A War Like Ours

by Saffron A Kent

  Anna asked about Nat, and before I could think of an appropriate response, Katie jumped in and filled in the gaps. She complimented Katie on her bold red lipstick, making her giggle. I shifted on my seat, growing uncomfortable. Tim shot me a glance but didn’t say anything. He could see my struggle, but he kept his silence. I was grateful. Maybe we really were friends.

  The waiter arrived with our food, and for the first time since we got here, I let my gaze wander. The crowd was filled with unremarkable faces.

  But then I saw her. Madison.

  My body lurched forward in my seat as I stared at the mass of black hair draped across her shoulder. The image of her hair around my cock darted through my mind, too quick to memorize but slow enough for a peek to last a long time.

  Game on.

  I hadn’t been able to get her words out of my head since yesterday. My anger had turned into a need so desperate and uncontrollable that it scared me. Like an incessant drone in my head. So I had taken Katie out of town to a zoo so I could avoid her.

  Madison sat on the opposite corner from our table, her face hidden by the myriad of people in between. I stared hard at her, willing her to turn, to look at me, give me her seductive eyes.

  “Hey, buddy, the food’s here. What’re you looking at?” Tim asked.

  “Nothing.” I whipped my gaze back. “I apologize. That was rude.”

  Anna waved off my apology. “No apology needed. Tim here seems to ignore me all the time. I don’t mind it.”

  Tim bent over and kissed her forehead. A feeling akin to envy made me flinch.

  We began eating and talking. I contributed whenever it seemed appropriate, with more than half of my attention on Madison, sneaking glances at her, wanting her to see me.

  And then she did.

  We both froze with our eyes on each other. I was sure the world still spun in that moment, but we were stationary. Everything ceased to exist. The food in my mouth dissolved. The smell of garlic in the air evaporated. All I felt was a strong longing to touch her, kiss her, strangle her.

  Madison broke our stare, and Julia came into my line of vision. She leaned toward Madison from across the table, said something, and then they kissed.

  I sat bubbling with jealousy, feeling trapped in this chair, struggling to unglue myself, bouncing my legs under the table with restless energy. I gripped my fork, white-knuckled, and breathed through my nose, ordering myself to calm down.

  Madison got up from her seat and ambled toward the left of the restaurant where a passage was located. How had I not noticed how short her shorts were, how revealing? And how long those legs were. They seemed bathed in oil, shiny. She threw me a distracted glance and disappeared into the hallway with the sign of the restrooms. Without giving it much thought, I sprang up from my seat and excused myself to follow her.

  I walked over to the narrow hallway with dim lights and wood paneling, and located the ladies’ room. Madison stood in front of the long, rectangular mirror. She whirled around, gripping the edge of the wooden vanity as I entered and locked the door. Her panting breaths echoed in the room, but she hardly looked surprised. She knew I would come. A strange look, a look I had never seen before, entered her eyes as she looked up and down my body.

  Playing with her hair, she pointed out, “In case you didn’t notice, this is the ladies’ room. Unless you were stalking me. Again.” She tilted her head to the side. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t want anything to do with me, you run after me a lot.”

  I strolled toward her in a slow, measured gait, my eyes focused on her hair. “You talk too much.”

  “Do I? Well then, feel free to shut me up.”

  “Do you have any ideas how?”

  She tapped a finger on her chin, as if giving it a thought. “Maybe you should come up with, I don’t know, something crazy, wild, something that will leave me speechless. But make it fast, please. I’m on a date.”

  I reached out, rubbed a strand of her hair between my fingers. “Do you ever get tired of manipulating people, playing them like puppets?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I pity her.” My eyes roved over Madison’s face, her goddamn innocent freckles. When did she become so beautiful? “I pity Julia. She’s in love with someone who’ll never love her back.”

  Her eyes flashed fire. “I love her. I live with her, it’s pretty much a done deal, or do you think just because I sucked your cock, I’m magically in love with you?”

  My lips twitched. “God forbid. I have enough nightmares in my life.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t know what to do with love, anyway.”

