by Daryl Banner
Suddenly, our legs entwine and I find myself humping one of his. Dmitri’s mind must be in the same place because he’s thrusting his hardened cock against me, humping and humping like he’s exploring some imaginary hole he found there.
The passion he ignites in me is so intense, I want to cry.
Sadness. That’s what strikes me when I start to feel happy. Fear, too. Fear that he’ll leave me when this is over. Fear that I’ll never feel this way ever again.
And suddenly I’m more desperate. Suddenly I’m devouring him like this is the first and last time we’ll ever know each other.
With my hands on his back, I feel every muscle as he flexes and squirms and thrusts. I slide a hand down to cup his ass, almost startled by the discovery of it. Yes, he’s got a great one, and despite it being somewhat of a stretch to grab hold of, I want to spank him over and over until he’s moaning against my face.
Who am I and what the hell have I done to Samantha?
I can’t get enough of him. The tighter I cling to him, the less likely he’ll realize who he’s making out with and run away.
Tighter, Sam, I coach myself, desperate and terrified. Cling tighter.
I grip him and pull so hard against his body that we roll off the bed. He slams on his back against the floor with a grunt. I’m on top of him now, working his face and humping his leg uncontrollably.
Like, really. We’re a pair of dogs.
We are completely out of control.
Unable to bear another second of making out before I pass out from lack of oxygen, I finally manage to pull away from his face. I stare down at him, inhaling and exhaling deeply.
He stares up at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed as he does the same, catching his breath. His face is so adorably flushed, it looks like he just walked through a snowstorm. His glasses are crooked. I hope I didn’t break them.
Listen to me. “I hope I didn’t break them.” I’m such an animal.
After a moment of breathing and staring at one another, I lick my lips, tasting him on them, and then I say, “We really should stop.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding hastily.
“I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. It’s natural. Let’s just … forget this happened.”
“Good idea.”
Then I assault his face again, and he clutches me like a ragdoll and moans into my mouth. We roll over again, knocking into the legs of the desk and causing its contents to rattle in protest.
Now our hands are exploring one another, and neither of us show a speck of shame. I reach down to cup his ass some more, then slide my mischievous fingers around his hip and toward the bulge in his crotch. When I grab a handful of him, he moans into my mouth again, his slippery tongue wrestling with mine.
He’s big.
Dmitri Katz is very big.
Yes, maybe I don’t exactly have an enormously impressive repertoire of cock-playing experiences to compare this to. Yes, maybe my history with male genitalia is embarrassingly brief and limited to just my imagination and Google, but Dmitri more than fills my hand—even through his jeans.
And when I grab him, he flexes in response. I squeeze. He flexes again, moaning and squirming against me. Oh, the power I have …
Then, his hand slides down my body and rushes over my thighs. With just one hand, he somehow manages to unbutton my pants. That same playful hand expertly slips inside them—and inside my panties—greedy and fumbling and desperate to find its destination.
It almost tickles until his fingers arrive right at my pussy.
I gasp, my mouth opening onto his face, my breath everywhere.
His fingers play along the lips teasingly, running up and down my entrance. My heart is thrashing so hard, I feel my chest connecting with his and fighting the rhythm of his own racing pulse.
His fingers flinch and move and explore.
It’s too much. It’s too fucking much.
My thighs clench together at once, trapping his hand and ceasing all movement. “Wait, wait, wait,” I breathe.
He pulls his head away slightly, studying my face. “Did it hurt? Did I hurt you?”
“N-No.” I’m breathing so hard, I can barely speak. “It’s just—”
“Too fast?”
He just spared me having to admit that I’m a virgin. “Yes.”
“Agreed. Yeah … uh, too fast.”
Dmitri pulls his hand out of my pants and sits up. The absence of his body and his heat on me is mourned at once, but I ignore it and sit up myself, leaning my back awkwardly against the side of the desk as he props himself against the foot of my roommate’s bed.
