A yelp escapes my throat when I'm suddenly jolted, lifted up in the air. Naz picks me up, cradling me in his arms, and I blindly reach for him, clinging to him. He lays me down on the bed, whispering for me to relax.
My instinct is to fight it, to tense up. It's alarming being in the dark. I try to relax, but my body is coiled like a spring. Every touch is like a jolt, the sensations heightened from the anticipation.
Closing my eyes, succumbing to the blackness, I lay there as he has his way with me. He kisses and caresses every inch of skin, bringing me to the brink again and again. He's slow and gentle, sweet and genuine, as he whispers how much he loves me when he makes love to me.
I paw at him, clinging to him, kissing and nipping at whatever skin my mouth can reach. I have no idea if it's his chest, his chin, or his cheek. It doesn't matter, though. It's him, and he's everything.
Every part of him.
It goes on and on until we're both sweaty and satiated. Naz pulls the blindfold from my eyes as he hovers on top of me, still deep inside of me. I blink away the darkness, adjusting to the dim lighting of the room, and watch as his lips curve. "You're mine forever," he whispers.
I return his smile. "I'm yours."
"Never forget it."
"I won't."
He pulls out of me, pulling me to him in the bed. It doesn't take long for sleep to pull me away from him.
I sleep deeply, waking up in the middle of the night to find myself alone in the bed. I call out his name but get no answer. His clothes are gone from the bedroom floor, his shoes aren't here, and neither is his wallet.
He's not in the suite anymore.
I wander between rooms for a bit before making my way back to the bedroom. I wrap myself up in the sheets, snatching Naz's pillow from his side of the bed. It's cool to the touch, smelling a lot like him.
I drift off again. Something jolts me awake much later, sunshine streaming through the window, bathing the bed in a warm glow. Opening my eyes, I see Naz when he steps into the bedroom. Yesterday's clothes hang from his frame, slightly disheveled.
He looks exhausted.
"Hey," I mumble, sitting up in bed and clutching the sheet around me.
He pulls off his shirt. "Good morning."
Naz strips right in front of me and says nothing else before disappearing from the room. The faint sound of water running reaches my ears after a moment, the shower starting up in the bathroom. Curious, I slip out of bed and join him.
Naz stands under the spray in the shower, head tilted back and eyes closed as the water pelts him from all angles. I stop just outside the reach of the spray, taking a moment to admire him. Water runs down his strong frame as steam surrounds him like a fog. His chiseled jawline accents a stern expression. Despite his exhaustion, his arousal is obvious, his cock hard and twitching like he could easily go twelve rounds with me, right here, right now.
Something tells me, from the look in his eyes when he looks over at me, that a bout with him today would be as ruthless as the brutality we witnessed in the boxing ring.
He shifts position, motioning with his head for me to come closer. I step under the spray, flinching from the scalding water, as he wraps his arms around me.
"Where'd you go last night?" I ask quietly.
"Work," he says. "Had something to take care of."
He reaches past me to grab some shampoo. It's the little bottle provided by the hotel, but I can tell it's not the cheap shit I've been subjected to at the hole-in-the-wall places I stayed in over the years in between houses with my mother.
He squeezes some onto his palm before setting it aside. I start to step away from him, not wanting to get in his way of showering, when he runs his hands through my hair. I freeze, stalled in place by the sensation, as he lathers the shampoo up in my hair. His touch is firm, sending tingles down my spine, as he massages my scalp. My eyes drift closed, a soft moan escaping my lips.
He doesn't stop there. I can do nothing but stand there as the man washes me from head to toe, lathering soap on every inch of my body before rinsing it away. He says not a word, doesn't even look me in the eyes again until he's finished. His eyes trail along my skin once I'm clean, lingering on the fading bruises along my neck. Reaching up, he brushes his fingertips along them, but he still makes no comment.
Instead, he turns away.
"Our plane leaves in two hours," he says. "We'll have to head out soon."
It feels oddly like a brusque dismissal, his stance doing nothing to warm his words. I mumble, "okay," under my breath as I head out of the shower, grabbing a towel on my way. I dry off, wrapping it around me, as I go back into the bedroom.
My eyes are drawn to his clothes on the floor, but I leave them there, focusing my attention on my own things. I dress quickly and pack, throwing my hair into a ponytail before making my way down to the first floor of the suite.
I can hear the shower turn off, hear Naz going about his business upstairs, as I walk to the vast windows and gaze out. We've been here for two days, yet it feels like we just arrived hours ago. There's so much I haven't done, so much I haven't seen, parts of the suite I haven't even ventured to yet.
Naz comes down, dressed back in a black suit. He's distracted as we check out, distracted on the drive to the airport in the limo. The others are already there, on the tarmac, belongings being loaded onto the plane when we make it that far. Naz bypasses them all, guiding me straight onto the plane.
We sit in the same seats as before.
The others take their same seats, too.
They're more subdued today, nobody saying much of anything as we settle in for the trip home. I glance around at their faces, my gaze settling on the seat across from me.
Empty.
We're coming home with one less person than we went to Vegas with.
You cannot step in the same river twice.
The first day of philosophy class, Professor Santino stood at the front of the classroom and uttered those words, quoting the philosopher Heraclitus. He said it with such conviction, and it made so much sense in theory, until he asked us to explain what it meant.
I didn’t raise my hand.
There were a few responses, but they always went along two lines—either it's because you've changed, or it's because the river has. The debate lasted nearly the entire hour. At the end of the class, someone asked Santino to tell us which side was right.
The man shrugged a shoulder, absently tapping his pointer stick against the hard floor. “Nobody knows. Maybe it's both.”
Standing in my dorm room so many months later, surrounded by all of my things, jet-legged and feeling out of place, I think I finally understand it. I'm not the same person who left here forty-eight hours ago.