by Bourne, Lena
I sigh and moan a lot as his hands massage my scalp, slowly and expertly and with so much skill and care my knees soon grow weak and jelly like. Pretty soon I won’t be able to stand upright without his help.
But I want to touch his hair too.
I rinse my hair and tell him so. He just offers me the bottle of shampoo. His hair is thick and strong like the rest of him, and back before he left, I could spend hours just running my fingers through it and think of nothing, but how nice it feels, and how much I love being with him.
We finally have those hours back. We have them all and we have them right now. There’s no need to rush. We can just be now.
That’s all I’m thinking once we’re both clean and rinsed, and I’m turning the shower off so I can lead him to the bed.
He reaches for the towel and hands it to me, but I shake my head and keep on walking. No need to dry when we’ll just get wet again in a second.
I need him, as much as I did last night, no, more, as much as I ever needed him.
And now I’ll take him.
I tell him to lay down and then climb on top of him when he does it. My dripping wet hair forms a curtain around our faces as I lean down to kiss him. My pussy is resting against his hard cock, our desire and need pulsing in tune. He tastes like clean water and the cool air around us, but also like the open road, the ocean-kissed wind, the soft dust of our ride made up of pollen, pavement and dry earth. He tastes like the life we used to share, like love and freedom and everything sweet and good and wholesome in this world.
I want us joined, I need him inside me and that’s all I know.
I know something else too as I lower myself down onto his cock. A moment of shock at his size, which pulls me back from my thoughts into the right now. Pure ecstasy invades me a heartbeat later as his thickness rubs against that special spot deep inside me. It ravages through me and leaves nothing but bliss and pleasure behind. I want to feel that again and again, until the end of days, until the end of time. We have that time now. We have all of it still in front of us. Just like we used to.
I keep on sliding up and down on his cock, picking up the pace, addicted now to the ecstasy that stabs me with each impale. My sighs and moans match his groans, our breathing loud and hoarse and in tune.
His hands stop playing with my breasts and nipples, leaving a void in the pleasure. A moment later his fingers dig into my hips, as he takes over and starts thrusting into me each time I slide down. Renewed, searing hot pleasure fills the void, almost to breaking point this time, making my sighs and my moans louder, turning them into shrieks. The sparkles of electric pleasure already filling my blood grow hotter, grow larger, grow in number, until all I am is one crackling mass of pleasure. I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I can’t speak, and I can’t think, save for one thought—I want this to last forever.
But it can’t. Too much electric pleasure is filling me, turning to flame, tearing me apart and consuming me. I can’t contain it anymore.
I scream as I come, because every sparkling bit of pleasure filling me exploded all at once, but instead of pain they brought bliss and ecstasy like I don’t remember ever feeling before. Pure bliss. Pure joy. Purely perfect.
I feel lighter than air, as malleable as water, as soft as a summer breeze, as I slide off his cock and into his arms, to lay there by his side where I belong.
This is what our forever was supposed to be like. And I want more of it. Need more. But it’s alright, I can rest for just a little while. Because I finally have it back now.
* * *
His kisses wake me, and I’m aware of him perfectly before I even become fully conscious. The kisses are just a continuation of the dream I was having, the one where everything is as it was, and amazing as it should be.
“Good, you’re finally awake,” he says once I open my eyes, then kisses me more deeply. I return the kiss and close my eyes again, feel myself floating in warm water amid gentle rolling waves tickling my skin and supporting me on absolute pleasure, which is no longer just a fantasy, but reality, my reality. Our reality.
He gets on top of me, his weight so wonderfully solid and balanced I gasp from the perfectness of it, but not as loudly as when he enters me.
I never feel as complete and as whole as when we’re joined and wound together as tightly as we can be, so tightly that nothing can ever break us apart. This is one such moment.
Butterflies of bliss are filling me with the endless flutter of their wings as he pushes further in, making me gasp again, making me squirm and sigh and moan, but he keeps going, unrelenting in his advance until I’m so filled I can’t take any more of him.
But that’s a lie. I can always take more of him. Always.
He pulls out just as slowly, our lips and our tongues as entwined as our bodies, bliss fluttering everywhere, inside me and out.
He keeps up the slow pace, letting me feel every inch of his thickness and his love for me, over and over again, until I’m breathless, yearning for the relief only he can give me, my mind fighting my body, because it wants this to last forever, just like this. But my body is stretched taut, stretched almost to breaking, already overfilled with pleasure again. He’s balanced on his forearms over me, and I’m holding his hands, didn’t even realize I grabbed them. The feel of his hands in mine, his cock in me, and his lips on mine—it’s all I wanted and all I needed and now I have it all.
A few more slow strokes, and I lose the will to fight the onslaught of bliss and pleasure. I let myself slip beneath the surface of the rippling water that brought me to this orgasm that I don’t ever want to end.
