Page 28 of Way Down Deep

9.54pm

That’s just how it is, I guess. Good things come, and eventually they leave us. Or sometimes we leave them first. Sometimes we even get a chance to say goodbye.

A part of me wants to promise you that I’ll never leave, that I’ll always pick up this phone, but only a liar can make that promise. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. I could waste away from cancer when I’m sixty-two. I can only be here now.

That’s something I have to say to myself a lot these days—that I’m here now.

I lug a lot of shame around, knowing I didn’t come over the second I found out I had a son. I knew about him for seven months before I came. Knowing what I do now, it’s like a knife between my ribs.

If I’d come, and if I’d seen what state he’s in. I could have spared him seven months of only god knows what. Seven months it might take him seven extra years of therapy to get over, for all anyone knows.

But there’s no such thing as time machines, and, in the end, no such thing as wishes, so all I’ve got is that mantra. I’m here now.

I do have my dad to credit for one thing—he’s making me a better father, myself. If only because I’m determined to give the boy what my dad couldn’t seem to give me. I’m always on the floor, on the grass. Always itchy to show him I’m here, let’s play. Let’s do kid stuff. Let’s do you stuff. Whatever that might be.

I’m living for the day he comes over while I’m messing with his blocks or his toy bulldozer and finally decides to join in. I have to believe it’ll happen. If I didn’t, I don’t think I could get out of bed.

Okay, stranger, this is heavy shit. But you know what? It’s after ten. I’m going to leave you momentarily to pour myself a drink and rereadyour message from earlier, reset my head. And after that, I promise I’ll make it worth the wait.

10.15pm

You said it thrilled you, the idea of torturing me. Can I confess something, stranger?

You already are.

I’m suffering. I haven’t come since before we first discovered each other. Not even with your fantasies setting me on fire, getting me hotter than anything I’ve ever read or seen or heard or felt before.

I couldn’t.

I nearly did any number of times, but then…

I didn’t want to come, then find your words still glowing on my screen in the aftermath, seeming utilitarian as porn. I couldn’t bear to cheapen them like that. They mean too much.

And perhaps even more than that, I haven’t wanted the ache to end.

How does that make you feel, to know I’m so hard and so frustrated it physically hurts? That you’ve done that to me. That you’re the only one who can fix it.

I know how it makes me feel. Helpless. Alive. Desperate. Electric.

All thanks to you.

So what I want is this—come back to the fantasy with me. Where we left off, after I made you come.

I want you on my lap, eager and frantic, only face to face this time. I want to feel you claim me, easing down slowly, savoring. Discovering what it feels like, taking a man inside you.

I want to think you’re about to end my torment, to feel the slick, flushed heat of you working me, to revel in the fact that I made you this lush and tight, and now I’m about to claim my reward.

I assume it’s my turn. That it’s only a matter of time. That you’re an angel, sent to save me from this hurt.

Then you put your lips to my ear, and you say, “You don’t come until I tell you to.”

Something moves through me at those words, a shiver made of fire. A fever as cold as ice. I don’t understand. You’re riding me hard, and I’m so close. It’s been days and days and days and I’m so. Fucking. Close. I say, “What?”

“Don’t you dare come until I say you can.”

I always knew we were playing a game, stranger, but the rules have changed. You’ve changed. There’s mischief and cruelty in your voice, and it has me as hot as the waiting or the strokes of your pussy or the smell of your own satisfaction in this room.

I want nothing more than to lose control, end this maddening ache. Grab your hips and force the motions, quench my cock and shoot you full of me, make a mess of the both of us.