by Sorbe, Lisa
I pretend to be shocked. “But wait a minute. I thought you weren’t about the fucking?”
He bites my earlobe just enough to make it sting, and I shiver, loving the way that pain and pleasure dwindle to such a fine line during erotic moments like these. “That was then,” he growls. “And this is now.”
Our breath is coming faster, heavier, and I begin to pump him harder, thrilling at the way his heart is thumping madly against mine.
I’m doing this to him. I’m making him feel this way.
Me.
When he grows slick, and our desire flares to a level beyond rational thought, I push him across the room, my vague memory of his spacious loft guiding me to a spongy leather couch. I unzip his jeans as we go, and by the time the back of his knees hit the cushions, they’re around his ankles. His boxers follow, and when he’s stripped of everything below the waist, I push him down onto the couch, my movements rough, determined.
He’s tan and beautiful and bare…and so goddamn hard.
I suck my lip between my teeth, biting back a hiss as I take him in. I could stare at him all night, sitting there, open to me, ready and wanting. But the fire at my core is growing hotter, the flames fanning across my abdomen, running up and hardening my nipples. Suddenly my dress is too restricting, the thin material not thin enough for the sort of closeness I crave. Shimmying my hips, I work it up my stomach, hitching it over my breasts and pulling it over my head. Ford mirrors my movement, shrugging out of his shirt so fast I wouldn’t be surprised if he found a rip in it later. He leans forward, his hands going straight to my hips, and with a roughness that makes me yelp, tugs my underwear down my thighs. They snag around my ankles, and I kick them off impatiently before climbing onto his lap.
“Christ, Becca…”
I just smile, feeling like a fucking goddess as I hover over him, circling my hips slowly and brushing against him lightly each time I do. Reaching back, I unbuckle my bra, fling it aside.
I’m driving him crazy, this touching yet barely, and when I finally slide onto him, take him in, the demon I wanted so badly to bring out is finally, finally unleashed. His large hands, his artist’s hands, grip my hips, pulling me down hard, his thrusts pounding back up with equal vigor. The kindness is gone from his eyes, replaced with a lust so carnal it’s taken him over completely. He’s not a man anymore, he’s an animal, a beast that needs one thing and one thing only.
So I give it to him. I squeeze him again and again and again, fluttering against his length. His moans turn primal, almost vicious. The deep, guttural growls vibrate against my stomach, my breasts, and with each driving ram of his hips, I can feel him straining more and more beneath me.
This is happening fast, so fast, but we’ve both been so sharpened by desire that neither one of us can hold back for long.
“Do it, Ford. Fucking come for me. Come inside me.”
It’s more of a demand than a request, and an irresponsible one at that. But both of us are beyond the point of caring; we’ve traveled past our bodies, our minds, and into another reality entirely. We’re lost to this new world, a dimension of pure sensation and nothing else, and the only thing we want is the very thing we shouldn’t.
My words push him over the edge; his arms tighten, squeezing from me what little breath I have left. A violent shudder rips through him, like a sledgehammer to his restraint, and he comes apart inside me. “Jesus-fuck-Becca-fucking-fuck…”
Holding his head to my chest, I climax with him, on him, my body quaking with its own surrender, exploding with such intensity that, for a moment, my vision blackens at the edges. My breath comes in sharp, ragged gasps, the air scraping against my ravaged throat like sandpaper.
I’m a raw nerve, even after we’re done, and for a moment all I can do is lean against Ford, reveling in the warmth of his embrace, which he doesn’t loosen, even though he could, though most men would. He hugs me closer, presses a kiss against my shoulder, and I let him, because even after the sexual frenzy, my need to be touched still hasn’t abated. If anything, it’s intensified, and if I could spend the entire night curled up here, wrapped in his arms, without seeming needy and weak, I would.
But that’s not an option, because just then, the smoke alarm goes off.
Ford is thirty-one, which makes him six years my junior.
