One Night Stand With The Alpha

Wednesday 19th June 1991 - Marlene

I awoke at nine, with Daniel still sleeping beside me.

The man was undeniably attractive, and I blushed at the memory of the things we had done together the previous night as my eyes glanced over his body, barely covered by the thin sheets of my new bed.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do now. I’d never had a one-night stand before, and it was not exactly something that people teach you the etiquette for.

Daniel was still asleep, but I was awake and I wanted to shower and make breakfast.

Was I supposed to wake him up? To make us both breakfast? To ask him to leave? Or to playfully tease him and offer him a chance to shower with me and relive some of those pleasurable moments we had shared last night?

I blushed again and decided it was best not to wake him. I would shower and go about my morning as if there wasn’t a devastatingly attractive stranger asleep in my bed.

Being screwed senseless by a total stranger was probably against one of those rules in Biata’s little guide, and I didn’t want to call attention to my impulsive decision to share my first night in this house with Daniel. Even if Elizabeth wouldn’t judge me for it, Biata would not let me live it down.

I looked over at the door, and decided I would get up and make my way to the shower as quietly as possible… except, that meant leaving this stranger in my room unattended and I couldn’t really trust that he wouldn’t steal my things…

I groaned in frustration. I thought I was quiet, but Daniel’s eyes opened and he sat up beside me, stretching in a way that showed off his toned body like a work of art before he snaked his arm around me and whispered softly, close to my ear.

“You weren’t planning on leaving me, were you?”

He kissed my neck again, and it sent a pleasant shiver through me. It was difficult to regret sleeping with him when I could barely stop myself from pinning him to the bed again now.

I managed to resist the urge, and I cleared my throat so that he would stop fawning after me.

“I need to shower. And… I don’t think my house mates will be very happy about this so as much as I enjoyed myself, I think it’s better if we just forget last night ever happened. I don’t want these people to think I’m the kind of woman who invites strangers in for anonymous s****l encounters.”

“It wasn’t anonymous - you know my name, and I know yours. And I don’t think you should care what your house mates think; we had a good time, that’s all that should matter to you.”

I stood up, grabbing the towel I had draped over the back of the little chair at my desk and using it to cover my body as if he had not seen it in intimate detail a few hours ago.

He raised one of his eyebrows at my sudden modesty, and I felt my cheeks burning again.

“It’s easy for you to say that; you’re probably never going to see me again after today. I have to live with these people and I don’t want them to think I am a slut.”

Daniel rolled his eyes at me, and I wanted to tell him to get out, but that would mean attracting attention to us and I could hear that Biata was awake, so I really didn’t want to give her the ammunition to lecture me.

“Hooking up with someone doesn’t make you a bad person. I don’t get why people like you think that way. We had fun, and nobody was hurt; how does that make you a bad person?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. I didn’t like the way he had said people ‘like me’, but I guess that it was because he was this Big City guy who was used to having casual encounters with beautiful women. The way he acted made me suspect he was probably from the West, and I was really not used to their kind of modern, metropolitan way of living yet.

“Listen… I did have fun with you, but I don’t want people to think poorly of me. Even if I can see your point you aren’t going to persuade my house mate to change her entire way of thinking, so, I think it’s better if we just… accept that we had fun, but that it was probably not the best idea in the world for me to invite you in here when we don’t know each other and… I need a shower.”

I stopped short of asking him to join me. I think I would have done if Biata wasn’t buzzing around downstairs, but I wasn’t quite brazen enough to pull a stunt like that.

I trusted that Daniel, with his extremely expensive wrist watch and what I now saw were designer clothes, was not going to steal any of my stuff while I was in the shower. Whether he was here when I got back or not didn’t really bother me - I just wanted to forget this had happened, and I didn’t need him to try to convince me that hooking up was not a stupid idea, because I was starting to feel really guilty and the more I thought about it the more I realized that really wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to become in this new place. I had left Theo behind and I was happy for the fresh start, but that didn’t mean I wanted to sleep around until I found someone to replace him.

I continued to think about that as I stood under the lukewarm water of the shower and stared at the cream tiles of the wall ahead of me. I was avoiding looking in the mirror; I didn’t want to look at myself right now, because I was starting to feel really ashamed of my behavior and the decision I had made to sleep with Daniel.

I stayed in the shower for far longer than I needed to, but when I was sure I heard the front door close downstairs, I emerged and wrapped myself in the towel again, allowing my long red hair to drip down my back because I had forgotten that I needed a spare towel for my hair when I packed my things and I hadn’t had time to go and get a new one yet.

I was relieved to find that Daniel had gone when I was in the shower. I had certainly given him long enough to take the hint.

He had made my bed before he went, and for some reason that made me feel a knot of guilt in my chest. It reminded me that I didn’t know anything about him, because even though he was dressed smartly in expensive clothes and he wore cologne and a wrist watch, I didn’t think of him as the kind of man who would make my bed before leaving me.

I checked my desk and my bedside table, but he hadn’t left me a note with his phone number or anything like that, so I assumed that was it - I was never going to see him again.

He would become a pleasant memory, or an amusing anecdote. He wasn’t destined to be a part of my life in any significant way.