SEVEN

HE’S ON ME BEFORE I can get my hand out of my pants and he has me pinned to the couch before I even know what he’s planning. His mouth presses hard against mine, kissing me hard and deep before I can squeak another word out.

His tongue strokes mine, plunging deep inside my mouth to take what he wants from me.

If I weren’t already wet, this would have done it.

Jack—but hard Jack, alpha Jack, taking what he wants.

He slides a hand inside my shirt and up my belly. His nails dig into my skin on the way to my breast, and I gasp into his mouth. My right hand still trapped beneath his weight, pressing further into me, I use my left to frantically tear at his dress shirt to get to his sensitive nipples, pinching at them until he moans, too, the vibration playing on my lips like a song meant to be devoured.

Slowly, he rocks his hips into mine, pressing the back of my hand with his hard cock, and it drives me fucking crazy that I can’t pull the fingers from my pussy so I can use my come as lubrication to stroke him hard and fast, but at the same time I want to drive them deeper inside myself, too. And he knows exactly what I want and is in complete control, overpowering me with his greater weight and my desire that’s making me weak. My mouth waters for the taste of his come.

He uses his hips to move my hand, and it’s so fucking erotic the way he’s making me fuck myself, I shiver and moan his name. “What if I hadn’t come home alone?” he asks.

With my free hand, I yank at his pants and underwear, and he shifts enough for me to slide them down over his ass, freeing his cock, ready for me, the tip glistening with pre-come. I slide my fingers out of my drenched pussy and grab him before he can deter me.

“If you hadn’t come home alone? Who would you have brought?” I look him in the eye and slide my slick fingers up and down, and he groans.

“Maybe someone from the office. Someone new. Someone easily shocked.”

I squeeze a little harder. “Yeah? Maybe she would only be pretending to be shocked because she likes it and didn’t think you’d be into that.”

“Into what?” he pants.

I picture him walking in with Inana, and my nipples ache. “Watching me finish. Watching you finish me. Or maybe even you watching me and her.” I bite my lip and smile at the way his breath catches.

“Is that what you want?”

“I want this cock.”

“Where do you want it?” He sucks just underneath my ear, hips rocking against mine, making me wish I had more than one pussy so Jack could make them all feel good.

“I want to lie here while you fuck my mouth,” I say, leaning back.

He pulls my jeans down my legs, discarding them along with my panties, and then he gets up and crawls over my body until his balls are above my chin. I lick up the seam, leaving a trail of saliva. He pulls back and nudges the tip of his cock against my lips, coating them in his salty, tangy taste, which I lovingly lick away when he pulls back.

But it makes me think what could have happened if Jack had brought a friend back home unexpectedly, a stranger, someone I hadn’t met yet. Someone adventurous—though it would have been more likely for his friend to be a man. God, I nearly purr at the thought of it, of Jack ordering me to my knees to suck his friend off.

I slide a hand along his shaft, squeezing near the root, and I pull his cock down toward my mouth, shifting up a little on the armrest to get my mouth at a better angle.

Jack’s hands would shake as he undid his own pants and gripped his cock, jerking himself off while watching me suck his friend’s cock, making another man feel good.

I swirl my tongue around the little hole, delicately, barely touching it, but his hips give a little jump anyways. It’s only been a few days since we’ve fucked, but it feels like longer. I can never get enough of Jack. My breasts are swollen and ache with need. I cover my lips with spit and slowly close them around the head, tight, and take him into me, licking back and forth along the bottom of the shaft with quick, light motions, watching his eyes darken with desire. He pushes a little deeper, advancing along my tongue. Then withdraws.

Maybe he’d pull me up from my knees, pull my ass in the air while still sucking his friend’s cock, and take me from behind, each thrust pushing the foreign cock further down my throat.

I like that.

“You like my cock in your mouth like that?” I lick all around the shaft, caressing his balls with my hand, focusing on one and then the other. I move to the base of his cock and work my way up like I’m taking slow licks of a melting ice cream cone until I get to the tip. And I lick all around it and put it inside my mouth. “Mm-hmm,” I moan, knowing the vibration will make it feel even better.

He groans.

I want to feel my heart pound in surprise by being overwhelmed by him, by his cock filling my mouth so deep I can barely breathe. Today, I don’t want to give pleasure to Jack.

