Crown Vic to a Parallel World

26

Sex and a Stroll

Shawn took the alcoholism as soon as I stopped crying.  I think he wanted to do it before I thought about it too much.  As soon as he disconnected, he kissed me and gently pushed me back on the bed.  He was hungry for me and he did nothing to moderate the feeling.

Shawn’s lust poured into my core like hot oil.  It filled me, made me feel like I would burst into flames.  I took what he gave me and poured it back into him.  We both caught fire.  His frozen eyes glowed with passion and sex.  His skin shone with the sweat of arousal.

Shawn straddled me and tore his shirt off.  He discarded his shirt over the side of the bed, but this time it didn’t take his attention.  His focus was all on me.  I reached for him but he took my hands in his and pushed them above my head.  He leaned over on top of me, his face barely an inch from mine.  “What do you want?” His husky voice breathed over my face.

“I want what you want.”

“Can I take what I want?” His voice contained a hopeful challenge and his eyes narrowed to sensuous slits.

I welcomed whatever he had planned.  “As much as you want, as hard as you want, anything you want.”

The passion that flowed between us became a flood of liquid fire.  We dove in, headfirst.  He sealed his mouth around mine and kissed me passionately, violently.  I gave in, submerged myself in the moment, in him.  We didn’t speak, and we weren’t gentle.  We fucked, hard and fast and rough, rutting animals.  He took me with force I didn’t know he had.  I gave back as good as I got.

Our feelings flowed and combined; our emotions tumbled until I couldn’t tell mine from his.  All my fortified defenses crumbled like castles built on sand.  I felt like I could almost look inside him, and he could almost look inside me.  The session lasted, grew frantic like we were trying to fuck ourselves into a single combined entity.  We didn’t finish and separate; we climaxed and collapsed, a pile of sweaty, tangled limbs.

The only sound in the room was ragged breathing.  “Holy shit, Shawn.” I gasped from the corner of the bed I’d landed on.  We’d reduced it to a bare mattress, the sheets stripped in the tumult.

“Too rough?” He asked from his corner.

I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me do it.  “No, you do that anytime you want.  It surprised me is all.”

He sat up and rubbed his hands together.  “When you gave me permission, all my control went…” he snapped his fingers and opened his hand.  “Usually…I told you that here, I’m a big man…the men I’ve been with were all smaller than me.  I always control myself because I don’t want to hurt anyone.  With you…I LOVE not having to be careful.”

I sat up and stretched my arms over my head.  “I’m glad this oversized body is good for something.”

“How do you feel?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.  Whatever you did earlier must have worked.  No pain anywhere.”  I glanced around at the sheets and pillows strewn about the room.  “I guess we should clean up and reassemble this bed.”

I got up and went toward the bathroom.  I felt Shawn’s eyes on me and a current of shame that I didn’t understand.  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

His face flushed and he dropped his eyes from mine.  “Your back…you’re scratched…I mean, I must have scratched you.”  He stared at his hands and felt a fingernail like he was testing the sharpness of a knife.  “I didn’t realize they were so long.  Let me fix your skin.”

“Don’t you dare.”  I went to the bathroom to look at my back in the mirrored wall and kept talking as I went.  “My whole life guys I went to school with, or worked with, lifted their shirts to show off sex scratches.  I finally got some of my own and you want to erase them?  No way.”  I positioned myself in a corner where two mirrored walls met so I could see my back in one without having to break my neck to look behind myself.  My upper back was crisscrossed with angry, red lines in groups of four.  I mentally high-fived myself.  ‘You made someone feel so good they lost control.’

“I’m proud of these.” I called in to him.

Shawn came in with me.  “I’m happy if you’re happy.  Let’s get in the shower.  If you won’t let me fix them, at least let me wash them.”  I could tell from his emotions that he didn’t understand why I was so excited about being scratched, but he was genuinely pleased that I was pleased.

*          *          *          *

We took a hot, playful shower and dressed in briefs and robes.  We moved to the living room and sat on the couch to watch television.  Shawn had me sit against the arm of the couch with one of my legs stretched along the cushions while the other dangled on the floor.  Shawn sat between my legs, his back against my front, and he drew my arms around his body as he relaxed against me.

“You made me very happy today.” Shawn said as his delicate fingers traced the scars and permanently swollen knuckles of my hands.

