The One In My Heart

He pulled the sweater over my head and did the same for the camisole I wore underneath, exposing my bra. And then he pushed down my skirt and tights to reveal a pair of matching underpants. They were both basic black—I hadn’t wanted to look as if I’d planned to be disrobed.

“Praise the Lord,” he murmured, slipping off my undies, “for a woman who can bring me to my knees.”

My heart thumped. “What use do I have for a man on his knees?”

He eased me down on a long sofa. “Begging for a demonstration, aren’t you? Open your legs for me.”

My hand gripped the back of the sofa. I might have trembled slightly. “What if I don’t?”

He already destabilized me so; I was afraid to grant him any more access.

He traced a hand up my tightly clamped thighs. “Do you know you have the perfect face for a nun—as if you have only prayers on your mind? And then there are those times when it all changes, and you look pornographically turned on.”

He pried open my legs and caressed the places I’d tried to conceal from him. Pleasure flooded me.

“Do I look like that now?” I heard myself ask, my voice raspy.

It was his turn to sound unsteady. “Yes.”

He went down on me. And it felt so good, I had to bite down on my lower lip to not sound as aroused as I felt. But by the time he brought me to my third orgasm, I had given up any and all attempt to be quiet and contained.

Then he was inside me, huge and hard. And just like that, I was again pornographically turned on.

He watched me, his eyes a dark, dark green. I couldn’t meet his gaze, so I wrapped my arms about him and buried my face in the crook of his shoulder, wanting only enough sensations to drown out any insidious feelings of need.

I was already high enough on the plateau that it wouldn’t take much for me to tighten again, climbing toward the next tipping point. But just as I neared that point of no return, he slowed.

I moaned in protest.

“You want to come?” he murmured.

“Of course I want to come.”

“Then tell me what you masturbate to—I’ve told you all about me.”

How could I? Ever since last summer, every time I’d touched myself it had been to memories and fantasies of him. “Just fuck me. I don’t want to talk.”

He licked my nipple. “Answer or you won’t get any more.”

I was desperate to resume that upward spiral toward my next orgasm, desperate for one more pure, thoughtless release, a minute of blankness when I was wrapped warmly in his embrace and didn’t have to remember why.

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if by doing so I would be speaking into a vacuum. “You. I masturbate to you.”

At this he resumed that wonderful cadence that gave me so much pleasure. “Keep talking.”

“I imagine…” I panted. “I imagine running into you unexpectedly, somewhere out of town.”

“Somewhere like Munich?”

I quaked inside. “Maybe.”

“And then?”

“And then you pull me into your hotel room, lock the door, and fuck me.”

I was almost mindless from pleasure, but still I couldn’t bring myself to admit the rest of it—the two of us lingering over dinner, then over drinks until we were the last ones left in the hotel’s lounge, and then standing on the observation deck together, watching snowflakes big as feathers drift down from the dark sky above.

“Do I fuck you all night?” His voice was rough, demanding.

I closed my eyes even tighter. “Yes.”

He rammed into me. “But you never called. And you never texted.”

And I came like an asteroid striking ground.


THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT HUGE, terrifyingly powerful orgasms was that one could pretend that they were memory bombs, wiping out everything leading up to them. I certainly did, floating in an erotic fog afterward. We lay intertwined on the couch, almost asleep but not quite.

Eventually he got up and draped his coat over me. There came the sound of water running. I was just about to make myself move when he came back, clad in one of the hotel’s bathrobes, scooped me up in his arms, and carried me to the tub in my bathroom, which was already covered in a thick, inviting foam.

“Do you mind if I dump you here?” he asked playfully.

“Dump away.” I loved baths, but rarely made time for them.

The water, when he lowered me inside, was the perfect temperature. But he didn’t join me. “Dinner’s in an hour.”

The steam from the bath carried faint notes of basil and mountain thyme—the Mediterranean of late summer. Had we made the trip six months later, I would be sitting in this tub with my window open, breathing in the scent of orange trees. But now the window was closed, the fog wafting visibly outside.

My heart too felt…overcast. Bennett was certain to be attentive this evening, as we played the pair of lovers completely absorbed in each other. And the thought of it was oppressive. Painful.

When I came out of my room, in a long-sleeved, season-appropriate version of the little black dress, he was waiting for me. He had changed into a three-piece suit in grey with subtle windowpane patterns, the jacket slung over the back of the sofa.

He put away his phone and smiled at me. “I love punctuality in a woman.”