It’s the same for him, I think. After a few more quick thrusts he’s spent, buried deep inside me and shuddering, breathing coarsely, as spent as I am. It takes me a few long moments to regain my awareness. His cock is still inside me but soft now, and he’s grinning down at me, only his eyes in focus.
“Come on, let’s get some dinner. Get dressed,” he says and starts to get up, his cock sliding out of me and making me moan. I pull him back by grabbing his hand again.
“Let’s stay in and just get room service,” I say.
He sits on the edge of the bed, smiling at me and holding my hand in both of his now. “But I want to take you out.”
I smile at the sweetness in his voice as he says it then sit up too and cup his cheek in my free palm. “We’ll have so much time for that. You need some rest now, I know you’re in pain.”
He makes a face and snorts derisively. “I’m fine.”
I lean in and kiss his lips softly, because he’s right here and I want to and I can.
“I can’t go outside and have you sit next to me fully dressed for hours,” I say. “Tonight I want you right here, just like this, and all to myself.”
He grins, sharp desire lighting his eyes so many shades of green I could never name them all. But I’ll try nonetheless.
“You make a very good point, Julie,” he says and lets go of my hand to cup my face, the touch turning my blood electric. “As always.”
Then he kisses me again, and then he’s on top of me again, and inside me, where he belongs. If we keep this up, we might not get to go out for dinner tomorrow night either, because we might not be able to walk.
But I wouldn’t want it any other way. This is exactly where I want to be.
And once his cock starts drowning me in those rippling, soft waters of pleasure I only just emerged from, that becomes the only thing I know. The only thing I’ve ever known.
10
Julie
It’s Friday night and we’ve just finished our dinner at a tiny restaurant near the ocean, where we’ve eaten at least a hundred times back in the day. It was a favorite of ours back then and when he pulled up into the parking lot of it earlier, I almost told him we should go someplace else instead. It would be better if we started making new memories now, instead of going over the old ones. That would be easier, because for me, all those old memories are still coated in a thin film of
sadness and pain.
We’ve had six amazing days here, and all of them have been out of this world perfect, better than the best of my fantasies, but seeing this place brought back the painful memories of missing him. We used to have such fun, such amazing times all the time back when we were regulars here. Then that all went away for so long. I don’t want it to ever go away again, but that possibility will always exist now.
I’m glad I didn’t make an issue of it though. Even though I feared they wouldn’t, the bad memories faded while we ate. The garden where we’re sitting is almost empty, lit only with low hanging lantern lights and candles on the tables. The air is still thick from the day’s heat, but it smells of honey and there’s a pleasant breeze coming in from the sea. Soft guitar music is washing over everything, Ink is sitting next to me with his arm around my shoulders, and I can’t think of a single place or time where I’d rather be right now. I certainly can’t imagine being with anyone else. The thought scares me, but I don’t think that’s just because he left me and hurt me so badly. I was always afraid of losing him and this fear seems more like that one did.
“Do you remember this place?” he asks lazily, but kind of pointedly too.
I look at him sideways, frowning to suggest he’s asking a pretty dumb question. How could I forget this place?
“Of course,” I say instead of something more snarky, since this is too pleasant an evening for snark.
“This is where we first decided to go away together. We were sitting right over there.” He points to a table at the far right end of the garden. Everything inside me stiffens as I sit bolt upright in my chair, his arm sliding off my shoulders. How did I not remember that? If I had, I definitely would’ve told him we should eat someplace else.
“You alright?” he asks and I nod, even though I have no idea how to make sense of all the things rushing through my brain. Anger at the unfairness of losing him, losing the ability to bring to life all those wonderful plans we made for our future is warring with the enticing, fiery possibility that they’ll come true after all now that he’s back. I don’t know whether to I’m angry, or sad, or happy, and it’s making me unable to speak.
I can’t see his face very well, because there’s too many shadows here.
“We should talk about that again,” he says in a very serious voice. He sounds like he planned this conversation. Or maybe my shocked reaction caused this cold purpose in his tone. Or maybe he’s worried I’ll say no to him if he asks me to run away with him now. As amazing as the last six days were, I couldn’t completely keep off the subject of him abandoning me. He got annoyed eventually, told me point blank that there’s only so many ways he can say sorry, that I now need to let him prove he’s never going to leave me again, but that didn’t stop me either.
“You want us to run away together?” I ask. “The way we planned?”
He nods and grins. “Yeah, but we should head down south a little earlier than we planned.”
I keep looking at him, and I have no idea what’s showing on my face, since so many things are rushing through my brain I can’t make sense of any of them, let alone find something to say. I do know one thing though. For almost a year after he left me I kept waiting for him to come back and say this exact same thing to me. Over and over, I daydreamed about him riding back into town to look me up and tell me we can run away together now. The wish was in the back of my mind the whole time he was gone, and it was a huge part of my decision to make the trip we planned on my own.
I finally know what to say.
“I already made plans for leaving home,” I say and that’s not exactly how I wanted those words to come out.
He frowns. “On your own, you mean?”