  My finger stilled and hooked around the strand. “I really wouldn’t.”

  The air smelled like cheap roses. The trash under the vanity was overflowing. Everything about this encounter was sordid. I could not have imagined this happening any other way.

  My eyes fell to Madison’s V-neck T-shirt, which pressed against her breasts. The room was small, with only two stalls wedged against each other and a small vanity opposite to them. There was hardly any space to move around. It was tight, contained…intimate.

  I bent toward her, my breath fanning over her lips. “Is this for me?” I tugged on her hair, explaining to her what I meant.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Maybe,” I whispered. “I dream of wrapping it around your neck, tight and hard, and squeezing. I’ve imagined hurting you so many times. Biting you. I wonder what your blood tastes like—citrusy like your smell or sweet. Somehow, I can’t imagine it being sweet. But stranger things have happened.” Things like me being here in this bathroom.

  Her face broke into a seductive smile. “Do it.”

  I flinched at her permission. Why would she want me to hurt her?

  “Don’t think. Just do it,” Madison urged.

  The need inside my cock had been stretched to its limit. It was seeping out of my skin, burning and hot.

  I grabbed her waist and jerked her toward me. She gasped, and I closed my lips over hers, taking her mouth in a harsh kiss. With her hands on my shoulders, she fisted my shirt and pressed against me, sucking on my tongue. I gave in and bit her lips, and she mewled inside my mouth.

  There was smoky energy that flowed in the space and coiled around us, making us forget everything. I became someone else, someone more like the real me, perhaps. Nothing could have stopped me from doing this.

  I pulled her hair in a sudden grip and yanked her head back, making her moan. I dragged my lips down to the tender part of her neck and sucked her skin into my mouth, gnawing at it. I felt the vibration of her moans in her throat, against my cheeks.

  My cock was so hard, the hardest it had ever been, so extremely painful that it was pure pleasure. I dug my teeth sharply into her neck, and she whimpered and shivered, rubbing herself against me. Her skin was so hot, hotter than the summer outside. She loved this just as much as me.

  I drew back, looking at the skin on her neck. It appeared red, bearing the mark of my teeth. My blood rushed, making me dizzy. I pushed her over the vanity. Her legs crawled around my hips, burying me close to her heat. Staring into her eyes, I pulled the T-shirt over her breasts. They spilled out of her black, cotton bra like ripe, ballooned fruits. The bones of her sternum on her flushed chest sloped down into the valley of her breasts.

  I gritted my teeth to stop my groan. She would be making the sounds this time. I tugged her bra down, revealing her pinkish-brown nipples, shrunken and hardened. Red lines slanted down the outline of her creamy breasts where the bra had dug into her skin. I pinched at the irritated skin, making it burn. She hissed and jerked against me. Her hands had found their way inside my shirt, and she scratched my back with her nails.

  God! That felt good, better than the blade or the glass every night. I ground against her, hoping to make it painful for her just so she would retaliate and scratch me back. She did.

  Taking her nipple in my mouth, I sucked and bit and laved, all the while
pinching her other nipple, clawing at her other breast. She locked her fleshy thighs around my hips and tugged at my hair sharply. Her moans drove me crazy, wild, blood-thirsty.

  I found the tender spot of her neck and bit again, this time breaking skin. I sucked the tiny droplets of blood and squashed her breasts in my hands. She thrashed in my arms, tugging, tearing at my shirt, raking her nails on the side of my neck. It stung, and I knew that she had gotten under my skin, too.

  Where had she been all these years? She matched me in every single way. She was just as raw and untamed. Just as angry and selfish. Perhaps that was why she got to me. Because I saw myself in her, a better me, in fact. I saw how unfettered she was, and I desired that, to be unchained, guilt-free.

  We broke apart, panting. Madison’s eyes were wet with unshed tears. I managed a moment of hesitation in all the haziness, wondering if those tears were of arousal or pain.

