Left Alone

I watched the sun drop behind the skyline from my office window. I was working late. The last mile is always the hardest, but I was really procrastinating this evening. I had been almost done for a few hours, but clacked away slowly at my computer, meticulously double-checking my work as much as I could while my mind was mostly somewhere else. I could hear a couple other people shuffling around the office, wrapping up for the day. At this rate, I'd be the one locking up again.

My phone buzzed.

"You still at work?" read a text from my friend Mike.

"Yes." I replied.

"How long are you going to be there?" He shot back?

"Why?" I was getting irritated at his lack of directness.

"Remember Brianna?" Asked Mike.

Of course I remembered Brianna.

"Where's this going? Maybe a call will be faster?" I replied

My phone started ringing and I quickly answered.

"Mike. What's the word?" I answered.

"Hey, remember that super amazing deal on that espresso machine I found on Craigslist?" Mike asked.

"The one that's 600 miles away and local pickup only?" I replied.

Fuck. I started to piece the narrative together already. I knew where this was going.

"Well, you know Brianna lives down there now and I heard through Jenna that she was coming to town to visit friends, so I reached out. Anyway, she has the machine in her truck and was going to drop it off tonight, but I had something come up. Can she drop it off with you?"

Mike and I were trying to start a cafe. Eventually. Very eventually at this rate. We both worked other jobs to supplement the meager loan we had managed to get. The only thing we had going in our favor is that the landlord of the restaurant space was an old friend of Mike's who was willing to let us accrue debt seemingly forever while we shoe stringed the endeavor, cutting as many corners as we could.

"Uh, yeah. Sure. I guess that's fine. When will she be here?" I replied.

"Probably pretty soon? She was at the space a few minutes ago, but I totally forgot and double-booked myself, so she's probably almost there." Said Mike sheepishly.

"And you just assumed I'd be here an hour late and willing to stay longer? Okay, whatever. I'll see where she is."

"I can give you her number." Said Mike.

"I have it." I said.

"Sorry, man. See you tomorrow." Said Mike. Then he ended the call.

I had spent the last couple years not trying to think about Brianna. We were rotten for each other. The first time we had met was at a mutual friend's housewarming party. She had arrived with her husband at the time. We hit it off immediately. Our chemistry was explosive and shortly after being introduced it was like nobody else at the party existed. We talked and joked and laughed until her husband drank himself into a stupor, got sick and she had to take him home.

Some months later, I ran into her again at another get together. Her husband had taken a job in another city and she was tying up loose ends before following him out there in a few more months. After that party, I'd given her a ride home. She invited me in for a nightcap and I ended up staying at her place the rest of the weekend. We barely left the bedroom, except to collect food delivery, go to the bathroom and re-hydrate ourselves.

The following Monday, I felt awful. I didn't have anything against her husband. He seemed like an okay guy except for maybe a drinking problem. I'd just thoroughly ravaged his wife repeatedly in every which way I could imagine at the time. We continued on like that for the remaining few months until she moved. I caught feelings. Told her I was in love with her. I tried to convince her to stay. She didn't. She would text things like "I miss you" or "thinking about you" from time to time. I didn't reply to her texts or calls for over a year. Eventually I heard through friends that they had divorced.

The next time I saw her, I was dating a someone new, an amazing woman who I liked quite a bit. I ran into Brianna and a friend's gallery showing. At some point she got tasked with getting more wine and I got asked to help her. As soon as we were alone in her car, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. She pulled into an alley and we fucked in the backseat. We eventually came back with the wine and nobody seemed to suspect a thing. My guilty conscience got the better of me and I started acting distant. My girlfriend confronted me about my behavior, I told her everything minus the gory details and we broke up. A trail of wreckage behind her, Brianna went back home. I'd hear about her from time to time through friends.

Eventually I heard that she was engaged again to someone new and they had bought a house together. I dated a few people and eventually ended up in another long term thing. We were living together and had talked about getting married. I'd still get the occasional salacious text from Brianna. I did my best to ignore them unless I was drunk or otherwise feeling low. Somehow she always knew.

