“Vanessa,” he hissed after her.
“What do you want?” She said, turning around. Her face was twisted in grief. What had he done? Aaron scrolled through his mental Rolodex of memories to ponder whether he’d lost more time, if something in him took over, if he hurt her. Nothing came to mind, which haunted him even more.
“I want… you…” he faltered, not knowing what to say. For all his money in the bank, for all his swagger in business, for all the ways he could make a woman melt with just a stare in her direction, he never did learn the art of communication.
Vanessa stood there, willing him to say more. He didn’t know what she needed to hear, what she was trying to cull from the depths of his mind. After an unbearable minute of silence, of staring into the abyss of each other, she sighed. “I have to go to work now.”
“No,” he lunged after her. “No, no you don’t. Come with me instead.”
Vanessa smirked incredulously. “Come with you where?”
“Back to my hotel room. Out to dinner. Hawaii. Anywhere. You haven’t left my mind since I met you,” he gushed.
“I have bills to pay,” she said, turning away from Aaron again.
“Let me pay them,” Aaron replied, a little too quickly. “Just… come back with me. You don’t need to work here. You don’t need to do this.”
Vanessa, awash in confusion, paused. She was being pulled in all directions. Emma needed medications. The both of them needed a secure roof over their heads and food on their table. Her shift began three minutes ago. And most grievously, this man who pulled back the curtain on arguably the most sensual night of her life—a night where she actually felt desired, sexy, like a woman—wanted to take her away from all of this.
He is just exaggerating, Vanessa thought to herself. There’s not a chance that he’d go out of his way for me. It’s just a ploy, just a way to use me for a night. And yet, looking at him from head to toe, one would assume that he had a full repertoire of women on reserve. The way his suits fit, the way his Porsche revs, the way he can cut steel beams with his eyes: bright and cerulean against a rich, earthy skin tone. He could have any woman he wanted, and yet… he was here.
And it was true that as the day wore on, as Vanessa’s mind drifted ever backwards to the events of the night before, she began to soften. She remembered the tenderness he’d used to touch her, the warmth of his breath along the insides of her thighs, the way he made her entire body vibrate with euphoria. She wanted to feel shame, because logically, that’s how she was supposed to feel. But what she couldn’t quite expunge from her mind was the fact that the world of sexual pleasure was seldom logical.
“Let me take you to my apartment,” Aaron said slowly, softly, “in the city.”
“I…” Vanessa sighed, walking toward him. “I… can’t do that.”
“Why?” Aaron asked, genuinely.
“Look, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this,” Vanessa could feel the truth bubbling up beneath her skin, right there in the parking lot. She felt as though she were about to burst, to break open in front of him, spewing the reality of her life across the perfect image of her that he’d concocted in his head. He didn’t want to hear about Emma. About epilepsy. About poverty. About dead parents. He wanted nothing to do with any of that, she could feel it. All he wanted was to experience her, to taste her, to feel her.
“Tell me,” he whispered, taking her hand. “Why can’t you join me tonight?”
“I can’t go to the city tonight,” Vanessa sighed. “But I can go with you to a hotel.”
Chapter 13
A different bedroom. Another set of sheets. A contrasting view of the ordinary, lackluster suburban landscape. Aaron and Vanessa were shadows dancing in the recycled illumination of streetlights flowing in from outside, moving in a choreography that they each somehow knew yet never actually learned. He laid her on the bed, ripping his shirt off, too lost in the moment to practice patience. She had poisoned his mind with her hips, with her moans, with the way her supple breasts were stuffed into her bra and shoved in his face. She was all he could imagine—lingering through his mind like cigarette smoke dispersing through the air, haunting his every moment with the way she smelled, the way she tasted. Tonight, he had to have her.
The darkness was both friend and foe. It hid their inhibitions yet cloaked their bodies. Vanessa wanted to let go, to relax, to spread out into the haven of safety that darkness offered. Aaron wanted to see her face as the electricity flowed through her, how she contorted as the pleasure spiked through her. But still, he restrained himself, this was still all about her. She called the shots, so he dutifully obeyed.
