Find Me in the Dark

by Ashe, Karina

  “May I touch you?” he asks, and right as he does, I reach out.

  His skin is hotter than mine. It startles me. I didn’t think it was possible for him to be hotter than I was now in this suddenly freezing room.

  My mind screams that things are moving too quickly—that I should run away or at least invite him out for coffee. You don’t let a man wearing a mask touch you—especially not one who watches you ‘always’ and sends you cryptic letters.

  He breaks contact. I feel his shadow on me, and I want his hot hands to touch my skin, my neck, my face. I want him to touch me wherever he wants to.

  “You still haven’t answered, Laura.”

  Chapter 6

  My legs part further. My cello almost falls. I snatch it and slide it under the chair. I don’t notice I’m sliding down with it until my knee hits the floor.

  He leans in, smelling like peppermint and aftershave. Clean. And just beneath that clean scent is something undeniably masculine. It makes my toes curl. It makes my other knee hit the floor.

  He stops, again, just before touching me. It feels like a strange sort of dance, like we’re two actors performing for an auditorium of ghosts. The feeling swelling between us pulls me to him like a dissonant chord trying to find home.

  He follows me down, crouching above me. I raise my hand to touch his cheek, finding his mask instead of skin. “Why do you wear this?” I ask again.

  “I already told you.”

  “No, really. Tell me.”

  “Because you wouldn’t love me—”

  “How do you know?” I scoot towards him, folding my knee under my body. “Do you think I’d turn you away just because you aren’t attractive?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Laura.”

  That’s all he says. Just ‘Laura.’ I don’t know if it’s a warning or a plea.

  “I feel like I know you already,” I whisper. “I’ve read your letters so many times that I feel like there hasn’t existed a time before you were in it.”

  His breath catches.

  I continue. “And then you do something like this, and it’s like I never knew you.”

  “Laura.” He says my name like he wants to say something else. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m being more honest than I’ve ever been before in my letters, or if they are just beautiful lies.”

  I want to push him down on the hardwood floor, climb on top of him and tear off his mask. Don’t say that, I want to scream. You can’t make up that kind of passion, those kinds of words. They were from your soul, were they not? They were you. Don’t call them beautiful lies. Don’t.

  His hand comes closer to my face. He still doesn’t touch me—he’s waiting for permission. “Do you know what you look like right now?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Like you did that first time I saw you. Actually, you always look like that. Every time I see you, it’s like seeing you for the first time.”

  That’s a line, it can’t be true, I want to say, but he speaks with such sincerity I don’t dare go against him.

  “May I touch you?” he asks again. Pleading. Needing.

  And I find that I’m pleading and needing too. I feel his shadow move across my shoulder, and suddenly I’m glad that I wore so little, that I can feel his breath on my skin through his mask, that I can show him so much.

  I want to show more.

  I nod, my head touching his fingers. He pulls away quickly but I lean forward, stretching my neck until his hand falls on my cheek.

  He hesitates. With every second that passes I feel further from him. I ache. Maybe he needs verbal confirmation. “Please,” I whisper.

  His free hand slides up the center of my back as his fingers trace my lips.

  I moan, sliding back further. The chair screeches. My heel catches my cello, and the toe of my shoe pushes my bow across the floor. I’m being careless again. I can’t afford to trample something more precious than his rose. But I can’t think straight. I’m intoxicated with need.

  He slides back, dragging me across the floor with him, away from my cello and chair. Through his mask, his breath fans over my neck. It feels like the sun on a hot day. It evokes a memory of me laying out on my childhood roof after a long summer day, watching fireflies in the fields as the light dwindled.

  “Laura,” he whispers. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s still waiting for something from me. I don’t understand what it is.

  And then I remember. “Yes,” I say, shutting my eyes. “Touch me. Please.”

  He makes a low note in his throat. His hands move just above my hips. His pointer fingers dig slightly into the bottom of my rib cage. He pushes me back and my shoulder blades hit the floor.

