Room 143

Chapter 4

Nash

I can’t believe the words that just came out of my mouth, but they’re true. Before I walked over the threshold of the hotel room, I had been teetering on a decision. What would I do when I crossed it? Would I allow the desperation of wanting to stay stuck in the same rut I’ve been in since the day Katie died win? Or would this new desperation that’s squeezing my chest, begging me to live the life I should be living win? It wasn’t until I saw the woman, the decision was made for me. She looks the exact opposite of Katie, and I thank God for that, because I need to be able to separate the two from my mind.

The second this woman stood in front of me, my c*ck pushed against the fly of my jeans, and I realized I’m going to go with it. Where Katie was light, this woman is dark, not like me though, not in the atmosphere surrounding her. Her ambience is a breath of fresh air. Nothing bad seems to have ever touched her, but truthfully, it’s the polar opposite looks to Katie that make the decision one I can live with. That’s important, looking into brown eyes isn’t like looking into the blue ones of my deceased wife. With a deep breath, I give myself another pep talk. You can do this. You must do this. Life is passing you by, Nash. If you don’t rip the Band-Aid off the wound, you’re going to wake up a forty-year-old with a receding hairline and a personality that can’t relate to others. No one wants to be alone the rest of their lives.

The thought of being alone forever scares me. Tonight, that reality is at the forefront of my mind. Walking into this room and there being someone else, where normally there’s no one, was a nicer surprise than I can explain to anyone. It’s a balm to the broken part of my soul. Even if it’s only for a few hours.

We stand a few feet apart from one another. In reality it could be an ocean or it could be a breath, I can’t really tell. It’s an out-of-body experience I’m having, like I’m detached, but still living in the moment. When I approach her, she doesn’t retreat, but then again, she gets paid to not be scared of men. I yell at that voice in my head to shut the f*ck up. A distinction isn’t needed; she’s here and she’s here for me. Those are the only two points that matter. My palms itch to touch her, to see if her skin is as soft as it looks. I don’t know how to do this anymore, but I decide to go all in. If I try to push through in stages, I’m going to talk myself out of this, and I’ll never be able to work the nerve up again.

My arms go around her waist, pulling her to me, and in that moment I realize how small she is. The top of her head barely reaches my collarbone, and my arms circle completely around her frame. In the years I’ve been alone, I’ve used working out as a substitution for physical touch and affection. CrossFit became my wife, lifting weights became my s*x, and running miles became my church. Hearing those words, even in my head, makes my life sound as empty as it has been.

When she puts her small hands on my chest, I’m hit with a deluge of emotion. No one’s touched me in years, unless it was to stop me from running away, or to shake my hand after I performed work on their car, and it didn’t bother me until now. Legit, I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me, or offered to give me any kind of comfort. My brothers stopped when I pushed them away, my mom stopped when I refused to return her hugs, and my dad gave up the day I curled into a ball crying on the shop floor and screamed at him, asking why God didn’t take me. Without anyone touching me, I haven’t realized I’ve been ready for it. The way my skin ripples with awareness where her fingertips have trailed along my skin, I’m obviously ready for it.

“Do we get right down to business?” I’m not sure how this is supposed to work. I know I don’t have it in me to woo this woman. Hell, I haven’t even jerked it in months. She’s the professional, although that sounds so impersonal. But that’s what it is. Everything about this is impersonal, and honestly that’s exactly what I need right now. I need someone who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t look at me with compassion and pity in their eyes. For so long I’ve worried that the next f*ck I’m going to have is a pity f*ck, and straight up my pride can’t take that. With this woman, who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my past, and is looking at me like she wants to eat me up – I’m feeling arousal and desire – two things I never thought I’d feel again.

She’s not even touched me in a s****l way, and I’m already feeling more like a man than I have in years. I’m feeling more normal, and normalcy is something I’ve strived for, but have never seemed to get a handle on, after the accident.

“Whatever you need, Nash.” Her voice is soft, like she’s trying not to scare me away. It’s the type of tone someone would use with an untrusting child. If it had been someone else, other than her, I would have snapped at them. Told them to not treat me like this, but her? She doesn’t know me, and I can finally let my f*cking guard down. “We do whatever you want, at your pace.”

