He gave me a small, sad smile. “The world is colorful through your eyes too, Anya. The colors are just different than mine.”
I wondered if this was what we represented to each other: the colors each of us couldn’t see. And to have found that, wasn’t it more important than any abstract concept of sensibleness? Yes, I was confused and vulnerable and in obvious denial, pretending that I could continue living my life like this forever, like half a person, while he was so complete that he could be reborn in a different body tomorrow and I would still know him. But to have found what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime connection and to let it go all because we’d rather be sensible than happy seemed just as twisted.
For a long time, while he watched me with his dark, observant eyes, I contemplated the likelihood of him touching my face and speaking my name softly while making love to me tonight, and I decided that every possibility of heartbreak and despair was worth that.
Seized by this certainty, I stirred closer to him. He let me, his eyes catching mine, the question stark in them. I did not know how to answer him, not with words at least. So I leaned a little closer and felt his lips with mine. Slowly. Carefully. Having the sense of him falling still one exchange of breath at a time.
It was barely a kiss, so not an answer after all, just a question to his question.What do we do now?
Somehow, I knew this was not my first romantic experience, and this knowing was so powerful that I felt the fingers of memory clawing at the forefront of my consciousness. A faint, faraway image fluttered behind my closed eyelids of another time, another pair of lips, another pair of hands. Breathless, caught in the absolute shock of this remembrance, I pulled back a little, but Kai, broken out of his composure at last, chased after me with a rough little sound of protest. His hand came up to close around my jaw, his lips moving over mine, nudging them apart.
His wanting me was so imperative and the response of my body so immediate that it had a dissolving effect on my thoughts. The image, the memory, whatever that thing was, left me irretrievably, and the shock from it morphed into something else, a scalding feeling, a rush in my blood, an emptiness deep inside me needing to be filled.
Sliding my fingers up his arms, I cupped his shoulders, threw my weight on them, and slipped on top of him. Groaning deep in his throat, he welcomed me into his arms, his hands reaching for my hipbones, using them to bring me right up against him. Then he looked up at me, amazed, his mouth open, waiting to be kissed again. So I kissed him, more deeply, more earnestly this time, golden firelight burning through my eyelids while the wet warmth of his tongue lapped over mine.
His hand on my hip roamed up, his fingers sliding under the hem of my sweater. Liquid and heavy was the heat of his palm as it rested flat below the hollow of my navel. I heard myself moan, a low, pleading sound. Anything he wanted I would have done in that moment. Anything.
“You like that?” he breathed out, his hand still there, still pressing.
With eyes closed, embarrassed by the sheer magnitude of my desire, I only let out a soft, “Mm.”
“Does it make you feel…”
“Yes, so much.”
“Me too,” he rasped.
I knew that already. I could feel him through our clothes, rising beneath me, wanting me as I did. The heat of his body crawled up my inner thighs, his solid form seeking the softness of mine. He held my face in his other hand, his thumb tracing the shape of my lips. And as if to test the extent of my surrender, he let it sink into my mouth. Deep. Deeper.
Breathing heavily, he kept his finger there for a moment longer, feeling the slow, sensual sweeps of my tongue, then, with a fresh rush of desire, he removed it and seized hold of my nape, bending my head back across his palm. His mouth landed open on my throat, hungry, his teeth scraping over my skin. And his other hand—still there, where I wanted it, pressing down between my hipbones. It was all I could think about now. The hot pressure of his palm. The possibility of feeling it lower.
“Fuck, Anya,” he cursed, dropping his forehead on my shoulder. Both of his arms came low to wind around my waist. He held me to him. Close. So close I could feel the fragile rhythm of his heart against mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I told him, aching for more. “I like it.”
He lifted his head and looked at me, eyes dark and glazed, still wanting, still needing me as much as I needed him. But then, with a ragged exhale, he said, “We can’t. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to?”
“No, Anya, believe me, I want to,” he sighed, his brows pinching upward. “I’ve wanted this for so long I do not know who I am without this feeling.”
His words nipped at my breath.This is a product of time,was what he was really saying,of the absolute understanding of each other. Something that would not distract me from my life but instead consume it altogether.
Tremulously, I exhaled into him, “But?”
“But you’re in a very vulnerable position right now. And I don’t want to take advantage of that,” he said.
“I know you don’t,” I whispered, cupping the sides of his neck, the pronounced veins under his skin so hot they made the pads of my fingers tingle as I traced them. “Isn’t that enough? That I know and understand the situation, and I am, very enthusiastically I might add, consenting to it?”
“It’s not that simple,” he argued.
“Can it be simple?” I pressed. “Can’t we just be two people enjoying each other for a night?”
He drew back a little, and I could tell from his expression that he was hurt, thatIhad hurt him.
Ever since that night at Sullivan’s, the dynamic between us had shifted. Now he was the one afraid to get used while I remained unaffected by the trivial labels and attachments of life. All of my cautiousness and overthinking, the life I used to be so afraid of disturbing, had lost its meaning, and so I no longer felt the need to protect it. I was tied to nothing, and he was tied to everything.
“I want this to mean something,” he said in a careful, measured tone of voice. “To mean something else than what it’s going to mean if it happens now.”
