Love on the Dark Side

We spend 80 per cent of our waking lives at work. By my count, it’s a hell of a lot more than that, and, with that kind of time spent around people, you get to know them well. Real well. When they’re nervous or annoyed or lying. Or secretly pleased. What makes them tick. Little things: gestures, tones of voice, catchphrases.

You learn enough to paint a person inside out. Finish their sentences, know what they’d say, know when they’d roll their eyes. You get inside their head and don’t even realise it until you find yourself laughing with them for no reason at all.

But I didn’t think anything of it because I don’t like boys. Never have, never wanted to. I didn’t try not to; I just never felt that spark travel down my spine and between my legs for a boy. I felt it first for a girl in tenth grade with long pin-straight, blonde hair and small round breasts. She always smelt like plumeria body spray and being around her made my soft bits tingle and my head spin. She was the first, and there were many after.

But no boys. Not for years. Not for all my adult life up until that day in the break room, when he said something utterly stupid and I burst out laughing, almost spitting coffee all over my lap. He sat there grinning at me, with sunlight caught in his hair. I looked at his face and my heart kept on beating hard even after my laughter subsided. I noticed that the sight of the watch on his wrist made me feel hot all over. I noticed his fingers, and I pictured him reaching between my legs. And I looked away.

I went home to the beautiful woman who shared my life and my house and lay beneath her with my eyes closed. Thinking about him fingering me. Kissing me. Easing his hard cock between the lips of my pussy and watching me squirm under him.

I’d never had a fantasy like that before; I didn’t know what to do. It was cheating; it was bad. Thinking about it turned me on more than I could imagine.

I stood in the shower the next morning, playing with my nipples and thinking about what he’d look like naked, and wanting him so much it hurt. And I knew what he’d say, just how he’d say it. Knew just the way he’d look at me before he put his mouth over mine. You learn those things even if you’ve never seen someone actually do it. Instinct tells you.

I’m sure he figured out things were different between us because he changed a little, in subtle ways. His smiles became fewer, but they lasted longer. Especially when no one else was around. His voice when he spoke to me was softer. He always turned up where I did, when I did: the break room, the front desk, the parking garage.

I sometimes caught him playing with his wedding ring, sliding it off his finger and back on. And he would look up and catch my gaze for a few seconds before he looked away again. Just my luck I would decide to want a boy who was as taken as I was.

I thought it would go away; I wanted it to. I told myself it was a passing infatuation that would eventually fizzle, and I tried to act like I always had around him, but something kept intruding. Making me stumble over my sentences and feel much too warm, even in the coldest room. Making me forget what I was going to say every time he smiled at me. After months had gone by, I realised I was hiding from the obvious.

That I should have this little control over myself rankled, but I couldn’t shake the need. Craving his touch like a junkie craves a hit. I thought, soon enough, my head is gonna explode and how am I supposed to explain that? Was it normal to want to fuck someone this bad?

The evening I got home frustrated like I’d never been in my life because he’d been wearing a sweater that hugged his chest and arms and outlined their shape to my ravenous gaze, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about normal.

I needed touch, but I found myself alone. Belatedly, I remembered Casey was gone to her mother’s for the weekend. I could’ve broken something, smashed it with my bare fists just to release the wound-up energy, but it wouldn’t have done any good. It was just me with the empty house on a Friday night, and my need for a gorgeous off-limits boy.

So I did the only thing you can do when you feel shitty and don’t have a solution: watch TV. I settled into the couch with a pop tart and a frown to stare blankly at the screen. There was someone talking in that wise lofty tone they use for documentaries, and I was half a heartbeat away from changing the channel when the words registered and caught my attention.

Dreams. The gateway into the vast uncharted subconscious where lurks who the hell knows what. Lucid dreaming: the ability to impose control on the subconscious mind and turn its ramblings in whichever direction one chooses. I sat still and listened in spite of my angst. What if I could control the tumble of thoughts when I dreamt of him? Wouldn’t that be nice.

I grabbed the remote, paused the show and rewound it before I went to find another pop tart. Hooray for DVR. I lingered at the kitchen table for a moment on my way back, and then picked up a pencil and an empty envelope. Why not? I had to give my fevered brain something to do when it came up with those explicit depraved images late at night. Why not try to teach myself to lucid dream?

