“Oh god,” I gasped. “Where did you learn that?”
“Where indeed,” he smiled. A drop of precome dripped onto my tailbone and I reached back, smearing it along the big mushroom head; he bucked forward in response and began to thrust against my palm. His movements were restricted though, teasing; he was giving me a taste of what he could do and nothing more. I turned to kiss him but Anders was tall and I had to crane my neck—he used the opportunity to curve his body and slide against me, thrusting his heavy cock between my thighs and buttocks.
“Think of it,” he whispered feverishly as I rode his relentless digits. “We were meant to be here tonight, not a moment before. Today is the day we were meant to—oh my god, you’re so wet. You’re so wet.”
I let out a strangled scream as my first orgasm of the night left me convulsing. “I’ve wanted you for so long, Anders. Even when I didn’t know you anymore.” Oh hell, why had that set me to tears?
“Hey,” he said, turning me to face him so that I could see the earnestness in his eyes. “No more regrets, right? I’m here now. You’re here now.”
I turned away again and looked out over the city lights, over the world outside the window. Here was a chance, too, for tying up old ends or finding new beginnings. Anders was right.
I faced him once more and dropped to my knees, bouncing the tip of his waiting cock on the flat of my tongue, and then flicking along the head. I grabbed his thighs and looked up in time to see his eyes widen as he gasped my name. I swallowed as deeply as I could, then pulled back only to do it again and again. I bit at his thighs and stroked his hip bones until his knees began to buckle and he sank shakily onto the futon.
“Stop, stop! I’m going to—”
He reached for my shoulders and his stomach muscles clenched with the effort of holding back. But he had caught a second wind in the next breath and soon he was seated on the edge of the bed, two fingers curling inside me as I looked out once more over the city. His hands were powerful: twisting, stretching until I spread my legs farther and moved into his touch.
“Jeg vil op i dig.” I want to get inside you. I readily agreed and with his hands on my hips he lowered me with an aching slowness that left no space within me for anything but him. When he was seated as deeply as he could go his kisses fell along my shoulders and he began to thrust.
“Brace yourself,” he warned. I nearly laughed mid-moan, wondering what he could possibly mean, but in the next second he began to fuck me so hard my teeth clacked together. My ass bounced off of his powerful thighs and my limbs were quickly turning to jelly. He stopped for the space of a heartbeat and then started up again like a jackhammer.
It was the most delicious thing I had ever felt. Had this teenage boy I’d known turned into a machine in my absence? Filthy mumblings vibrated their way up my throat as his hands gripped my wrists, holding me steady so his hips could piston harder, faster. “Anders,” I said breathlessly, “I want to look into your eyes.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold back if you do that.” He smiled against my neck and let me up, kissing me languidly for a moment before I lay back against his pillows. I was surrounded by the same scent I had fought to keep in another bed he had once occupied.
“Is it weird to have been a little bit in love with someone for fifteen years?” I blinked at his question, and then sighed as his cock ran the length of my slit. His hands went between my legs and held me apart so that he could bump against my clit. I shivered.
“I guess not if the feelings are returned.” His thrusting was rough, fast and the head of his erection was doing crazy things to my already frazzled nerves. “I used to—oh!—think I was wrong to keep holding on, though.”
“The only thing left to hold on to is me,” he said, finally bringing me over the edge to an orgasm so strong it left me kicking my heels against the futon. “I’m glad I was the one that got away then.”
His eyes, though older, still held that mischievous twinkle of youth. My legs hooked at the ankles and he held them against his chest just as he drove into me again; all of my body could feel him—I acutely knew the shape of him now, spreading from my center through my fingers and toes.
Soon though, the muscles in his arm and back were straining and his movements had become erratic: first slow, then a series of sharp, fast thrusts, then deep as he could manage and shallow again, all to stave off a finish that I was ready to beg for under this exquisite torture. I pulled my ankles from his grasp and set them on his shoulders, reached for his hair and yanked him down, kissing him with all the urgency that I could inject.
“You’re just as maddening as you always were,” I whispered, arching my back as he pushed hard enough to lift my hips.
“I could never resist you,” he growled back. His eyes closed briefly and he muttered something I couldn’t catch.
“What?” I asked, the end of the word trailing off into a squeak as he took one nipple in his mouth and then the other.
“Jeg vil kneppe dig til din krop husker min form,” he said. “I want to fuck you ’til your body remembers my shape.”
I tucked my head into the crook of his neck and he held me against him, powering his way through as I was swept away in the sensation and scent, the sheen of sweat that clung to us both and the smooth expanses of muscle under my fingers.
At the last he looked up, stared directly into my eyes and froze as though stunned. A look of wonder came over his face and then was mirrored on mine as I felt him pulsating: the release had silenced him completely.
He rolled off and to the side, extending an arm in invitation. I lay with my head on his chest for a while, breathing heavily and unwilling to speak in case it broke the spell. Maybe I would wake up from this and find myself staring at the computer screen or an old photograph of a time when spaghetti strap jumpers and heavily jelled spikes were cool.
