by J. R. Rogue
“When did you start using the word presumptuous?” I ask, running my fingers along his forearm. Who the hell am I right now? I think of the lyric I wrote before I looked at him—full of sex, our past, a deep rumble in my belly.
“I use it all the time, darlin’. I’m a college boy, didn’t ya know?”
He’s a businessman now, in Georgia. A successful man. I know so many things about his new life that make me want him more. And me? I’m just a messy writer, wayward and wondering where my path will lead. I keep everything about my new life from him, because it’s not impressive, but mostly sad.
“Just open the door, college boy,” I say. And there’s no hiding the desire in my voice. He knows what I want, and I’m surprised neither one of us pushed for it the first moment we saw each other again.
He does as I ask, and as soon as I hear the click of the latch, I touch him. Hands to the collar of his flannel, tugging, and I go up on my tiptoes, inching closer to his mouth.
I feel every year of desire and longing pulse inside me when my lips touch his. He tastes so good. He tastes like I remember.
Hunter falls to his bed. Knees spread, hand traveling up my waist. I don’t let him take his time. Instead, I climb on top of him, pushing on his chest as my hair falls in waves, tickling his jawline.
It’s devastating—a visual I will mark pages with—so I let my delicate dark touch him. His mouth is fire, and because I’m okay with being burned, I push into him, taste his needful moan.
“Goddamn, woman. You can’t do that already. I’m gonna wanna be inside you, and I may not last long if we jump right to it.”
“We can do it twice,” I reply.
“No, I want to do it right the first time.” His fingers trace my ribs, ghost over the swell of my breast.
My hands leave him, finding the clasp of my bra.
I remember how fast things went the first time we had sex, so long ago. I want him inside me now, but I can tell he’ll try to slow me down as many times as he can. But, let’s be real, no man can resist breasts in their face, so he doesn’t say a word when I pull my shirt over my head, and my bra falls down my arms.
I pull out of the loops and gasp when his mouth finds a nipple. His hair is soft under my gripped fingers as I pull him closer, taking his ballcap off before I toss it away. I grind into him as he traces the tip, sucks, and uses his teeth.
I’m sensitive there, wanting, and drowning in the sound of my own heartbeat. “Fuck,” I say, to the ceiling, to the dark of my eyelids.
I always drown in Hunter Hart.
He releases me as I grind into him more. “I want to know what you taste like when you get yourself worked up like that.”
“You’re doing it.”
“No.” He laughs, his fingers going for the button of my jeans. “It’s not me doing it. You’re sex. You always were. It’s not just your body, Sonnet, it’s you. Some women are cute and some are pretty and some are beautiful. But you? You’re just…sex.” He kisses my jaw, bites my neck. “Your eyes and your skin, and the way you look beautiful even when you’re sad. No one is like you, woman.”
I want to believe that’s why he’s never been able to forget me. I want to believe it’s something he can’t pinpoint—something inside me—because it can’t be my face. It can’t be this body. Flesh fades; it’ll all fade away. And if it’s not something inside me, it’s something I’ll lose.
“No one is like you either.” I don’t say it to return the compliment. It’s true. He was always the possibility. The one I just knew I’d love if we could only find ourselves in the same place for more than a fleeting moment.
I’m not in love with Hunter, and I don’t know how long this moment will last, but the seed is there in my belly. It’ll always be there.
The great possibility. The what if of the poem and the song.
I reach for his shirt, take it off. He takes off my jeans, then I take off his. It’s a dance.
His mouth trails down, stealing my thoughts of poems and songs, and all I can think about is his tongue. I want him to taste me. I want him to make me come.
I want him to make me forget our first time. Because for years, it was nothing but our only time.
I want to erase the one-night stand status of us—the period, the page that had just ended. There is nothing poetic about the feel of his fingers as he pushes my panties aside, sliding up and down, brushing my clit.
I jerk, but he holds me down, centers me.
“Not so fast. We’re going to take our time. First this, then my mouth.” He presses his lips to my panties, hums. “Want me to sing you a song?”
If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!
Hunter
It was dark back at my place that night ten years ago. I turned on the lights as she escaped to the bathroom. My lips still felt her kiss in the elevator.
When Sonnet walked out, her hands were in her hair. She pushed it out of her face, and I could see the sweat on her brow from the hot summer night. It was almost a hundred degrees that day. Every girl on the street was half-naked. Men in shorts, the sleeves of their shirts cut off.
A thick band of black was at the top of her red skirt. Her arms were wrapping around her waist, reaching for ties as I walked across the room to her. My hand met her elbow, slipped around to where the tie was, undoing the work she’d just done.
Sonnet kissed my jaw as I undid the silk, and I remember thinking that she didn’t look like girls I usually went for. A half-sleeve, pierced nose. Part of her head was shaved that summer. Her skin was tan, warm to the touch.
She didn’t look like the girls I used to go for, but she looked like someone I could wake up to every damn day. The stark contrast of us—my country boy wardrobe, her punk patterns—was something I could get used to. Her skirt fell to the ground, pooling at her ankles, and I held onto her hand as she stepped out of it, her bare feet making her even shorter than she already was. I put her at five-one or two to my six-two.