It was easier than I’d thought. So easy in fact I got it on my very first try that Friday night, stopping a fascinating dream about remodelling the back porch dead in its tracks and turning it instead to a windswept country lane. Miles eaten up under the wheels of the Mustang, wind in my face. I woke up exhilarated.

That should have maybe clued me in. After all, controlling dreams was supposed to be difficult. But I didn’t think anything of it; I’ve always been able to remember my dreams in full technicolour detail. I used to tell my mother about them and she would look them up in one of her books and tell me what they were supposed to mean.

None of the meanings in the dream books ever came close to being right, of course. Sceptic that I’ve always been, I didn’t expect them to. The trick my mother forgot to tell me, or perhaps she left it for me to discover in my own time, was that the real meanings are what we infuse dreams with. What our own subconscious minds give to the tangle of pictures in sleep; that’s where the power in dreaming lies.

And I had plenty to fuel the imagination. I took all I knew from watching straight porn and reading dirty romance novels and poured it into the fantasies I created about him. Palatial beds and nightclub-restroom stalls and the hood of the Mustang. I made his dream-self pleasure me until I couldn’t bear it any more and woke sweating, with my legs and clit still trembling and my panties sticky with my own come.

I would wake Casey sometimes, tugging her nightie off and burying my face in her soft skin and softer curls, and ravage her until my need was finally satiated. She would laugh in the morning and call me a slut, and I would laugh and kiss her. Feeling a little guilty because she had no idea how much of one I really was.

Casey didn’t guess at the smutty depths my mind achieved each night, but, if I hadn’t known better, I would have bet good money he did. During the day, he would catch my gaze and shake his head, smiling as if he knew the fantasy I was replaying in my mind as I looked at him. But he couldn’t have; I was sure I’d simply been giving myself away through body language. The odd coincidences on the other hand were harder to explain. Like the day I found him listening to Marvin Gaye when the night before I’d dreamed of fucking him on the leather couch of an apartment I’d had years before while we listened to Motown and got drunk on brandy. He looked at me when I passed his office and looked away while a guilty stain coloured his cheeks. And if I hadn’t known better . . .

When he started avoiding me, I told myself it could have nothing to do with those strange little occurrences. It just had to be his guilt over the attraction between us. Or maybe the hectic pace at work when things kicked into high gear and we found our days swamped with meetings and fire drills. The stress of work, the fact I didn’t see him every day: that had to be the reason I in turn stopped dreaming of him. Had to.

The trouble with that was I didn’t want to stop. I could still turn my dreams any which way I chose; I could still change them like scenes on a DVD, but I couldn’t summon the sweet fantasies of him. Not even for a few moments. They faded away and, if I stubbornly held on to the scene, it would be empty. Flat pictures on a screen instead of living breathing 3D.

I didn’t want that. I wanted that feeling of being with him, as if I could really smell him and taste his skin. Feel my arms stretch as I put them around him and he pushed my body into his. But the images were hollow, so I stopped trying; I avoided him too.

I felt deserted. Cranky. Like I’d lost something. I guess in a way I had. By day I couldn’t get my dose of him and by night I avoided REM, fearing the disappointment of half-baked dreams, and it was telling on my nerves. I found myself snapping at random strangers in the checkout line or at the drive-through window and, around the people I knew, the effort to appear normal stretched me thinner than fishing line wound too tight. I was about to snap.

So, since there wasn’t a way around his distance at work, I went back to the dreams. I couldn’t shake the feeling there was a barrier that, if only I could push through, would let me back to ‘normal’; that place in sleep where I could almost feel him. I just had to look harder.

As always I wandered in my dreams, but now I wasn’t looking for fantasy vistas and landscapes; I wanted real and raw. Here in the present. In my mind’s eye, I left my bed, passed through the walls of the house and out into the night to haunt the places I knew from waking hours. Night-time streets, empty office buildings. Cruising the familiar twists of city streets in the Mustang.

And as I would stand on a terrace looking out over the sleeping city, or sit on a damp park bench listening to a homeless guy mutter gibberish, I felt less deserted. I felt he was out there, somewhere in this dreamscape; and, if I tried hard enough, if I learnt to fly, eventually I’d find him again.

His gaze strayed up to mine again and that time I held it, not letting him run away. I looked into his eyes for far longer than I should have before I released him.

