The One Who Got Away

by Kristina Wright

  He shifted on the couch and one of the pillows under his right elbow tumbled to the floor. “Yeah, well maybe I dozed off for a minute, but I was,” he worked his dick in his hand as if the cloth didn’t exist, “thinking about you.”

  She tried to bite back the moan, but it escaped low and needy, and her voice was breathy when she spoke. “You were? About me? What were you thinking?”

  He laughed, and held out his hand to her. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  Taking his hand, she allowed him to draw her closer, tugging her down to him. “Mace,” she giggled, spreading her legs and straddling his lap, her knees forced apart over his thighs.

  “You feel that?”

  He shifted his body, forcing his hard dick up against her. Her sundress floated around her, her legs naked beneath, a thin strap of lace covering her tightly manicured curls.

  She shifted her hips, riding up the length of him, wishing he wasn’t wearing shorts and that she’d left off her panties. “I feel you,” she murmured, silken moisture seeping from her core, her thighs trembling in need.

  “That’s what you do to me.”

  She wiggled, rubbing her body against him. Between moans, she whispered, “So Mace,” and shifted, putting her hand between them and wrapping her fingers around his rocked-up length, “are you getting rid of these shorts, or are we going to dry fuck like we did when we were teenagers?”

  He roared with laughter, the vibration making a hum against her clit. He shifted, his hand reaching for her, strong fingers wrapping around the back of her neck and into her hair. He dragged her forward until her breasts were smashed between them.

  His timbre was rough as he said, “We’re not teenagers anymore, Cyrena.” His right hand moved between them, his fingers sinking between her swollen lips. “And there’s no way we can dry fuck when you’re already soaking wet.”

  Cyrena shivered, but Mace didn’t wait for a reply. His mouth was on hers, claiming any words that she’d have spoken. His lips were soft but demanding. Demanding but gentle. He angled his head, deepening the kiss, his tongue entering her depths, touching, licking, tasting.

  Her eyes drifted closed, her body going liquid under his command. The thick erection pressed against her ass and she needed it inside her. Needed his solid dick pounding into her, releasing everything she’d held back for over a decade. She opened her mouth and kissed him back, meeting his tongue with hers, kissing and nipping and nibbling.

  Frantic now, her body was on fire, cold need prickling along her back. She shoved at his basketball shorts, pushing them down, breathing a sigh of relief when his engorged deep-purple head was stripped of clothing. She didn’t break the kiss, and accepted his groan into her mouth as she touched her fingertips to his satin flesh.

  “I need you, Mace.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, moved across his jaw to his ear and whispered, “I’ve always needed you.”

  “Dayummm, baby.” A low rumbled moan poured from his lips, every muscle in his body coiled beneath his skin. “I’m here.” Without warning, he flipped them so she was on her back on the sofa, her sundress billowed around her waist, her legs spread as he settled between them. The rest of the pillows tumbled to the floor.

  He held himself up with his left hand as he used his right to shrug the rest of the way out of his shorts, but she didn’t miss the tense look on his brow. When his shorts were gone, he reached between them and pushed the thin lace panties to the side, his fingers entering her, stroking out the moisture, his thumb pressing circles against her clit.

  And then his plum-shaped head was there instead of his fingers, an inch inside of her, pushing her lips apart to accept him. Still supporting himself with his left arm, he grabbed her thigh over his right and lifted it, spreading her body farther. A rough growl escaped from the back of his throat.

  “Mace, don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.”

  He chuckled, but the sound was strained. “Baby, I’m gonna hurt if I don’t do this.” And then he thrust in with no further warning.

  Cyrena closed her eyes against the rush of emotion, and relaxed her legs as all those rocked-up inches of his erection thrust into her. Deep, so deep she felt him press against her womb, her heart, her soul. When he was all the way in, she ground her clit into him, shaking as her body stretched around him, as heat poured to her toes, as arousal elongated her nipples.

  Gulping for air, she remained still for a moment allowing the connection between them to flow through her. Remained still so the tingle of climax would subside just long enough for her to get fucked right.