I want him to take it from me.

I open wider, drawing his cock into me slowly, stroking the underside back and forth with my flattened tongue as it slips past my lips. I can feel myself getting wetter.

I take him deeper, and then withdraw, then deeper, then withdraw again when I feel his hips give an impatient hitch wanting more. His hands grab my hair, lightly fisting it.

I gag with a smile as his cock nudges the back of my throat.

I look up into his eyes, trying to smile with them so he knows it’s good for me, and I bob my mouth up and down on his penis, loving the feeling of it filling my mouth.

I want more.

I feel his hands tighten their grip on my hair, sending little sharp zings of pain across my scalp, and I suck harder when he holds my head in place and begins to fuck my mouth.

I want him to come in thick bursts of sweet tanginess that fill my mouth as he unloads, but I want him inside me, too, pounding my pussy. I want him to be in me when he comes so that later I can stand and feel it drip down my legs and dry on my thighs.

He slips his hands down my face and slowly pulls out of me. I nod and spread my legs and he takes a few steps back toward my feet, settling between my thighs.

I watch as he takes his cock in his hands, his perfect cock, and guides it towards my pussy, then slides the head up and down a few times, coating himself, making his cock slick with my juices. I’m writhing now, desperate for him to shove into me, to slam home and fill me in a way my fingers can’t.

He pushes in, just the tip, and smiles, knowing how torturous this is for me, but patiently teasing me. God, I love this man. He probes around the hole with a finger, spreading the wetness up to my clit, swollen with need, using fast, light flicks to torture me more, pulling back when I try to push against his hand.

“Jack, please,” I say, the words a strangled moan.

“Do you know how sexy that was, walking in to see you like that on our couch?” With a smile, he pushes into me, slowly, his cock deliciously stretching my hole while his fingers graze my clit.

I shake my head. “Tell me,” I gasp. Take me, fuck me, use me.

“I watched you for a minute. You had no idea I was there,” he says, teasing me by sliding in a little more. “If I’d brought a friend back she’d have seen you rubbing that pretty pussy.” His dirty talk surprises me—he’s improved, but this is a new one. If there’s anything that would drive him mad, it’s the thought of me being with another person. “She’d have seen you at your sexiest and joined in with me. We’d all be naked and fucking right now instead of just you and me.” When his lips utter these words, my entire body shivers down to my toes. He presses all the way in, his hard cock stretching against the soft walls of my pelvis, and he holds it right there, letting me feel how full he makes me, but he never stops rubbing my clit with his slick fingers.

I can feel my orgasm surging, building up inside. He shifts his weight and I can feel his cock move inside me and I’m going to come so fucking fast and I tell him that.

“I want to feel you come on my cock,” he says, staring deep into my eyes.

I nod, licking my upper lip, tasting the saltiness of the thin sheen of sweat forming there and also him, still lingering in my mouth.

I’m going to come.

“I know,” he says, and I must have said the words aloud again, but it’s crashing over me in waves now.

Jack.

I’m coming, Jack.

So good.

I shudder and my hips buck and Jack grits his teeth and groans as my pussy tightens its grip on his cock, and I feel my limbs shake with the ache, with the release, but we’re not finished yet.

Jack’s still hard and inside me and starts thrusting hard, perfect stabs of pleasure radiating deeper than the clitoral stimulation did.

But the idea of Jack buried balls-deep in my cunt is almost as good as the actuality, and I stare down at it between us, watching it go in and out, my juices flowing harder, drenching my thighs and his balls as they slap against me.

I want to drown in the come we make together, feel it coat us like massage oil as we slide across each other’s skin, because making love happens with every inch of our bodies, not just between our legs. Slathering each other with come. Modern art. Modern fucking art.

I grab his ass and grind my hips, wanting him to come so hard he can’t see so that I’m the first and only thing he sees when he gets his vision back.

He growls deep in his chest, so male and turned on that I feel another orgasm unwinding my spine from within, and as he pounds harder, faster, deeper, it’s torn from me like my mind’s coming loose from my body, and I scream his name, shuddering around his cock.

A moment later I feel his cock twitch inside me, filling me with his hot come in thick spurts. His hot breath puffs against my neck when he pulls me closer and squeezes me tenderly, possessing me more with that simple gesture than with anything else.

