Spiraling
How easy is it? To spot the point of no return? To know, if I step over this line, right now, in this moment, everything will change. To be able to see that coming on the horizon, and in that moment to make the good decision. The right decision. The one that will not lead me to this place, again and again. Which is here, on all fours, slick with want, waiting for the belt to sting.
Everything that happened was for you, you told me exactly how you wanted it
The message now, burning into my phone, while I wait at the airport, dazed. The burn of the leather, salt sweat skin, hot breath, rough tongue, friction, still fresh. A heat.
I know… I type, one-handed, trying to manage my bags through security.
And it was, almost to the letter. I shift my weight on the seat, I can feel the three welts, hot against my underwear. The memory of him rushing back, his hands pulling up my shirt, his mouth on my neck. I feel the heat rise in my chest. Another notification on my phone.
I can still smell your cunt on my skin, fuck
It’s too much. I put my phone in my bag, check my passport again, all my travel documents. We are boarding soon. I hastily finish my drink in the airport lounge, let the cool of the ice in my glass bring my temperature down. Rest my forehead in my hands, breathe. Slowly. In and out. Is this what a panic attack feels like? Don’t check your messages again. Don’t. I am going home. To my husband. Breathe. Just Breathe. I close my eyes and all I can see is the reflection in the mirror. A belt buckle catching the morning light. Just before the leather meets my skin. Sweet oblivion.
My head is spinning.
How the fuck did I end up here?
Where to begin then. This story, this narrative arc, where do we chart its origins? It seems unfathomable to think it’s been so long in the coming. But the theme has never changed, in each other’s orbits but never the central feature, always on the margins, skirting between what was sanctioned and what was not, as teenagers, wary and unsure.
You were always a bit of an enigma, you know, dark and mysterious
I find this amusing
Oh do fuck off, all girls in their teens are enigmas to boys, I’m hardly an exception
Oh, but you were
We will find each other again, a few years later when we are older, but still finding our feet, that teetering early twenties dance we do, pretending we are grown. That boy, now a man, will hold my hips, with just enough force to make me groan, he will take my mouth with his and hold me still, biting on my bottom lip. He is just a friend. A friend who is tracing the soft, wet edges of my cunt with his tongue. And who, at that moment, is making me come with such a force I have to bite down on the pillow beside me. I am trying to be quiet; I am not supposed to be there. I am not his. He is not mine.
Fast forward a decade, or two nearly.
This is the beginning, then.
It’s a Sunday, early Spring in London, the light returning with the promise of some sunshine, light relief after the winter of lockdown and loneliness. I dreamed of him. I hadn’t thought about him in over a decade before this. We live on opposite sides of the world now, with only the briefest contact every few years. A like on social media. The occasional happy birthday. He has receded into my past, a fond footnote to explain some of the main character’s quirks.
You know I kept a bit of an eye on you, eloping in the Caribbean and all that
Yeah?
I warm to the thrill of him lightly stalking my social media accounts. I do not own up to doing the same, although I had.
I had dreamed of him, an upside-down reunion, or a wedding— it was crowded with people I didn’t know. He came up behind me, close enough I could feel his whole body against mine, hands on my shoulders, slowly pulling me back so he could whisper in my ear— would you like me to tell you what it felt like to fuck you? What your pussy felt like when I came inside you?
And then he was gone.
I woke up with this ache that I could not shift. It has been years since I felt that kick, I recognized it immediately too, coiled up like a viper and just as volatile too. Fuck. Once bitten. Moving my hands into my underwear, I felt the familiar slickness of desire. I hadn’t woken up wet like this for longer than I cared to admit. I let his words roll around my head while I circled my clit, letting my fingers dip inside myself, spreading more wetness to my cunt. Would you like me to tell you what it felt like…?
And it came flooding back—I remembered too, his fingers in my underwear outside of a club years before, the urgency of it. His blue eyes intent on mine, as I moaned, don’t stop, please, don’t stop… unbuckling his belt, unzipping his jeans, the smell of his neck, the sweat.
You were always so good to touch, like you couldn’t get enough. Like you just needed more.
I come that morning remembering my hips straddling his as they had done that one day years before, in the middle of the afternoon. His cock, finally, finally deep inside me, my t-shirt riding up over the swell of breasts, the build-up of edging all afternoon now released. My hands behind his head for purchase, taking everything I can, because as ever— it was never mine.
