Sick of Losing Soulmates

There was a series of quick motions, as he tugged a pair of jeans on under the towel and pulled it away from his body. Holding it up in her direction, he offered it to her. The motion was a bit quick, and Samara caught a flash of the young man's penis as he tugged his jeans upward. Just the top of it, where the shaft met his groin, and the small indent in the pelvis above it. Not bad, she thought, and then laughed inwardly at her own appraisal.

She'd never thought of herself as a cougar--young men had never done anything for her. But she had to admit, she was admiring Carter. Despite his youth, he didn't seem much younger than her. And he was respectful, holding the towel until she stepped forward to take it.

Drying herself quickly, she handed it back to him. Pulling on her pants and blouse, Samara took a seat on a rock beside him.

"By the way," she leaned over and tapped his shoulder with one finger, causing him to lower his arm, "I never said you couldn't look. I just asked if you were going to."

"Oh," he drew out the word, "Now you tell me."

They both grinned at one another for a moment. He raised the bottle, tugging out the cork with his teeth and dropping it onto his bunched-up towel. Instead of drinking, he held it out to her.

"With all respect," she nodded toward the bottle, "you first."

His face showed confusion for a moment, and then smoothed, "Oh--smart. Right. Strange man, random bottle," Lifting the bottle, he showed her the level of the rye and then took two long swallows before showing it to her once more. It had definitely gone down. He offered it to her once more.

This time, Samara accepted. The whiskey burned on the way down, but it was a pleasant burn. After the coolness of the water, the heat settled at the bottom of her stomach. She took a second sip, and then passed the bottle back to the young man. He set it down, then reached behind him and turned down the volume on the speaker slightly. The thrumming chords of Wild in the Streets made the mesh front of the speaker vibrate.

"So, why'd your parents leave Australia?"

"My mum's family is from Rochester. We moved back to Wisconsin to be closer to them. Her dad had colon cancer, passed away a couple of years ago."

"You working?" She asked.

"Here?" He raised his eyebrows slightly, "Not in Malaysia. I did some work in Singapore, but mostly I'm just traveling on savings. I work as a tour guide, back at home."

"A tour guide?" Samara's curiosity piqued.

"Take people into the wilderness, paddle around, carry their gear, show them some animals. I mostly work around Lake Michigan, but sometimes we head up to Superior or Nipigon." He shrugged, taking another drink from the bottle of rye and passing it back to her, "I used to do a lot of camping in Australia, so it just... transitioned well. How about you?"

"Financial analyst," she answer, simply.

"Neat. For who?"

"Grocers. Zehrs, Loblaws, Food Basics. That kind of thing."

"Oh," Carter glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, "So you make, like, real money, huh?"

Samara laughed. She gave him a secretive look, and then turned to look out over the water as she sipped from the neck of the whiskey bottle. When she dragged her bottom lip over her teeth, she saw Carter furtively readjust his position on the ground. She kept her smile hidden away.

"Yeah, guess I do."

As they sat on the rocky beach, the tide grew slowly higher and the liquor grew slowly lower. Samara found herself enjoying Carter's company; he kept up with her, quiet in the right moments and joking in the others. She learned that he planned to become a conservation officer, when he was done travelling, that his mother's name was Wendy and his father's name was James. They traded stories from their travels; her about waking up in a bar near Taman Tunku Mahmud and having to hitch a ride on top of a mule cart back, him about living on a Singaporean goose sanctuary for eight days and having to politely dodge the advances of the gay couple who ran it.

They talked about bisexuality; hers, and unlike a lot of men, he didn't make her feel weird about it. There were no off-handed hints. He asked her questions politely, nodding along to her answers. He was straight, but made her laugh with a story about accidently leaving his number for a wrong bartender and texting another man for nearly two weeks before realizing the mistake.

The night wore on, and Samara found herself relaxing. Partially because the whiskey had made the thrumming of the heat become a more pleasant buzz, and partially because of Carter. She forgot to drown the letter. For a while, she forgot about the letter completely.

