Indulgence

There is something incredibly cold and sterile about places designed to universally project warmth and welcome. Hotel rooms are especially like this. The plush duvet is a solid white, and the sheets are the same. A variety pack of pillows to suit every taste. Everything looking soft, but not so plush as to be hard to clean; it is neither offensive nor appealing. Individualism is conspicuous in its absence.

The beauty is that the universality of every chain lends itself to a sort of ersatz routine. Drop the key card in the slot, lights come on. I go straight to the window and pull the blackout curtain, then the medicine bag comes out. A few minutes in the bathroom, then stepping out. The backpack spills its contents, and I plug in everything with a battery and set my alarm. Next is a brief call home to Mina, letting her know everything is fine and I am calling a night. Finally, I strip, my clothes in a pile next to the backpack as I climb naked into the cold bed, turning the lights out as I go. 

Now it’s almost a compulsion. I sleep on the left side – always. I’m too used it now after so many years of having someone on the other side. But then my legs flail out, seeking the cool sheets, enjoying the small pleasure of the cool fabric warming on my skin. As the bed slowly warms up, I then, finally, nestle in to my final position for sleep. The duvet settles around my body, and a small pocket of genuine warmth builds around me, a tiny sliver of space I can call mine.

Most nights it will be minutes until I am asleep – exhaustion is usually motive enough for me. Tonight is different. I’m thinking about another body in this bed – cool skin, curves I know like the road home. It’s Mina’s laugh – no, her giggle – that I picture. We always love staying in hotels together, and making the most of it. She would lie there, my hand going to the empty space where her shoulders would be. She would be waiting for me to make my move, expecting me to scoot close, and roll on top, stepping between her legs. In the these cold sheets, finding that channel of warmth…

I’m hard now, and my hand is absently stroking myself, almost as a reflex. I roll flat on my back, stroking intently instead. There is an electricity in my erection, the response is more intense than pleasurable. My arm begins pumping away my own body, knowing it perfectly. I keep stroking, rolling my hips under myself, mimicking the motions of it as my my mind pictures her every movement. The feeling transitions, and in a minute I can feel the inevitable rise to orgasm. As I feel the hot jets welling up about to burst, my left hand abruptly throws the duvet off my body, the cold air washing over me as I hear the soft thumbs of each burst landing on my stomach and chest. I keep working my arm through it, milking each drop out as the chills of pleasure and of cold resonate across my skin, and I lie there, basking in the reverberations along my nerves. 

It’s an awkward prance to the bathroom to clean myself up without staining the linens or carpet. Once my body is dried off and clean, I roll back into the cold sheets again, this time to drift instantly off to sleep.