*Mona*
“That takes us through September,” he said, the bed depressing as he claimed his spot on the edge.
I nodded distractedly, again scrolling through the calendar app on Abram’s phone for August and July, hunting for a possible span of time where we might be able to arrange a quick meet-up. We’d both set timers on our phones, a countdown to the moment I’d have to drive him back to the airport using Lisa’s car.
I felt good-ish about February through June, but July and August were still a problem. We hadn’t been able to find even one rendezvous over those two months. Abram would be in New Zealand and Australia and I would still be in Europe. No face-to-face time for over two months felt like a rendezvous dearth of ginormous proportions.
Of note, I did rather like the word rendezvous and planned to overuse it in the future.
“How long is the flight from London to Dubai again?” I gazed longingly at the seven-day period of free time he had between Brisbane and Perth in mid-August. Unfortunately, it just so happened to be the same week as my Spectroscopy Symposium in London, where I’d be presenting at three sessions and moderating two graduate-level panels. Dipping into my parents’ travel fund to visit my boyfriend—especially when international tickets were so pricey—didn’t sit right with me. However, if I skipped avocado toast for the rest of my life, I’d be able to afford the plane ticket.
Abram covered my hand, drawing my eyes back to his. “We’ve spent a half hour on just those two months. Let’s move on to September through November.”
We were situated adjacent to each other on the twin daybed in Lisa’s guestroom. It doubled as a small couch, but I’d left all the throw pillows piled up behind the headboard. I was sitting against the wall, my legs crossed, with just my regular sleep pillow behind my back. Abram sat on the edge, one foot propped on the floor. He stood at intervals to pace while studying the calendar app on my phone.
Keeping it real, Abram’s pacing was a problem, because I loved, loved, loved watching his body move. Which meant that I was staring at him when I should’ve been studying his calendar. He didn’t seem to notice my staring. Or, if he did, he didn’t say anything about it.
“We have to move on.” His brown eyes flickered between mine, and—just like all the other times we gazed at each other for any length of time—I had to remind myself not to tackle him to the ground, rip his clothes off, and kiss and lick and bite every square centimeter of his rock-hard physique.
Especially his bottom.
That’s right. I wanted to sample his bottom. Every time he paced away, little pheromone pixies danced on my pelvis, gleefully, wickedly smashing my concentration into a million pieces of agitated yearning. I wanted to touch it, stroke it, massage it, bite it.
Whew.
Clearing my throat, swallowing, I sucked in a breath and tore my eyes away from his, fanning my T-shirt. “Is it—” I had to clear my throat again because my voice cracked. “Is it hot in here?”
The thing is, I wasn’t this person. No one, not even me, would ever describe me as physically focused, or fixated on touching an attractive or alluring exterior. Ever. I actively rejected external beauty as a contributing factor to how or if or when I interacted with people. I’d never been tactile. I observed. I calculated. I analyzed. I didn’t even like playdough as a child.
But with Abram, I couldn’t stop noticing. I couldn’t stop thinking. I couldn’t stop wanting.
“Mona.”
Think of the Queen! Isn’t that what the British always said? What was the US equivalent? Think of the first lady?
I worried my bottom lip, breathing in through my nose, endeavoring to get my brain out of his pants. “Okay. Okay. Where are you going after Perth?”
“Mona.” He leaned close, using his hold on me to pull both my hand and his phone toward his chest.
My gaze darted up and then away, cheeks heating, because if I looked at him again, I’d be—again—fighting the impulse to tackle him and we still had three months to—
“Mona, look at me.”
I did. I gave him my eyes. I also held my breath.
His gorgeous amber irises seemed to glow as they moved over my face, dropped to my mouth, lingered there. They felt hot yet controlled, self-possessed, and for some reason the self-possession took my heat level straight to plasma.
“I think—” He licked his lips, taking his phone from my grip and placing it on top of the throw pillows piled by the headboard. “I think we need to do something.”
“Something?” I asked, still not breathing so the words came out more like a hitching whisper. I didn’t know if it was the lack of oxygen or Abram that had me feeling so dizzy.
Abram. Definitely Abram.
On my sixteenth birthday, I’d had an IUD implanted, a gift from my sex-positive parents. Lisa had received one too. Leo had received a reversable vasectomy for his.
Even with the IUD, I’d always used a condom for sexual intercourse as well as spermicide I would procure after triple-checking the lot numbers and packaging date. Anything older than three months, I would throw away.
I’d administered two blow jobs, again always with a condom, and the second one only because I was convinced I’d missed something the first time. Once, a guy attempted to conduct cunalingus using a female condom. I’d insisted after discovering he hadn’t been vaccinated against HPV. It wasn’t enjoyable. I’d stopped him after the timer denoted the agreed upon two minutes was over, not liking how messy and wet on my thighs it had become.