Aaron ran his hands frantically along the contours of her back, unclasping her bra with manic intensity. Her breasts spilled out and he cupped them, squeezing with passion as she fell over him and leaned her head toward the ceiling, gasping with bliss. Vanessa was naked, straddling Aaron, dripping all over him, ready for him to plunge into her. And yet, she was still apprehensive. For all the ways he had warped her mind over the past twenty-four hours with flashbacks to her euphoria, she felt him along her skin. She ran her fingers along his shaft, elongated and imposing, wondering how badly he’d hurt her if she succumbed to what she really wanted—what they both really wanted.
Aaron was lying flat on his back, cupping and massaging Vanessa’s breasts with wound up excitement, his knees pulled up and his feet flat on the bed. Vanessa leaned back on his thighs, using them almost as a chair and lightly moved to touch herself, massaging her clit before his eyes from where she straddled Aaron’s chest. She could feel his cock stand straight up along her back, besieging her with the notion that he would rip her apart if she tried to accommodate him.
“I want you,” Aaron whispered, lightly twisting her nipples. She jolted with pleasure and bit her bottom lip, looking at him sensually.
“Let’s try something different first,” Vanessa whispered back, scooting her body backwards to straddle his cock, pulsating now with passion.
She was now transported back in her mind to the first few times that she discovered these parts of her body, the accidental encounters which led to euphoric afternoons behind locked doors. After school, Vanessa would bound up to her room and shut herself inside, blasting the radio to drown out the sound of her body moving in ways she couldn’t control, the sound of the first few yips of ecstasy rippling through the body of a newcomer to the club of sexuality.
Here, in Aaron’s bedroom, Vanessa mimicked her old strategies. She flipped him upward—an arrow facing north—and slid herself along the bottom side of his cock. Already soaking wet, Vanessa held his hands where they were, cupping her breasts, playing with her nipples. Moving along his shaft, she rocked as if he were inside of her, flipping a switch somewhere inside of her to release an orgasm almost immediately. She held off, not wanting to shut off the sparks that his cock was creating through her body. Again, she felt the pit of her stomach churn with the wattage of her orgasm, her body pumping up the voltage a little more with every slide across Aaron’s rocklike cock.
Vanessa opened her eyes, and as they adjusted to the shadows in the darkness of the spare bedroom, she could see that Aaron was perplexed. He looked curious in his arousal, and fascinated by Vanessa all the same. Her voluptuous breasts overflowed from his grip and her bliss was apparent, yet it was clear that this was something completely new to him; sexual contact in a way he could understand despite not knowing the language in which it was spoken.
“Is this okay for you?” she whispered in a shaky voice, her orgasm billowing within her despite her efforts to suppress it.
“Take… what… you… need…” Aaron moaned, feeling Vanessa shiver as she moaned and gasped, holding onto his biceps for support while electricity buzzed through her. She threw her head back with the titillation of his cock along her clit and gasped once more, a full-bodied, husky inhale that morphed into the gushing sigh of utter contentment.
“That… was incredible,”
Aaron said, running his fingers along the contour of her hips as she sat on him, leaking and panting.
Wordlessly, Vanessa touched herself—wincing in pleasure—and smoothed her liquid desire down his shaft. Trepidation replaced euphoria as anxiety crept through her. How could she handle a cock this large? How badly would it hurt? Would she bleed? Would she cry?
Aaron could sense that something was off, that Vanessa had lost the appeal she’d just had. Her strokes were limp, faltering with a kind of dissatisfaction.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he cooed in his voice like asphalt.
“Nothing,” Vanessa said, stroking again halfheartedly, wondering which method might hurt less, her pussy or her jaw.
