Lost in the Moment

I'd slept for just a little over an hour in two days by the time I got home from my trip. Emma's going away party was planned for just a few hours after my touchdown. I was in a haze as I spoke to the woman next to me on the plane, trying to explain what non-monogamy was without it sounding like either a cult or an invitation after it slipped out that I was going to my partner's partners house that evening for a dinner party. She asked the predictable questions about jealousy and freedom and I entertained the conversation all the way to the cab stand, but my mind was mostly on seeing Emma after having been away. I evaded the invitation that I felt was coming from my new friend politely, slipping into a cab with a small wave goodbye.

When I'd landed, Emma shot me a text welcoming me back. I read her message over and over in the cab on my way home, smiling as I pictured Emma saying it all in one excited breath:

"Yay, you are back!!! Thanks for coming tonight and OH btw, I had a dream about you last night again and I woke up and touched myself thinking it."

I could picture the way that the corners of her mouth turn up when filthy things come from it and the contradiction that those kinds of words always have to her sunny smile and dreamy eyes. She speaks English and French fluently, often blending the two languages in the same sentence when she's excited. I read her words one more time, pocketed my phone and closed my eyes for a moment while thinking about holding her in my arms.

When I got home, I emptied my suitcase and started a load of laundry, counting the number of minutes before I'd have to leave again. I had just enough time to shut my eyes for half an hour and laying across my bed in the afternoon sun, I fell asleep fast and hard. I hit snooze twice when my alarm went off and then forced myself out of bed and into the shower, where I found that my hot water heater was out again. The spray of cold water helped wake me up as I shivered and washed away the feeling and smell of airports and travel.

Emma texted me that she was running late and that she'd meet me at my apartment on the way to Daniel's so we could go together from there. We met outside of my building grabbed a cab, and slide into the backseat, close to one another. She threw her leg over mine and I rested my hand high on her thigh, squeezing it just a little. Her golden hair twisted in the breeze from the open window and her beautiful blue-green eyes sparkled in the sun that poured into the back of the car. She smiled at me and giggled a little as she sang a children's song in french that she wanted to know if I'd ever heard of, telling me about her campfire nights with her family while she'd been away. I suddenly had the strongest feeling that someday I'd be there with her in that little family home and I realized for the first time that maybe I wanted that kind of life with her.

We'd been seeing each other non-monogamously for a few months and her going away party was being thrown by one of her other partners; I'd met Daniel on one other occasion and his partner Harper on a separate one. This was the first time the four of us were to spend time all together.

Emma was moving to San Francisco to take classes in coding and she'd had the plan to do so for almost as long as I'd known her. How long she would be gone depended on how well things worked out for her there, but I knew that it might be for good.

She was leaving the next day on another short trip for a friend's wedding, so we had just that night to see each other after a week apart. She would be gone again for the weekend and we would have only two nights left together when she returned. Daniel had offered to host the going away so she could get friends in one place and say her goodbyes to them then, saving the remaining nights in town to spend with him, or with me.

We were the first to arrive at his place and the three of us set to work in the kitchen chopping and peeling vegetables for dinner. Emma was making a vegetarian shepherds pie, so I chopped beets and sweet potatoes while she sliced cucumbers; the kitchen was warm and in my sleeplessness, I moved back and forth between states of hyper-awareness and dreaming on my feet. The sound of the knife on the cutting board, the whirring of fan blades and their soft voices speaking sweetly to one another as summer crept through the open door all made my head swim just a little.

"Aren't you supposed to be on another continent or something?" Harper asked when she saw me upon entering the room.

"I just got back tonight," I said and I looked up to find her gone again.

I found myself alone in the kitchen for a moment, slicing vegetables and thinking that it might be the last time that I saw any of the people who were there. Emma was the common thread and in my dreamy state, it felt a bit like that thread was unraveling.

Others arrived, none of whom I'd really met before and all of them were colorful, interesting people. It can certainly be said that Emma's life is every bit as interesting and vibrant as she is. Everyone gathered in the kitchen to talk as she and Daniel finished making dinner and Harper laid out the things Emma's friends had brought for the pot luck.

The topic of conversation moved from sci-fi to philosophy to porn; in some moments I was too quiet and in others, I spoke too much. In a fit of exhausted excitement, I stepped carelessly on something Daniel was saying while giving my judgment on a company that I don't particularly care for in adult entertainment. I fell quiet finally and listened to the stories of others instead, learning bits and pieces that I'd never known before about Emma's life from others that she'd shared it with and loved and who would also miss her when she was gone.

