Fourth Time's a Charm

It was our fourth date. I remember that because I had decided to break my five date rule and fuck him at the earliest convenience. It wasn't as much a decision as it was a need, something akin to breathing. You have to do it to survive but you don't think about doing it. You don't analyze the steps of the process. You just do it. Over and over. So seeing him and wanting to fuck him was like that. It was just that natural. And I didn't question if it was actually going to happen or not. I just knew it would.

It's funny that I should call them dates at all because they really weren't. They were just times that we had crossed each other's paths and gained a moment together. I knew that he wanted me from the first time I saw him at the bar at Haley's because his pitch dark eyes did that smoky, lusty thing that men's eyes do when they want to fuck you. I didn't realize until I was half-way across the room that I was trying to edge closer to him but the bar was crowded and, anyway, I was there with someone else and if she saw me making eyes at him I would be in for more serious torture that night than I was ready for.

Later that night, when he told me his name, Mathias, I was ready to dump her then and there. She was getting predictable, anyway. Predictably mean. I did so two days later. It was the first good decision I'd made since I'd met her.

Actually, getting caught in Leslie's web was the first in a string of stupid moves that defined my thirtieth year. For some strange reason I seemed to be attracted to chaos like lint fuzz to a black sweater. First, I mistook her lack of a pulse to be coolness personified until I realized she only had two settings and the on switch was only flipped when the handcuffs and leather came out. Then I decided to tell my boss to go to hell after breaking his thumb when he tried to feel me up for the third time during my performance review. And just for kicks, I ostracized my best friend by getting too drunk at her birthday party and eventually getting kicked out of the club.

So, two days after first meeting him we had our second date. Mathias, in all his smooth, hard, ebony glory was stalking the grocery store aisles like a panther, making vines grow down from the fluorescent lights and shimmering heat ripples in the air with his every nonchalant, slinky step. I abandoned my search for the perfect break-up feast and followed in his humid wake. It was pretty hard to miss him. He was deep black, tall, and rounded with a cat's casual muscularity but he sidled through the store as unobserved and as silent as a shadow.

I caught up with him in the coffee aisle. His shaved head glistened in the shaft of moonlight piercing through the vines and leaves above and around him. He turned and looked at me. His eyes went all smoky and everything stopped. I mean it. Everything and everyone else in the store froze. My heart didn't. It was beating in some unfamiliar way that throbbed all the way down to my clitoris and then spread to my hips. A small smile split my lips and he nodded in return as if satisfied with what he observed.

Then he was in front of me, so close I could smell the musk of him. The tattooed beating of my heart ceased. I could see an owl in a branch above his head, intent and still as midnight. One stroke. One caress of a single curly strand of my hair. A kiss like the birth of the universe on my forehead.

The night shattered; vines and leaves fell and burst into green atoms and twinkled out of existence; the owl flew up the aisle and out the electric doors without hooting. I could hear a kid whining, "Mommy, can we get some? Mommy can we get some?" I was shivering, blinded by fluorescence, and alone.

The next day, I woke famished, which was unusual for me. So I ate some cereal, and then some toast, and then I realized what I really wanted was some meat. Ten strips of bacon and three turkey sausages later all I could think of was sleep. I curled up on the couch inside my favorite soft blanket and passed out.

When I woke again the sunlight through the windows was golden cast and I knew many hours had passed. I was hungry, again, and restless. I took a shower, threw on the tightest black jeans and top I could find, and for some reason, my black leather stiletto boots.

I didn't know where I was going when I left my apartment. I guess I sort of let my nose guide me. For some reason I wanted meat, again. I walked up R Street and turned onto 14th. I remember thinking how cool it was that my boots weren't hurting my feet with all this walking. And then I spotted meat heaven, Hungry Chuck's Hamburger Bar & Grill. I practically ran across the street, dipping and weaving through the speeding traffic.

The smell of cooked flesh almost knocked me over before I even went inside. I could feel saliva trying to leak out the side of my lips and I flared my nostrils wide to take in as much of the aroma as I could.

Now, at this point, a normal person would say, "Didn't any of this seem a little bit odd to you?" Of course it does, now. But then, I wasn't thinking at all. I was just doing what came naturally, what I was meant to do. And we don't usually question that, do we?

I prowled the joint and found an empty booth by a window through which the last of the day's sunny brilliance was shining and poured myself into it. That was our third date, even though I didn't see him. But I knew he had been there; I could smell him at that booth like he'd marked it. And I just knew that I was supposed to be there that day. It was almost like he'd left me a message. I stretched my legs across the leather and lounged while I waited for my burger, content doing nothing but soaking up the sun's fading warmth and watching people. I had ordered my burger rare, another oddity as I usually liked my meat super well-done, and when it came I couldn't resist licking the salty, bloody juice off of each finger until there was not a drop left. I'm sure people must have been staring at me but I was oblivious, reveling in an ocean of new sensations.

The night was still in its infancy when I finished eating and I was still restless so I left Hungry Chuck's and ambled on down 14th Street. It was one of the first nights of Spring and the breeze carried the scents of food and perfume, sex and alcohol, high spirits and testosterone on its warm currents. The streets and sidewalks were loud and busy and I slipped through the bodies disdainful of the proximity but unhurriedly. I found myself in front of Haley's and could think of no better place to be than its warm, dark wood interior.