  “Mace,” she cried out, but was silenced as his lips covered hers, her scream captured in his mouth.

  He fucked slowly at first, long full strokes that ground into her body, then slow withdrawals and tender returns. Her legs shook, her clit throbbed. She tightened her fist into the back of the couch as he worked his length into her again and again. In and out, the movements filled with tenderness. Tension coiled in her gut, her skin prickling with impending climax.

  She arched her back, rising to meet his downward thrusts. And then the movements changed, became frenzied as he drove hard into her, his muscles tightly corded, strained against each movement. She shifted as he thrust in, his dick hitting just the right spot. Her control imploded, every muscle shivering as she climaxed onto his dick. The pleasure of orgasm chased away what lingered of regret.

  He released her mouth, his head falling back, his dark eyes hooded. “Baby,” he mumbled, his jaw tight, his body tense, “Cyrena, this is right.” And he emptied into her, his body shaking violently as he came.

  He came hard, filling her with his hot sticky seed and she accepted him, cradled between her legs, their bodies one. He collapsed against her, his face coming to rest against her breasts, his breathing fast and heavy.

  After a couple of minutes he released her leg that had been draped over his right elbow. “Doc, I think you may have to ice me,” he said with a chuckle.

  Cyrena laughed. She couldn’t help it. She wanted this. Him. Had always wanted it. The last few weeks had simply been a reminder of fate, a fate that brought them together one weekend at a children’s receiving home.

  “I’ll ice you, soldier, but you have to feed me first. I worked all day, and I’m pretty sure you promised me dinner.”

  “Damn.” He laughed as he backed away from her, his dick still half hard as he withdrew. “I had plans for this,” he said as he walked naked across the room, his body shimmering with sweat, his dick wet from her climax.

  He returned a few minutes later with candles and flowers and chocolates. “I planned on seducing you tonight.”

  She smiled. “Guess I ruined your plans.”

  He winked. “Yeah, baby, you did. You’ll have to make it up to me.”

  She pushed her dress down as she sat down and accepted the box of chocolates, nodding as she plopped one into her mouth.

  “There’s something else.” He walked to his metal footlocker and withdrew a small blue velvet box. “I’ll be whatever you need me to be, baby, but I’m not going back to active duty. I can be here for you. You want to date, we’ll date.” He strolled, naked, back to the sofa and went down on one knee before her. “You want a boyfriend, I’ll be your boyfriend, but what I want is for you to be my wife.” He opened the box and handed it to her.

  “Mace.” Her hands were trembling as she accepted it from him.

  “It’s not much, Cyrena. I bought it before I left for boot camp, when I thought you were coming with me. But if you say yes, I’ll double the size of that rock. Triple it. Whatever you want.”

  She swallowed, the lump in her throat making it hard to speak. Her hands shook as she took the ring from the box and put it on her own finger. “The ring is perfect the way it is.” The tears were flowing now, the memories of promises holding the right future.

  He laughed and twined their fingers. “So you’re mine again.”

  “Always.”

  POLYGLOT

 
Skylar Kade

  yes, that’s it. That’s how she licked me.” I moaned and thrust my hips up against Sergio’s flexing tongue. I continued narrating. It never failed to get my lover so hot that he would fuck me as soon as I came. “We were in the greenroom of the auditorium after her rehearsal, bra straps slipping off our shoulders before the door could even close behind us.”

  He slipped two fingers, then three, inside me. I was wet, ready.

  Nostalgic, though that was new. Something about the impending ten-year college reunion made all those long-ago memories more poignant. Sharper, cutting against the edges of my current life. Sergio curled his fingers against my G-spot, the hot spot that Ekaterina had introduced me to over and over again in our thousand days together. “Harder, deeper.” Ekaterina’s fingers had been long and slim, perfect for violin, so perfect she’d left everything in New York right after graduation for the chance to play with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in Saint Petersburg.