He nodded, swallowing hard and looking at me as if willing me not to walk off, but I was late for a meeting. I let his gaze go, took a step back and turned, but I heard his voice, compelling me to listen for one moment more.

Lying in the too-wide king-size bed that night, I tossed and turned, unable to find sleep. What do they say? No rest for the wicked? But I had to sleep; I was powerless awake. I took up the most comfortable position I could find in the middle of the bed, eyes closed tight, refusing to open them or to move, and gradually I slipped into the first fuzzy wave of semi-consciousness. I took my usual route, slipping through brick and cement walls out to where I was free. But tonight I had a purpose and I wouldn’t be thwarted. Tonight I was going to find him.

I stood somewhere not far above him and looked down at him sleeping. I called his name and he turned, restless, but didn’t wake. So I touched him, and then pulled my hand back in surprise at the prickle of stubble on his cheek. Wondering at the roughness and how strange it felt . . . to feel that in a dream where before all I’d ever known was softness. But as I stood marvelling, he woke and smiled.

He reached up and the bedcovers slipped back from his body. I caught my breath; he was naked as the day he was born, but Holy Mother Mary his body was perfect. He looked like a boy out of those jeans commercials except for the curls of dark hair across his chest, trailing down to his navel and between his legs. And, where the pictures in the jeans commercials stopped, my gaze kept going. Down to that . . . thing between his legs that was so not what I had dreamt about before.

I was still staring when he put his hands on my hips and I looked up at him. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. The evidence was pressing into the silk of my pyjama bottoms as he unbuttoned my top, button by slow button. His fingers stroked the space between my breasts and, although warmth surrounded us, I shivered. He pushed the pyjama top off my arms and sighed.

His gaze followed where his fingers moved across my chest and the curve of my belly, caressing, lingering. And then, moving again, down to the waist of my pyjamas, pulling them down. The silk co-operated, eagerly falling to my ankles to leave me bare to his inspection.

While I stood still, not daring to move. Not having a single goddamn clue what to do next; only knowing I wanted him to keep touching me. Keep feeding the need growing in my pussy and my breasts and my arms and my legs and, oh, God, everywhere. He pushed me backwards and I panicked for a moment because I remembered standing somewhere high up when he came to me. But it was my own bed that enfolded us.

The bed that had felt so comfortless and frustrating not so long before, now hot and soft and seductive under me. Like his mouth on my skin leaving wet tingling trails as his tongue moved over my chest. His hands were warm, rough on my flesh that didn’t know what to make of this harsh maleness. Except to respond and rise and send pleasure rushing down between my legs.

I ran my hands up his shoulders and arched as his mouth dipped between my thighs. I’d heard the stories from girls who had been with men before. Too rough, too timid, too clumsy. And granted, this was a dream, but his mouth – oh, dear God! Oh, Jesus. I was screaming by the end of it, screaming when I was the type to barely do more than gasp and sigh. My hair was soaked, the sheet beneath me was soaked, and, as I leant on my elbows, trying my best to breathe, he lifted his head and brushed wet hair from his eyes. He smiled and wiped his mouth and then licked his fingers clean one by one, looking at me.

I lay back and covered my eyes with my hands, ran my hands through my hair. I felt like I’d run a mile, my breathing refused to find a rhythm anything like steady, and he was looking at me with that impish smile. Jesus. The night was far from over and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.

He lay next to me, one leg bent at the knee, his hand moving lazily over my torso while he waited for me to catch my breath again. He nuzzled my neck and kissed me and then I felt the sharp pinch of his teeth. Laughing, I batted him away, but I didn’t mean it. I loved his strong arms against my back, the way his stubble tickled my neck and made me squirm. He smelt strong and sharp, like soap, and I wrinkled my nose, wondering why my dream sense had come up with something so bizarre and not erotic. And why I liked it so much.

I pushed him off finally when I was back to some semblance of control. He watched me sit up and shake my hair back and stare him down, ready for round two, and he reached downwards. I beat him to it. He looked surprised and then he smiled, pleased and aroused, although his body didn’t show it yet, but that part didn’t take long, even with my clumsy efforts. He guided my fingers, showing me how to stroke him the right way, and, when I figured it out, he swallowed and closed his eyes. God, I loved being able to do this to him.

