The Unrequited Page 18

  “Do you like that?” he asks.

  I swallow and moan, “Yes.”

  “I’ve thought about you like this,” he says in the thinnest of whispers. “Under me, naked and desperate. You moan when I touch you like this but I tell you to be quiet. I tell you to keep it in because I want to hear something else.” He presses his thumb and I bob under the pressure. His erection jostles, reminding me that I’m stuffed full of him.

  “Do you know what I want to hear, Layla?” The pressure on my clit increases and I can’t keep the moan inside.

  “Thomas… Oh God.”

  “Shh. Tell me, do you know?” When I shake my head, he clarifies, “The poem you wrote for me.”

  His thumb is circling, flicking, feeding me pleasure, and I forget to be embarrassed about my poem. He is making me hungry and though it’s still painful to move, I do it. I bow my back, lodging his cock farther in.

  I hear his strangled curse and watch the tendons of his neck tighten at the cost of staying still. “Ah, God, you’re a tease. You’re such a fucking tease.”

  I moan and manage to ask, “How do I tease you?”

  “The way you stare at me, like you want me to kiss you. The way you follow me around. The way you take everything I give you, never complaining, never backing down. You’re asking for it, aren’t you? You’re daring me, begging me to do all the bad things to you.”

  I’m shaking my head on the floor, moving it side to side, mindless, insane, drunk on him.

  “Isn’t that why you came here? Isn’t that why you keep coming? You want me to ruin your pussy, make it bleed like it’s your first time. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I hiss. “That’s what I want.”

  I’m wet, so wet down there, and suddenly we’re moving against each other. He is rocking into me, in and out, long, lazy strokes that I feel in my stomach.

  My desire ups with every slide and I forget about the pain. I wrap my legs around his waist and bring him closer. Thomas speeds up his thrusts until he’s slamming into me, grunting like a man possessed.

  “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” I chant as his hips smash into mine, as his balls slap against my ass. I am sobbing with every jab.

  Thomas has gone speechless as he stares down at me, at my rebounding breasts. He is feeding off my moans, my pleasure, my restlessness like a demon. My desperation spurs him on as I meet him stroke for stroke.

  I watch him over me, his stomach contracting, his hips pumping, his skin flushed and glowing with sweat. It seems the fire inside him has come to the surface. It burns beneath his skin, creating a reddish sheen over his body that is accentuated by the yellow light.

  The sight brings forth a gush of cum from my pussy. I pretend it’s blood, my virgin blood, instead of the creamy arousal.

  I moan and shift under him, and the angle of his thrusts changes. He’s hitting an elusive spot inside me, and shivers start down in my toes. They spread to my thighs and I know I’m going to come. I want to warn him, but words are trapped inside my throat with my breath. It doesn’t matter because he doesn’t need any warning anyway. His strangled groan acknowledges my climax.

  My sock-covered toes curl and my muscles lock tight. Only my core is spasming with life while the rest of my body might as well be dead.

  Thomas drops his head on my shoulder, his thrusts erratic. It’s a mad race to his own climax, the jerky movements, the rotation of his hips—and then it all stops. Orgasming, he throws his head back, exposing his neck.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than this, than him. I’ve never heard anything more melodic than his animalistic grunts. He grinds his cock inside me, wringing out every drop of his cum. I wish I could feel it without the barrier of the latex.

  My hips twitch in unison with the heartbeat in his cock, and I wind my arms around his neck, never wanting to let him out of my pussy.

  For a long time, we breathe in sync, in and out, in and out, as if our wild, aroused breaths are fucking now that our bodies are at rest. It’s a poetic thought, a little fanciful and a whole lot of impossible, but it’s nice.

  Then Thomas heaves himself up and away from my body. He removes the condom, wraps it in a tissue – to hide it? -- and throws it in the trash, before snatching his pants from the floor and putting them on.

  Again, I can only catch a glimpse of his corded thighs before they are covered by the frayed denim. He leaves them unbuttoned, as if it’s too much of a hassle to do such a mundane task, and walks to the window, lighting a cigarette.

