Longing

Summer, 1989

It’s irrational, this longing, this lust and I can’t quite believe how my body betrays me, but it’s something that cannot be helped.  Compulsion and heat are my companions even as I laugh in derision at my own stupidity.  Because this will not end well.  You are too young, too caught up in your own fancies and your atheistic attitudes towards love.  But it’s not love I want from you. What I want from you is to feel your heart beat against my body, to smell the sweet raw animal of your flesh, to hear the whisper of your voice against my hair, telling me you want me, you need me, you are unable to take a breath without me.

It’s how we sit on my bed, you and I, at night with the curtains drawn and the city damped down in the dark.  I shiver, hairs raised and you are next to me and I wait, because I will never make the first move. Your eyes and hair are so very dark against your skin and it nearly makes me senseless, looking at you, jaw-chiseled and so alive, but just below the surface a seething and roiling that I am too eager to stop.

I turn my back to you just so, and when I glance back over my shoulder I can just see you out of the corner of my eye, looking at the long arch of my neck and my face in shadowed profile. I can feel your hunger, anticipate the struggle you have not to touch me, because it is not wise, you think. We are driving blind, I said to you the other day, laughing for the seriousness of the situation and I know that you won’t hold back much longer.  You have scented me now.

Time stops, the world slips back to nothing as your arms come around my body and draw me back to you and I am a moment in stasis; I will not draw air for fear of breaking the spell too soon.  And when I do it’s deep down to the bottom of my lungs and the exhalation is exquisite as my body becomes oxygen rich and liquid against you.

That moment lasts forever, it seems, and I say nothing, just listen to your heart beating against the bones of my back as it syncs with mine – feral and languid, both.  We are fragile, in our way.  Your cheek brushes my hair and I stretch my neck to the side, and invitation, an offering.  Your breath catches rough as I move and I know your desire; I know your weakness; I know your strength.  I know you have pushed past restraint as your lips touch my skin, soft supplication and I am swan-like in effigy as I bend to my need.

Lips give way to mouth and pressure and movement as you devour the long arc and your hands grip my wrists so that I cannot move, am held tight against you and my longing wells up so rich and wide that all I can do is bite hard against a cry so guttural it would send the birds to wing.  It is an eternity, this moment, this movement and I am delirious.  I’d cry out to God if that were my way, but for now I am drowning, I am dying, and for the most fleeting of moments I love you.