*****
Four weeks came and went quicker than ever. Things were going well with my column, Jeremy was getting a little bit better with each treatment of chemo, and my stranger still visited me occasionally. I still asked him to kiss me, asked him for more, but he never would give me anything. I wanted more and I craved after him so much, it was simply quite frightening. How could I fall in love with a man I didn’t know? It just seemed impossible. It was just that he had everything I called out for. He felt familiar and right. He felt dangerous, but fucking tantalising. He was dangerously tantalising, in fact.
In the four weeks, I prepared Jeremy’s room by ordering another bed and moving my desk into my room. I set up everything he would need, including a little stand filled with books for him to read. He was intelligent and the more I could try and stretch the intelligence, the better. I knew he could be great at something once he settled into school and set his mind on whatever it was he wanted to be. He actually hinted one day that he wanted to be a doctor because doctors have been helping him his whole life. He felt he needed to give something back.
The other thing I’d been secretly doing was looking for Jeremy’s Julie. As often as I could, I visited that same spot outside McDonalds, looking and hoping to find a girl with the same description. I really wanted to be the one who helped him tick off all the items on his list. Not because it would mean he had fulfilled everything before dying, but simply because it could give him momentum for life. To give him that boost he so sorely needed to get better and get himself out of that hospital. I knew it was driving him crazy and, quite frankly, it was driving me crazy having him in there. I wanted him with me so he could start his new life. I wanted him to go back to school and start learning all about being a doctor, if that was what he truly wanted.
It was Friday evening and I was just getting ready to go out and celebrate. If all went well, Jeremy should be leaving the hospital in a few days. I had Ian and Louisa coming around for dinner, then we were going to hit a nightclub. It was Spaghetti Bolognaise night, after all, and Louisa had yet to try my culinary skills.
Deciding to keep it simple, I dressed in a fitted, knee-length white dress, my red high heels topping off the outfit nicely. I was ready to go out and I was sure ready to get laid tonight. He hadn’t visited me in a couple of days and I was feeling a little off. It seemed like once he visited and gave me a head-thrumming orgasm, I could think clearly. When he wasn’t with me, I constantly craved him.
Closing my eyes, I pictured my stranger holding me. He did it with enough tenderness to show me he somehow cared, but not enough for me to feel completely content. I let him mark me but, for some reason, I think I believed that if I let him, I was somehow close to him and he was somehow a part of me. The only connection I had when he was gone was the seed he left inside of me, and the marks I now bore on my neck. I even had marks around my wrists because he tied me up on his last visit. I wanted it. I asked for it. I even pulled and yanked on my restraints because it heightened my excitement. I craved his dominance and aggression. It was almost like a part of me screamed to be taken at all costs.
Shit, what was wrong with me? Was it bad that I got off on being tied up by some person I didn’t even know, then ravished within an inch of my life? Was I sick to even try and rationalise that this behaviour was perfectly normal? That letting a stranger come into my home and fuck me like I’d never been fucked in my life was definitely okay? Of course it wasn’t. But why did it all feel so right then? Why, when he came to me, did I feel so alive, more alive than I have ever felt in my life? I couldn’t justify it, I couldn’t comprehend it, but above all else, I couldn’t fucking deny it. I couldn’t deny him. He was everywhere. In my thoughts, in my dreams, in my fantasies.
In my heart.
I was lost to him. Completely and utterly drawn to his sexual magnetism. It was almost like it hummed whenever he entered the room. I had gotten so used to him that I would wake before he even entered the room. I was never scared, never frightened, never intimidated. Instead, I was alight with a thousand volts coursing through my veins. I felt on edge with desire, so full of thirst for a man whose real name I didn’t even know. For a faceless man, a tyrannical man…a deviant.
My deviant.
It never wavered, never tapered, never weakened. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Despite what he could give me, I wanted more. I wanted so much more. But I knew that could never be true. I knew what we had could never move on from this. How could it? How could a good, long-term relationship ever grow from our situation? He followed me for years, broke into my apartment, ate my cookies, and took from me. He’d taken everything from me and I willingly let him.