Satisfaction
by
Aki Grisham
You’ll never forget the first time he walked you to your apartment. You’d only met that evening and you don’t know how you attracted his attention. But you had, and he had ignored the other party-goers to dance with you. He trapped you in his eyes and as the evening drew to a close you could think of nothing nicer than having him as an escort. You could smell the desert on his teak skin and it reminded you of home. He smiled when you reached your door, lifting your hand to his mouth and leaving grains of sand on the skin where he kissed it.
When he let your hand go the warmth of his skin lingered. He said he’d call and you were delighted, if skeptical. Guys rarely bothered to call you back then. And he was attractive and brilliant, and smelled like heat and clean air and sandalwood. It was unthinkable that that sort of man would call you back. A man who towered over you by half a foot and bent near in half in a bow to kiss the back of your hand. The only guys who would have called you had more hands than an octopus and were only in it for a shot at your skirts. Guys who thought that because you were short and plain and had memorized the Star Trek opening you’d bend over backwards to be liked.
You refused to get your hopes up. It was sweet of him to walk you home. What more could you have reasonably expected?
But he did. He called --not by phone but by showing up at your apartment while you were at work. He left behind a lotus flower and a card asking if you were free for brunch the next weekend. You could smell sandalwood on the paper and you remembered the way the sand had scratched pleasantly against your hand during that brief kiss. You remembered the longing you had buried so deep for the desert you had grown up in. The scents back home were different -- cactus and tumbleweed instead of roast meat and spices. You weren’t sure how to contact him to say that you’d love to go to brunch. But you dressed in your best sundress that Sunday and you were surprised and giddy when the knock came and there he was.
You felt unimpressive and small beside him as he led you to the car. People -- total strangers, you assumed -- waved to him. He never waved back. He merely acknowledge them with a broad white smile. He might have been a musician or an actor. A politician. But he looked at you like you were everything in the world worth having. You don’t remember much of the conversation, you remember that you were worried when the waiter stumbled over himself and the way the crowds cleared for you both and how you thought, ‘Like the red sea’ for the first time since you were a child. He chattered excitedly about the latest advances in medicine and psychology and pushed your hair out of your eyes, tucking it behind one of your ears.
He asked to see you again when he walked you home. Hunger, but no desperation, in his dark eyes, and you did what you’ve never done before; you stood on your tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted like clove and his hands fell to your natural waist to crush you close. You could feel the aeons in that kiss. Something scintillating and dark curled up in your brain and you wanted to run away, but you were transfixed by a pleasantly tingling sense of trepidation. When you pulled away you wanted to chide yourself for being like everyone else. Rushing into things. How many women had thrown themselves at this man? How many men had? Would he forget you now that you were like everyone else? Now that you were no longer special?
He kissed away your concerns and curled one hand up around the back of your neck. “If you let me,” he purred and his voice was sinister and chocolate-rich, “I will take everything you offer. I am a greedy sort of man.”
You had him six times that night, and by the time you fell asleep against him, you were sore and almost certainly bruised but you felt soft and shiny and new. You were certain he’d be gone when you woke up. Certain that now he’d had you, he would leave. You could be this man’s conquest. He was yours, after all.
Your nightmares were legendary that night. Filled to the point of bursting with locusts and shadows that twisted and bit and tore. You were held to the sheets by choking black tendrils of woodsmoke, and you could taste blood and ash in your throat. You couldn’t even scream, lying there transfixed and not quite dreaming until he woke you up. His fingers traced patterns down your arms and you felt sand, soothing and hot against your skin. You buried your face against his chest and breathed in heat and sandalwood and sweat.
“Are you alright?”
“J-just a dream,” you managed, and he kissed your forehead and apologized before pulling you tight against him. Your dreams were worse and when the serpent devoured you, you slipped into an unending, conscious blackness until you were startled awake by lips against your own and a voice saying he was going to use your shower.
You were dating within the week. Your nightmares were vivid and agonizing and you found that you no longer noticed little pains like paper cuts and burn marks because they were all inconsequential in comparison. He fretted over every incident as though they were his fault. He was insatiable -- hungry and curious and passionate. Almost exhausting, but when you needed a break he would chuckle and kiss your forehead. “I forget sometimes,” he apologized. “Take what time you need.”
You looked on, half horrified as people watched and whispered about him in terrified awe. At night, when he slept soundly and fear of your own dreams kept you awake and frozen you could hear the screams. Around you the world seemed to break and crumble apart but he was just as vivacious as ever. Building and tinkering and explaining things as best he could, sitting you on his lap and whispering into your ear how this particular device worked.
You started noticing his little cruelties. He could silence people with a look, his dark eyes somehow darker and promising unspeakable horrors to the speaker. But those eyes were never directed at you. With you his eyes were always gentle, possessive and possessed in equal measure.
People left his conferences changed. Their eyes were dark and they stared past each other when they spoke but always, always they spoke of your beloved with terror and reverence. They spoke of the darkness in his eyes and you laughed because his eyes were never anything but bright when they came to rest on you. They spoke of his cruelty, but he was never anything but kind to you, around you. His hands were gentle on your skin and he made you sing in ways you didn’t know you could. Every little touch left your blood humming and your heart buzzing in delight.
They assured you it was a lie. He was too great a man, if he was a man. He was using you and you were the better for the using. Doubt sowed itself in your stomach and turned food to dirt on your tongue. His brow furrowed when he finally asked you about it. How could you tell him you doubted him? How could you tell him what people said, the lies (and god you hoped they were lies) they hissed. You didn’t. You couldn’t.
He was your whole world. How could you have done anything but protect him from your fears?
Around you the city fell further and further apart. The followers --that was the only word you could think of for them, though it felt childish and cruel-- of your beloved grew more and more crazed. You heard about the murders and watched the riots from your window. But it never touched you. Happening so close and so separate from where you were curled up in his arms. He kissed your forehead to comfort and reassure you, but you could feel the curve of his smile on your skin. He laughed as you drifted off to sleep and kissed at the back of your neck. Your passions only grew in those final days. You made love like you were on ecstasy and he held you in his eyes and you were the only thing reflected in their vastness.
Then, one day he pushed a ticket into your hands. “You have to leave,” he said, urgency breaking the normal steady pulse of his voice. Ripples in the wave of sheer personality that was your darling. “Go home.” He begged you, “Go home before I finish my works here and offer up this city.”
You wanted to say that you didn’t understand. But you did. You always had. Ever since you had dreamed of that serpent you had known who and what he was. You had fought it. Denied it. But you had known.
“Go home,” he urged again, “I love you, but my love will not save you from my nature.”
What could you do? You obeyed and when you stepped off the plane in the city of your youth you breathed in cacti and tumbleweed and you ached for clove and cinnamon. For heat and spice and warm brown skin. Your feet felt leaden and your ears rang with his voice as though they could will it back into being. That city burned to the ground and you knew that he stood there laughing at the flames. His hunger, his desire, still unsatisfied.
Your nightmares eased and soothed and shifted to dreams of longing. In those dreams he kisses you tenderly and whispers secrets in dead languages against your skin. One morning you know you’ll wake to a lotus flower on your doorstep and you’ll see him again. And he’ll hold you in his arms and he’ll take all you have to give and possibly, probably, all that you don’t. He is a greedy man.
But he is a king. Your king. And Kings are greedy.
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