{{let's be alone together}}

✾✾✾...ACT 3...✾✾✾

- Come. – I say huskily, still watching her, wanting her. I'm hungry.

I offer her my hand, and she takes it, although there is no need for this. She's blushing, I reckon I've just acted like a gentleman with her, and perhaps she is not used to it.

I do that a lot. I have, since my early childhood. I have always taken care of the women around me, for the lack of real men. I just had to be the strong one, being the older one as a given premise.

I don't mind. It's my life.

She takes my hand and I help her up, and she rushes to press herself to my clothes, begging for a hug. I do it, of course.

- Are you cold? Do you need me to...

- It's fine. – she whispers. – Let's just... get to bed.

I nod. I take her to the bedroom.

The light's subdued quite on purpose. Truth be told, I made up the "no undressing" rule as I went, it hadn't been planned. But I am not sorry. I cannot afford to let her in. I cannot let anybody in any more.

She is all naked, sparkling skin in the middle of a simple room, containing just one bed, just one chair, just my flowers, just my books. You used to say it was your favorite room in the whole flat. This room used to be our sanctuary.

It's lonely now. It's just me in it, you're gone.

I probably look a little sad, because she carefully places her small hand on my shoulder – the one that's covered. She remembers.

- Forgive me, my love. – I whisper, and I step closer and take her waist, kissing her again, kissing her the old way.

I'm still not sure who I'm talking to. Perhaps to them both.

She shivers in my arms, thirsty for that new kiss, and I relish her warm mouth, it's quite exquisite.

- Let's fuck. – she finally escapes a little and begs again, tired of waiting for me.

This one does not enjoy foreplay so much. She's different from you.

She makes herself at home, and her white body contrasts perfectly with the navy-blue cotton sheets. She is a siren in my darkest sea, and I am the monster to devour her without remorse tonight.

It has been known to happen before.

She lies on her back and stretches like a cat, enjoying the pleasant coolness of the fresh linen. I stare at her and fight the urge to get naked too, so that I could feel her warmth better.

No, no warmth for me. I don't want more of that pain.

I kneel next to her and then straddle her hips, congratulating myself for the choice of loose pants. She giggles lightly, and I see that she is ready to make some tasteless joke, so I bend over her and take her nipple in my mouth, without any barrier for my tongue this time. She sighs, pleased, and her pretty mouth opens up for a groan as I suck on the tender flesh, sucking a little too hard. My hands roam her body, caress her sides, her small breasts, and as I change to the other nipple, which is quite hard by now, she exclaims:

- Nice!

I don't want to talk to her. I am forever torn this way. With you too, I wanted to speak the sweetest words in your ear, and I also wanted us to be just silent for days on end.

I can't explain it. Don't make me.

She smells of roses, she tastes like milk... I kiss up this time, feeling how her body heaves, as my hand slides over her hip, and over her belly, to reach down over smoothly shaven skin, as soft as a newborn's, throbbing with all her rushing blood... She is moist, waiting for me.

I can't delay this any more.

I bite into her mouth, and the new kiss is still slow, albeit vicious, painful. I suck on her, as my fingers reach down to touch her wetness, her heat. She moans sensually, as the tips of my fingers explore the shape and all the folds of her gentle flesh, and I push my tongue into her brutally the very second my middle finger rubs against her clit.

Her arms are wrapped around my shoulders once again, her hands meet behind my back, but it's not a hug. She's kissing me back, matching me in every way, and the kiss goes on and on while I palm her forever ravenous hotness.

I sharply remove her from myself, and she whines, there, in the middle of it, and she perhaps expects me to remove my clothes. I guess, this is what a man would do. A man, also, would be quite hard by now. And I am. I am. I am quite hard for her, even though she's not the real thing, even though she is just a substitute.

I thought I knew myself. I thought I could manage to be cold tonight, detached.

But she is not to blame, and my mind understands this. She is beautiful and hot, and I want her. Now I want her, just like I wanted you.

I need to stop waiting for you.

I do my best for my smile to her not to look far too forced. I push her legs apart gently and this time kneel between them. She lies in front of me, open, throbbing, awaiting.

I realize that it won't be sex per se tonight. It would just be a round of emotionally-laden masturbation of sorts. She is probably going to be quite disappointed.

But she is a professional, and she smiles at me sweetly the moment I lean over her and kiss her belly and her thighs again.

- You are so beautiful... Divine... - I coo to her, and she must feel that those words are not hers, but she still smiles for me nonetheless, out of duty.

Tonight, we lie to each other. We are but mere actors in a play.

I have until midnight. There is a plenty of time.

Tomorrow, she won't even remember me.

- Bea? Please? – she pleads with me, too turned on by now.

- Yes. – I say coarsely. – Enough with the teasing already. Tonight you're mine!

She bites her lips because of the harsher words, and I watch her hands crawl up her body, and she squeezes her nipples for me, letting out a loud groan as I bite into the soft flesh of her thigh.

- I want it. – she professionally purrs to me. – I want you... Please...

She speaks my words back to me, and I want to cry, because those words are yours.

But you are not here, are you? I have to make do with what I have.