Finally, he pushed himself to his feet and stretched. Samara lay back, admiring the way that the dampness from the rocks made his shirt cling to the hollow of his back. Rolling his shoulders, he offered a hand down and helped her to her feet.

"Alright, that's the night for me," he paused for a moment, slinging his towel over his shoulder and tucking both speaker and bottle into a carry bag, "Are you close? Can I walk you home?"

Despite how much she'd enjoyed his company, Samara still hesitated. She turned the offer over in her mind for a moment, and then nodded.

"You know what? That sounds nice. Thanks."

As they walked side by side down the small dirt path, between the damp overhang of blackwood and mangosteen, Samara found herself glancing over at her companion. There was something strange about him, she thought. Not uncomfortably strange--the exact opposite of that. Strange because of her own lack of uncomfortability. Normally, with any man she had just met, walking through a dark forest would have been Samara's nightmare.

But Carter had something about him. Simplicity. A physical ease. A languid, swinging, comfortable easiness. His hands hung loose at his sides, but when she glanced over she could see a slight tension in his neck and shoulders; he was staring away from her, into the dew-wet forest. He appeared to have forgotten her entirely. He looked, despite the sounds of wildlife that surrounded them, like the only living thing on earth. He had a certainty about him, that didn't line up with his twenty-four years.

And, in that moment, she realized something. Something that, once realized, cannot be un-realized. She wanted him. It happened like a card trick; one thought slipped out of the deck, shown to her, slipped back in by sleight of hand. The thought disappeared, but the knowledge of it remained. As Samara walked, she walked side by side with that realization. It skipped between them.

"This is me," she announced. They had reached the end of the path, and she saw the standing pole-lamp at the side of the dirt pathway that led off at an angle toward her porch. The glowing glass of it was worried by bugs. She could see their tiny forms, black against the brightness, skipping one way and then the other.

"Well, then." Carter looked at her, for the first time in minutes. His chin inclined in a small nod, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Sam. Maybe we'll see one another again."

"Yeah," Samara nodded back.

He turned, making to walk the opposite way down the road--the path, that acted as a road. As he did, Samara was struck by a sudden feeling. She didn't know how she knew it; it was like before, like a turned-over playing card. If Carter walked away, she would never see him again. The certainty of it struck in her throat. She wanted to call after him, but couldn't seem to speak around the weight of nothingness that choked her.

"Actually--" Carter turned suddenly, and then paused when he realized that she was still staring after him. She saw a slight widening in the brown of his eyes, a tenseness to the corners of his open mouth. He felt it, too. He knew the same thing that she knew, in the same way that she knew it.

"Yeah," Samara repeated, nodding the same way that she had before.

When she heard his footsteps following her back to the porch, she felt no surprise. He set his bag down near the steps. When he sat beside her on the porch swing, it felt right. Easy. He made no move to touch her, instead opening his arms so that one hung over the armrest and the other sprawled over the back of the wooden bench. His hand was close enough to touch her shoulder, if he stretched out his fingers; but he didn't. He only stared at her, blinking. Waiting for her to speak.

Instead of speaking, she reached behind her to pull the letter from her back pocket and handed it to him. He turned it over, studying it, and glanced at her for permission before pulling it open with his thumb and sliding out the sheet of paper. Moisture had made it go strangely translucent, and smudged the blue-black ink of the pen. He read in silence, and then began to nod.

"I'm sorry. That shit's tough." They were simple words, but Samara once more felt a knot in her throat. Maybe because they came from somebody who knew; knew what she felt, knew that sometimes words didn't measure up, knew that sometimes people didn't measure up.

He understood. That was enough.

"S'alright," she mumbled.

"Nah," she caught the hint of drawling Australian enter his familiar Wisconsin accent during his opening word, "It's not. It's shit."

She nodded in agreement. Folding the letter back into the envelope, he handed it to her. But instead of letting go, he pressed slightly through the moisture-heavy paper, in a way that let her feel his fingers against her palm. For a long moment, they only stared at one another.

This close, she could see that the darkness had played a trick on her. She'd thought his eyes were deep brown, but as they stood under the dim, watery light of the porchlight, she realized that they were not. His eyelashes cast tiny shadows, in the downturned light, on his narrow cheekbones. The eyes above them were the exact color of caramel--and shiny, like the hard candies you got at mid-class restaurants.

