Preach to me Baby

by Hazel Parker

  Christ. I had to focus, I had to... or else it would only get much, much worse.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep, deep breath. I tried to clear my head for a moment, to wash out any imagery of the man in the living room from my brain. To wring it out to dry, cleanse it, and leave it back in the clean, innocent territory where it should properly be.

  But, of course, at this point there was only so much that could really be cleaned away from it, only so much that I could get it back on target, and with sad resignation, I opened my eyes again, knowing I was going to have to just grin and bear it until Daniel came home.

  I reached out a hand for the neck of the wine bottle and plunged the corkscrew into the lid, twisting it off, and gently tipping the bottle over into two, clean champagne glasses. My hands shook dangerously as the deep-red liquid sloshed into its respective containers, and I practically became drunk off of the stuff simply from coming into contact with it.

  Eventually, it became too much for me, and I cursed as I spilled a more than generous splash of the stuff across the kitchen counter, nearly knocking the filled glasses over as well, but hastily preventing myself from doing so at the last minute. It seemed like a tremendous, colossal deal for a moment, this spilling of our beverages, and I think I almost flew into a damn panic attack at the sight of the tart substance oozing across the kitchen counter.

  But then, I closed my eyes yet again, taking a deep, intense breath, and struggling once more to clear my head. This, in itself, was no big deal, and if I couldn't manage an incident as inconsequential as this, there was no way I was going to survive once I made my way back out there into the living room.

  I opened my eyes again, stilling my nerves for what felt like the hundredth time that evening, and went about carrying on my facade of self-composure to the extent it proved possible. I grabbed a kitchen towel and hastily sopped up the mess of the spilled wine, then cast the dirty rag aside and gripped the necks of the glasses so tightly I might have damn near popped them off, in order to avoid dropping them and the glass shattering all over the place.

  And now it was time. There was no avoiding it.

  I emerged, a ball of nerves, into the living room, the most artificial smile you might care to imagine peeled red and glossy across my made-up lips, and my demeanor so saccharine that I might have passed myself off as one of the damn Stepford Wives.

  He wasn't in his seat anymore, and this realization sent an instant spike of panic through my body. But then, I saw, he was just standing and looking at the wall of framed photos on the other side of the room; a cold shiver of relief made its way in the opposite direction.

  “Hey, um... I've got the wine. Sorry it took so long; I had a little bit of a spill in the kitchen.”

  He turned to me, and for the hundredth time that night, my heart nearly burst, skipping a beat, at the sight of his dark, handsome face.

  “Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,” he said in his most seductive of voices, the sound of it alone getting me embarrassingly wet with want, and my ability to resist him diminishing further and further by the minute. “Do you need help cleaning up or anything?” he offered.

  “Oh, no, no,” I said, shaking my head a little bit too insistently, I'm sure, and handing the glass of wine to him before I had the chance to spill it again. “No, I got it all cleaned up; it was just a small accident. Thank you, for offering, though.”

  “Of course,” he said lowly, smiling that dark, malevolent smile of his, and I tried, stupidly, to smile back. It felt like my lips weren't really working, to be honest, and I'm certain it came out more as a grimace than anything. God, I felt like an idiot. Convinced that I was almost surely creeping him out with my own discomfort, I tilted my head back and downed a generous amount of my wine, nearly draining the entire damn glass in one gulp.

  It was ridiculous, I knew, but if I was going to make it through this, I was going to need as much alcohol in my system as was humanly possible. As I drank, I glanced over at the grandfather clock on the opposite wall. It was almost 7:30. Damn it. Daniel should have been there at around 6:45, at the very, very latest. I was about to go flipping out of my mind.

  Then, suddenly, there was my guest's dark, ensnaring voice once again, and I nearly choked on my wine as I turned toward him, distracted as I'd been, and caught very suddenly off guard.

  “I was just looking at the photos you all have hanging up over here. Like this one, of your wedding day? You look astonishing in this.”

  “Oh, uh, thank you,” I said, my mind racing, and physical compliments not at all the sort of thing I needed to hear from the man right then if I had a hope in hell of resisting his many unspoken temptations. “Yeah, three years, now,” I stammered, extending a trembling finger encased in a gold wedding band his way.

  I needed to remind him that I was, in fact, a happily married woman, or at least that was the excuse I made for doing this; although in hindsight, I'm almost certain that it was more like I needed to convince myself to carry out this small, stupid gesture.

  It was a huge mistake, though, as I realized very suddenly, because now he was reaching over, taking my hand in his hand, pulling it close to himself as though to study the ring around my finger. A wave of shivers came pumping through my body, and my breasts began to beat wildly with anxiety, my head spinning, and my teeth sinking deep into my lower lip.

