I breathed out slowly. Instantly fully awake after his tongue seared a hot trail across my core.
He'd just left, after all that? My heart had begun to race and I felt hot all over as I was drowning in a fur coat. My thoughts were a jumble.
I couldn't understand how my body was responding so quickly. To something that wasn't barely offered. My body was racing so far ahead my memories did not even have a chance to catch up.
I smelled his arousal as he went by, I knew nature had him ready to perform. And the mere thought of that brought a rush of images, scents, and sensations. My temperature jumped another 10 degrees and I had to fight to keep my breath slow. The cooling of his saliva in stark contrast to the heat that seemed to pulse in waves from my center.
But somehow he was choosing not to, he was choosing not to be like an animal. My body. My body? My body twitched in anticipation, it was all I could do to stay where I was at and not run after him. My hind legs ready to position me. I could see the image in my mind of my subconscious wanting to feel his teeth on my neck. His body covering my back and forcing me down. I ached with emptiness.
Was it even possible for animals to choose? I tried to remember what my biology teacher had said about the absolute nature of animal instinct and their brains. I tried to distract myself with the realization that my body, this body that I now claimed as mine was reacting as an animal. Pure unbridled instinctual lust was suffusing itself into every pathway in mind. Rational thought - I held to that thread. The only thing that separated me from my nature, my new nature. My hind legs? I realized that I'd come to terms with the undeniable reality that I no longer had arms, but rather forelegs.
Finally, the wash of agony, loss, pain, sadness from the memories dimmed the power of my arousal back down to a dull hollowness.
I cracked open my eyes and looked at him. He was looking out the front of the bus. I wondered again for the millionth time what went on in Apoc's mind. I could tell you every nuance of how he felt moment to moment, but the subject of his feelings might forever be a mystery.
How much did he know?
What did he think about?
And why, oh, why did he not continue? I was ashamed to realize that a large part of me wanted him to have had his way with me. I didn't want to be asked or wooed. A part of me didn't want the choice. It would have been so much easier to just answer the physical call the need within me and not have to be consumed with my thoughts of my humanity.
I could feel my body still responding... even just to the breaths and the single lick.
Now I was getting what I wanted, somehow I didn't want it. Not this. Not like this. But how then? the longer I worried the more the sensations and the heat within me cooled.
How did I want it? What would be the right way? Was there a right way? Was I expecting him to ask me? How would I know?
I felt so confused. The fact that he didn't just continue and do his business made me feel rejected in some way and turned on in another. I realized I was rationalizing instinct.
Couldn't I just be one or the other? What was with my constant desire for internal conflict? Did I absolutely have to have it be so frustrating and upsetting no matter what happened? What was wrong with me?
I wanted him to want me. That realization struck me to the core. I couldn't seem to follow that back to anything rational.
My core of my being wanted to be irresistible to him. I wanted him to respect me, or was that some leftover comment I'd heard in college. An idea that I entertained to feel powerful, that I leaned on to lessen my discomfort in social interactions. I always felt like my friends always had it figured out, they always seemed more confident and successful. They got the boys they wanted and the jobs they wanted. They got the grades they wanted, the teachers wrapped around their fingers. They seemed to know where they were going, and even when bad things happened they never seemed to suffer like I did. They never looked as confused as I felt.
Felt.
I wanted him to take me and ravish me without asking.
NO!
I wanted him to ask me and be willing to hear and honor a "no" or "not right now". Right? I wanted to be loved... the right way.
NO!
I wanted to be held down.
NO!
I wanted to hold him.
For the first time that I could remember recognizing it - recognizing me. I could smell myself. I could smell that I was ready for him. And I could also smell my fear, and anger. No wonder he couldn't figure me out. I couldn't figure me out either, judging by my smell I was just a jumble of contradictions. Old beliefs about who and what I was or even who I was supposed to be, were being warped and broken by my new reality. I didn't really exist in either world. My two halves felt as if they'd been separated by glass. My guts sliced in half.
I was no longer human, but I wasn't really a dog either. Too many thoughts, too many memories, too many thoughts about how things should be how life or culture should be... I didn't even fit in anymore. To the point, that it was somehow wonderfully terrifying and freeing at the same time. I didn't have to compete anymore because I was a one of a kind. There was no one to compare myself to anymore. I didn't have to be or do anything other than what I was doing right now.
I was shocked for a full minute as all the voices in my head quieted for a moment. None of them had anything to say anymore. All of my doubts, my inhibitions, my beliefs had to change, they now had to all be about me. I could no longer point to anyone outside of myself as responsible or even necessary for me.
Maybe this was what God had intended for me all along? Was that blasphemy to say that? I had read the Bible, in fits and starts over the years. I heard the proof texting of the pastors who would find texts all over the Bible to support whatever their message of the week was... all tied up in a neat little bundle. I'd often find that the pastor had really taken the verses out context, which was always a betrayal. I had to find the perfection of who and what I was now.
Somehow.
Maybe a cautionary tale? I was the human guinea pig? Sally the sheep-girl? Maybe my purpose was to show where all of these things were really headed. An example of human efforts to play God and how they always end up in pain and suffering. My pain and suffering in this case, but that was selfish of me to think like that. My family had also lost. They would always wonder. And they would never get me back, never the one they lost.
I stood and crept up to the front of the bus where Apoc sat looking out. I knew that he'd heard me. I closed my eyes and nuzzled him. He sighed.
Right now I was alive.
Right now Apoc was alive.
Maybe this moment of now was all that ever really matters in life.
For all we knew the aluminum shield hadn't worked and we'd both be dead from a sniper bullet in seconds. But again I chose to trust and to enjoy this moment and the next if I could.
He nuzzled me back and I leaned into him.
