by Claire Kent
He returned the kiss but didn’t deepen it. He was smiling against my mouth. “I do my best.” Then, unexpectedly he took a step back. He was still smiling, but something had changed about his presence. “I’m all sweaty still. I better take a shower. Get something to eat if you want. There’s not much there, but you can have anything you want.”
“Okay.” I felt a little rebuffed by his sudden retreat, just when I’d been kissing him.
But, by the time he’d disappeared into the bathroom, I’d realized what had happened.
I hadn’t been acting like we were having no-strings-attached sex. I’d been acting like we were a couple. And so, naturally, he’d retreated.
He hadn’t been rude. He hadn’t called attention to it. He’d just put up his walls again.
And that was fine. I couldn’t get hurt by it, since this was what I’d signed up for. He’d been honest from the beginning, so I had no cause to complain.
If I felt disappointed, then that was my own fault.
I wasn’t really all that hungry, so I took my water into the bedroom and stretched out on the bed, getting comfortable. I could have gone to the couch, but then that would have reminded me of the sex we’d just had there—the memory of which still gave me emotional shivers. It would also make me feel domestic, and I really had to be careful about that.
We weren’t playing house. We weren’t even really friends. We were fuck-buddies, and I couldn’t forget it.
I breathed deeply and tried to relax until Josh came out of the shower. I certainly didn’t intend to fall asleep.
But I did.
I really just dozed off, and I woke up again when Josh collapsed onto the bed beside me. I blinked at him groggily, immediately realizing what I’d done and kind of embarrassed by it.
He’d stretched out next to me on top of the covers and didn’t look like he was about to jump me again. In fact, he looked really tired himself. He wore nothing but a pair of pajama pants—something I’d never seen him wear before.
“I didn’t know you owned pajamas,” I said, since it was the first thing that came to my mind.
He glanced over. “My mom bought them for me a few Christmases ago.”
It was funny, but I hadn’t even imagined him having a mother. I wondered what she was like.
“So there’s a matching top? Why aren’t you wearing that?”
He narrowed his eyes disapprovingly but didn’t say anything.
I giggled. “The blue is kind of boring. They’d have been cozier in red flannel.”
He seemed to be hiding a smile. “Cozy isn’t really the look I’m going for. Which is why you’ve never seen these before. I thought you were asleep.”
“Just resting my eyes.”
“Ah. Is that what it was?”
I turned on my side to face him, feeling that wave of affection again that was so dangerous and so impossible to stop. “You look kind of tired too.”
“I am,” he admitted. He was lying on his back, but his head was turned to face me.
“We don’t have to have more sex tonight, if you’re tired.”
“I believe I already replied to that comment earlier.”
“I know. But it’s fine with me if you’re tired. What happened with that dog?” I don’t know why I asked the question—only it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the exhausted, stretched look on his face.
“What dog?”
“The one you started to mention earlier. In the park. You said there was this dog who was brought into the office this morning, and then you just trailed off.” I was watching his face, making sure he didn’t look annoyed or defensive by the inquiry. I didn’t think it was a very personal question, but he’d changed his mind about telling me earlier, and there must have been a reason for that.
“Oh.” He turned his head so he was looking straight up at the ceiling. “It wasn’t a big deal. Just someone found this dog in their neighborhood, and it had been really beat up.”
“Beat up how?” I spoke softly, since there was something underlying his calm expression that made me think he was bothered by the memory.
“I mean, literally beat up. Someone had beat the dog until it couldn’t even walk.”
I sucked in a breath, a pain in my chest at the thought. “Oh, how horrible. How can people do that to a poor, defenseless dog?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes. “It says something about their heart, though, if they hurt creatures who depend on us as much as dogs do.”
“I used to talk mean to Polly sometimes,” I said, my throat tightening at the memory. “When I was in a bad mood or impatient or something. She would always look so upset when my tone was mean, and then as soon as I said something nice to her she immediately forgave me. She’d wiggle all over, so happy about it. It was such complete devotion, even when I didn’t deserve it.”
He opened his eyes to look at me, and there was sympathy in his face that made tears burn in my eyes. The emotion faded fairly quickly, though. It had been a long time since I’d broken down at the thought of Polly.
“Dogs were the first animals domesticated. The first animals who learned to live with humans. Did you know that?” His tone was more natural now, as if he were trying to move past the moment before.
“I had heard that before. I don’t think it’s surprising.”
“Even feral dogs depend on humans—scavenging on the edges of our society. A cat can turn feral pretty quickly. They’re always close to wild. They’ll soon start to hunt for their own food and adapt to life without humans. They don’t really need us. You can release goats and cattle and pigs into the wild, and they’ll all be able to survive outside of human civilization. Dogs will always need us, though. They can’t let us go.”
“Yeah. It’s like we’re made to be companions.” I smiled at him, slightly bittersweet, and he returned the smile. “So what happened to that poor dog today? Is it all right?”
“I don’t know. We did what we could. It’s still in the office. I don’t know…”
“What kind of dog is it?”