  “Wow, that's really beautiful,” he said, gazing at the damn thing with more intensity than I felt was necessary, his grip all the while driving me wild. His hand was large compared to mine, rough and strong and warm, causing my own palms to sweat with the passing of every second I remained captive to his grip. “You have very soft hands,” he ventured, smiling up at me in a way that seemed both to feign innocence and to acknowledge that he knew exactly what the hell it was he was doing.

  At last, he let go of me, and my fingers seemed to withdraw very slowly back into position, clenching into a tight fist at last at my side, as though to prevent without question any danger of such contact being repeated at any point in the future. I cleared my throat again, and tried to think of what I should say to this.

  “I, um... yes, I moisturize. Thank you.” I smiled feebly once again, unable to raise my eyes to meet his own this time around, and attempting to figure out where to steer the conversation. Instead, I tilted the wine glass one, final time to my lips, drinking away the last of my sweet, inebriating nectar, and my head spinning just a little bit as I struggled to see straight.

  “I'm sorry again about Daniel not being here yet,” I said finally, looking once more at the clock. “I thought, you know, since he was the one having a friend over for dinner, he might actually be here when he was supposed to be. But, I guess, joke's on me.”

  He smiled at this, looking over at me and studying me, and I had to avert my eyes once again. I tried to use the excuse of taking another sip of my wine, but by the time I'd raised it halfway up to my lips, I recalled that the glass was already empty, and I was forced to bring it back down, feeling largely like a complete ass at having done this.

  “Oh, that's all right. Daniel always was just a little bit that way... unpredictable. A real wild card, honestly. That's what I always loved about the bastard,” he grinned, and I grinned back at this. But then he added, “Plus, this way I get the privilege of meeting his pretty wife while he's gone.”

  This, as you might expect, stirred something in me, and I squirmed in my seat with discomfort.

  “So, um... Ryan... you two know one another from college?” I offered, changing the subject as promptly as I could possibly do, blushing, I could tell my cheeks were about as red as the wine still sloshing around in his glass.

  “Oh yes,” he said, peering into the surface of his drink reflectively, as though having become suddenly absorbed in nostalgia.

  “Yes, your husband and I were very close back in the day. He and I did just about everything together during that time. It's strange, really; beginning such a close friendship with someone at that
age... sometimes it really feels like the two of us have known one another since childhood, even if it's only really been just a few years.”

  I smiled at this, but tried to calculate a few things in my mind. It seemed, I don't know... peculiar to me that these two should be such close friends, given that the man sitting across from me hadn't shown up as a guest at our wedding, and if he'd been as close with my husband as he presently claimed, he should reasonably have been best man material, or at the very least an usher.

  I wondered, vaguely, if there was some degree of untruth to what he said, or whether, perhaps, there had been a falling out between the two of them at some point, that had, for the time, prevented his attendance at our special day.

  I put these sorts of thoughts aside for the time being, aware that they would do me no good at the present, and if anything, would only serve to aggravate an already tense situation even further.

  “What was he like?” I asked, suddenly, surprising even myself just the least bit at the sound of the words passing forth from my lips. “My husband, I mean, back when you knew him in college?”

  Ryan smiled. “Well, that's a hard question... I don't want to get him in trouble with his wife or anything,” he said, winking playfully at me, and even though I knew the joke was directed at Daniel, I couldn't manage to make the distinction between this and flirtation, and I found myself blushing yet again in spite of myself.

  “But, well,” he continued, staring into his wine glass reflectively, and considering his words. “I guess you could say he and I had a bit of a penchant for getting ourselves into trouble. And I mean, hell, nothing that serious or anything. I don't mean to make it sound more dramatic than it was or anything.

  “Not like we were arrested, or anything like that, although I guess there were probably occasions when we could have been.” He chuckled at this, although it didn't do much for me in terms of easing my nerves. “But, you know, just normal, college-kid stuff. Dumb things, really. We liked to keep our professors and the campus police on their toes.”

  I chuckled flakily, and asked, faintly curious, “Like what?”

  For the next several minutes, my guest went on to describe some of his and my husband's antics over the course of their college careers, although I have no idea what the hell any of the specifics were on anything. Something about pranks and drinking, that sort of thing, but the details were entirely lost on me as I gazed deep into the man speaking to me.

  On several levels, asking for this sort of insight into their past lives was probably a mistake on my part, because listening to him tell a story meant that I would be forced to just sit quietly and stare at him, taking it all in, and unable to tear myself away even if I wanted to. And this, I felt, would be the death of me over the course of this already intense situation.

  As his lips moved, distorting, melting, reshaping around the nonsensical words he spoke, I found my eyes dipping onto them, being sucked toward their gravity without a hope in hell of escaping. My stunned eyes bled over his body, moving over every, beautiful surface, taking in the whole of his astonishing reality as though he was the first man I'd ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on in my entire life.

  Christ, what the hell was I going to do? He was just so... so devastating, so perfect to behold, like a damn male supermodel, or some species that was just the least bit sexier than a human was capable of being. And the thing was, I couldn't even lay my finger on just what the hell the specifics were about him, what certain things about his presence turned me on.

