Three Times Lucky

“What’s the R for?” I asked in an offhand way, hoping to convince her that I didn’t care all that much.

“Oh, that,” she drawled, then gave a soft laugh, turned her head to look over her shoulder like she’d forgotten it was there. “Dumb stuff you do when you’re young.”

Amalia sprawled on her stomach, naked save for the white sheet that had wrapped itself around one beautiful, tanned calf.  Her loose dark hair slid over her shoulder and the perfectly executed R of a scar was gone.

I wanted to ask her what the initial stood for, but she looked at me through hooded eyes, and quirked her lips. As if she wanted it again. As if we hadn’t just fucked. My dick told my brain to shut up and stop using up so much blood so I could get hard again. Amalia wasn’t one of those women who would hang around long if you didn’t give her what she wanted. I was pretty sure of that.

* * *

I’d met beautiful women before. Fucked a number of them, too. Some were very nice and some were walking train-wrecks. But there is a scale of beauty when it comes to women, and it’s unique to every man. Some are so far out of your league you can look away without a second thought. You are what you believe you deserve and I didn’t, in a million fucking light years, deserve Amalia.

I first laid eyes on her at a fundraiser for a worthy cause – damned if I can remember for what. Every other heterosexual male in the room saw her too.  Tall, lithe, dressed in a simple black sheath dress that plunged at the back to show an expanse of golden skin. Her hair was pinned up, dark tendrils trailed down the nape of her long, slender neck, but every one of us was mentally pulling out the pins and watching it cascade over her shoulders. High, perfectly proportioned breasts. Hips like a woman – not to narrow, not too wide – and an ass that could curve into the palms of your hands like glory.

If the body was stunning, her face was flawless. God – her mouth, her lips were hypnotic – made to surround the base of your cock.  But it was her eyes that trapped me. Big, dark almond-shaped with a little slant. Her mouth was all sex but her eyes were all innocence. That insidious combination forced me to overcome that sense of ‘out of my league’ and introduce myself.

When I did, and she responded with a slow smile and a languid handshake, I became the sort of asshole I can’t stand. I would have this woman. She was mine and she just didn’t know it yet. I’d do anything – utterly anything – to possess her. It was a strength of will thing, an absolute single-mindedness that should have frightened the fuck out of any sane, civilized adult. But the moment she didn’t turn her back and walk away, I was none of those things.

I held her hand too long. She gave me another half-smile and retrieved it. No wedding band. It wouldn’t have stopped me. Nothing would have stopped me.

“What brings you to this worthy gathering?” she asked, tease-heavy drawl in her words. She turned her head to scan the room grown crowded before I answered.

“I think I made a donation.”

Her laugh was moonlight on skin. “Good for you.”

“And you?”

“I designed the invitations. The organizers are friends.”

I had been relieved of my invitation at the door, so I couldn’t pull it out, look at it, and charm her with a compliment. Fuck it, I thought. “Do you have dinner plans?”

That’s all it took.  It turned out I didn’t have to do ‘anything.’ Just a donation to some charity and an invitation to dinner.

* * *

I watched her eat. Neat little forkfuls of the starter. But when the crab arrived, she picked up a shattered claw in her fingers and sucked the meat out with uninhibited relish. Just the sound of it made my eyes water. Her cheeks hollowed and my cock ached. Thank Christ for tablecloths.

I’m not an idiot.  When women do this, they know exactly what kind of game they’re playing. She did. I just didn’t fucking care. I’d play any game she wanted.

After the exchange of pleasantries and the requisite bits of personal information, halfway through the main course, I regained enough sanity to think strategically. I didn’t want to blow it with this woman. Yes, I wanted to fuck her, but I wanted more. More of what? No idea. Just more.  So I decided I wasn’t going to screw it up by asking her up to my place.

Instead, I drove her home like a gentleman, and she asked me up to hers.

