Roommates

by Valerie Reyes

  But that night she had smiled. This night she did not.

  I wanted to reach out to her, and lift her chin with my hand, and look into her eyes. I wanted to see if there was a tear there, or if it was a trick of the light and my imagination.

  But I didn’t feel I had the right to touch her, and after a few seconds, she raised her head herself, and wiped the tear that must have been there away with her fingertips.

  The distance that had been strangely lacking a moment ago was there again. The years and all that had passed in them hung between us like a glass curtain. Smalltalk seemed impossible. Even if I could think of something polite and trivial to say, it would have seemed wrong to say it.

  “Do you regret it?” I asked her. I blurted it out, as though I hadn’t written it down in letter after letter that I lost the will to send as soon as I imagined her opening them and never answering.

  She didn’t answer me now either.

  “It’s was more complicated than all that you know,” was all she said.

  “That isn’t really an answer.”

  Her body was relaxing now, and I realized that mine was too. I’d been so afraid of this conversation for so long that the fear of it was worse than the words themselves. Now that it was finally happening, it felt like a relief.

  “There’s no easy answer for that question,” she said, and for the first time, I believed her.

  I reached out, and put my hand on her cheek, and the glass curtain between us was shattered.

  She was so warm! And her cheek was so soft. I could feel the weight of her head leaning into my hand. It was like an invitation for me to grow closer to her, and I did.

  Her body felt the same. The curve of it under her dress and the texture of her hair. I breathed in deeply. She smelled the same. She smelled like her. How strange it is, I thought, that the smell of a person you miss should be so hard to recall exactly, but that once you’ve got it back it calls back all the memories of her so completely.

  But then I felt her tense and saw her look around us. There was no one here, but that didn’t put her at ease. She took my hand and then pulled me into the shadows.

  “Why does it matter?” I asked her. I meant for my voice to sound annoyed, but that was hard to do. I was too overawed by the intoxicating feeling of being near her again, and besides that was trying to be as quiet as I could for her sake.

  She’d be wanting to protect her reputation. That made sense enough. She was a proper lady, and while I was still a titled man in theory, there was no doubt in my mind or hers what people would think of any lady they saw in my company.

  This began to lead my mind down a dangerous path. It was the path of wondering what this would mean if it went any further. If she didn’t want anyone to see us, what then? Wouldn’t that mean the same thing it had always meant? Wouldn’t it mean that we were never to be together? That she was ashamed of me? That she didn’t want me?

  I was looking out at the walk by the river, and not at her. But she was looking at me, apparently. She raised her fingertips – those same precious fingertips she’d used moments before to wipe away a tear and that I’d so desperately wished to touch – to my lips. She used to do this. It all came flooding back to me.

  “There’s something on your lips you won’t speak,” she’d say. “I’m trying to find it.”

  Her face now was a strange mix of emotions. Was it the dim light or was it only my fantasy that made her look now exactly like she looked all those years ago, as though no time had passed? Or was it simply that this was the expression she’d often had on her face back then: wondering and hoping? Lord, she looked young! And I felt young, too. I felt so much younger than I’d felt in a while.

  And I was still young, I knew. I’d been feeling older lately, as though nothing good could become of me. But it wasn’t really too late, after all, was it? These years misspent … they didn’t really amount to anything, did they?

  I kissed her fingertips, the way I used to, again and again. I reached up my hand to hold on to them, afraid that she would withdraw them. She couldn’t. I couldn’t be without them.

  But then she did, and used them to lead my mouth to hers.

  And then I couldn’t see anything, because my eyes were closed, and I couldn’t feel anything, because all the feeling in my hands, and my feet, and the rest of my body was irrelevant next to the sensation of her soft lips. We kissed gently, as we had the first time we’d kissed, when we’d neither of us ever kissed another or been kissed, and were so afraid that we would do it badly and wouldn’t get to kiss again.

  But with one kiss, with this kiss, I was not afraid anymore. And then the sensation began to restore itself to the rest of my body. And I was more and more aware of the entire front of her body pressed up so hard against the entire front of mine. It was as though she was trying to get to me, but the bulk of her dress was holding her back.

  I wound both of my arms entirely around her and helped her draw as close to me as our bodies would allow.

  Then she smiled. And I knew that smile. It was the smile she had had on her face after I told her the first time that I thought if we saw much more of one another, I may begin to fancy her. It was in an alley around the corner from the old dressmaker’s shop, where I’d followed her. And she had smiled this smile of cautiously optimistic triumph – she knew she had me, but was terrified she would ruin it by being too sure.

  But I could not be carried back into my memories this time. There was too much here, in front of me, to allow myself to spare a single thought for what might have been, a long time ago.

  My body wanted her. It wanted her with an intensity that hit me all at once. Back then I’d been so chaste in my thoughts, so far into my head, not imagining that I would actually be here, touching her. But the body I had longed for for so long, and had substituted other women for for so long, was here now. And she could be mine. She must me mine.