I mean, saliva. Do you know how filthy the human mouth is? Disgusting.
I’d done many, many things with my seven sexual partners—working my way through a checklist of positions and techniques, toys and gadgets—and everything I was open to exploring had been attempted at least once. Notes had been made. Items had been crossed off. Second and third attempts at pleasant activities had yielded varied results, leading me to the conclusion that masturbation utilizing a LELO vibrator was the only consistent—and therefore worthy—method of satisfaction.
But with Abram . . .
I wanted to do it all again, try it all again, even the items I’d crossed off my lists.
“We have twenty minutes left, before I have to leave,” he said, the words rough. His palm came to my knee and my body jolted at the benign touch. A small smile tugged his mouth to one side, his delicious dimple making an appearance, and his voice was low and rumbly as he asked, “Do you want me to touch you?”
“Touch me?” I squeaked, clearly incapable of brain function higher than a parrot. Forced to exhale because my chest felt like it might burst, not a half second later I was gulping air again.
“Yeah.” His hand slid higher on my leg, sending hot spikes of twisting tension straight to my center, and he leaned closer, rising slightly above me, filling my vision, his warm palm shifting to the inside of my upper thigh.
My feet did something weird, arching and pointing uncontrollably, almost like they’d been tickled, the muscles of my legs and stomach flexing. I sucked in an involuntary breath just as his large hand stopped at my hip, his thumb drawing a firm line over my thin cotton pajama pants from my lower abdomen straight to my clitoris.
Well, that escalated quickly.
I gasped, my eyes closing, my head hitting the wall at my back, my hands fisting in the comforter on either side of me while my body dichotomously froze and melted. I couldn’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
“I can feel you,” he said, his voice still a growl as the pad of his thumb circled me through the two layers of fabric, pressing, searching. “You’re so wet. Is that for me?”
“As the, uh.” As the prophesy foretold. “And thus, I die,” I choked out instead and tried to shrug, making a joke of it, because—OMFG—I was ten seconds from orgasming. Honestly and truly. My lungs were on fire, my body clenching around emptiness, my skin stretched too thin.
And I was mortified.
He’d barely touched me. There’d been no buildup. One small stroke followed by two barely there circles, and my body had gone zero to the speed of light.
I can’t breathe.
Some abrupt instinct had me clawing at his wrist, my hand fisting around his thumb to stop the efficient circles. I was wound too tight, it—everything—felt overwhelming.
“I—I’m—”
“Shh. Let me.” His lips were on my neck, making me shiver, and he pried my fumbling hands away, threading our fingers together.
And then he was guiding me to my back.
And then I was lying down.
And then he was there, over me.
I experienced a split second of pure terror, of fear, my mind telling me that someone was above me, covering me, holding me down, and I couldn’t move. Then Abram came into focus, settling himself between my open legs. Abram’s scent filled my lungs. Abram’s hips spread me wider. Abram’s mouth sucked at my neck, eliciting more shivers, and my terror was nearly eclipsed by the surfacing wonder of seduction.
Abram rolled his pelvis, and the hard length his erection pressed right where I needed. Fear diminished, waned, but didn’t completely extinguish. It became a quiet whisper instead of a clamorous shriek, inexplicably amplifying my senses without overwhelming them.
I can’t breathe.
But I did breathe. I inhaled him, the Abram fragrance that both calmed and excited me. It spread like a velvety cloud, invading and liquifying each clandestine corner and hidden space and secret desire. It communicated a history without words: security and safety, longing and need.
I gasped again, my back arching sharply, my hips wanting to move. “What—what—oh God.”
He made a noise, it sounded frustrated, his breathing now labored, his body heavy—so heavy—above me. Holding my hands on either side of my head, he rocked, sliding up and down, stroking me through our layers of clothes. I couldn’t move. I was wholly trapped, inexorably tangled up and in and by Abram.
I should’ve been feeling panic. I wasn’t. I was no longer the Mona who didn’t like to be touched or crowded. I was a cluster of nerves and dark wants, wanting this man to cover me, hold me down, take over. I enjoyed the loss of control, how my fear mingled with pleasure, heightening every sense and sensation.
This, what we were doing, definitely hadn’t been on any of my lists. We were fully clothed. Our bodies were touching through layers, but my hands were confined. His mouth was still on my neck, his breath falling on my skin, causing goose bumps, tingles, shivers, and heat. So much heat.
The only time I’d done anything close to what Abram and I were doing now had been last week, in the pool, when we’d mindlessly attacked each other. Nothing about this should have been sexy. But it was. I shouldn’t have wanted to be possessed and overpowered in this way. But I did.
