Page 43 of Flying

There's no doubt she’s enjoying our standoff when she swivels her hips again; intentionally. Firmer. Call it: time of death. There’s no blood left for my brain, so my words tumble out fully raw and honest.

“You,my darling, are the first girl I noticed gave me tingly feelings. The ones that caused me to wake up one too many times with sticky sheets before I got out of middle school.” She’s staring at me. There’s an earnest intensity in her gaze, and I hope if I keep going quickly enough maybe she’ll ignore that.I just mentioned wet dreams from puberty.Keep talking, keep it moving.

“Lily, you are the amazing flower I watched blossom from a shy new student to my personal shusher. Then, you were my secret keeper. Do you know I looked for you in the stands at every hockey game, even once you were with him?”

I spit “him” with the ire and derision it deserves, and she shivers ever so slightly. Pressing on with an increased fervor I bite out, lips hovering by the edge of her jaw.

“Who are you? You are the beautiful woman I suffered through watching someone so fucking unworthy of your drive, your love for your friends, and your ability to just float on so lightly through thisworld claim you as his. I sat there, knowing I had to be quiet. Patient. Because I always knew. You are destined for so much more than he offered you. You deserve your life to be filled with the type of color you bring with you. Playfulness. Joy. Someone who remembers your coffee order. Yes, I caught that look on your face in September.”

Feral. Enraged. I am nearing lecturing territory or a firm reprimand, “You are the woman who turned every mistreatment you received inward, someone who fled from home blaming yourself for a house made of paper not standing up to the rain.”

The lid removed, the all consuming torment I have felt bubbles over as my pulse quickens to match a hummingbird.I sound commanding and harsh, but she doesn’t look afraid.

I envelope her in a tighter grasp than anticipated.I swore I knew my own strength. Am I scaring her? Hurting her?Instead, her knees fall farther apart and her ankles cross behind my back. She’s gripping my shoulders and torso with all four limbs, climbing me like a tree. Like she’s trying to be squeezed into a singular being.

Standing and switching us around, I place her down on the mattress and crawl over her. I graze my palm against her cheek, pushing my weight into her as she did to me. I grind myself against her, feeling each ripple of expectation between us.

“Do you not realize,darling, it’s always been you for me? When you went quiet for two years, the girls kept me updated on every move. Not to be kind, it was because I was driving them insane. Pretty sure Nessa blocked my number for a bit there. Where the fuck were you?” Our eyes are locked, we’re intimately wrapped around each other and still she hasn’t interrupted this overdone speech.

“Then, you were back online. Like you never left. And those photos,” I growl and shake my head, “you look fucking delicious. Good enough to eat, which is something I will happily do for you, until it’s time to fly back to New Jersey, but first I need to hear you say you want this too, darling.”

Her eyelids slowly fall while my fingers twirl in the strand of hair that fell to her face from our frantic movements. I brush my fingers softly across her forehead, skimming her cheeks with the pads of my fingers and track the freckles across her nose. She parts her lips on a soft breath and I’m not sure if she is waiting for me to finish mymonologue, trying to find her words, or second guessing what she’s doing here. These soft touches unleash something greater than my wildest imagination.

Without a second hesitation she raises her hips chasing the friction and she tries to reach me but I pull back despite missing her being against me already. She places both palms over my cheeks and brings our noses to touch. We are so close that we barely would need to move to kiss, but I remind her, “I need to hear that you want this, I can’t guess.”

Finally, she nods, lightly grazing my mouth with a nearly there kiss before whispering, “Please.”

That is all the permission I need to steal the sound from her mouth.

When her tongue parts my lips, we begin to kiss and roll our bodies together. There is a rhythm that is both brand new and familiar, like when a song’s remix is played for the first time. Her fingernails scratch lightly while reaching under the hem of my T-shirt, starting on the lower part of my ribs before swirling patterns up the sides of my body. She reaches behind my shoulders and presses her nails harder into the skin, and I feel their sting and pull her lower lip between my teeth with a soft nip.

“Like to be a little prickly, do you, darling?” I laugh as I kiss where her lip swells from my teeth’s sting.

She cocks an eyebrow and quips, “Mhm, you’ll figure it out, we have time. Five days, huh? Do we tell…” her breath hitches, “um, everyone? Back at h…in Peacock Springs? Or…” she trails off searching my eyes, nervous to ask the question I see there. She wants to ask me if this is a secret, a temporary vacation hook up, or something more. I’m just not certain what answer she wants from me.

Instead of giving a direct answer to the unasked questions I opt to keep things playful, palming a handful of one asscheek over the leggings. “This is the ass I have had teasing me on Instagram for far too long. Bent over, twisted, legs in the sky. I’ve wanted to be over, under, or alongside you in each of those shapes. The only one who sees your face in the throes of pleasure and hears your moans. I thought you were never going to come home. I’m this generation’s George, I’ll never be anywhere but there, so I gave up on the idea.Until you slammed into my chest in September, and all of my fears disappeared. It didn’t matter that having you only once wouldn’t be enough. You snuggled into me that night and I knew for certain that I am a masochist. Completely crazed. Right now, I don’t care if I have you for one night, one week, one lifetime. The idea of going another fifteen years without ever kissing you, never having you in my arms…it is too much. I will take what you’ll offer me, for as long as you’re offering it.”

twenty-nine

Lily

“I don’t know if I can come back for good.” Unconsciously my lower lip is between my teeth, I’m chewing through my thinking.Holy shit, I need this to happen, shut up and don’t prevent this. “Iamconfident that I can make you come. Tonight, tomorrow, for as long as we’re sharing this too small bed in the mountains.” Before I can say too much or the wrong thing I pull him back towards me placing kisses, little licks, and nips up and down the column of his neck.

Together we work his shirt from the hem up and overhead, and I resume my trail of kisses from below him pausing over his heart. It’s a frantic pace and I blurt out, “I don’t know what else we will have, but I know that I want this so badly. I want you so badly. If you’re someone else, you’re here for a good time, not a long time. Follow the dopamine, darling. Keep touching me. Kissing me. Do you want to keep touching me?”

“You always did keep me on task,” he laughs out before sliding our bodies against one another to be face to face and claim my mouth. It’s like it opened him up to take off his sweet, sincere persona and revel in his basic desires. He tries to take off my leggings from the ankles, but they just barely move. I lift my hips and peel away the waistband so that his next yank from the feet causes them to spring free in one swipe. The soft clingy black fabric is gone, and I’m there in just a tinydusty blue mesh thong and gray T-shirt that’s lifted up showing my stomach.

In a flash of insecurity I mumble out, “I really didn’t expect, I mean… I didn’t know, and…” I glance at my legs.

Running each hand down from my waist along the inside of my thighs to the calves, I hear him chuckle. He blushes at the unintentional sound.

“Darling,” he steps between my spread ankles and prods my knees farther apart, “not the first time I’ve seen a woman naked before, I do not care about the fact that you didn’t plan to let me taste you. I only care that the wet spot I see growing is for me.”

Holy shit. I can’t breathe.

He continues to run his hands lightly like this up and down my calves as he studies me. I’ve never had a poker face, and while I have been unable to think, speak, breathe he’s still the one who always knew me inside out and manages to make me laugh and relax a bit further.

Rubbing his beard against the stubble down my legs, leaving a trail of kisses and adding in little moments of deep skin sucking and light bites along the way, he hovers over my core and meets my eyes.

---