Chapter 8 #2
Before sitting, I unbuckled my belt and took off my pants.
My legs were already cooking inside the denim.
I was grateful Solstice had taken Joe, because this was no place for my cat.
I thought Oolong might be right at home here, being a bearded dragon, and wondered if Calliope usually brought him.
Maybe even this heat was too intense for the reptile, though.
In just my black boxer briefs, I took Calliope’s hand and sat beside her.
I hadn’t realized she was sitting on a pillow until one touched my ass.
I was expecting the hard ground. There must be more accommodations in this place than just a tepee-like structure.
They must do something to keep it from flooding during heavy rains or freezing during the winter.
Calliope’s hand trailed up my arm, creating a line of sweat in its wake. I watched as her fingers brushed my shoulder. Why was her touch so hot? Not just arousing, but actual heat. Like she was dragging a match up my arm. I was a bit surprised fire wasn’t licking its way across my skin.
“You need to focus, my love. Your mind is wandering.”
Focus? Focus on what? Her voice sounded like it was being projected all around me, even though she was right in front of me.
She was so beautiful. I had no idea how I’d ever used the word ‘plain’ to describe her.
Drenched in sweat, her long, brunette hair hung heavy around her shoulders.
I didn’t like that she was wearing a beige bra.
It gave the illusion she was naked when she wasn’t.
I wanted her naked, I wanted her naked so badly.
Would this be how she would look under the spray of a shower?
“Breathe, my love. Watch me. Deep breath in, hold for two seconds, and let it out. That’s it… Breathe…”
I watched her small, covered breasts rise and fall with each of her breaths, making my chest movements match hers. Her hands rubbed up and down my arms distractedly. I wanted to take them, tie them to my bedpost, and lick every bead of sweat off her body.
Would her tits grow when she became pregnant with my child?
I never thought I wanted kids. Watching the others in the club become fathers made me realize just how much I loved being an uncle.
It was like a Rent-a-Kid program. You got to take the kid out for all sorts of fun stuff, get the pictures of them laughing and giggling and being free, and then you get to return them to their parents when the cranks and sugar-high crash hit them.
I loved that, and never thought I wanted anything more.
A loud beeping came from my right. I turned, but saw nothing. It reminded me of an EKG machine at a hospital. The telltale beep…beep…beep… of a heartbeat, but it was gone as soon as I heard it.
Last night, when I’d learned of Kora’s plan to fake a pregnancy with me, it made me wonder what my reaction would have been if Kora had told me she was pregnant.
What if she hadn’t come to her senses and she’d followed through with her plans?
Poked a hole in my condoms or slipped me something to make me forget to use one?
What if she had gotten pregnant with my child?
That far-off beeping sounded again. Only this time from my left. I turned to look, but nothing was there. Just the dim siding of the dome. Was that antiseptic I smelled over the heavy incense?
Cool liquid touched my lips and I drank down the sweet water. Some dribbled down my chin and onto my chest, conflicting with my heated skin and raising goosebumps. I felt my nipples tighten into pebbles.
If Kora had been pregnant with my child, I would have fought for custody.
I would have raised my son or daughter without their irresponsible and manipulative mother.
Some might condemn me for taking a child away from the mother, claimed that children should be raised by both parents, but that was bullshit.
Single man or woman, two men or two women, it didn’t matter the gender.
I knew. I’d been raised by a bastard of a father and a selfish mother who eventually abandoned me.
Having a man and a woman in the household meant jackshit.
It was how the child was raised, not by the gender or quantity of its parents.
Sadness had gripped me at the idea of a child, though. It had nothing to do with my bachelor days being over or raising a baby on my own. It had to do with the mother. Kora. I didn’t want to have a baby with Kora.
I wanted to have a baby with Calliope.
The bamboo bucket tipped again, dropping a waterfall of water down onto the flames and burning embers. Steam rose up to the hole in the ceiling but did not escape. Instead, it collided with the roof, creating a cyclone of mist. A form slowly took shape, a dark shadow among the white vapors.
