this story should be read after ‘Scars and other metaphors’ – see below

“Hey, don’t be an idiot. The water doesn’t stay warm.” Ingrid called from the bathroom.

Jose languished in the bed, naked, sticky. He wanted to be in the bath. He needed to be in the bath. He wanted to be in the bath with Ingrid.  But his torpor was such that he felt frozen. Perhaps the snow blowing off Lake Michigan seeded that idea in his mind. It was horizontal and direct and large wet hunks of snow were propelled with force enough to make a soft thudding noise on the windows.

It was late afternoon  but already dark grey with thick clouds permitting none of the dying sunlight through.  There were no lights on in the room and the little bit of light the windows captured, large as they were, was diminishing. The fire was now embers and needed stoking.

He looked around. The room was nice enough but like most hotel rooms it was simply a box. Their planning was limited to such temporary spaces, as they had other commitments in their lives. But the setting was over-looked;  their functionality was immaterial. It only  mattered that they spent time  together. The sheets were a tangled mess. There were books and newspapers and clothes all about the room. They had spent only about 24 hours in the room but it looked like a psychotic rage had been involved. While he was not by nature a neat person, she insisted she was. At last he had corrupted her in some way.

The terror continued on the other side of the glass. Somewhere below traffic slowed and stopped and drivers despaired.

There was some quote from Aristotle about life being about doing instead of…that he didn’t remember or maybe even fully understood but nonetheless took some feeling of reinforcement from it. He moved from thing to thing, from challenge to challenge without pause and an irritated boredom with any pause. Jose chased. He distrusted himself when he was clever.  He self-criticized, he analyzed. His humor was dark. Ingrid was exuberant, fearless, glib and physical. They were in few ways alike and in many not at all. The only interests they shared were each other. With good faith, tried to expose each other to things they liked but ended mostly pounding square pegs in round holes.

“I don’t mean to burst your bubble but the bubbles are bursting in here.”

“One sec.”

But Jose loved the thought of her there. He cherished for a moment the idea of her in that other room, waiting for him, for its potential, the idea of her slick, warm skin, the fullness of her tongue, the weight of her wet hair, the weight of her body on him, were almost as sweet as the fact and he waited and savored it. New smells, the smells of soap and perfumes would be a respite from  the earthier smells early in the day,

Ingrid was a contradiction to his world view, even to his character. His happiness was forward looking thing.  Maybe at some point, being with her was some kind of challenge but that uncertainty was long gone. There was nothing to accomplish with her, nothing to achieve. His life with her was futureless, evanescent. This was disorienting. He thought of some pleasant thing he might do for her in the future, but that was the extent of it.

She came out of the bathroom at the moment when he contemplated this void. She wore a towel on her head and one wrapped around her. “The water is now cold.” She announced and pantomimed a stance of authority, “You are a constant disappointment to me and your father.” She got on top and straddled him. She was very clean and he felt soiled. “Holy God is it snowing hard!” She said and then returned her attention to him. His cock was getting thicker, overcoming any fatigue from the day.  She took the towel off her head and let the thick mass fall on him. She kissed him forcefully on the mouth, the fullness of her tongue pressing hard into his mouth, and then to his chin, his neck, his chest. Her hair, dark with water, scrubbed over him like an ablution.   She kissed his stomach and spent a moment at the space above his hip, above the hair from his groin.

She took his cock inside her mouth gently using her lips to pull the skin slowly over the head. He moved her hair and looked at her lovely face, appreciating the fineness of her features and the care he gave to his pleasure. Her lips were full and engaged. There was no hurry in her, no sense of immediate purpose.  She took it deeply into her mouth and kept suction as she slowly drew back, caring and slow.  And again.  It was marvelous and he could have easily succumbed to selfishness.

But he lifted her head towards him, sat up and kissed her, biting her lip as he did, pulling her forward,  pretending he had any capacity to control her. He kissed her neck hard behind the ear and then more softly as he moved down the nape of her neck, sucking and alternately nibbling as he moved towards her shoulder.

He turned her slowly on to her stomach and opened her towel. He spread her legs. From this angle it was hard to get to the vulva but he buried his head and sucked on first one lip, then the other and probed with a hard tongue the base of her opening. He rimmed her gently and then pushed hard for just a moment to find the tenderness inside.  He then worked his way up the crack of her ass stopping at the very top where he licked the down there upwards. He moved up her back licking, alternating on the muscles on either side of her spine. Her worked slowly as she began to breathe heavily. At last he reached her neck but he continued to the place where her hairline began, pushing hard and then softly licking there.

Then gentleness no longer seemed right. He took a significant portion of her back muscle below the in his mouth and bit down firmly. He then nipped several spots around her shoulder blade. As he did so he reached around and grabbed her breast, pinching the nipple between two fingers. She tried to turn and engage him but he forced her back down. She started to turn to get him on top but he knew she preferred it from behind. He took some small bites on the top of her shoulders, trying his best to delay in a fantasy that somehow in the end that she wouldn’t somehow get precisely what she wanted.

He wanted in and lifted her hips up. His thrust was deep but he choose to put one leg outside hers to improve leverage. While he knew she appreciated this position best, he felt deprived of the look of her face. He started in and out,  slowly but built to a faster pace. He forced himself to slow but her steady push back always induced  him to go faster. She built and built. At last, she swung her arm forcefully around  and pushed him off. He knew she would come like that but she wanted the same thing he did.

She rolled over onto her back. He got her legs up and got as deep as he could. He went slow. He looked into the universe of her eyes. He felt he might lose himself there, forget everything else. Her brow pinched, her forehead dewed up. He kissed her on the cheek and then the neck as he went slowly back and forth. The room was suddenly too warm. Her skin, already tanned, glowed and flushed. He felt his hips push farther forward than possible and hers felt a part of him. She arched and suddenly she didn’t know what to do with her arms. He knew it was helpful then to grab them and  as she was climaxing he let himself go too.

It took a few minutes as they caught their breath.

“The water is probably cold.”

“I hear they are always making more.”

But within a few moments of running the hot they were in.

“The temperature is never right in tubs anyway. To enjoy a bath requires constant adjustment.”

“Agreed. Tubs are usually too small but this feels too big.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.”

“It’s our space.”

“Our little box.”

“I like it in our box. It’s my favorite box.”

“You have other boxes?”

“Yep. You are in one. Work is another. My fiancé is another. The occasional dick was always one too.  My parents are one more.”

“Interesting way to think about things.”

“Keeps everything separate.”

Jose thought about Ingrid’s boxes. “Separation works as long as everything stays separate.”

“I don’t know if you are being redundant or just struggling with comprehension.”

“No just dumb. Do your boxes ever break? How strong are they? What if I don’t like being in a box?

“What?”

He resented this. He couldn’t have her and even if he wanted to own her it wouldn’t matter. He thought about where his desire for her was discrete from his traditional upbringing versus some weird  masculine tendency or just plain insecurity.

“You know I don’t love you.”

It took a while for Ingrid to stop laughing, “Of course not. And I don’t love you either.”