It wasn’t the first time that he’d played with my hands.  As he did it, I wondered what fascinated him about my abused paws.  I wondered if it was the size, or the implied strength of them, or the fact that something as ugly as they were still functioned at all.

Shawn called my name to get my attention back from where it had wandered. “Church?” He said with a question implied in his voice.

“Yeah?” I asked.

He screwed his head around so he could look in my face. “I said you made me happy today.”

“I did?” I asked incredulously.  I wondered how I’d done that.

Shawn reached up and stroked the side of my face with a soft palm. “When you agreed to be my boyfriend and to let me be yours…you made me very happy.”

My brain engaged and I understood what Shawn was referring to.  I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before.  I guess my natural self-loathing didn’t understand how giving someone a gift as paltry as me could make them happy.

I grabbed Shawn’s hand from my face and kissed it from the heel of his hand to the tips of his fingers.  Shawn chuckled ticklishly as my lips played across his palm. “And you’ve made me very happy.” I admitted back to him. “If I thought I could manage it without hurting myself, I’d be turning cartwheels!”

Shawn’s ringing laugh filled the living room and made my heart swell with joy.  His emotions told me that he’d made a mental image of the probable results of me attempting cartwheels and he’d enjoyed what he saw. “You are a silly ass.” He teased me and stroked my face again.

With that gentle accusation made, the moment seemed to be over.  Shawn settled against me and turned the wall screen on.  We snuggled on the couch and watched TV until it was time to eat.  When we were hungry, we called down for food and fed each other dinner.

After the meal, around seven o’clock, I started to get nervous.  My hands were steady, and I didn’t feel any cravings, but I’d finished dinner and was stone sober for the first time in a decade.

I tried not to think about it. ‘Just watch the show.’ I told myself. ‘Isn’t it fascinating?  Who are these people?  Why are we watching them?  Are all these shows just preludes to an orgy?  What do the kids watch?  Do they have cartoons here?  Cartoon orgies?  Is this what it’s like to be sober in the evening?  So far, it’s overrated.  It’s nice having Shawn here.  What the hell am I gonna do when he falls asleep?’

“CHURCH!” Shawn exclaimed out of nowhere.

“Yeah, what?”

He tapped the end table to shut the wall off and turned to me.  “Part of being boyfriends, especially boyfriends with direct emotional feedback, is not pretending everything is fine while you have a panic attack.  Talk to me.”

“I’m not used to sober quiet time.” I explained. “I work and I drink.  It’s like…it’s like not smoking.  When I ate lunch at that café you like, I was waiting for a menu, and I didn’t know what to do.  I still haven’t figured it out.  What do non-smokers do when they wait?  This is kind of the same thing.  I can’t figure out what the time is for.”

Shawn jumped up.  “Go get dressed.  Come on.”  He clapped his hands.

“Why?”

“You’ll see.” He said and didn’t say anymore.  He went to his room.  That left me with no other choice but to go to mine to do what he told me to do.  I went to my room.  The scent that greeted me when I opened the room door brought a smile to my face.  I’d forgotten to open a window and the bedroom still smelled like sex.

I breathed it in and tried to figure out how much of it was him and how much was me.  I liked it.  It made me feel naughty and a little nasty.  I savored the scent while I dressed.  I enjoyed it so much that when I finished getting ready, I stopped at the window and hesitated.  ‘Shame to let it all blow away.’ I thought, then I changed my mind and shoved the window wide. ‘We’ll just have to stink it up again.’

I met Shawn in the sitting room.  I wore two shades of pink and no jacket.  He wore flame-red, stretch, hip hugger pants, a form-fitting yellow t-shirt and white heels.  He looked great but a little slutty.  “Are we going cruising?” I asked.

He thought about that for a second, I assumed until he found the definition in my memories.  “No, why?”

I shook my head.  He was either modest to a fault or he really didn’t see it.  “Do you really not know how hot you are?” I asked him. “I can’t believe they don’t chase you down the street.  Tell you what, I’ll keep my eyes open.  If I ever see someone hotter than you, I’ll point them out.”

He still didn’t get it.  “Uh, thanks.”

I skipped explaining and tried to get back to what Shawn had originally wanted. “I got dressed like you asked.  I assume we’re going somewhere.  Lead the way.” I gestured toward the door, then changed my mind and ran ahead of him. “On second thought, I’d better go first.  If you lead the way, we might not make it out of the room.”