It was a good night and when it came to an end, people said goodbye to Emma. I stayed in the kitchen and started to clean up not wanting to be in the way, rinsing dishes and clearing the table as the conversation continued in the next room. While standing at the sink, I saw Harper coming back into the kitchen in search of another drink and I turned off the water, listening to the drip slow as she approached, hovered, decided what her move would be.

She picked up the spatula and offered me a taste of the shepherd's pie, which I hesitated to take, before giving in and taking a bite.

"You have a lot of shame, don't you?" she asked and I laughed. I couldn't tell if she really believed it or she was trying to get me to argue to the contrary, but the fact was that I felt no shame standing there with her.

We went together into the next room, but Emma and Daniel seemed to be deep in conversation, so Harper turned us both around and we headed back into the kitchen.

"Let's let them have their moment," she said.

I passed her and went back to the table to wipe it down and when I turned to go back to the sink, she attempted to get me to stop what I was doing by putting her hands on my chest and pushing me back toward the wall. I let her move me at first before I dug in and stopped her. She was tipsy and I didn't want things to get out of hand, so I was trying not to be too rough. She taunted me once, twice as she shoved against me and then I had her wrists in my hands and was backing her across the room until we hit the washing machine. She fought against me, insisting she could overcome me and then told me she hated that I was stronger than she thought I would be. We were incredibly close and the more she struggled the firmer I held her, pinning both of her wrists in one hand over her head as she brought her face inches from my own. She breathed heavily, vexed because she wasn't getting her way.

"I'm not going to kiss you!" she proclaimed.

"Who said that was even on the table? That's awfully presumptuous of you" I answered, scolding softly but meaning it.

"I saw the look in your eyes," she said, the conviction in her voice waining before the end of her sentence.

Whether I wanted to kiss her or not was irrelevant because we were at Emma's going away and I was standing in her partner's kitchen. Being in an open relationship doesn't mean there aren't boundaries and I wasn't going to test or write them just then, no matter how many of my buttons Harper pushed.

"Let me go please" she said and I did immediately.

"Thank you," she said quietly but firmly.

She eyed me with contempt and I wondered what it was that she was hoping to provoke me into doing or if she even knew herself. It felt like there was a reason, but in my exhaustion, it was eluding me.

"You aren't switchy at all, are you?" she asked.

I shook my head at her more than her question and she looked disappointed.

Daniel came back into the room then and I used it as an excuse to go find Emma, leaving him with Harper in the kitchen. Standing in the doorway to Emma's bedroom I watched her pack and moments later Harper came into the hallway. She paced behind me like she was stalking prey, patting me on the top of the head condescendingly on one pass. I turned around and shot her a look and Emma shot me one in turn, curious about what was happening, but she said nothing.

Emma gathered up the last of her things and we were ready to leave, so she went to say goodbye to Daniel. Harper left them alone again, walking toward me in the doorway and while Emma and Daniel were wrapped up in each other, she smacked me hard in the face just before she leaned in to hug me. She wrapped her arms around mine tightly after, trying to pin them to my sides, as she gave me a kiss where she'd smacked me. I was stunned and doing my best to keep my calm when the level of absurdity in it washed over me.

I laughed, finding it entirely ridiculous that she'd done it. I could see over her shoulder the look of uncertainty on Daniel's face; he'd heard it but not seen it and checked in on us. The warmth of her handprint on my face and the vague ringing in my ears were bringing me back to the present and while I wouldn't dream of letting most people get away with something like that, I wasn't going to be provoked.

I smiled at Harper and she smiled back as I slipped my arms around her waist. She tensed and relaxed as though she was still unsure what she wanted to so and we backed away, distancing ourselves slowly, unwilling to turn our backs on one another.

I was dreaming on my feet then; I felt wide awake but nothing seemed real. I hugged Daniel goodbye and Emma and I headed back to my place to spend the night. We walked a few blocks together in the warm cloudy evening to the main road and found a cab to take us home.

I sat close to Emma, watching as the car cut quickly through the streets. The windows were down and the wind was on my face as little drops of rain splattered me. Emma took my hand in hers and I looked at her beautiful smile, happy to know her, happy to have her, happy to be hers.

