Page 100 of I Love My Mistake

Michael takes the cigarette from me and sucks in a long drag, then puts it out without asking me if I want more. That’s annoying. He steps away, walking halfway to the easel, but stops. He turns and looks at me. He gives his head a slow shake from left to right and rakes his eyes over my whole body from toe to head. There’s that expression again. He really can’t believe I’m here. He’s about to say something but he stops, suspended by my look.

My eyelids have fallen half-mast. I’m thinking all kinds of things about him, talking myself into what we’re about to do. I’m thinking how he’ll feel inside me. How I can still taste his kiss in my mouth. How I want to hurt him.

“What are you waiting for?” I purr.

He advances, his shiny long hair blowing softly with his speed. He thinks he’s coming in for a kiss, but I have other plans. Come a little closer, Michael. That’s right. Just like that. As soon as he gets close, I reach back and slap him hard across the face. He reels back, head swinging left. He looks at me sideways, hand twitching.

One corner of my mouth turns upward in an evil little smirk. My eyes travel to his parted, surprised lips. “Want another?”

His expression changes to unadulterated lust. He reaches fast and pulls me to him, grabbing me by the back of my head, crushing his mouth to mine. I double his intensity by pulling him so close he nearly passes right through me. Unchained, we grope each other. We careen around the room, lost in a hot fever and finally free. I strip off his jacket as fast as I can and run my hands down his flexed, tensing back, over his arms, down the sinewy lines of his chest. These are the same muscles I’ve watched so many times paint masterpieces with only me as their infatuated audience. His hands are all over me, gliding and pressing and squeezing and grabbing. When we spin toward the table, he releases me just long enough to push everything from it onto the floor with a single sweep of his arm. Candles and wine bottles crash into a heap of beautiful wet and broken glass full of ashes. He latches our lips back together and lifts me onto the table with an enthusiastic grunt. I hook my legs around his hips. I yank apart from his mouth and lean back to slap his face again. He growls, face stinging, and pulls my arms behind me, holding me down. I snarl in his face. He reaches under my dress, jerks my panties down my legs and off, staring for a hot second at my exposed bare skin, my tiny tuft of dark, moist hair. He unzips his pants and pulls out the cock I’ve always imagined. It’s just like how I knew it must be – dark and full and shockingly huge. No man is as sure of himself as Michael, as quiet and self-possessed, without being well endowed. You’ve got nothing to prove to anyone when you’ve got this piece of meat hanging from you. I raise my eyes to his. My mouth is open, my body’s open – all of me is ready.

“I want to slap you again,” I whisper and bite his lips.

“If there was ever a woman I wanted to hit, it’s you.”

This isn’t gentle lovemaking or anything close. We are going to fuck.

I leap onto him. He grabs hold of me, clasping me hard. With my legs locked around his hips, my feet smashing his ass and gripping him, my fingers digging into his taught olive skin, we spin. I pull at his t-shirt as my hands climb beneath it, ripping its already busted hem even more. He angles his body to kick off his pants. While he’s distracted, I bite hard into his neck. He yells out in pain and grabs my mouth with his to stop me from doing it again. I bite his bottom lip, tugging at it. His fingers dig into the soft flesh of my ass, pushing my cheeks together, my skin molded like dark mahogany clay. He maneuvers his body so he can enter me, gets in the right position and shoves his cock smoothly inside, groaning loudly as the slickness of my moisture envelopes him so sweetly. I cry out as I ride him, as he pushes in deeply. This is Michael inside me. Michael, finally. Our tongues probe. Our fingers dig deep. The strength of his arms lifts me up and down over and over on his massive cock.

Suddenly my mind splits in two. It fragments – whipping off course, flashing to Mark – to his kisses, his touch, the way he felt. How whole I felt with him. How happy. How hopeful and how poetically complete.

I don’t feel any of those things now.

With each pounding thrust that Michael rams into my body, my heart begins to collapse. Even as my body betrays me and answers the call of Michael’s skill, loving every thrust, my heart fills with shame like I’m betraying it. You shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t right. It’s getting louder. My brain reels until soon I don’t know where I am.But it’s too late. My body – so human – is taken past the point of return. Pulled in two directions, I’m ripped down the center by an orgasm I can’t stop, even though I want to. He dives into me again and again, his lips on mine. But I unlatch my mouth from his, gasping as the unwanted pulsing continues. Tears slide down my cheeks. I clutch onto his back with my legs and my arms, disgusted with myself as the waves of ecstasy come long and hard. With each unavoidable contraction, I cringe and begin to sob. Michael thinks I’m releasing joy. He continues to thrust deeply into me. He’s not done.