  His body moves over mine. His knee slides between my legs. I arch my back, hitting his stomach. His hands move over my forearms, pinning me to the ground beneath him.

  My heart races. I’m shaking. I flex my hands and he readjusts his grip.

  “Laura.” I love the sound of my name from his lips. I don’t know if it’s his accent or the way he says it, but every time he does it’s like hearing that word for the first time.

  “Yes.” I don’t know what I’m responding to. What I’m asking for. I just don’t want him to stop.

  “Are you alright?” I feel his lips moving through his mask right beneath my ear.

  He’s asking if I want him to stop. I don’t. I shut my eyes, breathing out unsteadily. “I’m fine.”

  “Just fine?” he asks, voice husky.

  No. Not just fine. It actually feels like I’m unraveling. Like I’m the furthest from fine that I could be. Yet, I love it—this perfect, frightening, uncontrollable feeling. I think I’ve spent my entire life trying to find it.

  “Just fine,” I reply.

  He grabs my wrists and brings them over my head. He holds them together with one hand. He runs his free hand over my pants before unbuttoning them, exposing my stomach.

  His mouth is right by my ear. The fabric of his mask is hot. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Wha—” My chest is rising and falling so fast that I can’t even form words. I’m hot everywhere. A blissful feeling wells between my legs. I try to bring them together, tightening my muscles. It causes my cunt to brush against his thigh. I moan.

  “That’s more like it.” It sounds like he’s smiling—like he’s drinking me in.

  I moan again and he slips a hand beneath my pants and touches the top of my slit with his finger pad.

  I push my hips up and pull my legs further apart, cringing.

  His hand is in my hair, sliding down my face. I realize he’s let go of my hands, but I still can’t move them from their place above my head. I feel so good I can barely move. I curl my hands into fists, gripping at the air, at nothing, grasping for anything and finding nothing.

  He pulls his hand from out from under my pants. I cry—yes, actually cry—until he pushes his finger over my chin.

  I lower my head so those fingers brush my lips.

  “I wish I could taste you.” His voice is raspy and desperate, and the words themselves shock me. I’ve never heard anyone talk like that to me before. I find myself growing wetter, enjoying how graphic his words are, how filthy. Filthy words or my own rise in my mind, unbidden: I want you to taste me. I want to see the look in your eyes when you do. I want to disintegrate on your tongue.

  I flick my tongue over his palm. Its rough. He’s used to using his hands. There are small scars on his skin, too.

  He groans as I massage his palm with my tongue, pressing down so hard that I’m sure my teeth will leave indents. With his free hand, he jerks down my pants.

  He’s not soft anymore. He’s as rough as I feared he’d be—as rough as I want him to be. My knees are bent at such a weird angle he can’t get them all the way off. He growls, then flips me around.

  My elbows clash on the floor too hard. He grips my hips.

  I’
m moaning again. It’s pathetic how I fall apart in front of him. Hair sticks to my cheeks and neck. I move my lips and it catches between them.

  His hand moves up my vertebrae. He stops when he reaches my neck, and he wraps his hand around it. I imagine what it my silky black hair would look like winding around his fingers as he squeezes gently, pulling me towards him. I arch my back and hit his elbow. My legs spread apart further as bliss wells between my thighs.

  Maybe it’s best that I don’t know who he is. I shut my eyes and lose myself completely; when I look into his dark face it’s like my eyes are still shut. At that moment I want to accept anything he’ll give me. It probably scare me if it wasn’t so dark that I could barely even see myself.

  My jeans are down by my knees. He inches closer. He lets go of my neck to push my panties to the side. Again, it strikes me how rough his hands are. I shiver. I want to feel that roughness everywhere—over my neck, breasts, and cunt.

  He complies, slowly, moving his hands over either side of my body.

  The floor is hard on my palms and knees. As hard as him. I’m panting on all fours, my mouth hanging open, dragging in air and the scent of my arousal and his.