“A Husky. She’s not even very old. Just barely past being a puppy. I think…” He cleared his throat, looking up at the ceiling once more. “I think someone used a bat on the poor thing.”
“Oh, my God.” I raised my hand to my chest. “I can’t understand why…how…”
I couldn’t finish the question, but I didn’t need to. Josh shook his head, his eyes closing again. “I’m no longer surprised at what people are capable of. When I worked in the refugee camp, I’d see things…hear stories…what was done to these people. What humans are willing to do to other human beings. When I first started field work, I saw…”
My throat was tightening again, but for a different reason now. He’d never talked about his humanitarian work in Africa before. He’d never even brought it up, aside from the brief comment on what he used to do on the first day we met. “What did you see?”
He shook his head.
“You never talk about your time there,” I murmured, intentionally keeping my voice light.
He opened his eyes to look at me again. “I can’t talk about it. I just can’t.”
“Okay.”
There wasn’t anything I could say to that. Certainly, a relationship entirely about sex didn’t allow for prying into his past, his emotions, his brokenness. “I guess you had to kind of distance yourself from the things you were seeing, or it would just eat you alive.”
“Yeah. That’s what I should have done. But I didn’t do a very good job.”
I thought about that. Understood why he’d have such trouble with it. He was really very sensitive, very empathetic, very easily touched by the hurt and need around him. He’d put up walls now, but they were mostly to protect his tender heart.
Finally, he said, “Do you know what’s been happening in Sudan over the last decade or so?”
I nodded my affirmation. I’d basically only known what was covered by the news, but I�
�d looked it up in the last few weeks, curious about his time in Africa.
“I normally wasn’t in the really dangerous areas—I mostly worked in refugee camps—but not long after I started field work, I ended up in a village after it had been massacred. I was really young, and I thought I could handle the emotional toll, but it eats at you…you know? As the years went on, it kept eating at me. What I’d seen that day, plus what I was seeing every day after.”
“I’d think it would have to.”
“I had a breakdown,” he said, after a minute of silence.
“What?”
“I told you I didn’t do a good job of distancing. It was all just too much. There was a group of boys that came into the camp—a lot of refugees from Sudan ended up in Chad—and for some reason they were the last straw. The things that had happened to them, to their village, to their families. Torture and rape and murder. All in the name of…” He took a strange, ragged breath and let it out slowly. “I had a mental breakdown. I couldn’t get out of bed. They had to send me home.”
My mind was whirling with this information, the pieces of his nature, his history, his choices, coming together with a clarity I’d been missing until now. And I knew now why he was so committed to no-strings-attached. In everything. It was a protective mechanism, to keep him from falling apart like that again.
“So that’s why you went to vet school?”
“Yeah. I had to do something. All my education and training was in international aid work. I could have done an office job in the headquarters of an NGO—and not do field work—but I couldn’t seem to manage even that. My mom was the one who told me I should be a vet. She said I’d always wanted to be one as a boy. and it wasn’t too late. I don’t remember wanting that, but it’s a decent life.”
“Yeah. I think you’re a pretty good vet.”
“Thanks.” He gave me a half-smile, and then his expression changed, twisted slightly. “I’m not sure why I just dumped all that on you.”
“It’s fine. I’d wondered why you’d made such a career change.”
“Anyway, enough about me. Did you want to go to sleep, or did you feel like doing something else tonight.” He gave me a familiar, hot look so I’d know what he was talking about.
The shift was so abrupt that it took me a minute to catch up. It was hard to make a complete turnaround from what felt like emotional intimacy to casual sex. “Either way is fine with me. If you’re tired…”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not too tired for sex?” He rolled on his side and reached over to caress my cheekbone with his knuckles. “So what’s on your wish list for tonight?”
I couldn’t begin to sort through what kind of sexual scenarios I wanted to indulge in tonight. My mind was still on the previous conversation and what I’d learned about Josh. I could hardly tell him I’d rather talk to him than fuck him, though. We weren’t in this thing together to talk. “I don’t know. What are you thinking?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m thinking about that night we ran into each other at the bar.”
I thought back to that night, our second night together. “What about it?”
“What do you remember about it?” His voice had gotten low, hoarse, erotic.
I remembered a lot of things. A lot of very sexy things.
“You didn’t obey very well, so you had to come wait for me in here.”
My body started to react to the memory, to the texture in his voice, which was almost a caress in and of itself. “I remember.”
“And then I came in here and found you stretched out on my bed naked, waiting for me. You were so turned on you could hardly lie still.”
“I know.” I shifted slightly, feeling a familiar pulsing between my legs.
“And then you had to learn to come when I said so. But you were so eager you could barely stop yourself.” He hadn’t even touched me, but my breathing accelerated.
“Yeah. I remember.”
“I know you remember.” His hot eyes raked over my body, making me feel naked even in my clothes. “I made you come harder than you’d ever come before. Didn’t I?”
“Oh, yeah, you did.”