We went across the street from the back of the hotel to the park.  The sun had gone down, and the column lights were lit along the paved paths.  The park was emptying out, but still somewhat busy.  People strolled in the night air; a jogger went by getting in a late work-out.  Eyes occasionally flicked my way.  Eyes more than occasionally flicked Shawn’s way.  He didn’t seem to notice.  I noticed and possessively jockeyed myself to the middle of the path and nudged Shawn to the edge.  I laughed when I realized I’d done it.

I hadn’t really been around people since I bought my clothes, and it was interesting to be in what passed for a crowd on Solum.  Shawn was right when he said he was a big man there.  Almost everyone we passed was five-six or shorter.  I asked if he knew why everyone was smaller.  “I mean, on Earth, I’m a big guy, but I’m not that unusual.” I explained.

Shawn’s left arm crossed his body and gripped his right side.  He rested his right elbow on the arm and set his right hand against his cheek while he thought.  When he had something to say, he used his clinical tone while his right forearm gestured in the air.  “In my freshman year anatomy class, they said people have been getting smaller.  Small people are more efficient.  We live in a civilized world.  We don’t battle to mate, not physically.  The theory is, the more advanced a society gets, the less they depend on physical strength, the smaller the population becomes.”

I drew the logical conclusion.  “Therefore, Solum society is more advanced than Earth.”

Shawn shrugged and dropped his arms to his sides.  “It’s just a theory.”

“Is any part of this world at war right now?”

“No.  The last war was King Pravus’ war.”

“You’re more advanced.  On Earth, someone is always trying to kill someone else because they’re different from them.  There is always a war going somewhere.”

Shawn grabbed my hand.  “Don’t think about Earth or war or any of that.  Just be here with me.  Breathe the air.  Smell the plants.  Isn’t this nicer than sitting in a bar?”

I didn’t like his question.  The way he asked it, like he already knew the answer, ruffled my feathers.  I took a breath and reminded myself that Shawn just didn’t understand.  No one who has never dealt with destructive addiction understands it like a former or current addict.  I tried to explain without trashing the mood.

“I didn’t spend so much time in bars because I liked it, and I didn’t drink an ocean of bourbon because I enjoyed it.  I needed it.  I already told you that on Earth, I worked and I drank.  Whenever my mind wasn’t occupied, I knocked it down with whiskey.  I don’t know what to do with quiet time.  I’m afraid of it.

“That’s why I’m worried.  You’ve taken the physical need, but the reason behind it is still there.  I didn’t start drinking because I was addicted.  I started drinking because…because I needed…I needed a place to hide.  You haven’t fixed that, Shawn.  You can’t.” I automatically shook my left wrist to feel the weight of my watch.

Shawn looked at my watch until I dropped my left arm to my side, then he forced his eyes onto the path. “I know.  I promise I know, and I’ve thought about that.  I know you’re worried about tonight.  Don’t be.  When we get back, just get in bed.  I’ll make sure you sleep.”

I let the matter rest and tried to be in the moment with him as we strolled along.  As we went, he told me the little he knew about the trees and plants.  I pretended to be interested.  I liked hearing him talk.  I liked his tenor voice and the way it made me feel.  He could have been telling me about the mating habits of butterflies and I would have listened.  I didn’t always get the point of what he said, but I enjoyed the melody of his soothing voice as it washed over me.

*          *          *          *

We got back to the suite around nine.  I undressed and went straight to his bed.  Shawn went to the bathroom and left the door open so he could chat at me while he did whatever he was doing that seemed to take forever.

“I think tomorrow we’ll stick with the beginner’s wall.  I want you to master that before we make it any more difficult.  I hope it’s easier for you than it was today.  Oh,” he leaned into the doorway so he could see me, “what do you think about moving to my apartment tomorrow?  This hotel is nice, but I haven’t been home in three months.  I mean, we’ve slept together every night but one.  Hardly need two rooms.”

He disappeared from the doorway; water ran, then stopped, and he crossed the floor and got in bed.  “It’s a studio apartment, but it’s big enough for the both of us.  What do you think?”

I was feeling very frazzled.  The things that I was afraid of were starting to appear around the edges of my consciousness and let Shawn know it.  “I think I’m having a hard time and I really need to be asleep.  Please.” I begged.

Shawn felt guilty.  He stroked my head and kissed my lips.  “I’m sorry.  I was being thoughtless.  I’m excited you’re in my life.”  He wrapped his right palm around my forehead.  “Goodnight.” He said and I was asleep.