Coming back is never easy…especially when you’re not sure what you were running from.
A reunion sparks thoughts of a lost love as a woman returns to her old town, and an old flame.
Coming Back by M. King
ISBN: 978-1-907623-05-9
Genre: Sensual Romance/Erotica
Length: Under 4000 words (13 .pdf pages)
Rating: 2 (sexual content)
This title is released as part of our Alpherbites line – short stories available for free download. Why not take a nibble at a new author or genre today?
Excerpt:
God, but it’s been a long time.
Since we spoke on the phone the other night, I’ve been trying to work out just how long, but I’m really not sure if it’s five or six years.
Have I really forgotten?
I imagine, if I confess this to you, you’ll tease me for being so forgetful, maybe say I must be starting to get old. Yet I can’t believe I could ever come anywhere near forgetting you.
Not that I’ll tell you that.
Even so, I’m slugging back the vodka tonics, waiting for you, and it seems like no time has passed at all. It’s as if it was only yesterday we were in The Holly Bush illegally, sneaking furtive drinks we were too young for, and furtive kisses we couldn’t put names to.
To be brutally honest, I’m glad you left. We were, I think, too young. Too young to cope with what was happening.
Of course, perhaps I just told myself that, because I didn’t want to admit what a coward I’d been. That would be shameful, I know, but I’ve done worse things since then.
I don’t think of them now, and I don’t think anymore about the past because—as always—I’ve got myself a table with my back against the wall, so I can see the door opening, and I can see that you’ve arrived.
My stomach does that little jump it’s done every time that damn door’s opened tonight, but this time I know it’s you, even though your body is turned to the side, turned away from me as you pass some dark-clothed woman in the doorway. Immediately, I recognise your shoulders. And, immediately, my nipples contract a little, even as my eyes are adjusting to fit your welcome shape back into the world.
It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The thinking part of me, the small part that doesn’t automatically become a crotch on legs the second I watch you walk to the bar, is amused by the fact that this hasn’t changed. I knew it wouldn’t, somehow. I hadn’t really thought about you in years, but the reunion last month was like a flare to my memory, like a match to the curling corner of an old photograph. Something that time had compressed, made flat and distant, suddenly blistered into life, coiling and writhing in the snare of a growing flame. I’d half-expected to see you there, surprised at my disappointment when I didn’t, and I knew I had to see you.
I had to find out.
Put it all to rest, I suppose.
You get your drink and my hand is raised, fingers half-curled, half-waving, just waiting…yet again, stuck somewhere between inaction and decisive movement. I want to bite my lip—you’ve made me nervous—but I don’t dare wreck my lip-gloss. It doesn’t matter, because you see me then, and you smile. God, you haven’t forgotten how to smile, that’s for sure. I am caught up and held in that megawatt grin, and as you walk over you don’t seem to have changed at all. You reach my table, and I’m sure I’ll knock something over as I stand up but, miraculously, I don’t. You set your drink down and say hello and, rising, I lean across to kiss your cheek. The evenings are still warm—I’m wearing a summer dress, my wrap abandoned on the back of the chair—and your fingers are cool as they curve against my arm. You smell different, a far better aftershave than you used to use, and your skin’s rougher on my lips.
I try to leave you unmarked, unblemished by the make-up I put on, I admit it, purely to impress you, and that seems funny, because once I tried so very hard to mark you.
Available for free download from Alpheratz Press
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