It was the most spectacularly sensual event of my life. Yet, even as it happened, I knew this conclusion made no sense. It felt incomprehensible, indecent, scandalous, and the indecency quenched some hidden, unacknowledged thirst.
“I think I’m going to—”
Abram kissed me, stopping my words, his tongue coaxing, a complete contradiction to the hard press of his body. Releasing my hand closest to the wall, he leaned to the opposite side, still caging me in, stroking his fingers from my breast to my stomach and replacing his erection with his palm.
I groaned at the loss of him, of the heaviness and friction, until his hand slid inside my underwear and he parted me with his fingers.
I was sweating. My heart was racing. My mind was swimming. I still couldn’t breathe, but his scent was everywhere. He was everywhere. He was inside me, his hand in my pants, moving rhythmically in a way that—in the moment—felt wholly illicit, forbidden. He captured my cries and moans with his mouth, keeping me quiet like my pleasure was a secret, just for him.
I came, a shock of fire searing my nerves, to my fingers and toes, bursting behind my eyes. His composure, power, and precision made me crazed, made me feel as though I was his toy, or his instrument, and he was in total control. Bafflingly, I loved it.
His fingers thrust more forcefully, deeper, rubbing and stroking, prolonging my climax until I was boneless, exhausted, spent, sore low in my belly, and left with a cavernous ache in my chest. His amazing body, big and powerful, hard and mercenary next to mine, petting me, telling me wonderful and wicked things.
You are so fucking sexy.
I love watching you come. I love the way you feel. I love watching you lose control.
Do you want me here? Do you want me inside you?
Next time, I want the taste of you on my tongue.
Or, were those my thoughts? Did he say them? Or did I wish for them?
As the last of the spasms shook me and before I could disentangle myself, I turned toward him. He was gone. He’d left the bed. Rolling off and immediately pacing away.
Discombobulated and disheveled, I watched him, his hands braced on the far wall, his shoulders rising and falling. I felt the lack of him, a cold shock. I surfaced by degrees—Mona, me, the thinking, reasoned part of myself—and a sharp spike of alarm abruptly snuffed out any lingering residual exhilaration.
Why would you let him do that to you?
Wait. Do what? Touch me?
He held you down. You couldn’t move, and you liked it.
I blinked at the internal accusation, remembering the last several minutes as though watching them happen to someone else.
I’d liked that? I’d like him over me? Holding me down? I’d liked not being able to move? Being touched, possessed, controlled like that? He didn’t ask. However, I didn’t say no. I didn’t ask him to stop. Asking him to stop had never even entered my mind.
A flood of disbelief was followed by a rising tide of reason, during which I attempted to explain and describe my own desires to myself as something healthy and normal.
But is it? Is it healthy and normal?
Yes.
No.
Maybe?
No. You were afraid.
Was I?
Yes. And you wanted to be overpowered, you liked it. He could’ve done anything to you, and you would’ve been helpless to stop him. Even now—thinking about the possibility of handing over control again—You. Want. It.
I did. Just the thought of Abram over me again, his weight covering me—but this time naked, entering me, taking his pleasure from my body—I was completely and wholly arrested by the mere notion. It made me breathless, achy with a new dazzling, blinding thirst.
Yes. I want it.
And yet, I shouldn’t want to feel helpless, right? I shouldn’t want to feel overpowered physically. I’d felt that way once, against my will, and it revolted me, it kept me up at night, it gave me nightmares.
On the other hand.
With Abram it felt different—the loss of control, the lack of explicit consent, the being conquered sexually, emotionally—and what did that say about me? Was I turning a difficult moment in my life into a fantasy? Just the thought made me sick.
My internal arguments were becoming circular. Disbelief and reason were pushed aside by a creeping sense of shame and guilt.
Is there something wrong with me? I shouldn’t want this, should I? I shouldn’t—
“Mona.”
My name in Abram’s voice pulled me out of my shadowy reflections, and I looked at him, comprehending my own position at the same time. I’d rolled to my side, my knees bent and pulled to my chest, my arms locked around my legs. He was kneeling at the side of the bed, his hand hovering over my temple.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his gaze searching. “Did I—I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
The trepidation in his voice was a sobering bucket of ice water and I immediately shook my head, pushing myself up. “No. No, not at all.”
He didn’t look convinced. “What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head more resolutely. “You did everything right, you are great.”
I’m the one who is wrong. I didn’t tell you to stop.
Abram seemed to be watching me closely, but he still wasn’t touching me. “I had to leave the bed, I was too—uh—worked up, and I only have this one pair of pants.” His mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes and quickly waned. “Do you want me to hold you?”