They were both still holding on to the letter, one on each side. The tips of their fingers were almost close enough to touch. As they stared at one another, Samara could feel herself being drawn into the moment; part of her wanted nothing more than to give over to it completely, but the other half still stood at a slightly further distance, watching and judging.

He's so young, that part of her brain negotiated with the closer, hornier side. This close, she could smell the young man; the smell of the ocean that still clung to his chest and shoulders, mixing with the somehow cleaner, saltier smell of fresh sweat. He smelled like old sunlight, and faint cologne, and freedom. He smelled so good that her mouth nearly began to water. Samara could feel the slow path that a drop of her own sweat took, down the hollow of her temple and following the curve of her cheek.

"It's not really--" she began, but felt the words whisked away from her as Carter leaned forward.

She had never been the type of woman to melt in anybody's arms; and she still wasn't, but it was close. She felt the stone-scraped smoothness of his palms, and the strong fingers connected to them, as he reached up and took her face between them. She felt the inside of his forearms squeeze against her breasts, and his stomach press against hers. One moment they were sitting, and the next they were on their feet. Her hip bumped the swing, causing it to rock sideways and rattle woodenly against its chains on their way to the wall. The letter fluttered down to the porch boards, forgotten.

And then his lips were against hers. Her eyes had closed, in the first heartbeat of the kiss, as his mouth opened hers. As though only one were possible at a time--sight or feel. And she could feel. The heat that bled from his body, beneath his clothes. The slipperiness of his tongue as it moved to take her own from her mouth. The salt that lingered along the bridge of his lips, the strands of her hair that made a messy pattern on his forehead, the rhythmic thudding of his heart that made a counterbeat to her own, which felt almost frantically fast.

She felt the second part of her brain, the part standing at a distance, knocked off its feet as their bodies came crashing together. In reality, she knew it had actually been quite gentle, but it certainly hadn't felt that way. She felt like the edge of the ocean; as though she were a rock, and he was the wave which rolled in to come crashing over it. Her hands grasped at him desperately. His had gone lower, sliding down the sides of her body until he held her, in a steady open-handed grip, by the waist. She rocked her hips into him, pushing the bottom of their bodies out from the wall even as she drew him deeper into the kiss.

They felt underwater. Even as her mouth opened against his, Samara felt surprised not to feel the sensation of bubbles fleeing upward through the small spaces between them. There was an undercurrent, as well, which brought them together through the pushed-open door and tumbling onto the pull-out futon in the room which doubled as her bedroom and living room; it was not quite sexual desire, she thought with the small part of her brain which could still think clearly. It was more like... shared separation, or perhaps shared seclusion. Like waking up in a jailcell of loneliness to find that somehow, remarkably, somebody had taken up the cell beside her own.

Only when her back met the mattress did Samara realize that her tangle of hair was still damp with ocean water. She could feel the wetness of it working into the pillow behind her head and neck. But she didn't care--because Carter's mouth had left her own and begun working its way down her body. Since the porch, they had not exchanged a word, but her desire was obviously. Obvious by the way that her ankles wrapped around his calves, sliding to the back of his thighs as his mouth worked its way lower. She felt the swooping V of her blouse pushed apart by his chin. Her breath trembled, feeling the warm touch move lower still.

Finally, he took one of her nipples into his mouth. She felt the openness of it, first; the warmth and the wetness, and then the firm suction that pulled it deeper still. His tongue made a circular pattern around its top, and then pushed up from the bottom in a way that made her body arch in response. From her open mouth, she heard a whine sound in the otherwise bug-whirring, fan-whirring, body-whirring stillness of the room. It did not sound like her own voice.

He was young. He fucked young. The heels of his palms pressed down against the soft indents just above her hipbones, his mouth grasping eagerly at her skin, the firmness of the cock behind his jeans that pushed against her in a slightly rolling motion. Despite the fact that this was the first night in Malaysia that Samara hadn't spent with a glass of wine in her hand, she felt properly drunk for the first time. As if following the wooden blades of the overhead fan, the entire room seemed to be slowly spinning. She could hear the whoosh-whoosh of it, in her ears, following the pulse of her heartbeat.