  He leans over me, his chest over my shoulder blades, his mask on my neck. He whispers something in his native tongue. For a moment, I feel like I can decipher it. Some words seem the same in any language.

  I moan, and it sounds like those words, almost. I tilt my head to the side, hit his shoulder, feel his muscles flexing as he positions himself over me.

  His fingers slip down my mine forearms before he pushes his hands over mine and squeezes.

  I should be afraid. I should be something. My rational mind gives one last weak protest before it’s silenced. I can’t do anything but feel and need and want. I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. I don’t care what it means for the future. All that exists is him, right now, moving over me.

  The backs of my thighs conform to the front of his. I curl my feet around his calves. The head of his cock slides over my slit. I shudder. I wasn’t expecting it to be so hot.

  “Laura.” He sounds heady. Sick. It spills over me like a drug, and for a moment I’m angry that he’s stalling. I push myself back as far as I will go, his cock slides over my slit.

  He groans, then pauses as if it’s hard for him to think of the words he wants to say. “Are you—”

  “I’m going to die if you don’t start fucking me.”

  His breath catches. I feel it on my skin. For a second I’m afraid he’s going to walk away. I was too crass, maybe. He can see how filthy I am; how wanton. And then I realize that such fears are foolish. He’d already said he wanted to taste me. He already knew he could have me.

  He pushes himself in slowly, agonizingly slowly, so I can feel each hard, thick inch of him. I can’t take it. My hands flex under his grip. He begins to pull up and my hips follow him, my body already addicted to the feeling of being stretched, not wanting to lose even one of those devastatingly thick, long inches.

  He pulls back quickly. This time I can’t follow, but I wait for him, legs spread, ankles cocked.

  “Are you alright?”

  It takes a moment for his words to register. “What?”

  “Is it too much?”

  No. Never. I want to say something cutting to get back at him for asking something so intimate, but I can’t think of anything. My mind is too full of him to realize anything else, so I moan and arch back, grinding against his hard body.

  I feel his teeth through his mask as he bites my shoulder, thrusting into me again. I moan.

  “You’re filthy,” he whispers.

  And I moan again, spread my legs further, and clench my cunt harder, becoming filthier.

  “And so beautiful,” he continues. “I never thought you’d let me touch you.”

  I don’t like the way he says beautiful, like I’m somehow above him—above this. I don’t want to be beautiful; I want to be filthy. He’s moving slowly, getting me used to his length. It drives me crazy.

  “Will you let me have you?” He whispers.

  “Yes,” I gasp. You already have me. Please, take me already. This is torture.

  It doesn’t seem possible, but he moves even slower. “Will you give yourself to me?”

  The red auditorium curtains sway in front of me. A janitor or adventurous student could creep in right now and I wouldn’t know. The audience could be filled with people I couldn’t see. I don’t care. The idea of us performing up here makes that delicious ache even stronger.

  Would I give myself to him?

  Yes. Oh God yes.

  “Laura?” He prompts.

  Stop talking. Just fuck me. “Please,” I beg for all those things, but mostly for an end to this sweet torment.

  He pushes into me. I pull my legs together. He’s so deep in me now that I feel his zipper on the edge of my clit. I move over it, enjoying the feeling of it digging into me, and of him, stretching me too far open, filling me completely.

  He removes one hand from my hip and gathers my hair. Then, he pulls back gently.

  I look at the ceiling, at the pure darkness in front of me.

  “Look at me,” he demands. “I want to watch you while I take you.”

  My eyes roll back.

  He’s such an imposing figure. Though he isn’t bulky, his strength is unmistakable. Lithe and fast, he holds me with the determination of a man who always gets what he wants. Even his fingers are strong as they dig into me. It’s the only warning I get before he slams into me.

