“Why are you talking about a confrontation? We’re not fighting.”
“I’m waiting.” Still looking at her intensely and she knows she can’t get out of this. Her stomach is tightening, her brain is in overdrive, trying to filter so that her mouth does not utter the words she can’t take back. And she starts slowly and carefully but it soon escalates and she’s talking fast and nervously.
“Ok, I was thinking about us again and I know I should not, but I was also thinking about getting back to reality after this. I was thinking about you and that I’m holding you back and I don’t’ want to be that person that gets in the way of your life, of you finding a woman more suited to you, of having babies and all that stuff. Of you deciding where you want to live and work without me. In a way, it’s about clear thinking, as I have no idea what the hell I’m doing with my own life.
I’m hanging out, waiting to have a conversation with my son, so I can decide what the hell I’m going to do with myself, and as much as I would like this between us to go on forever, it will not, as I’m too old for you and I saw you with that gorgeous girl on the beach and wondered, why me?”
(Oh goddess Aphrodite, she has lost that filter from brain to her mouth. It’s out. She said it, and she mentioned that gorgeous woman!)
He is making her more nervous, as he remains propped up on the doorframe, looking at her with wonderment in his eyes, and she can tell he is trying not to smile, or is it laugh? Is he laughing at her? And her mouth continues on its rampage.
“So I ask myself, why am I with him? What do I want from him?” And it’s now that she stops, looks at him hard and says, “Well, say something, will you?”
He looks at her, uncoils himself from the doorframe and goes to her. He sits on the edge of the bed as she sits there propped up on pillows. He bends over her, lifts up her chin, looks at her forlorn face and says in a very matter of fact way and with a very relaxed cheeky smile.
“You know why you’re with me,
kardiá mou (my heart)
? Because I’m good in bed.”
She pushes him away with her hands on his chest but he continues.
“Ok. Let’s get serious. Let’s rewind all that stuff you just blurted out. This is all about me greeting my friend on the beach today and don’t deny it. I know, you’re trying to rationalise feeling a wee bit jealous, right?”
She looks down and finds that she’s twisting the end of her nightdress like a little girl. He hugs her,
“Oh agápi mou (my love) what do you want to know about Aphrodite?”
(Oh fuck! She has the Goddess of Love’s name. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!)
And her little girl’s voice comes out.
“Is she a good friend?”
“Look at me Hope. Look into my face, because I want you to hear this well and have it sink in. She is a friend who used to be a girlfriend.”
And her heart stops beating as he continues.
“We were together until recently, but we were not together like you and I are! We went out, we had sex and we worked together. Aphro is a career officer and we got on well and we also parted amiably. She knows about you. At least, she knows I moved on, but we remain as friendly as possible. And she is a good person, smart and a woman I admire. That is the truth and the whole truth. I can’t tell you I was celibate for the year that I have been here. I would be lying and you would know it.”
Hope is flabbergasted by his admission and the honesty. It has thrown her and she can only say the most mundane thing, and the most immature thing that comes to her.
“She is gorgeous and she is your age. Why? Why? I just don’t understand.”
With a smile on his face, “Strictly speaking, she is older than me, but with a smaller gap. Yes she is gorgeous, but so are you. What else do you want me to say? We can’t help whom we fall in love with. I don’t care how much you love me and what sacrifices you can or can’t make for our love. I will always love you, no matter where you are.”
He looks at her as her eyes fill with tears and as much as she’s trying to control the water works, they are on the edge. He embraces her and whispers in her ear the lyrics of a Greek song.
Pethéno giá sέna kai us íse apáti, then pái na ίse pséma egó se léo agápi
.
(I’m dying for you, even if you are a deception. It does not matter if you are a lie. I still call you love.)
He holds her tight and he whispers,
“Are you expecting your period, ‘cause you’re very teary?”
