Story So Far

And how do you talk to people of a love like this? So big you lose yourself entirely and have to rebuild from nothing when it all goes away. Can you ever laugh and smile and say it was just a phase? Talk normally in company; enquire innocently of their well being as though you didn't wish they were dying inside without you. Crushes and infatuations pass with nothing more than the briefest remembrance of embarrassment, but real love leaves its mark. A hole in the heart, a dirty streak across your soul.

And it never goes away. Not when you've moved town, travelled the world, sought redemption in another's bed. It's still all there, all part of who you were and who you are now. No matter how much you'll wish to be as white as pure light, dirt sticks.

We're at work and I can't think straight with him near to me. I write to him on my notepad and slide it under the desk:

"I want my hands on you. Right now. I want to sneak out of here and I'm thinking of sliding my hand up your thigh. How far could we go before someone sees? God you get me so hot. I'm burning on the inside. Can you feel the heat under my skin? Touch me, please. I'll beg for you. Please and cherries and all things nice. I'm down on my knees to get you good and hot and hungry. I won't breathe till you're on me. I'm craving the weight of you. I want to keep you up all night and when everyone else is sleeping we'll be living our dreams locked in your room. Tie me up. Pin me down. I'll struggle and you'll push and I'll moan as you take off my clothes. In the dawn men in suits will hear the sounds of our heat as they walk to work and will hurry home to kiss their wives in ways they thought they'd forgotten.

I like to be man-handled. I want to be treated roughly, pushed up against a wall, pressed over a desk, pulled to the floor. I want to be your frightened, little virgin and your dirty, fiery slut. I'm imagining you running your hands over the tops of my stockings to reach further between my legs; I'm unzipping your fly and kneeling before you; my eyes widening as you move over and into me; us lying in the sweaty aftermath and my hair falling over my shoulder as I turn to talk with you, but you silencing me with a kiss instead."

You look at me across the table and hold my gaze as you stand up, turn to the speaker and apologise for interrupting. You walk round the table, take my hand and pick up my bag. "Please excuse us," you say, as you lead me out of the room, then the building and across the road to the hotel opposite. "You better be wearing stockings," you murmer, pushing me backwards into your room...

It's funny how you know sometimes that everything isn't okay, even when there's no evidence to back you up; the emotional version of the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. We sat by the pool. It was late Summer, turning to Autumn, but I was not cold in my light jumper. He sat behind me, legs either side of me, as I watched the sunset over the trees. I leaned back into him and a tear trickled down my cheek. I tried to brush it away without him noticing, but he saw and pushed himself around to sit in front of me. He wiped the tear away and the one that followed. "Hey, what is it? What's wrong?" he asked gently.

"Nothing," I answered. He looked at me unconvinced.

"I don't know," I said a little more truthfully. "It's so beautiful. I love you. And none of it will last forever. I love you so much it hurts sometimes."

"I know. Me too, but I'm not going anywhere."

"Really?"

"Yes. Really," he replied, kissing me softly and weaving his hands through my hair. The last of the light left the sky. He stood up, held out his hand and pulled me up and walked towards the house. "Come on," he said, turning and taking my hand. "I'll make you some hot chocolate to cheer you up." He smiled at me and it hurt all over again.

Lying on his bed, awaiting his return, I was dismayed to find that my excitement at seeing him had disintegrated into a melancholic uncertainty. The fear in my stomach pinned me to the mattress, as I thought of everything that I had ever wanted to do and how incredibly over-ambitious it all was. I rolled over on to my stomach, squashing the fear under my weight, lay my head against his pillow and breathed in his scent to calm myself. He returned, fiddled with his stereo and put on some music. Once back in bed he knelt at the end and pulled me on to my back so I was looking up at him. He dragged me towards him, hands behind my calves, so that I had my legs wide open, wrapped around his waist, my ass resting on his knees. "Why did you put this on?" he quizzed good naturedly, referring to my dad's old shirt that I wear to sleep in.

"It's cold in here," I explained, flattening the material across my chest.

