In the Wake of Wanting

by Lori L. Otto

  And I’m still inside her. Zaina never allowed that to happen. It feels so personal and intimate.

  I reposition my arms and her legs and lie on top of her, our bodies sticking together with sweat. I kiss her sweetly, deeply, hoping that I convey to her my gratefulness and my unworthiness. Realizing my weight, I slowly roll over, feeling her absence around me immediately. She climbs on top of me, though, and continues to kiss me.

  “Wait,” I say, helping her off. She protests a bit. “Trust me.” I clear my throat, my voice scratchy. “The woman of my every waking daydream is astride me. I’m coming back to that.”

  In the bathroom, after cleaning up, I look at myself in the mirror. It’s as if all the other times with Zaina were practice rounds culminating up to this. This is what it should have been like. Our mediocre sex-life was never my failure. I was stupid for thinking it ever was. Her self-conscious and over-cautious boundaries kept us boxed in, limiting us as to what we could enjoy together. Yet another reason why things were never going to work out.

  I pull the door closed most of the way, wanting to leave a little illumination so I can see her better. When I get into bed, she returns to the exact place she was and leans over to press her mouth to my cheek. Her hair cascades around us, but I can still see light through her fine, golden tresses. My thumbs massage the small of her back gently as our lips are locked in deep, slow, passionate kisses. I should be spent. I should be exhausted. Instead, I’m alert to her every move and wide awake, wanting to watch her; wanting to see more of her.

  She sits up, flipping her hair back, and sighs, running her fingers across my chest.

  “Coley, you have changed my whole perception of things tonight; changed the full meaning of words with definitions I’d felt were simplistic and unchangeable. Words as simple as man and woman. Beauty and femininity. Sex and love. My entire reality has been modified; refined.”

  She runs her fingers through my hair. “You’re a poet in your own right, you know? No, you don’t know,” she quickly answers her own question. “I keep a notebook of things you say to me. So elegant. So sensitive. They make me ache–in a good way.” She puts her hand over her heart, drawing my attention back to her scar. I lightly remove her fingers from her chest, placing her hand in mine.

  “What happened there?” I ask, running my left thumb over the mark on her skin and hoping she’ll open up this time. She glances down at it, leaving her head bowed for longer than I’m comfortable. I feel her tears on my abdomen. “Coley, I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me. Here.” With her help, I move into a seated position where I can look directly into her disconsolate eyes and see more tears falling over her freckles. I kiss them away before they can fall. “I’m sorry.” We wrap our arms around one another, and she takes deep breaths to compose herself.

  “It was Nyall,” she says.

  I stop breathing.

  “It was the worst day of my life.”

  “Coley,” I whisper, my eyes tearing up now, too.

  “His third episode. We were all cooking dinner for Mom–me, Nyall and Joel. It was over the summer–that first summer after the incident at his school. Everything felt normal that day. Mom was doing yard work. Joel was handling the meat. I was preparing some instant potatoes from a box–Joel and I were arguing about it because he wanted fresh potatoes and I told him I didn’t want to go to all that trouble. Nyall was cutting vegetables for a salad.

  “All of a sudden, his arm was around my waist, my back was against his chest and the knife was against mine. ‘He said he doesn’t want them!’ he yelled in my ear. ‘He doesn’t want them!’ I felt the knife pierce my skin. It was a shallow cut.” She leans away so I can watch her continue her story. I caress her face and run my fingers through her hair, attempting to be as soothing as I possibly can. She alternates between looking behind me and looking at me as she goes on.

  “I had been there to see his second episode, but he was hurting himself. Punching through the wall in his room… not to damage it, but to make himself bleed. ‘Look at the blood. Make it stop,’ he kept chanting as he hit and hit and hit. It was in this monotonous tone, and his eyes were fixed and glazed over like he wasn’t even there.

