel as if I NEED you and I HATE you for this, hate myself even more for needing you, because needing you binds me to the howling ghosts of my murdered past, binds me to the memory of waking up as no one, waking up unable to speak or to move, unable to express the utter torment of waking up lost, alone, my soul echoing with absence, my mind blank, my past erased so completely that I cannot even mourn for what I do not know I’ve even lost.
I NEED YOU.
Damn all the gods for burdening me with this truth, but I need you.
I don’t want to need you, but I do.
And you will not, cannot give me you. I don’t know why, and I do know you will never tell me.
Your eyes ever so slowly flutter closed. Your fisted hands uncurl.
You reach for me. I tremble, paralyzed in place. Gently now, more gentle than you’ve ever been, you turn me in place, bend at the knees, curl your hands behind my thighs and lift me easily, tug my legs around the trunk of your waist, and in the moment before impalement, you pause.