We sit like that for an eternity, staring at each other and breathing, breathing, breathing. Our hands lie slack at our sides, as if they, too, are worn out from so much bodily exploration and naughtiness.
I’ve never touched a boy that way. I’ve never felt one up so freely, so unapologetically. I’ve never felt so exposed to someone, and we didn’t take off any of our clothes. How is that possible, to feel so intimate and close to someone without having sex?
And what would sex be like? I’m almost terrified at the prospect.
He twists around suddenly and swipes the poem off of the bed behind him, then brings it to his face, reading it over again. I watch him, studying the subtle blush in his cheeks, the way his fingers clutch the paper, the way his eyes move as he reads.
I wonder if I’ve lost him already. Was it a mistake to stop? Will he think I was just leading him on this whole time, only to deny him a bite of the very carrot I was dangling in front of his face?
With every breath I let in and push out, I feel the crackling, golden potential of what could have existed between us slip away like smoke through my still-trembling fingers. If I kissed him again and tried to reignite the fire that just burst between us, it wouldn’t be the same. I ended it. I snuffed it out and flipped on the brakes and told him it was too fast.
“Hmm,” he murmurs, looking over the poems.
I wonder if he’s reading it at all, or if there’s any thoughts tumbling through his head—thoughts like mine. Did all of that really happen? Or did I imagine it all? I feel so strangely out-of-body suddenly. I’m floating in the space between what is real and what is just … poetry.
“Yeah,” he goes on with a nod. “Our series will work. An attention-seeking … passion-seeking romantic who … greedily craves the world’s attention. He—or she—is just a person who’s had more than a taste of fame, more than a taste of glory … yet still—”
“Wants more,” I finish for him.
Dmitri meets my eyes with his deep, intense ones, then gives me a hungry, knowing look. “Wants more.”
Chapter 5
Sam
On Wednesday, the day Dmitri and I are scheduled to present our series in front of the whole Poetry class, Amy is having some meltdown about her family and how her future step-monster (better known as her father’s girlfriend Beebee) is going to be coming to Thanksgiving dinner when Amy expressly threatened that she would refuse to come home if Beebee was going to be there. Now she thinks her family hates her and she’s going to have to spend her break eating cafeteria turkey here on campus. She cried even harder when she realized that the cafeteria—or anything on campus, for that matter—wouldn’t be open during the break. “You could try the Chinese buffet on Abernathy,” I suggested. “The one by the studios …?” That didn’t help the matter. She wailed and wailed on the porch as I tried to comfort her one-handed, my other occupied with a cup of punch.
Really, Rho Kappa Lambda has the best punch ever.
Dmitri is looking particularly confident today. His hair seems a bit cleaned up, parted slightly and styled with some kind of product that makes his black hair even blacker somehow. Five pairs presented on Monday, five present today (including us), leaving five pairs to present on Friday, which is the final class before Thanksgiving break.
I’m so ready. If, by “ready�
�, I mean: about to throw up the breakfast I didn’t have.
The whole time I stare at Dmitri’s back, I think about that night in my dorm room. I still can’t believe it happened. Since then, my heart has caught fire several times dreaming of our next bold moment. Will it be a stolen minute or two after class? Will it be in my dorm again? Will it be between laundry loads in the skeezy basement of West Hall? I have to clench my thighs together several times to suppress the warmth that explodes down there.
It’s going to happen again. Our story has just begun. It’s not over; far from. And the next time Dmitri and I are in a room alone together, we will put words between our kisses, and he’ll tell me how he truly feels. He’ll confess that all this semester, he’s been driven as crazy as I have. We were meant to meet in this class. I was meant to scratch my name on that seating chart that first day.
I close my eyes and hug myself, dreaming of Dmitri, even with him sitting right in front of me. I’m utterly unable to hear the poetry of my classmates; I’m filled with enough of my own.
“Dmitri Katz and Samantha Hart,” the professor calls out.