She pulls back and looks at him in wonder that he has that detail in his mind, when her period is due. And he is right. She is due and she is teary, and extra sensitive. She hugs him and is so in love at this very moment, but cannot tell him. It’s as if the words ‘I love you’ are prohibited for her, and if she dares say them she will be punished in some way.
And then her filter disappears again and she says,
“Why? Why me and not her?” and for the first time in the few months they have been together she sees him lose his cool.
He jumps up, throws his arms up, looks up as if he is looking for some divine help and shouts,
“Not this fucking boogie man again,” he looks down at her in anger with his hands into fists, and she can see the artery in his neck that she loves nibbling, is throbbing. “I fucking told you,”
He bends and grabs her by the shoulders and she can feel the bruising that will show there,
“I. Love. You. Why? That is not for us to know. It is. It just is!”
He releases his stronghold on her and embraces her with anger subsiding,
“Please
agápi mou
, (my love) can you let it go and just believe that what we have is special. Very special! It’s ours, and no one can take it away from us, no matter what happens to us.”
Hope holds him as he is holding her, and whispers in his ear,
“So you are admitting that this can not go any where.”
He pulls back still holding her and looks into her face.
“
Psíhi mou
, (mt soul) I say nothing. You are doing all the negative thinking. I don’t know what you will decide and I won’t take it lightly if you decide I should get out of your life, but I can’t make you do something that will make you unhappy, or create more complications in your life.
But just have this in mind. If you decide to be with me I will walk whatever bumpy road you walk on, alongside you, and will always make sure that your life is full of love from me, but the end decision is yours. I know I can look after you in every possible way, even financially as I have faith in my abilities, but you have to have faith in me and in us. That is what is missing on your part. Faith.”
She almost can’t believe what he is saying and because of his words her decision is more difficult and she knows she loves him and cannot tell him. Yet she still wonders why he has come into her life. He can see her eyes brimming with tears again and he gets that playful look in his eyes,
“Let’s make out.” And he seals her mouth with his. He pulls away and wipes her tears with his thumbs and she’s laughing between tears and says,
“You have to be in a car or a couch to make out and we’re in bed.”
“I get hard when you cry.”
They are laughing now, “But we have established that you are always hard.”
“That I am,
agápi mou
, (my love) when I’m around you.” And now his voice has turned grave, a solemn tone. And he brushes her with a stroke of his tongue and she’s all his again and he is in her ear, “I’ve given up smoking for you and only for you. I drink very little and have never done drugs, but your body is so addictive I can never give you up.”
And she wonders at this. She’s about,, she’s petite although with good boobs. She has given birth and has some stretch marks. She has short, dark curly hair, she’s forty, with lots of baggage and he prefers her to that tall blonde, who is at least ten years younger then her, and he had that goddess and yet prefers her!
Hope is in his arms, his beautiful hands and his strong arms are around her and not the tall blond. Why can’t she take pride in that? Why can’t this boost her ego, instead of deflating it. She tries to analyse at this moment, the moment he loves her and she knows why she’s like this. Suddenly she knows (without the therapist) at this stage.
It’s simply this. She doesn’t feel as if she’s worthy of such love. She has no idea what she has done to deserve it. Her husband had come into his life when she was still a teenager and she was not sure if he ever loved her. He always had other women in his life, and she was simply just his “property”.
She thought that getting married would give her the emotional stability she did not have growing up. She was so wrong. And after her divorce she had fallen into a relationship with a Peter Pan man.
Then true love does come along, in the body of the most beautiful man, maybe, on the planet. And his beauty is not skin deep. Ok, he is also the best lover in the world, but most importantly he actually cares. So much caring, that she has no idea what to do with it. She’s not used to it! She has always tried to care for her emotional self on her own, for as long as she could remember, since conscious memory. She then cared for a child, and a husband, and is still taking care of herself. And she is finding it hard to let someone else take care of her, for the first time in her life.