  After a beat, she reached for my jeans, making my hesitation evaporate into the air. My hands found their way around her shorts, wrenching them down just as she did the same with my jeans. I looked at the pile of clothes at my feet. Her panties were black, not pink. It gave me a weird satisfaction. Black did not speak of innocence. Her unshaved curls came into view, and my stomach contracted. I never thought I would find something like this, something untamed, undesirable, so fucking desirable that I would die to get inside it.

  My cock leaked pre-cum, and I wrapped my arms around her waist, locking her in place. We both stared at each other, barely breathing as I pulled her forward to me and, at the same time, shoved my cock inside her. Her head fell back as she gasped, exposing her bruised neck. I groaned, losing the battle to be silent as her tight heat gripped me. It spasmed around me. I squeezed her waist to control myself, or I would come right that second.

  I stared down at the juncture where my cock was shoved up inside her liquid core, unmoving. The thick base smeared with her wetness, her core stretching over it, the smell of sex—it hypnotized me. My mind filled with a blank, ethereal space, like everything I knew was wiped from existence. Rationality, beliefs, my very name.

  Madison moaned in protest and yanked my hair, jerking my head up. She looked exactly as I had pictured she would, drugged and out of control. She moved against me, but I remained still. Despite the fact that I was dying to move, to grant her what she wanted, I would not on some perverse principle. I will not move.

  She clenched her teeth as I rubbed my thumb against her clit. “Fuck!” She shut her eyes, leaning back, propped by her arms. “Fucking move already.”

  Staying still was getting harder by the passing second. I needed her to beg. I ground against her clit one more time, and her channel contracted. Was she going to come? Just like that? I worried her clit again. And again her channel spasmed, her thighs quivered over my waist.

  My body hummed with excitement. I bent down and took her nipple in my mouth, sucking on it. I opened my mouth wider, took in as much of her breast as possible.

  She was rocking, pulling my hair, begging me to move by lifting and rubbing her hips on mine. I did not move, remaining still inside her. I barely rubbed her clit. I simply sucked on her nipple and played with the other one. I knew she could come like that. She was extremely responsive. I dug my teeth around her nipples and bit down.

  Madison screamed and came. She throbbed against my cock and convulsed in my arms. I leaned away and watched her. Her neck craned back as her breasts jiggled with her orgasm. Just like that.

  I was stunned. It must have only taken a total of ten seconds for her to climax around my unmoving cock. She opened her eyes, and they darted around, as if she were embarrassed.

  Smirking, I goaded, “I can see why you lured me in here. Julia’s been remiss in her duties.”

  Madison’s eyes swung back to me. She wiggled her hips, making my cock jump inside her. “I didn’t lure you in here. I don’t even like men. Don’t you know I’m a lesbian?” She curled her tongue at the “les” of lesbian. It was oddly very erotic and infuriating.

  I leaned closer to her. “Oh, I have no doubts. With the way you just came in about five seconds, I know you were dying for a man.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but I shut her up—with a kiss. And finally, I began moving inside her, exhaling in sweet relief. She gasped into my mouth. I let go of her lips and watched her, moving slowly at first, fighting to keep my eyes open and on her. She appeared angry but aroused.

  I increased the speed, pushing into her, shoving her back with each stab of my cock. Her back crashed against the mirror. Her channel gurgled wet, sucking sounds as it slurped on my thick shaft. My stomach tightened. I might have mocked her for her eagerness, but I was not far behind her. It seemed I had needed this for too long. Longer than I could remember.

  I hastened my strokes. Madison’s arms flew and came to rest on my shoulders as her head lolled around against the mirror. Her angry eyes were turning hazy again, but she fought against it, just like me.

  We did not want to give in and close our eyes and lose this round.

  I flicked my finger over her wet curls, looking for her clit. She moaned low as I found it. I kept flicking. She had opened my shirt halfway down and scratched my chest. Without warning, she seized against my cock again, and her eyes fell closed as she came, moaning, writhing, like she was fighting to stay alive. She jerked up the counter, once, twice, thrice as her core drooled and gushed.

