17
CASSIUS
What the fuck had I just done?
Seriously.
What the fuck had I just done?
I didn’t mean fucking Sarah. That was lovely, and to a certain extent, I could compartmentalize it. I saw, I conquered, I came, and there was a lot more to it than that, but just that alone could be considered a great use of my time.
I meant that I cared for her.
I’d felt guilty, triggered storming out on her after the topic of Virgil had come up. I’d forced myself to say, “now or never.” I’d forced myself to decide between fucking her senseless and fucking her over. I chose the former.
I turned on the inner demon within me, the insatiable, lustful monster that gave every woman it encountered the fuck of her life. But somewhere along the way, at some point between opening my door and climaxing, I saw Sarah as mine.
Not just in the possessive, controlling sense. But in the possessive, caring,genuinesense.
That shook me. I was silent for several minutes post-orgasm, and Sarah seemed inclined to believe it was because of the buildup over weeks—years, in a sense—to this moment. Shewasn’t wrong. She just didn’t know from what angle I was seeing things.
What the fuck would happen now? Sex didn’t always cross the Rubicon from lustful to loving, but in this particular case, with all the context and all the build-up to the moment, it now seemed that was exactly what was happening. It now meant that if this wasn’t meant to last, I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
I was going to hate it.
But I was just as sure that I was going to hate the prospect of putting everything with Virgil aside, loving Sarah, and acting like there was nothing to it.
Fuck!
I rolled back over, finally, and looked at Sarah. Those beautiful green eyes looked at me yearningly, and the smile on her face invited me to surrender to her. It didn’t help that her naked body still taunted me, as if saying there was finally something I could not overcome with my mere will.
“That was… something,” I finally said, to which Sarah just chuckled. She pulled my head in, kissed my forehead, and snuggled against me. Fuck, she took that as a cue of intimacy.
And fuck, I was enjoying it. Liking it, really.
And then it hit me why I was suddenly so scared.
I wasn’t in control of this moment and how I felt about it.
I had relished the feeling of power for so long and controlled so much of my life, whether with money or sheer will, that now, face to face with the reality that I had no control over how I felt and, to a certain extent, what I was doing… I didn’t know how to handle it.
Sex had shattered the barriers we’d had, but more than that, it had broken the illusions I had about control. I had never really been in control of the direction everything was going. I’d lied to myself and said that I would make the decision of whether to break her or fuck her—or both—but in reality, my feelings hadbrought me this whole way. If they hadn’t… I probably would have broken her.
Slowly, Sarah drifted off into a nap. I was tired, but there was zero chance I was falling asleep. I had handled financial crises involving the loss of billions of dollars of value more easily than this; shit, I had handled death better than this. OK, maybe not quite, but it had been a long fucking time since my mind was racing like this.
We’d be here for less than twenty-four more hours. Odds were we’d probably fuck again, and the second time was never as much of a shock to the system as the first. But fuck, there was zero chance I was forgetting this anytime soon.
Nor was there any chance I was not going to be affected by this.
We did indeed fuck one more time, and while it didn’t introduce new fears or shocks to my system, it didn’t mitigate anything. I barely slept that night, while Sarah slept like a rock. Of course; she was an artist, used to vulnerability, used to exposing parts of herself to the world, even if through the medium of painting.
When the morning rose, I was experiencing a strange feeling. I was hiding how I felt. To Sarah, I was the cocky, confident man who knew how to bring her to orgasm with a few simple steps. I was aware that she could read a little between the lines, that she probably got hints of my conflicting feelings, but I didn’t think she knew just how conflicted I truly was. If I wasn’t careful, this could end badly—and not just in that Sarah would never talk to me, but that I’d somehow lose confidence in my ability to control it all.
Sure, maybe I never really could. If I could, Virgil would still be alive. But…
I drove us to the private plane, finally eager to have no further responsibilities. Sarah seemed completely at ease, walking at a casual stroll. I thought from the way she looked at me she might try to hold my hand; thank goodness she didn’t leap to that quite yet. I would have taken it, honestly, but it would have heightened the disconnect between how I felt and how I acted. I really didn’t like this; if I was having that dissonance, I wanted it to be deliberate and of my choice.
But we went onto the plane one after the other. Sarah took a seat first, across from me. I took my seat, let out a gentle sigh, and smirked.