I’m snuggled up next to Jack in bed, listening to his steady breathing, but I can’t sleep. The diary’s burning a hole in my mind, but I don’t want to lose myself inside it right now. Some part of me wants to prove that I’m not obsessed with Inana yet, that I can take a break from the diary, so I slip from Jack’s arms and pad into the living room to pop in a DVD.

LJAvventura. It’s been niggling at the back of my mind for days, and I can no longer put it off.

For a while, I drift inside the visuals of the coast, the sea, the rocks. Everything seems more dangerous, but also more beautiful. I always rooted for Claudia. Monica Vitti was always a favorite of mine, and I couldn’t help but want her to find a goddamn happy ending, though those aren’t ensured or expected in serious films that mirror life.

Things rarely end up with neat bows.

Sandro tells Anna that words create misunderstandings and wasn’t it enough that he cares for her?

Guess the Five Love Languages weren’t popular back then.

He’s got a point. Even now, couples continue to put arbitrary parameters on their definitions of love and relationships. Is monogamy natural?

No.

We’re part of nature as well, and it goes against our biology—as well as our physiology—especially when it comes to reproducing. Men are hardwired to spread their sperm far and wide to impregnate as many females as possible to ensure that their genes are the ones to survive. Women are hardwired to want a mate who is bigger and stronger than the rest, hence why so many are attracted to the bad boy or the asshole—it screams back to the time of our ancestors, when those were the ones we thought could protect us and our future progeny from the very real dangers we faced.

Social monogamy is real, but oftentimes the children of supposedly monogamous couples aren’t really the offspring of both partners.

The ladies looked elsewhere.

We’re living in an artificial world. If we eschewed all of the things that aren’t natural—air travel, makeup, synthetic fibers, spray cheese—our lives would be reduced to that of a granola cruncher living in a yurt in Tibet.

Monogamy can work, but it’s a choice. We have to define for ourselves and our partner what it is we want from a given relationship, and then honor those definitions.

And yet, Claudia and Sandro were pretty eager to get together the moment Anna was out of the picture.

But it’s not like she left. Or did she? The way it’s written, we don’t know if Anna ran off or was taken. If she’s dead or alive. But that’s not even the important thing. We’re not meant to care about Anna— we’re meant to care about Claudia.

It feels more like a Hitchcockian device that we’re meant to believe, and as soon as we do buy into that idea, something bad will happen. I became protective of other people’s truths, but was I really protecting them, or serving myself? Everything I do brings me closer to Anna. If I had continued searching I would have tarnished myself and brought everyone’s private predilections into the public eye. Most of us chose selfishness over selflessness.

I turn the movie off, feeling tainted by my own past, and pick up Inana’s diary again.

Here is another woman who burned like a meteor. She was never destined to be ordinary or to fit into society as a drone working from nine to five. I’m unable to reconcile the act of suicide with the woman in the pages of the diary, but maybe that’s because she reminds me of myself. The similarities between what Inana wants and what I want give me a mild jolt.

I need to get inside the woman’s head a little more. The best way to know her is to be her. In doing so, maybe I can know myself in a safe way, an acceptable way.

There’s a quote underlined several times inside the diary. “I must explain this to her. If she loves me well enough she will understand. All things are possible in love. I will explain to her that I possess her at will without the loathsome absurdities of sex.”

I search for the quote online and find it’s from a book, Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath. The title reminds me a little of the infamous Witch Hunter’s Bible, but I go back to the quote, reading it twice more.

Are all things possible in love? If someone loves you well enough, does that person truly understand? What if the things you want are slightly outside his or her realm of comfort or understanding?

Inana had fans, and yet a lot of them—as well as some friends— abandoned her when they learned about the new mission of her life. How is that friendship, love? Love is patient, love is kind. Love doesn’t judge you when you embark on a public journey into BDSM and sexual expression and document it. Was her image so set as a muse, a representation of fashion houses, that they didn’t want to lose the power she brought and gave?

Everyone’s so goddamn ready to crucify each other, you’d think we lived two thousand years ago.

T Swizzle jumps from country to pop, most likely to launch that album even bigger, and some people scream that she’s selling out. I think maybe she just got tired of being inside a big old sequined country box. But sometimes growing the way we want to, instead of the way someone else wants us to, seems like a crime.