“You’re blushing,” he murmured, giving me a knowing look. “Like a little girl caught doing something naughty.”
If possible, I blushed even hotter.
“You’re embarrassed.” Josh leaned toward me at last, his hand barely skimming my breasts over my shirt. “But you’re also getting turned on, just thinking about that night.”
I was. Turned on. Just the memory of that wild passion—completely new to me then—aroused me.
“Aren’t you?” he demanded.
I wanted to melt from the feelings coursing through me. “Maybe a little.”
He sat up, giving me a familiar look of heated dominance. “Take off your clothes for me.”
I was breathing raggedly, but I did as he said, the arousal making it hard for me to process clear thoughts. All that mattered was the way my body was throbbing, the way Josh was staring at me.
When I was naked, he moved down the bed some and then put one hand on my thigh. “Show me.”
“Josh—“
“Show me,” he said again, his voice even sexier than his gaze.
I put slightly trembling hands on my thighs and parted them for him, my pussy almost aching at the greedy, possessive look in his eyes as he watched.
“Show me.” His eyes never wavered from between my legs.
With a hard swallow, I used my fingers to part my intimate folds and show him my wet pussy and swollen clit.
I was glad to see that he was aroused too. I could see it in the tension of his face and shoulders and in the slight flush on his cheeks. And in the bulge at the front of his pajama pants.
He leaned forward and blew gently on my aroused flesh.
My whole body shuddered, and I couldn’t hold back a whimper in response.
“Very good,” he said thickly. “You want it again like that night, don’t you?”
There was no sense in denying it. The evidence was there for him to see, as I exposed myself so intimately for him. “Yeah. Please.”
“Hold your ankles, baby.” Josh straightened up.
I did as he said, leaning back on the bed and folding my knees toward my chest—gripping my ankles to hold my legs as far apart as he wanted.
First, he pleasured me with his fingers and mouth, until I was just on the verge of coming and begging him for release. He wouldn’t let me, though.
Then he put on a condom, braced himself over me, and slid his cock inside me.
He fucked me hard, pushing against my folded body in a series of forceful, rapid thrusts. He shook the bed until the headboard slammed against the wall. He jiggled my body until my breasts were bouncing against my chest, and I could barely keep a grip on my ankles.
The motion of his cock felt raw against my already sensitive pussy, and my position was awkward and uncomfortable. But I was close to coming again almost immediately—so overwhelmed with the heat and brute force of him.
“Are you going to come when I tell you?” he grunted, when I was practically sobbing with my need for release.
“Oh, God. Oh, yes.”
“Then come. Come now.”
I let out a loud cry with my first orgasm. Then he let me release my ankles, keeping my legs trapped in place, folded against my chest, with his shoulders. Then he told me to rub my clit. I had to squeeze my hand into place, but I obeyed until I was close to another orgasm.
When he told me to come, I came—and then came again. Until he finally came too in a series of jerks and grunts.
I was leveled when he finally collapsed on top of me, and I couldn’t help but clutch at him hungrily. He was breathless and limp, but he rolled off me pretty quickly. Much quicker than I wanted.
We took several minutes to catch our breath and recover, and by then I was starting to feel discontent. Heavy.
It took me a minute to rea
lize why.
He’d used sex as a distraction—as a way to move beyond the emotional vulnerability of our previous conversation. He was committed to keeping things casual, and this was the way he’d brought us back.
I had nothing to whine about. He’d given me three incredible orgasms, and I’d known what this was from the very beginning.
I still felt kind of achy, though, and so tired I thought I would drop. So I decided to just head home.
He didn’t object.
In the car afterwards, I cried a little. I think it was mostly from the aftermath of the emotion and sex, more than anything else.
If I couldn’t do this casually, then I couldn’t do it at all. I’d have to really think about it. Be honest with myself.
Because one thing was absolutely clear.
Josh wasn’t going to change his mind about what we were and what we could be.
Eight
I did pretty well for the next few weeks with my resolution to keep things non-intimate.
Whenever I felt that pull of affection or the desire for emotional closeness, I turned the moment into sex. It seemed to work for Josh, and it worked for me too.
At least, it usually did.
We did a lot of power-playing, since that worked best to remind me that there wasn’t anything deeper between us. If he was ordering me around, then I felt less like myself, so I could focus only on the sexual pleasure and not on what else was missing.
The week before, we’d had dinner in front of the television, and he was telling me funny stories of people who’d brought very spoiled pets into the office for treatment. The evening had felt so domestic—like we were in a real relationship—that I’d had to ask him to tie me up afterwards to get my head on straight again.
He’d made me come over and over again, bound spread-eagle on his bed, and I’d been screaming myself hoarse at the end of it. I’d felt kind of heavy afterwards and hadn’t spent the night, but at least I’d stopped myself from having soft, fond feelings about him.
Tonight, I’d had to work late. I’d had a bad day—with a lot of stress from complications with a project at work, one that I was getting unfairly blamed for—and I’d actually been planning to cancel and just go home and get to bed early.