Chapter 80: Inseparable

Nash

It had been days since I had last seen Daphne, almost a week. I shouldn’t be counting the hours, but I felt like an addict who was desperately jonesing for his next fix. Everywhere I went, I was subconsciously looking for her, listening for her. That tall brunette at the supermarket, the silver sedan at the intersection, a stranger talking on her phone in like at the Burger Joint. She was everywhere, and she was nowhere.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to get hung up over some girl I hardly knew. I wasn’t supposed to get attached, or get involved. I certainly wasn’t supposed to bed the girl, but if I had to, then it was supposed to be strictly a physical release, hit it and quit it. It wasn’t supposed to linger in my blood, a constant insatiable ache.

I was too damn distracted. I couldn’t even focus on my work. After I botched several attempts to write a report for a client, I finally called it a day and left the office early. I waved at the Philiapino woman who lived in the house next door. She pulled back her lips in a not-a-quite smile, more like a grimace that showed her teeth as she gave me a robotic wave and went back to trimming her hedges.

Shaking my head, I let myself into my house through the back door. I put my keys on the hook next to the doorframe and considered my kitchen. It looked fake, like a staged room for a house showing. There was a neat line of canisters in graduating sizes on the counter, in a moss-green color that matched the curtains and the throw rug in front of the sink. But when I walked over and pulled the lid off from one of the canisters, it was completely empty. No flour, sugar or salt. Just five empty crocks on a countertop that I never used.

I headed for the downstairs bathroom, which was just off the kitchen to the left. Pulling off my clothes as I went, and dropping them directly in the washing machine that I passed on the way. By the time I twisted on the hot water, I was already completely naked, my bare feet sinking into to the fuzzy bath mat. It took a minute for the water to run hot, so I used that time to shrub a tooth brush over my teeth and my tongue. After I spit the toothpaste out of my mouth I took a took hard look at myself in the mirror.

I looked about as rough as I felt. There were dark rings under my eyes from lack of sleep. That was probably because every night I was awake with that empty feeling gnawing at my insides like a god damn bleeding ulcer. My jaw was covered with several days worth of stubble, which made me look older and less reputable, like some thug you might find down at the docks. My hair was in bad need of a trim too.

I rubbed my shoulder, reaching behind to try and massage the spot where a bullet had penetrated through my back. That miserable slug had sat lodged just under my scalpula for three weeks while I waited extraction from a top-secret location in the Middle East. While the offending bullet had long since been removed, some days my shoulder still ached like the damn thing was still in there, hot and inflamed, festering with infection. Even though the wound was healed, had been healed for years, I still felt like I might make a sudden move and rip it open.

At least I no longer flinched every time there was a movement behind me. I leaned both hands against the sink and closed my eyes.

I could picture her there, her delicate hands with her small hit fingers sliding across the cool of my naked back. I could almost feel her rubbing my aching shoulder with firm, even strokes, before her hands wrapped around my torso, and splayed across my chest.

I’ve never had much of an imagination, but all I had to do was close my eyes, and I felt like she was right there with me, feeling what I felt, her hot, sleek body pressed up against mine. I could feel her rosy n.ipples pebbling against my back, feel her hands sliding, lower and lower, until her soft fingers wrapped around my shaft.

But when I looked down, it was my own hand.

I wasn’t a man in the habit of rubbing one out in the shower. I never let my baser instincts control me like that. When the need became a pressing issue, there was always someone who was ready to satisfy it, I didn't have to do it myself. I pushed away from the sink, and stepped under the spray, which had gone from ice-cold to the other extreme. The dropplets which pinged off my skin were burning hot, and the room was filling with steam. I welcomed the sting, and let the heat penetrate my muscles.

Memories of another shower swirled around me. I pressed my palms against the tiles, and felt my breath come faster. Thinking back to that day in the shower with Daphne, it was almost like I was conjuring her into the present. The steam billowing up around me in the shower stall seemed to carry her sweet scent, and I could almost feel her hot, water-slick skin rubbing against me, creating a friction that was totally different from the norm.

If it had only been physical desire, I could have turned it off, but what I felt was so much more than a need for s.exuall gratification, it was a soul-deep loneliness like I’d never felt before.

I’d been alone my whole life, from the time I was a ten year old boy, coming home from school to an empty house. And while I craved human companionship from time to time, I craved solitude even more.

Nothing in my past could explain the way I was feeling, the way every cell in my body seemed to be crying out for a woman I barely knew. There was no reasonable explaination for the way I thirsted for her lips. I was like a man in the desert, desperate for a cool drink against my parched tongue. The way I hungered for her touch on my skin, the way I longed to hear her voice, low and sultry in my ear, saying my name…

She didn’t even know my name.

Jerking off was a waste of time, but… if it could get her off my mind, just for a few minutes, if I could get some peace, maybe long enough to fall asleep and get a decent night’s rest, well, then…

I closed my eyes, let the shower spray across my neck and shoulders, and slid my hand down my body. Reasonably, it was only my hand, but when I encircled myself, it wasn’t my fingers, but her soft lips, her tongue, her eager mouth taking me in, sucking deeply, moaning against me until I swear I could feel the vibration all way to my balls. My hand worked, slowly at first, and then with growing fevor.

I must have been hallucinating, because I swear I could feel her pleasure and her excitement building along side my own, I could hear her little whimpers of pleasure, I could feel the panting of her breath, the shudder of her muscles as she grew close to her own peak. When I finally came with a jerk and a shudder, I heard her cry out, even as I practically roared her name.

“Daphne!”

And just like that, as my body went limp, and I sagged against the shower wall… the illusion was broken and that feeling of connection was lost. The water was slowly changing from hot to luke-warm, I had somehow managed to knock the shower gel, the bar soap, and my shampoo off the little shelf.

I was alone.