F*ck, if she knew how nervous I was right now, how scared I am, she’d be the one running for the door. I have my hands clasped against her lower back because they’re shaking.

“I don’t know what I need.” The chuckle that escapes is dark, laced with a desire I haven’t felt in so long, I almost don’t recognize it. “I haven’t done this in a long time.”

“You’re a widower, I know,” she says the words just as softly as before, almost as if she doesn’t want to break the spell we’ve woven around each other.

F*ck, so she does know. It makes my stomach drop and my heart pound, the familiar feeling of anxiety coming back. There’s an anger too. This emotion, was one I thought I’d gotten over a long time ago, but surprise. It’s rearing it’s ugly head again. “Guess they told you all about me, huh? And here I know nothing about you.”

Her eyes flash, that innocence there again that’s confusing me. “All I know is the widower part. I don’t know what happened, how long it’s been, or how you’ve lived your life since then. It’s none of my business and if you want me to, I can pretend like I don’t know. You don’t need to know anything about me. All you need to know is I’m going to get you over the hump.” She leans forward, brushing her body against mine. I feel the hard n*****s against my chest, and it’s enough to make me believe what she’s saying is true. “When you leave here, you’ll be able to do whatever you want with whomever you want.”

My mind struggles to believe her. I haven’t been able to get over that hump yet, and f*ck, I’ve tried over the past five years. But all those women… I knew, they weren’t a faceless body that I’d never see again. I’d gotten stuck at the asking them out part; the words would form, but I couldn’t say them aloud. Frozen by uncertainty and a fear like I’d never felt before. I’ve been scared to death. This situation, it gives me an out. If I breakdown and cry in the middle of this, I don’t have to face her at the grocery store next week while I’m trying to pick out a ripe tomato. If this goes to hell, I don’t have to see this woman again, and I’ll know for sure if I’ve still got what it takes to pleasure a woman. If I can still make one scream with an orgasm, f*ck if I can still come too. It gives me the courage and the man the f*ck up I need to make this happen.

“I need you to take control at first,” I force the words out, hoping like hell I don’t have a massive break down. I feel just on the other side of insane, as I speak the words. “I want this, but I don’t know if I can make myself do it,” I admit.

“Let me do this for you.”

Hesitantly, she puts her hands on my abdomen, before she makes a lap around me, touching softly as she goes. Her palms sculpt my t-shirt to my body. The cotton molds against my abs as she moves back around to the front, mapping the muscles that haven’t been touched in ages. Once she gets to my shoulders, she moves them down my biceps and forearms, until our fingers entwine.

Intimacy. The thread of our fingers together, our palms meeting, holding our arms out to our sides until we meet in the middle. Her t**s touch my chest, her belly slides against mine, and her head fits under my chin. I’m breathing roughly as she stands there, letting me get used to the feel of another body pressed against mine. When she turns her face into me, I almost jump at soft touch of her lips on my sternum, and then up my Adam’s apple. A soft kiss drops on my chin, before she starts making her way back down, until she encounters the buckle of my belt, and the clasp of my jeans. For a moment I think about how I’m touching someone who isn’t Katie. I push those memories aside, deciding to live only in the moment. Touch is all I can handle. Emotions have no place here. Her fingers let mine go, and I immediately miss the connection we shared.

She drops to her knees in front of me, and I’m forced to close my eyes against the visual, because just that is enough to give me a tingling at the base of my back.

“Sh*t.” I let out a deep breath, anxious, yet wanting what is going to happen more and more by the growing minutes. I turn my brain off, tell it to stop c*ck-blocking me, and use my newfound courage to tangle my fingers in her dark hair.

“What do you like?” Her words remind me who she is, as she gets the button undone before pushing the waistband of my jeans and my boxer-briefs down. The buckle clanks so loudly in the room, it’s almost comical. I would laugh if my balls weren’t trying to be sucked into my body after the first two seconds of her not even touching me yet.

