I've Loved You Before

Chapter 29 - Love Song

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Sitting solemnly at home

Beside a silent telephone

A vacant heart, a world come and gone

So hold me in, and I can see

A cold romantic one way street

An empty bed of used up promises

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John stood up on shaky legs, and reached for the bottle of bourbon sitting on the table in front of him. His thoughts were loose, and his body was feeling warm. It was exactly what he'd hoped for. Smiling to himself he knelt down to bank the fire before he went back inside the house for the night. His toes curled in the sheepskin rug he'd just purchased, so soft against his skin. Images of Marlena's nude body spread out before him in the firelight came to mind. He could imagine what that rug might feel like on their bare skin, and he moaned low in his throat. He immediately groaned in frustration. Obviously getting drunk did not help him clear his mind. He had hoped for an oblivion filled type of drunkenness. Instead he'd been served a reflective, ruminating drunkenness. Thoughts of Marlena filled him up, and all that seemed to do was add to his loneliness.

Making love to Hailey had been a mistake. Making love to Marlena would be a melding of his soul. It always had been. John sat the bottle of bourbon on the coffee table in the living room, and glanced at the clock. The night was still young, he was intoxicated, and a storm raged outside. He could hear the icy wet mix hitting the windows. At least he still had electricity. He could put on a movie, and hopefully fall asleep.

Outside, Marlena took the steps up to John's house slowly. There was a dim light shining through the bay window at the front, and she could see John as he leaned towards the fireplace. Her eyes scanned over every angle and muscle of his bare back. His sweatpants hung low on his hips, and as he knelt down, she briefly stopped her ascension and closed her eyes, telling herself she should leave. Sparks flew up as he tossed logs in, and when he stood up she saw him waver on his feet. There was a bottle of bourbon on the table, nearly a third gone. He was drunk. That knowledge made her even more wary. She certainly couldn't trust her own emotions. If John was drunk he wouldn't be the voice of reason.

She licked over her lips, wondering if he tasted like bourbon - vanilla, caramel, and that woodsy flavor of the oak it had been aged in. She blinked several times trying to calm herself down. Water dripped down her face, and for the first time since she'd stepped out of her car in the pouring February rain, she shivered with cold. For the entirety of her life she'd made safe, rational, dependable choices. Staring at John's half naked body, and allowing her eyes to scan over him was none of those things. It was reckless, impulsive, and unexpected. It was the same way she'd felt in her darkened laundry room when she was alone with him. If she had turned around that night, she knew it would have gone further than simply her softly whispered acknowledgment of her nudity.

She'd been a good girl for as long as she could remember, but staring at John right then, she wanted to be his good girl, and that took on an entirely different meaning. She wanted to break every rule she'd ever made for herself, and be rewarded for it.

John groaned and leaned against the mantle allowing his head to hang down momentarily. He felt the stretch in his back and under his arm. His body was his enemy, craving things it couldn't have. It brought with it a tenseness that seemed to live there permanently. Closing his eyes, he felt that painful and pleasurable ache in his cock. A deep throb that wouldn't subside. It wasn't just sex with Marlena. It was her touch, it was the sound of her voice, it was the way he could feel her every minute emotion, and all he wanted was more. He wanted to hear her laughter in the afternoon sun, he wanted to hear her soft voice in the darkness of his bedroom, and he wanted to see her smiles across the dinner table. Images of her smile in the morning, or her brushing her teeth in the bathroom mirror... he wanted all of it. None of that was his, and it was driving him crazy to watch Roman throw it all away, when John wished for it every night. Reaching down he gripped his swollen cock through the soft gray cotton of his sweatpants and squeezed himself tightly. "Fuck!" he growled, turning towards the couch.