My eyes flip open. Already?
Dmitri twists in his seat to give me a quick, encouraging lift of an eyebrow and a smirk before clutching his folder of work and hopping up to the front of the classroom. I walk behind him with my own and position myself at his side, then pick a spot at the back of the room over everyone’s heads and stare at it while he begins to speak. My hands clasp my folder tightly and I’m sweating so much under my arms, I’m pretty sure the entire class can see.
Just when I think I can’t stand the nerves for a second longer, I turn and look at Dmitri’s face as he confidently introduces us and then reads “To Fuck” to the class.
At once, I feel a calmness rush through me. The way he talks, his words, the movement of his sexy lips … it comforts me at once. I draw on him for strength, reassured that our work is not something the class will mock. I deserve to be up here. I may even earn a few points of respect from my peers, who have likely never bothered to turn an eye in my direction until today.
Then, almost too soon, it’s my turn to make noises come out of my mouth. I lift my folder and start to read our analysis of the poem we received. We had decided ahead of time that Dmitri, having the better reading voice, would present all of the poems we wrote. But because both of us are required to speak, I would read the opening and closing statements—namely, an analysis of the poem we got and a post-reading statement that summarizes our work.
After my quivery voice finishes, I step back, allowing Dmitri to step to the front again and start reading our poems, one by one.
I watch the side of his face, listening. It’s like I’m hearing our poetry for the first time. The words are like music to my ears. Perhaps I even mean that literally. He has such a pleasing tone to his voice, I honestly believe he’d make a great singer, assuming he can hold a pitch. I’m no singer by any means, but I know a good voice when I hear it.
Then, Dmitri picks up the final poem—the one that’s totally about me—and he reads the words of “A Million”.
I bite my lip, unable to help myself. Maybe after our work together is done, he can finally admit the truth about that poem and maybe we could actually try something between us. I don’t know what it’d be. Maybe it’d start out as a friendship with benefits. Maybe we’ll just jump fully in and call ourselves boyfriend-and-girlfriend. I’m tickled everywhere at the thought of it, quivering with excitement as he reads the words that touched me so deeply just a week or two ago when I first put eyes on them.
Dmitri has a way with words. That much I’ve always known.
When I look out at the classroom full of students, feeling more comfortable the longer I stand here, I experience an unexpected stab of possessiveness. It’s as if I don’t want them to hear these beautiful words, as if his poetry belongs only to me. Those words are mine.
Oh my God, what’s happening to you, Sam? Shut up. It’s just poetry.
It’s so much more than “just poetry” and I know it.
And the class knows it. I feel my face turning red.
Dmitri finishes the poem and lifts a sullen face to the class. “I hope you enjoyed that last one. It’s particularly personal to me.”
My head snaps to him at once, wide-eyed. My glasses even make a little rattling sound with as quickly as I turn my face.
Is he about to confess his feelings for me to the whole class?
Then Dmitri goes on. “I think we all have that special someone we have known at some point in our lives. It’s someone who turns your world upside-down. Someone who you … didn’t expect to feel strong emotions for. Maybe even someone you just met …”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
“And someday, I’m sure I’ll meet that someone,” he says. “It hasn’t happened yet, of course. But … this poem is like a promise, a dream, a fantasy that someday I will meet that special someone who ignites my heart. My one-in-a-million.”
I stare at him. I stare through him.
My heart sinks through the floor.
“Thank you for your time. Now my partner Sam will give the closing statement,” he finishes, then takes a step back and turns his gaze on me expectantly.
And I’m still staring at him, dazed, head spinning.
I turn my face to the folder in my hand, the closing statement. I feel my knees trying to give away beneath me. It literally feels like he just took the world’s biggest spoon and scooped a big helping of me right out of my stomach.
And then he flung that helping right out the window.
Because he doesn’t want it. Because it isn’t the flavor he craves.
Because he doesn’t want me.