‘Oh shit.’ He laughed. And when I lay back he moved over me as if afraid he’d crush me. I didn’t know why until his first thrust and then I realised there was a big, big difference between a strap-on covered in lube and the real thing. Not to mention that Casey didn’t like dildos that resembled the real thing, preferring bloopy, neon contraptions that were as far from a man’s dick as a phallic object could get.

It shouldn’t have hurt, not in a dream. But, then, it shouldn’t have felt so good either. I shouldn’t have been grinding myself against his cock like that. In porn it was always simple: in and out and then ‘cut!’

No, this went on and on. And it felt so good that I forgot about the pain. Maybe straight girls were on to something. Or maybe it was just him. I didn’t think any other man could have done this to me.

If any other man had tried to spread my legs in the air and use my cunt like that – because use it he did – I would have fed him his own balls. With béarnaise sauce. But with my boy it was heaven. I lifted my hips for him and fucked him just like a straight girl. I let him roll me over and spoon me while he ground his hips against my ass and came inside of me, crying my name out. And I wasn’t ashamed.

I adored every second of it. His roughness, his hardness, the sharp scent of our sex, so unlike what I knew that I wondered again where my subconscious had dredged it up from. I revelled in our fucking.

I sat up, confused and achy. When had I taken off my PJs? There they were at the side of the bed in a silky blue puddle. And why could I still smell the scent of him from my dream? I stared at my naked body, at my thighs and I gingerly touched my sore nipples. And I told myself it was all psychosomatic. I’d wanted it so badly my body had somehow given me the experience I craved. Right? Right.

But something in my brain didn’t buy it. I stumbled out of the bed, staring at the stained sheets in wonder and thinking that, in all my years, with all the lovers I’d jumped in and out of bed with, I’d never ever seen my sheets look like that. But it was me, had to be. Couldn’t be anything else.

I sifted through impossibility after impossibility. An intruder? Not possible. I’d circled the house twice; the alarm was still on. Everything was in place, sealed and unbroken. The only thing that had wandered beyond the confines of the house was my mind. And for all I knew it was still wandering.

I didn’t sleep much the next night. I stayed awake for as long as exhaustion would let me and, thankfully, when I did drift off, all that haunted my subconscious were the projects I had due the next day. I didn’t dare let my mind go further than that, and truthfully I don’t think I had the energy. The dreams had never left me drained before, not until now.

Then came Monday morning. I was almost afraid to go back to work and I thanked my stars Casey was gone all week; it gave the bruises time to fade, and me time to recover. But I still had to face him.

And why I did it, I wasn’t sure, but I donned a shirt that didn’t quite hide one bruise on my neck. I wore my hair up so that, if I turned my head and bent a little forwards, the bruise would be visible. It was a test for my own peace of mind. I would be able to prove to myself I had invented that night and everything I felt after it. I would have sanity again.

I’d forgotten he was working offsite for the day, and when someone reminded me it was all I could manage not to grind my teeth. I haven’t had many days in my life that I prayed would end like that Monday. It was sheer agonising hell. I couldn’t think: the wonderful soreness of my body distracted me, my mind skittered. People spoke to me and I watched their lips move but made no sense of their words. I found myself staring out of the window playing the dream over and over in my mind. Running my hand along my neck. And wondering.

That night he came to me first, almost as I drifted into unconsciousness. He was waiting, sliding into bed beside me and reaching for me under the sheets with a smile.

‘I was thinking about this all day,’ he whispered as he kissed my cheek and then my lips and then parted my mouth with his. ‘And I missed you,’ he murmured into our kiss while his hands smoothed the shape of my body under the sheer babydoll nightie. I had worn it on purpose, hoping and dreading. And now I was rewarded.

He only murmured assent because his mouth was occupied with the embroidered bra-cups of the nightie, but, after only a second or two, he raised his head and frowned.

But we had no time to talk. I lay on my stomach and his weight and heat covered me, pressing me into the pillows. His cock moved wet and fast between my thighs, slicking my ass cheeks and legs with our moisture, his balls slapping my clit, teasing it in the lewdest way. I was a she-wolf taken by her mate, my nails digging into the backs of his hands as he held me and drove into me. Hard. Harder. I tore the skin over his knuckles and almost broke my back arching up into him. He slid one hand under me, held me to him and filled me.

