So, Chere wasn’t inclined to welcome me back with open arms? Okay. Understandable. Hell, I shouldn’t have gone back in the first place, I definitely shouldn’t have fucked her, but now that I had, I wasn’t going to deprive myself. Those breathless hours we’d spent through the night, before her angsty emotions caught up with her…
Well, they were worth it, even if her defensive, distancing words had followed. I wish I’d never met you. I wish you’d leave me alone. You’re crazy and scary and controlling. All the blather about police and restraining orders. I knew she didn’t mean any of it, but she’d been pretty damn angry.
My little fighter. She’d always had a temper.
It pleased me that Chere hadn’t lost any of her spirit, that none of her defining qualities had changed. Her hair color had changed, sure, and she’d pretty much lost that whore look she used to have. But God, the splendor in its place… Her curly, dark hair, her bold features, her eyes like liquid toffee. Her freckles. That pert, strong chin.
I lay back on my bed and undid my pants, took out my cock and stroked it to hardness. I had work to do, a meeting tomorrow, but I had a little sexual tension to take care of first.
Today sucked, but last night had been amazing, perhaps the most magnificent sexual marathon of my life. The way she resisted at first, the way she fought me and melted into me at the same time. Then…when I pushed inside her… My fucking God.
I worked my cock slowly, sensually, pulling hard with a firm grip. This is for you, Chere. I took my time, thinking back to the softness of her skin, the cinnamon scent of her hair. I didn’t want to come too quickly. There was so much to remember. So much to look forward to when I won back her trust, which I fully intended to do. I wouldn’t attempt to enslave her as I did in my darkest fantasies, or interfere with anything she was trying to accomplish. I’d just fuck her in that rough, intense way she liked, for our mutual satisfaction.
After I came like a storm, and cleaned myself up, I sat and scrawled some words on a stark white page. I placed it in an envelope, and wrote her name and address on the front.
You’re so beautiful.
It wasn’t enough, and someday I would do better, but for now it was the only poetry I had.
Chere
Andrew looked down at the parts and pieces spread out in front of him.
“Chere, I swear to God we’re doing this wrong.”
“Read the directions again.”
He held the flimsy paper up to his face and squinted at the tiny writing. “You read them. I can’t make out a word.”
“Your eyes are younger than mine.”
He leaned back against the doorjamb and tossed down the paper with a sigh. “Why are we changing the lock again? If the building manager already changed it?”
“Because Price used to own this apartment. He might be tight with the manager. He might own this entire building. He might have been the one to send the locksmith.”
“You sound kind of paranoid,” Andrew said.
“Of course I’m paranoid. He was stalking me the entire time he was gone. I’m sure he’d love to have another key to my apartment, and if he knows the people who run this building…”
My friend looked skeptical. “He had a key for two and half years, though, and he never used it.”
I glared at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“Your side, darling.”
“And we can’t really say if he used it or not. Maybe he came in here all the time while I was away.”
At my quiet huff of outrage, he bent back over the directions. “Okay,” he said with feigned confidence. “We’ll figure this out.”
I leaned over the directions too, trying to calm down. I shouldn’t have been bitching at Andrew. He’d come over in a flash when I told him I needed him, even though he’d just returned last night from his rent-boy excursion in Vail. He was sun bronzed and wind burned and full of racy tidbits about his time with Mr. Recaro.
I hadn’t told him as much about my reunion with Price. I left out the night-long carnival of perversity and stuck to the basics: that he’d shown up out of nowhere and let himself into my apartment, and freaked me the fuck out.
“We need more light to do this,” Andrew said. “Can’t you open the drapes?”
“No. Remember? Hunting binoculars.”
“Oh, yeah.” He grimaced and picked up one of the pieces.
After I’d sent Price away, he’d had a note delivered to my apartment. You’re so beautiful. That’s all it said, You’re so beautiful. When I showed it to Andrew, he’d pointed out what I already knew, that it was an echo of something he’d written once on my arm. Look at what you do for me. You’re so beautiful.