Obsession

By Desdmona

This story contains sexually explicit scenes.

He’d been coming to Milano’s for months, entering through the back door, sitting at the same table, ordering the same meal, and watching the sunset from the same window. She was gone, but she would always be here. Her haunting fragrance—hibiscus mixed with ocean breeze—incensed the air around him. It was she who guided his hand to his groin while his other hand twirled a fork in his linguine.

The back of his eyes burned like the sun on a white-hot beach of the panhandle. A suggestive “remember” played a crescendo in his mind.

As if he could forget...

Linguine and shrimp. A well-placed napkin. Her daring hand. A pedaled zipper. “Can you eat while I play?” she purred, her tongue slithering across her bottom lip, paving the way for a throaty moan. Her pupils dilated as her slim fingers probed to the meat of him. She leaned in to whisper, “Can you, darling?”

Finish a meal before she brought him to climax? He wasn’t sure. He’d failed her tests before: lying nude on blacktop in the heat of the day, convincing a third to join their party of two, or sucking her bared suntan breast in line at the deli. Always in the open. Always in a crowd. Attempting had been exciting. Difficult. Succeeding had been out of reach. He was a coward.

After his failures, she became morose. Distant. Odd. Obsessing over animal shows on cable TV, watching with untamed eyes and mimicking the ferocious growls. She ceased calling him ‘darling’. She stopped turning her feral eyes towards him. She disappeared.

As if he could forget...

She probed beneath the napkin—delicate feathery touches, followed by a coddling grasp, and then an upsurge in tempo. It was Utopia, this feel of flesh against flesh while in a public place. Her thumb skimmed over his glans and found the first drop of seminal damp. He closed his eyes, lost in her, until his fork pinged against the side of his plate, and his eyes popped open to see uncurled linguine splattered on the linen. He squirmed from her grasp, and his napkin floated to the floor. Damn!

“Is the lady not joining you tonight, Mr. Faber?”

“Hmm? What did you say?”

“Your lady friend, she can’t be with you tonight?”

He looked to the seat on his left. It was empty. His fork, with its tines mummified in pasta, was secure in his left hand. The tablecloth was spotless and the napkin still covered his lap. He shook his head.

“We sure do miss her ‘round here.”

He nodded and the maitre’d turned to leave.

The summer sun drooped in the purple sky and glasses tinkled around him as other lovers saluted its beauty. His hands remained steady—one beneath the napkin, one clamped tightly around his fork—as he sucked in the last of the linguine. He swallowed, he moaned, and a growing stain blighted his napkin.

If only she could see.