At first, hearing this makes me itch. I don’t like being reminded that I’m barreling towards forty, even though I don’t look it, and learning that Ford just crested thirty leaves me feeling stressed in a way I can’t explain. Because age shouldn’t matter at all, considering that this relationship – if it can even be called that – isn’t going anywhere.
I tell him I’m thirty-two and feel slightly better when he doesn’t question it.
Earlier, while Ford dealt with the alarm and the burning beef tenderloin smoking in the oven, I scooped from the floor the black t-shirt that he flung off in the heat of passion and, shaking it out, slipped it over my head. The soft material felt like a hug, like his arms had felt seconds ago. Now, hours later and sprawled together in his bed, I’m still wearing it.
“I’m taking this home with me,” I say, running my fingers over the gaping neckline. “Just so you know.”
Ford dips a finger into the V and gives it a tug before reaching in and running his hand over my breast. “Well, you definitely wear it better than I do, I’ll give you that.”
I make a face, and then lean in and kiss him, smoothing my hand down his bare chest and skimming it over the waistband of his boxers. He didn’t bother putting on another shirt after discovering that I confiscated his, and as far as I know, his jeans still lay discarded on the living room floor. I slip my hand inside his underwear and grin against his lips.
Ford laughs, and though he doesn’t pull away, gives me a look. “Again?”
I shrug. If we did indeed go again, this would be the third time tonight.
I, for one, am up for the challenge.
He pops a kiss on my nose. “At least let me feed you first.”
I huff, pretending to be annoyed, though a smile breaks through my tough façade when he levels me with an adorably sweet puppy dog look. “Look at you, ever the caretaker. But I thought dinner was burnt beyond repair.”
He sighs. “I admit, seeing that beef tenderloin in flames was a hard pill to swallow. But, fortunately for you, that’s not the only meal I can cook. How about some fried chicken and waffles?”
“Oh, my God. Yuck.”
Ford laughs. “What do you mean, yuck? It’s, like, the best combo ever. You’ve never heard of it?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I have, but I’ve never gotten the appeal.”
“Well, then,” he says, grinning. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”
I flop back against the pillows. “Fine, fine. I’ll try it.” I hold up a finger. “But then dessert. Okay?”
Ford springs off the bed. “Not a problem. I made a chocolate trifle.”
I point at him, lifting my brows as I do. “That is not what I’m talking about. And what the hell? You made a chocolate trifle?”
Ford smirks. “Yeah, I’m aware of the type of dessert you want. And as for the trifle? Nah. I was just kidding. I can cook, but I can’t bake worth shit. Something about measuring ingredients down to a T. Way too rigid.” He gives an over-exaggerated shudder, and I’m instantly reminded of earlier on the couch, and then again on his bed, when that shudder signified something else entirely.
I just stare at him.
“You,” he says, walking backwards toward the kitchen, boxers hanging low on his hips. “Wait there, make yourself comfortable.”
I smile. “Whatever you say.” Then, spreading my legs slightly, I lift the hem of his shirt, letting it drape across my hips. He stalls in his tracks, and when I see that I have his undivided attention, I slide it up even more.
The only thing I’m wearing is his shirt, which leaves me bare everywhere else.
His eyes darken in a way that I’m
quickly becoming familiar with, and already I’m beginning to love the change in their reflection. It’s getting easier and easier to bring out the beast in him, the animal that needs, wants, and craves pleasure above all else, everything else. Already these first two times with Ford are better than any I’ve ever had with Nicholas, and almost as good as some of my best with Hollis.
“Fuck the food,” he growls, and launches himself at me.
I think I’ve got this whole seduction thing down pat.
Despite the ease with which I seemed to jump straight into a sexual relationship with Ford, I’m not all that sexually experienced. Ford is the third guy I’ve been with…ever. By today’s standards, that’s pretty much child’s play.
Nor, to make it clear, am I a cheater. Well, I mean, I suppose I am now. But I’m not a chronic cheater.
And that should count for something, right?