A bear, powerful and vicious, stepped forward. It didn’t move towards me, nor did it attack, but walked mid-air without making any progress in escaping the mist. He roared, and I got the instinctive feeling that he—or maybe she—was protecting something.
That beeping sounded again. I turned, and my mind spun. A white flash blinded my vision, keeping me from finding the source of the beeping. A scorpion walked across the vast white nothingness, clicking its claws and curling its infamous tail.
I was reminded of that child’s story of the scorpion and the frog. It’s in my nature…
Cool liquid against my lips brought me abruptly back to the sweaty dome. I greedily drank down the water, swallowing hard and fast. Hands, so small and gentle, touched me everywhere. Had she grown extra arms? How was she able to touch me in so many places at once?
My eyes landed on her face. In the flicker of the fire-lit lanterns, I saw her flushed cheeks, her dilated eyes, and her soaked hair. I loved her hair.
I reached up to touch it, wondering if this was how Midas felt just before turning an item to gold. When my hand moved, it seemed to shimmer. Like I could see the past, present, and future position of my hand. I saw my fingers touch her hair before I felt it.
She watched me intensely. I couldn’t tell how far or close she was to me.
I lifted her hair to my nose, breathing in deeply.
She smelled of sweet honey and the forest. Wild and untamable.
I paused when I saw something crawling through her hair.
After my eyes focused on it long enough to identify what it was, I lifted my hand to pick it up.
“What do you see?” she asked. Her mouth moved in front of me, but it sounded like her words were coming from behind me.
“It’s a ladybug.” Did my voice sound like it was slurring to her, or was it just me?
I saw her lips move, but all I heard was that beep…beep…beep… of the EKG again. When I looked back at my fingers, the ladybug was gone.
Calliope took my hands and placed them on her breasts. She was nearly flat-chested, but I didn’t mind. I was more of an ass-man myself.
A low chuckle sounded. “Oh really?”
Had I said that last part out loud? I hadn’t meant to. I squeezed my hands over her tits. I wanted that fucking bra gone.
“Quinten…” My name sounded breathless on her lips. She’d started to call me ‘Starbucks’ last night, but fuck, to hear my birthname like that? There was nothing like it. “Quinten, I want you to kiss me. No one’s here. We can’t be interrupted this time.”
The entire world fell away. I forgot about the fire, the mist, the animals, the beeping… They all vanished, and there was nothing in my life but her.
I claimed her lips as I’d wanted to do for days.
They were soft and moist. She trembled in my arms, and it took a great deal of thought to remember that this wasn’t just our first kiss, but her first kiss ever.
She’d never been touched before by a man.
Never let another man feel the softness of her lips, the thickness of her hair, the smoothness of her skin.
She wasn’t just mine in the metaphorical or emotional senses, but in the physical sense.
Every touch was new, every experience a first.
She would never know what it was like to have another man press his lips to hers, to sweep his tongue against her mouth and gain entry to its depths.
She would never feel another man push her gently back onto the throw pillows that lined the floor of her sweat lodge and mold his body over hers.
She would never compare another man’s weight over her or the size of his hips cradled between her legs.
All her touches, her moans, her pleasure were mine.
And I was claiming her. Here and now. I may not be able to offer her my first and only touches as she was me, but she would have something even greater. She would have what no other would ever: my body, my heart, and my soul.
Every touch was sensation, intensified by the heat of the steam and our bodies. Our clothing was removed, though I wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened. I did not recall taking off my underwear, and yet I was as naked as she was.
“Quinten…” I loved my name on her lips. Loved how she said it like a prayer, like I was her god.
She had no idea it was the other way around.
That she was my goddess, my reason for being.
I would worship the very ground she walked on, lay waste to all who threatened her, shower her with jewels and diamonds not worthy of her beauty, build her a house with my own two hands, and protect her and our future children with my life.
She would never go hungry, never know fear, never worry about tomorrow.
I was here, and she was mine.