The memory of Jack’s horrified face flashes to mind, a memory I’d suppressed. He didn’t understand when I wanted him to go further. To be wild with me.

To hurt me.

It turned him on to think of being with me and someone else, but when it’s just him and me, he holds back—even when I beg him not to. There’s no way he’d actually participate in a threesome with me—especially with another man. He’s too straight-laced for that, and that’s fine…for him.

I’m Inana without the journey—or rather, I put a foot through the threshold, then tried to take it all back and pretend I never did it. Pretend it didn’t change me on a fundamental level. But knowledge acquired cannot be undone. And so, while living with Jack, seemingly content with the quiet domesticity of our lives, there is still something churning inside me: unanswered questions that trouble me, an ache to further my sexual experimentation and needs.

Simply admitting that to myself feels like a festering boil has been lanced, and some of the pressure is eased. I’m torn between the two versions of myself, the one that I am and the one that I could be. I adore Jack, crave the security and stability our relationship provides, and have made a conscious attempt to suppress my sexual desires for the sake of maintaining our connection and some kind of normalcy. Christ, his face when I asked him to hit me. I’ll never ask him for something like that again.

I couldn’t risk him misunderstanding, shrinking away again. I feel his love in words and caresses, but I want to be caressed and longed for the way Sandro looks at Claudia.

But at the same time, I still have the same feverish, hypersexual recurring dreams—a part of myself I can’t deny.

It’s not the same dream anymore; it has shifted to a point in the future, to a place inside myself that I don’t recognize, to sexual scenarios that are darker and more intense—and that scare me, if I’m honest.

I dream I’m there again, and things make a certain stark sense. There’s a perfect moment when you’re on your knees in front of someone who can destroy a life, a business, a country without a regret, and the things you’re doing with your mouth can make them forget how to breathe. Your roaming tongue stills theirs.

I’m talking about power. Real power.

Four years ago, if you’d told me I’d be masturbating in public, I’d have looked scandalized along with the other pretty pearl-clutchers.

But unlike them, I’d have had an interest that burned the inside of my skin, making me blush for a different reason. I’d have been dripping at the thought of doing something so audacious. So free. It’s not that I was ashamed of my desires, even then. It’s more that I thought I should have been, and that I was a little broken inside because shame flitted just beyond my fingertips.

I’ve been wet in public before, cold arousal lying against my crotch from panties I’d soaked earlier kissing Jack goodbye before running errands. Even better were the times we’d fucked and then I’d go out and his come would seep from my pussy, slicking my panties.

But the inappropriate thoughts coursing through my veins always made my “shouldn’t”s rear up in outrage.

I shouldn’t go grocery shopping before changing clothes.

I shouldn’t like the heaviness of the damp fabric between my legs.

I shouldn’t smile at the men who leered.

I shouldn’t imagine how easy it would be for a stranger to glide up behind me, lift up my skirt and slide inside my pussy, using the wetness he had nothing to do with creating, to fuck me over the pork chops where anyone could see—not that he’d get the pork reference.

A stranger using Jack’s come as lube to fuck me in public.

In my dreams, I’d shed so many goddamn shouldn’ts, like a snake rubbing against a rock to rid itself of too-tight skin, that I glowed. I was sleeker, faster, tighter.

Happier.

Making love doesn’t do that. Fucking does. Anyone who tells you sex is only physical is doing it wrong.

In real life, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve sort of…dulled. Now, sitting on our couch, remembering how it felt to be overwhelmed by possibilities, I shiver with dark delight and continue rhythmically squeezing my thighs together, muscles rippling over my clit.

Look, Ma, no hands.

Everyone’s wound tightly these days, twisting themselves up into Gordian knots to protect themselves or to convince themselves that they’re more complicated than they really are. Deep down, we’re pretty fucking simple. We all just want the same thing at the end of the day:

More.

Maybe I can’t have more of it without jeopardizing what Jack and I have built, are building.

But Jack’s going away on a trip with DeVille for a week, which means I have one week to immerse myself in Inana’s life and try to feel the things she felt. To dive in before shaking the droplets of interest from my skin like a wet dog.

And then I’ll let it go.