“Yes, yes,” I breathe, meeting him on the in-thrust, “Like that, baby. Give me that, please, please—fuck me, Conrad. Please fuck me.”
“Jesus Christ, woman,” he groans, “you’re too much. You’re too perfect.”
“We’re perfect.”
“I can’t hold back anymore, but if I let go, I won’t stop.”
I pull forward, knowing I’ll have to help him past his desire to not hurt me when he lets go of his control…
I scream as loud as I can as I slam my ass back into him, hard and fast. “Good!” I snarl, “don’t stop. I want it. I can take it. I need it, baby. Fuck me, please.”
He loses the battle with a primal growl. He lets go of my ass, caresses gently, and then spanks me, hard, and I squeal and lurch away in surprise, and that’s when he gives in, thrusting into me. My squeal of shock at the spanking morphs into a groan of delight as he glides in. He takes hold of my buttocks again, gripping a handful on each side. Drives in, hard, and I scream again.
He leans over me, his chest against my spine, and cups my tits, grinding while buried as deep as he can go. Resting his forehead between my shoulder blades he thrusts, kneading my tits and pinching my nipples, and then he gathers both breasts in one hand and slides his fingers down to my clit. Brushes quick circular touches to me, thrusting, kissing my spine, biting the skin, groaning as he moves.
“You’re holding back,” I murmur. “Don’t.”
He leans back, stretching away, taking hold of my ass once more, and pulls almost out.
“Yeah,” I murmur, as he drives in. “Like that.”
“God…damn,” he growls, feeling me writhe back into his thrusts. “Gonna lose it in about ten seconds.”
“God, yes,” I breathe. “Lose it. Lose it inside me, Conrad. Give it all to me.”
He starts fucking, then, no longer the scraping, slow, grinding single thrusts. Instead he’s pushing into me in a slow, deliberate rhythm. “Like this?”
“Yeah—yeahyeahyeah,” I gasp, shrill, breathlessly whimpering the last three syllables in a single rush. “Oh god, yes. Don’t stop, Conrad, don’t you dare stop now.”
He’s picking up speed, clutching my ass in a harsh, crushing grip and pulling me back into his thrusts, snarling each time he slams deep. I can feel his balls swinging and swaying, tapping against my cunt on each thrust, feel his body flexing behind me, feel his power. I can feel each ridge and vein of his cock as it slides into me, again and again, and I’m lost in moans, gone for this, drowning in it.
“Conrad!”
“Fuck, Hannah—Hannah—”
The orgasm that’s building now is…a different beast than anything that’s gone before. It’s just entirely more. I press my ring and middle finger against my clit, face buried in the bed, ass in the air, taking Conrad’s cock hard and fast, and I grind my touch against my clit the way I like it best, pushing myself to the edge, but waiting, waiting for the moment Conrad lets go.
“Come with me, Hannah,” he growls.
“Now?”
“Now, baby. Come now.” He grunts wordlessly, gasping, groaning, fucking my asshole with all the primal power he possesses. “Jesus—fucking hell, I’m—god, I’m coming…Hannah, I’m coming!”
My fingers are circling so fast my forearm aches, and I’m writhing on him, slapping back against him, crying out as my own climax seizes me in a giant fist, wringing me into sobbing, shaking convulsions.
I feel him come, and it’s the most violent release I’ve ever felt from him. He slams as deep as he can go, and I feel cum shoot out of him and fill me, and he pulls back and rams back in, more cum spurting into me. Again, and again, and again, each driving thrust pouring more and more cum into me, until it’s pooled inside my asshole and being forced out by his still thrusting cock, squirting out of me, dripping out of my asshole, sliding wet and warm down the outside of my pussy. God, so much cum. And he can’t stop fucking me, groaning, snarling, cursing. My asshole spasms around him, clamping down on his softening cock.
Finally, he pulls out of me as slowly as he’d pushed in.
When he flops free, I feel empty, aching, but wrung out with ecstasy, utterly spent, utterly sated.
