Page 12 of The Roommate Subtext

No ambiguity in that reply, either.

Have a good night, Rose.

Goodnight.

She sat with her phone in her lap for a while, the sex toys still laid out on the bed next to her. She was really turned on.

Instead of getting undressed, she reopened his blog and began to read.

FOUR

Blake set his phone aside and leaned back against his headboard. Gosh, he was achingly hard, cock throbbing just from the potential in that conversation. He’d already gotten off today, but he was as turned on as if he hadn’t come in days. He pushed his pants down past his hips and took himself in hand, sending a thrill of arousal rushing through his bloodstream as he began to stroke.

Texting wouldn’t be the same as playing in person. He didn’t have any visuals to work with, not even a physical description. Only Rose’s mind, her ideas, tiny flickers of her sense of humor. He’d always thought playing with someone online would feel completely unsatisfying, but the tension had his mind racing already.

Rose presented so much potential. New to kink, maybe never played with anyone online before, curious as her name indicated. She had liked his most recent story about the anonymous hotel encounter. What else would she like? She had toys. He wondered about how she liked to use them. The larger toy, in particular, intrigued him. Did she have to warm up to it? Was it uncomfortable filling her, stretching her open? How would she squirm if he slowly pressed it inside her? Maybe she would let him tease and torment her from afar, submitting to him …

The pleasure spiraled up so fast he barely had time to prepare before he was coming, bliss radiating outward as the waves of climax overtook him and he groaned. He caught his breath in the aftermath, surprised by both the intensity and suddenness of his orgasm. Twice in one day, like a teenager.

Blake stopped into the bathroom to finish cleaning up. On the way back, he noticed a sliver of light peeking out from under Maggie’s closed door. She was still awake. Had he made noise? Had she heard him? He was usually more careful. He never wanted to make her feel uncomfortable.

Still too worked up to sleep, he went to the kitchen. Tea always settled his nerves. Blake put the kettle on the stove. Maggie had made fun of him last week—affectionately, he was pretty sure—for his tea ritual. But he’d grown up in a tea-loving household, and his mother would be horrified if she saw her son making tea any other way. He may not be close with her, but he still smiled at the thought of her waking up in a cold sweat down in south Florida, saying, “Oh my god, Blake is making tea in the microwave.”

Besides, he was pretty sure the water tasted better when you heated it up in a kettle. Maybe that was the anticipation, though, which he had always liked—obviously, given his sexual proclivities. When the kettle started to whistle, he took it off the burner before it could disturb Maggie.

He wasn’t a loose-leaf purist, especially when he wanted to sleep, so he poured the nearly boiling water over a chamomile tea bag and let it steep. The herbal aroma wafted up into his nose. The light over the stove cast a shadow from his cup down onto the stovetop. He would let the tea steep for three minutes. Maybe four. He was patient, but it was also after midnight. He glanced at the clock. 12:13. Was 12:13 one of those times you make a wish on? Or only 11:11 and 12:34? He was never good at remembering those sorts of things, the tiny minutiae that slipped away, leaving behind more facts about plants and his other nerdy hobbies.

If this was one of those wish times, though, he should wish for something. This was a spontaneous wish, like a birthday candle or a wishbone or an eyelash. He had a girlfriend once who used to love eyelash wishes, would pinch the loose black half-moon between her finger and thumb and tell him to choose. He would always choose thumb. He couldn’t remember those wishes now. Like he could barely remember her.

Maybe he should start dating again. His friend Andrew had suggested it once, tentatively offering it up one night while they were deep into paperwork for PlantSeed and rambling through a variety of conversation topics. He’d written it off then, but maybe Andrew had a point. Blake had never been able to sync up the two sides of himself: one side was the sweet, nerdy guy who had no trouble attracting girlfriends but who always seemed to find the most vanilla girls anywhere; the other side was the kinky Dom who hid his identity behind the cloak of anonymity to keep a charitable nonprofit out of the press.

Dating sounded exhausting. He chose his wish: he wished he could either find somebody who accepted him for his many contradictions, or that he could be satisfied with the bifurcation of his life. In the cosmic pantheon of wish-granting, “either/or” wishes were probably frowned upon, but that’s where he was tonight. The clock had already moved well past 12:13, anyway, and the wish might not even count.

He emptied the tea bag into the countertop compost bin, which Maggie said was the biggest plant nerd accessory she’d seen, but which was clearly good environmental sense. His tea was a light orange-gold color, hard to discern in the dim light from the stove. When he added some honey, it curled around before melting away, and exhaustion settled over his body like a weight. He stirred the cup with a tiny spoon, then switched off the light over the stove, darkening the living room except for the hazy glow of streetlights filtering through the shades. The light had disappeared from under Maggie’s door.

His bed creaked as he climbed in. The bedrooms in this condo were a good size for the city, large enough for a queen bed, a desk, and some actual furniture, although he had mostly filled the space with shelves and additional plants. Now, with only his bedside lamp aglow, he leaned back against the headboard to drink his tea. The night outside was finally starting to cool off, and with the light breeze and fan, his room had gone from sweltering to comfortable. The fan motor might have been enough to mask any noises he’d made earlier.

Maggie’s presence on the other side of the wall felt close enough to touch. That was a line of thinking he should not entertain, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts from settling on his roommate, as they often did on nights like this.

Obviously, Maggie was attractive. She had dark eyes that seemed to see right through him, and dark wavy hair barely long enough to tie up in a clip … or wrap up in a fist, if she liked that sort of thing. When she smiled, dimples dotted each cheek. She was beautiful, playful, confident, and if he had any way to trust her, and if he thought she would be into any of the things he was into, well … the possibilities made his heart race.

But she wasn’t. She was his roommate, and a news writer: she spread information, while he was committed to secrecy. Plenty of reasons for them to stay romantically and sexually uninvolved.

Blake leaned back against the headboard, took a sip of tea, and tried to relax. Somewhere, Curious Rose was off reading his stories, or maybe sleeping by now, but he would talk to her again soon.

He shouldn’t hope for more from that exchange. But here in the quiet midnight hours, he could acknowledge the flicker of hope. It didn’t have to amount to anything … but for now, that was enough.

The Pimpernel’s blog was a wealth of stories. Maggie skimmed through a couple before finding one to read all the way through. It was another ridiculously unsafe but unbearably hot stranger encounter. In this, the woman was bound naked and blindfolded in the forest. She read breathlessly as someone began teasing her, working her over …

Maggie looked up from her phone. What was that? She heard something: a gasp, or maybe a stifled moan. She listened, but the sound wasn’t repeated. Maybe it was someone outside.

Or maybe it was Blake.

She tried not to think of him like that. She had her moments, of course, like tonight when he was half-naked and she couldn’t stop her runaway thoughts. Of course, she didn’t ever overhear him. Whatever he did in the privacy of his own room, he was usually quiet. With the story inspiring a feed of sexual fantasies, images of Blake came to the forefront. Blake, lying back on his bed, hand wrapped around his cock, trying not to moan …

No, she couldn’t go there. She was not going to insert her roommate into these debauched sexual fantasies. Maggie continued reading, her mind replacing the characters despite her best efforts, until she was envisioning Blake taking her from behind in the woods. She reached the end of the story and tossed her phone aside to finally strip off her clothes and satisfy the ache inside her.

The sound of Blake’s bedroom door opening made her stop and look toward her closed door. He wouldn’t enter her room, obviously.