The Weight of Wanting

The first week was the worst.

Leigh threw herself into work because the alternative was sitting on that couch in the exact spot where he'd left her, pressing her thighs together like some kind of feral animal. She won a motion she'd expected to lose. She closed a deal that had been bleeding for months. Her managing partner commented on her focus, and she almost laughed, because her focus was a defense mechanism—the only thing standing between her and the constant, low-grade arousal that had become her baseline state.

She'd showered that first day. Eventually. But she'd waited until evening, until the last possible moment, standing under the water with her eyes closed and her hand between her legs, replaying the morning—the weight of him, the rhythm he'd used, the way his voice had dropped when he said *your pussy is the best thing I've ever thing I've ever felt.* She came with the water hitting her face and her hand shoved between her thighs and his name in her mouth, muffled by the spray, and it wasn't enough. It was a shadow of the thing. A photocopy of a painting.

She wanted the painting.

His first FaceTime came at 2 a.m. her time. She was in bed with a legal brief on her chest and her reading glasses on and she answered without checking the caller ID because she was half-asleep, and then his face filled the screen—sunburned, three days of stubble, the Aegean behind him so blue it looked fake—and she said, "You look like a catalog for unhappiness," and he laughed, and the sound went through her like current.

"I'm working," he said. "The stone came. The local supplier shorted me on the ceiling panels and I had to drive two hours to argue with a man who doesn't speak English."

"How'd that go?"

"I drew pictures. He understood pictures." He turned the camera to show her the room. It was further along than the photo—walls sealed now, the glass polished, the platform bed with a bare mattress on it. He panned slowly, the way he did everything—deliberate, precise, making sure she saw every angle. "Fourteen days," he said. "Maybe twelve."

"It's beautiful."

"It's functional." He turned the camera back to his face. "You're wearing glasses."

"I'm reading."

"Take them off."

"Jason."

"Take them off. I want to see your face."

She took them off. He studied her through the screen with that gaze—the slow one, the climbing one—and she felt her body respond, a flush starting at her sternum and spreading outward, her nipples tightening against the cotton of her sleep shirt.

"What are you wearing?" he asked.

"A t-shirt."

"Whose?"

"Mine." She paused. "Yours is in the laundry. I wore it three days in a row. It smelled like you and it smelled like sex and I finally had to wash it because it was starting to smell like neither."

"Put mine on."

"It's in the dryer."

"Go get it."

She went and got it. She came back and put it on over her bare skin—the shirt that had been on her body the morning he left, that had been pulled over her head right before he put his mouth on her—and she stood in front of the phone and waited.

"Good," he said. "Now get in bed."

"I'm in bed."

"Under the covers. I want to watch you fall asleep in my shirt."

"You're insane."

"We've established this."

She got under the covers. He talked—about the stone, about the supplier, about the way the light hit the room at 4:17 p.m. local time and turned the walls the color of her skin. She listened with her eyes half-closed and her hand resting on her stomach and the warmth of his voice settling over her like a second blanket. She fell asleep mid-sentence. She found out the next morning he'd stayed on the line for forty minutes after she dropped off, just watching her breathe.

---

The calls became routine. Every night, sometimes twice a day. He'd call from the site, shirtless and sweating, and she'd watch the muscles in his arms flex as he held the phone, and she'd think about those arms pinning her wrists above her head and she'd have to cross her legs at her desk. She'd call him from her apartment, wine in hand, and tell him about her day in the flat, controlled voice she used in court, and he'd say, "Stop performing. Tell me what you actually feel," and she'd say, "I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin if I don't feel you inside me in the next fourteen days," and he'd go quiet, that dangerous quiet that meant he was hard and thinking, and then he'd say, "Thirteen now. The stone's going faster than I projected."

On day nine, she called him from the bathtub. She'd had two glasses of wine and her inhibitions were loose and she was lonely in a way that was becoming structural—a load-bearing wall in the architecture of her days. She propped the phone on the tile and let him see the water lapping at her collarbones, the tops of her breasts, the way her dark hair fanned out in the water like ink.

"Leigh." His voice was careful. Measured. The architect assessing a structural problem.

"I'm just taking a bath."

"You're taking a bath and showing me."

"I'm taking a bath and showing you." She let her knees fall open under the water. She watched his face on the screen—the way his jaw tightened, the way his eyes tracked downward. "I miss your hands."

"Show me where."

She slid her hand down her stomach, under the water, between her legs. She pressed two fingers against her clit and closed her eyes and arched her neck against the rim of the tub. "Here," she said. "Here is where I miss your hands."

"Open your eyes."

She opened them.

"Look at me while you do it."

She looked at him. She rubbed slow circles, the way he did it, the way he'd trained her body to respond, and she watched his face on the screen and he watched her fingers moving under the water and neither of them spoke. The sound of her breathing filled the bathroom. The water rippled with the motion of her arm.

"Faster," he said.

She went faster. Her breath hitched. Her free hand gripped the edge of the tub, knuckles white against the porcelain.

"Stop."