Despite what Hollis believes, I never cheated on him. Though, when you really look at it, cheating is such a broad term, isn’t it? While I did meet Nicholas when I was living with Hollis, I didn’t sleep with him until I’d officially ended our six-year relationship. But when I look back now, I can see that Nicholas courted me quietly for months (so quietly that I didn’t even really know it was happening), visiting the bar where I tended and engaging me in what seemed to be innocent, superficial conversation. He dazzled me with tales of his travels (which were mostly for work), and then about his job as an architect and how he sat poised to take over the family firm in just a few short years. I grew to anticipate his visits, watching the door for him on Sundays and Tuesdays, the slowest nights of the week. Nicholas held a commanding presence, and he filled the bar with it. Seven years my senior, he seemed larger than life, so worldly and so much more experienced than I was. Than Hollis was. I began to despair about our tiny, shitty apartment, worrying that we’d never make it to true adulthood, able to buy a house and maybe an SUV, eventually add children to our brood. We were adults, yet it seemed that I was the only one of us who was actually adulting. Hollis chose not to work after college so he could focus on writing, and I went along with it, because he was the one with the talent. The one who could flesh out the skeleton of a story in a way I never could. But just the thought of sitting at a reception desk or in a cubicle at a call center while I waited for him to write a best seller was enough to give me anxiety; I couldn’t imagine actually working in an environment like that, every single day for forty hellish hours a week. So I found a job at a ritzy hotel bar, where the clients could afford to tip well, and no two nights were ever the same. My degree in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry was hardly useful, and slinging drinks to rich people in a bar was the lesser of two evils.
Of course, now I find it all oddly amusing, the way I thought I was shunning conformity by working in a bar as opposed to an office. I was, after all, still punching a time clock. It was a precarious balance, this freedom laced with burden, and I know now that I was conflicted. Some days, I yearned for a house in the suburbs. Then, on others, I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the city – even a less significant Midwestern metropolis like Duluth. One moment, I craved the buzz of the busy streets, yet the very next, I wanted to be alone, holed up in a house with so much land that I never ran the risk of seeing my neighbors when stepping onto my front porch.
I wanted a loud life and a quiet life, a large existence and a small one at the same time. I wanted the freedom to be whatever I wanted to be in the moment, and not be chained to the expectations of others – their needs, their wants, their demands.
Back then, I couldn’t have that kind of life with Hollis. I wasn’t free; I was his meal ticket. And though he treated me like a queen, I was still a queen who served her king, and his needs were more precious than mine.
I grew bitter, and Nicholas’s visits to the bar increased, and before I knew it, we were having drinks after my shift, then dinners on the days I didn’t even work. He knew about my relationship with Hollis; I never hid that from him. At first, he was a springboard for my woes, listening intently and offering quiet suggestions. He told me I was too beautiful, too sweet, too precious to be working behind a bar, serving others while I was the one who should be served. He appreciated my work ethic, but thought I was being taken advantage of by my sponge of a boyfriend (his words, not mine), who did nothing but sit at home writing all day. Nicholas always said the word with a sigh, and sometimes a sneer, letting me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t respect what Hollis did in the slightest.
Over time, Nicholas and I became good friends. And we stayed that way for months. Things were growing rockier between me and Hollis, and I appreciated having someone to complain to when things in our apartment broke down, or a few missed payments on our credit cards made the new monthly minimums too high to deal with, resulting in creditors calling my phone (not Hollis’s, never Hollis’s) relentlessly.
On one such night, when I was sitting at the bar with Nicholas after my day shift had just ended, my phone buzzed four times in one hour from four different debt collectors. In hindsight, I should have just turned it off, but I was hesitant to miss a call from Hollis, who’d had a meeting with a potential literary agent that afternoon. I was desperate to hear how it went, and therefore suffered through the constant barrage of creditor harassment. But when my phone rang for the fifth time, however, I couldn’t take it anymore. The tears that had been building behind the scenes all night broke free, and when that happened, it was like a dam had burst. Through vision so blurry it felt like the night had been doused by an apocalyptic flood, I watched as Nicholas picked up my phone and answered it. He was calm but stern as he informed the caller that he would be taking care of not only the minimum due, but the remainder of the balance.