Sipping my morning coffee flushed, I am bemused by my own subconscious, and something catches. I scroll through social media and find his account quickly enough. A new profile picture now. He’s grown a full beard and it suits him, the southern rock gentlemen look, a new bass guitar. Silver threads, smile lines. We are now, proper grown-ups of course. The stakes are so much higher. The coil tightens. I sip my coffee. I draft a few takes, settle on something fairly nondescript. Hit send without too much thought.
In hindsight, this was the moment. Hitting send. The flare, the trigger, the crossed line.
Hey. Long time! Hope you’re well.
I continue to ask him for some inane detail for some made-up project I am working on.
It doesn’t take long to escalate. I am not sure who initiates the actual innuendo, I suspect we have never been platonic enough for things not to be laced with latent desire whether we mean to or not. As if the words when exchanged ignite something already there. Even now, even after all this time. It begins to take over. I can feel the coil unwinding, and tightening, this unease, this need, growing. We skirt around certain subjects, a shared nostalgia, opening up avenues of conversation that end with my hands in my underwear, short of breath, wet and insatiable.
Do you remember? That night we locked ourselves in the bathroom? We thought we were so discreet! Half the party must have heard us…
I remember. My jeans halfway around my thighs, my underwear roughly pulled to one side, his fingers exploring, teasing, my back pushed up against the sink. My hands fumbling with his zip, buttons and buckles and finally getting hold of his cock, hard already, slick, the sound he made when I dropped in front of him and took him in my mouth. His girlfriend only a few meters away, sipping coke and rum, while I took in her boyfriend’s cock to its base and made him shake when he came.
You always had the knack, that mouth of yours…
Ha! And I have learned a thing or two since then
There are days when I am calm, the surface remains unbroken. I sit at our kitchen table in the flat that I own with my husband. I log on to work and do so gladly and diligently, I have a career that I love and that I am good at. Work is rewarding and stimulating. I meet a colleague for lunch. I make appointments, keep up with my admin, pay an outstanding parking ticket, check my bank balances, make sure we have insurance, that we aren’t overpaying, make plans to see friends and family. For the most part, my life is calm and organized.
Then there is this: the ellipsis that occupies my thoughts. The stream of thoughts that makes me dizzy.
Typing…
I remember the sound you made when I tasted you the first time, you were the first you know
I remember it too. Slippery with want, heavy breath
Fuck that feels so good
And it did. The memory of his tongue between my legs makes me wet almost immediately. He was the first man to make me shake with his mouth, I remember my hands in his hair, pulling him closer, deeper, wanting to feel more, needing him to take everything.
I want to see the wetness on your fingers. Show me
I can feel my edges blurring.
I lock myself in bathroom cubicles in the office, scrolling back and re-reading the messages he sends me. I find I can’t concentrate in meetings, the notifications on my phone sending my heart rate up, my cheeks flushed at the thought of what they might contain.
Morning you
Hey yourself, I am trying to behave here, meetings back-to-back
Don’t. Catnip. Distracting you is my favorite sport
I catch a glimpse of what he sent, his cock, hard as fuck— the hint of wetness on the tip. All I can do is suppress a gasp. I can feel my cunt start to swell at the thought of it, easing inside me, pushing to the point where it almost hurts, filling me up. I think about fucking him constantly, running through it over and over in my head, what it would be like, beyond our texts and illicit pictures. We are grown adults now, there won’t be the trepidation we had, the questioning hands, the amateur naivety of our youth will now be replaced with a surety of knowing.
Months after the initial intrigue, like any addiction, this has escalated. We have graduated from sexts and images to live video. I feel that viper coil under my skin when I clip myself into my choker and cover my fingers with lube, awaiting instructions on what he wants to see. I check the heat in my chest rising, the familiar delicious kick in my cunt just before I open his messages.
I want to watch you touch yourself, watch your fingers circle your clit, open up for me
The rush of euphoria, the anticipation of what may or may not happen next.
I respond: I want to see you come.
And so, no, this is where we begin.
Behind a locked door, encoded apps, clearing chats. Slowly but surely, I have opened up, reawakening something I had forgotten I possessed. An insatiable appetite for pleasure, and the courage now to let the riptide take me. I get braver, demanding more for myself both in this game we play and outside of it.
To be clear, where are we now—?
Thankfully not in the same hemisphere. The distance affords us time and space and preserves the physical sanctity of our respective marriages, the distance holds the line. Until it doesn’t. It was only a matter of time, wearing down the boundary, the knife-edge of desire.
Whatever this is, it is intoxicating
Then we start to plan. So perhaps this is the line?
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