He collapses to his back beside me, rolls into me, cradles me in his arms, rolls back so I’m nestled in his arms, my head on his chest, his heart beating under my ear. We’re both panting hard, gasping for breath.
“Holy shit,” he breathes.
I smile against him. “Yeah, baby. Holy shit.”
Silence. Drowning, drowsing, liquid silence.
Except his heart beating under my ear: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM…
I’m melting into him.
But he is becoming part of the darkness, and it’s not Conrad’s brawny arms I’m melting into, but the darkness itself.
“No,” I whisper. “No. No…no-no-no, please no, god, please—no!”
It’s too late.
I’m losing the reality. Losing the skein of truth. Losing Conrad.
“You have to come back to me, Hannah,” he whispers.
And it’s that low, close, hot, buzzing whisper again, so close, yet on the other side of some barrier.
Barely a whisper.
He whispers in the darkness.
“You have to come back to me, Hannah.”
“I’m trying.”
“Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
I squeeze, with all my might, but I’m the darkness, I’m floating amid the whispers in the endless night and I can’t squeeze, can’t even feel his hand. I can hear him, but I can’t feel him.
I need to feel him. I need to hold him, need to touch him. I want that back.
The dark rises up, surrounding me, preparing to drag me back under where the oil-slick puddle of reality and fantasy and truth and dreams all merge, where touch is real but I’m not, where Conrad can touch me and hold me and fuck me and I can give it all back to him, but it’s all in the darkness, it’s all muddied and muddled, and I want the real thing, not the transportive secret euphoria, not the black drowning bliss, but the simple pleasure of just him.
The rough scrape of his sandpaper stubble against my thighs. The calluses on his palms brushing the silk of my breasts. His lips on my jaw. His hair tickling my belly. His hands holding my legs open for him.
Just holding his hand.
His arms around me, cradling me close.
His body warm and solid and real.
The darkness slides up slick around me, eddying.
“You have to come back to me, Hannah.”
I’m trying.
God, I’m trying. I want to come back to you; I need to come back to you.
I’m lost in a shadowland, trapped under an endless sheet of black ice.
I want to come back to you, Conrad. I hear you. But I, I can’t—I can’t reach you. Can’t find you. Can’t find my way out.
The waves chuck against the pilings, a boat rubs against the dock, oars clink in the oarlocks. Wind skirls warm on bare flesh. The moon bathes us, silvering our skin. We’re twisting, writhing, our flesh tangled and our sweat mingling.
“Hannah,” he murmurs. “You feel so good, Hannah.”
He presses me down on the dock, my hair splayed out on the aged wood, his hips moving between my thighs, sinuous, sensual, slow. The wood is smooth and worn, splinterless from age, and still warm from the sun.
No, no. He never fucked me on the dock. I wanted him to, but he never did. We explored each other in different ways, but he never left the boat. I learned how to deep throat him in that boat. I learned how delicious his stubble felt on my thighs as he ate me out until I was a shuddering puddle on the dock, my legs draped over his shoulders. I learned how much I loved the sight of his cum on my skin, how I loved the sticky wetness of it, knowing it was his, that it was him marking me. This was always in the rowboat. He never fucked me on the dock.
I’m being pulled back down.
What’s true?
Memories tumble
through me, a million of them.
Doors. A candle. Torches. Doorknobs, and always him behind them. Him, in all the ways I love him, primal, masterful, wild, dark and dirty, sparing with his words and free with his touch. Always teaching me new ways to enjoy my body, new ways to enjoy his. Never shaming me for my desires, but rather always exploring them with me. Horses. A castle. A condo. Bodies tangling in sunlight in a big bed. The bite of wind and the white expanse of snow and a horse warm behind me and him in front of me, taking me in the cold. A sword gleaming in the moonlight. Men’s eyes, men’s touch, but always him, all of it always him.
They flash and flit and flicker through me, bright and vivid and utterly real, not just memories, but each one an experience momentarily real all over again. Him, him, him, again and again, in all the ways he owns me.
Him.
I remember all that.
I cannot escape it.
