Hearing him say what I’ve suspected since he used the term “night terrors” — that he’s military in some way, Navy specifically — makes me smile. For some reason it lightens my heart at the same moment I feel heaviness coming over me. “Well, at least it means I’m not crazy. That I’m not the one and only person in the world to have the kind of dreams that I’ve been having.”
As I speak, I watch Brandon come back over to the bed. Sit on it. As he does, I admire the tattoos — the edges of ink I can see from under the collar and sleeves of his shirt. “Like the one last night?” he asks.
I nod, feeling torn between fascination at his body — at whatever he’s had inked on him—and what he’s just brought up.
“Do you want to talk about it, or…?” For a moment, Brandon looks like just asking me is a losing battle. And it probably is, based on how I was behaving with him the night before. But now I want to tell him. I want to open up, since keeping it inside isn’t helping.
“It was about my dad.” Not five words out of my mouth, and I’m already feeling choked up. I’m already feeling short of breath, but I grit my teeth and continue. “It was about the day I found out he was killed in action.” Next to me, Brandon makes a sympathetic sound. He doesn’t move to touch me immediately, but the sound is as warm as any hug or touch. “In the dream the soldiers who came to notify me had snakes coming out of their mouths.” I shudder, thinking about it all over again. Seeing the way their mouths open and vomit snakes. Hundreds. Thousands. And how those snakes wrapped around my throat. “The snakes wrapped around my throat. Made me feel like I was going to die.” I pause, watching him. Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
Brandon nods. His face is as sober as I feel.
“Choke to death, you know?” I pause again, fiddling with fingernails that aren’t really there. I’ve chewed them all down. “But in real life. In real life it was so much worse, you know? There weren’t any snakes or anything, but when those officers came to tell me that my father died — that he was killed in a bombing that happened where he was stationed — I died. I collapsed on the floor and seriously thought I would never get up again. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe that he was really dead like that, you know?” I sniffle, feeling my throat tighten all over again. My eyes beginning to water. “They came saying that they would’ve come sooner, but needed the time to identify the body, you know?” Tears leak out of my eyes, remembering how badly I thought he must have to be damaged or burned to be that unrecognizable. “And it was on my birthday, too.”
This revelation makes Brandon gasp. Grab my hand, and I don’t bother to pull away. “Oh my God, Juliet,” he says softly. “On your birthday?”
I nod, feeling more tears coming. This pseudo-stranger has more sympathy for me than most of my friends did when they found out.
“That’s terrible! That’s such terrible news to receive any day… But on your birthday? That’s just… Horrible.”
“Yeah.” I wipe in my eyes, feeling numb. “And I thought it was the flower guy, too.” I suck back a sob. “Daddy always sent me flowers on my birthday, so…” I can’t even finish this sentence. Just mentioning my dad is enough to make me feel punched in the throat.
Brandon puts his arm around me. Draws me to him. Hold me tight. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. That must’ve been so hard for you.”
I nod again, but I’m far from being able to see clearly. My tears have gotten too heavy. “So I just decided to go for a drive. I drove outside of the Albuquerque city limits and toward the mountain. Toward the place where my dad used to take me all the time. A place he enjoyed going when he was home.” I wipe at my eyes again. “I drove as close as I could, and then ran up the mountain. I just ran and ran and ran until I got there. I don’t even remember how I got from my car to our spot really, but I was suddenly there. And that’s where you found me, I guess.” Even as I think on it, all it is a blur. The only thing that sticks out is the feeling of Brandon’s arm around me pulling me back. Much like it’s doing now, except where none at the edge of a cliff. “Thinking I need saving. But I didn’t really need saving. I was just numbing out from my reality. But not by killing myself or anything. Just trying to stop thinking. Feeling, you know?” I snuggle into him, feeling that need rising in me again. “You finally allowed me to escape from it last night.”
Brandon soothes me. Cuddles me. “Aaaah,” he whispers, leaving me back against the bed and beginning to kiss me, “like this?” At first, his kisses land on my cheeks. Then on my neck. Then my chest, nipples. He takes special attention to not just kiss, but lick, those. But those kinds of attentions are short-lived. He returns to kissing his way down my body, before I’ve even had time to enjoy the feeling of his tongue on my nipples. The coldness his saliva adds to the air touching me.
Along with kissing his way down my body, he kisses himself off the bed and between my legs. Once between my legs, he kisses and nipples my inner thighs. My mound, creeping closer and closer to my hood. My clit, with each kiss and love bite.
In no time at all, his nose and mouth are buried in my pussy. In my wet, tender folds. Which he wastes no time in tasting and stroking. With his tongue and fingers in turn. When his fingers are on my clit, his tongue is on my lips, and vice versa.
The firmness — the commitment his tongue displays for me — that’s as addictive as it is arousing. After what I know can only be a handful of licks and strokes from him, I’m already building. Already tightening toward orgasm, though I know that part of this is from the leftover sensitivity. My clit is still raw and tender from my treatment of it last night, which was heavy and intense, even by my standards.
But even with the intensity of his licking and sucking of my clit, of its size and base, I don’t stop him. If anything, I spread my legs wider. I even use my hand to pull up and out on my mound, so that my clit hangs free of all the folded skin and darkness.
Even so, I’m flinching with each touch of his tongue. Each lap he takes of my juices. I’m squirming and gasping under all of it, seeing stars. Feeling pop rocks on my tongue, fireworks of pleasure in my brain.
At some point during the oral treatment he’s giving me, Brandon puts his whole mouth on me. Over me and begins to suck and taste me like I’m a giant clam. Pastry. Something worthy of eating whole. Tasting deeply. His tongue shoots into my pussy like a fleshy, soft dildo. But warmer and more autonomous than any toy. Once inside, his tongue carves circles in my tender flesh. In and around my hole. And it doesn’t take more than a few of us to have me climbing toward another orgasm. Add to that some pinching and stroking of my clit (something he’s started to do, even while tongue-fucking my pussy), and I’m gone.
I cum in a swirl of color in sensation — of feeling like I’m one horny thread getting pulled from a giant naughty sweater — and narrowly escape visions of receiving the bad news. Of hearing that my father’s been killed in combat. Sought out by the enemy to not come home.
But all of that disappears in one violent, shuddering release of pleasure. One that has me almost squeezing Brandon’s face with my legs into nothingness.