My heart is screaming so loudly, it finally seeps out my mouth. “Get out,” I whisper. But he doesn’t hear me. He’s in his own world. I say it again, whimpering louder, “Get out.” He can’t hear me. He’s lost in the feelings. Or is it that he doesn’t want to hear me? Oh God. The idea of that makes me lose my mind, pounding on his back and shoulders with my limbs. “GET OUT! GET OUT OF ME!” Yanking myself up in one painful jerk, he falls out of my body, slaps against his thigh in an ugly thump of wet skin on skin.

Stunned, he reels back as I jump off of him. Clumsily falling to the ground, I leap up, pulling my dress to cover myself as I run for a wall to lean on. I stare at the floor, but I’m not seeing it. I’m seeing Mark standing in my home, earnestly telling me, the way you look at me, the way you feel in my arms. These eyes of yours, Nicole. They kill me. I look into them and I think of…

“Possibilities,” I whisper, staring at the studio floor.

Michael explodes with angry confusion, pacing and walking to me. “Possibilities? What are you talking about? What the fuck is going on?”

My head jerks up and I stare at him, remembering where I am. I push myself into the wall, away from him. He drops his hand to his side, shuts his mouth, nostrils flared again. He must think I’m insane. How can I explain what’s happening, why I did that? I shouldn’t have come. I’ve made a horrible mistake.

“Give me a second,” I whisper, holding my hand up. Michael watches me in silence as I scan the room for my panties. Spotting them lying in a little heap on the floor, I walk to them. Looking down to where they’re lying stained with red wine amid broken wet glass and ashes, I shake my head. The sight is a perfect metaphor for this night.

“Why the fuck are you acting like a crazy bitch?!”

My head turns on a swivel and I glare at him. “A crazy what?” I straighten up and hold my head high. “And here I was feeling bad. Well, that’s done. You can fuck right off, now.” His jaw sets. If he wants to take back what he said, I can’t see it in his eyes. I shake my head at us. I leave my shattered panties where they are and head for the stairs. “You can keep those… as a souvenir.”

“Hey,” He walks quickly to me and reaches for my arm again. This time he makes contact, wrapping the strength of his fingers around me and gripping hard. I turn my head again, looking at his grip. From underneath my brow, I look up and lock eyes with him. The familiar rage that always waits just beneath the surface of my psyche, boils hot. On the outside, I am eerily calm.

“Let go.”

He doesn’t. He wants answers. “You can’t walk out on me again. We’re going to talk about this. I can’t go through what I went through last time.”

Every muscle in my body is tight. Very, very slowly I tell him, “I can leave if I want to, Michael. You can’t make me do anything. And your manhandling me isn’t going to get me to listen to you. Let go of my arm. You’re stronger than I am, and you’re hurting me.”

His eyes soften and his grip follows. He’s not the type of man who is inclined to hurt a woman physically. He may not even be the kind who’s inclined to hurt her heart. I was just that lucky. Well, I don’t want to be the lucky first punch, too. But he releases me, his hands flying up like he’s showing me he’s not armed. I take a deep breath, feeling safer as he crumbles. “Nicole. I’m sorry. Look, please don’t leave until we talk. I can see you’re angry with me for everything I’ve done. I wish you could feel how much that hurts me.” He touches his chest where his heart rests inside.

His vulnerability surprises me, makes me relax. I look at him from the corner of my eye. “Is there something you feel you’ve gotta say?”

A huff of air expels from him, and he nods. He stares back at me, open and childlike. “Yes.”

I feel something shift inside me. Compassion? “Okay. I’m listening.” I adjust my legs to face him. I was positioned to escape.

He takes a deep breath, looks away and runs one hand down the length of his hair before he looks at me again. He’s still wearing only his t-shirt and his socks which makes him look even more vulnerable, like a young boy rather than a man. “The truth is, I didn’t know how to tell you I was married. I wanted you, but I didn’t want to be unfaithful to her. I’m sure you figured that part out. What you don’t know is, she helped me get my green card. I owed her, and what she wanted was fidelity.” He looks down to the floor and blinks twice. “There is no love between us. Not like...”

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