Page 52 of Hamartia

He makes a soft tutting noise. “Arrogant rockstar.”

“That’s what they call me.”

I move my mouth to his neck, sucking hard on the skin there. He tilts his head to let me change my angle. Almost like he wants me to leave a mark.

“Who calls you that?”

“Aside from you? Wikipedia.”

“Your girlfriend?”

I freeze. Then slowly sit up and back on my calves to look down at him. He folds an arm behind his head and stares up at me, face calm and utterly expressionless. No accusation, no malice, nothing. It feels wrong to talk about her with him. Certainly, before I’ve spoken to her about him, but given what we’ve just done together, I realize that Jae also deserves an explanation. I take a few deep breaths as I try to think through the mess my head.

“It’s over.” I sigh. “With Camille. I mean, we need to talk, but when we do I’m gonna tell her it’s over, Jae.”

I watch his face closely for some sort of reaction, any sort of reaction, and I think I see a brief flicker of something in his eyes. It’s gone in less than an instant. Maybe I imagined it.

“I see,” is what he says, flat, almost unemotional. Then, “You are sad about it.”

I blink down at him. “I mean, yeah, of course. We’ve been together a while, we were gonna get married. We were good together too. I mean I thought we were, you know, but maybe we weren’t. I don’t know.” I drag a hand through my hair and shrug. “I don’t really know anything anymore, I guess.”

Or more accurately, everything I thought I knew has turned out to be complete and utter bullshit. I’m not sure what I’m expecting from him by admitting this. Empathy maybe. Some soft words of comfort. Sage advice. Anything other than what he does, which is to extract himself from under me and climb out of bed.

“Where are you going?” I stare after him.

He gives me a look like it should be completely fucking obvious, and says, “To run a bath.”

He strides into the ensuite without a look back.

In my bewilderment I still register that his ass looks incredible; firm and round and pale. I want to fuck it again. Again, because I just did it. I just fucked him.

It seems incredible to me. I was inside him. I made him come. He made me come. I’ve just had one of the best orgasms of my fucking life, with a guy. This guy. And now he’s what?Done with me?I’m dismissed?

Maybe poetic justice for all the times I’d done the same to women. Fucked them and moved on like they were nothing. I’d never been cruel or unkind, just superficial and dismissive. Even when they’d made it clear they wanted more.

Yeah, I deserve this.

And I’m realizing now just how much pride and dignity each one of them had, because they got up and left, no questions asked. Whereas all I want to do is follow him in there, kneel at his feet and ask him to let me have him again.

While I could watch him do no more than breathe for hours on end, his fascination with me seems almost non-existent, fleeting at best. It’s one way traffic. It’s never been more obvious than it is right now. Me sitting here on his bed covered in his come while he goes to run himself a fucking bath. The most pathetic part? I’m half-hard again. I still want him. Just thinking about sinking into that perfect body again has some kind of Pavlovian response happening to my cock.

Had I seriously been thinking that I could get him out of my system by fucking him once? I’m a bigger clown than I thought possible. I need air. I need to walk and think and then maybe speak to a priest or an exorcist or something because this guy is simmering in my veins like demonic possession.

I find my T-shirt and jeans on the floor and pull them on, trying to ignore the way the come has hardened and is starting to crust and flake on my chest. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed lacing my boots when he reappears naked and perfect as sin.

“You are dressed,” he says, stopping to look down at me.

I look back down at my boots before I say or do something pathetic. “Yeah, I’m gonna split.”

“Split?” He repeats, sounding confused. “Oh, you mean you are leaving.”

When I stand up, he’s closer and well, he looks almost…pissed.

“Why?”

I frown. “Isn’t that what you want? You got out of bed and said you were taking a bath and so I figured we were done with whatever that was.”

Now he looks pissedandhurt. “Withwhatever that was? We fucked, Raphael. Surely you cannot be confused about that.” There’s a note of mockery in his voice that gets my back up.