WHAT’S WRONG, MY LOVE? by Grant Wandle (2nd Place, Flash May26)

I woke. Everything was still, with only a dim streetlight glow creeping under the curtains. You had your back to me, but I sensed that you might be awake. You might even have woken me. I lifted my hand across and you shuffled backwards into my embrace, wrapping my arm tightly around you, interlacing your fingers with mine.

“What’s wrong, my love?” I asked. For a long moment you lay silent and still. Then, without a word, you arched your buttocks into me, pushing rhythmically against my groin.

We had – as every couple probably does – established a rapport, a set of protocols for sex, signals that are known and understood. Your actions now were unfamiliar, but your directness aroused me. You released my hand and rolled onto your back, pulling me on top of you, wriggling your hips to position them under mine. I was about to kiss you when you reached down, grabbed my erection and directed it inside you.

Your breath as I entered you was the first sound you had made. You wrapped your arms around me, pulling my chest against yours. I slid my hands underneath your head, lifting it as I lowered my own, wrapping us further into each other, my lips against your ear. You let out a stifled cry – not your familiar orgasm, but something quite different, an exclamation of need perhaps, or of fear.

Afterwards, I would normally have raised myself on my elbows so we could kiss and enjoy the stillness as our hearts, still pressed against each other, slowed to their normal rhythms. This time you pulled me back, your arms tight around me. I felt your chest expand with each breath, your hair against my cheek. Only as sleep started to claim us both did we roll apart.

In the morning we kissed and talked lazily of our weekend ahead. We dozed. We made love again, slowly and gently. I wanted to ask you about the previous night. I didn’t believe that you had simply been horny. Had you had a nightmare, some primitive night fear? Had you been worrying, alone as I slept beside you?

“Last night…,” I began, but you frowned and looked away. I didn’t argue. I still believed we would talk everything through in due course.

It was another month before you left, but I remembered that night as when you needed me most, when we were closest, wrapped inside each other as I cradled your head against mine. When you held me afterwards I assumed that you still wanted me on top of you, inside you. Only much later did it occur to me that, even in the near-darkness, you had simply wanted to stop me from looking into your face.