He sought my warmth, and I didn't mind.

Out With It

I wish I could just resume whatever was happening with him back in May instead of constantly having to draw and redraw these new boundaries/parameters that wind up blurring and getting crossed anyway. Potential dating! Kidding, now it's cut-off-ties-and-move-on. No wait! He's apologized, and I've extended the hand of friendship without any expectations to sleep with him again since he has a girlfriend. Kidding, now he's broken up with her and has been hankering for time with me. But wait! We should redefine this nebulous thing we've started up again. And on and on and fucking on.

I feel like there's bait dangling in front of my face, and he keeps lowering and yanking the hook. I've been talking bullshit for the past few weeks here when I should have just owned what I feel instead of pushing down everything like I always do.

Yes, I do like him. Quite a bit. And I would like a more serious arrangement with him, but I'm convinced/certain that he doesn't want the same, especially considering that he just got out of a summer relationship barely a month ago. I'm ashamed that I would still have feelings for someone who's hurt me the way he has. I'm angry that I can't concentrate on much else. I'm humiliated that I've let myself become more invested in some whatevership than the other party. I know better than that.

Mostly, I'm terrified of feeling more vulnerable than I have in years.

What If

Last night I imagined us taking our time to undress each other in your room. I slid your shirt over your head; you unbuttoned my blouse with such careful fingers. Late sunlight slanted through the window as my skirt pooled on the floor next to your jeans, and the sky had turned deep blue once my knees hit the back of your bed, sending me in a slow, arcing tumble onto sheets that you’d just washed. They smelled like you: fresh laundry, sharp and clean, with traces of the body you wear them out in. I pulled you down.

The rest comes in hazy patches of memory tinged with too much longing. Mostly, I remember our every movement executed as if underwater, my hand fluidly curving over your ass, and hooking my leg over your shoulder seemed like a minute-long task. I remember your weight fully pressed on me, chest to chest, while you buried your face in the crook of my neck until your beard rubbed my skin pink and tender. Without any music in the background, I could hear the choked groans you tried to hide, and my own catches of breath startled the stillness in the air.

I looked into your eyes at one point, letting every wince and lip bite show from how completely you were filling me. You would shift forward, and the bed would pitch along as well to the aching, steady rhythm we set. Time started and stopped, started and stopped. When it was all over, I clung on tight with my eyes squeezed shut, picturing another image within this dream, and let go before those few seconds stretched into something too tense to unravel. I think I decided to stay for the night because for this moment only, I had enough time. 

Hot and Cold

Sometimes the shame of what kind of person I truly am cripples me. Not a confident, cool person, but a fraud, too wracked with insecurities and self-doubt to be of much admiration or help to anyone. This intimidating front I put up, it's convincing so long as I don't let the cracks show because once one of the walls come down, the rest tumbles quickly afterward, and it becomes apparent that I'm not strong at all. Better to keep them (to keep him, to keep her) far from my soft inner body so there's nothing to hurt when we eventually part ways.

If I’m not careful, I get invested too soon and too much. My emotional spectrum exists in two opposite ends: either I've written you off or completely invested my time and energy in getting to know you. Happy, middle-ground mediums were never an option for me. If they were, I would have taken advantage of them by now. Instead, I scare people away, whether by my coldness or passion. The former preserves my defenses; the latter blasts them open. Which is the more frightening, or genuine?

People think I don't care, but I do. 

I care too much. 

Conflagration

I’m burning in ways I didn’t expect with him. Find myself wanting to put my mouth on his length, bite a pattern around his hips, mold my hands to the shape of his thighs, take pleasure from his pleasure—I want to make him feel good. That makes me feel good too. How unexpected. My fantasies have never featured me as the aggressor, or the one who draws out the shudders from the other person’s lips, but the script’s flipped, and what used to be a passive sequence has turned active. No longer done to, but doing. I like it.

I wonder what’s caused the change, but I think I’ve always known. The role switch was already happening when I was with him on Tuesday, spread-eagle on his sheets while he licked an uneven line down my stomach. I wanted to return the favor. Again, the urge returned on Sunday night as soon as he slid my underwear off and pulled my hips towards him, towards his waiting mouth, because I looked right into his face as he did so, and the hunger in his expression—pupils black and blown—elicited a gasp I sucked in at the last second.

That kind of naked longing, seldom experienced and thus so memorable: how humbling, how infectious—and all of that directed at me. I want to make him feel the same way. To have his hips buck at my attentions. To clench tight around him, my nails scoring trails down his back, and swallow every moan he can’t hold in. To see an identical expression on my face staring back, dark-eyed and red-lipped, my voice thick with heat and intent. To listen to his body come apart in my hands as he has done to me. I want to undo him. 