  I pulled one of my hands around from where it had been behind her back, and let just enough space between us to allow my fingers to touch the bodice of her dress. The corset was too rough! I couldn’t feel at all the soft skin beneath. But I brought my fingers up, inch by inch, until the feeling beneath them changed from stiff, stretched silk to the yielding, heaving flesh of her breast. I could hear her breathing rise in intensity, and she gasped as I reached my hand down between the stiff fabric of her corset and her breast. Her nipple was firm beneath it, and I felt her begin to lose her footing. There was no hint of hesitation. She was mine. I could do with her entirely as I wanted, I knew.

  But then she stiffened suddenly, pulling away. I did not hear what she had heard, but followed her gaze out toward the river where I saw what she had seen. Two women were there, innocently and loudly chatting their way down the path.

  As one, we slunk back further into the shadows of the trees and bushes. It seemed a lifetime before they finally passed, but when they did, I looked to Emma, afraid that the spell would be broken entirely.

  The look on her face assured me it was not. She was desperate. Her eyes slightly glazed from the intensity of her desire, and her cheeks flushed.

  “We are near your family home, are we not?” she asked me.

  Chapter 10

  Emma

  I could think of nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. Only his hand, grasping mine firmly and pulling me along, was real.

  For so long! For so many years! I had imagined what it would feel like. I had seen and heard of men and women doing foolish things, mad things, so that they could make love. And I had thought them absurd! But I was the one who was absurd! No one could have been so blind as I had been. His touch was all that mattered. His hands and where they would go … where would he put them?

  The walk wasn’t long, I knew, but it felt like miles and miles before we finally came to the gate. And from there he did not bring me in! I couldn’t figure out why we were not going up the front steps into the parlor. Instead he was leading me around back.

 
; In another mood, at another time, I might have protested. I might have stopped and demanded he tell me where we were going. But there was nowhere he could have taken me where I would not let him. There was nothing he could not do to me. My body was his, entirely, so long as he would touch my breast again as he had touched it. So long as he gave me that feeling, there was no border of propriety that I would not breach for him.

  He brought me into the little cottage before the house, meant for the groundskeepers, and I saw immediately that it was where he had been living. It was a mess, and my skirts overturned empty wine bottles as we went through the gate.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I never bring women here.”

  And I didn’t care! He looked so concerned, and I couldn’t have cared any less! I laughed at him, and he was taken aback, hurt. He didn’t understand that I was laughing from the absurdity that he could imagine my attention drawn to anything but his hands, and his mouth and his body.

  I had to make him see! So I drew close to him, and kissed him, hard and deep on his mouth. And he kissed me back, leaning me over until I was hanging from his arms. My hair had fallen mostly out of its clasp and nearly swept the floor.

  Then he forced me away from him for a moment – cruelty! – before regarding my breasts again. I was breathing too hard, and the neckline on this dress was too low and too tight. If I were not careful I would burst out of it.

  I brought my hands up to the back of my dress, fumbling with the buttons to undo them, but then I felt his open mouth on my neck and became too distracted to continue. He had never kissed my neck before. No one ever had. I felt a pulsing deep in me, between my legs. My heart was pounding, but it seemed to be from there. I was dimly aware that he was undoing the buttons of my dress. But it was too slow! One by one by –

  He’d ripped the rest of them, and his lips were again on mine, his tongue in my mouth. I could feel nothing but his mouth and the pulsing desire in me, but after a moment I felt my corset begin to loosen, and then I was stepping out of all of it, all of that hateful cloth, standing next to him in only my thin cotton undergown.

  Then I felt his hand on my legs, lifting up the skirt of my undergown. It touched my skin only fleetingly – only barely. It felt almost accidental but he must know it was driving me mad! I could not stand it. I wanted his hand to touch there, where I was soft, and wet, and had been saved only for him.

  But his hand glanced right over it, and touched only my stomach, tracing a line up to my full, round breasts. This way felt much more natural than when he had touched me by the river. His hand cupped one, teasing my nipple with his thumb.

  Oh, how did he know? The gentlest touch there made me almost fall. It was like he was controlling me as a puppet.

  Then I felt my arms move. My light undergown had come up over my head, and I was standing before him, completely naked. And his mouth … his mouth was on my neck, kissing me there again. And then his lips were gingerly touching my collarbone. And then just at the very top of where my breast began to bulge out and then …

  I felt a moan begin, deep in my body. His mouth was on my nipple and my knees were weak. I was falling! But he caught me, and lifted me, and carried me to the bed where he draped me over it like an empty dress. And there he began where he had left of, with his mouth on my nipple.

  The feeling was so strong! So much stronger than I’d ever imagined it could be. I needed him to touch me lower. I could not wait. And if he would not then I would need to. My hand, lying by my side, began to creep towards myself. I had to be touched there, I had to feel it.

  Suddenly, his hand was on my wrist, pinning it to the bed. He would not let me! I let out an involuntary cry into the stifling, hot air of the room, warmed by our bodies.