  I looked down my body, noting the stretch marks and softness that hadn’t lingered on my frame as a coed. But Sergio, his muscled, tawny shoulders spreading my pale thighs, loved every inch. “You are so beautiful, amore,” he whispered, like he did every chance he got. Like I was Christmas and birthdays and summer vacation wrapped up, with an extra thirty pounds for good measure.

  Despite my initial fears, it never got old to hear. Especially now that we were solid, strong. Those first years had been hell, when you are so beautiful was as close to an apology as he ever got.

  While his fingers undulated in time with his tongue, Sergio crawled his other hand up my body to lay over my heart. “Mine, my Katie,” he uttered, before returning to my pleasure.

  “Yours.”

  When he slowed, I took the unspoken cue and continued the story, not that he hadn’t heard some version of it a hundred times in the years since he’d discovered my Sapphic past. “We were stark naked and she had me on the vanity counter, ready and waiting when the door opened”—I gasped as Sergio danced his tongue over a particularly sensitive spot—“and the first chair trombonist stood in the doorway, gaping at us.”

  I twined my fingers with Sergio’s where they lay on my chest. The memory pushed me closer to the edge. “He’d left his sweatshirt in there, swear to god, like it was straight out of Penthouse.”

  He knew this part well by now. “Lucky boy.”

  The dark pleasure crawled up from the past and I shuddered. “Oh hell, lucky me. Do you have any idea how talented brass players are with their mouths? What four hands can do?”

  “Total overload.” He thrust three fingers in my pussy, suctioned his mouth on my clit, and drew circles around my anus with his pinky, blowing me past all recollections of other lovers. Shocks exploded from my core out to the top of my head and tips of my fingers and soles of my feet.

  He drew out the pleasure, gliding his fingers through the wetness between my legs, before he thrust into me. “If we had a woman here, now,” he said, “you’d let her lick your pussy, wouldn’t you? Dirty girl.”

  “Yes,” I hissed, writhing against his penetration. Even after all this time, his size still jolted me. So much bigger than the toys Ekaterina and I played with. So hot and alive.

  But his filthy words did me in every time. He told me all the ways he’d take me and another woman, never specifically Trina but we both knew who we were picturing. I came again and he followed me, panting and gasping as the phantom third partner faded away.

  In the bright morning light, as the minutes counted down before we really—truly this time—had to get ready for work, Sergio pulled me flush against his body. Despite the long hours he worked as a translator for the UN, he’d maintained the fit, athletic body that had originally caught my eye at an unofficial holiday work party. His voice, that syrupy Italian accent, was second.

  His passion for life hooked me, though. Pulled me out of the timid shell I had crawled into after graduation. After heartbreak.

  “You still love her, don’t you?”

  I could never lie to him. And what was the point? He understood love wasn’t some finite resource. Hell, he’d taught me that. “Of course I do. Just as I’ll always love you.”

  Dashing as ever in his charcoal-gray suit and olive-green tie, Sergio looked every inch the European playboy. One hand tangled with mine as we walked while the other threaded through his hair.

  “Don’t be nervous. It’s just dinner.” We passed one of the college’s scattered campus buildings, heading for a restaurant-slash-bar-slash-club we used to crash at during late nights studying or, more often, partying. Our alma mater had to rent the place out to hold all the nostalgia that would accompany the gathered alums.

  “I never understood class reunions.” His shiny dress shoes clipped against the brick sidewalk. If I were any shorter, I’d have to jog to match his pace.

  “And your family reunion? You think that was a bundle of laughs, only understanding a fraction of what they were saying?”

  He paused and turned me in his arms, then dipped me back in the fading sunlight. “You loved it, amore. Two weeks in Italy? All that home-cooked food? And my family adored you.” His brow wrinkled, and he swooped in for a kiss. “Especially Dominic. He adored you too much.”

  I laughed, remembering the teasing flirtation I’d gotten from one of Sergio’s cousins. “Well maybe you’ll snag a dance with the former Pi Beta Phi president.”

  Once inside, the voices of all my former classmates echoed off the walls. We signed in with minimal fuss, and headed to the name badge desk.

  I froze. There, spotlit under the angry fluorescent lighting, was The Name.