* * *

She fucked like she ate.  Like all that golden skin was just pretty wrapping for a carnivore. Like she was born to be in porn, but the really high-end stuff.  The reality of her lips wrapped around my shaft blew what I’d imagined away. On her knees, looking up at me with those little doll eyes, leaving lipstick smears as she sucked.  It took everything I had not to lose it down her throat.

It was after I’d fucked her from behind that I found it.  After she’d spread her thighs wide and groaned over the meaty thuds of my hips meeting her ass.  After she’d arched her back and orgasmed, milking my cock until I was sure I’d go insane. After I filled her with cum.  I bent over to kiss her shoulder and felt the ridges of it against my lips.

The R. The fucking R.  With my half dead cock buried in her pussy and my muscles still twitching. I knew better than to ask.  I just couldn’t help myself.

She moved. The conditioned air chilled the fluids on my dick as if to remind me that, like everything else, pussy passes. Sprawled on top of the rumpled sheets, her skin dark against their whiteness, her hair a tousled mess. My fingers itchy to thread and clutch at the strands.

I asked. The answer was lame. So I fucked her again just to stop myself from asking another question.

* * *

It was fear that stopped me from phoning her the following day, or the day after.  I didn’t want to hear her turn me down. Didn’t want to consider the possibility that I’d never fuck her again. That I had been a disappointing one-night stand.  But I did finally use the number she’d given me.

“Hey there, It’s David.”

“Hey there yourself,” she said in a bored, neutral tone.

“I apologize for not calling sooner,” I said, and meant it. “Crazy week.”

“Sure.”

“No, I mean it. I’m sorry.” I tried to dial down the desperation. “I was hoping, maybe…”

“You could fuck me again?” The voice was still bone dry.

“Well, that, too. But maybe dinner? Or something else?”

“Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Are you gonna make me beg?”

There was a pause on the line, then her laugh, glassy and wicked. “No. When?”

* * *

It took the advice of a friend to remind me of what I’d almost thrown away. I was up at the Skyline bar, having a few drinks after work with a buddy of mine, Chris. I’d just finished telling him about Amalia when she walk in with three other women. They were headed towards the far end of the room.

“That’s her,” I said, putting down my drink and nodding towards her.

“Holy shit.” That’s all he said at first.  Then he repeated it. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.” And all I could think of was that it was a good thing she wasn’t there with another man because I’d have ripped him limb from limb.

“You fucked her?”

“Yeah.” I followed her progress to a table by the huge glass windows that overlooked the city. Her girlfriends were cute, but nothing compared to her.

“And you didn’t call her for two whole days? What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Chris snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hey, over here. Are you shittin’ me?”

Then I was back. Wondering if I should go over and say hello.

“Don’t do it. If you go over there now, you’ll look like a desperate asshole.”

“I am a desperate asshole.”

Chris looked over at her again. She was haloed by the deep orange sun, as it set over the city.  “Sure. No call to wear a sign, though.”

* * *

I found the second one in the shadow of her right breast. This time I felt it with my fingertips as I was sucking on her nipple.

She was squirming beneath me, grinding her hips up against mine. I knew what it was before I saw it, and my mouth went dry, but I propped myself up on my elbow and looked.

Like the first, it was a raised scar. Not a burn, but cut into the skin. It was just as ornate, with a little curl at the leg of the R. Fancy. It had taken time to do. It must have been cut deep.

“What does the R stand for?”

Amalia threaded her fingers through my hair and tried to tug me back down her her tits, but I resisted.

She sighed and stretched on the bed. “Why do you want to know? Why does it matter?”

“I’m just curious. Two of them? It’s got to stand for something.”

She tisked like she was humoring a wayward child. Her hand skittered over my bare chest, over my stomach, and began to work the button on my pants.

“If I tell you…” she said, tease oozing over her tongue, fingers tugging down my zipper. “Will you stop asking silly questions and fuck me?”

Warm skin curled around my cock. It throbbed in her hand, and she laughed.

“Yeah.”

I was almost deaf by the time she spoke again. Sure, even strokes. My dick leaked precum and she used it like lube to stroke me faster.

“It stands for Robert. Old boyfriend. Satisfied?”

