Page 67 of Sicken of the Calm
“Uh, duh, that’s the whole pointof abstract art – either it moves you immediately to your core, or it’s a pileof laughable garbage that you either pretend to like or make cutting jokesabout,” he replies, thrusting his nose in the air. I shake my head, smiling.
We get lunch and walk around thecity, and no one is saying the worddate, but I’m thinking it loudlyenough for the both of us. All the while, his words before we left, his promiseof what he had planned for tonight, is a slow simmer at the back of my mind,allowing me to enjoy the day and anticipate its end at the same time.
We walk around long enough thatthe sun starts falling, and we eat dinner at a food cart, enjoying the city’sbustling nightlife, awakened by the promise of spring. I look at all the peoplewalking by us. Each is in their own little capsule of life, swirling withinvisible wants and doubts and experiences that I find difficult to comprehendthe depth of, even, or perhaps because, I have a body and a mind and a capsuleof my own. When I look at Ezra, I imagine our capsules melting together, thisshared space that goes beyond space, beyond time. For the first time, I’m theone that reaches for his hand without it being for comfort, but simply becauseI want to and am brave enough to do it. He looks at me, and the smile thattakes over his face lights up my small little world.
When we get back to mine, theapartment seems especially quiet and still, matching the spaces inside me. Ezramoves around the room, a phantom earning shape as he turns the lamps on. I lookat him in the orange glow. Each flare of light casts another spell, taking usfurther away from the world outside. In this small, perfect place, I watch Ezrakneel by the bed and pull a small box from under it. The lid makes a small,soft noise as it’s removed, and my heart beats a little faster, as it always does,when he pulls the silk-cotton ropes he purchased months ago out, leaving themresting on the bed. The box is shut and slid under the bed to sleep. With thatsame calmness, he goes over to his bag and slips out a piece of silk that isblack, but also orange and liquid white from the light. It puddles next to theropes before finally, finally, he turns back to face me.
“Are you thirsty?” he asks. Ishake my head. “Undress,” he says. I do so slowly but without show, leaving myclothes on the desk beside me. When I’m bare for him, I get on my knees withouthim having to ask. I’ve never done that before, but it feels right, and hissteps stutter slightly from where he was moving closer. I look up at him whenhe stops before me, but close my eyes as he runs his fingers through my hair. Ifeel so calm and at peace that I could melt into the air around me.
“Look at you,” he says. I make aslight noise from the back of my throat, as if I’m eating up his words butcan’t quite take them.
My eyes flutter open as his handdisappears, and I watch him undress. It’s rare that I get to see him naked soearly in the game. I enjoy the opportunity to look at him without the haze ofheightened arousal, even though my dick is already hardening just fromanticipation.
When he’s removed all his clothesand put them with mine, the paleness of his body is cast in shadow and light.He reaches me again and his hand returns to my head, petting my hair for a fewmoments before his other hand takes hold of his half-soft dick. He lifts it tomy mouth and I part my lips obediently. He rubs the head of his dick on themfor a moment before finally slipping in. I close my eyes, widening my mouth alittle to take him in. I simply breathe through my nose for a moment, smellingthe earthy scent of him. My hands come up, just to rest on his thighs, and hefeeds me his cock in slow thrusts. I get to feel him hardening and lengtheningon my tongue and suck a little harder, the banked heat inside me flaring alittle more to life.
As always, he gives me justenough to leave me wanting more before pulling away, but I don’t protest. Mymind is blank and clear. I only have to follow.
I stand up on only slightly shakyknees and open my mouth to his kiss, his tongue fucking into it as languidly ashis cock had done. When he pulls away, the look in his eyes is hard to define,as if he is looking at something beautiful he wants to take apart, just to putit back together again.
He guides me to the bed and Istretch out on my back, leaving my hands above my head without having to beasked. He smiles at me, a dark and gentle thing, before getting the ropes fromthe foot of the bed and moving to tie me up. His movements as he winds theropes around my wrists and to the headboard frame are sure and practiced, andthere’s a glow inside me, knowing that it’s a skill he acquired just with me.
He grabs the blindfold andstraddles me, knees pressed against my sides, but pauses before he goes anyfurther.
“You said you weren’t sure aboutsensory deprivation, when we first talked about it,” he says, and of course hewould remember.
“I want it,” I say, my voice comingout quiet, matching the still night around us. His hand comes up to cup myface, running his thumb across my cheek.
“I think it’s going to be alittle more intense than you think,” he warns, and it’s not like I don’tbelieve him because he’s always been right about these things, but-
“I trust you,” I say simply. Helets out a long breath, as if his lungs were pushing it out of him, before henods.
“There will be moments when Iwon’t be able to touch you, but I’ll never go far, ok?” he says. I nod my head.He leans down after a moment more to kiss me and I strain my head upward alittle to deepen it, but he keeps it light before pulling back.
He grabs the blindfold again,kisses me between the eyes, and then places a stretch of the fabric over them.With that, the sight of Ezra disappears. But I can still hear him, can feel hisbody on me. The piece of silk is long, and he winds it around me a few times,deepening the darkness until it is almost complete, just a slight glow from thebottom edge peeking through when I move my head. He ties the knot at the sideof my head to avoid me having to lay on it.