This blatant breach of my privacy should have offended me, should have caused me to leap up and rip the phone right out of his hand.
But…I didn’t.
I sat there, cheeks tear-stained and sniffling back snot bubbles while he fed the collector his banking information. Nicholas’s voice seemed to be coming from the other end of a long tunnel, and I did nothing but listen as he requested a letter stating that the card was paid in full along with a statement showing a zero balance. He followed the demand with a curt That will be all, his tone implying that he was in charge of the conversation, and not the other way around.
When he slid the phone back to me, I was at a loss for words. I had no idea what debt he’d just paid off, or how much he forked over to do so. I was embarrassed, sure, but also wildly impressed. He was an adult, a man, a fucking man, sitting there in his designer suit, blonde hair cropped close and wearing a five o’clock scruff that, for the first time ever, I itched to touch. He was broad shoulders and thick thighs while Hollis as all string bean lean. The way he took control of the situation without even asking me was hot, so damn hot. And perhaps it was because he didn’t ask for my permission, just did what needed to be done, strongly and without faltering, that made me finally admit what I’d known for a while – I didn’t want to be with Hollis anymore.
I suddenly saw Hollis’s desire for nonconformity as childish avoidance, his brooding nature as nothing more than moody apathy. He’d never swooped in and rescued me before, not in the way Nicholas just had, so easily and without thought.
Nicholas could take care of me, something that no one had ever, ever done before. Not even Hollis.
And I was so fucking tired of taking care of not only myself, but everyone else in my life.
That night, I didn’t even have it in me to utter a thank you or stammer an apology. I felt torn up inside, all these new realizations about the person I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with taking seed in my heart, sprouting in my mind. Life as I’d known it was ending. Sitting there with Nicholas, I could feel the pull of a new tomorrow so strongly that the skin on the back of my neck prickled with anticipation.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to speak. Nicholas just laid one hand over mine a
nd, with his other, gently tilted my chin until I had no choice but to look at him. “You’re better than this, Rebecca. Better than him.”
I left Hollis the next day.
“I’m a chump, Marla. You know that? A fucking chump.”
She stares at me but doesn’t replay, so I continue.
“I listened to a man who I thought had my best interests at heart, gave up love for security, turned my back on the only person in the world who’s ever truly known me….and look where it’s gotten me.”
She still says nothing, though if I tilt my head just right, her smile does seem a bit more sympathetic.
I huff, not buying the sincerity in her grin, and scroll to the next photo on her Instagram page, a selfie with her and Hollis and the kid. Scowling, I take a sip of my gin and study the image. They’re on a beach along Lake Superior’s North Shore, a lighthouse distant in the background. Marla and the kid are smiling into the camera, but Hollis is staring at them, his eyes soft and liquid, as if he can’t bear to take his attention off the two for even a moment. “But I guess my loss is your gain, isn’t it?”
I’m still at our lake house in Duluth, even though Nicholas thinks I’m home in Minneapolis by now. But he’s not there, so why should I have to be? If I were to rationalize it – and believe me, I don’t need to – there’s way more for me here than back there. Which is kind of depressing when you think about it, considering that what I do have here isn’t much.
Yet.
I take another sip of my drink, but even the feeling of being pleasantly tipsy isn’t enough to take the edge off my…pain? Anger? Bitterness, jealousy, resentment?
Pick one. Any one. I feel them all.
My thumb works on its own accord, as if hellbent on making me feel worse. I’m at a loss to stop it, and its jerky movement takes me on a self-guided tour of Marla’s life, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, going all the way back to when she started the account almost four years ago. By the time I get to the first picture, the one that shows a newborn baby wrapped in a white blanket with pink trim, my head is pounding like my brain is trying to break free of my skull.