  I ran into attractive men all the time, but as a rule, they didn't get me anywhere near as uncontrollably worked up as this sexy stud was. It was like, his entire being, everything about him, was sculpted, put together, in such a manner that it was calculated to be the most effectively crippling to my psyche, pulling me into him, and never letting me go.

  My nostrils flared, and my mind raced as I examined him all over, ripping his clothes off in my mind and savoring every pulsing, sweaty bit of the flesh underneath. His jet-black hair, his penetrating eyes, and his light, sexy stubble framed a face that verged on severe in its beauty.

  A perfect nose, an immaculately formed skull, the features all place in just the right spot, every angle, every flowing line enough to get swept up and lost in for eternity. His lips were of the sort that seemed made to be kissed, delicious and succulent, one could tell, from simply looking at them, and positively irresistible when you were forced to gaze across the room at them for as long as I had.

  He was well-dressed, in a manner that made fashion seem effortless, though my concern was genuinely with what lay underneath the fabric, the bulging fierceness struggling at every corner to push its way free and consume me. I could tell, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was one fit, well-toned man, his body a damn wonderland of muscle and strength and severity, the glory of his anatomy unmistakable beneath the frustrating confines of his clothes.

  His shoulders were beautifully broad, and his arms were thick, powerful as they shifted through the air with the telling of his story. His chest, meanwhile, was absolutely strapped, threatening to bust through his shirt anytime he strained too roughly in any direction, my eyes pinpointing onto the series of black buttons, willing them to come popping off and unveil the sweet, sexy treasure that lay underneath.

  And then there was his ass... oh God, what an ass. I'd peeked at it so many times this evening, anytime his back was turned and I had the opportunity to catch a glance of the thing without him noticing. I could imagine those glorious glutes as plain as day, sculpted, toned, succulent, juicy, everything a girl could possibly ever want. And finally, I couldn't help but see, his crotch bulge, the fabric of his pants struggling to contain the immensity of his cargo below the belt.

  The sheer splendor of the thing surely beyond what I could even begin to imagine. I wondered, vaguely, whether he was circumcised; my husband was, and though I'd heard mixed things about uncircumcised cocks depending on who you asked, I fantasized that his was just such a penis, with that extra bit of flesh going for it, able to please a woman in the most lurid, the most powerful of ways.

  And good God almighty... I gasped, suddenly, caught up in my own fantasy and startling suddenly back to life.

  “You all right?” my fantasy lover asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, yeah I'm... I'm fine,” I said, and he smiled.

  “So, anyway...” he said, and carried right on with his story.

  I sank back into my chair, feeling as though I might get stuck to the damn thing in my ridiculous perspiration, and my head throbbing with an immense come-down after that bout of fantasizing.

  What the hell was wrong with me? I was a married woman, for Christ's sake: a happily married woman, for that matter. It was ridiculous of me to be thinking sexual thoughts about any other man, and in particular my husband's best friend, when what the two of us shared was so strong, so vibrant, and so perfect.

  Prior to this unbearable stud waltzing into my life, I had never even had the desire to be with another man. Daniel and I were perfect for one another, and in fact, he had been like a godsend for my life.

  I'd been so miserable when the two of us had met, so committed to the idea that my life couldn't possibly get any better than the daily drudge that it had become at the time. I just felt so empty all the time, at my awful job and with my ridiculous student loan debt hanging above my head like a plague. Some days, I would just get home and feel like crying, and it had seemed as though finding anyone to share my life with was as vain and as impossible a task as anything else.

  It just didn't seem like the sorts of guys I'd wanted to meet were out there, or else they were already taken, and I was left with a bunch of immature boys, or with the sorts of mature men who were so dull and unsatisfying that they made me even more depressed.

  But then, when I'd met Daniel, sweet, wonderful Daniel, it had been like my entire life suddenly improved, and everything seemed like it was bearable again. It felt, for the f
irst time in forever, like I could be happy, and I was, and when the two of us got married, it had been like nothing else in the world could come anywhere even remotely close to matching what an amazing feeling it was.

  Three years. Three wonderful years together, like a lifetime with one another already, but our best days surely still ahead of the both of us. The spark had not died down in the least bit since the night of our honeymoon, and the two of us were in line with one another on so many levels that he somehow managed to meet my every need, even some needs that I didn't even realize were present.

  Just this morning, for instance, he'd surprised me with sex, sex that catered to my every need. I'd been dreaming lightly at the time, very lightly, and basking in the early morning light bleeding across my skin from the bedroom window.

  And then I'd felt him, knocking on my back door, if you will, the stiff, morning wood of his cock brushing playfully up against my backside through the fabric of my nightgown. It seemed like he always wanted me, and I always wanted him, and it seemed preposterous to imagine this ever being any other way.