  I thought I was ready for it. That it would be nothing more than the previous feeling of him filling me intensifying.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  I want to always be filled with him. I push back against him, making it hard for him to move. He groans and grabs my hips, keeping them in place as he thrusts. My eyes flutter shut and his hand grips my hair harder. I stare back into that face I cannot see.

  “Don’t stop looking at me.”

  I’m too afraid to look away. It’s ridiculous to be so afraid when I can’t see anything of him, but I can feel it, his intensity, moving through the mask, spilling over me. I should be self-conscious of how I’m frowning as I moan, of how far apart my lips are, of my crooked front teeth, but it feels so good I can’t bring myself to care. Even if I do care it doesn’t matter. The darkness is there, beckoning to me to dissolve into it until I almost feel like I no longer exist.

  He leans over. “It’s alright.” His voice is strained, a growl. “Cum for me, Solnyshko moyo.”

  Those words seem significant, though they could be anything, even another girl’s name. Still, I’d want to feel them on my skin, saturating my body along with the heat and scent of him. I am merely an instrument of passion. His.

  The world round me is breaking. I forget the discomfort in my legs, the pressure in my knees. I don’t mind his grip. Everything fades except the bliss building in my center. It’s almost painful it’s so perfect, and so perfect that it feels like it should be forbidden to experience it.

  I cry out. I don’t care if anyone is watching. If anyone hears me. All I want is to be with him completely, for him to hear this sound and know that he caused it.

  My legs buckle. I push them together tighter, squeezing his cock with my cunt and my thighs as he thrusts faster, faster, until I do as he asks.

  My orgasm is so intense that it hurts. My hands tense into fists and then go lax. He thrusts forward one last time, burying himself in me.

  Then we’re both quiet. His grip on my hips loosens, but he doesn’t move away. I’m sore between my legs, but for some reason I love the hardness of his body, the feeling of him behind me and on top of me—this man I still don’t know the name of.

  My elbows hit the floor and I rest my cheek on my knuckles. I begin to become aware of my own breath. The sweat cools on my skin. The place between my shoulder blades, where his head rests, feels hot. His cock is still hard inside me. He flexes it,
and my cunt instinctively tightens, trying to hold it still.

  He wraps an arm around my stomach and falls to the side, dragging me down with him. My limp arms are sprawled over the floor as he hugs me to his chest. I hear his heartbeat slow.

  Suddenly the reality of what just happened hits me.

  I just fucked a man I didn’t know.

  A man who’s been sending me anonymous letters for over a year.

  And he’s holding me like he intends to never let go.

  Chapter 7

  “What’s wrong?” His voice is husky, dazed. I shiver. “Nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t lie.” His grip on my body tightens momentarily. “Do you not want to be close to me?”

  I don’t know what I want.

  I can’t bring myself to say it, so I try to breathe evenly.

  “Do you want me to let go of you?”

  Yes. Maybe. “I don’t know.”

  He rolls me onto my back and plants one arm over my shoulder while the other keeps my body still. His face is about five inches from mine, but I can’t see anything beneath that mask.

  I could have just fucked anybody.

  The idea that had gotten me so wet just a few moments before starts to freak me out.

  His hands brush aside the strands of hair that are stuck to my cheeks. “What’s wrong?” he asks again.

  Heat flares across my face. Thank God he’s wearing a mask because there’s no way I could look someone in the eyes after, after, after… After whatever the hell just happened. I hadn’t even been capable of speech for the most of it. I remember him asking me questions, me crying out. Me demanding him to fuck me. Me using the word fuck like that, to a guy while his cock was right in front of me.

  I’m almost glad my grandma isn’t alive, with her lumpy hugs and lumpier cookies. I remember the concerned look in her eyes when she wagged her wooden spoon at me, warning me about holding hands with boys. Yes, holding hands. She was worried I’d hold hands with someone before I turned twenty-five. I’m only twenty-one and here I was…just ugh! She’d be so disgusted with my behavior.

  And then I remember that she’s in heaven, watching me, and I want to die on the spot.