Chapter 3 #2
I pick up the phone, turn it over in my hand, my thumb hovering over her contact.
She told me not to come on this trip. And I didn’t just come anyway, I defended him. Explained him. Wrapped his behavior in softer words until it sounded like something forgivable.
I can already hear the silence she’d give me if I called now. The disappointment.
I drop the phone back onto the nightstand.
I can’t have her voice in my head right now, pulling apart something I’m still trying to piece back together.
I lie back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, letting the calm flow over me like a second skin.
This vacation is supposed to feel like a reset.
A beginning again.
So why does it feel like I’m standing in the middle of something that’s already ending?
I shift, restless, the fabric of my dress suddenly too tight and too present against my skin.
I sit up, then stand, my fingers moving to the zipper without much thought.
The dress slides down slowly, pooling at my feet like something shed, something left behind. I step out of it, leaving it there, and the air against my skin feels more honest.
I tell myself I’m just trying to relax, to soften the edge of everything.
That’s all.
I sit back on the bed, then lie down again, this time letting my body sink deeper into it, letting my eyes fall shut.
I breathe in.
Breathe out.
But my mind doesn’t calm down. It drifts, wandering somewhere it shouldn’t.
I try to pull it back. I do.
To Daniel. To this room. To the version of tonight that’s supposed to be happening.
But it resists, dragging to Robert.
My breath stutters.
I shift slightly, my body responding before my thoughts catch up, before I can decide whether to stop this or let it happen.
It would be easier to stop.
But easier doesn’t mean honest.
Besides, I’m technically not doing anything wrong.
Daniel and I aren’t exactly together. This trip is supposed to decide that. To see if there’s still something here worth salvaging. And we’ve been apart for three months… three months I know he hasn’t spent alone.
That thought should shut this down. But it doesn’t. If anything, it loosens something in me.
I let my head tilt to the side, eyes still closed, and the image of Robert comes back like it owns the space behind my eyes. He stands in the dark, his eyes burning through it, burning through me, like distance is nothing, like he can see me exactly as I am right now.
My breath catches.
His hands move to the buttons of his white shirt, deft, unhurried, like he knows I’m watching. Like he’s taking his time on purpose.
Will he have tattoos?
I gasp softly as he slips the shirt off, the fabric falling away, his body pulling my mind in deeper, holding it there, refusing to let go.
God.
The tension that’s been sitting under my skin all day begins to loosen, slowly, like a knot loosening one thread at a time. My fingers curl into the sheets, leveling myself as the feeling builds.
This isn’t about him.
That’s what I tell myself.
It’s just a release. It's letting something go.
I do this when I’m stressed. I fantasize. Build scenarios. Escape the sour reality of my very vanilla sex life with Daniel.
My mind drifts, pulling from memory, from imagination, from things I don’t say out loud.
The last time, I was caught between two roommates who locked me up, swore they wouldn’t let me go until I came seven times for them.
I swallow as heat curls back into me, this time… It’s different.
Now it’s Robert I see, not faceless like the others. And in my mind, there’s a whip in his hand.
That’s new.
Because it’s always been easier when they don’t have faces.
Easier when it’s just a body, a feeling, a blur.
But this?
This is him and I don’t stop.
My hand drags down between my thighs, my sex aching and begging to be touched as he flips me over in my head, his hand coming down in a hard spank.
I gasp.
The sensation blooms, imagined but no less real, my breath catching as I slip my hand beneath the thin fabric of my underwear, feeling the heat there, the slick proof of how far gone I already am.
In my head, I squirm.
I always do.
It’s instinct. Resistance. That push and pull I don’t question anymore. I fight, even when I know I don’t really want to get away. I never do.
I want to be held there.
Made to stay.
Robert doesn’t hesitate. He pins me down in my mind, firm, unyielding, like there’s no version of this where I slip out of his grip.
He rips my underwear off, and slides three fingers, deliciously brutal, into me.
I scream, my breathing breaks into uneven pieces, my body following a rhythm I don’t consciously set, just… fall into.
My hips keep moving, chasing it, meeting it, like my body knows exactly what it’s doing now.
It builds fast. Too fast.
That sensuous pull deep inside me winds harder, expanding me until I can’t think past it, can’t breathe past it.
My thighs tense, my back arching off the bed as it climbs.
“Robert…” His name breaks out of me, and it tips everything over.
My orgasm hits hard.
My whole body seizes around it, an overwhelming rush that snaps through me, stealing the air from my lungs as the release crashes down.
My grip tightens, my head falling back as it rolls through me in surges, each one pulling more out of me than the last.
I can’t move away from it.
I don’t want to.
It keeps going, pulsing, dragging it out until I’m trembling through it, until it finally starts to fade, leaving me breathless, undone.
My eyes snap open.
The room crashes back into place around me, too bright and too real now. My chest rises, my breath uneven, my body still catching up to what just happened, to what I just did.
To who I just called.
Robert?