“Touch me, Elian,” Margie whispered, her fingers eagerly stroking. My heart and mind were, as always, unaffected. My body however, remembered its function. I wrapped an arm around the naked woman because I knew it’s what she wanted, even if I could never give her what she needed.
I ran my hand between her legs, closing my eyes as she writhed against me, coming on my fingers after only minutes.
“Stay with me tonight,” she rasped, and I kept my eyes closed, not answering her.
She knew better than to ask. I hated her for expecting it. I felt angry. Resentful.
Annoyed.
“Please,” she whined. I wrapped my hand around the delicate wrist connected to a hand trying to hold me close. To trap me. To keep me.
To keep something that will never be hers.
“Stop,” I growled, wrenching her arm away, wanting to be gone.
“Elian,” she breathed, relentless. She wanted…always wanted.
She kissed me again and I felt numb. She took the only thing she could have. My skin. Pliable under needy hands. Impenetrable yet present.
It’s all she would ever have.
I let her pull my arms back around her naked body. Holding but not touching.
I shouldn’t be angry with Margie for being predictable. For being available. I’ve allowed her to get to this point. This place where she thought that I wanted her.
After all, I had gone home with her after work. I had let her touch me. Kiss me. I said nothing as her words had flown free. Love. Promises. Unfortunate declarations.
This wasn’t her fault.
This was my fault.
This was her fault.
Margie didn’t know that the man she’d just fucked was a lie dressed in falsehoods. She thought I wanted her. She saw my responding cock as a sign that I was devoted. That I was hers.
To her, my dishonesty felt like love.
I continued to lay there, my arms wrapped around her and I waited. That’s all I ever did anymore…waited.
It’s what I was good at.
Margie didn’t ask me to stay again. She gripped me tight, her arms trembling in her desperation to keep me close. I never claimed to be a man that stayed. Margie had always understood that.
Soft kisses on my neck and I continued to lay there. Still. Unmoving.
Coal Black Eyes watched me from the dark. Knowing. Seeing. She was everywhere.
My heart lurched and constricted and the numbness slowly disappeared.
Layna.
Layna.
“Where do you want to go?” I had asked her, feeling that exact moment when my life would change.
“Anywhere,” she said.
Anywhere.
Everywhere.
With you.
I dug my fingers into the flesh underneath me. Not seeing. Not hearing. Not feeling anything but Layna.
“Elian!” Margie gasped, not knowing this wasn’t for her.
I let Margie touch me. I touched her back. I gave. She took. She was in the moment. I was…anywhere.
When we were done once again, I gave her the time she needed to feel reassured and comforted. I didn’t want her to feel used and abandoned. I should feel guilty for the thoughts in my head while I fucked. Thoughts that didn’t belong to Margie. They didn’t belong to me.
They belonged to her.
I had somehow found her in the middle of all this. Not at the beginning where it would have made sense.
Not at the end where I could have walked away.
But in the middle.
Where I would never be able to let her go.
So I waited.
I knew the moment Margie fell asleep. Her slightly painful grip on my waist released, ever so slightly. I removed my hand from the still sweaty skin of her back and started the slow, necessary process of moving away from her.
I carefully packaged Coal Black Eyes into the farthest recesses of my mind. To a place where I could look at them again.
Later.
I hurriedly got dressed and picked up my phone and keys from her bedside table. I scribbled a quick note, letting Margie know that I went home. I didn’t want to be a complete dick.
As I walked out of Margie’s apartment my phone vibrated in my hand. I looked down at the screen, though I already knew who it was.
I hit ignore.
I got in my car, and my phone started to vibrate again. I let it ring a little longer this time before sending it to voice mail.
I knew this dance well.