“I think,” he said, reaching for the alarm clock to his left, “You and I should take tomorrow off. Obviously on a chilly night like tonight it’s very easy to catch a cold.”
“Oh?” I asked, amused.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s been a long time and we have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t remember that scar on your shoulder and you haven’t seen my photography, for starters. I want to see how much Danish you’ve learned and see what you’re like halfway down a bottle of wine now that we’re old enough to drink things not from parents’ liquor cabinets.”
“I’d like to hear you play guitar again,” I agreed. “And tell you all the drama you missed after high school.”
“Sounds like fun,” Anders grinned, kissing me on the forehead. “And besides, I’ll need at least a full day to make sure you never forget my address again.”
BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS
Kristina Wright
It started with a text at 3:00 a.m. I miss you. The cynic inside me said it was a booty call text, but the realist said he’d either just come from a booty call and was feeling nostalgic or he truly missed me. Either way, I wasn’t awake to get the text until the next morning. And I responded with a smile: I miss you too. And not just at 3AM.
We always know when a relationship begins, but sometimes the ending comes and it’s not until much later that we can look back and pinpoint the end. “There,” we say to ourselves. “That was the last day, that was the end.” If we’re lucky, we get that kind of closure. If we’re lucky.
It didn’t happen that way with Erik and me. There was no ending. There was the last day I saw him—in a crowded parking lot at the mall around Christmastime—and then there was… nothing. It was, at best, a tumultuous relationship. One that should never have happened, I can acknowledge in retrospect. We were in different places in our lives and we wanted different things—a fact I didn’t discover until I’d already fallen in love. He was trying to be someone he wasn’t and I was trying…well, I was trying to believe he could be what I needed. It was destined to fail, but something—call it love—kept us trying. Fighting for it to
work, when we weren’t fighting each other.
There in that parking lot, right around Christmas, he kissed me for the last time. I was crying, as I did so often in those last few months, and he was panicked he had lost me. He kissed me and I felt…nothing. Nothing good, anyway. The passion was tamped down and muffled by so many negative emotions I couldn’t even remember when his kiss—just his kiss—could make me soaking wet. That should’ve told me it was the end, but even then…well, we had been there before. We’d broken up three times in as many years, for weeks or even months, and somehow we always found a way back to each other. It was usually as a result of lies—to ourselves and each other—that generated false hope. But we did it anyway and for a while it worked, as make-up sex became our norm and we drowned ourselves in sensation and ignored the cold, hard truth—we just weren’t meant to be together.
Until…we just didn’t see each other again. We had a few phone calls that ended with one or both of us screaming, we texted each other those random I miss you messages, but ultimately they would devolve into accusations and anger. We talked about going to a concert we’d planned for before the last big blowup, but the tickets went unused—at least, I didn’t go and I never had the courage to ask if he’d taken someone else—and then the texts simply tapered off to nothing. I cut him out on all social media because quitting cold turkey seemed best for both of us and having any access to his day-to-day life seemed dangerous to my mental health. I heard through the friend of a friend that he had started up with someone else, someone who he could likely be more himself with, someone who was more easygoing and less intense. At least, that’s what I told myself. No way he’d find someone he loved more than me. I knew that. Knew it. Because I knew I’d never find anyone I loved more than him.
Time is a funny thing. They say it heals all wounds, but that’s not true. I let my communication with Erik taper off to almost nothing and felt my heart scab over nicely. The first year was hell—every holiday, every place I had ever gone with him, was a bad memory. I had to remind myself, over and over, the number of times we’d spent fighting on my birthday or in a crowded restaurant. It wasn’t a good relationship; I had to keep reminding myself of that. We were wrong for each other. So wrong.
Two years later and I was good. I had moved on. I had dated casually and been seeing a great guy for six months, one I liked a lot even if I didn’t love him with that all-consuming passion I’d felt for Erik, but it hadn’t lasted. He said I was too distant; I said I was simply mature. We said our goodbyes and the whole thing was drama free and very adult. I silently patted myself on the back. I’d grown up; I had learned from my mistakes. I was over it, over Erik, and had maintained a stable relationship for a period of time and not fallen apart when it was over. It felt like a success. A hollow, lonely success, but still…success. And then one night at 3:00 a.m….Erik texted me. We had devolved to texting each other only on our birthdays and at Christmas. Simple, empty texts, good wishes and nothing more than you’d tell a stranger at Starbucks. It was safer that way, better than dredging up the past, better than fighting. Better than never speaking again.
Then there was the 3:00 a.m. text, followed by my teasing response. I thought that would be it, but the next night, he texted again. It wasn’t 3:00 a.m., it was a little after nine and I was already in bed, reading the latest Stephen King. I glanced over at my phone, expecting a text from the guy I had been dating, as we were still friends (imagine that!) and planning to see a movie over the weekend. I entertained a thought that we might get back together again, that he might be right and I had been distant, but I dismissed it. No, I was done trying to conform and please someone else. I was feeling cocky, until I looked at my phone.
I miss you all the time. I would like to see you. Please?
