After an hour, we were all led back down to the common area, which wasn’t a place I wanted to be. I went back to my cell for lack of any better options and leaned my head against the back wall where I could see out the window and down to the street.
The building was a rather strange one architecturally. It was triangular instead of the usual rectangle, and from the street, people could see the seven-foot tall windows of the cells covering the twenty-seven-story building. Lots of people likened the sides of the building to an old-style punch-card because of the window slits in the pale, cement walls.
I wasn’t sure exactly what floor I was on but could tell I was up pretty high—certainly more than half way up the nearly thirty-story building. There was a single bar going through the center of the thin window from top to bottom, just in case anyone was crazy enough to try to escape from so high up. Crazy or not, people had tried, and a couple had even succeeded. When I looked out of the south-facing window, the view kind of sucked. I could see the Harold Washington Library, but that was about it. All the cool stuff was to the North and East.
I turned back toward the bed with its plain white sheet and single pillow. Just looking at it sent that warm, sleepy feeling through my body. I blinked slowly a few times as I shuffled over and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
“Don't sleep,” I told myself as the mattress gave way below my ass.
I didn't have to check the tags to know it wasn't a name brand mattress. There weren't any actual springs poking me in the back, but it was one step away from it. It smelled like strong detergent instead of anything nastier, at least.
I laid back and rolled to one side. Fatigue continued to spread over my body, and despite my desire to stay conscious, I knew it was a losing battle.
“Stay awake.”
Fucking talking to myself again.
Rolling over with the hope movement alone would keep the sandman away, I heard the springs below me groan in protest. I was immediately reminded of another small, crappy bed in the heart of the Arizona desert. Inside of my head, I could hear the rhythmic sounds of the squeaking wrought iron bed as I pounded into Lia.
My hand releases her neck, and I grab her hair instead.
“My cock feels so good fucking you,” I growl into her ear. “You like that? Huh?”
A groan is the only response I get, but it is enough.
I slam into her harder, hold myself deep inside for a moment, and then slowly slide almost all the way out. I would have pulled all the way out, but it would be too awkward to get back inside of her without getting her back up on her knees again, and I like having her all splayed out under me the way she is.
She likes it, too.
“Do you know how easy it would be,” I moan, and my voice is gravelly and husky in her ear, “to fuck you in the ass from this position?”
I feel her tense, and there are goose bumps springing up over her neck and shoulders. I smile slightly—she’s never taken a cock up the ass before. My lips press against the skin below her ear.
“Not this time,” I whisper, and I feel her relax underneath me for a brief moment.
I never did have anything other than straight sex with Lia. As many times as I had fucked her in that cabin while she was there, I never did take her in the ass. Other than that single comment when I had been on top of her, I hadn’t thought about it much. I would have taken her any way she was willing, but unlike any other woman I had ever been with, my cock’s focus was all on her pussy.
Reaching up to my head, I grabbed the thin pillow and pulled it to my chest. It smelled like cheap detergent with a hint of bleach, but I tried to ignore the burning in my nose as I pressed my cheek to the pillow. I wanted to recreate the feeling I had when I woke up that morning with my head on Lia’s stomach and her hand running through my hair. I closed my eyes briefly and immediately felt consciousness trying to leave me.
“Not yet,” I whispered into the empty room. “Need to have her in my head first.”
Maybe I’d dream of her if I did. It was possible, wasn’t it? All the dreams started again shortly after I came back from that cabin, so shouldn’t I be able to conjure up a dream of her?
“Please?”
I thought about the feeling of her skin under my hands and the way she smelled the next day—like she’d had me in her all night, which she had. I remembered the sound of her panting breaths and low moans as I first entered her body. I could still taste her tongue in my mouth after she’d borrowed my toothbrush in the morning.
I tried to fill my mind with thoughts of her sad smile as she glanced over her shoulder and walked up the steps of the bus. She didn’t want me to drive her to her mother’s house, and I couldn’t have left my post long enough to do so anyway.
She’d just been a girl, lost in the desert.
She should have meant nothing to me.
When I returned to Chicago, I had tried to forget everything—especially the lost girl I had taken to my bed and held far too closely in my mind. I kept myself occupied with my work and with a whore, but I knew that I had actually lost myself in that cabin as well—lost myself in her eyes as well as between her thighs. That loss was what drove me over the edge and brought me to this tiny bed in a tiny cell, just as Lia had been brought to my small bed in a one-room cabin.
I couldn’t hold sleep off any longer, and even though I knew my chances of success were nil, I continued to try to fight it.
I lost.