Broken. Megan Hart

alive just a while longer.

      I waved a hand in the water over my body, not touching my skin but letting the water do it for me. The ripples felt good, and I imagined Joe’s hands. His long, strong fingers and clean, neat fingernails. I’d memorized his hands—every wrinkle of every knuckle, every vein. The exact spot on his wrists where the hair on his arms began.

      Thinking of Joe’s hair, I fought back another moan. My hands slipped down to stroke myself again. I wanted to bury my face in his chest hair, to rub the coarse curls of his arms against my eyelids. I wanted to feel his hair on my belly when we fucked, cock in cunt.

      I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to come. I thought I might die if I didn’t let myself finish, right then.

      I thought I was dying when I did.

      Everything stopped.

      Then all at once, it started again. My heart, beating. My breath, held in my lungs, rushed out. Water splashed as my body quaked. My clit had filled to the point of bursting and now it emptied in small, perfect spasms of ecstasy. My anus puckered as my cunt rippled, bearing down on nothing.

      Unable to hold it back, I gasped. My back arched and water sloshed over my face. I closed my mouth, fast, so I didn’t choke myself. Some got in my eyes, stinging, but the pleasure was so intense I didn’t care.

      When I was done and returned to myself, I put a hand on the edge of the tub to haul myself upright. I was cold and shivered, my nipples peaked now not from arousal but from chill.

      Nausea twisted my gut in the aftermath. I was light-headed when I got out, and had to stand, head down, for a moment or two before I felt steady enough to grab up my towel from the hook on the wall.

      I moved too fast and the room spun. I got on my hands and knees, my hair sodden and stringy over my shoulders and down my back. I shivered, teeth chattering, and then I wept.

      The towel I clutched smelled of lavender and I pressed my face against it to stifle my sobs as I’d bit my lip to hold back my sounds of pleasure. I dissolved on the bathroom floor, giving in to magnificent and overpowering grief.

      I loved my husband but wanted to fuck another man. I wanted it so much it tore me apart and knitted me together over and over. I lived for the stories Joe told that let me imagine myself as the women he took to bed. I had called him names, but I was wrong. It wasn’t Joe, it was me.

      I was the cheater.

      Chapter 03

       February

      This month, if I have a name, it’s lost in the pounding beat blaring from the speakers in the club. I’m wearing a short, tight skirt and a shirt made up of two scarves tied behind my neck. No bra, and my tits push against the silky fabric like twin melons. They barely bounce when I dance, and I’m proud of them. They’re worth the college tuition they cost to buy.

      Guys have been approaching me all night. I let them buy me drink after drink, but I dance alone or with a girlfriend, shaking our asses in time to the pounding rhythm. My skirt rides up over tanned, taut thighs, and tawny hair glistens in the blue strobe lights. I’m hips and tits and hair. I’m smooth, fluid motion. I’m sex for the sake of sex.

      There’s a guy watching me from across the dance floor. There are lots of guys watching me, but this one is different. He’s alone, not part of a pack. Just standing there, watching. His long-sleeved, black sweater hugs his shoulders and chest and fades into the black of his trousers, making him a shadow.

      I put on a little more effort for him, a wiggle of my hips and ass and tits. I crook my finger. Come hither, stranger.

      He detaches himself from the dark and moves forward, cutting through the crowd. I lose sight of him and frown, my dance losing a little of its steam until a moment later when the crowd parts and he’s standing in front of me.

      He smiles. I smile. I raise my hands over my head and wiggle, turning, writhing. He likes it.

      And damn, he’s a good dancer, too. He molds along my body. One hand goes to my hip. With the other, he curls my fingers around the back of his neck. The back of my head rests against his chest, because even in my four-inch heels he’s still about five inches taller.

      We move in time, ignoring the other dancers who sort of bounce up and down, as if on pogo sticks. We move more like water. His hand on my hip drifts down to brush along the hem of my skirt and the bare skin of my thigh.

      My nipples get hard. He’s subtle but I know what he wants. I want it, too. It’s not like I’m here to find Mr. Right. More like Mr. Right Now.

      The song changes and some people on the dance floor leave. Others join. I turn and tilt my head to smile at him. Fuck, he’s got pretty teeth.

      We can’t talk, really. The music’s too loud. We communicate with a look, a touch. He’s good at that, too. He actually looks at my face.

      If we’re not going to dance, we need to get off the floor. Besides, I’m hot and thirsty. I gesture toward the bar and he nods, so I grab his hand and tug him along to the bar where he buys me a margarita and he orders a bottle of water.

      I don’t think he’s drunk, which is really interesting, considering it’s Saturday night and the entire bar is halfway to wasted, including me. I lift my margarita, and he toasts it with his bottled water. We smile and sip. It’s quieter here by the barest margin, but still not enough for real conversation.

      “You wanna go someplace?” I have to shout the question twice before he answers.

      He leans in to say directly into my ear, “where do you want to go?”

      That’s how we end up at my place. I feel okay with him driving me home since he hasn’t been drinking, and it saves me cab fare, anyway. I live on the third floor of a converted brownstone, and the margaritas have made the stairs too steep for me. Laughing, I stop to take off my shoes. His eyes follow the motion of my fingers unbuckling the ankle strap. His eyes look dark until he raises them to my face, and then I see they’re not dark at all, it’s just that the pupils have gone wide and black.

      At the top of the stairs I unlock my door and push inside, then turn and grab him by the front of his black leather jacket. I back him up against the door, closing it, and press my body to his, still cold from being outside. He smells like winter air and leather and smoke, and I pull him down to kiss me, but he turns at the last second so my mouth lands on his cheek.

      His hands have found their way to my tits without a problem. His hands are cold, too, and they slide up over the silk scarves and my tight nipples. I push his jacket off his shoulders and toss it on the floor. He bends to pick it up and hang it over the back of a chair.

      “Oh, you’re fussy,” I say, as if that’s cute.

      He doesn’t deny it. He even smirks a little. Maybe he’s proud of it. I take off my jacket and make a show of hanging it up on the coatrack, using exaggerated movements he watches without changing his expression.

      “What’s your name?” This I toss over my shoulder as I head to my kitchen and yank open my freezer to pull out a bottle of lemon vodka.

      “Joe.”

      I set out the bottle, a shot glass, the sugar bowl. I grab a lemon from the basket on the counter and slice it into quarters.

      “Joe, you want a lemon shooter?”

      When I turn for his answer, I see he’s followed me into the kitchen.

      “Sure.”

      I pour a shot, wet the back of my hand with the lemon and sprinkle it with sugar. “Bottoms up.” Down goes the shot, lick the sugar, bite the lemon.

      He does one, too. I like the noise he makes when he sucks the lemon. It’s a little half-growl. I wonder if he’d make that same noise if I sucked hard on his cock. And suddenly I want to find out.

      I move closer to him and grab his belt. I’m not as drunk as I was