Swallowing against a lump in my throat, not trusting myself to speak, I nodded. His hand covered mine in the bed, and—damn it!—I flinched, not meaning to and immediately rebuking myself for the involuntary response.
Abram’s eyes widened and he moved as though he was going to withdraw, so I caught him, grabbing his arm and using it to pull him forward. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I slid to the floor, to my knees, and held on.
He hesitated only a fraction of a second, and then closed me in an embrace. But it felt careful, hesitant, as though to communicate I was free to come or go, and that frustrated me.
There’s something wrong with me, I shouldn’t want—I shook my head. I would have to think about this later. We had no time, and I’d just come apart under his skillful hands. Which meant our relationship was operating under a climax disparity. My confused turmoil would have to wait until the scorecard was even, and he was on a plane back to the West Coast.
“Hold me tighter,” I demanded. “I need you to hold me tighter.”
“Are you sure?” His strong arms flexed, but he didn’t draw me any closer.
“Yes.” I crushed him to me. “Please.”
It must’ve been the please that did it, thank goodness, and I liquefied in his powerful embrace, loving the constricting feel of the hug, snuggling closer, smelling him, and admitting unthinkingly, “I already miss you.”
I felt him smile against my shoulder, placing a kiss there. “I already miss you too.”
“How much time do we have?”
Abram sighed. “Not enough.”
Moving my hands down his shoulders, I worked my arms inside his embrace, placing a kiss on the underside of his scruffy jaw, and slid my fingers to the front of his pants.
“Whoa—” He released my body to capture my hand before I could reach for his fly. “Wait—Mona—what are you doing?”
I stroked him over his pants with my free hand and a wild thrill raced down my spine at the feel of him, so hard, so ready. I’d never been a big fan of male sex organs, but—in this moment—I wanted to take out an ad in all the newspapers announcing my everlasting devotion to his.
“I’m going to give you a blow job.”
“Whoa, okay, stop.” He caught my roaming fingers, his breath a gasp. “First of all, we don’t have time.”
“I can be fast.”
“Hold on. I don’t want you to be fast. Like I said before, that would only frustrate me.”
I kissed his jaw again. “But—”
“No.”
I grunted, my hands going slack in his grip, and I leaned away to capture his eyes. “It’s not fair to you.”
“I’m not worried about fairness,” Abram said on a laugh, his gaze wary, like I was tricky, or had magical powers and couldn’t be trusted.
“But I—you know—and you didn’t. You didn’t get anything out of it.”
“Believe me.” His stare softened, warmed, and he released me, sliding his fingers into my hair. “I definitely got something out of it. I will be writing poetry about that moment for the rest of my life.”
I grunted again. “You should let me reciprocate.”
“I don’t want you to reciprocate.”
“I feel like . . .” Like I haven’t earned it.
Once more, he seemed to be watching me very carefully, and when I didn’t continue, he prompted, “Like?”
“It feels like an injustice, that only I should have this experience. Alone. And the next time we’ll see each other isn’t for three weeks.”
Abram’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what it’s really about? Because you don’t owe me anything.”
“I know that,” I said automatically.
“Do you? Do you know, do you understand, that I’m always going to want to pamper and please you? That making you come, seeing you blissed out and hearing you panting is like a drug for me?”
My stomach twisted delightfully at the picture he painted even as my spine straightened at the use of the word drug. “I don’t want to be your drug.”
“Too late.” He grinned, his glorious left dimple completely adorable, almost distracting me from my concern.
“Can’t I just be your person?” I asked, my eyes flickering between his and the thought-derailing dimple on his left cheek.
“Can’t you be both?” Abram slid his nose against mine, giving my lips a tender kiss. “Can’t I be both for you?”
“No. I don’t think so,” I said honestly, tilting my head such that I had his eyes again. “Drugs are altering. Addictive.”
“That seems just about right.” Another grin, a chuckle, and his arms came around me.
“But, Abram, I don’t want to alter you. I want you—who you fundamentally are—to stay intact. And being someone’s addiction automatically implies an unhealthy dependence. And—”
He stopped me with another coaxing, seductive kiss, his hands sliding into the back of my underwear and massaging my bottom, muddling my brain. God, that feels good.
Wait. What were we talking about?
I had no idea.
Must not be important.
Relative to his mouth moving against mine, his hands in my pants, the press of his erection against my belly, and the building “bliss” (as he called it), whatever I’d wanted to say didn’t seem terribly important.
I kissed him back. I floated on the high that was Abram’s mouth and hands, taste and smell. And when we were interrupted, it was the alarms we’d set on our phones.
He had to go.
Our time was up.