Page 13 of The Sound Of Us

A sliver of hope blooms in my chest. But wait. He’s said this to me at least three times in the last few months. Is this another tactic? I can hardly think straight when Frank goes from cold to hot to cold again.

“I brought you your food,” he says again.

“I’m not hungry.”

He reaches over the food and pulls me into a seated position, and shoves the plate on my lap. “I warmed it for you, and I also added some sugar to cut the acid.”

With the worst of it now over, I try hard to hold my ground. “I’m not hungry, Frank.” My tone is soft but laced with as much sternness as I can get away with while there is still time.

Frank walks around the bed. My eyes track his movement and my heart begins to thump.

Time’s up.

I lift a spoonful of beef stew to my mouth, still watching Frank.

With his back facing me, he fiddles inside the drawer on the nightstand on his side of the bed. I chew and shovel more food into my mouth. The stew is sweet. The oddness of the sweet taste mixing with the spice makes me gag, but I swallow it down.

Frank looks over his shoulder. He still has a smile on his face, but it’s turned nasty. “What? I’m not gonna shoot you for saying you’re not hungry, Axel. I’m not a pyscho.”

I don’t need to see the gun to know it’s sitting on his lap. And I know he’s not going to shoot me for saying I’m not hungry. He just knows how terrified I am at the sight of that gun, and this is his way of letting me know who’s in charge. He always plays with the gun when I’m ‘being difficult’.

I comply. When I’m done, Frank sets the gun back into the drawer and takes my plate to the kitchen. When he returns to the bed, my back is facing him, my body curled in a fetal position, closing up as much of my body as possible.

Frank’s arm slithers around my waist, yanking me against him.

“So, the new neighbor. He’s deaf,” I say. My way of delaying the agony.

“Yeah.” He snickers. “I heard about that. Also heard he brought a big-ass piano and what not. The fuck a deaf guy doin’ with a fuckin’ piano is beyond me.”

“I think they can feel the, uh, what is it? Vibrations?”

“Stupid,” he mutters.

I wish Frank wouldn’t be so nasty about things.

Chapter 6

Axel

No-Lube-Fridays: Part Two

I force my body to relax when Frank slides my sweats down my hips. The move is meant to be sensual. I can feel it in the gentleness of his movements. The soft brush of his lips across the back of my neck. The trail of his fingers over my ass and the press of his naked body against the length of mine.

It all makes my skin crawl and I have to grind my molars and take deep, calming breaths to stomach the bile rising up from my belly.

I search my brain for something to turn me on and give Frank the erection he believes he deserves. While Frank’s touch eats away at my body and his heavy breathing bears down on my neck, I escape into the deepest recesses of my psyche.

Detached from the things being done to my body, I run away to a place where I’m safe inside the arms of a beautiful stranger. The perfect man made up in my head. Where the touch of this stranger’s fingers brings me excruciating pleasure and untold happiness.

I learned this technique after coming across some erotic art in Mrs. Dalton’s attic one day. Sketches she had to hide away after she got married. Mrs. Dalton’s choice of art was disgraceful, according to Mr. Dalton.

The sketches were of two men, doing exactly what Frank is doing with me right now. Except, in the sketches, the men were… enthralled with each other. Their passion forever captured in the intensity of their gazes and the lust swirling around them, created by the strokes of a graphite pencil.

Now, as Frank inserts his penis into me, uncaring for my physical comfort, I sink deep into the canvas of my imagination.

My imagined lover, gazing down at me, his eyes filled with awe and love as he gently enters my body. His lips lower to mine, capturing me in a kiss so soft and angelic.

And when he knows I’m ready, he moves inside me with sure and hard strokes. Because even though I crave the sweetness and gentleness of love, my starvation for the uncontrolled wildness of lust is undeniable. And with the lover of my dreams, I can have both.

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