Sitting up, Aaron took her cheeks in his hands and kissed her deeply, whimsically. His hands jutted upward, running themselves through the roots of her hair, massaging her scalp lightly with his nails. He needed her. He needed to burst inside of her, to feel how tightly she would wrap herself around him, how she could strangle him in the most desirable way possible. “Vanessa,” Aaron whispered into her ear, so softly that she began to shake. “Get on your back.”
She did what she was told, unfolding her legs and widening them to let him in. Aaron stroked his shaft lightly for a moment, rubbing the tip along her labia, drawing imaginary lines of feverish passion along the opening where her lips met. He hesitated. Aaron knew that once he thrust himself inside of her, that was it. He could never take it back, he could never undo it. Once Vanessa let him in, some light would flip in her head, a wire would be cut, a line would be drawn. He’d had her for dinner the night before, she just used his cock as her own personal sex toy, but this was different. They were writing their own truth, and now something indelible was going to occur. Once he shot himself inside of her, it could never be reversed. The truth would be written in blotchy black ink, not erasable pencil lead.
The tip of his cock was pressing into her now, an open door to a warm house in a winter forest. She was tight already. Her muscles were clenched and he would have to force himself inside, break through the tension and make himself fit. Aaron was standing on the edge of unspeakable pleasure for what felt like hours, all he had to do was fall in and allow it.
Aaron forced himself—throbbing with the thrill of finally feeling her—into Vanessa, who was taut and firm, unyielding in her constriction. He let out a gasp and so did she. They were connected now in a way they hadn’t been before. Aaron lost control of himself, maniacally pulsating inside of her, feeling the curves and dips of her core envelop him, stroke him, manipulate him until he felt the spurts and bursts of his own erotic electricity ripple through him and blast into fireworks of intoxication throughout his body.
Vanessa gasped as Aaron was at the pinnacle of his orgasm, compressing her muscles around him, taking him to an even higher level of euphoria. He grabbed a lock of her hair and tugged, letting the energy flow freely as he pumped into her, feeling the rapid tickle of bliss emanate through every cell in his body.
“Vanessa,” Aaron moaned in a whisper before showering her neck with a spray of light kisses.
“Yes?” She smiled at Aaron, pleased with herself.
“That was amazing,” he whispered between kisses. “You are amazing.”
After a few quiet moments, Aaron slithered out of Vanessa, rolling over in slumber. She stayed up, facing the ceiling, stroking his back until she knew he was asleep. Then she got dressed, scribbled her phone number onto the pad of paper embossed with the hotel’s logo on the nightstand, and left without saying goodbye.
Chapter 14
The disillusionment of ethereal sleepiness washed over Aaron almost immediately. Vanessa had worn him out; he could almost feel his energy reserves rattling with vacancy. With immense purposed, his mind lumbered toward a celestial landscape of dreamy serenity. The bounds of reality were frayed; the humming of indistinct change through his body was simmered into silence. For the first time in a long while, he felt at peace; reveling in a sublime world of make-believe that felt as stark in his mind as reality itself.
In this intangible, dreamy panorama, Aaron found himself on a catamaran. He was floating in a river with other people, some he knew, some he didn’t. Old acquaintances from high school were there and a stray handful of people he’d known in passing during the transit between all the people he’d been. He was socially lubricated by some wine he’d snuck onboard inside an opaque water bottle. The gulps he took were hot and stale. It was afternoon and the tidal wave of impending drunkenness felt, at that particular moment, like velvet across his mind.
Aaron was, for some reason, trying to get to know the people around him. That was the first tip that something wasn’t quite right. His crippling boredom with most other people had somehow lain dormant within him. After a few minutes of strained and forceful attempts at meaningful conversation, Aaron (rather characteristically) grew tired of the surrounding idiots and their babbling, so he sat in the sun with his wine and his knock-off, imitation solace. He wasn’t in a river, actually, but it wasn’t an ocean, either. It was a bay, Aaron guessed. He and everyone on board were far enough from land that they lost sight of the shore, yet they were close enough to understand, without question, that it was still in reach.
