Talcum

Rated R

He's pretty sure she thinks she loves him.

And on certain nights, when she looks at him with soft eyes, he can tell she's wondering if he loves her back.

It's absurd. Why would anyone think he loves her? It's not like he knows everything about her, or wants to. He might want to, but that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything at all that he dreams about her, because dreams are just bits of conscious and psyche.

Dreams aren't love, and the way the light catches her hair isn't love either.

~*~

Another man smiles at her, glances down at her chest.

He's furious, and his nails dig into his palms hard as he watches her blush under the man's gaze.

She doesn't seem to understand that she can't have anyone else. She can't have him either, not yet, not until he knows she's ready. There'll be a clear sign when she is ready; he'll know when he sees it. It's not enough that she's asked him out, that she admitted to coming for him.

He comes for her every night.

~*~

Sometimes at work, on a particularly hard night, when he's particularly hard, he'll remember the time she vomited on his foot.

It took two weeks after that incident for him to picture her lips around his cock again, and it became his trump card. Became his hard-on nixing technique. Except over time, the memory shifts, and she's vomiting fresh air, and the sound of her heaves remind him of gasps of pleasure, and even vomit starts to seem erotic.

~*~

Her breasts are pert. Impossibly so, even on the days when she doesn't wear a bra.

He imagines palming the firmness of her flesh and running his thumb over a stiff nipple. Imagines the hitch in her breath when he takes one between his teeth, and the hard slap of his fist against his groin gets louder in the emptiness of his bedroom.

~*~

Love isn't what you see in the movies, he knows. There's no swelling musical scores, there's just loss and unspeakable pain.

He wants no part of love. When she smiles at him and his heart stops, he makes himself picture an old deaf woman still waiting for her husband to come home.

~*~

The cock of her eyebrow makes the cock in his pants jump. Thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't. He's certain of that. Because at the very least, she doesn't know what it's like to slide into a woman slow, feeling the slickness, the gradual give of her warm walls, and he wonders if she touches herself. If she puts her fingers, those fingers touching that file, into herself and rubs, and pushes.

He's jealous of her fingers now, and this has gone too far, and not far enough.

~*~

There's a knock on his door around two. His first thought is not to answer it, since he's hard and ready for his daily palming, but something in the knock is familiar. A well-placed knot in his robe helps conceal the bulge, and he opens the door to her.

"Hey," she says with a nervous grin. "I forgot to give you this before you left."

It's a file of some sort. He thinks it's manila, but in any case it's on the floor now, as he pushes her against the wall and crushes his lips against hers. She's kissing him back just as hard, clutching at his back, pushing his door shut with her foot.

There was no need to bring a file. They both know it.

She reaches out and unties his robe, weaving her hand into the opening with impatience to wrap slender fingers around his cock as he bites her shoulder hard.

Christ, he has to fuck her now. He's going to fuck her raw.

She strips off her shirt, and he fumbles with the clasp of her bra until her breasts come into view. Fulfilling one of his oldest fantasies, he cups his hand around one and-

Stops. Stops kissing, stops rubbing. Stops breathing.

He is a scientist, and scientists make hypotheses. Assumptions based on evidence, and the evidence of her high breasts should make it clear that they are mostly muscle, that they are firm. But science has failed him, the evidence has failed him, and he's never felt anything so soft in all his life.

Leaning down, he takes a nipple between his lips - not his teeth, never his teeth - and the flesh of her breast is so soft against his rough whiskers. He drops to his knees, kissing her stomach, and it too is soft, and smells like baby powder.

He is all hardness and she is all softness, and this can't work.

She says his name gently, running her fingers through his hair. He looks up at her with something like terror.

"I don't know how to do this."

"Do what?" Her eyes are dark. Dark, and oh fuck, he loves her.

"I've never been here."

She doesn't say anything then, just shucks off her pants ungracefully, and he loves how ungraceful she is. Removes his robe for him quickly, and he loves how impatient she is.

This can only end badly.

His sheets are soft and his headboard is hard. He pushes into her and wonders when exactly she pushed her way into him. There is no staccato thrusting, just a gentle rocking and the sound of his name on her lips, over and over. When he comes, he shudders and murmurs her name, too.

They're sticky with sweat and semen and DNA, but he throws a heavy leg over hers anyway, so she can't leave him yet. The deaf woman is shaking her head at him in disappointment, and Sara is whispering, "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"