I watched the sweat track a path between your breasts like a river cutting through a valley I hadn't yet mapped.
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Tuesday, 5:42 AM
I am writing this because if I speak these words to you when you wake, the Caribbean humidity will swallow them before they can settle. I am writing this because the ink is the only thing I can control this morning. My hands are shaking—not from the four rums I watched you order last night, but from the terrifying realization that I have spent thirty-five years living in a drafty house in Amherst, grading papers on the nuance of ‘showing not telling,’ while you were a storm waiting to happen.
Now: The sun is a jagged, white-hot line on the horizon, cutting through the heavy green of the palms outside our balcony. You are still asleep. The sheet is tangled around your waist, revealing the curve of your hip that I spent three hours memorizing with my mouth.
Then: I saw you at the bar. The resort was battening down for the tropical depression moving in from the south. The staff were frantic, dragging the heavy wicker furniture inside, but you were leaning against the mahogany rail, watching the sky turn the color of a fresh bruise. You didn't look like a tourist. You looked like the reason the storm was coming. When our eyes met, it wasn’t a polite exchange; it was a peer-review of my soul’s roughest, most shameful draft.
‘You look like you’re waiting for a ship to go down,’ you said. Your voice was lower than I expected, thick with a confidence that made the hair on my arms stand up.
‘I’m a professor,’ I told you, as if that explained the way I was clutching my glass. ‘I’m trained to anticipate the climax.’
‘Then you’re over-prepared,’ you laughed, and the sound was like glass breaking in a quiet room. ‘The best climaxes are the ones that ruin the outline.’
Now: I am looking at the compass I left on the nightstand. It’s an old brass thing, a family heirloom I keep in my travel bag to feel grounded. The needle is spinning aimlessly because of the storm’s lingering magnetism. Or maybe it’s just the room. I feel like I’ve lost my true north in the scent of your neck—a mix of expensive sunscreen, salt, and the raw, musk-heavy scent of a woman who knows exactly what she wants.
Then: The power went out at 9:00 PM. The resort plunged into a thick, velvet darkness that smelled of ozone. We were the only ones left in the lounge. You grabbed my hand—your palm was hot, dry, and calloused in a way that made me wonder what you did when you weren't ruining me—and led me toward the beach.
‘The surf is going to be ten feet,’ I said, the academic in me trying to protest the sheer stupidity of walking into a gale.
‘Let it be twenty,’ you whispered.
We didn't make it to the water. We made it to the supply hut behind the dive center. The wind was screaming through the slats of the wooden walls, a theatrical roar that drowned out everything but the sound of our breathing. I pushed you against the stacks of folded kayaks, and the plastic was cold against your back, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating off your skin.
I didn't kiss you first. I put my hand on your throat, feeling the frantic, galloping rhythm of your pulse. You leaned into it, your eyes wide and dark, reflecting the occasional flash of lightning that snuck through the cracks.
‘Julian,’ you groaned, and the way you said my name—not as a title, but as a plea—shattered the last of my New England restraint.
I reached for the hem of your linen dress. It was damp from the spray, the fabric clinging to your thighs like a second, more honest skin. I bunched it up in my fists, my knuckles grazing the soft, trembling heat of your inner legs. You weren't wearing anything underneath. The discovery hit me like a physical blow. You were just there—open, wet, and waiting in the dark.
Now: My pen has run dry twice. I keep thinking about the way the light is hitting your shoulder right now. There’s a faint red mark there, a souvenir of the way I bit you when the world finally fell apart. I want to apologize for it, and then I want to do it again.
Then: I dropped to my knees on the sand-dusted floor of that hut. The smell of rubber and salt was overwhelming. I spread your legs, my face pressing into the damp linen of your skirt before I found what I was looking for. You tasted like the ocean—brine and minerals and something uniquely yours. Your hands found my hair, tugging with a beautiful, violent desperation.
‘Please,’ you hissed, your hips bucking upward.