  Like a moron, I keep lying on the floor; I watch him take a drag. The slopes of his carved back twitch with his actions, and so do his bulging biceps when he rakes his hands through his thick hair.

  The longer he is silent, the more my anxiety grows. Something’s wrong. Something’s going on in his head, and I want to know what it is. I drag myself up, barely suppressing a hiss as the rug burns make their presence known. I stand on jellied legs and go to pick up my discarded clothes by the door, but the sight of the couch stops me.

  It’s sagging and wrinkled, so unlike the pristine condition it’s usually in. Frowning, I take the room in for the first time since I entered. Papers are scattered on the desk, so unlike him. Cigarette and ash litter the floor as if he’s been bingeing on nicotine all day. It makes me think that the cleaning crew is going to hate him in the morning.

  “Are you…Are you sleeping in here?” I blurt out the question at Thomas, my clothes forgotten. His back tenses, grooves and digs appearing out of the knotted muscles, and that’s my answer. Yes.

  “Thomas?” I press on. “What’s going on?”

  Nothing. Just a swirl of smoke that scatters into thin wisps as it touches the window. If anything, he’s become even more statue-like, unapproachable and cold. I clench my fists at my sides and dig my toes into the carpet, stopping myself from going to him. I know he won’t respond kindly to it and I’m feeling oddly vulnerable right now, naked and anxious.

  “Where’s Nicky?” My voice is hoarse with fear, and that’s the first thing that pops up. “Did she…take him?”

  This elicits a harsh laugh. “No. She wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?” He doesn’t answer, so I ask another question. “So where is he?”

  “He’s fine. He’s with someone who can be there for him right now.”

  “And you’re not that person?”

  “No. Not right now.”

  His callousness presses down on my chest and a strangled question emerges. “Thomas, wh-what’s happening? Have you even been home in the past two days?”

  Sighing, he turns around. His face is lined with impatience. Looking me up and down, he sucks in a long drag, pinching the cigarette between his index and middle finger. His eyes are both harsh and lazy and despite my anxiety, my pussy clenches. I wince at the dull pain.

  My flinch doesn’t go unnoticed and his gaze drops to the juncture of my thighs. It makes me hypersensitive to the wetness still lingering there, so much so that I rub my soft, fleshy thighs together.

  “Put your clothes on. I’m dropping you off.”

  “No, not until you tell me what the hell you’re doing.”

  He lifts the half-smoked cigarette and points to it, his voice laced with dry sarcasm. “Trying to kill myself.” Then he flicks it away, adding to the litter and walks to the side of the desk, picking up his keys. “Now, shall we?”

  I don’t think. I don’t even tell my body to move. It just does, and in the next second, I’m lunging at him, climbing his sturdy, powerful body. He oomphs at the impact and shifts his stance to brace my weight.

  My arms are around his neck and my thighs clamp around his waist. My wet cunt is sliding over his ridged stomach, the curly hair around his belly button tickling my clit, making us both shudder. I put my forehead to his and stare into his eyes.

  “She’ll come back, Thomas. You’ll see.” My reassurance scrapes my throat and tongue, but I keep talking. “She’ll realize how much she love
s you and she’ll come back, I promise. I just know it.”

  Thomas settles his arms under my ass, his hot palms stinging the tenderness caused by rug burns.

  “Yeah? Is that what you know?” His gravelly voice is making me restless, and the fact that he is massaging my ass, soothing the soreness, as if he cares that I’m hurting, doesn’t help. He’s looking at me like I’m something…precious but irritating. Like I confuse the fuck out of him. Like he can’t believe I’m talking about his wife while clinging to him naked, rubbing my core against his stomach like a slut.

  “She will. She loved you once, and she’ll love you again. You can’t fall out of love. You just can’t.” Love has to be enough.

  I don’t know whom I’m trying to convince, him or me.. Thomas can’t ever stop loving Hadley, and I can’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone would willingly not love this man. It’s incomprehensible to me. It makes me hurt.