  “The same thing happened on this day, in the kitchen. Joel tried to reason with him, but Nyall wasn’t listening. Joel finally told me he wasn’t focusing on him at all. He was chanting by then. ‘He said no. He said no. Look at the blood. He said no.’ I told him to go get Mom, and Joel broke down because he didn’t want to leave me like that. I yelled at him to run as the knife pushed in deeper. I’m not sure to this day if Nyall did it or if my movements caused it. I was crying hysterically at that point.

  “He pulled me into a seated position on the floor. One of his arms was around my neck, and the knife was still pointed at my chest. Mom stepped cautiously around the corner. Joel was sobbing behind her. She signed for him to go to his room, but he wouldn’t go. I kept my eyes on his as I felt blood run down the front of my body. I could tell it was getting worse by the look on his face.

  “Mom was calm when she spoke to Nyall. ‘That’s your sister, Nyall. That’s Coley. Your baby sister that you love dearly. She didn’t hurt you. She didn’t hurt Joel. Let her go, Nyall. Put the knife down and let her go.’

  “‘He said no!’ he yelled. It was so loud in my ear that I jerked away from him. There was this searing pain. I screamed in agony. Mom told me to stay still and then I saw her gun raise… and then I passed out.”

  Her face crumples in sadness and distress. “Oh, shit, Coley, I’m so sorry. Laureate, I am so, so, sorry.” I hold her as tightly as I can.

  “It was awful.”

  “I know. I’m sure it was.”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she says through her tears. “He didn’t mean to.”

  “Of course he didn’t, Coley.”

  “Mom would never hurt him. She loves him so much. It was so devastating to her. To all of us,” she cries. “But the knife had gone in pretty deep when I moved, and she needed to get me to a hospital. She was desperate and had to diffuse the situation.”

  “What did she do?”

  “It wasn’t even loaded. Joel said she walked right up to Nyall, pointing it at him, and it wasn’t until she was in his face that he snapped out of his daze and let me go. Then, he heard Joel shouting our address into the phone to 9-1-1, saw me lying in front of him in my blood-soaked shirt, and threw the knife across the room as he scooted to the other side of it. He had no idea what he’d been doing.”

  She shakes her head, moving back once again. “Dad picked him up… Nyall insisted on donating blood at the hospital because he heard I’d lost a lot. As soon as he was done, he asked to be taken to a mental hospital where we would all be safe from him. Dad made a few calls, got a recommendation, and that’s how Nyall ended up in Berryville.”

  I don’t have any words for this situation. I wish I did, but everything is insufficient for something this monumental.

  “It’s a hard thing to reconcile… that someone you love so much would try to… you know, kill you,” she says.

  “It wasn’t Nyall,” I say to her. “He wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “And that’s hard to understand, too,” she admits.

  I nod my head, once again pushing the mass of fine hair out of her face. We kiss softly.

  “It’s why I take pills. Antidepressants,” she tells me. “Without them, I’m overwhelmingly sad for him and for my family. In a way, I feel like I put him in there.”

  “You know who put him in there. You told me before. The man who molested him and the son of his who was old enough to know better–they drove him to the brink, laureate. You didn’t do this. You love him and he knows it. And he loves you. I could see that, whether you think he understands love or not.”

  She nods her head and provides a small, yet genuine, smile. Gazing into my eyes, she presses her lips to mine. “Speaking of love…”

  “Yes?” I ask, my heart racing, feeling ev
ery bit in love with her.

  “Weren’t you going to make love to me tonight?” She licks her lips.

  “But… that…” I point my thumb toward the headboard and cock my head.

  “No,” she says, squinting her eyes. “If that was your version of making love, I’m frightened of your definition of fucking.”

  I relax and grin at her challenge, then shake my head. “It was not. It was supposed to be that, but then you were introduced into the equation, and all hell broke loose.” Our lips meet again as I reach for another condom. “After this, you will understand making love with such clarity that you will be able to write ten separate and distinct volumes of poetry about it. So pay attention.”

  Holding her in my arms, I roll onto the other side of the bed, settling on top of her; inside of her.

  “Or don’t pay attention. Let’s get lost in this.”

