Page 64 of Double Dared
“And…done,” I whispered.
The stinging of the disinfectants caused a tightness around Taylor’s eyes, but his lips stretched into a fascinated smile, emphasizing his beauty so much that the warmth of his olive skin seemed to glow brighter after a moment of fear.
“There,” I said, pinching his chin and turning his head left and right, watching for the silver to gleam in the light. “You’re beautiful.”
Taylor’s eyes snapped into focus, eyebrows rising a little as if he had just realized that I’d pierced his ear, and he hopped onto his feet. “I want to see.” He walked over to the bathroom, where the big mirror was litfrom above and behind, and he leaned against the sink, gazing into his reflection with eyes wide with fascination. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “That’s hot. That’s seriously hot.”
I stood next to him, a little behind, arms crossed on my chest. “You have to clean it every day until it heals.”
“I have a guy for that,” Taylor murmured, still gazing at the reflection. “I look like a pirate.”
I laughed from the top of my lungs and stepped closer to him, towering behind him while he still leaned over the sink. My hands found his hips and pulled him back enough for his ass to press against my crotch. “A sexy pirate.”
Taylor straightened and turned around, his stomach pressing against mine, his chest touching mine, his crotch gently rubbing against mine, getting hard already. “This sexy pirate is gonna make you cry his name tonight.”
“He can try,” I dared him.
And he did. He did it so intensely that my throat was sore and my voice cracked the entire following day. But Taylor walked around confidently with his silver earring dangling from his right ear. “Next up, a matching tattoo,” he joked one morning, just before he was due to travel home for a long weekend.
I took him in my arms and looked into his eyes. “I’ll do anything you say,” I whispered. “Dare me.”
Taylor laughed, not daring me after all.
That weekend, while he was away to visit hisparents, I drove up to the cottage for some time alone. That morning, in Taylor’s absence, I thought reflection would be the thing I needed. But entering the house alone just before noon, I found myself constantly checking my phone to hear that he had arrived home safely or that something had happened and he needed me to come and pick him up.
No news. No texts. All I had was an empty house and the fresh memories of Taylor’s naked figure in every room that now felt a few degrees cooler in his absence.
I packed myself a small lunch and a thermos of coffee, then hiked through the woods to a clearing where we had watched the sunset on our last day here. I hadn’t bothered with the picnic blanket, so I sat in the grass and poured myself coffee into the cup, wrapped my hands around it, and brought it near my face so that the steam curled from the cup and into my nostrils.
It soothed something restless deep within me.
I gazed out and down the slope, the hill rolling away from me and turning into an endless forest that blanketed the earth all the way to the horizon. Snowcapped mountain peaks glimmered in the sunshine in the distance.
Being here alone had been a bad idea. Too much of the space was occupied by him, and he wasn’t here. The good thing I discovered in it all was that none of the space was occupied by Emma. Not only had shenever wanted to come here and be “away from civilization,” as she’d jokingly told me, but her grip on my mind was loosening with every passing day.
And I say mind because I realized, over the days and weeks with Taylor, that her hold on my heart had been a lot weaker than I’d known. She had taken up the space in my head in the days after leaving me, but I had mistaken it for love.
Or maybe I had loved her still, loved her enough to want to see her angry with me, jealous, regretful, but that, too, had faded in the brilliance with which Taylor shone.
I stayed at the house for a few hours, pulling Taylor out of my memory and placing him where he had been. Sitting on the high chair by the kitchen island, a little tense with his own nakedness, or strolling up the stairs and swinging his hips for me, or lying on top of me in the movie room, or leaning over my desk in the office.
Or in the bedroom, where he had been so beautiful and passionate.
I packed up and returned to my car, deciding that staying here alone wasn’t going to bring me anything I’d been hoping for. Instead, I sent him a simple text.Miss you. Because I did miss him. I missed him already, and the prospect of four days without him was weighing me down.
But those days also passed. I busied myself writing a new essay, deep-cleaning my apartment, and stumbling over the traces of Taylor every now and then.There were his underwear in my hamper. His toothbrush was in the cup next to mine. A new hairbrush had appeared in my apartment at some point, and there were a few precious hairs curling from it. I found one sock under the bed that didn’t belong to me; the location of the other was a total mystery. In the kitchen cabinet, there was a chocolate I hadn’t bought myself. And then, when I thought I’d uncovered all the little things he’d left around, I found the plastic-cup jockstrap in the drawer where my toys and underwear were. It was tucked in the back, left for later, but still very much in my home. Its scent, a unique mix of Taylor’s sweat and cum and something indescribable, turned me on at first breath.
I thumbed the rim of the cup, then the soft padding inside of it, and brought it to my face for another deep inhale.
I called him later that evening from my bed. Taylor was in a dark room, his face lit blue by his screen, and his eyes shone with the reflection of his phone. “Hey, you,” he said.
“How’s the trip?” I asked.
“Dragging,” he admitted. “I’ve seen everyone I wanted to see. Twice. Now I’m waiting.”
“Twenty-four more hours,” I reminded him. We’d agreed that I would pick him up at the airport, so I’d been counting the hours. “Are you alone?”
His expression shifted from pleased to amused to mischievous in the span of three seconds. “I am,” he said softly.