He gets up and leaves the room. Hope can hear the clanking of ice in the kitchen, and he is back with a glass with ice and that milky substance, that can only be ouzo on ice. He sits on the edge of the bed again, takes a sip and puts the glass on the bedside table. He turns and looks at her,
“Do you want some?” And he takes another swig.
“No….” and before she can finish what she is saying he has sealed her mouth with his and is feeding her ouzo. He moves his head to the cave of her breasts and pops out a piece of ice from his mouth. He caresses her with his hands and the ice and she catches her breath. She is immediately his sex slave once again.
“You always end conversations with sex.”
He looks at her hard, deeply into her eyes. “Can you think of a better way to end a conversation that we both know is not going anywhere?”
Of course she can’t and she gives in. They drink the ouzo together, he from the glass and she from his mouth, Hope has ice on her body and as it is very hot, it is exhilarating. He slowly puts it on her body with his lips, which is very arousing. He is lying on top of her, supported by his elbows by her sides, and very quickly she loses the skimpy sleepwear. And very quickly too, he loses his boxer underwear. She wraps her legs around his hips and moves towards his arousal.
“What do you want Hope, tell me?” She looks at his face and she suspects that he is withholding sex from her, something he has never done before. He has not played the game of alpha male with her before. He knows the map to a woman’s body. He knows how to navigate her body so he has control over her, and Hope is shocked at this realisation and aroused by it, at the same time. His cock is hovering over her folds, teasing her; she’s burning for him. She’s trembling, but is trying to stay in control….and is failing miserably.
“I want you.” She says, trembling. His body is covering her, his lips are very close to hers, his cock is covering her intimate parts, and she’s in purgatory and paradise at the same time.
“How do you want me,
morό mou (my baby)
?”
“Inside me. Put all of you inside me. Now. Please,” her voice whispers urgently, panting.
He teases her a little more with his cock and his lips. He takes her hands and holds them together on top of her and she can’t touch him, but she suspects he thinks she might push him away as he continues to torture her. He enters her slowly and their breathing stutters, as he grunts from pleasure but he stops there, inside her, with her trying to move for him gyrating her hips into him.
“Don’t move.” He demands in an authoritative tone she has not heard before. She stops moving and he begins to move slowly inside while she has the orgasm on the edge, and she snaps into a reality that he is trying to keep her from her orgasm. He wants something from her.
He is looking into her eyes with extremely dilated pupils making his eyes look darker than they are, with their faces in each other, She says in a trembling voice. “Why are you doing this? Do you hate me so much?”
“No baby, I don’t hate you. My love is more than you can imagine.” Whilst moving slowly inside her. “I have never reacted to a woman as I have to you, and I have never had a woman who presses so many of my buttons as you do. But never mistake my love and my caring for weakness.” He keeps looking into her eyes while still holding her arms and he stops moving inside her.
“Just fuck me Jason, now.” But he still does not.
“Apart form fucking, what else do you want from me Hope?’
She now has tears in her eyes as she has no idea how to handle this stranger. Where has her Jason gone? He sees her face, he lets go of her hands and starts to move and she explodes immediately. She can see in his face that he is trying to control himself. She wraps herself around him and as she releases and she starts muttering in his beautiful mouth.
“
Se agapó. Se agapό
. (I love you, I love you)” She looks into his face as she calms and she sees a smile she has not seen before, and he has stilled inside her so he can control everything. She knows now that was what he wanted from her. Her declaration of love.
He had her in his arms for the next hour or so, and she came again and again, while he controlled himself in a super human venture. She was exhausted. She was done! But he wanted more from her. She was just happy to have him in her arms. She could feel and could see that he wanted to come too. He looked into her face and said.
“Come with me baby, come again.”
“I can’t. I don’t have any more.”
“Yes you have. I’ll help you.” And he did and he lets go with her. He was not a noisy lover, he was a talker, but only for Hope’s ears. But he came louder this time, saying her name over and over again, filtering his words and sound in her mouth. He held her so tight for so long, as if he were afraid she might escape and she loved being in his arms.