  We close our eyes, kissing in rhythm with our bodies’ slow and deliberate movements. Her moans are long and drawn out; her hands glide up and down the length of my back. Her feet flex and her toes curl against my leg muscles.

  Sensing she’s easing into her climax, I roll over on my back and let her take control. She lies with her body flush against mine, but rocks against me, rolling her hips into mine deeper.

  Her breathing quickens, and she pushes her torso off the bed. I hold her hair away from her eyes, fascinated by the look of sheer ecstasy on her face. I knead her breast with my other hand, and she places her hand on top of mine, holding it there, pressing it into her. As her hips pick up speed, she moves her other hand to her left breast, touching herself.

  I let go of her and push against the bed, straining to kiss her. She meets me half way, which allows me to get her in a seated position in my lap.

  With my hands pulling down on her shoulders, I thrust deeper. She threads her hands into my hair, whispering a lingering “yessssss” into my ear. I slow things down a little, wanting to feel more, feel longer, and hoping she does, too.

  “Oh, yessss… like that, Trey. Ohhhh…” Her lips are hungry for mine now. The kisses are intense, mimicking our bodies’ motions once again in speed and depth. She gasps in my mouth, then sucks on my lip; then she does it again until the gasps become cries.

  “Coley, oh, God.” I drop my hands to her waist and hold her still as she tightens around me and carries us through orgasms together. When we’re both coming down, I lie back on the bed and bring her with me, settling her against the pillow.

  Again, being cautious, I clean up before returning to her. She puts one arm and leg across me and lays her head on my shoulder, leaving herself open to more kissing. I shift to angle myself a little better, because I’m pretty sure I could continue this all night. “I am forever indebted to you for this one night. I want you to know that,” I tell her. “I don’t want to speak ill of anyone, but I may as well have been a virgin coming into this. It’s nothing like sex has ever been for me before.”

  “Liar,” she accuses.

  “Am I blushing? Is my face turning red?”

  “You’ve been flushed all night,” she comments.

  “It’s not from lies.”

  “Well, you’re not inexperienced, by any means.”

  “Then consider me an ace pilot who’s spent thousands of hours in simulation and just experienced his first successful flight.”

  “Thousands of hours?”

  “I’m trying to relate it to that scenario. I’d rather not talk about my experience. I’m just trying to say that this all felt very different to anything I was accustomed to.”

  “It all felt much better than anything I’ve experienced,” she says. “I’ve never wanted to go for a second round…”

  I raise my brows. “Really?”

  “No. It’s more like ‘hurry and get the first round over with’ for me.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “I’ve been with douchebags, Trey.”

  “You’ve been with guys who’ve only fucked you.”

  She considers that statement. “You say that like it’s a negative. I love your always-skyward-facing moral compass, but I felt very close and connected to you when we were fucking tonight.”

  I close my eyes, still coming to terms with that. “I hate that the first time we were together, we fucked.”

  “I love that the first time we were together, we were so out-of-control in lust that we couldn’t wait to devour one another. Lust can be an expression of love, too, Trey. I’ve never felt like that for another person. I’ve never wanted anyone like I’ve wanted you.”

  “Well,” I admit, “that feeling is mutual.”

  “Love is more than what’s in here,” she says as she puts her hand over my heart. “It’s not cordoned off to one place. It’s what’s up here, too.” She pushes up off the bed and kisses my forehead, sweeping my hair back in the process.

  “Okay, yeah… I agree with that.”

  “Then…” she says as she slinks down the bed, “it’s what’s down here, too.” One of her hands cups my balls while the other traces down the center of my body. By the time she reaches my dick, it’s already showing its curiosity as to what she’s doing down there. She presses her lips just above my pubic bone. When she sits up, her fingers are wrapped around my erection.

  “Would you like me to suck your cock?”

  “Fuck, did you really just say that?!” I ask her, feeling my dick twitch in her hand. She giggles because she felt it, too. “Your tongue will be the death of me, laureate.”