My heart was trip-hammering in my chest even before I got to the “Please?” Maybe I wasn’t as over Erik as I thought I was. I hesitated. Should I see him? It was the first time since that missed concert that he’d asked to see me. I considered dashing off a quick rejection, telling him I was seeing someone. But that seemed like a game we would’ve played when we were together. I didn’t want to play games, but that didn’t stop me from putting my phone down and reading another thirty pages of my novel while my mind worked out how I should really respond.
Okay, I texted back an hour later. When?
He didn’t wait an hour. Less than a minute later my phone vibrated, as if he’d been holding his phone in his hand waiting for me. His response put the ball firmly in my court. Whenever you’re available. Just give me a date, time and location and I’ll be there.
I laughed out loud. That didn’t sound like the Erik I knew. Warning bells went off. What did he want? Booty call, I thought again. No, that wasn’t his style, either. At least not with me.
I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to say something I’d regret in the morning. I’ll check my calendar and text you tomorrow. That seemed fair. It wasn’t a game; I needed time to think.
Thank you, Fiona.
I fell asleep and dreamed of him and the next morning I gave him a date, time and location. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
“You look amazing,” he said four days later as he sat across from me at a new Mexican restaurant that had just opened the previous month. I’d deliberately chosen a place we had never been together before, not wanting to open the can of worms that was the many bad memories between us.
“Thanks! You—” I trailed off. He didn’t look amazing. He looked unbelievably thin and haggard. “You look happy,” I finished lamely, though his big smile did suggest happiness, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
He laughed. “I look like hell and I know it. But thanks. I’m happy to see you.”
We placed our orders. I demurred when the waiter suggested a margarita and settled for a Coke. I wanted to keep my wits about me with Erik.
“So what’s up?”
He laughed, and it sounded good. Too good. “That’s the Fiona I know and—” His smile faded. “Yeah, well, it’s a fair question. I needed to see you. Life has been…tough lately and you were always a rock for me.”
I was literally biting the inside of my jaw at this. A big point of contention between us had been that I was always there for him but he didn’t, or couldn’t, return the favor. We were different like that—me the nurturer, him the one happy to let me nurture him no matter how much it depleted my own reserves.
“What’s going on?” I honestly didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to be dragged into whatever drama he was in the midst of. I had a thought—what if it was about a girl? What if what had precipitated his texts had been a need for relationship advice? That would explain the first late-night text—fighting with a girlfriend, reminding him of his ex. I literally groaned. “Please don’t tell me you need me to sort out a problem with a girl for you. Seriously.”
He looked at me wide-eyed. “You think I’d ask you to meet me for that? Seriously?”
I spread my hands wide, wishing I’d gone for the margarita after all. “Sorry. This is all kind of…unexpected.”
“There’s no girl problem, Fiona,” he said. “I have dated, yes, I was seeing someone for a while and it didn’t work out, if you want to know the truth…”
I shook my head, feeling myself getting angry. “Enough. I got it. You’re out there dating. Good for you.”
“That wasn’t my point.” He sounded as calm and patient as he had when he sat down. “I just wanted you to know I didn’t want to see you because I needed you to fix my love life. In fact, I didn’t want to see you to fix anything. Promise. In fact, it’s the opposite. Or whatever the opposite is of needing to be fixed. I’m good now. I’m okay. It’s been hell, but I’m okay. That’s why I wanted to see you.”
“What happened?” I asked, exasperated by now. I just wanted to know. “Are you dying?”
“No, but my dad did.”
I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the table. I gaped at him for a long minut
e, no trace of humor on his face. He was serious.
“Oh my god. What happened, Erik?” I asked quietly. “What’s going on?”
“Massive stroke right after Christmas. He was just in the kitchen making pancakes one Sunday morning and the next minute…he was gone. It’s been rough on my mom, not having anyone close by. So, well, I’m moving to Chicago to be closer to her. I’ve already put in some applications at schools there.”
My mind was reeling. Erik’s dad, his idol, had died. He was moving to Chicago. I didn’t even know what to say or how to process all that, so I went for the easiest.
“School? You’re going back to school?”
He laughed. “That’s what you ask about?”
“I figured I’d start small.”
“Wise woman, always.” Our dinner had arrived by now, but I honestly didn’t think I could eat a bite. I couldn’t stop staring at him. “Yes, I’m going to back to school. To be a teacher.”
“You want to be a teacher?” I knew I sounded like a parrot, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like I didn’t know this man sitting in front of me. We’d met when my downstairs neighbor in my apartment building had started a grease fire. Erik, looking like the stereotypical hot fireman, had shown up on my doorstep to evacuate me to safety. Of course, the fire had been contained to my neighbor’s stove, but still…it was the kind of meet cute that made for a great cocktail party conversation. And now Erik, the rock-climbing, skydiving, high-octane firefighter was going to be…a teacher?
“Wow,” was all I could manage when he laughed at my expression and nodded.
He told me he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps—he’d been a college professor—and how glad his mom was that he’d be moving back closer to home. We swapped work stories and I didn’t even know what else, my mind still in a surreal haze from his bombshell. There were long silences and longer looks and I had the sense of time slipping by and needing to say more, but all I could do was shake my head.
The One Who Got Away Page 18
