He was hot in the way of British summers: longed for, sticky and never around for as long as you wanted.

That said, they’d lasted a year, on and off, even though she was never quite sure what their deal was. He’d flitted in and out of her life, butterfly-like, and she’d chased him, more than a little eager to stick pins through his wings. He even fucked on top of the covers, as if he couldn’t bear to be beneath them, trapped in the fug of his own body heat.

At first, she’d struggled to associate that on-top-of-the-duvet fucking with intimacy – she wanted the two of them rolled beneath it, not these marooned-on-top shags she got instead. But she’d learnt, with time, that they didn’t need cotton and feathers to bind them – it was enough to wind her arms around his neck as he buried his cock deep inside her and to feel his sweat-slick skin stick to hers as he held it there.

A year in, she still puts in more effort than he deserves. Tonight, for example, she’s wearing the killer heels she knows he loves, and she’s stopped at the hairdresser on her way home from work to have her fringe trimmed. Her hair’ll be out of place ten minutes after he walks through the door.

After sex, her fringe always sticks to her face, and he’ll peel it away and kiss her damp and salty forehead. The room smells of the two of them, and she holds on tight to him, and wills his cock not to soften. ‘I just want you inside me’ – those words trip so often from her tongue, her emails, her iPhone keypad, that they’re like a mantra now.

Tonight though, she never got the chance to say them. Tonight he cut her off before they were even fully naked: he took the hand that was reaching for his belt and guided it gently back to the mattress. She tried to break free, at first – he was just playing Dom, right?

He was playing Dom, as it happened, but with someone new. Someone he’d met in a bar, a few weeks back. Someone he’d thought would be just another fling. But things change…

He didn’t want to mess her around.

And so she let him let himself out. He did it quietly, without fuss. As break-ups went, it was one of her better ones. But the bed, the one she’d always slept alone in six nights out of seven, was too big without him. She slipped down into the gap between the bed and the radiator, where the space felt more manageable, more contained. It didn’t stop her shaking.

She turned the radiator on. It was cold for July.

***

This is an entry for Exhibit A’s Sinful Stories 2 competition. Many thanks to @Flutterbyflip for permission to base the story on her beautiful and inspiring photo.