Creatures of the Wind

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

He knocked on the passenger window and waited. A part of me knew he'd been behind me all the while, stalking me like the predator he was as I walked from my office building. There really was no choice left. I made my choice years ago when I let him kiss me and lost myself to him; there had never really been a way out after. The dark parts of him affixed themselves to mine so seamlessly that they would probably never be severed.

I unlocked the door and took a breath. My eyes were glazed over in the rearview mirror and my cheeks were flushed. It sounds melodramatic and cheesy, but the addict in me knew I was about to have a fix, and as much as I hated myself for being so weak, I was also thanking myself for giving in.

Just one more time, I thought.

How many addicts have thought that and overdosed?

Andrew opened the door and made me wait. He didn't even bend over to look at me. He just stood there, waiting. I'd always admired his patience. Maybe he was debating if he should go through with it, or maybe he was tormented by his own desire to escape, to be free of me and this endless battle between us. Maybe he was just enjoying making me sit there with the knowledge that I had once again surrendered. Knowing him, it was very likely that last part that kept him standing there. Eventually he sat and shut the door, and then it was like our separation never happened. I didn't look at him. He pushed my dress up a little and put his hand on my bare thigh, and I turned the car on and drove back to my place.

---

My house is a tiny thing that everyone likes but no one envies. It's cozy enough for me, but I know my friends wonder how I don't go crazy living in it. They all have families now. I'm sure they envision their kids and spouses hanging all over them whenever they want a quiet moment, and it's true that if I married and had children I would have to move. For now, it suits me just fine..

Andrew told me once it was a dump, but I knew he secretly loved it. He drunkenly confessed once that he thought it was a fairy cottage. Every now and then I caught him studying it, his eyes admiring as they catalogued each corner.

When we got back to my place, Andrew walked into my living room and ran his hand over everything as if to check it was the same as the last time he was there. He picked up a book from the coffee table and flipped through it. I took the opportunity to finally appreciate him. He'd let his dark brown hair grow longer; it was almost wild. He looked thinner than the last time I saw him, and slightly older. Grief that I had missed those new wrinkles form, all the changes in him, filled me, like it always did.

Leaving him to it, I went into the kitchen and poured us wine. I debated telling him he'd have to leave once we finished it. That maybe we should just catch up and prevent another disaster from happening. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I could handle it anymore. If I had my phone on me rather than in my purse in the other room, I'd have texted my friend, Ash. She would have provided me with a speech to say and a script so I'd know how to act it out.

She, along with the rest of our friends, was baffled and frustrated with us.

"Just end things, for the love of God," she told me when I showed up at her house, weeping because I'd found out he was engaged briefly. "You're killing yourself."

If you've never experienced that kind of love, I guess I understand why you might think you could walk away from it. I've heard it described as an itch, as an obsession, but it's so much more than that. It's walking into a room and thinking you've forgotten something all the time. It's waking in the middle of the night and being unable to go back to sleep because you wonder what he's doing. It's hating him and loving him in equal measures, regretting every kiss but also every second apart. It's hating yourself, most of all, for your weakness. It's feeing so sick with desire that you've forgotten what normalcy feels like. It's thinking you'd freely and easily give yourself up if you could only sink into him, become a part of him. It's an addiction that seems sillier than others--it's not a substance or an activity like gambling--but it's just as real. It's devastating but necessary. It's a compulsion.

I thought of all this as I poured. As much as I wished I could stop myself, I wanted him more. I'd take on all the pain of what would come after if it just meant we could spend a few hours together.

Right before I walked out, I heard Andrew humming something I couldn't identify. I knew he hummed only when he was really content, and it made my heart and eyes burn. I felt content, too. More than. I couldn't remember the last time I felt so energized, so... activated. I felt like I could sit at my desk and write a best-selling novel. I felt like I could finally tackle my attic, or call my problematic sister, or run five miles. I felt like myself again for the first time since we last met.