She stopped. Her hips jerked forward involuntarily, seeking the pressure that had been withdrawn, and she made a sound—a small, frustrated whine that she would have been embarrassed by if she hadn't been past the point of embarrassment.

"I want you to stop and I want you to think about the fact that in eleven days I'm going to be inside you and you're going to come on my cock and I'm going to feel it and you're going to feel me and it's going to be better than your fingers because it's me."

"Jason—"

"Goodnight, Leigh."

He hung up. She stared at the screen. She threw a washcloth at the phone. Then she put her fingers back between her legs and finished herself off in roughly forty seconds, biting her lip so hard she tasted copper, and when she came she said his name into the steam of the bathroom like a curse.

---

On day fourteen, she texted him: *Can I go to the club? Just to watch. I want to FaceTime you while I'm there.*

His reply came in four seconds: *Which club?*

*The one in the city. The one we went to.*

A pause. Then: *You want to watch other people fuck while I watch you watch.*

*Yes.*

Another pause. Longer this time. She could picture him on the other end—standing in the half-finished room, phone in hand, running the calculation. The risk. The reward. The specific, particular thrill of her being in a room full of people having sex while he was six thousand miles away, watching her face as she took it in.

*Wear the black dress*, he wrote. *The one from Athens. Don't wear anything under it. When you get there, find a spot where I can see the room and call me.*

She went.

The club was the same—low ceilings, dark corners, the particular atmosphere of a place where desire had been distilled into something almost architectural. She found a seat at the back, against the wall, where she could see the main floor. A couple was on the central platform—the woman on her hands and knees, the man behind her, his hands gripping her hips, his cock sliding into her with a rhythm that was unhurried and deliberate. Another couple on a couch to the left—the woman straddling the man, her head thrown back, her breasts in his mouth. The sounds were layered—moaning, the slap of skin, the wet noise of bodies moving together.

She called Jason.

His face appeared on the screen. He was in the room—their room—the glass wall behind him dark with night. He was shirtless, leaning against the stone wall, and he looked like a man who had been waiting.

"Turn the camera," he said. "Let me see."

She turned the camera. She watched his face as he took in the scene—the couple on the platform, the couple on the couch, the ambient sexuality of the room. His expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A darkening. A focusing.

"Now turn it back to you."

She turned it back. She was sitting with her knees together, the black dress ending mid-thigh, her hands folded in her lap. She looked, she imagined, like a woman at a very inappropriate business meeting.

"Open your knees," he said.

She opened them. The phone was positioned so he could see her face, her chest, the tops of her thighs. The dress rode up. She wasn't wearing anything under it. He'd told her not to.

"Now watch the room," he said. "And tell me what you see."

She watched. She described what she saw—the woman on the platform being fucked from behind, the way her back arched when the man's hand came down on her ass, the sound she made, muffled by the cushion. The couple on the couch, the woman riding the man now, her hips rolling in slow circles, her mouth open against his neck.

"Are you wet?" Jason asked.

"Yes."

"Touch yourself. Don't come. Just touch."

She slid her hand under the hem of the dress. Her fingers found the wetness—heavy, obvious, the kind of arousal that had been building since she'd walked through the door. She pressed her fingers against her clit and inhaled sharply.

"Keep describing," he said. His voice had dropped. She could hear it through the phone, that low register that meant he was touching himself too.

She described. She described the man on the platform pulling out and flipping the woman over and pushing back in and the woman's legs wrapping around his waist. She described the sound of it—the wet, rhythmic slap of his body against hers. She described the couple on the couch, the man's hands gripping the woman's ass, his fingers digging in, the woman's moan when he spread her open.

"Two fingers," Jason said. "Inside. Now."

She pushed two fingers inside herself and her hips tilted forward and she bit her lip. She was wet enough that there was no resistance—just heat and pressure and the feeling of her own body clenching around her fingers, wanting more, wanting thicker, wanting him.

"Fuck yourself with them. Slow."

She did. Slow. In and out, her wrist angled awkwardly in the confined space under the dress, her eyes on the room but her mind on his voice. A man at a nearby table glanced at her—noticing the angle of her arm, the flush on her chest—and she met his eyes and didn't stop. She didn't care. She was performing for one person and he was on the other end of the phone.

"Add a third."

She added a third. The stretch made her gasp. She was full—not full enough, not the specific fullness of Jason's cock, but full enough that her body responded, clenching and releasing, her hips moving in small, involuntary circles.

"Don't come," he said. "I mean it. If you come, I'll know, and I'll make you wait an extra day."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

She stopped. She pulled her fingers out and pressed her thighs together and breathed through the almost—the razor edge of orgasm that retreated slowly, reluctantly, like a tide pulling back from shore.

"Good," he said. "Now go home. Go to bed. Think about me. Seven more days."

"Jason—"

"Seven days, Leigh. And I'm going to make you come so hard you forget your own name."

He hung up. She sat in the club for another ten minutes, vibrating, her thighs pressed together so hard her muscles shook. Then she took a car home and got in bed and did not touch herself, because he'd told her not to, and she wanted to be good for him, and the wanting to be good was almost as consuming as the wanting to come.