****

When we got to my apartment, Emma dropped her things in the dining room on the way to my bedroom. I followed her and found her bent over my bed, looking at me sideways through the doorway with want in her eyes. I pinned her wrists behind her back in one hand, running the other under her dress and over the thin fabric of her panties. I could feel how wet she already was beneath them and the little gasp that escaped her throat when my hand made contact made me smile.

"Tell me what you thought about when you touched yourself this morning," I said.

Her mouth turned up at the corners and parted slightly as I ran my fingers back and forth between her legs. She raised onto her toes and tilted her hips as I started to pull my hand away, which she knew was the warning that if she wanted me to continue, she'd have to do as she was told.

Her voice was barely a whisper as she gave me the details and her legs shook as she came close to coming. I wanted it to last so I slowed the rhythm of my touch so she could concentrate and catch her breath. She told me about all the things that had run through her head that morning as I pulled her panties down and ran my hand over the warmth and the wetness between her legs, sending a new shiver that I watched travel from her hips to her knees. Her wrists still pinned in my hand I stood her up roughly, turned her to face me and kissed her hard before pressing her back down on the bed, sliding my fingers inside of her.

The exhaustion, the slap in the face from Harper, the miles on the road and in the air, none of it mattered anymore because I was close enough to taste Emma, to touch her, smell her, to see the neediness in her eyes and hear it in her voice as she pleaded for me to fuck her. I pulled my shirt over my head and she pulled open the button on my jeans, both of us all out of patience for waiting. I forgot just then what it was like to want or need anything but her.

I was already hard when I climbed onto the bed, lifting her with one arm beneath me into a better position. She told me more things that she'd imagined while pushing herself against my cock to take all of it deep inside of her and her mouth fell open when she managed it. She was still for a moment as she got used to the feel and then she started whispering again. I rocked my hips and fucked her slowly at first as words poured out of her in spurts of half-remembered moments about my hands, her hands, my mouth. The faster she spoke the harder we fucked and she grasped for the words in French and in English to tell me all the different ways she wanted to be taken and what she wanted to take from me in return.

"Do you want me to wait?" she asked and I told her not to. "I want you to come with me" she pleaded, but she was already over the edge.

She was cradled in my arms when she came and heat poured off of us into the cool air of the room as she took a moment to catch her breath. I was still inside of her, still hard as she squirmed and tightened herself against me, shaking, panting, sweating as she tried to hold on to that feeling, that thought, that moment. She closed her eyes finally and let go, collapsing into my arms, lost in the moment.

*****

We woke early in the morning at the first glimpse of the sun, though I can't tell you why we both happened to wake. We found ourselves looking into each other's eyes in the first light after having only fallen asleep a few hours before. She smiled at me and I kissed her forehead, then her lips and in that dreamy state, our hands started to wander.

We drifted in and out of sleep, finding restful moments dotted by lucid ones of touching and feeling and being there together, not wanting to waste any of the time we had left.

Just after dawn; she knelt on the bed in front of me facing the window, touching herself. The morning light was pouring in and the outline of her strong, slender body against the view of the city made me left me in awe of her. Maybe she felt my need or maybe it was need of her own, but she reached back just then taking my cock in her hand, squeezing it in her fingers and it responded to her touch instantly. I moved up on to my knees behind her and she leaned against me. I was lost for a moment in the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her body as it leaned against mine and the honey musk scent of her. I could hear the change in her breathing as she lifted herself higher on her knees and pushed herself back on to my cock. She brought herself down hard like she needed all of me at once and I felt the shiver crawl up her body as she took me in.

I wrapped my arms around her, crushing her into my chest as she played with herself and we rocked violently into each other, crashing together like we were trying to make each other give up, give in, yield.

People in the building across the way started to arrive at work and we fucked hard in front of the window, daring anyone to look in, wanting to be seen as we got closer, closer, closer...

She didn't ask to come that morning; without a word or a warning she came hard and when she did, so did I. That single moment stretched back from the one in which we'd met into a future we couldn't see. We never made any promises between us of forever, but in that moment, we were always.

We collapsed on the bed together and she rested against me, her heartbeat slowing as she caught her breath. Her body glimmered gold in the morning sun and I marveled at the shape and contour of it as she ran her fingers across my cheek and then clasped my face in her hands firmly.

"You are so fucking beautiful," she said to me, but the truth is she's the beautiful one and I was just fucking lucky to be there with her then, to get to love her in those moments of today and yesterday and any tomorrows that we get.