Marked

I woke with a taste in my mouth I couldn't name. Not bad. Not good either. Something mineral, like pennies left out in the rain, and underneath it, her. That scent. I was hard before I opened my eyes, aching in a way that had nothing to do with morning.

The apartment was wrong. Light came in at the wrong angle. The clock on the nightstand read 2:47 in the afternoon, and I had no memory of getting home. The last thing I could place clearly was her hand in mine, cold fingers laced through mine, and her mouth at my wrist.

After that, fragments.

Her palm flat against my chest, pressing me back into leather. A streetlamp swinging past a window. The weight of her across my lap, the cool length of her thighs, a sound I made that I didn't recognize as my own voice. Her lips on my throat. Her lips on my throat. Her lips on my throat, and then a sharp small hurt that dissolved so fast into pleasure I arched up off whatever I was lying on and begged.

Or I think I begged. It comes back in pieces, out of order, more like a dream than a memory, and every time I try to hold a detail still it slips.

I stood under the shower a long time. The water ran over me and I felt, for the first time I can remember, like my body was a thing that belonged to someone else. Not in a bad way. In a way that made me drag a hand down my own chest and feel her there, a cool print pressed into my skin.

Two small marks on the side of my neck. I found them by accident, fingers skimming the spot while I dried my hair. They didn't hurt. They looked like love bites, almost, except neater, paired, the size of her smile.

I told myself it was nothing. I told myself that all day, standing in front of the mirror, tilting my chin to catch them in the light. Nothing. A rash. An allergy. A woman who kissed too hard.

But the mark ached. Not the skin. Deeper. A low sweet pull like a tide, like something had been threaded through my blood and tugged. And when I closed my eyes I could feel her mouth again, and the room fell away, and I was back on that seat with the city smearing past the glass and her voice telling me to be still, be good, and I was. I was so good.

I should be frightened.

I keep saying it to myself, in the mirror, in the dark. I should be frightened. A woman I met twice took me somewhere I can't remember and left something in me I can't explain, and I should be running to a doctor, to the police, to anyone.

Instead I am standing at my window in the rain, tilting my chin to the glass so I can see the marks in my own reflection, and I am hoping.

I am hoping she comes back to finish what she started.