"Look at us," he growls, nipping my earlobe, forcing my gaze to the mirror. I do, mesmerized by the rawness—the way my pussy lips stretch around his thick shaft, glistening, the veins standing out on his cock as he withdraws and slams back in. The sensory flood is overwhelming—the cool mirror kissing my spine, his hot breath on my neck, the ache in my thighs from holding on, the building pressure coiling tight again. He shifts, one hand sliding between us to rub my clit in rough circles, and I shatter, vision whiting out, walls spasming around him as I come, juices trickling down my thighs, soaking us both.
He doesn't stop, turning us away from the mirror with me still impaled, my body limp and quivering in his arms. The room spins briefly, city lights blurring, before he backs me against the wall near the window. It's rougher here, the texture biting into my shoulder blades as he pins me, one leg hooked over his arm for leverage. Standing fully now, he drives into me with abandon, hips snapping and each thrust jolting me up the wall, my breasts heaving, nipples grazing his chest hair like sparks.
The position is primal, exposed. I feel every inch of him, the drag and fill, his balls slapping against my ass with wet thwacks. Sweat drips from his brow onto my collarbone, salty when I lick it away, and his free hand fists in my hair, tilting my head back to expose my throat. He sucks there, marking me with a blooming bruise, while his cock pistons relentlessly, the head battering my cervix in delicious pain-pleasure. "Take it," he rasps, voice breaking on a moan, and I do, nails raking his biceps, the black ink bands blurring under my grip.
The wall scrapes my skin raw in the best way, grounding the haze of ecstasy, the city's hum vibrating faintly through the stone like a shared pulse. His rhythm falters, thrusts become erratic, and I clench around him deliberately, drawing a guttural curse from his lips. He comes hard, flooding me again, hot spurts painting my insides as his body shudders against mine. I follow seconds later, the sensation pushing me over, oh God, yes, legs trembling, locked around him as waves crash through, leaving us both gasping, slick and spent against the unyielding wall.
He holds me there a moment longer, forehead to mine, breaths mingling in the charged air and that warm unnamed scent clinging to us like a second skin. The city's jewel-like glow watches indifferently, but in this haven, with his arms steady around me, I feel untouchable, bold, alive. He takes care of me for a long time, and when sleep comes, it is the easiest slumber I’ve ever fallen into.
Morning holds its breath.
My hand slides into the space where he should be and finds nothing but the cool, smooth slip of cotton. The chill runs up my wrist. I leave my fingers there a second longer, as if warmth might bloom if I wait, as if heat is a shy animal I can coax back. The curtain moves in a small, tired way. Street light thins intoday. A pipe knocks somewhere behind the wall and then thinks better of it. I hear the room the way you do when you’re not alone and then remember I am.
His pillow has a shallow dip, the kind a head leaves when it is not heavy enough to stay. On top of it, a square of paper sits like a little folded house. My name is not on it. There is nothing of him on it, no cologne, no smudge. The crease is crisp, like it has already been opened and shut a few times by someone else’s hands.
I don’t pick it up yet.
His jacket is gone from the back of the chair, but a single black thread clings to the wood and wavers when I breathe. On the floor, one of my earrings has rolled to the skirting board and waits there like a dropped moon. The glass on the nightstand holds the last thin mouthful of water. A ring left by the base shines in the grain of the wood. I lift the glass and take a careful sip, hunting for the taste of smoke that lives in his laughter, for cedar from his collar, for anything. It is just water. It is only cold.
The room tells me small truths. The second button on my dress is still undone. The sheet is twisted around my knee. There is a pale crescent of flour on my forearm I do not remember earning. In the wastebasket, a corner of hotel stationery shows a blue crest. The bin is empty otherwise. He is efficient when he leaves.
I sit up. The paper on the pillow watches me. I know I’m exaggerating, but it does.
Last night I fell asleep to his hand in my hair, to the small ache of his thumb at the hinge of my jaw. He said something into my neck that I pretended not to hear because pretending made it easier to keep breathing. I remember the way he tucked theblanket over my hips even after we pulled it off twice. The way he laughed, low, like laughter is a secret you tell to keep yourself alive.
I reach for the note.
The fold resists like a mouth I have to convince to open. The paper is heavier than it looks. The first line is only my name, written with the pen he keeps in the inside pocket of his suit. He writes like he walks—clean, no drag. I say my name out loud to hear it in his voice and hate myself for doing that.
My eyes skip. I do not mean them to. I go to the last line because I always go to the part that hurts first. I am greedy like that. Or just bad at hope.
I stop. I start again from the top, the good student I used to be making an appearance in a bed with the sheet kicked half off.
Before I take in the words, the room shifts in small ways. The curtain lifts and drops and lifts again. The world tries a breeze and gives up. A car door slams outside. Somewhere, a baby starts crying like the morning has offended it. I run my thumb along the paper’s edge and when I pull away, a thin line of red stares back. I am holding too hard. Of course I am.
I think of the tiny lives of things that belong to him and now don’t. The dent his boots press into the mat by the door is already rounding out. The hook where he hung his keys looks wrong without the ring, a small mouth minus a tooth. The bathroom mirror has no fog on it. His toothbrush is not leaning against mine. The empty glass on the sink wears a water stain shaped like a question mark. I am making a museum out of air.
My phone glows from the floor by the bed. The last thing I typed to him is still in the box, half a sentence, a joke that tried to bebrave and missed. I do not send it. I touch the screen with two fingers and let the light go out.
Back to the paper.
When I read, the words go in like ice. Not the kind you bite. The kind that slides under your ribs and does its work quietly, in good order, with no fuss. My chest tightens in a way that belongs to bad news in hospital corridors, to old December nights when the power went out and all we could do was count breaths and pretend we were not counting.
He has not written much. There are no apologies grazing the edge of the page, no list of reasons that would make sense if he stood here and said them into my hair. He knows what explanations sound like. He knows what they are worth in the morning, in a room that has started to forget the weight of a man on the other side of the bed.
I swallow. It doesn’t go down.
I look at the dent in the pillow one more time, at the little house of paper I have unfolded into a flat thing. I imagine him sitting on the edge of the mattress, bent over, the lamp off, the city coloring his hands with streetlight while he writes, and the moment his pen lifts, and his mouth draws tight like it does when he has already decided and does not want to hear otherwise. I imagine his pause—was there one?—after he folded it. Did he put it down and then pick it up and then set it back like that? Did he press the crease with his thumb?
I do not cry yet. The body has a strange pride when it gets hurt. It wants to stand up straight on the way down.
The note warms in my hand. I can’t blame the paper for what it carries. I know better. Still, I fold it once more along thesame line he made, and it falls into shape without effort, like it remembers him.
I turn it over and read what he left me, simple and neat, his handwriting making promises his mouth never learned to keep.
Some things are too precious for my world.
6