  Ekaterina Dobrev.

  Like it was the same as the hundred other tags. Like it didn’t just wreck my fucking world.

  Sergio sensed it. One look at my face, then at my line of vision, and I didn’t have to say a word. No, my lover swept an arm around my back, supportive and supporting as my knees wobbled. He nuzzled against my neck. “It’s okay ciccina. Would you like to leave?”

  “I need a drink.” His kiss against my temple fortified. “Hopefully the liquor is better than it was in college. I’m about ten years too old for rail vodka.”

  Three screwdrivers, some close dancing and the throbbing light show let me drift away from the badge. I had even caught up with a dozen former classmates in the packed restaurant, watching Sergio try not to smirk as they all talked a big game about how successful they had become. I did my usual, asking questions and listening as people talked in circles.

  Finally, as a lull hit the crowd, Sergio returned with a bottle of water. Good thing, because the room was getting a little blurry around the edges. I gulped down half the bottle before a Nineties throwback came on and Sergio pulled me again to my feet. “One more dance.”

  There wasn’t space for a tango or cha-cha or any of the ballroom dances he’d taught me, but swaying against his lithe, muscled body infused me with all his warmth. His hands stroked up and down my back. I caught sight of the class president dancing with the former Goth queen, and the champion lacrosse player exchanging terse words with his trophy wife. Past and present overlaid until déjà vu hit me like vertigo.

  And then, like I had summoned her from memory, Ekaterina stood backlit in the doorway. I knew it in my gut, didn’t need to see her face or read her name badge.

  Buzzing kicked up in my ears and I clutched Sergio. “She’s here.” My voice sounded more like our ancient pack-a-day neighbor’s than my own. “I…I’ve got to…”

  Though I caught the tail end of Sergio’s warning that he would give me a five-minute head start before coming to find me, I didn’t reply. We’d done this before, knew the routine. I got some time alone to get my head on straight and figure out whether I needed to rant or breakdown or cuddle or fuck it away, and Sergio didn’t have to deal with the crazy headspace I was in. He would show up soon and put the pieces of me back together.

  I pushed through the side door off the dance floor that opene
d into a small walkway at the side of the building. Heat leached off my skin and the faint smell of Saucer Magnolias and cab exhaust gave me something else to focus on.

  I had done what I set out to do: make an appearance. Part masochism, part voyeurism…like everyone else who attended their reunions. Watching the past from a safe distance was one thing; letting it sucker punch you, another entirely.

  The door behind me slammed open. “Took you long enough. Ready to go?” I turned and swallowed thickly. It wasn’t Sergio.

  “I thought I saw you leave, kotonok.”

  I was sucked into the past, kicking and screaming. Ekaterina hadn’t aged, aside from elegant laugh lines around her eyes. Same tall, whip-thin frame, white-blonde hair, and eyes so blue they almost burned. Words stuck to the roof of my mouth, part vodka-thick tongue, part shock. How many dirty conversations with Sergio had me reliving this very reunion? Dammit, she even smelled the same. A whiff of Love’s Baby Soft reached my nose and I wanted to bury my face against Trina’s neck.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. I…” Ekaterina tugged at a lock of hair, just like she had when cramming for a test in calculus— not her forte. “I’m sorry, Katie. So fucking sorry.” She closed the distance and before I could process, Ekaterina had me wrapped in her long, muscled violinist arms, like she’d read my mind.

  Tears burned my eyes, but I waited for Ekaterina to finish. I could feel the rest of what my ex wanted to say, like a word caught on the tip of my tongue.

  “Leaving you was a mistake.”

  And my world crumbled, unraveled back to that moment of divergence. Nothing is more important than my career, not even you. The words hurt as much now as they did when Ekaterina had hurled them during our last big fight. “Don’t say that.” I hissed the words out and my breath raised more of Ekaterina’s scent, potent as airborne fentanyl.

  I saw hair prickle up on Ekaterina’s neck and braced myself. In an instant, I was back against the brick wall with Trina looming over me. Our hands were twined and locked above my head against the side of the building. “Not married?”