Seduction

I knelt in front of the window, never imagining that one of them had already gone around the house and was watching me in silence from the back door.

I took the first motorway exit without thinking. What she’d just told me made it impossible to keep driving, and I still hadn’t confessed what I really wanted.

I danced pressed against a masked stranger until his voice asked in my ear if I still remembered him. And my body answered before I did.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said as he moved toward the examining horse. I had come to have the carrot removed, not to orgasm in front of a stranger in a lab coat.

I ran through the downpour to my door thinking I was safe. I didn’t realize he had come in behind me until I felt his hand on my back.

It was almost closing time when the bell rang. He and she came in, asked for black lace, and, without knowing it, offered me the afternoon I’d spent months fantasizing about alone.

That night I went down for a glass of water and he was awake on the sofa. What happened after that in my bed, with my stepfather breathing on the other side of the door, still burns me.

I followed a trail of blood to a clearing where something waited for me, hanging between the trees. I never imagined the forest creature would choose me as its prey.

She swam toward me without taking her eyes off me, and in the warm evening water I understood that what we had felt as kids had never really gone away.

I walked onto the stage without thinking, in front of a room full of strangers and a man who no longer looked at me. That night I stopped begging and started feeling.

My whole life I believed I belonged only to him. The afternoon he walked into the dean’s office and found me on the desk, I discovered how much he liked seeing me with another man.

When I got the final dare of the night, I knew I could say no. What no one expected was for me to say yes with that smile on my lips.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

The moment I cast off I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end with a simple sail: she was already looking at me differently, with that half-smile promising much more.

For months, I’ve repeated the same scene in my head on the ride home. Today, when the seat beside me was taken, I almost stopped breathing.

I got home, tossed my heels into the air, and let my imagination do what I’d never dare do at the office.

There’s a bathroom no one uses at the back of the garage. I’ve spent days imagining you there, against the mirror, while I whisper everything I want to do to you.

The store was closed, and she had the whole morning free. The driver noticed before she did, and the smile in the mirror made her think things she shouldn’t.

We shared a hallway, an elevator and a coffeemaker, but never a real word. Only what each of us imagined when the other turned away.

I tripped over a root, and before I could get up, she was already on top of me. Her cold skin brushed mine, and I knew that night I wouldn’t leave the forest unchanged.