My phone buzzed. There was a text from Brianna. It just said "hi."

"Hi" I replied.

"I think I'm outside." She texted back.

I buzzed her in and texted directions to my office. A few moments later I heard her knock at the door. My plan was to be pleasant, say hello, get the espresso machine from her car and say goodbye. I felt reassured by the fact there were other people in the office who knew me and knew my girlfriend, which I'd hoped would bolster my sense of accountability, will power and resolve.

"Cool office." Said Brianna.

It was not a cool office.

"You wanna give me a tour?" She said. "I bet there's some good views."

"Nothing you haven't seen before." I replied. My resolve was buckling already. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. "There's a pretty good view from the conference room."

We walked down the hall. We weren't touching, but we were already walking too closely together. I heard the muffled conversation of the last two people in the office as they walked toward the exit.

"We're taking off! You good to lock up?" I heard my coworker Eva call out.

"That's fine." I called back.

I heard the front door open and then as the door closed, I heard the volume of their conversation drop and then cut entirely with click of the latch. Brianna and I were alone. I felt her behind me, putting her arms around my waist. I turned to face her and instinctively pulled her closer. Just like that we were in an embrace. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. She smelled amazing.

"Fuck off. You smell incredible." She said, echoing what I was thinking about her.

She buried her face into my chest. I stroked the back of her head. She tilted her chin upwards and we kissed. Until the moment our lips met, I kept trying to tell myself everything was fine. We were just old friends that had been close. There was nothing wrong with holding her, but now we were kissing. I could still stop it, I thought to myself, but in the meantime our hands had started wandering. She placed her hand over my now fully erect cock, rubbing it through my pants. She started to undo my belt, broke the kiss and then sort of slid down my torso like a fire pole until she was on her knees in front of me, finished unfastening my pants and then pulled out my cock. She looked up, gave me a little smile and then took me into her mouth.

The first time we ever fucked, I remember being taking note of how amazing she was at sucking cock, thinking about Malcom Gladwell's theory of 10,000 hours and then just as quickly trying not to think about it anymore, which turns out is surprisingly easy in the moment.

I couldn't control myself anymore. I had to have her. I withdrew from her mouth and lifted her petite frame up off the ground and sat her on the table in the middle of the room. Any excuse I was holding onto regarding my passiveness in this situation evaporated as I took the lead. I hoisted her skirt up, grabbed the waistband of her panties and pulled them down her legs and over her ankle boots.

We locked eyes. She looked as crazed as I felt, her legs spread displaying a trimmed bush framing her beautiful cunt. I kissed her again while my hand found her clit. She was absolutely soaking wet. I kissed her deeply while working her clit with my middle and ring fingers. She was the reason I believed humans were affected by pheromones. Her scent had completely hijacked my brain. I had to taste her. I dove between her legs and sucking on her clit and working it with my tongue. My two fingers slid inside of her, pushing up on the top wall of her cunt. She started moaning and rocking her hips. Her rocking, my fingers, and my tongue found a rhythm, like dancing. Her rocking got more intense and I noticed her hands tightly gripping the table in my peripheral vision. Her moans got deeper and more animal like. Her thigh muscles tightened and she briefly seized up before her rhythm broke and became chaotic thrashing. I kept the rhythm on my end, holding her by the thigh with my free hand to make sure she didn't thrash herself off the table. She gripped my shoulder and then tapped it a few times, signaling she needed a break. I stood up, our eyes met again and she pulled me into another kiss. I lined up my cock with her swollen pussy, her legs wrapped around my lower back and pulled me in. I sank into her wetness and started plunging into her, picking up the rhythm again.

"Fuck. You feel amazing." I spoke without thinking. My higher brain functions were gone.

"Oh fuck. Ugh. I'm gonna cum again." She bellowed.

"Yeah. I want you to cum all over this cock." I droned out.

"I need it. I need to feel you." She panted.

"What do you need to feel?" I said

"I. Want you. To...Cum." She said, staccato

"Where? I need to hear you say it." I said.

"Cum in me. Cum in my cunt. Pleeease." She cried.