It is the darkness, the claw-grip of the feverish dark. It’s pulling me under, into the shadows.
I don’t want all that anymore.
I want the truth. I want to be free.
“Come back to me, Hannah. Please.” His rough, deep, beautiful voice is fainter, now. Farther away.
I’m trying, Conrad.
Come back to me, Hannah.
I’m trying, I’m trying, goddammit, I’m trying!
It’s like drowning, feeling the water close over nose and mouth and eyes and being unable to break the surface, unable to claw back up, unable to breathe. I fall under the scrim of the dark, tumble down under a meniscus of shadow, and I cannot stop myself, cannot paw for air, for light, for breath.
I can only rage against the swallowing black.
Remember what is real, I order myself.
Remember the real.
Remember the real.
Remember the real.
*
The sky is a bright brilliant endless blue. Not a single cloud, just a wild expanse of azure. The lake is a mirror of the sky, crystalline, utterly still. Around the edges are the trees forming a carpet of vibrant green, reflected in the lake and standing silent on the shore.
A crow wings across my field of view, black on blue, cawing raucously.
The gazebo is white, faded paint chipping in places, aged wood showing through in places. The rock on which the gazebo is built is gray, made darker by the occasional lapping of the water.
The rowboat is brown, old, faded, smooth-worn oak. The oarlocks are tarnished metal, the oars long and thin, with wide, dripping blades. There’s a green and blue-checkered flannel blanket on the middle bench of the boat, folded into quarters, the edges hanging over the front and back of the bench. On the floor of the boat is a wicker picnic basket, showing the remains of a lunch: an uncorked and empty bottle of Malbec, two wine glasses with smears of red at their bottoms, a small block of Dubliner cheese and a red-handled paring knife, a plate with scraps of cold cuts and cracker crumbs and a few browning apple slices, a quarter loaf of baguette with the end ragged from being torn rather than sliced.
I’m on the floor of the gazebo, wrapped in our fleece blanket. Shivering. Aching. Teeth chattering. “I’m cold, Conrad.”
He frowns at me. “It’s July, Hannah. It’s eighty degrees out here.”
A shiver seizes me, wracking me so hard my bones rattle inside my skin. “I know. But I’m cold.” Another violent shiver. “Everything hurts.”
I’ve been feeling shitty for a few days, but it was nothing I could put my finger on, just a general malaise. By turns I’d feel confusion, nausea, a low-grade fever and then, yesterday, a headache; yucky, but nothing I couldn’t push through.
Then, today, after lunch, feeling shitty turned into something worse. At first, I thought maybe the wine was bad, or that I’d had too much, even though we’d only split the one bottle, and I’d not even finished mine, nor eaten much. But the longer I sit here shivering, the more I realize it’s not bad wine, or having had too much to drink, or even food poisoning.
This is…something worse. The headache is debilitating, an excruciating onslaught of vicious pain, accompanied by a stiffness and soreness in my neck.
“I think I need you to take me home, Conrad.” I wrap the blanket more tightly around me. “I have to lay down.”
He kneels beside me, and then helps me to my feet. He tucks the blanket higher around my shoulders, and his fingers brush my neck. His frown deepens, the worry lines at the corners of his eyes and between his brows sharpening. He touches the back of his hand to my forehead.
“Fucking hell, Hannah, you’re burning up.”
“Fever.”
“Yeah, and I’m thinking it’s a high one.” He scoops me up in his arms.
With exquisite care he carries me out of the gazebo, across the rock and sets me in the boat, and then climbs in after me. I can tell he’s worried; he doesn’t show emotion on his face very easily, so the worry written clearly on his face scares me. He rows vigorously, putting his whole body into the work, leaning forward and then pushing back with his legs and hauling on the oars with his entire upper body. We’re back at my dock within minutes, and he’s dripping sweat, breathing hard. Climbing out of the boat, he leans down and scoops me up in his arms again and jogs with me up to the house and in through the back door.
Setting me in my bed and covering me with blankets, he touches my forehead and cheeks with his wrist, and lets out a gusting sigh.