  Thomas flexes his fingers and smashes our bodies together. I feel his hardness in the crease of my ass, and my core clenches in response. We’re stuck to each other’s bodies, slick and hot with lingering sweat and ever-expanding lust.

  “She told me she’d be back Wednesday, but she isn’t here, and I…don’t know what to do.”

  It’s such a vulnerable, almost childish statement that I can’t stop myself from kissing him and drinking his pain away.

  When we break apart, he says with intense and glassy eyes, “I don’t deserve her, not after neglecting her for a long time. I don’t know when it happened, but I lost sight of her. I forgot about her. I forgot everything but my words. No one deserves that. No one deserves to be forgotten.”

  I didn’t even realize I was crying until I hiccup and his features slash with regret. This is why I come back to him time and time again. This is why I don’t care if I’m breaking every single rule and deeming myself a slut, a harlot. Because he’s lonely. Because he’s in unrequited love. And for some unfathomable reason, it kills me to see him like this.

  I rotate my hips against him, wondering if I’ve lost my mind. How is it possible to be so, so sad and filled with lust at the same time?

  Thomas brings his hand over to my cheek and tries to wipe the salty water away, but I’m filled to the brim with emotions. God, I hurt so much right now. For Thomas. For myself.

  “So you see,” he whispers over my lips, ghosting the wet, soft flesh over my plump, salty ones. “You can fall out of love if you’re in love with someone like me.”

  As he hauls me even closer and fuses his lips with mine, I can only think of one thing.

  If I ever fell in love with Thomas Abrams, I’d never fall out of it.

  I promised Thomas I wouldn’t regret what happened, and I don’t. I truly, honestly don’t. I don’t regret it, but it’s hard to keep things in perspective when the world around you is booing Hester Prynne for having an affair. They even slapped a scarlet letter A on her chest because of it.

  I want to jump and shout, Her husband was playing dead. She was alone. Didn’t she deserve love?

  But I can’t, because I want to throw up.

  Turns out the theatre people upstairs were practicing a play based on the novel The Scarlet Letter, and tonight they are performing it in the university’s Lincoln Auditorium. Emma and Matt are sitting next to me in red vinyl seats and are engrossed in a whispered conversation. I really don’t know what they’d be talking about that requires such a level of privacy. Dylan isn’t here, because apparently they still haven’t made up, and that makes me feel wretched, as if their fight was my fault.

  But isn’t it my fault, or at least the fault of someone like me? Like Emma’s mom who cheated on her dad and destroyed their family?

  I look away from them and my gaze falls on a couple sitting two rows down. They are kissing in the darkened theatre. Like a perv, I watch their tender embrace. The guy has his hands buried in the girl’s hair and she is holding on to his shoulders. It looks soft and loving and so unlike what happened between Thomas and me.

  But still, it manages to burn up my lust for him.

  Now the urge to throw up is even stronger. Suddenly, I stand and make a beeline for the exit. Matt and Emma are busy with themselves so no one notices me slinking away. I search for a bathroom frantically, and throw up whatever I ate in the toilet when I find one.

  God, I am Hester Prynne. I am a harlot.

  I have a strong urge to hide myself and never show my face again. My bathtub has become my best friend because I’ve spent two nights hidden away inside it. I feel so ashamed. I feel like people will take one look at me and know, as if my skin is glowing scarlet.

  I want to go back to yesterday and live there. When Thomas is close, nothing feels wrong. What we did was not shameful. It was survival. I need Thomas right now. I need him to make me feel better.

  How ironic is it that the only person who can make this go away is the very one who turned me into this shivery, anxious mess?

  ________________

  Panicking, I sprint through midnight streets, barely paying attention to my surroundings. I reach the Labyrinth, standing tall and shadowy. Once inside, I take the stairs two at a time and keep dashing until I reach Thomas’ office. I turn the knob but it doesn’t give. I try it again, and again and again until I’m rattling the door, pounding on it with my fist.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  I’m hyperventilating. My breaths sound too loud for the tomb of silence.

  Where is he? Why isn’t he here?

