for a swooning moment all blood drains from my brain. His eyes are glowing with pleasure at what lies ahead. His whole face is glowing, and I’m so nervous.
How difficult it is not to hide from what I want so much.
“I have to switch off the light.”
Comprehension registers in an incredulous shake of his head. I understand the disappointment, but not the flash of fear that hardens his face when my words sink in. But I am afraid, too.
“You can’t do this with the light on?” he asks in a tight voice.
“Not—tonight.”
“Not with me.”
“No.”
He seems to shrink into himself, and his hands lie still on my pajama’ed thighs. He stares, without seeing, at something there. The back of his hand, my knee in flannel.
“I don’t like that.”
He sounds defeated, but I can’t explain, and I can’t argue. The truth is, I need to do this in the dark and in silence. I grope for the switch of the bedside lamp, and the room is dark. Not quite pitch dark; after a while we are able to make out the white patches of each other’s eyes. I shrug out of my pajama jacket and wrap my arms around a phantasma. It is warm to the touch, substantial and alive, this fantasy of mine, and it smells like Giles Cleveland. It kisses like Giles Cleveland, too. Like a grumpy Giles Cleveland, at first, because he is annoyed with me, unresponsive. I love that he wants to see me, but I can’t allow that. Can’t allow him to see…me. See how much I want him.
The memory of the connection we made earlier is still glowing in his belly, too, and soon he is kissing me like he kissed me in the hallway. Only now I drive him on. He wants to be tender with me, but I cannot allow myself to feel the tenderness. There is nothing for me here except the fierce ache of lust. Impersonal and anonymous, in the dark, this naked male body, and I want to make it mine. This body is my fantasy of Giles Cleveland, and a fantasy is all he can be to me. I want to blurt out words, words to tell him what this feels like, what I feel for him. But the Sinatras are right. I won’t go and spoil it all.
I draw him toward me, away from the pillows, so I can lean over him and pull his t-shirt up and over his head. So much naked skin, cool in the night air but heated from inside. One male body should be much like the next, shouldn’t it? But this is the one I want. I lift his hands and cup them around my breasts, and he squeezes them lightly and chafes the tips with his palms. Half-heartedly, it seems to me.
“Too small?” A pointless question, but I can’t help it. This is an insecurity I thought I had mastered, but apparently not. Not in this case. He gives a low spurt of laughter, and of course I can’t tell, now, what it means, because I can’t see his face. The top of his head brushes along my chin, then my left breast contracts almost painfully, his mouth is so hot and so deliberate in its caress. It feels like the ache of fear, and I know why: if he is going to touch me like this, I will lose it.
We grapple in the silvery darkness, and with this phantasma I can be bold in a way I could not be bold with Giles Cleveland.
“No, don’t!” He pushes my head away. “I won’t—last. Please. Please.”
The skin of his belly is smooth and vulnerable under my lips, between my teeth; the soft, wiry hair tickles my cheek, and I simply have to take him back into my mouth. I wish I could be rough with him, just make him come fast and fierce, all control mine. Suck his brains out. I know I can make him come, and judging by the state of his hot, hard shaft, it would take about thirty seconds.
He scoots away from me, out of my arms, and jumps out of bed. Is he angry? What man gets angry when the woman he invited into his bed offers oral sex to him? He disappears into the bathroom and I hear him rummaging in a bag with a zipper. What is my cue? Should I just leave? When he returns, he makes for the window and opens the thick curtains