“It’s quiet in here,” I mention. It’s unnerving to me. For so long after Katie’s death, I couldn’t stand the quiet, I always had the radio playing, and it’s a habit that’s continued as I’ve started to experience other things in life. “Mind if I turn some tunes on?”

“No, go ahead.” She eases back on her knees as I reach to grab my cell phone, and turn it onto a Spotify playlist. I put it on to repeat and try to wrap my head around what the f*ck is happening here.

“C’mon.” She stands, grabs my hand, and leads me over to the couch. Once there, she fully gets the jeans and boxer-briefs down my thighs to the tops of my boots. I don’t want her to mess with the dirty things, and in a voice gruffer than I mean to use, inform her, “That’s far enough.”

When she takes her knees again, before pushing me down on the cushion, I watch as her throat pushes the saliva down. Her throat moves ups and down with the motion. It’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen, and I’m unsure as to why. Her small hand grasps my c*ck that’s now so hard she can barely wrap her fingers around it. My eyes close as she starts and up and down motion, using her palm to caress the head. “Do you like that?”

Katie never liked for me to tell her what I wanted. Our s*x life hadn’t been adventurous or necessarily mind-blowing, but it had been comfortable. There were drunken nights where we’d gotten a little frisky, that one night we’d watched porn, and I’d bound her hands behind her back with a scarf, but other than that? We were missionary with the lights off, sometimes on (but mostly off), a few times a week. She’d been my first when I was sixteen years old, and up until this moment she’d been my last.

I clear my throat, hoping my voice makes it between the tight grip I have on my emotions. Opening my eyes, I tilt my head forward to watch her, to take all of this in, and hope I never forget a moment of it “Yeah, like that.”

“Tell me what else you like,” She smiles up at me, over the head of my length, before she opens her mouth and takes me down her throat, using her tongue to bathe me up and down like a f*cking popsicle on a hot day.

“That,” I gasp, holding on for dear life. “I like that.”

Words are hard for me to form as I’m assaulted with so many emotions I haven’t felt in so long. The few times I’d tried to find pleasure on my own without Katie, it’d felt so empty. And maybe that was because I was doing all the things to myself, that she’d done for me. But this woman… F*ck I don’t even know her name. Taylor? Was it? She’s doing things in ways Katie never did them, blowing my mind on a whole other level.

My biggest fear with s*x was that I wouldn’t be able to tell one body apart from another, but that’s a lie, because this mouth, is hotter and tighter than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. Reaching forward, I grasp her hair in my fingers again and pull her down fully on my length, grunting when I feel the back of her throat. When I see tears at the edges of her eyelashes, I want to beat my chest, tell everyone I did that. Which is confusing, because I was never that type of a guy before.

Being celibate has changed me. Denying myself pleasure has changed me, and in this instant, I want desperately to get a part of myself back again. To take back a little piece that I thought had been gone forever. Reaching down with my free hand, I cup one of her t**s through the dress she’s wearing, using my thumb to worry the hard nub sticking out against the thin material. She moans against my length, almost making me lose it as I feel the vibrations.

With the hand I have wrapped in her long locks, I use my palm to press her down on my length, holding her there while I press up with my hips. After a few times of a clumsy up and down we fall into a rhythm, me pushing and thrusting while she takes it. I worry this isn’t what she wants, but when her eyes open and they meet mine while she’s eating at my c*ck, I see the desire in those dark depths. The way she’s moaning lets me know she’s enjoying it. And in the back of my mind, I tell the little kernel of doubt I have that she wouldn’t be moaning, her n****e wouldn’t hard, and her mouth wouldn’t be so slick if she wasn’t enjoying it. This time when I push down, she takes me even deeper, if that’s possible, and her hand comes up under my body to cup my balls. Her questing fingers is all it takes. I groan loudly, pulling back from her mouth, and come all over the front of the little black dress she wears.

Her mouth is wide, lips are red where they’ve been stretched around my length, her eyes are hooded, and her face is flushed with desire. “Now that we know you can do it like that, how about we try the other way?”

My chest is heaving and my c*ck is still hard against my stomach when I take in the vision in front of me. I can’t say no. “Yes,” I groan, throwing my head back against the couch. “Yes, let’s do that.”