“O-Our series …” I start to read, clinging to the folder so tightly that it crinkles. I’m so stupid. I’m so, so stupid. How could I have possibly thought he was into me? He’s just a boy. You got him all worked up in your dorm that day, but anyone would have done just as well. It was just hormones—nothing real.
I clench my eyes shut, then open them again.
“Our series …” I try again. The words are beginning to blur. Oh my God, please tell me you’re not crying. You wouldn’t deign to cry in front of the classroom over a boy. Don’t you dare, Samantha Hart. I’ll never forgive you. “Our … s-s-series … is about the innate craving within all of us for … for attention.”
I pull off my glasses, give my eyes a rubbing, and then replace them on my nose. My breath has become annoyingly jagged and uneven. The room is circling around me like a gang of schoolyard bullies, taunting me, laughing at me, poking me with invisible sticks.
I’m so stupid.
“And it’s …” My face tightens up, determined to show nothing at all. What that does instead, however, is bring forth an unexpected, boiling-point anger. “And it’s about the assholes who only want the attention, but not the responsibility that comes with it. They just want to be looked at. They d-don’t want to be … loved. They don’t have any room for love, not with all that self-serving egotism filling them up.”
The classroom is silent. No one even so much as shuffles a foot.
I don’t listen to any of it. I steamroll on.
“So maybe these attention-seekers just want to live the rest of their lives sucking on the meatless bones of their own narcissism. Maybe that’s enough for them. But it … it isn’t enough for me.”
Dmitri leans toward me and breathes my name. “S-Sam?”
“A-And that’s the real tragedy of the attention-seeking asshole,” I finish, lifting my chin. “He ends up alone in the end. Alone, unloved, and … and his beautiful words, ignored.”
I clutch my folder to my chest, then march back to my seat. Only after a second of feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I realize I’m supposed to turn in the folder. Climbing back to my feet, I hand the folder to my wide-eyed and slightly concerned professor before then claiming my seat once more, folding my arms, and slouching until
I’m certain the world can’t see me at all.
But the eyes persist. Dmitri, after a moment of standing there in a total stupor, finally turns in his own folder and, with his face burning a furious red, sits in the desk in front of me and says not another word.
The next pair present, and I don’t hear a word of their poetry. All I hear is my heartbeat raging in my ears. I’m staring at my desk and trying not to cry.
I’ve never had these feelings before. I’ve felt so many intense, unique emotions over the course of this semester that I am entirely stretched out in my emotional capacity. I’ve been tested every day, and today is the test that finally broke me. All I want to do is slump back to my dorm, ignore the remainder of my classes, and cuddle my pillow until the world makes sense again.
Except I might be short the weight of a once-swollen heart.
The moment class is dismissed, Dmitri turns to face me. “Sam? Are you alright?”
I can’t even look at him right now. I can’t risk gazing into his deep, beautiful eyes and getting all stupid. The thought of peering into them makes me so angry, especially knowing that I’ll cave right away and apologize to him for spitting acid. Then I’ll beg his forgiveness and probably leap right into his lap again and suck off his face. Me, the girl who doesn’t do it for him. Me, the one who fades into the million.
I feel so weak right now. No self-respecting woman would put herself through any more of this torture. I should go, and I should go now. A second longer in this classroom with Dmitri and I’ll melt into a puddle of regret.
“Sam? Talk to me. What’s going on?”
I rise out of my chair, grab my backpack, and head for the door. Don’t look back. Don’t regret what you’re doing. It’s the right thing. Just go.
Halfway out of the building, he catches up to me. “Sam.”
I move as fast as I can without running. I pretend like he’s a shadow of a tree I’m passing by, even though this particular tree is following me somehow and saying my name every couple of seconds. Trees can do that, right?
It’s by the large fountain in the courtyard between four main buildings that I finally stop. The music of rushing water fills my ears when I turn to face Dmitri, but I keep my gaze glued to his chest because I refuse to be seduced by his eyes.