“I’m seriously worried about you, Hannah.”
“I’ll be okay,” I say. “I’ll sleep it off. Take some Tylenol, maybe.”
“Tylenol is in the bathroom?”
I nod, and he ducks out of my room and into the bathroom. I hear him poking around the medicine cabinet, hear pills rattling. He comes back with a tiny Dixie cup of water and two white pills.
“Here. Take these.” He hands them to me, but my arms are heavy, and my sight blurs, and I’m too exhausted and weak to get the pills to my mouth.
“Help?” I try to sound like it’s funny, but it’s not. It’s terrifying, to be this exhausted, this suddenly.
My head is full of heat and thickness and dizziness. My whole body is heavy. I’m freezing, shaking, shivering. He takes the pills from me, puts them on my tongue, and helps me drink from the cup to swallow them.
“Jesus, Hannah.” His jaw clenches and releases spastically. “You have a thermometer?”
“Back…of the cabinet.” It’s hard to talk, to think, to put words in order.
He leaves again, comes back with the thermometer. It’s an old one, the kind with actual mercury in it. I open my mouth as far as I can, and he sticks it under my tongue. Waits a minute, maybe two, and then pulls it out.
“Fuck,” he whispers under his breath. “It’s one-oh-four, Hannah. That’s dangerously high.”
“The Tylenol will help,” I whisper. “I just…need to sleep. You should go.”
He stares at the thermometer. “I can’t. I’m not leaving you. Not when you’re this sick.”
The headache intensifies with every passing minute, becoming so excruciating that nausea batters through me from the agony, setting my stomach to heaving. “Gonna…shit—I’m gonna puke.”
Conrad barely gets the trashcan from the bathroom back to me in time; my vomit is thin and sour and wine-tinged.
“Just leave the—the can,” I say. “I’ll be…I’ll be okay.”
“Fuck that, babe. I’m staying here.” Conrad perches on the edge of the bed at my feet.
“Ch-ch-Charlie will—be home…s-s-s-sooon.”
“Don’t care. Not leaving you.” He touches my head again, hissing. “Goddamn, you’re seriously on fucking fire, honey. It’s scaring me.”
“Just a f-f-fever.”
“Maybe, but anything over one-oh-four is dangerous. If that medicine doesn’t take the temp down soon, I’m taking you in to the hospital.”
“No. No hospital.”
“Babe—”
“I—I watched my p-p-parents die…in
a hospital. Got put…put into the sys—system.” It’s so hard to think, and my teeth are chattering so hard I can’t speak. “Left the hospital with a social w-w-worker. I ha-hate…hospitals.”
“I know, but…you may not have a choice.” Compulsively, he lays his wrist on my forehead yet again. “I don’t like this. The way it hit so suddenly, how hot you are. Doesn’t feel right to me.”
“I’ve been feeling shitty for a f-f-f-ew d-d-days. Then it got worse today.”
“I’m just saying, Hannah, like it or not, if your fever doesn’t go down, or if it goes up, I’m taking you in. I won’t risk it.”
My eyes close, then, and I can’t open them. I feel like I’m being sucked out of the light and into the darkness. Out of the world and into the shadows.
Everything is heavy.
I hurt.
I’m cold.
Something hot touches my forehead, lies across my head from temple to temple. Hot? Or cold? I don’t know, I can’t tell the sensations apart; it feels hot, but I think it’s cold.
It vanishes after a while and is replaced, but again, I can’t tell if it’s hot or cold.
“Hannah?”
I hear him, but he’s far away. I try to wake up. “Mmm.”
“I’m gonna take your temp again, okay?” He sounds…scared.
“Mmm.”
I feel something small, thin, and cold at my lips. I open as far as I can, and the thermometer just barely slides between my teeth. I manage to put my tongue over it, and that’s all I have the strength for.
A minute, an hour—some indistinguishable amount of time passes, and then the thermometer slides out of my mouth.
“Fuck.” His voice is a low growl, panicked. “One-oh-five. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
The Black Room: Door Eight Page 4