I don’t usually jerk off because it’s too hard to control what I think about and what I feel, but right now the only thing in my mind is Elias.
I see him at the bodega, flushed and drugged looking from the plug inside him.
I see him running in terror along a dark path.
I hear him scream, feel him fight. I feel his body take me, respond. I hear him moan and cry. I feel him clench on me as he orgasms.
So why don’t I come? Why the fuck don’t I come?
I’m down on my knees and one elbow, jerking my dick, making awful sounds. I should be able to orgasm.
I let my hand go still on my dick. I rest my forehead on the ground.
I’m too strung out to control my thoughts. They go where they want. They go, thank god, to Elias, but they goinsidehim, to the way he broke for me. Ifeelhis submission. I feel it as my own—andthat’swhen I come.
It feels fuckingawful. I can’t stop it though as my balls draw up tight. My hand clenches on my dick as it pumps and spurts. If nothing else, at least I can scream here, so I let myself.
After, as I lay shivering in my mess, I know I have to fix this. I have to get back in control. But the kind of control I attempted this morning, cutting myself off from Elias, didn’t work, and it’s not going to. I can’t put this part of myself away with the game unfinished.
Which means there’s no choice but to keep playing.
TEN
Elias
I get hard off and on all day, even when I’m not directly thinking about what happened. The memory is in my body. In the soreness, yes, because I feel the tenderness of my bruised knees when I kneel to check inventory on a bottom shelf. But it’s when I reach to the back of it, when I find myself unconsciously arching, that I shudder.
That doesn’t mean I’m not still depressed. I know that it’s over. I know that my life, once again, is dull and easy and safe. I know that it was never real, even if it felt like it. That’s what I paid for.
I can’t afford to pay for it again. Even with the new pet sitting assignment I just got, it will take months for me to save up enough for a new fantasy.
It’s a depressing thought. It’s hard to live in this dull reality again. And yet, though I do feel kind of depressed, I don’t feel like I’ve returned to this reality quite the same as I was before.
When we get busy at five, Emmy tells me to help Saul in the deli. Usually, Saul gives me one-word orders when I step back here, but today he says nothing, just stares at me.
There was a time when that would have made me self-conscious, but tonight I just ask, “Onions?” Saul always needs onions chopped.
He ignores the line of customers. “You seem …” He trails off, clears his throat. “Yeah. Onions. And teriyaki chicken.”
“M’kay.”
As we work through the rush, he keeps looking at me. Usually, when the rush is over, Saul goes outside to smoke whileI clean up the counters, but tonight he starts brewing fresh coffee. He’s still watching me. Can he tell that I got fucked last night?
Does he even know that I’m gay? I’ve never said, but maybe it’s obvious. Maybe he’s homophobic.
But when I’m done with the counters, he hands me a cup of coffee. His fingers brush mine. Settling his ass against the counter, Saul crosses his arms over the slight paunch of his belly. It’s not a bad paunch, pretty normal for 45 or whatever he is. His sips his coffee.
“You seem different,” he tells me, like he’s finishing what he’d started to say an hour ago.
On another day, that would embarrass me, but today I’m immune. Besides, he’s right. I am different.
Last night, I got chased through the woods. I got caught and thrown down and fucked so primally, soperfectlythat I came handsfree for the first time in my life. Then he kept fucking me, and I kept coming, again and again.
Last night, I learned that I was right about myself: thatiswhat I need. The problem is, I need it again. I need it now.
“You wanna smoke?”
I blink Saul and the deli into focus. “I don’t smoke.”