We kissed again, slower than we had in the elevator. Her hands were in my hair, and mine found her ass, bare, in her thong.
I wanted to talk to her more, while also wanting to be inside of her. It was a war. My dick and my brain were having it out while my heart sat in the corner, wary as fucking hell.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight—then or now. It was romantic hogwash. But she excited me. Simple as that.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked, and I led her to the couch.
We could hear the sounds of Nashville below, drunk hollers and premature fireworks, every time we came up for air. I wanted to see her illuminated by the streetlights. I needed that memory.
I sat down, legs spread, and she crawled into my lap, her thick thighs straddling my hips. My fingers traced her ribs, and then her hands found mine, pushing them away before reaching for the hem of her tiny top, pulling it up and over her head. Quickly, she reached around, undoing the clasp of her bra and then throwing it behind her.
I needed to take some clothes off. I couldn’t let her strip down like that and not return the favor. Before I could finish the thought, she was kissing my neck, reaching for my shirt this time.
Then we were skin-to-skin, warm. She pressed into me, and our mouths fought for dominance.
I let her win that night, and I let her win last night. It was the one thing I did right back then—letting her take control. I felt like she needed that.
Sonnet doesn’t let me into her room at the cabin. It’s a thing, one we don’t discuss.
I look around my own room. Her scent is here, but she no longer is. We spent all day in my bed. Fucking, tasting each other, writing words, catching up on some of what we’d missed over the years.
She didn’t join me in the shower before dinner like I hoped she would. Instead, she showered in her room. I heard her on the phone as I went up to eat.
When I came back down, her door was still shut, so I went to my room, replaying the day until I finally hear my phone buzz an hour l
ater.
After grabbing it, I find a text from her. Find me, it says.
I know where she is. She’s in the hot tub, and when I reach it, she’s facing away from me, looking out into the yard behind the five-story cabin. Not many people hang outside on the bottom level. The retreat residents don’t stay on this floor, just instructors and Sonnet.
My hands land on her shoulders, and I’m rewarded with her head falling back. Her eyes are closed, and her dark hair is down, the rest being soaked by the hot tub water.
I see the swell of her breasts, the dark of her nipples under the water. “Where’s your top?” I ask, noting the drink at the edge of the hot tub—wine in a mug. The mug has a typewriter on it. She doesn’t know it, but I’m going to make her come in this hot tub.
Or maybe she does know it. She makes plans, and I fall right into them. I do it willingly, so I can’t complain.
Her eyes are still closed, so my palm travels down, cupping her, fingers swirling. I pinch, and her eyes open.
“Be gentle,” she chides.
“Is that what you want?”
“No,” she admits, and I believe her.
She likes to put her hand around my throat when she straddles me, pulls my hair and fucks hard. I felt like I met a new person today in my bedroom. More confident and sure of what she wanted than all those years ago.
I take my hands off her, walk around the hot tub. “You ain’t afraid of someone comin’ out here and seein’ us?”
“No. I don’t care anymore.”
I take my white T-shirt off, then my jeans. I don’t get ass naked, because I don’t think she is. I sink into the water across from her, my boxer briefs going from gray to nearly black in the water.
My arms spread wide, inviting. It doesn’t take her long to move across the space. One thigh, then the next, straddling me. I grip her hips, thumb her ribcage. I still like the look of the tattoos there, the look of her.
“You want this, out here?” I ask.
The fresh air hardens her nipples, just above the surface. “I want you out here.” She sinks down, rubbing her clit on my dick. I can tell she found the spot by the way her head rolls back, so I pull her down more. She moans, and maybe she isn’t a poem; perhaps she’s a song, like I always tried to make her realize.
“You gonna sing for me?” I ask, kissing her jawline, thumb grazing her nipple.
“No, that’s your job.” She’s breathless.
“You’re so pretty when you’re coming undone.” I kiss her pulse, reach into her wet panties, two fingers pushing up into her. There’s the water, then there’s her wetness, so different.
“You want me here?” I ask. And it’s so hard not to just push inside of her, feel her flex around me.
Too many years have gone by without us fucking, exploring each other. I want to know every bit of her body. I want to know all of her little cries, her sighs. I would have turned them all into songs if she had chosen me after that hot summer night.
“Are you always like this, Sonnet Rosewood?” I want to know. Is she like this for every guy? Is it just me? Is she just sex, like I said? Sex and too much for me?
“No.” She rides my hand. “Just for you.”
Let’s Work Together
Sonnet
There’s a mist over the mountain this morning. I hear a guitar playing faintly somewhere in the cabin, but it isn’t close so I know it can’t be Hunter.
I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t stop thinking about his lips on me, and strangely, Christmas. The last I shared with no one, and the one fast approaching.
Me: How about you visit me sometime soon? When I get settled wherever I settle? Maybe for the holidays?
Mom: We would love that.
I falter at the we. I still haven’t gotten very close with my mother’s newest love interest.
My phone hits the nightstand with a loud thud, and I wonder how Sera feels about Christmas trees, twinkling lights. I’d be putting up a tree now if I had my own place. Early, but who cares.