  And then I felt his lips on the skin just below the curve of my chest. He was moving down, down, further … he kissed my bellybutton and kept going. It was a mystery to me what he could be doing. No one had ever told me, no one had ever taught me how this was going to be, or how desperately I would want it.

  And then I felt it – his mouth where I had longed for his fingers to go. The warm soft tongue that had just minutes ago been in my mouth now gently caressing my other lips.

  That was when I began to feel it: the pleasure was building on itself. Something was growing inside me. The pleasure was becoming more and more intense.

  I thought I couldn’t stand it before, but now I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was making noises: first more moans as I had made before but then building to half-animal cries. I was losing myself. Soon I wouldn’t be anyone. I wouldn’t be anywhere. I wouldn’t be anything. The pleasure was all there was.

  It felt like waking up after a long, restful sleep, though I knew from where he was that it had only been a moment. Where I had been so excited and exhilarated before, now I felt only peace and a sudden, intense, deep affection for the man in front of me. I would do anything for him. I would go anywhere he wanted me to go. I put my hands on the sides of his head to urge him up, closer to my face, where he kissed each of my breasts. I stopped to look at him.

  I traced his face with my fingers. His eyes. His bushy, unkempt eyebrows. I looked at every inch of his face in the soft moonlight from the window. He was beautiful. He was a beautiful man. I saw what my time away had done to him, written here on his face, and I felt sorry. This was more than the guilt I’d felt. It was different. Instead of just feeling bad I wanted to make it up to him. I would do whatever it took to erase what I’d done to him, and dedicate everything in me to give him just a small piece of the joy and the pleasure he’d given me.

  I laughed, and this time he understood why I was laughing. It was laughter of pure, concentrated joy. And he kissed me for it, and our bodies intertwined.

  We lay like that for a while. I could feel him, beneath his trousers, stiff and huge with desire, but he took his time, and let me undress him, button by button. His skin was a new world to me, hidden as it had always been under clothes. I couldn’t keep my hands off of him. I ran my hand from his neck all the way down to his trousers, and let my hand linger. I could feel the excitement that he’d exhausted in me earlier building up again. He was smiling, seeing my eagerness. I must have seemed so inexperienced to him, but he was only loving and guiding. He undid the buttons on his trousers and guided my hand inside.

  His manhood was so smooth, and so very, very hard. It was like a rock covered in silk that he had hidden away. My pulse was rising, and I found I didn’t know what to do. I wanted it. I wanted him inside me. My mind began to grow fuzzy again. The clarity I had gained when he had done whatever magic it was he had done to me before was quickly disappearing. And so he took over, and laid me down flat again on the bed.

  He took my hands from where they were near his waist and pinned them above my head. Then he kissed me, softly, deeply, for a long time, and I didn’t even notice that he’d opened my legs with his knees.

  He drew back, just for a moment, but my lips missed his and I lifted my head towards him until I felt him enter me, and I fell back on the bed, in awe. It was beginning to rise in me again, the wild desire and pleasure that I had felt earlier. But this time it was even greater as I saw the same pleasure rising in him. My hips began to move with him, feeling him farther and farther in me. We moved faster and faster until I was on the edge of what I had felt before.

  But he didn’t stop, he just held me there, on the edge, feeling that rush, that absence of mind, for what felt like hours. I couldn’t take it. My body couldn’t last any longer.

  Finally, when he was ready, he pushed me over the edge and I felt the absence, and the sudden clarity, and when I came back to myself I was wrapped in him. His skin on my skin, and our arms and legs again intertwined.

  We lay like that for some time before either of us spoke. I only listened to his breathing and watched his chest rise and fall. Then we readjusted, and he lay on his back with my head on his chest, his fingers lightly stroking my arm. From here I could see his ro
om entirely. I’d barely seen it when we came stumbling in, but now I had the chance to observe it more closely.

  It looked like him. In a very real way I could see him living here. The chairs were the sort of chairs he would like. The walls were decorated with some old paintings I’d known his family to have for years. It was just like him, I thought, to have saved these paintings even when the entire little cottage showed sure signs of being in money trouble. There were newspapers strewn about, which I figured he probably stole from the club. Certainly he’d still go there. And there were scribblings on papers that made me smile. It was a thing he would always do, to write down a thought he had of something he needed to do and wanted to remind himself not to forget, or an idea he had in the middle of the night. When we’d been together before I would always find these, and gather them up. But here, with no one else to see them, they just accumulated.

  I wanted to get up and run around picking them up and reading them, smoothing out the crinkled ones and ordering them. It felt like some of the years of his life that I’d missed could be found in these little papers.

  But nothing in the world, not even that, could have pried me from the tight, warm embrace of his arms.

  After a long time, he spoke.

  “You can’t imagine how I’ve longed for this.”

  I turned my head so that I could see him, and then couldn’t stop myself from kissing his lips.

  “I didn’t even know it would be like this. I didn’t know this was even something to long for. I thought it was only a thing that men wanted.”

  With a smirk on his face, he adjusted us so that he was on top of me, looking down on me with my hair splayed all out across the pillow.