"But I can't undo the buttons," he moaned, and I laughed at his incompetence. He figured them out pretty quickly and pushed my shirt open. In the half-light my stomach and breasts looked like toffee cream. He leaned over and nuzzled at them, lingering there to kiss and nibble at my nipples. I was tense with the weight of my worries and his actions tickled and made me giggle nervously. I felt exposed, as though he could look right through in to the core of me, to the huge gaping space where everything should be. He trailed small kisses down my stomach and over my thighs, adding a new kind of ache to my bundle of feelings. It felt as if I was in a vacuum, like slow motion film with all the sound taken away. All I could hear were my frantic gasps as he stroked and pushed into me with his intellectual's hands, soon opening his trousers and replacing them with his cock. He was forceful and it hurt, but I wanted it to. As he bore in to me I felt my inside tear and burn with a white, pure heat. In the background a singer bemoaned the lack of purpose in his life. It drove through me on the tips of his fingers and travelled up to strangle my heart with black tendrils of self-disgust. I was nothing, have done nothing, was dirt, always trailing a few steps behind the sort of people I admire and never doing anything about it. He continued to touch me inside and out, stroking my clitoris with the ball of his thumb. My climax approached amid waves of hysteria, I could not tell if my gasps were those of pleasure or sadness. Afterwards I lay with my head on his chest as he stroked my hair and silent tears trickled down my cheeks and into my mouth, infusing our kisses with the salt of my sadness.

I watch him quietly from the corner of the room. I don't know if he knows I'm awake, but I'll do nothing to draw his attention to it. I like to see him when he's unguarded. He moves through the tai chi forms, hands and feet and arms and body perfectly in synch. Whenever I'll see anyone else practising these movements the ghost of his soul will be right beside them, showing me everything it could have been. I love this grace in him. Kissed by God. And it shows in all of him; how he won't kill spiders without wishing them a happy incarnation, reads books no one else understands, is broken by the words of a song. I wonder if I listened only ever to his soul and never to the words he said. Too much beauty and a sadness under his skin, an anger that will be this boy's end.

A year later and everything's shattered like glass in the dirt while I keep on not listening. I lie on the bed in his stuffy room feeling oddly sad. I've been tired the whole weekend and I'm lolling around in my nightdress again. I bought it especially for him. It's cream with polka dotted lace and cross back straps. I love it; love how it drapes itself over me and how it's just about see-through over my sex and my nipples. So I'm enjoying rolling around in the four-poster bed like a film star, but I think its irritating Greg. He seems to have presumed I would be providing more entertainment for him. He's staring out the window, at the beautiful garden, and I watch him in his jeans and jumper watching the birds outside. He steps back, turns towards me and smiles lazily. Perhaps I was wrong about his mood. I push myself up on my elbows and smile back as he saunters over. He pushes my slip up round my waist, slides his hands under the waist of my knickers and pulls them off. I'm lying on my back, horizontally across the bed, with my legs bent, and he kneels on the floor in front of me and kisses all the way down, while he's stroking my stomach with one hand and my clitoris with the other. It turns me on that he's still fully clothed and I can feel his jumper against my legs as he holds them open. I know he's worried about doing this right and it feels strange at first, but I'll find myself craving it over and over. His nose rubs against my clit, while he probes his tongue into me over and over, before running it up to circle my swollen bud. He's treating my clit the way he does my nipples and its having the same effect only a thousand times bigger. I gasp in pleasure/pain as he drags his teeth over it at the same time as he pushes his fingers inside me. He pushes in, out, in and sucks hard on my clit as I feel my body tense and clamp my thighs round his head as every muscle in me shudders. I whimper, exhale deeply and release him from my grasp. He smiles, "I was having trouble breathing, love, but it's not a bad way to go I suppose...". He rests his head against my leg and traces little patterns on the other with his fingers. What will linger in my senses for longest is the absolute softness of his hair brushing against my thigh and how in the afterglow I loved to open my hand and run it through my fingers like silk.

I fall asleep and when I wake it's dark in the room and he's sprawled out beside me. I feel guilty for sleeping all afternoon, so I decide to return the favour of affection. Softly I roll back over and trail kisses down his chest, stomach and the line of hair I find so sexy. I keep butterfly kissing till I'm where his skin is so sensitive he wakes and I see a smile spread over his sleepiness. I like making him hot. I'm so in love I love how he tastes and I like hearing his breathing quicken, like feeling I unbalance him. He's quiet when he comes, I'm not, I'm noisy, 'cause I'm always louder than him and it turns him on. Now I've finished he looks fragile and shaky, so I kiss his neck and stroke his hair. We lie on our sides and he wraps his arms around me tightly, nuzzling into my hair and kissing my shoulder. I cover his hand with mine and interlace my fingers with his. I kiss his hand, "I love you", I whisper in to the darkness and he must already be asleep because he does not reply.