"Ohfuckohfuckohfuck," she sobs. "Fee, fuck—Felix, yes, fuck, fuck, fuck!"
She comes for an eternity, sobbing and shaking.
For a moment, she goes still, limp on the bed, panting.
And then her eyes snap open, and they're full of quicksilver fire and erotic hunger.
I have a feeling I've just roused a beast within her.
Eight
EMBER
I'm boiling over with a crazed confusion of emotions and sensations. Chief among them at this exact moment is utter relief—I haven't had an orgasm in nearly eight months, and I don't think I really allowed myself to feel the need. I have a tendency to dissociate from my body in times of stress or feeling emotionally or physically overwhelmed. When I'm concentrating on something, I can forget that I have to pee for so long I've gotten UTIs. I'll forget hunger, thirst, pain, anything.
So the last eight months I've dissociated from my body entirely. I had to make myself eat after Dutchie died. Had to force myself through the motions of caring for myself physically, telling myself it's what he would have wanted. And then it went back to being habit—eating because that's what you do, you eat in the morning, afternoon, and evening. You take showers. You use the bathroom. I never felt any of it, I just…forced myself to do it.
But physical pleasure? What a joke. Until I met Felix, I'd legitimately forgotten what that was. I'd shut that part of myself off, divorced my psyche from my innate needs as a biological, human female. I haven't been a sexual being since the moment that doctor said the word "cancer."
And then Felix happened.
Maybe when I whacked my head on the engine compartment, I knocked something loose, I don't know. I just know the moment I saw him, physical sensation came flooding back into my body. It was truly bizarre.
I was no longer just a Gordian knot of sorrow floating through the world.
I was a woman.
I had a body.
I had toes and fingers. Legs and arms. Feet and hands. Hair, nails, teeth. Organs.
Skin.
Breasts and buttocks.
I was a woman, and I needed sex.
At first, it had felt sort of…divorced from emotional need, which is weird for me. I'm on the demisexual spectrum, normally. I don't feel sexual attraction unless I feel an emotional one first. It's connected to my comfortability with nudity, perhaps. My mother's commune was one of open sexuality and nudity. It wasn't at all unusual to enter an RV or bus or van and find a couple in the throes of sex. People would walk around the camp naked. I've never tried to sort out the psychology of it, but I know that there is a connection between how I grew up and my demisexuality. I spent almost three months getting to know Dutchie and falling in love with him emotionally before I felt even the slightest glimmers of physical arousal. And then, it developed slowly. He was so patient, so kind, so understanding, even though he was a normal guy with a normal sex drive. But he never rushed me, never pressured me. It was over a year after we met before we slept together.
Then he died.
I shut down.
And Felix…quite literally turned me back on. Why and how, I have no fucking clue. I just know that I saw him standing there on the dirt road, all muscle and masculinity and sexiness, and I felt an instant and overpowering attraction to him. An arousal that I couldn't even begin to fathom, because it was so intense, so sudden, and so fucking strange. So unexpected. I barely knew him, but Iwantedhim. I was barely able to hide it. I wanted to rip his clothes off right there in the middle of the road and climb on his dick.
It had shocked me stupid, and I’d been so confused that I'd had to meditate until it passed, and even then, if I let my mind go to him, that attraction would crop back up.
I’ve tried everything—pot, meditation, mantras…everything but leaving town.
That was not an option.
And then he'd appeared again. At that beach. Shirtless. Dripping wet. Ripped, jacked, and fucking gorgeous. A rippling six pack dusted with fine golden hair that was thicker on his chest and in a line down his belly, darkening and thickening as it delved under those tight, short swim trunks. Brawny arms. Hard, round, massive shoulders. Thick, hard thighs. A bulge that swayed with every step, promising a cock that could show me a sinfully good time.
My arousal had been so complete and so disorienting that I hadn’t known how to handle it. It was beyond my experience—my desire for Dutchie had grown as I got to know him. He hadn’t been my first, but because it had taken so long to open up to him that by the time we made love, my emotional connection with him had been immense and soul-deep, and so my physical connection to him had been as equally intense.
Felix…
He's cipher to me. A totally alien and unknowable thing. My feelings for him are confusing. I barely know him and yet suddenly I'm wildly horny for him? It makes no sense. I crave him to the point of lunacy. I dreamed of him every night after I first met him, and they were not innocent dreams. They were filthy, sinful, depraved dreams. I'm embarrassed—and turned on—even thinking about it.