I didn’t answer her because I made a choice not to come in her hand. I got my pants past my hips, pushed the crotch of her panties aside and slammed into her. But the sensation of immanent orgasm faded. All I could think about was the name.  The fact that she’d let some other guy to cut his initial into her. Not just once, but twice.

I had to fuck it out of her. Fuck that image away. Of that fucking letter, and her lying there, letting him carve it into her. If I could only thrust hard enough, I could obliterate it.

“Fuck!” she sobbed, and pushed at my chest. “You’re hurting me.”

“Not like he hurt you, I bet,” I panted.

“Stop it. Fucking stop it.”

And I did. I apologized. I kissed her. I made her come and I fell asleep with my arms around her, because I didn’t know what else to do.

* * *

I found the third one as I was teasing her, kissing my way down her naked body. Her hands and legs bound to the bed frame with my ties. I smelled the musk of her heat, working my way down to her cunt.  And there, just above her mound was another one.  I stopped. This time, I didn’t have to ask. Same well formed letter. Same curl at the foot of the R.  It had to have hurt like a bitch.

“For god’s sake. Did you think I was a virgin when we met?” Impatience curdled her voice.

“No.” I hilted two fingers inside her swollen cunt, just to make the point.

Her muscles tensed and tightened around them. “Then what?”

“What’s his name?” I asked, pressing the pad of my thumb against her clit and circling it, watching her hips rise and fall as I fingered her.

“Why the fuck does it matter so much?” she panted.

“What’s his name again?”

“Rick.”

“Really?”

“Not this way,” she groaned. “Let me come on your cock.”

“I thought his name was Robert.”

“Jesus. Just let it go. Fuck me.” She was looking down at me, legs splayed, grinding her hips. She pushed herself onto my fingers with a wet, sucking sound.  “Just fuck me.”

The smell of her pussy was overwhelming. Thick and woody and rich.  It didn’t matter that I was hard. It didn’t matter that I wanted to be inside her. I had to know.

“Rick? Robert? Which is it?”

She stopped moving. “Untie me.”

“Why did you let him do it?”

“Unfucking tie me now.” Tears made her eyes glassy and unfocused.

“I need to know. Amalia.”

“I didn’t let him!” she yelled.

I sat back on my heels and looked down at her. “Three times? Bullshit.”

“You wouldn’t fucking understand. You’d never understand!”

One by one, I undid the ties. Amalia curled up into a ball and cried. Not loud, but in a way that shamed me. I lay beside her, wrapped my arms around her, and told her I was sorry. That it was fine. Everything would be all right.

* * *

First I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. Everyone has a past. I’d been in love before, with a girl in college. Why shouldn’t it have been the same for Amalia? Of course, it was. But it didn’t matter how many times I tried to reason with myself, I couldn’t get those Rs out of my head. Every time we made love and I touched one of them or kissed one of them. I tried to push it down but it just kept coming back up.

Six months into our relationship, lying in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, I trailed a fingertip over the curve of her shoulder.

“God damn, I love you,” I whispered.

She turned onto her side, sliding an arm over my chest and hooking a leg between mine. “I love you too, baby.”

“Then tell me.”

Amalia giggled. “I just did.”

“No. Tell me about R. What’s his name again?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Riley.”

“Bullshit.”

“Then don’t keep asking.” She turned onto her back and sat up.

I grabbed her wrist, pulled her down, and rolled on top of her. “I need to know. I just fucking need to know.”

Her body went limp beneath me and she looked up at me with the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. “The next time you ask me about this, I’ll leave you. I’ll walk out of your life and I’ll never come back. Understand?”

* * *

Amalia is the most beautiful, hottest woman I’ve ever known.  When we walk into a place, people change. Women look at her with envy and wish they were her. Men look at her with lust and wish they were me. I tell myself I’m the luckiest man alive to have her. That’s why I’m going to marry her.

If I tell myself that enough, I forget to wonder who R is, or what they had, or why she let him carve his initial into her skin. Three times.