My gaze falls on his tie, lying by my side. It’s maroon in color. He never wears a tie but today was some sort of a special staff meeting and Professor Masters insisted. Not half an hour ago, I wore it around my neck with nothing else but my polka dot socks as I rode both of us to our climax. I squirm in place, probably leaving a wet patch on his coarse carpet.
On his desk, against the wall, on the couch, on the floor—he has had me everywhere. As I look around the room, I can see our merged silhouettes on every surface. I can hear the things he whispered in my ears. I can smell the musk of our raging, borderline lunatic fucking. I can see the wrappers of Twizzlers alongside his discarded bags of chocolate croissants. I always litter and he always picks it up and puts it in the trashcan, with an exasperated but indulgent look. Maybe I do it just so I can see that look.
I realize that this is my home, made of my moans, my cum, and my sweat. This is more my home than my tower, than my mom’s house in New York. I don’t have to hide in here. I can be myself. Whatever fucked-up self it is, I can be that.
Thomas is all quiet and introspective. I want to ask him what he’s thinking about, but I’m afraid to hear his answer. He’s probably thinking about her, about Hadley. He’s always thinking about her.
It has been ten days since she went away. I know she will be back. I know she’ll come to realize how much Thomas loves her. There’s a power in him, a power in his love. It reflects in the way he fucks me. How he slakes his frustration with my body. How his body laps up my moans, my orgasms to subdue the fury in him. How he uses me to be happy.
“I thought you were trying to quit smoking,” I say. I need his eyes on me, and that’s the first thing that comes into my head. His muscles wake up and strain as he turns the chair in my direction, and blows out a giant cloud of smoke.
“I thought you were trying to write.” His rumbly voice tells me he was on the verge of falling asleep. I can’t help but notice that there’s something endearing about that, and so like a man. They fuck. They sleep. They fuck again.
“I’m stuck.”
The air changes from lazy to tightly strung. Thomas is still sprawled in the chair, giving the impression of being relaxed, but the twin flames in his gaze flicker. “Are you?”
Nodding, I get up on my knees, my notebook falling to the ground with a thud. My back arches—a default reaction now—when he looks me up and down. My winter gear along with my undergarments are lying somewhere in a heap, leaving me in a thin, see-through sweater and a wool skirt. My nipples pout, much like my lips.
“So are you gonna help me?” I ask in my tiny voice, the voice that never fails to get a reaction from him.
Last time I asked him to help me with my poem, he told me to sit on his cock and read it out loud while riding him. All the while, he sat there like a king, never moving, simply watching me with a hunger that drove me to jump on him, up and down.
I come to my hands and knees and crawl toward him, watching him through my lashes. Cigarette clenched between his lips, he follows my every move with hooded eyes. Every flutter of my loose hair around my face. Every little sway of my dangling breasts that are barely hidden by my top. I reach him and he shifts his chair to face me. My hands grip his calves through his jeans, massaging the muscles as I sit up on my haunches.
“So?” I crane my neck up and hug his leg between my breasts, moaning out loud at the delicious friction of his pants.
He whips the finished cigarette out of his mouth and it lands in the trashcan. Leaning down, he breathes the smoke over my mouth. I suck it in like I’ll never breathe again. Oh God. God. I can’t take it. This hormonal, chemical explosion inside my body—it’s too much.
Then his hands band over my biceps and he hauls me up and makes me straddle his lap. The chair creaks with both our weights. My hands caress his stubble as I murmur, “That sound is going to kill me.”
“What sound?”
“Your stupid chair.” And there it is, his laughter. It makes every corner of my body smile. “Whenever I hear it, all I think about is you fucking me in it so it’s screaming with our weight.”
A side of his mouth tips up in the wake of his short laugh. “I’m kind of getting the feeling you want me for my body rather than my poetic genius.”
Genius—yup, he is that. I don’t know how, but words come to him out of thin air. He looks at the ceiling and describes it in ways I never even thought of. Despite our frenzied fucking, he does teach me things. He calls me out on my poor word choice, tears me apart over overly flowery language, and I think he likes it. Other than sex, that is the one time he’s animated, his eyes dripping with another kind of passion. He glows when he talks about poetry.
Coming back to the moment, I say, “Actually, I also want you to bump my grades up.” I move against him, my bare pussy sliding along the hard bulge, barely hidden by his unzipped jeans. “Because, you see, I’m not very good at writing. My work is choppy, and my word choice sucks.” His eyes smolder and his hands come to grab my undulating hips.
“Is this your way of getting a compliment out of me?”
“Yes,” I admit shamelessly. “Give me a compliment. I challenge you.”
He digs the pads of his fingers into my hips to stop me from moving. “Fine. You don’t irritate me as much as you did before.”
“Wow, stop, I’m blushing.” I swat at his naked chest. “You’re so good with words.”
He swats at my ass in retaliation, making me moan. “I told you I’m not very good at talking. You want compliments, you should hang out with your friends instead of being with me.”
It’s a joke, I know, a dry, sarcastic comment. I should forget about it. I shouldn’t ruin the moment—I’m on borrowed time as it is.
But my stubborn heart isn’t in the mood. It’s remembering his words from the other night when I was in his unpacked study. I found my dad’s journals, his poems, and I knew…that this was the way for me to talk.
Perhaps he notices how rigid I’ve become in his hold, because he tenses too. After my last attempt at talking about it in his car, I haven’t broached the subject of his lack of writing.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, frowning.
“Nothing.” I smile and massage his shoulders, trying to do what I do best—distract him.
“Layla,” he warns with that voice of his. It’s not fair. I can never resist that voice. Never.
I simultaneously sag and tense in his hold. “I…I want to see you write. Something. Anything. I just want you to write.”
A beat passes. Then two. The urgency in my chest is increasing. I don’t want the silence. Silence is ruining. “I can’t see you like this. Thomas, I know. It’s obvious. You—”
He doesn’t let me finish as he lifts me up and puts me on the desk, my legs dangling. I try to sit up but he presses his palm on my breastbone, keeping me still. He stands over me, some kind of god of wrath with his thunderous frown and sparkling skin. My chest rises and falls under his palm, like he’s the one making me breathe. If he removes his hand, I’ll die.
“Take off your top.”
What? No.
“Thomas—”
“Take it off.” He licks his upper lip.