It sounds strange, given how I've described it, but there were no obstacles between us. We weren't cheating on anyone. We weren't living hours apart. We'd loved each other since we met in a speech class in college. We were each other's first everything--first time, first love, first traumatic breakup. As much as we loved one other, we tried to accept that we just didn't work together. Every time we decided to be official, we started viciously fighting. He became jealous and territorial. I became paranoid and shrewish. Our friends unfairly took my side a lot of the time, but I probably needed it more. Our friends joked he'd corrupted me, but it was a mutual corruption they couldn't understand. And so we tried to give each other space, avoided each other at parties, ignored each other if we had to be in the same room. We'd last six months or so, sabotage whatever relationship we were in, and fall back into each other. It was toxic and doomed, but it just felt too good to stop. I didn't want to give him up, almost as much as I wished I'd never met him.

He was looking at some new prints I'd put on the wall when I came into the room. He took the wine from me and gestured to one.

"That's hideous."

It was an abstract piece that a friend had forced me into buying. I'd left it sitting in my guest room for ages, but I found myself appreciating it a few weeks earlier. It was a mixture of reds and pinks and blues. The title was "Love's Chaos". It seemed fitting for me.

"We can't all have blank white walls."

Andrew took a drink of his wine and shook his head. "I put some stuff up. You'd hardly recognize it."

I squinted my eyes at him. "You put some stuff up."

"Okay," he said with a small smile, "it was an ex."

A stone dropped into my stomach. "Must've been serious if she was decorating your apartment."

He wasn't kind enough to break eye contact when he said, "It was."

I backed up into the wall and leaned my head back to study him. I wasn't sure why this felt safer than standing a few inches away; he could cage me in there if he felt like it. "What happened?"

He shrugged and licked his wine-stained lips. "What always happens."

The wind kicked up outside, making my little house groan with the effort of staying up. It was supposed to storm later that night. I was thinking how typical that was when he approached me. His fingers touched my lips.

"What are you thinking about?"

I kissed a fingertip and said, "The weather."

Because that was easier than thinking of him with someone else, letting her into his life, letting her follow him into places I couldn't.

Andrew gave me another one of his small smiles.

"I've missed you," I whispered.

He leaned on the wall beside me and let out a weary sigh. "It's been a long time. Maybe the longest." He took hold of my hand and squeezed. He wasn't normally a hand holder but I assumed that meant he missed me, too. I knew him well enough to know he'd never say it.

"I wish things were different," I said.

He moved in front of me and ran his hands down my sides, then fisted the bottom of my dress. "Maybe this wouldn't be as good if they were."

He touched his tongue to my neck, ending the conversation. He kissed across to my throat, up to my jaw and then finally landed on my mouth. He was an aggressive kisser, a fact that ruined me for all other men. Guys will promise you that they'll ruin you, but they don't really mean it, or they don't understand what that means. Andrew truly ruined me. All I could think of when others kissed me was their kisses were the equivalent of damp, limp handshakes.

"Kate," he breathed against my mouth.

"Let's go to the bedroom," I begged, my voice thin and breathy.

Andrew ignored me, keeping his dark eyes on his hands as they ran over my body with a possessive interest that made me weak. "I want you here, like this."

My pussy had never been so wet, I decided, but that assertion would only last until next time. I loved when he took me roughly, when he needed me so much that it didn't matter where it happened as long as it happened fast.

He took my blonde hair in his hands, looking at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I can't wait to be inside you."

"Then fuck me."

He yanked my dress down. I heard the fabric stretching, figured it was probably ruined. It didn't matter. He ripped off my bra and immediately took a nipple into his hot mouth with a pleased grunt. He nibbled a bit on it and then circled it with his tongue. I knew he loved my breasts--they were the best attribute of my body. His hands pushed up my dress so that it was just a pathetic scrap of fabric only covering my stomach.

I tried to touch him, to unbuckle his pants, but he swatted me away. He feasted on my breasts and sometimes flicked his eyes up to mine, making me hotter and wetter with the eye contact.

Then he stepped back, shoving his pants and boxers down. "Get on your knees," he said in that gravelly voice that belonged to moments like this.

I followed his orders. He touched my jaw and pushed my head up with it. His fingers slid forcefully into my mouth, and I sucked on them until he was overcome with the need to put his cock inside instead. I loved to suck his cock and he knew it, which made him love it even more. The familiar weight of it on my tongue had me squeezing my thighs together. His hand went to my hair, tugging it to guide me as I moved my mouth off and on.