I nod and bring his hand into my lap where I clasp it in both of mine. I may not have forgiven him completely yet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him with all my heart and always will.
“This San Diego trip was supposed to be the start of my solo adventure on the road,” I say. “It would be just like the one we talked about going on together.”
He sits up straighter, and despite the darkness I can see light in his eyes, warm, pleasant, perfect light that shines just for me.
“You thought about going even after I left?” he asks like he can’t quite believe it. Or like he’s incredibly happy to learn that I did. “That’s how much you wanted to go?”
I nod and smile wider. “I wanted to spend my life with you on the road with all my heart and all my soul.”
He smiles too. “Yeah, me too.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you come get me sooner?” I laugh as I say it, but his smile fades. I know what he’s thinking, I know he’s thinking about those bad choices he was forced to make and how they didn’t do any damn good even though he kept his word. That’s what I’m thinking about, anyway.
“Is that a yes?” he asks instead of answering my question.
I nod. “Yes, I’ll go anywhere with you.”
He has such a beautiful smile. It lights up his whole face, lights up this whole dark terrace.
“But we should make things right at home first,” I say and am forced to watch his smile fade again. I don’t like seeing that.
“It’s gone too far. We can’t just run away from it anymore,” I add, wishing I could stop talking this way, because he obviously doesn’t want to hear it, but I know I’m right.
“There’s nothing to take care of. What’s done is done. What happened, happened. We can’t change any of it,” he says in a tone that suggests he’s done talking about this.
“Let’s get out of here,” he adds, proving me right.
He waves the waiter over and pays in silence, finishes his beer in silence, and lays his hand on my lower back to lead me to the parking lot in silence. As much as the way he speaks annoyed me sometimes, his silences were always worse.
And this one is deeper and colder than any I remember. I don’t know how to break it. But I want to.
I pull him close and hug him tightly once we’re both mounted on his bike.
“Living my life on the road with you is the only way I want to live my life,” I say to him before he turns on the engine. “Don’t ever doubt that.”
He lays his arm over mine and squeezes, then turns on the bike without replying, and drives off.
Most times he was an open book, and I could almost always tell exactly what he was thinking about any given thing. Sometimes he wasn’t though, and this is one of those times. This silence of his is also colder than any I remember.
* * *
Ink
I didn’t have much of a plan when I came looking for her. She gave me a second chance and I promised myself I’d make a plan. But then I got so lost in her, in the way she loves me, the way I love her, and that promise went right out the window. I wish I’d told her about this barebones plan of mine sooner than tonight. And above all, I wish I’d stayed free to go anywhere, anytime with her.
I’m not free as a bird anymore, not even close. It was good pretending to be free and carefree these last couple of days, but that’s all it was—pretending.
There’s also no real reason to think that running away would solve anything. There never was a reason to think that. The first time we almost did it, bad shit happened, and it tore us apart. There’s no real reason to think even worse shit won’t happen now, shit that could tear us apart for good. As in death. I’ve been pretending running away will solve our problems, but in reality the best we can hope for is to postpone them. Maybe we’ll even be able to outrun them eventually, but that’s more of a dream than an actual possibility. I’ve spent the last six days pretending that’s not how it is, but her logical words to me shredded it to pieces.
I was never much of a planner. I’d always just do what I felt like doing, when I felt like it, and worry about the consequences when and if they came. She was the planner. I should have told her about the full scope of our situation before now, I should’ve done it back at the restauran
t, but I didn’t know how.
How do you tell the woman you love her life will be in danger if she stays with you?
But she has to know.
I’m taking the long way back to the hotel, doubling back on some of the roads leading there, but I can’t outrun this reckoning. By its very nature, a reckoning can never be outrun, yet I’m clearly still the fool who thinks those rules don’t apply to him.
Once she understands the full extent of the danger we’re in, that she’s in, will she still pledge her life to me so willingly?
I already lost her once, so I know I can’t face a life without her. The idea is no different than death in my mind.
What will she say? What will she do?
I guess I’ll find out soon, because our hotel is at the end of this stretch of road we’re on now. The lit outline of it is already clearly visible, and a reckoning is waiting just beyond those lights.
11
Julie
“I don’t understand this. I wish you’d talk to me,” I say once the hotel room door has been closed behind us for at least ten minutes, which he spent standing by the window and staring out into the darkness.
He turns to face me, something liquid and warm, yet cold and corrosive at the edges flowing from his eyes and engulfing me. He walks towards me and I do the same, meeting him halfway, right at the foot of the bed that was freshly made in our absence. The whole room looks and smells like we were never here at all, and realizing that makes my chest ache. I know what he meant by it being impersonal now. We’ll be erased from here as soon as we leave.
His palms are rough yet pleasantly warm as he cups my face and kisses me with that gentle passion he does so well, and which never fails to bring every good memory of mine to the front of my mind, along with sparkles and crackles of desire and love. But this feels like a goodbye kiss, and though I have absolutely no reason to think it is, my heart rate still quickens in fear.