And that, my dears, was the fourth date. Aha! You didn't know three and four happened on the same day, did you? They did and four is the only true one.

He was lounging at the farthest table from the door in the back corner. Maybe lounging isn't the correct word for what he was doing because although he was reclining along the wooden bench, his bearing was more like a polished Egyptian feline idol; sleek, black, and regal, paying attention to everything but looking bored none-the-less.

He stared at me as I crossed the room to him. I welcomed the humidity that enveloped me, and again, it seemed that dense foliage grew from the rafters and obscured my view of the rest of the bar. The drums started up inside me again and my hips began to sway with their rhythm. By the time I made it to his table and draped myself across his lap I could no longer hear the Indie rock screeching from the jukebox and the whole world around us had frozen once more.

He let me touch his full, succulent lips, which I did, for a seeming eternity, reaching up as he looked down at me, caressing them, trailing my fingers over their curves, slithering one finger and then the other between them to be lapped at by his languorous and soft tongue. I rested my head on his shoulder, nuzzling and purring into his neck as he began to pet me, running his broad hands over my body, stroking and teasing me into a stretch that arched my back and offered him my breasts.

I could see a sliver of moon peeking through the branches above us. I could smell the dankness of overly moist earth as he slowly unbuttoned my shirt, running his fingers up and down the valley between the buttons, exploring across to my taut nipples.

And all the while he was touching me, I felt this incredible, searing heat racing through me, a need burning so deliciously hot that I heard myself making small, pleading mewling sounds. I became feverish under his touch, grinding on his lap, clawing at his head and neck.

He bent his head and lapped at a nipple, delicately, slowly. I was moaning and squirming. Maybe it was just that he licked and licked so long but his tongue began to feel rough, and the combination of its wet coarseness made me hotter and I smashed my breast against his mouth as if I could take him into me through some type of mammarial osmosis. He bit me. I howled. Right there in Haley's. Nothing like English issued from me. It was a sound more like a genie at last escaping his bottle, full of the gale of the sand storm, like the phoenix wailing and roaring into its new birth.

Somehow, my jeans and panties were around my ankles and I was bent over the wooden table on my stomach with all that needed to be filled offered to him. I felt his tongue, again. This time it was moist and demanding. I felt him lick along my lips then between them, opening me and suckling, teasing my juices from their deep place. I couldn't think of anything coherently. Flashes of pyramids, rain forests, and ancient temples in the jungle all cascaded through my mind and then there was nothing but color as he latched onto the hard nub of my clit and sucked. I remember feeling like I was caught in one of Star Trek's transporter beams; that I had dissolved into millions of formless atomic particles anxiously waiting to be reassembled.

There was blood smeared on the table top from my breast I realized as I looked around for his head, which had disappeared from between my thighs. I felt his weight on my back and then he was looking in my face. His normally dark eyes were shining green lasers in the jungle dimness.

"Do you understand what it is to be mine?" he asked. Oh, man. I felt flayed and reborn hearing his growling purr of a voice. It was fathomlessly ancient and carried the scents of sandalwood and Easter lilies. I knew that I would do anything that this man ever asked of me and I knew that there would never again be a place for me outside of his world. I managed to nod. I was sweating and still grunting and whimpering, completely inflamed.

"Do you want to be mine?" It was the most tender of whispers and the dumbest of questions. I almost couldn't answer. I had to wriggle my lips and jaw and coerce my mouth into forming words. "You have to say it. I cannot force you."

"Mathias, I have always been yours," I grunted. A still lucid part of my mind cringed at how cheesy that sounded but I could say no more except, "Please."

It wasn't so much a smile that he gifted me with after that as it was the snarl of a successful hunter, and I knew I had been so right from the beginning. I was still wet, juices and pheromones creating a viscous stew, and he simply took me. No more preamble, no teasing hint of insertion then withdrawal. He plunged into me, smooth and sleek, in one thrust and the night creatures of the jungle came alive around us. I could hear the scurrying of little ones around our feet and the padded stealth of larger hunters excited by our smells on the periphery.

We grunted and rutted. Blood dripped over my shoulder from his claws onto my lips and each drop was like molten ambrosia, scalding me, purifying me.

I howled, again, as he slammed into me, breaking me and remolding me with every thrust. And with each slick stroke over that tight, sweet spot, my muscles clenched harder, and I thrust back into him making my ass jiggle and my cunt begin to spasm.

My orgasm stampeded over me and he grabbed my hair, arching my neck and back, freezing me in mid-pump as I felt him shoot inside me. He was breathing hard and he wore a grimace as he came injecting me with more than his cum with each spurt. We were like molten rock, surging over each other, melting one another into new formations.

And then we lay there, across the table in the jungle that was Haley's, cooling and settling into this new existence. When he finally withdrew and shifted off of me, I felt weightless but more real, more substantial than I had ever been. I reached out to him with one clawed finger and traced the square of his jaw up to the black whiskers, making us both purr.

There was no need for us to speak as we refashioned ourselves and straightened our clothing. Slowly, the world of Haley's began to reinstate itself but the ripe landscape around us didn't shatter this time. It just sort of faded a little. And before the music came blaring back into my ears I heard the owl hooting softly on its branch.