I used my tongue to trace the line of your labia, find the tiny, hard center of you that was already pulsing. You were so slick that my chin was covered in you within seconds. I didn't care. I wanted to drown in it. I flicked my tongue against you, rhythmic and punishing, while I slid two fingers inside. You were tight, clutching at me, your internal muscles rippling in a way that made my own cock ache so fiercely I thought I’d break.
You came with a sound that wasn't a moan—it was a jagged, high-pitched cry that the wind snatched away. Your body went rigid, your fingers digging into my scalp so hard I’m sure I’ll have bruises. I stayed there, holding you through the aftershocks, my face pressed against the heat of your crotch, breathing in the scent of your release.
Now: You’ve shifted in your sleep. The sheet has fallen further. I can see the slope of your breast, the nipple dark and sleep-heavy. I remember the way it felt in my mouth—the pebble-hard texture of it as I sucked you into my throat later that night, after we’d stumbled back to this room, dripping wet and half-crazed.
Then: We didn't even make it to the bed at first. I stripped my shirt off, the buttons popping and scattering across the tile like hailstones. You reached for my belt, your movements frantic, fumbling with the leather until you finally freed me. My cock was heavy, straining, the skin so sensitive that when your hand finally closed around me, I nearly finished right then.
You knelt in front of me, your hair a wild, tangled halo. You didn't hesitate. You took me into your mouth, your lips tight and demanding. You used your hands to grip the base of me, pulling me deeper until I was hitting the back of your throat. The friction of your tongue against my frenulum was a specific, localized torture. I watched you—the way your cheeks hollowed, the way you looked up at me through your lashes, fully aware of the power you held.
I pulled you up, my hands gripping your waist so hard my thumbs left indents. I turned you around, pressing your chest against the cool glass of the sliding balcony door. The storm was outside, the palms lashing against the glass, and we were the mirror image of that chaos.
I entered you from behind in one long, slow thrust. You gasped, your forehead hitting the glass. You were so wet I slid in with a quiet, squelching sound that made my blood boil. I stayed there for a second, buried to the hilt, feeling the way you stretched to accommodate me. You were hot—impossibly hot—a furnace of muscle and skin.
I started to move, a heavy, driving pace that had nothing to do with the ‘lithe grace’ I usually write about in my fiction. This was tectonic. This was animal. I reached around to grab your breasts, my palms flat against you, my thumbs raking over your nipples as I slammed into you. Each time I hit you, you made a small, broken sound, your breath fogging the glass in front of your face.
‘Harder,’ you choked out. ‘Julian, give me everything.’
I didn't hold back. I let the rhythm take over, my balls slapping against your bottom, the friction building until I was seeing spots in the dark. I could feel your walls clenching around me again, the second wave of your climax beginning to roll in. You started to shake, your knees buckling, but I held you up, my arms locked around your middle, anchored to you as the world dissolved.
When I finally broke, it was a total surrender. I came inside you with a violence that left me lightheaded, my vision blurring as I felt my pulse exploding into your depths. We stayed like that for a long time—two bodies pressed against the glass, listening to the rain die down to a drizzle.
Now: The coffee in the pot is cold. I haven't drank a drop. I’m just watching the way the light catches the fine, golden hairs on your forearm. In my classes, I tell my students that a story needs a resolution. It needs a ‘falling action’ where the tension dissipates and the characters return to a New Normal.
But as I look at you, I realize I don't want a New Normal. I want the storm. I want the way you looked at me when you thought I wasn't looking—with a hunger that matches my own, a hunger that doesn't belong in a classroom or a quiet house in Massachusetts.
I am going to leave this letter on the desk. No, I am going to burn it. No, I am going to tuck it into the pocket of your suitcase so you find it when you get home, three thousand miles away from this humidity and this version of me.
You’re stirring. Your eyes are opening. They’re that same bruised-sky color.
I’m going to put this pen down now. I don’t need the ink anymore. I need to see if you remember the way my name sounded when the wind was trying to tear us apart.
Always,
Julian