"Wait--" she managed to gasp in the voice that was not her own. The pause in the movement of his tongue told her that he had heard her, was listening. She drew a deep, steadying breath, "--no protection."

She had a small bottle of water-based lubricant tucked in the top pocket of her suitcase. By the wetness she could feel between her thighs, she knew that it was unnecessary. No condoms. Veronica had been going to bring those, along with the small green fabric case of their toy collection.

But to her surprise, Carter only chuckled. Her second inhale became decidedly unsteady, feeling the vibration of it through his still-open mouth and against the skin of her left breast. Without a word, his right hand slid away from her waist and between her legs; caught between the front of his jeans and the sodden cloth of her underwear. She felt the slight curl of his forefingers, replacing the width and pressure of his pant-covered erection.

Samara felt nearly delirious as the fingers began to massage her, while his body moved a bit higher so that his head was beside hers. His voice was a low whisper, but with his lips held beside Samara's ear, it took up her entire world.

"Then I guess you'll just have to come on my fingers, won't you?"

Now, where the hell had a twenty-four year old learned the confidence to talk like that?

Part of her brain asked, and another much louder part shut the question out immediately: who cares, it replied. He was here, he was beautiful, and he could. She turned her head, catching his mouth in a kiss. As he moved his in answer, the fingers between her legs caught the side of her underwear and pulled it aside. She gasped into his mouth, feeling the front of them now stroking over the arousal-heightened slickness of the skin between her labia. His thumb stroked over the slightly raised bump of her clit, and Samara found herself fighting not to buck her hips into the man's cupped hand. Only when his fingers began to tease her entrance did he break the kiss, tilting his head to trace a line with his lips from the base of her neck to the bottom of her right earlobe.

"How delicious," the voice beside her ear had definitely taken on the hint of a growl, behind its already lowered whisper, "You're practically dripping on my fingers. So fucking hot," his teeth caught the bottom of her ear and her chest swelled with air as the ends of his fingers pushed a quarter of an inch inside of her. Not enough to be inside of her, not properly, but just enough to make her feel light-headed and desperate for it.

She whined her response. Almost without waiting for permission from her brain, Samara felt her hips pushing upward. Below her, Carter held his hand steady--not moving forward, but only letting her slide herself onto his fingers. Samara felt her breathing diffuse, hitching as the second knuckle of his fingers pushed her slightly wider. Still the hand didn't move. Only this thumb moved, in the pattern of an upside-down teardrop around the hood of her clitoris. It was nearly enough to drive her over the edge; either to insanity, or an orgasm.

"You want it like that, gorgeous? You want it that bad?" His chuckle, just above her ear, made Samara's spine tighten, "Show me."

The final two words were delivered in a different tone. Not teasing, and not quite inviting; almost provocatively. The same way somebody would deliver a challenge, like prove it or bring it on.

And she did. With a sound that came from lower in her throat than the ones previously had, Samara bucked herself on the young man's fingers. Her tightness pulled them slightly closer together, and he lowered his wrist about an inch to make it easier for her. Of all the things that Samara had done in bed, this was new--not being fingered, but fucking herself on somebodies hand. Beside her ear, as she drew back from the first, desperate thrust, she felt Carter's pent-up exhale.

He was kissing her cheek. He was licking the outer curve of her ear. He was breathing against the top of her neck. And all the while, the hand between her legs stayed perfectly steady, and the pattern of his thumb continued.

She was going to come. Samara could feel the tell-tale signs; the tension at the bottom of her back, the sudden weightlessness of it. The way her head fought to turn back on the top of her curved neck, the kick of her pulse on either side, the slight tremble in the hollow base of it. Her breathing was even faster still. No longer moving her chest, but pushing out the back of her stomach with each inhale and exhale, tensing further with each one.

"Now--!" She whined, the tone of her voice pleading. She didn't know what it was, that she was asking for, what it was she wanted. To cum. To cum--desperately, but something else.