With that I exploded. It was one of the most intense orgasms I'd ever had. I could feel myself pulsating jet after jet of cum into her. Her hips were thrashing again and her thigh muscles shuddered.

Somehow I had managed to move the criteria again and again. It's not cheating if you don't kiss. Well, if you don't go any further. If she doesn't cum. If you don't fuck her. If you don't cum. "If you don't cum inside her" was the last possible cheap tissue thin excuse I had ripped through.

The thought of it being illicit shamefully turned me on even more. I was still hard, but my cock was too sensitive to continue. I pulled out of her with an audible wetness. I looked down and saw cum on the edge of the table and a little on the floor below. She slunk off the table and onto the floor, taking my cock in her mouth. It was very slow and very delicate. It felt very loving somehow. Then she slowly increased the pace. I was still sore, but it started feeling good again. Her pace picked up and then steadied. Soon I could feel another orgasm coming.

"I'm going to cum." I said.

"Mhmm." She hummed.

I came in her mouth. Not as powerful as the first orgasm, but more than I anticipated. She swallowed and kept going until I had to slow her down when it got too sensitive again. She looked up, smiled at me, stood up and kissed me on the cheek.

She picked up her panties off the ground. I put my underwear and pants back on.

"Where's the bathroom?" She said.

I walked her over there and she went inside. While she took her time to wash up, I leaned against the wall and reality, logic, and sense came flooding back in. Once again, I felt like garbage. I had cheated on a good woman with someone that only had use for me as long as it suited her. Eventually she came out of the bathroom and found me. She smiled. I forced a smile in return.

"I have to go meet Daniel for dinner. He's waiting at the hotel." She said.

Daniel was her new fiance.

"Oh. Right. I didn't realize he came with you." I said.

For a moment. I felt incredulous. I couldn't believe she could do what she had done and then just go back with him and have dinner. Then I remembered that's exactly what I was going to do. I was going to go home and have dinner with my girlfriend.

I went down to her car and got the espresso machine and loaded into mine. We kissed goodbye. I felt gross. I went back up to the office and cleaned up the mess on the table and floor. What the fuck was I thinking? At least there were no cameras.

I went home and had dinner with my girlfriend. Somehow I managed to go again and we had sex. I worried she'd smell Brianna on my cock. Maybe she did. It was surprisingly good sex. After she fell asleep I got up to waste time on my computer because I couldn't sleep. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Brianna.

"I love you." She said.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" I said.

"I dunno. Probably nothing. Sorry." She said.

I didn't see her for the rest of her time in town. Then she was gone again and life slowly got back to normal. I got tested for STDs a short time later and everything came back clean. I was lucky. I always got lucky. I am vain, weak-willed, extremely susceptible to flattery and probably a sex addict. I've never used dating apps or otherwise gone out of my way to cheat, but it always happened. Brianna wasn't the only other woman, but she was the only other woman that mattered. A physical and emotional affair.

I met Daniel a few months later when Brianna came back to town for a friend's wedding. I liked him more than the last guy. I could have seen us being friends under different circumstances, but I got the weird feeling that he knew and even weirder feeling he might be into it. They invited me out for drinks the day after the wedding, which I thought might be safe, given that he'd be there. At some point, he made an excuse to go back to the hotel, leaving us alone together and we did what we always do. She went back to Daniel with a pussy full of my cum for the second time. I felt empty and gross.

Eventually, they moved further away and I didn't see her for a couple years. I heard they broke up. We fell out of touch. The cafe eventually opened. It did surprisingly well for a time, but after a few years, business dropped off and Mike's landlord friend decided he could make a lot more money with other tenants. I remember selling the espresso machine. Every time I looked at it I'd get brief waves of arousal and disgust in equal measure. It sold for more than what we paid for it though. I moved to a new city as well. My relationship ended and then I found myself in a new one. We're living together, we are happy and I've managed to stay faithful so far.

This afternoon my phone buzzed. It was a text from Brianna.

"I'm going to be in your city this weekend. Would be great to see you." It said.

I haven't replied yet.