In a moment of silence amid the mingling chatter, when the world was doused in a gasoline of yellow, mid-afternoon buttery luxury, Aaron leaned his head back and took a long drag from the bottle, pulling the liquid heaven into himself, staring up at the sun.
“It’s so weird,” a voice chirped beside him. He was about the same age as Aaron, same build, also by himself.
“What?” Aaron replied, genuinely curious, his voice husky with the remnants of a truly remarkable sip.
“The sun… and the earth. The sun is hollow. The earth is full. The sun is so mighty, so life giving, and yet, there’s nothing inside. It’s a great big ball of fire on the outside, and that’s it. It’s hollow, and the earth, where we are, it’s full of everything. Hollow, full. Hollow, full. Hollow, full.”
Aaron took another pull from the bottle, neglecting to offer the man any. He needed every last drop of the wine to process what he’d said. Aaron was sliding into the cozy state of drunkenness where everything feels deep and thought-provoking, even if it’s idiotic. His drunk mind was astounded while his final grips of cynical sobriety were setting off alarms that whatever this man was saying was probably just maniacal ranting.
And then, it happened.
There was, eerily, no sound. It felt as if the explosion would have been too deafening for human ears to hear, so instead of a blast, an otherworldly silence fell over the landscape around them. It was almost like Aaron’s mind couldn’t conceptualize what the end of time truly sounded like, so it muted it instead. (An afterthought, of course, as it all unfolded, he had no reason to believe it was anything other than bleak reality.)
Blackness seeped from the sun like ink squirts from a broken pen, floating and billowing through the sky and toward him with a speed fast enough to be cause for alarm, yet slow enough to make everyone on board the boat fidget, make them insecure, make them marinate in their terrifying realization that within a few moments, they would face a certain and undeniably painful death. A blotch of murkiness bleeding across the atmosphere from the sun, heading toward the planet, and they all watched in nervous laughter as it rounded off and landed somewhere behind the curve of the earth—on some other continent, in some other land, terrorizing some other people.
Aaron and the people on the boat thought they were safe. They thought it was over. They were too concerned with celebrating their own survival trumping the mortality of other, less fortunate souls that they didn’t notice the splatter of black death rocketing toward them in a menacing encore of the first horrifying act. The sun was like a tiny ball of lemon candy in the sky—bitter and angry—and Aaron couldn’t quite conceptualize the size of the shadow coming at him until it got closer and closer still, encompassing all light, painting everything everyo
ne saw with the color of death, swallowing them without chewing.
Water. Darkness. Confusion. Weight. That insidious, idle wondering while one is gripped by death of how, exactly, they’re dying. Was it drowning? Was Aaron being crushed by the pressure of the blackness? Was it a fire stronger than the standard red flames? A military-grade incendiary force, which chars a person to a crisp before it ever hits the skin? Was he choking on ash? Was he simply in the process of being scared to death?
All that Aaron knew was gone, all the emotions he felt were overridden. It didn’t matter who he was, how many books he had read, or how many pairs of lips he kissed in his youth. It didn’t matter whether he had traversed foreign soils or locked himself in the artificial light of a basement all his life, because this was his life now. This creeping, seductive dance with death was all that Aaron could understand.
Aaron was pulled under the surface of the water with a force he knew he couldn’t survive, and the sloshing of fellow human desperation was weakening his hope bit by bit. He resigned himself to death, which now threw itself at him, over him, into him. Aaron was rendered useless by this black sickness spewed from the sun, and it was either taking him too long to die or this suffering was all part of the plan. He stopped fighting. It was over. Aaron lost, Death won. His mind was slipping away, into its own darkness.
And yet, somehow, it wasn’t. He wanted to fall asleep forever. He wanted to dissolve into the water. He wanted to solidify into the sand. And yet, there was that goddamned unwavering positivity — whispering caramel-colored and velveteen lies of his untapped grandeur into his waterlogged ears — keeping the blood flowing through him.
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