  A ball of heat originated in my stomach, spread over to my spine, and slid to my cock. I came then, spurting my cum deep inside her. Like before, my muscles vibrated under the strain of my orgasm before going lax and heavy. As though, I gave her more than my cum. As though, this was more than a simple cocktail of biology and chemistry.

  My head fell into her shoulder, and finally, I closed my eyes. The last thought in my head was that I had won.

  Harsh breaths clashed with our languid limbs. I could stand here for hours, swimming in her scent. Madison moved in my arms, pushed at my shoulders, causing me to move away.

  I observed her disheveled state. Her top was banded over her breasts, and her bra was stretched down to push them up like an offering. Her shorts were out of sight somewhere. Her sweaty, petite body heated my blood again. Her thighs were open, and her core gaped from the middle, wet and pink. I tried to remember the last time I had seen someone so beautiful, but I could not. Nat hovered over the back of my mind, but I shut that down. I did not want to think about her right now.

  I straightened my clothes with Madison looking at me. She was slowly coming awake, heaving herself down the sink, putting herself together. The silence was pervasive. I almost missed her chattering.

  “I think you lost this round,” I murmured, more to goad her back to life than anything else.

  She sucked in a sharp breath, the fight coming back in her eyes. My lips threatened a smile. She opened her mouth to say something, but I swiveled on my feet and walked out.

  ****

  Madison

  A man was fucking a woman. On TV, I mean. He was on top of her, and they lay among the tangled sheets.

  Sitting on the couch at my house, I could see the back of him as he drove his cock inside her with ferocious movements. His ass clenched with every push, and the woman was moaning like she was going to die. Yeah, it was fake. But for a second I imagined James’ ass clenching, his cock driving into me. His shoulders slanting down to his spine, a sheet of muscle and movement. My heart pounded in my chest.

  But then, in my head James became Scott and then back again. The moans on TV became my moans, and then they became high-pitched like those screams from so long ago. Scott’s wrinkled face when he came morphed into James’ stunning pleasure as he creamed inside me.

  “What do you think all the fuss is about?” I heard Julia’s voice through my musings.

  “What?”

  We sat at opposite ends of the couch, the lights in the house dimmed to the point of darkness. I’d taken a shower as soon as we g
ot back home from the restaurant about an hour ago. Not to wash away James’ smell, but to see what he did to my body—his marks, his fingerprints on the scene of the crime.

  Julia pointed to the TV and raised a skeptical brow. “Why do you think she’s moaning like that? I bet that’s fake. I mean, of course it is. It’s a movie. But what the hell is that guy doing to her?”

  I turned to Julia, who was still looking at the TV. Her profile was beautiful. The lines of her face were clean, almost royal. High cheekbones, sharp jaw lines. Julia was a stunning woman.

  I’d cheated on her today.

  To be honest, I’d been cheating on her for a long time now. Using her to make James jealous, to make myself feel better.

  And I felt…guilty. More than guilty. That was the weird burn in my chest. Unbeknownst to me, this guilt had been creeping inside me for the past few days, only to become this thorn in my ass now. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, something I’d been doing a lot around Julia. My girlfriend. The host to my parasite.

  She set aside the remote and faced me. It was plain in her moss green eyes that she knew. She knew all about it. Had she followed me to the bathroom? Had she heard my moans through the cheap wooden door?

  Jesus fucking Christ! I fucked a guy and I…liked it. A guy with a live cock and all, and now my girlfriend knew about it.

  “Well…he’s boning her,” I said, referring to what she’d said earlier. “Also known as having sex.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, studied me like James sometimes did when he was trying to figure me out. Something jolted in my chest to see James in Julia.

  “Of course, I know that.” She smiled. “But what’s so special about it? What’s so special about fucking a guy?”

  Her question bristled me. If she knew, then why wasn’t she saying anything?

  See, most people would take this opportunity to fucking shut up or change the subject, but I didn’t. “You tell me. You had a boyfriend once, right?”