I open the door of my room, I take her by the hand and pull her to me until we’re chest to chest. She sighs for a moment and then relaxes in my arms which, from now on, will be her home.
I rub her hair and she blushes again but doesn’t break our eye contact this time. Our eyes remain like that, reflecting for one another and my heart feels like it’s about to explode with love.
I touch her face and smile at her because from now on I want her to see smiles surrounding her, no more tears or worries, no nothing.
Nothing that isn’t love.
Mine.
“Hey, Alex?” I whisper to her lips.
“Mmm-hum?”
“Don’t faint.”
She looks at me as if she has no idea what I’m about to say now.
“I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”
“Oh.”
“Do you remember what you promised me?”
She nods again.
And a moment later my lips are on hers, light but intimate. I just brush them and I smile at her again before exploring this kiss, which is helping me get over my doubts and fears. Because kissing Alex is loving, breathing and living.
I live for this woman.
And she is timid and clumsy but she allows me to take the lead, caressing the nape of my neck with her hand. I hold her even tighter so I can feel her heart beat against my own chest and I say a silent prayer that her heart doesn’t try to play any jokes on us.
I lose the ability to speak, I lose the capacity to think.
I lose everything about myself.
I lose myself to find myself again in her.
I let my hands slide down her back and slip them under her shirt and exhale as soon as I feel contact with her skin.
I’m trembling, and I realize it, but for me, this feeling cannot be repressed, immense and at the same time devastating as it is, because I know I need this contact.
To feel her.
To feel every part of her.
And I’m not talking about a physical need, I’m talking about something much bigger and more important than contact between two bodies: I’m talking about a primary need that cannot be substituted by something else, as if it were the only thing allowing me to go on living.
I don’t know how to explain it with words, I just know I am exploding with desire to feel her flowing in every part of me, to unite us forever, so that she remains, no matter what happens.
I move to the side a bit to be able to tell her the only thought I’m capable of formulating in this moment, that vibrates in my mind and on my lips and that never leaves me.
“Live, Alex. Live for me.”
—
ALEX
I woke up at dawn in his arms.
