I knew when he was done before he pulled out and got out of bed to clean himself off. Such a good guy. Yes, that's right... I counted the steps in my mind with something akin to chagrin: first, walk around the bed to my nightstand. Two: pull two tissues out of the box and ask how I was. Three: clean whatever bodily fluids were left on his penis. Four: throw them in the bin and grab the boxer from the chair. Five: go to the bathroom and wash. Six: get back to bed and sleep.

Such a good guy.

Such a bore.

Sex with him was nice. Wasn't stellar but it was ok. It was perfunctory... Close to boring in its predictability but it did what it was meant to do. But it hadn't always been like that, I thought to myself as his breathing fell slowly into a calm rhythm. In a few minutes, he'd be completely asleep and then he'd roll over to the furthest side of the bed and start to snore.

No, it hadn't always been like that. Not with my previous lover. It had been raw and intense and hadn't just served to balance hormones. It had been greedy and primal. It had reached down to the soul. My train of thought was interrupted by his hand slipping free from my waist his body shifting away from mine and rolling to the other side of the mattress.

Such a predictable move. And wait for it... a split second later came the soft snore. He was a good guy. Really, he was. But it couldn't have been more obvious things weren't working out to either one's satisfaction. Yet we were lingering together.

We had tried talking about what was going on... but even that was halfhearted. He had vaguely mentioned something about expecting more. I didn't have the heart to follow through on that line and find out what because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I'd have to tell him I wasn't all that interested in him. And he wasn't the stud he thought he was. But why hurt his feelings?

Why make it obvious my body, mind, and heart were constantly making the comparison to someone else? And that he wasn't up to par either? “Don't burn your house down until you've moved out of it,” used to say my mother. And I had no intention of moving... after all, he was a good guy.

But then some nights that didn't weigh in his favor as much as it should have. I looked across the room and caught the reflection of the bed in the tall closet's mirrored doors just as it was: two people sharing a bed curled on opposite sides so far apart the sheet between them was pulled taught. Looked like a flipping tent.

Then my mind almost as if on purpose, to underline the contrast between past and present, pulled up a memory of another man, myself and our reflection in that same mirror. So different...

I had called him after work and we'd gone out for drinks. Or so was the plan. We ended up bumping into some acquaintances and going for tapas and staying out much later than we had planned. Until we couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take it. I couldn't stand the intensity of his gaze on my skin and know what he wanted to do but not be able to act on it. I couldn't stand not having his hands on my skin when I could feel the heat radiating from his body. By the time we managed to make our way to my apartment there had been such urgency we were half undressed before the elevator got to my floor.

I was at least. He had taken the clip out of my hair, untucked my shirt and half unbuttoned it the second we had stepped into the cramped space. He'd grabbed the hem of my skirt and lifted it around my hips and if I had lived any higher he'd have probably been inside me in a few more seconds. But instead, he grabbed me from the back of my thighs and lifted me to wrap myself around him at mid-waist. I did and while I hoped my neighbours didn't decide to step out of their apartments right as he was walking the short distance to my door I can't say I would have cared much if they had. His lips were warring with mine, his hands were cupping my bottom in a most delicious way and I could feel the strain behind his fly almost like a promise.

No idea how we got in, or when we finally made it to the bedroom but we did and he half threw me on the damn bed. I looked at those tight muscles of his jaw while he undid his necktie and assumed he'd be shedding his coat and shirt next so I reached towards my ankle straps to release them. But I didn't get too far. He didn't let me. He grabbed hold of my ankles and pulled me right to the edge of the mattress the second his collar was undone. He knelt stepped between my legs and pegged me with a hungry stare that needed no verbal command: don't move a muscle. Not that I could. Or would. The man liked control and I was going to, more than willingly, surrender it to him.

There was no hesitation in him, no compunction or stalling to speak of. He lowered himself, on his haunches, between my legs, his coat’s raspy wool in sharp contrast to his warm fingers against the back of my calf as he pulled it over his shoulder. A split second later I felt his breath against my inner thigh and his fingers pulling my thong roughly to the side snapping the flimsy lace off and the burning sensation as his lips touching my skin. I could hardly breathe, there was that much pleasure coursing through my veins, and I had been dying to get to this moment all night long. Damn the clothes I was still half-wearing, damn the door we I wasn't even sure he'd closed, damn the prelude and the dainty little butterfly kisses. 

His lips were working against my core, nipping, pulling and sucking. His tongue was lapping against the most sensitive spots, mercilessly looking to drive me out of my mind and it felt oh so good. One of his hands had found its way to my hip and his fingers were digging in holding me further off the edge of the bed while his mouth was wrecking havoc on my nervous system.

I felt the tip of his tongue slip inside me, play around the rim and pull away for a second but I knew better than to think that’s as far as he’d go. I felt him inhale and return to the same spot with a vengeance, pushing further in, his grunts and breathing with almost an animal-like quality. It felt so raw, so good and so alive.

I closed my eyes and sank into the sensation. He was inside me, all over me, twirling and twisting away making it impossible for me to stifle my moans. His thumb was rubbing right at the top of my clitoris sending shivers down my spine while his lips sucked on my flesh. I was right on the verge but he didn’t’ let me get there.

His tongue slid out of me and lazily swept up replacing his thumb. The suction of his lips around my clitoris was almost painfully it was so gentle and slow and the way he flicked his tongue over it had me trembling from all the tension I reached down and tried to guide him back to where I needed him, to let him know what I wanted but all I could do was gasp and clench my fingers in his hair while his index finger slowly slid inside me. It retreated. It pushed back in.

A second later and there were two fingers. Pushing and pulling quicker and more deliberate. He licked and sucked at me with a growing frenzy his hand in perfect stride with his lashes against my clitoris. At some point, my hips had started moving of their own accord but I hadn’t noticed until my back was arched off the bed so hard it almost hurt and I could barely draw breath.

I felt his teeth grazed against my clitoris, his lips clamped down on it in and his fingers curled inside me at just the right spot. And the world exploded from within my body, incandescent pleasure flooding my every cell as I came and broke apart, his fingers still inside me, moving, prolonging the sensation,

All the while he was looking at me, from between my legs, watching my every spasm, measuring my every breath, taking pleasure from what he was able to engineer.

And that mirror had been a silent witness to it. To it and what followed afterwards.