“How’s that. Too tight? Loose?” heasks.
“It’s good. I can’t see.”
“Good,” he says, and it’s strangeto hear the smile on his face instead of seeing it. It makes me suddenly awareof my body, of where Ezra is in relation to me. Lighting into my awareness isthe feel of the ropes around my wrists, my breaths coming in and out of mynose, the feel of the sheets, and of Ezra; his soft balls and ass as he sits onmy abs, his folded thighs and legs secure against my sides. When he kisses me,it takes me by surprise, and I let a little breath out that he licks from myteeth.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?”he says in a warm breath across my mouth. I say nothing in return. I never dowhen he says these things, feeling like protesting and accepting at the sametime. It’s not that I think I’m unattractive, but it’s not his words that causethe biggest reaction in me. It’s his tone of voice, so reverent, quiet and yetindisputable. It makes something in me crack open, the soft centre melting outfrom its hard shell and dripping all over me, warming me from my toes to thehair on my head.
That one kiss is only the start.He traces my face with the tips of his fingers, mapping out its valleys and itshills, running across the jungle of my eyebrows and the grain of the slightstubble on my jaw. He traces my lips before slipping three fingers into mymouth, pushing them in and out so slowly that it’s almost calming instead ofarousing. He just watches his own fingers for a while, my face lax and calmaround them, sightless, before they slip out again. I feel him shift slightlyand suddenly it’s his lips, trailing the same paths his fingers did, makingsure the skin under my eyes remains just as vulnerable, the tip of my nose justas round.
This sets a pattern for the restof my body. His fingers, the explorers, setting out the paths to be taken byhis lips, which leave settlements of warmth everywhere they go. He builds smallpyres on my pulse point, leaving the ground purple with the bruising heat.Sweeps winds across my collarbones, follows the migration of fluttering birdwings across my shoulders. The skin of my inner elbows is searched with teethand tongue, left alive by nipping teeth. My nipples are constructed as placesof worship, and Ezra stays there for an age, for two, drawing song and gaspfrom the land underneath. The valley of my stomach is found trembling, left asheaving earth. The thin skin of my inner thighs is proclaimed holy land and isanointed with a thousand kisses and a thousand bites. My legs are fertile landand are raked by his nails, over and over and over until it must be left a richred, ready for the next season. Even when I think the journey must have ended,that Ezra has found a place to rest at last, I am turned over, exposing thesweeping landscape left to discover. The forest of the nape of my neck istravelled from one point to another, leaving shuddering leaves behind. The longdesert of my back is nothing to his wandering hands, to his breathing mouth, tohis wet tongue. The arid land is left transformed, tributaries of liquid warmthtrailing from the river of my spine. The estuary of the small of my back is divedinto, the islands of my cheeks bitten into until I am left a shakingearthquake. The backs of my legs are treated to the same ploughing of the earthas the front, cultivating sounds and whines, sacrifices for the Gods above.
And then finally, finally, Ezraturns to blessed land. He parts my cheeks and his tongue finds the holebetween. I jerk and cry out, sensitive to any touch after the long andextensive exploration of my body. I’m both trembling and loose, and he fuckshis pointed tongue into my hole, massaging his fingers into my perineum untilI’m gasping for breath, shaking apart, saying his name like a prayer and a pleaall at once. When he wraps his hand around my dick, hard and leaking despitenot being so much as brushed before, I moan into the bed, the combinedsensations bringing me perilously close to the edge. I open my mouth to give awarning, but Ezra must know my body so well, so intimately by now, and he pullsaway before I can be hurtled over the brink. The darkness over my eyes is justadding to the helplessness of the mounting sensations. I sob into the sheets,relief and want at once as I come back from the edge.
“Please, please, please,” I’msaying, and he runs a hand over the skin of my ass, abused minutes before byteeth and tongue. I hear him hum, but I don’t know what he’s thinking, and whenhe disappears, it’s with a punch to my stomach.
Very suddenly, for the first timesince we started, I can’t feel him touching me, can’t even hear where he isover my breaths and rushing blood. I turn my head instinctively to look towardthe direction he was just in, but as I open my eyes under the blindfold,there’s nothing. I feel the jolt of fear like a thunderclap across my sensesand yank at the ties around my wrists.
“Ezra,” I say in a panic, and thewordyellowis at the tip of my tongue, but Ezra is suddenly there, notonly his hands and his mouth but his whole body, blanketing me, pressing me tosink into the safe earth of the bed. My face is turned to the side and I feelhis face against mine, feel his breath even as my own stutters, feel his wordsas much as I hear them,
“I’m here. I’m always here,” andI can feel it’s true, feel him in every piece of me, in the body he has lit upfrom one point to another, and deeper still, in waters uncharted.
“Don’t, don’t,” I’m saying, and Imeandon’t go, don’t leave me, but the words are stripped to mere,unintelligible sounds before they reach open air. Still, Ezra seems tounderstand, if only partly, and stays with me, a hand cupping the back of myhead as we kiss across the awkward angle until the tide that had swelled insideme has calmed again. We lay there for a moment longer before Ezra stirs.