We had no breath left to whisper endearments before we swam away again, back into our own beds and minds. But I left him marked that night; his shoulders and arms and hands. I hadn’t meant to, but I wasn’t sorry. There, in the dream, I wanted to give him sweet pain and let him know he was mine. Here. Beyond consciousness.

I was exhausted the next day. I felt as if I hadn’t slept in days. OK, Sunday. But what about last night? I yawned and poured coffee and slumped into a chair at a table beside the window. My pussy ached delightfully, but I was too tired to try to figure it out. I’d accepted that my overactive imagination was taking its toll on my body, somehow. Maybe next week I’d see a shrink, get my head right. Or maybe I’d just get laid by a guy, see if it cured me . . .

He began to ask how my day was going as he set his breakfast tray down and reached for a bagel. I looked down at his hands, smiling at the memory of what I’d imagined last night.

Just a small red line left by a sharp fingernail in the heat of passion. A scratch that could have been caused by anything, anywhere: a doorframe, a zipper, a million other objects in the rush of life. But I remembered grabbing his wrist as he reached under my stomach to tease my clit as he brought himself to climax. I remember forcing his hand hard against my body, our combined weight pressing down as he slammed into me.

I reached for his other hand, the one nearest to me and turned it over, palm down. A half-moon cut over the third knuckle, a scratch just above the wrist. I keep my nails long because Casey likes me to tease her with them, trailing them over her breasts and her clit when I tie her up. I keep them sharp.

Time slowed down and halted while we sat there. Me with my heart pounding, because the impossible – when finally you confront it – is scary. Thrilling. Confusing. I sat afraid to move or breathe or think because God only knew what might happen next, and he pulled his hand away. He reached up, brushed my hair aside and gently pulled the neck of my sweater forwards.

I couldn’t drink my coffee, it was choking me. But I sat there, cup in hand as he sat with his barely touched breakfast before him, both of us staring at the TV and seeing none of it until the break room emptied of everyone but us. Then he put one hand over my trembling one and he smiled at me. As if to say it would be OK. That we had nothing to fear because, somehow, some way, our deepest truest wish had come to pass.

‘How do you know?’ I whispered in the darkness of my bed as he lay beside me, propped on one elbow, and played with my nipples. Rolling and twisting them between his thumb and fingers. Pinching them and then running his hand down my torso to check that my pussy was getting sufficiently hot and bothered and slippery. Teasing me a little down there so that I wriggled and arched, and then smearing moisture up over my pussy and my stomach, up to my breasts again where he began his maddening playing anew.

He hand stilled, resting on my chest. He looked at me. Serious, but not solemn, and I could hear the calm, assured happiness in his voice when he spoke. ‘Yes. Yes it should.’

Three times and the charm would be wrapped up. So I made the most of it. When he lifted me atop him, I rode him until my thighs would not obey my commands to move any more, and when I fell against him, exhausted, he rolled me over, knelt above me and kept fucking me. Kissing me as his cock pumped furiously, hungrily. One last time I felt the pleasure building like rage, like a storm; and I wrapped my legs over his to drive him further in, drive him to the centre of my pleasure and spill it outwards and all through my body. One last time to feel his body tense and jerk, hear him grunt and then sigh. Feel his wet heat trickling down my legs.

His tongue moved wet and lazy over mine. Saying goodbye; saying ‘thank you’, and, after the kiss, we let go. He faded past the barriers of my thoughts and it was over. As fast and desperate and amazing as it had begun.

We didn’t speak of it, not in everyday words in our everyday world. Only a look sometimes, or a smile. A reminder. I wanted to say to him at least that I would never ever forget, but silence was the understood price and I never said a word. I think he knew all the same.

On the last day I ever saw him, before our lives took us different ways, I bent the rules just a little. Out of context, with no warning, I told him thank you and kissed his cheek. He stared, startled for a few seconds, and then hugged me once, smiling.

‘I did. I still do. But –’ he looked up, found my gaze, and gave me a soft smile ‘– I figure it’s one of those things you don’t pry too hard into. You just accept.’

I kept my secret and, I imagine, he kept his. We never tried to bridge the miles or the years between us – by ordinary means or not. But every so often, just before waking, I sometimes think I feel a gentle touch on my arm. Or a kiss on my cheek. And I smile before my eyes open. Because, after all, it’s only a sweet dream.