Reluctance to publish isn’t new to me. I have drafts pending since 2006 - things that are too good to discard, but too evil to countenance or too personal to reveal. Not everything inside my head is open for debate and speculation.

As to the ending… Wait for it… and hope the damn thing doesn’t stay in my drafts for a few years.

She was still a distance away, the cost and benefit of living well outside the embrace of a city. I spent the time taking a shower, and in that time felt some of the anxiety, the weight sitting on my shoulders, fade away. Nevermind the metaphors I could spew now, but that shower took the edge off whatever it was.

I didn’t bother to shave, so my chin was covered in those welt inducing whiskers that I like to pretend are wholly accidental. In truth, I like how how they mark my path. She’d been to my house before, but timing with relationships is everything, and for no real excuse, we just never connected long-term. I’d hurt her plenty, but sex, until then, had never been a part of it. Pain she liked, pain, I could give her.

I dressed, but casually, keeping to track pants and a tshirt, both black. When I heard the buzzer for the gate, I hit the button and walked out front to meet her. The bag she carried still had things sticking outside in a rather haphazard fashion.

‘Sorry.’ She said. ‘I drove fast.’ She came around the car to where I stood, stopped to pick up her keys that she dropped. ‘Sorry.’ She came forward again, but dropped her phone all of which were piled into her small hands. ‘Sorry.’ She looked at me with apologetic smile.

I watched it all with a semi amused look on my face and reached for her bag. ‘No!’ She said sharply. ‘I’ll lose all of it and be out here all day.’ Her voice had a fine quiver to it, as if she was at a job interview and had been running two miles straight out.

‘Come inside.’ I pushed the door open and stepped back so she could work her way inside.

‘Wow, D.’ She said, dropped everything into a pile on a chair. ‘You’ve changed this place around a lot!’

I followed her gaze to the artwork on the far wall. ‘I don’t like bare walls.’

‘I remember. Well, it looks good.’ She smiled at me and I met hers without one of my own.

‘Thank you.’

She bent over to make sense of the clutter now occupying my favorite chair in the living room. I watched her for a minute, watched how her hands moved quickly over the mess, reached up to tuck back the dark hair behind the shell of her ear. I followed the strands. I’ve always loved dark hair. Long. Dark. Hair.

‘Something to drink?’ I slid my gaze over her as I said this.

‘About a half bottle of vodka!’ She smiled at me.

I stared back at her. She laughed. ‘I’m joking, D. I know. I know. No drinking before we play.’

I smiled then, finally. ‘Play, hm? Is that what we do?’

Her smile faded, the nervousness flowed back into her expression. ‘No. No, I guess not.’ She smiled. ‘But sometimes it is fun.’ She offered the last statement, weakly.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ I repeated.

‘Yes. Please. Iced Tea, maybe?’

‘That I have.’

I watched her drink it. I listened to her ramble on about her day, about things that had no great importance to either of us really, but with each word some of her nervous energy spent itself. She relaxed slowly, plied with gingery shortbread cookies and sweet tea. When I took her plate, I gave her a level stare. ‘Feel better?’

‘Yes, D.’

‘Good.’

She fiddled with the corner of her napkin. ‘So what’s on tap?’

‘A little of this, a little of that.’

‘Not telling me?’

I took her hands and brought them to my mouth, kissed the backs of them, each in turn. ‘Pain, of course.’ I turned one of her hands over and kissed her wrist where fragile blue veins showed through her skin. ‘Pleasure then.’ I repeated the action on her other wrist. Her fingers curled inward. Goosebumps skittered across her skin.

‘I’m nervous.’

‘You should be.’

I released her hands then and boneless, they dropped to her sides before she remembered them. My hands slid into her hair, tilting her face upward for my kiss. Her palms found my forearms, rested upon them lightly. When I kissed her, her lips parted as if my kiss had broken the tension holding them closed. She groaned lightly, leaned into me to deepen it, but I held back. It was only a tasting, a sample. The beast I am is preceded by this sensual demon, one that lures, beckons and captures.

That kiss was just lips. The tongue, the teeth, the demand would all rush in soon enough. I paced her to my way of thinking. She was too eager, unschooled on sensual thought, on longevity. I leaned against her, pushed her back against the island in the middle of my kitchen until the granite hugged her high on her waist. It was built for me, and so dwarfed her.

I broke the kiss, but still leaned over her. I dropped a hand to her waist, my lips pressed a kiss along her jaw and her head tipped back on its own. I inhaled her scent. ‘You smell like outside.’ I left a small wet spot where I had tasted her skin. ‘…and flowers.’

She had her face in my shoulder as I traced a slow path down hers. ‘You smell like mine.’ I laughed against her neck softly. She stuttered slightly, ‘I m-mean for now.’ I lifted my head, wondering why she worried so much about such a small comment.

‘Right now I am.’ Both of my hands slid over her and cupped her bottom, pulling her against me for a moment before lifting her to sit on the counter top. I pushed her legs apart and stood between her knees. My fingers played with the buttons of her sweater, easily sliding the two out of their loops. She took it the rest of the way and pulled the garment off her arms. ‘Better.’ I said.

‘Your turn now?’

‘If you’d like.’

‘Yeah.’ Her fingers were on my back, pulling off the tshirt with very little caution. It popped over my head and was down my arms in a flash. Her fingers pressed against my chest, grazed over my nipples. ‘Pierced.’ She noted it breathlessly, sliding her touch across my stomach. ‘You’re so warm, D.’

Her hands came up to my shoulders and I turned my face into one and bit the fleshy part between her thumb and wrist. She tried to jerk it away, in pure reaction, but I held onto it with my teeth until she whimpered.

‘Your turn.’ I said and pushed the other part to her sweater set over her head. The bra, clasped in the front, swung open and my mouth found one of her nipples. Closed. Sucked. Her hands slid into my hair to hold me there. She laughed breathlessly. ‘Your teeth prints are already on me.’

‘That isn’t all there will be when I’m done, slut.’ She squirmed on the granite. ‘Get me down?’

‘No.’ The second nipple called to me, hard tipped and red as it was. I nipped it and then tugged until her back arched prettily. Sex, sadism, is as much about art as it is the sensation of power and lust combined. My hands slid along her thighs, traced the line of her underwear. ‘Panties, hm? You must not like them much.’

She smiled and did it breathlessly somehow, laughing? I wasn’t sure. ‘I forgot about them.’

‘They don’t stand a chance.’ I said this, tracing the lacy outline. ‘Flimsy things.’