I live for Christmas, and even when I spent it alone, I could feel something when I looked at the lights of trees. When I was numb and by myself, I felt something as my eyes took in the brightness of a colorful fir. It was a beating heart—that of my family—no matter what state of disarray it was in.
The air is cold when it hits my legs as I throw the blanket off my bed. I pad to the bathroom, stilling when I hear movement outside my door.
The hall light is on, allowing me to see the shadow outside my door.
I can hear the erratic beat of my heart.
It’s not too early. The gray of the sky is deceiving. The sun doesn’t reach my side of the cabin in the wee hours of the morning.
My eyes rove over the lock. It’s engaged, and the fact that I’m obsessing over it shows me I have let Brooklyn and her murder-podcast-paranoia get into my head. No one is going to kill me at this cabin. I knock on my own door and call out, “Who’s there?” My tone isn’t fearful, but annoyed.
“Who else would it be?” Hunter’s voice booms through the wood.
My eyes nearly roll out of my head as I disengage the lock and open the door to him.
His own eyes drop down to my chest, the thin fabric of my nightgown doing little to hide the chill. When his eyes finally meet mine, I’m glaring.
“Sorry?” he offers.
I push him as he laughs, but he grabs my wrists before I can pull away. His hands are warm and he smells like syrup.
“Why are you outside my door?” I ask, wrapping my fingers around his elbow.
“What are you doing today?” he replies, stepping closer.
He hasn’t been in my space; he never has been. I’ve always met him in his, and I can’t help but wonder what that means. My therapist told me I have the highest walls she’s ever seen. I miss our sessions. I wonder what she’d say about me driving through Nashville, about pushing away every thought entering my mind that’s related to my father.
I step forward, making Hunter back up into the hallway more. “What am I doing today? If I had to guess, I’d say writing with you, eating, laughing at something Brooklyn says. Why?”
“Let’s go to town.”
I haven’t left the cabin much. The winding Tennessee roads are a bit daunting. I’ve only been to the grocery store. “Are you driving?” I cross my arms to cover the cold.
I want to go with him. I want to leave for a bit, breathe. And he has a truck.
I know what I want to buy.
I don’t know how I convinced him to take me to Target, but here we are. I powerwalk to the back of the store, and Hunter keeps up with me, his long strides seemingly unhurried.
When I find the Christmas section, I light up. My hands come to my face as I laugh into my palms.
“What’s so funny?” Hunter asks, beside me. So close.
“Look at it. Look at the colors.” I sweep my arms wide. I’m not a religious woman—despite where I grew up. I don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus. I celebrate the colors and the feeling the season brings me. I celebrate the notion that I’ll have my own family one day—however it’ll look. That we will laugh and love on the holiday.
I don’t know Hunter’s stance on religion. It’s never been something I’ve asked about. I start with something less substantial. “Do you like Christmas?”
“Yes. Who doesn’t like Christmas?”
“Lots of people. They bitch about trees going up early and the reason for the season not being acknowledged and all that crap.”
“What is the reason for the season?” he asks.
“The reason is whatever you want the reason to be,” I tell him.
“What’s the reason for you?”
I don’t answer right away. How do I explain the feeling Christmas brings me? How I miss going to the theater, seeing ballerinas act out the Nutcracker play. How I miss riding around at night, checking out the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods. I miss eggnog, and I miss the colors. One year wi
thout someone to share it with, and it feels like it’s been ages.
In my weakness, I let my sadness eat away at the love I have for Christmas.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I admit.
“That’s a first.”
I walk past Hunter, into the aisle with the trees. I reach out my fingers, running them along the firs and balsams while I hear him follow me.
“These aren’t proper trees. You need a real one,” he says.
“I hate real trees. And I hate Christmas rules,” I scoff.
“Christmas rules?” he repeats.
“Yes. Like, you’re not allowed to put up your tree until a certain date. And if you don’t have a real tree, you’re half-assing it. And you don’t give a shit about family if you want to go see a movie on Christmas day. White lights versus multi-colored lights. Shit like that. The way we as humans can take anything good and shit on it, only makes it another reason to fight amongst ourselves.”
“But what if I’m right and you’re just wrong?” Hunter cocks an eyebrow at me.
My hands go to my hips, and I glare back at him. “Are you going to help me pick a tree or not?”
“Yes, I am,” he says, backing up from the aisle and walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“To get your ass a cart. I reckon you’ll want a lot of Christmas shit,” he says.
My smile is immense. I feel like what happened between us last night doesn’t have to be something I obsess over. Instead, I’ll obsess over Christmas. Not over the past year, which feels lost now. This one, I’m reclaiming.
An hour later, we head out of Target, thoroughly covered in glitter. I have a small tree in tow to put in the corner of my room, garland for the mantle in there, and twinkle lights for the area outside my sliding door. I know it’s not my home, and eventually, I will need to find one, but for the few weeks I have left here, I want to make it mine.
Thanksgiving isn’t for another month, and I won’t get to spend Christmas in the Smoky Mountains. But it’s starting to feel like Christmas to me.