---

Day twenty. Her flight was at 9 p.m. She spent the morning in a fog of preparation that had nothing to do with packing. She packed in twenty minutes—a carry-on, a weekend bag, nothing excessive. She wasn't going to need clothes. She knew this. He knew this. The clothes were a formality, a concession to the airline's nudity policy.

She wore jeans and a sweater and boots to the airport. Underneath: nothing. Because he'd texted her that morning—*No underwear. Not for the flight. Not for any part of the next forty-eight hours. When I get my hands on you, I don't want to waste time removing layers.*

She sent back: *What if I'm searched at security?*

He sent back: *Then the TSA agent gets a show and you think about me while it happens.*

She went through security without incident. She sat at the gate with her legs crossed and the secret pressing against her ribs and her body already responding to the anticipation—the heaviness between her legs, the sensitivity of her nipples against the rough knit of the sweater, the way her breath came shallow and quick.

She landed in Athens at 2 p.m. local time. He was at the arrivals gate.

He was wearing jeans and a henley with the sleeves pushed up and he was leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed and he looked at her the way he always looked at her—the slow climb, the deliberate assessment—but there was something else this time. Something harder. Something that had been compressed by three weeks of distance and phone screens and his own voice telling her what to do with her fingers while he listened from six thousand miles away.

"Hi," she said.

He didn't say hi. He took her carry-on from her hand, set it on the floor, and pulled her against him and kissed her. Not the slow, deep kiss of the morning he'd left. This was the other kind—the kind that said *I've been thinking about your mouth for twenty-one days and I'm done thinking.* His hand came up to the back of her neck and his fingers tightened in her hair and his tongue pushed into her mouth and she could feel the three weeks of restraint breaking apart in the way he held her—too tight, too close, too much, and exactly right.

"Car's outside," he said against her mouth. "We're not going to the island tonight."

"Where are we going?"

"The club. The one in Athens. The one where I watched you come against a wall while three people watched."

She felt the heat spread through her body like a lit match dropped in gasoline. "Jason—"

"I've been thinking about it for three weeks. Every night. While I was building that room, while I was looking at the light through the glass, while I was on the phone with you listening to you breathe—I was thinking about taking you back to that club and putting you against that wall and fucking you until you screamed."

"Then why haven't we started walking?"

He smiled. The real one. The one that broke the architect's composure and showed the raw, hungry thing underneath. He picked up her bag and put his hand on the back of her neck and guided her through the terminal, and his grip was firm and his stride was long and she had to half-jog to keep up, and the whole time his thumb was pressing into the muscle at the base of her skull in slow circles, and she was wet before they reached the parking garage.

---

The Athens club was different from the one in New York—older, darker, carved into the side of a building that had been something else in a previous life. A church, maybe. A warehouse. The walls were stone, rough-hewn, and the lighting was low and warm and the air smelled like candle wax and sweat and sex.

He took her to the back. To a room she didn't remember from before—a private room, smaller, with a bench against one wall and a mirror on the ceiling and a heavy wooden chair in the center of the floor. He closed the door. The sound of the club—the moaning, the music, the layered symphony of pleasure—muffled to a low thrum.

"Strip," he said.

She stripped. She pulled the sweater over her head and unzipped the jeans and stepped out of them and stood in front of him in nothing but her skin and the mark on her neck that hadn't quite faded. He looked at her. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms and looked at her the way he'd looked at the room—assessing, calculating, planning what he was going to do with the space.

"Touch yourself," he said. "The way you did on the phone. But this time I'm in the room and I can see everything."

She put her hand between her legs. She was soaked—had been soaked since the airport, since the kiss, since the car ride where his hand had been on her thigh and his fingers had been inching upward and she'd spread her legs for him in the back seat and he'd pushed two fingers inside her and said, "Mine," and she'd said, "Yes," and come in approximately thirty seconds. She was swollen and sensitive and when her fingers found her clit she flinched.

"Slow," he said. He was watching her face. "I want to see it build."

She went slow. She rubbed in circles, standing in the middle of the room, her knees slightly bent, her free hand gripping her own thigh for balance. He watched. He didn't move. He didn't touch himself. He just stood there with his arms crossed and his eyes on her body and the focus in his gaze was so intense she could feel it on her skin like a physical thing—warm, heavy, pressing against her.

"Stop."

She stopped. She made the sound—the frustrated whine, the one she wasn't embarrassed by anymore because he'd drawn it out of her so many times it had become part of their vocabulary.

"Come here."

She went to him on unsteady legs, her pulse hammering in her throat and between her thighs, and the second she was within reach he seized her wrist—the slick one, the one glistening with her own heat—and yanked her hand up to his mouth. He sucked her fingers clean, two at a time, his tongue lashing between them, his teeth scraping her knuckles, and his eyes never left hers, dark and voracious, and she felt the pull of his mouth echo deep in her cunt like a second heartbeat. Then he spat her own taste back onto her palm, twisted her arm behind her back, and bent her over the arm of the couch so fast the room blurred.