Page 19 of Pawn

I moan, my knees pulling up and wide open, swaying with the rhythm of his thrusts. My breasts move with him, rising and falling, and his eyes feast on me, memorizing every inch, every movement. I can feel my climax coming, that tight, hot pressure building, and I know he can feel it too, the way my pussy clenches around him, the way my breath hitches.

“My turn,” I gasp, and I pull him down suddenly, flipping us, straddling him again. I sink down onto him, taking him deep, and then I’m moving, pumping my pussy hard, my hips rising and falling, my clit grinding against him. I slow down, rotating my hips, teasing him, my pussy muscles tightening around him, milking him.

“Fuck, Liana,” he groans, his hands gripping my hips, his fingers digging into my skin. I can feel his cock throbbing inside me, the way his breath hitches, and I know he’s close.

But I’m closer.

I feel my orgasm building, that tight, hot pressure, and I know I’m going to come, but then he’s moving, pulling me to him, flipping us again, and he’s on top of me, his cock sliding back inside me. He maneuvers me onto my stomach, lifting my hips, placing a pillow beneath them, and then he’s behind me again, his hands on my ass, squeezing, spreading me.

He lands on me, penetrating me from behind, and I meet his thrusts, pushing my ass onto his pelvis, our bodies moving in harmony. The sensation of his throbbing cock sliding in and out of me is almost too much, and I can feel my climax coming, that tight, hot pressure building, ready to snap.

He lays on me, his body engulfing mine, absorbing me into him, and we rock together, our pelvises moving in time, his cock sliding in and out of me, deep, so deep. His arm reaches underneath me, his fingers finding my clit, and he rubs me, his touch firm, insistent, and I cry out, my body trembling.

I can’t hold back any longer. My orgasm crashes over me, my pussy clenching around his cock, my body shuddering, and he groans, his hips snapping against mine, his cock pistoning in and out of me as he chases his own release.

I feel him come, his cock pulsing inside me, his body tensing, and then he’s spilling into me, his cum filling me, hot and thick. We collapse onto the bed, our bodies tangled together, our breaths coming in ragged gasps.

For a long moment, there’s only the sound of our breathing, the feel of his skin against mine, the way his cock softens inside me. Then he pulls out and rolls onto his side. We both fall asleep, joyfully exhausted.

Soon

I wake up, and he is gone.

Gone — the way a thing is gone when the space it occupied has already closed around its absence, and the air has rearranged itself to fill the shape he left behind. I did not hear the door. Did not feel the mattress shift. I did not catch the sound of his feet on the floor, his jacket coming off the chair, or any of the hundred small noises a body makes when it moves through a room it does not belong in.

He left the way he arrived. Like smoke. Like something that was never fully solid to begin with.

I sit up. The sheets are tangled. My body holds the memory of his hands — the pressure, the warmth, the specific devastation of being touched by someone who knew exactly where to reach. My skin feels like a page read for the first time by someone who understood the language.

The apartment is quiet. The heater hums. The cream walls stand unchanged and the granite countertops carry the same deliberate cold and everything looks exactly the way it looked three hours ago except that nothing — not one thing — feels the same.

I press my hand against the cushion beside me. Warm. Fading. The ghost of a body that was here and is not, and the warmth draining out of the fabric the way it drains from everything taken before you are ready to let it go.

His scent is in the sheets. Something clean and specific and male — not cologne, not product, just skin and coffee and the particular heat of a man whose body ran silent and warm against mine in the dark. I breathe it in before I can stop myself, and the ache through my chest is so unfamiliar it takes me a moment to name it.

Want. Not the wanting of something you cannot have. The wanting of something you had and lost before you learned its name.

I pull on a shirt — except he did not leave one. He left nothing. No jacket, no shoe, no single physical object that would prove he was real except the warmth still fading from the cushion and the scent still clinging to my sheets and the feeling in my body of a woman who has been opened by someone who understood the architecture of what was closed.

Then I see the paper.

On the counter. Folded once. Placed beside the coffee mug I left there hours ago — positioned with the deliberate care of someone who wanted me to find it but did not want it to look like he wanted me to find it.

I cross the kitchen. My bare feet on cold tile. The apartment humming its mechanical hum.

I unfold the paper.

A phone number. Ten digits. Written in handwriting that is precise, unhurried, each number formed with the patience of a man who does not rush because rushing is for people who are afraid the moment will end.

No name.

Beneath the number, one word.

Soon.

The word lands in my chest like a key turning in a lock I did not know existed. A lock I have been pressing against for twenty years without understanding what it was or where it led or what would happen when someone finally reached through the door from the other side.

I do not call the number.