"You love it, don't you," Andrew said. It wasn't a question because we both knew I did.

I made a noise in agreement and he cursed. His hand tightened into a fist in my hair.

"I should just come down your throat and leave you like that since you love it so much."

I whimpered around his cock as he thrust it faster.

"You thought you could ignore me tonight, didn't you? You made me follow you all the way to your car. We know this doesn't work that way." He brought his other hand up to my hair and used both to fuck my mouth harder. "Your pussy doesn't deserve my cock."

I clutched his ass as it tightened and released, loving every second of his need.

"Lucky for you," he panted, "I want that pussy. Get up."

I popped off his cock with a filthy noise and stood. My hair was wild, my eyes were watery, and I knew from experience that my mouth was messy, wet and red.

He confirmed this when he stroked some hair down and said, "Look at you. You're a mess."

Then he pulled me up almost violently, throwing me against the wall. He stroked his cock a few times and then let it slide through my pussy lips. His cock stroked me there a few times until it caught on my entrance. We both gasped as he pushed inside. It took some effort on his part to open me up; it had been a while for me. He groaned and worked his cock into me until he was buried deep.

"Every time I think I'll finally be bored," he said. "I'll finally be rid of this."

I closed my eyes and nodded.

He fucked me hard and fast once he knew I was settled. It hurt but it was so, so good, desperate and hungry and rough. His hands took a breast each, and he squeezed them as he thumbed my nipples.

"I've been wanting this so bad," I moaned.

"Open your eyes."

I complied and met his fierce gaze. He let out a deep breath and kissed me. His thrusts lost their rhythm and became choppy, a sign he was close. One of this hands lowered and began circling my clit, alternating between light and hard. My pussy clenched around him.

"Fuck." He picked up speed again. "Do that again and you're going to have cum running down your thighs."

I squeezed again. He gave me a look and pressed on my clit hard. The orgasm came upon me before I knew I was going to come. I contracted tightly on his cock, losing my mind as he fucked me through it.

"Fuuuck, Kate. So tight."

In a quick, hard thrust, he shoved his cock in deep and rested his head against my collarbone. I felt it jump, and then a rush of warmth filled me. My pussy gave another flutter around him, welcoming his cum, and he groaned. He pushed in and out slowly, letting me milk him, and then he sighed heavily and pulled out. As he promised, cum ran down my thighs. He pulled away and ran his fingers through the mess, scooping some of his cum onto his fingertips and pushing it back inside me. He met my eyes with intensity that could make me cry.

"I'll never be bored of it," Andrew said.

"Me either."

He stayed the night, wrapped around me. It never ceased to surprise me that Andrew was a cuddler. We fell into a deep sleep, feeling the kind of peace we only knew once we fucked.

Then the morning came too soon. Dreadful warm sunlight brightened my room. I felt him awaken and tense, before carefully relaxing. I would have been amused at the familiarity of it all if it weren't so heartbreaking. He pulled back from me, probably assessing if I was awake. I pretended to still be asleep. Whether he knew I always pretended, I have no idea.

He stood and slowly dressed, taking care to be quiet. For a moment, I imagined bursting from the bed and tackling him to the floor. "I'm awake!" I'd scream. "You're not leaving! You're not creeping out of here like I'm some horrifying mistake! You're not doing your walk of regret again! We can make it work this time!"

But that wasn't how we played this game.

He woke up and felt regret first. I wouldn't feel the regret until later when I was washing him off of me.

Andrew sat on the edge of the bed to put his shoes on, and then he was up and out. The only evidence he had been there were the marks on my thoroughly abused body and his half drunk wine glass. It would take me a full two days before I could bear to wash it.

But in that moment, I opened my eyes and took in the bright new day that I wouldn't be able to appreciate, wondering and hoping and dreading when we'd be together again.

It was an addiction, I said before. But it's also a curse. A goddamn torment.

I inhaled his smell from the pillow and smiled.

x

Thank you to Bebop3 for the editing and words of support.