I Fantasize About the Woman I Love Being My Gladiator

This winter gives me no peace. The cold seeps through my skin, too white and too thin, and settles into my bones until I’m tired, weak, wanting to disappear beneath the blankets. And then, as always, I think of you.

Strangest of all is that in real life you’re a straight woman, someone who would never look at me the way I look at you. But in my head, no. In my head you’re something else. You’re my warrior, more woman than any woman and more capable than any man, not only because of your strength but because of the way you would know how to love me. I would be your lady: delicate, small, surrendered. Because not all of us who love other women are looking for something soft. Some of us are looking for someone to fight for us.

I need your big body and your height, that six-foot-something frame against which my slight figure sinks as if into shelter. I need to feel your weight, the heat your skin and your breath give off, while all I have is cold and a tremor that won’t calm down. You, firm and resounding like a she-wolf of the northern forests; me, small and tame like a bird that has been left outside the nest.

When sadness gets the better of me, I need to cry against your chest while your lips seal my forehead and cheeks. I need you to bare your claws whenever something scares me, because I was always fearful and gentle by nature. To make me feel protected, even if only for a while.

And I also need the opposite: to be there when the doors of your chest fly open and your dark eyes fill with tears, when you show me your fragile side inside all that strength. To heal the wounds of your soul with embraces, with caresses, with kisses.

I need your huge hands, with their long, thick fingers, warming mine, which are fine, pianist’s hands, and go cold at nothing. I need the sweet roughness of your skin tracing my cheeks, my back, my breasts, my waist, my hips. I need your scent, that mix of honey and cinnamon that makes me dizzy, and your long chestnut hair, and the curve of your body that undoes me.

I need your voice, so deep and so womanly at the same time, able to push me right to the edge just from hearing it. And I need the gleam of your gaze behind your glasses: if I had to find it among a thousand pairs of eyes, I would recognize it without hesitation. Among them all, it’s the only one.

Just thinking about you gives me an instinct I can’t stop, the need to make up for all this cold with the heat of my own body.

***

I imagine you coming in slowly, your mane loose and your gaze fixed on me, burning with the desire to possess me. You’re wearing barely a dark sports set, a top and a tight pair of leggings that hide and at the same time highlight everything about you that makes me hungry. Leather boots with a platform, wide heel, soles that stomp hard. Imposing. Haughty. A gladiator come to claim what is hers.

I stay standing in front of you while you sit down, and your powerful legs wrap around me and pull me tight against you. Your rough hands begin to undress me with a slowness that kills me, running over my waist and hips, leaving me only in the fine silk lingerie I chose thinking of this moment. I wrap my arms around your broad neck, your shoulders, your back, and I whisper in your ear how much I love you.

—Tell me you’re mine —you murmur against my hair.

—Yours —I answer, out of breath—. All yours.

When I’ve got nothing left on, you pull back a little to look me over from head to toe. Your cheeks are flushed, your breathing ragged, your pupils huge. No one ever looks at me like this, I think, and the mere fact of feeling watched that way leaves me wet and trembling. You seat me on your lap, rubbing me against your firm thighs, and you kiss me with an intensity that forces me to cling to you. Your mouth travels down my neck, my breasts, and when it reaches the tip of one of my nipples I have to bite my lip not to cry out.

***

Then I’m the one who wants to go down. I kiss your mouth, your cheeks, your neck, and keep descending slowly, sliding from your lap until I’m kneeling in front of you, surrounded by your open legs. I hug your waist, I caress your back. I spend long minutes on your breasts, lowering your top little by little, losing myself in every centimeter while I listen to your breathing turn hoarse, almost a growl. That music drives me insane.

I kneel all the way down. I take off your boots, your socks, and I smell them and kiss them without the slightest shame, because with you I’m not ashamed of anything. I kiss your feet, your calves, the insides of your thighs. I pull your leggings down with my teeth while you hold my head with one of your big hands and stroke my hair. And when I finally get where I want to be, I sink my tongue in slowly, devoutly, drinking from you, feeling how each caress to the back of my neck turns into a tug that gets stronger and stronger. With your other hand you touch yourself, until your whole body tightens in spasms and you collapse, clinging to me, and the two of us end up on the floor, breathless, laughing against each other’s mouths.

***

I die for the shock of seeing you appear in a black leather harness fastened tight to your hips, a crooked smile and your tongue between your teeth. I go toward you with my small body still wrapped in silk, I hug your waist, kiss your belly, grab hold of everything I can grab. You answer by stroking my hair and my back, filling my head with kisses. I love feeling your heat and your weight, you fierce like that northern she-wolf, me tame like that lost bird.

You bend down until you reach my mouth and we kiss until we’re out of air. Then you lift me up, seat me on your lap, pull off my last garment, and I, driven mad by desire, settle my pelvis until I finally feel you inside me, deep. You start moving slowly, carefully, and I ride you at the rhythm you set. I feel the brush of my small breasts against yours, your arms opening over my back like a roof, and I cover your neck, your jaw, your cheeks with kisses while you give me long kisses back on the mouth.

And that’s how we stay for a good while, changing positions and corners. Standing against the wall, your hands over mine. Sitting, me with my back to you. On the kitchen counter, my back against the cold tiles. Sometimes you hold my hair, sometimes you cover my mouth gently, always with the care of someone who loves me and never wants to hurt me.

Minute by minute your thrusts get deeper, faster, and I ride you as if there were no tomorrow. Your voice grows rough, feral, and between kisses and gasps you keep telling me in my ear how beautiful I look to you, how much I turn you on, how incredibly womanly I make you feel. We beat to the same rhythm. I cry with pleasure, I moan like never before, and the two of us finish at the same time, soaking the sheets, because the harness is stroking you too where you need it most. It’s incredible how you love me like this.

***

When we can’t take any more, we sit facing each other, our legs tangled, our bodies pressed together, moving slowly. We kiss more and more desperately until one last shudder goes through both of us at the same time. Then we catch our breath, embrace, cry a little from sheer emotion, and tell each other everything we feel in low voices. And we fall asleep like that, wound around one another.

But the truth is I’m alone. I’m in my bed, between these cold sheets, and all of this is happening only inside me. While I think of you, I feel the wetness growing and an instinct I can’t stop. I begin to caress myself slowly, my breasts, my nipples, my belly, imagining that it’s your huge hands tracing me. I go lower little by little, I focus, I slide two of my fine pianist’s fingers inside, pretending they’re yours, thick and sure. I move as if I were riding you, I hug the pillow as if it were you, I kiss it, bite it, breathe deeply searching for your honey-and-cinnamon scent that isn’t there.

I’m dying to make love to you, Brunilda. To be possessed by you. To be made yours, completely, without reservations. I know it will never happen in real life, and maybe that’s why I want you even more in this one, the only one in which you are mine.

I want you, I adore you, and I love you madly.

With all my love,

Vera