  An illogical thought rises in my head: What if Thomas is gone? What if I never see him again? What if he left like Caleb, without saying goodbye?

  My tattoo burns.

  I know it’s stupid. Thomas won’t leave. He can’t. He lives here. He’s got a job here. He can’t leave mid-semester, can he? But I’m not listening to my own rationale. All I can feel is the sense of abandonment, the betrayal I felt when I found myself alone in a strange house, packed with drunk-dead bodies.

  I can’t…I can’t take it. Not again. I want to fall on my knees and sob but my panic won’t let me. It’s filling me with a bizarre sort of energy that vibrates through my legs. Before I know it, I’m sprinting again.

  I hit the same streets, until I’m traveling deep into the residential area where the snow covers the grounds in a white sheen, making it look uninhabited. I don’t slow down until I reach his house. It’s dark, deserted. The naked branches of the tree hovering over the roof sway with the wind, all lonesome-like.

  Hiccupping with cold and loss of breath, I walk toward the driveway. My feet drag. The pavement beneath my boots turns into sand, clutching at my heels with sticky fingers. I don’t want to finish this walk, don’t want to see what’s at the end of the road, but I put one foot in front of the other.

  I keep my eyes on the house, willing the bricks to show signs of the life contained inside it, but there’s no movement. The windows are as dark as ever. Only the white door shines under the yellow porch light.

  Swallowing and breaking a million rules, I become a trespasser once again. I jog across the yard, around the house. I remember the window in the back, through which I saw Thomas with Hadley only a few days ago. So much has changed since then. I have too many secrets now. About Thomas. About myself. About who we are and what we’re capable of.

  In my haste to get to the window, I slip on the wet and snowy earth, falling with a yelp. Shit. Tears well in my eyes as I try to stand up, but in the process, I scrape my knees against the pebbles and the icy patches of snow.

  I’m brushing the muck off when a force pulls me back and I slam against something hard and warm. Something moving, growling. Something that smells like sweat and chocolate.

  Thomas.

  He is here. I sag against his heaving chest, relief making me weak and pliable.

  Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.

  The tips of his fingers dig into my arm and he spins me around to face him. He is sweating. A puff of wintry breath escapes his p
arted lips as sweat rivers down his forehead. His gorgeous dark hair is hidden under a black hood, but a few strands fall over his forehead, framing his fire-breathing eyes.

  I’m so relieved to see him that I smile—a lazy, you just-saved-my-life kind of smile. The anger in his features intensifies.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls, yanking his earbuds out with his other hand. A muted melody wafts around us, the muffled sound of a beat I want to listen to, too. I want to see what kind of music does it for him.

  “Layla,” he warns, his face dipping toward me, no doubt to intimidate. I’m so mellow with relief that nothing he can say or do will make me fear him.

  “Thomas,” I breathe, feeling giddy and ridiculous. “You weren’t in your office so I thought—”

  He shakes me, effectively cutting my speech off. “So you thought what? That you won’t get fucked tonight? Are you that hard up for it?” he bites out as if disgusted.

  His disgust hurts me more than anything I could’ve ever imagined. All day I’ve been wracked with guilt and hatred for myself, and honestly, that play didn’t help either. All day I thought Thomas was the only person who’d put me at ease, who’d make me feel better.

  Before I can say anything, he speaks, his harsh voice changed to a serrated whisper. “Why can’t you let me save you, Layla? Why do you make it so fucking hard?” The flash of agony and regret is so thick and bright on his face that I see his true intentions.

  He wasn’t in his office because he knew I’d come. He knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from him. He wasn’t there because he was trying to…yeah, save me. Me. No one has ever done that for me before. I’ve never been that important to anyone.

  His patience seems to be stretching thin and I put my palm on his stubbled cheek. “I thought you’d left and I’d never see you again…like Caleb did.”

  Something changes in Thomas. I don’t understand it, but I know it’s different than his anger just a few seconds ago. His fingers burn hot on my arm and I can feel it through my coat. I wonder what I said. His scowl matches the black sky, and I can actually hear him grinding his teeth.