Chapter Thirty-Nine
**POV MADS**
“Ask me.” She interrupts me, looking into my eyes. I inhale the air I'm lacking by raising my chin in a dominant position, I see her soft face, the expression melancholy but still desirous. I shake my head negatively, it wasn't a question.
" You are mine." Dakota lowers her eyes before looking back at me, she sighs in agreement. I press my finger to her lip and she opens it, receptive. "Repeat."
"Mads..." Her body tenses, and I don't respond until she says it. "I'm all yours."
Her words sound sure and deep, she looks at me and moves closer. My thumb reaches the entrance to her mouth and she sucks on it, I feel the warmth of her saliva wetting the tip of my thumb, her perfect lips closing around it. It brings back memories, my body responds, and my mind proves sadistic and exploitative.
"Good girl." She moans and nibbles my finger, giving me the sensation of pain and pleasure. I used my other hand to reach between her hair, her head moving, her eyes closed in total surrender.
"Kiss me..." I moan as I hear her demand and grab the back of her neck, my fingers still wrapped around her jaw. She looks at me defiantly. "Kiss me like you kissed me this morning after you came into my mouth."
That was my limit. I press my lips tightly against hers, I feel her curious tongue touching mine deliciously, we kiss and my hands grip her face with a destructive desire that hurts and blesses me. Those hands slide down my back and she moans and sighs between our kisses as if she needed it. Indeed we were, and my certainty was that this was an infinite need. My feet move without thinking, my whole body invested in pushing her against the nearest wall. I hear her moan and gasp in surprise and pain as her back hits the wall, her hands trembling on my body, confused but lucid, Dakota claws at me, squeezing my shoulders and neck with an insatiable hunger that I also feel.
We breathe pantingly, forehead to forehead, I inhale her scent and hold her in my arms as if she were ephemeral, threatening to vanish at any moment.
"I want you to come to Seattle with me." She nods in agreement. "And I want you to wait for me when your workday is over."
"What are we going to do?" I kiss her again, touching her cheek.
"I'm going to introduce you to some people and kiss you more..." I stroke her cheek with my finger, she smiles, bites her lip and runs her hands through my hair.
My heart was pounding, I felt alive, but I remembered Adrien, my name, the reality that surrounded us, and a part of me wasn't completely satisfied.
I see the door close and suddenly everything seems empty and simple, I've come to dislike the literal because everything about her is complex. I feel it more than I should, as I do every time she's not there. My rationality asked me how long this would last, and the answer was bitter, causing me hatred and pain at the same time as I accepted the facts.
Dakota was twenty-nine years younger than me. I take a deep breath as I sit back in the chair, my right hand running down my cheek to scratch my beard, which is already showing signs of growing back. I scratch my eyes and smooth a few white strands of my dark hair with my fingers, the thought of it makes me frustrated. Maybe I was a reasonable man for realizing this, maybe I was a pervert who had taken this woman's virginity just yesterday. I concluded that I was neither, but something in between.
Every day I thought about choosing the best option, giving her the freedom she deserved, and not interfering with the need everyone has to take advantage of youth, which no longer concerned me. She should be with people like her, living with the impulsive mistakes that even Adrien had experienced, or rather, was living with. No, Dakota was smart and wonderfully curious, but that didn't make her stupid. All her desires were born of passion and a beautiful obsession with freedom, nothing she set out to discover had a petty intention, but an intensity and rational interest that made her incredible.
My cell phone vibrates and an unknown number flashes on the screen. That's strange, my number was private, and there were few names in my contact list. I hold the phone in my hands and stare at the screen before answering.
"Yes?"
"Mads?" The female voice answered me and my heart froze. It had been years since I'd heard it, there was a weariness and a seasoned cynicism in it.
"Oh, Sarah, it's you."
"Are you surprised or bored?" I didn't answer, listening to her after so long made my mind travel through distant memories. "No, not bored. The news says you're quite entertained." She teased in her typical dismissive tone.
"Have you been spending your time reading the news? I thought life as a newlywed would be more interesting." I say, an involuntary smile appearing.
"It's been three years since Arthur and I got married Mads, and a long... Hm, seven years since we were engaged. You know that."
"It took him too long to realize he wanted to marry you, I'm not judging him." She laughed, her sarcastic laugh had never changed. I wondered if Arthur enjoyed it as much as I used to.
"Are you listening, darling? Mads said you were undecided about me, and he agreed with you. "I heard a male voice in the background that seemed to be laughing and talking. "You haven't changed at all."
"What?"
"You make serious jokes and with that thick voice of yours, it's hard to tell when you're serious or not. I hated that about you." She says, relaxed, but her last line touched dry scars somewhere inside me. Sarah is like that, she says what she thinks with amazing ease. My biggest challenge used to be getting used to her sweet and bitter sides at the same time. She was fickle.
"Now we know the main reason for the divorce, my sense of humor." We laugh, Sarah swears at me, and suddenly I'm sure that there was nothing there but two people who had exchanged and experienced the best in the world, and that in the end there was nothing left but memories to prove it. We were unknown friends, maybe even more distant. Adults.
"So... younger girls, huh?" Dakota comes to mind. A smile forms on my lips, but it's short-lived. Suddenly, the pen on the table becomes interesting to my fingers.
"Not in the sensational, degenerate way the media makes it seem."
"So it's just, one girl that brought you to your knees? Damn Mads, you were never like that. Does she have big tits?" Sarah laughs at her joke, I don't.
“Stop it."
“Oh, you take her seriously. Curious, I want to meet her."
"Never."
"One day you will, if you keep her until then. Maybe Arthur and I can keep you company."
"I don't think that would be a good idea at all." She snorts.
"Come to think of it, no woman would want to meet her current boyfriend's ex. But you know, we're not conventional, our breakup was a mutual consensus." I nod, sometimes our marriage seemed like a past life event, something very distant, even if frustrating to think about.
"Especially when it was you."
"Ouch. Age is getting to you. Does she like it?"
"I don't know, I guess."
"Hmm. I always thought you should find a woman as serious as you are. I didn't expect her to be, I don't know, twenty years younger." Twenty-nine. The number was still stuck in my head. "You know, I know you better than anyone, if this is happening, I don't think it's for some senseless reason."
"Thanks, Sarah."
"How's Adrien?" I try not to sound upset when talking about our son.
"You ask in the same tone as when he was seventeen."
" He'll always be seventeen to me. He's coming to London soon, but he tells me he's busy with Moser. Still, he calls me a few times a week." Her voice is deeper, calmer. Her relationship with Adrien was stronger than anything else. Since his birth, Adrien had been Sarah's alone.
"He will."
"Oh yes, he's obsessed with Moser, more than you."
"Why did you call me?"
"Arthur convinced me. I saw the news, I wanted to know if you were okay, if Charlotte was okay."
"We're fine."
"I knew you would, you always find a way." Not for everything. "I have to go, send my love to our son."
"I will."
"I know you won't. Take care, bye." She hangs up, and the world becomes even stranger than it already is.