  She scrapes it across her teeth and nods as she looks up at me through her lashes. “Maybe…” I don’t bother to tell her that no one has ever given me head before. I just stare at her in awe as her lips close around me.

  “Yeah, I just died,” I breathe as I grip the sheets beside me.

  chapter twenty

  Crawling back beneath the sheet, I drag my fingers across Coley’s ribcage as I lean over her and kiss her. I had gotten up early to work out at the gym on the second floor and shower, but I still had plenty of energy to spare that was begging for release. The way I was feeling was against the laws of physics and nature, I was certain. I shouldn’t be out of bed at all after the night we had, but I feel invigorated and excited, and I don’t want to waste a second of the time I have with her.

  I was going to see if she’d bathe with me, but once I got in the bathroom, I could tell she had already soaked in the tub while I was at the gym. The soft scent of roses permeates every patch of skin my lips caress; coconut wafts from her hair. Once my tongue discovers her hard nipple, it lingers, encircling it slowly, daring it to become even more pronounced. I smile when it does, feeling victorious, then move my mouth down her body, between her legs.

  Her fingernails scraping my scalp, I settle in to do some additional exploring to find out what makes her tick. What makes her come. I want to get it right every time we’re together.

  “Trey!” someone yells from outside my door, just before pounding ensues. Startled, I throw off the sheet, which Coley hurries to pull back over her after I get up.

  “Who’s that?” she asks, sitting up and frightened.

  “Stay here.” With a raging hard-on straining to free itself from my briefs, I go to the entryway, recognizing Jon and Matty’s voices before I answer. “What the hell?” I pull a pillow over my crotch before deactivating the alarm and cracking open the door. “What’s going on?”

  “You had a girl here last night?” my uncle asks, not even waiting for a response before they both burst into the apartment, bypassing me and walking straight through toward my balcony.

  “Why is that your business?” I call after them, but they’re both preoccupied with whatever brought them here so urgently. “Excuse me!” I yell to them both. Matty turns around and sees Coley wrapped tightly in the sheet. She looks terrified.

  “Sorry, miss,” my uncle says, looking away from her hurriedly. I eye him angrily as Jon tosses things around on my patio.

  “Coley, it’s okay.”
She meets me in the kitchen. “This is my uncle, Matty. You probably recognize my brother-in-law, Jon, although maybe not in this frenetic state. What the hell is going on, Matty?”

  He signals for me to come over to him toward the balcony, away from Coley, so I do. He holds up his phone and hits play on a video.

  It’s my living room.

  It’s me and Coley entering my living room.

  It’s me undressing Coley in my living room; her standing fully naked, me touching her body.

  Matty drags the slider forward so I can see that it’s me performing oral sex on Coley last night.

  “What the hell is that?!”

  “It’s online,” he says.

  “Where online?!”

  “Everywhere!”

  “How the fuck…” I look at Coley, feeling as if I might throw up. “Oh, my God.”

  “Who has access to your balcony, Trey?” Jon asks, barging back into the apartment. “Have you had people over?” He spots Coley in the kitchen and stills. “Whoa. That’s her, isn’t it?” he asks Matty, pointing rudely. “She’s here.” He looks at me, then looks back at Coley. “Hey,” he says to her as an afterthought.

  “Hi. I’m her… who exactly?”

  “Just my friends when I’m here,” I interrupt her to answer his question, “and Jenny and the maintenance staff.”

  “Could your neighbors gain access?” he asks me.

  “Not without risking their lives. The nearest one with a balcony is five stories below.”

  “Someone planted a camera out there, man.”

  “What?!” Coley asks. We all look at her. I cross the room and join her once again. “A camera? Where?”

  “It’s stuck on the railing with super glue or something,” Jon says. “I just moved your plant in front of it.” He points to the tall ficus tree.

  “Where was it pointing?” she asks.

  “Inside, into the living room,” I tell her softly.

  “When was it filming?”

  “Last night.”

  “When?”

  I nod my head.

  “Specifically when?” she asks, getting angry.