Heart In A Cage

01

"Closing time's approaching. Five minutes." That smoky and cheerful voice strikes another chord. It confirms that the man I'm seeing is the man I saw, and it's startling. Pricks at my composure.

Silence stretches on for another ten seconds as I ponder it.

"Do you work here?" I ask, tucking away the explicit thoughts and replacing them with the one's reminding me I have a boyfriend.

He cocks an eyebrow. "Why, is that how I appear? Like an employee."

"Shit—shit, my bad. I'm just going to go because closing time, you know?" I set off to flee from the large man, but just as I turn around and take a step, a grip on my wrist stops me, and something hot ignites on that portion of skin.

"I'm kidding, beautiful. Tell me what you need."

I barely manage to turn around with the heat in my cheeks, on the place he'd touched, and...between my legs. Fuck. Treacherous pussy.

"Okay...I need—" My chest begins to heave. "I need, um..."

"You're alright?"

I nod my head. To quell my nervousness, I take out my phone and present an image of Jasper's hideous button-down. The employee scrutinizes it critically, so I say, "It's not for me. It's for my boyfriend."

His jaw tightens. "I'd presume he's the one talking crap to you minutes before?"

"Yes. You heard." Within this short time of meeting him again, I've noticed that he's taken a few glimpses down at my chest. Just minor. Quick but noticeable. Maybe the revealing choice of attire wasn't a terrible thing? Those eyes can stare at me for as long as they want.

"This way." He gestures towards the opposite end of the store, asking that I follow him just as I did those months ago. I trail behind him and shamefully admire his enormous back. Paired with a dauntingly tall frame that's probably a few inches taller than my own, he looks frightening. And I'd taken myself right onto his lap with very high hopes. Hopes of getting fucked, more precisely.

When he arrives at a rack of various button-downs and flicks through them, I survey his attire. Below his dark-blue blouse are black jeans matching in color to the leather belt that wraps around it. The top is doing awfully great at flaunting his body. It strains over his biceps, the cotton stretching over his chest. If I lean in a little closer, I might be able to see through it. The ridiculous temptation anchors me to my spot.

I glance at his hands working between the clothes and really get a look at them. Tattoos? Each finger has been tatted, and upon further inspection, I note that the design extends onto the top of his palm, then journeys up his arm. The rest I can't make up. Stupid sleeves.

It's an intricate artwork of stems and leaves and roses. The vegetation wraps around trellis's which are positioned between his fingers, growing off the top of the framework's arches to crowd around the skin above. None of it was there the first time I met him; he got them some time after our encounter. A time in which he's forgot me.

"My apologies." He stops searching and turns to me, and I immediately look up from his hands. "Seems like we're out."

What a relief. I don't need to endure a date with Jasper wearing that almost neon green atrocity. I still don't know why he's asking me to get it, especially since he's the one who's usually at home, coddled by layers of blankets, jerking off underneath. He always insists that his indulgences in pornography are lessons that educate him on sexual intercourse. Our dog-shit sex is a firm disapprover of that.

"That's fine. It wasn't nice anyway." I try not to gulp too evidently as the man crosses his arms. The action is successfully drawing attention to those biceps.