A Taste

“I want to taste us on you...”

I type it. Then just sit there, fingers hovering over keys, heart hammering like I’ve shouted it out. Maybe I did, to no one but this quiet room, the low hum of my monitor swallowing the sound in my silent house.

Your typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.
You’re hesitating. And that hesitation is the reply.
We’re always almost saying it. Almost doing it. Yet never quite.
Is it a lack of privacy? Or a lack of intention?
If you wanted to, you would.
That’s what I tell myself.

Maybe it’s this dance, the almost, that keeps us hooked.
Is it guilt that stops you? Maybe fear? Fear of losing control when control is what keeps you safe...

You send back a kiss emoji. Not flirtatious. Just… soft.
Like you’re saying: I feel it too.
I am fed-up of this wanting... it’s not gentle. It’s an ache. A gnawing hunger that coils low in my gut and won’t let go. You leave me restless. I want to consume you then walk away leaving bruises and scratches. Marks only I know are there.

I want you undone, bent over and breathless, so far gone you forget everything but your need of me... I want to devour you until your legs give way.

I can never say your name out loud. Yet you crave your name on my tongue, so I roll it round, expel it like a breath, afraid the universe would hear it and steal you from me.

We’ve been circling each other for years now like ghosts in a slow collision. You, Me. Work. Groceries. Chores. Dentist appointments... But at 2 a.m., when the world stops watching, we become something else. Something that crackles, something wrong and electric and necessary.

We’re adults. Consenting. And we need this.

“I want to taste us on you,” I type again. Slower this time. A whisper written only for you. Because this isn’t just about desire. It’s about us, this thing we can’t name without destroying it. 

A minute later, you reply.
“This.”

I close my eyes. Let the ache pulse through me. It’s just lust, I’ve convinced myself. But then you tease and laugh, and I forget to be guarded. You disarm me in the way you remember the smallest shit I've said years ago. How you let me be both your master and your slave...one breath apart.

We exist in fragments. In pixels. In messages sent too late at night. In metaphors. In breathless pauses.
You send a photo. A slight smirk. Like you know what you’re doing to me.

And dayum, my body reacts.

I'm molten rock.

The kind that aches.

The kind that won’t go away until I’ve imagined you completely wrecked by me.

"You are mine!" say it I command.

You don’t reply. Not tonight. Not most nights.

Usually I am left in want, unsatisfied, disappointed, frustrated.

Angry.

But that is a part of this dance.

Me berating you.

You jealous thinking of me pleasuring another.

So I sit here. The chat window open like a wound that won't close. I imagine your face lit by your phone. Your breath shallow. Your heart beating with mine, across the distance as guilt coats your fingertips.

This isn’t an affair. It can’t be.
Affairs have beginnings and ends. 

We have ellipses.
Long pauses.

Then nothing.

Everything seizes like it never was...

So...while I still have you, in this brief interlude, these stolen moments that soon will pass...

I whisper it again.
“I want to taste us on you.”
And in the dark, I realise I don't have to pretend that I want you anymore.

If I wanted to, I would've.

That’s what I tell myself.

Almost no longer good enough. 

"No expectation!" 

I say it to remind you not to get too close, knowing all the while that it would create a chasm that is insurmountable.

I can feel myself letting you go, pushing you away, this weakness no longer fitting...I hear the hurt in your replies, and then tune them out...my new life calling. 

And I am quite surprised by how easy it is to forget your name.