Dragon*Con Weekend

I had brunch with him on Saturday. Yeah—hadn’t seen him in four months and was unsure of what my next move would be. Scratch that, I already knew what my answer would be. It was only a matter of when. Certainly not that morning, my period ensured that along with his schedule. But the meal was his compromise, and we finally set eyes on each other after an entire summer of false starts and stops that raised more questions that could ever be feasibly answered.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I ate, to my horror. Across the table, he casually tucked into his food while every glance he threw became a loaded gesture.

 

Later, I proposed my own compromise in the form of twenty minutes stolen in my car in broad daylight on a filled parking lot. As soon as I shut the door, he turned my head towards his, body preemptively angled as if to fit over mine, and at that first touch of lips, I grabbed at him, one hand on his waist, the other sliding up his chest. When he grasped the back of my neck with his fingers tangled in my hair, I realized how little had changed from our encounter in May. The heat coiling deep in my belly came as no surprise because my desire had not diminished in the slightest. I wanted—want—him just the same.

Judging by how he tugged at the neckline of my shirt, I think the feeling was mutual.

And as he bent down to leave two teasing nips on my thighs, I felt the impatience in his teeth and the proximity of his mouth, so tantalizingly close to the seams of my underwear that converged at the neat, budlike shape he hungered for the most. The urgency in his hands made me shudder. I hadn’t expected that both of our reactions would be this strong. I hadn’t expected things to circle back here this soon, but no—I did. I’ve never known how to say no to my urges.

Eventually, we disentangled. My locks were falling out of place from my bun that’d cheerfully dislodged during the proceedings. After straightening ourselves, he landed a bruising kiss on me and climbed out of my tiny car. I licked my lips, leaned back on the seat, and closed my eyes, waiting for my heart rate to go down. 

Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice--

By this point, I know full well I can’t quit this guy so when I made plans to drop by his house last night, nothing was unclear about the nature of that visit.

-----

I’ve fallen back into bed with him because I can’t be bothered to restart my search. What makes me curl my toes has him groaning into my ear, and there are too many of them to count—why go through the same song-and-dance number when he’s pinned me to the mattress with his mouth right then, right now? I could rehash the sequence of events in the weeks following his elaborate apology letter, but I’ve already talked myself hoarse about it to other people and spaces that aren’t here. This is for when I’ve made the decision, the recount of the before, during, after, and everything in between. I’m tired of making excuses. I simply want his hands on me.

And if our interactions seem guided by baser intentions than before, that’s because they are. With any pretenses of dating or romance out of the way, I’m obvious in my lust, an altogether more manageable variable in an arrangement made richly volatile by the new, potential baggage he and I both bring in. Without (his) pressure to emotionally open myself up, there’s only the heat and sweat generated between two bodies pressed tight together, reluctant to break apart for fear of allowing another situational wrench to set us at odds again. This could be the worst call I’ve made this year. This could be the best. Or it could be another call made in the running timeline of my romantic and sexual endeavors that I won’t examine until all’s been said and done.

For now, he lays me flat on the bed, hooks my legs over his arms, and leans in to breathe the heavy scent between my thighs. I’ve come to his house on my period and warned him off of putting his mouth there. Up until this moment, he’s kept away, but the towel rubs soft under my back as he drags my hips closer, his eyes lingering on the darkest corners of myself. A second passes; he mutters a curse under his breath and dips his head down. A sharp intake of breath then fills the room, and I realize that it’s mine.

He can’t stop touching me. I can’t stop touching him. His fingers spread and curl and dig deep for me to rock back against, my face buried in a pillow to stifle my moans. When he slides all the way in, I sink my teeth into his shoulder, sucking the freckled skin there to leave a mark in the morning, and it hurts god it hurts, but it’s a familiar hurt from months ago, a pain I’ve wanted to revisit, but the tight, aching fullness of him can’t possibly hurt worse than what he had dealt me with his absence.

Afterwards, my roaming, restless hands map the shape of his chest while his palm fits over my waist. I inhale the muted, comfortable smell of his deodorant in the curve of his neck, and he drops kiss after kiss in my tangled hair, my damp forehead, my red, wet mouth. I should have left immediately—that’s the protocol, isn’t it? But I’ve stayed, and pressed myself against the whole length of him, and curled my shoulders towards his, and let him catch me up in his arms where his music note tattoos come in and out of view, wordlessly playing a song I have yet to hear in its entirety.