A Man Who Stays
julian
I never really slept. I drifted somewhere around three, maybe four, with Alyssa asleep on my chest, and then I was awake again at five, staring at the ceiling.
I didn’t move, even with her body making my arm go numb, because there was nowhere on this earth I’d rather have been than right there, watching her sleep.
I’d spent the better part of two decades making sure this exact thing never happened to me.
Every woman before her kept a distance where they couldn’t reach anything that mattered.
I wasn’t looking for this, yet here Alyssa was anyway, asleep with her mouth hanging open and her guard all the way down.
I wanted her in my life. And to have her the way she deserved, I was going to have to take apart the entire framework I’d spent years building.
The careful machine I’d made of myself so nothing could get in far enough to take me down.
She was already in, past all of it. The machine had failed, and I wasn’t sorry about it.
Lying there thinking, I could see my father.
Not in the room, but back then. Lying on the floor beside a bed he couldn’t bring himself to sleep in anymore.
A big man knocked down to nothing, because the person he’d loved since he was ten years old was taken out of the world.
Love did that to him. That was what waited on the other side of letting somebody matter that much.
You handed them the power to end you, and prayed God let you keep them.
I shut my eyes until the picture faded. When I opened them she was still there.
Still breathing. And I made myself look at the choice I was making without flinching.
I could keep Alyssa at the edge of my life where losing her couldn’t level me, or I could have this.
Not both. And the thought of going back to the careful nothing I’d had the nerve to call a life? That was a no.
So… all in, then.
I don’t do things halfway. I wouldn’t know how.
If I was doing this, I was doing it the way I do everything that counts, which is completely, with everything I’ve got.
Even with my father on the floor in the back of my mind.
Even with no idea how to be a man who stays.
I’d figure out the how. Deciding is the part that matters, and I’d just done it, watching her sleep.
I wanted my head right before she woke, so I eased my arm out from under her and she frowned and resettled, but didn’t wake up.
I needed to go for a run. I found a notepad and wrote two lines.
Gone for a run. Don't go anywhere.
Left it on top of her phone and ran until the sky went gray and then pink at the edges, and somewhere in those miles I worked out how I was going to handle this.
Because it was going to require handling.
I was usually a particular kind of man in this area.
I didn’t do gentle as a long-term setting.
I could be demanding, and I didn’t hold back when I didn’t have to, and I’d never had a reason to.
With Alyssa it was going to be different.
I’d realized it the second I settled between her legs and felt her brace.
She’d angled away from me, like she was looking for somewhere to hide. Like her own pleasure was a chore a man would want to skip. Then she cried from being looked at. From being wanted out loud with nothing asked back.
A woman doesn’t get to that place by accident. Somebody gets her there slow, over years, until she stops knowing she’s hungry. The cold that went through me thinking about how she had been treated had nowhere to go, because the culprit was already in the ground.
She wasn’t inexperienced. She was unexplored.
Which was, in some ways, more delicate. I was going to have to be patient.
Careful. Learn her pace before I pushed a limit, let her lead wherever she wanted to go, and stay in that space, until she forgot what it felt like to brace.
Until being desired started being the thing she walked in expecting.
By the end of my run I had it mapped. Every way I’d take my time. Every limit I’d let her set. I’d give whatever she needed from me, for as long as she needed, at her pace. I was good with that. More than good.
Alyssa was still asleep when I got back.
I took a shower and when I came out she still hadn’t moved.
I stood in the doorway of the bathroom and looked at her.
One arm stretched into the space where I had been.
I crossed the room and got back into bed, slid behind her and settled her back against me.
Her hand found mine in her sleep and held it.
She started to wake up, and I pressed my lips to the top of her head. She tipped her face up and found me looking down at her.
“You showered?”
“Went for a run.”
“Without me?”
“You needed your sleep.”
“Mm. You smell good.” Then she kissed me with her hand on my face and the morning light coming through the curtains. She looked at me and smiled, then started moving down.
My first instinct was to stop her. I didn’t want her feeling like I expected her to. “Alyssa.” I caught her shoulder — patient, generous, I thought — “You don’t have to—”
She stopped and looked up at me, and it was not the look of a woman who needed reassuring that nothing was expected of her. It wasn’t that look at all.
“You don’t want me to?” She raised an eyebrow with her voice all innocent and sweet-sounding. But the look in her eyes told me she already knew the answer to her question and just wanted to watch me try to fight it.
I let out a breath, leaned back, and put an arm behind my head.
She grinned, waiting exactly long enough for me to not have an answer. Then she continued.
I was experienced with women and I had never once lost my composure in these situations. I was good at this. I stayed present and attentive and in control of myself. I delivered and that was that.
There was nothing in my experience that had prepared me for the combination of Alyssa’s confidence, attention, and that she was looking up at me with those soul-piercing eyes like she was enjoying it. Genuinely, enthusiastically present in a way that was—
“Mmph,” I grunted and exhaled through my nose. I looked at the ceiling. Then I looked back down at her.
She held my gaze and her expression said that’s right. My jaw clenched, and my hand found her hair, and every thought I’d had on my run about patience and limits and taking it slow evaporated.
I knew she wasn’t timid. I’d watched her argue a point she knew she was right about with the precision of the lawyer she was.
I’d watched her run miles she had no business running on pure will.
I hadn’t connected all of that to this. She wasn’t timid anywhere.
She’d just been caged. Not given the safety or the partner who made her know that all of her was welcome.
She had that in me, and she was making it abundantly clear what Alyssa Carter did when she felt it.
My hand tightened slightly in her hair. “Lyss…” I hissed. “I’m about t—”
She looked up at me, then sank down deeper, while both her hands twisted around me like she was working a pepper grinder.
“Alyssa!” I tapped her shoulder and groaned her name once more. Another warning. The last considerate thing I could manage.
She pulled back, opened her mouth wide while looking me dead in my eyes, slapped it on her tongue twice, then sank back down, hitting her throat.
I stopped being able to think in complete sentences.
“Fuuuuuuuuu…” I grumbled as every nerve in my body went haywire. My thoughts blurred into the sensation, each breath more desperate than the last.
By the time I released, I felt emptied, heavy and weightless all at once. I slumped back against my pillow, eyes half closed, trying to slow my breathing and collect myself, staring into space. Stunned.
I was aware that she had moved. She kissed up my stomach lightly, pleased with herself and having every right to be. I was aware of that happening, but I wasn’t able to respond to it because I was somewhere outside my body trying to locate my composure.
“I’m going to shower.” Her voice was soft, completely unbothered by the fact that she had just sucked the soul out of my body and I lay there waiting for it to settle back in.
“Do you have anything I can borrow? A t-shirt, sweats, or something?”
I said nothing. Couldn’t.
“Julian.”
Still nothing. I was looking at the ceiling. The ceiling was helping.
“Julian?”
I turned my head and she was looking at me with a grin that meant she knew exactly what she’d done and found it amusing.
“Hm?”
“Do you have clothes I can borrow?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes. I’ll… yes. I’ll bring you something.”
She stifled a chuckle, and leaned over and kissed my cheek. Then she padded toward the bathroom, and I tracked every step with my ears, until I heard the door close behind her.
I lay there a moment longer, still looking at the ceiling thinking about the man who had been carefully mapping out his patient and generous approach to our sex life.
That’s what you thought, something in me said. I flung my arm across my face and laughed. Once.
Okay, I thought. Alright then.