Erasing Faith(57)
Only actions.
The joining of two bodies in the darkness. The melding of two lost souls in the night.
My hands dropped to the hem of Wes’ shirt. He turned to face me, lifting a finger to toy with the thin strap of my tank top. Our eyes locked. Held. Burned.
And then, we were kissing.
Violently, suddenly.
A kiss that blasted open the floodgates — so powerful it was just as terrifying as it was beautiful. And like a lightning strike sparks an unstoppable wildfire in the heart of a vast forest, the mere brush of his mouth against mine set off a consuming fire within our interlocked bodies, that no amount of reason or restraint could douse.
His lips slammed down on mine — imposing, possessing, demanding, domineering. His kiss was a coup d'état. He seized every one of my senses, invaded every part of me, took control over my entire body with a few strokes of his tongue, a few nips of his teeth.
It was no hostile takeover. I surrendered to him willingly, with open arms and a white flag.
But Wes’ walls were higher than mine — harder to scale and fortified with dynamite. This was a man who’d never known love. I knew he wouldn’t yield to me so easily. So while his overthrow was overt, mine was the Trojan horse. A mission of stealth. I didn’t wait for his permission — I didn’t demand it. Instead, I snuck past his borders while he was distracted obliterating mine. I slipped inside his walls, inside his soul, and planted my flag in the flesh of his heart.
If he was claiming me, I was claiming him right back.
For once, we didn’t joke or tease or push away everything that made us a little bit vulnerable. We stripped each other bare — not only our clothes, but every barrier we used to keep a safe amount of distance between us. My tank top hit the floor and with it all the willpower I’d been trying to utilize. Wes’ hands worked the shorts from my legs and I felt all my self-doubt and carefully constructed denial peel away as well.
I am in love with this man.
The realization crippled me. I began to tear at his clothes, determined to remove the last obstacles separating us. Needing to get to that place where it was just him and me — two bare bodies, wearing nothing but the white cords around our fingers, entwined so tightly nothing could ever separate us again.
I moved around behind him as I pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor alongside mine. My fingers traced the whirls of ink spanning his broad back and shoulders. I’d been dying to look at his tattoo for weeks, since I first spotted the twin tendrils peeking out of his collar on that rainy afternoon in the café. I saw now that it was a work of art — an infinite twisting design of spirals and interlocked rings, thorns and coils of ebony ink.
A pang of surprise and sadness jolted through me when I saw the pattern was etched over a multitude of scars, each a different shape and size. It was like nothing I’d ever seen – the bumpy skin from countless old wounds, camouflaged by a labyrinth of inky beauty. I didn’t allow myself to ask where the marks had come from – I simply explored the maze with my fingers and lips, working my way from the outermost swirls to the elaborate inner markings and reveling in the feeling of Wes’ muscles contracting and heaving beneath my touch.
I heard his breath grow labored as I kissed my way to the spot directly between his shoulder blades. His back was taut with tension, each muscle pulled tight as he tried to keep himself in check. I knew he was losing the battle for control when I reached the center of the inky design and felt his spine go rigid.
He spun around and pinned me beneath him so fast I had no time to react, and I felt my own breaths turn to choppy pants of desire. Wes’ eyes burned into mine as he settled on top of me and I felt every hard line of his body pressed tight against my curves. His desire was a visceral, tangible creature swimming in the air around us — clawing, consuming, caressing me.
No more walls stood between us — we’d obliterated them. There was nothing left here but skin and unspoken promises. Undeclared dreams and unquenched desires. And for a moment we just gazed at each other, his face hovering centimeters above mine, and the look in his eyes told me everything I ever needed to know about love.
He stared into my soul, his dark eyes brimming with something like wonderment, and inched inside me so slowly, so achingly, I thought I might fly apart in a million pieces, so full of emotion my body couldn’t possibly contain it all. And, for the first time in my life, I knew exactly who I was, what I was.
I was complete.
We moved together — eyes locked, souls aligned.
I was spiraling, reeling. Spinning, feeling.
It was too slow, too fast.
Too much, not enough.
Everything, all at once.
And as our lips met and parted, as our hands caressed and explored, as our mutual pleasure mounted and grew to a breaking point… I knew I would happily stay here, in this moment, with him for the rest of my life. I didn’t need air or water or sustenance — all I needed was Wes, and this slow, delicious torture he was inflicting with each powerful thrust of his hips. Every time he moved, he pushed me higher, until the earth disappeared and I was floating among the clouds. I never wanted it to end, never wanted to return to the ground.
He rolled so I was on top of him, staring down into his eyes, and when I saw the mixture of astonishment and longing swirling in their depths it nearly shattered me. He felt it too — the connection between us. The love.