Chapter Fourteen La Petite Mort
Chapter Fourteen
La Petite Mort
The trip to my apartment is short, only two blocks, but despite the cold we move slowly down the sidewalk, letting the moment
linger. We walk a little too close, our quiet voices breaking the occasional stillness of this cool April night. The town
is dead; there is no one to bear witness to our bad decisions this time.
I don’t know what will happen when we get to my door, but I know I’ve missed the feeling of our hands wrapped around each
other’s. It’s safe and warm, like stolen kisses on too-bright sets and naps in each other’s trailers on the rare lazy afternoon.
It feels, disgustingly, like home.
We stop in front of the flower shop, each of us looking at the other expectantly. The air seems much colder than it was a
little while ago, what with the weight of our indecision bearing down on us. It’s do or die, now, and we both know it.
“This is me,” I say, and take a step back, but Nikki steps with me, her grip staying so strong on my hand that it pulls the
rest of her along with it.
We tug our hands back and forth, laughing when my back hits the glass door, the little bells only a faint jingle on the other side. She presses against me, tucking her nose into my neck like she’s trying to breathe me in.
And me too, me too, I feel it too.
“Are your friends still inside?”
I shake my head.
“Will you let me in?”
I shiver at her words, wondering if she’s intending the double meaning or if it’s my own lust-addled brain drawing a connection
that isn’t there.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I want to, but . . .”
“It’s your call,” she says, smiling into my skin. “Might be good for us.”
“What, like, to get it out of our system or something?” I ask. “For an old times’ sake kind of thing?”
“Something like that,” she says, flicking her tongue just once against my neck before quickly replacing it with a teasing
nip of her teeth, and suddenly, all of my reservations fly out the window.
I want this. I want her. One last time won’t hurt anything. For old times’ sake. For closure. Closure, yes! Even Regan said
it was healthy. Just one last time. For . . .
“Yes,” I say, spinning around in her arms to unlock the door. She continues kissing me from this new angle, her lips skimming
over the back of my neck and sliding forward to press gently between my jacket collar and jaw. Cold air slips down my skin
but we both know that’s not what’s making me shiver.
The key finally catches and the door jolts open, sending us spilling into the store. Startled laughter falls from our lips like misspent promises of better times. She is here with me now, like she was there with me before. I feel lost and found all at once, and doubly anxious to get her upstairs.
We knock into one of the displays as I lead her backward to the stairs and the sudden scent of flowers grounds me, yanking
me back into the present just as I was ready to fully surrender to the past.
Nikki seems to sense a shift in me, letting her fingers trail after mine, but respecting my space as I pull away. She waits,
watching me pull off my coat and set it on the front counter before I go back to lock the shop door behind me. I head upstairs
without a word, her footsteps trailing me slowly up to my apartment. I leave the door open as I walk into my place and kick
off my shoes.
“Second thoughts?” she asks, hesitating in the entryway, her coat and shoes still on and ready, like she’s prepared to bolt
at my answer.
I look away. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Does anyone?”
“I think, yeah,” I say, looking back at her. “I hope so.”
“Andy,” she says, meeting my eyes. “Would you like me to leave?”
“No.”
She smiles, dropping her coat behind her as she kicks off her shoes and finally, finally comes closer again. I swallow hard,
thinking of all the other times in our lives and our past ones that she stalked toward me, her lithe body almost as familiar
to me as my own.
“Do you know what it’s like to be homesick for someone who hates you?
” she asks. “To be stuck in that town without you? People throw themselves at me, but I don’t want them, I never wanted them.
I want you. It’s like starving during a feast.” She trails her finger down my side.
“Nothing tastes as sweet as you, so why even bother?”
“I’m tired of hating you,” I whisper as she slides her foot between mine. She gently kicks my legs apart before pressing me
down into one of my kitchen chairs. I look up at her, waiting, always waiting. Control was not something I liked to give up
in life, but something I needed, wanted, craved, to be taken from me in bed.
None of my other lovers ever really got that, not like Nikki did.
“I can make you feel something else, if you’d like to let me.”
My blood goes syrupy and slow as she sinks to her knees, parting my legs even farther as I squirm under her gaze. I nod, desperate,
thankful to all the gods in the universe that I wore a skirt today.
“Say it, Andy,” she says. “Tell me what you need.” I shift my hips toward her, and she grins, licking her lips. “With words.”
“You. I need you,” I say.
One last time. For old times’ sake. Closure. Nothing more. It can’t be anything more.
“How do you need me?” She trails her hand down my thigh, reaching the hem of my skirt and sliding it up agonizingly slowly.
“Where do you need me?”
I should be frustrated by how easily my body and mind bend to her will. I should be annoyed. I should be a thousand other things, but right now, pheromone-drunk on her honey voice, all I can say is “Please.”
She grins before rucking up my skirt the rest of the way and slipping my panties to the side. I squirm under her gaze but
even from this angle I can see her hunger. “Fuck, I’ve missed you.” She leans forward, nipping gently at my inner thigh, one
well-manicured finger teasing along my folds before dipping inside, trailing the wet heat up to my clit before pulling back.
I arch my hips, chasing the sensation, but she presses me back down with her free hand.
“Stay,” Nikki growls, then leans back on her knees. She makes sure I’m watching before she slides her lone wet finger into
her mouth and sucks it clean with a smile. “Better than I even remembered,” she says. “Now open up and let me have a proper
taste, doll. It’s been too long.”
A tiny voice whispers in my head that I should absolutely not be about to hook up with my ex on my kitchen floor, but a much
louder, much more fun voice is shouting, Oh, who the hell cares, we’re just getting it out of our systems, right?
I let my legs fall open on either side of the chair, which has the unfortunate side effect of having my panties shift back
into place. Her lips fall into a pout, as she leans forward. “Now, that won’t do.” She reaches forward, carefully ripping
them down the center. “Much better.”
“Those were expensive!” I snap.
“I’ll buy you twenty more pairs.”
I have a split second to take offense before her tongue is there, lapping at my opening like she’s dying for it, and every word, every thought, every emotion I have now or have ever had is driven out of my head by pure pleasure.
We always fit together this way, Nikki and me. Our incompatibilities were legion, but not this, never this.
Her tongue finally presses inside, and we moan together as her hand slides up to draw torturously slow patterns against my
clit. I am boneless, melting, sliding in the chair in my effort to chase my high and she laughs, hot breath against tender
skin, before sliding her other hand up higher, beneath my shirt and bra. She trails gentle circles around my breast until
my nipple pebbles up, and then pinches it hard with her nail—just a little bit of pain with my pleasure, always, hitting just
the right note that has me shuddering apart on her tongue.
“Nikki!” I cry, my muscles going taut. She slides her hand from my breast to my side, pinning me to the seat and holding me
up as I ride out the aftershocks. She swaps her fingers and tongue, surprising me with soft kitten licks to my clit while
she slides first one finger inside of me and then another—curling them in just the right place to send a fresh zap of pleasure
coiling through my core.
“I can’t,” I say when she keeps going. “Nikki, I can’t. It’s too much, it’s too much.”
“One more, baby,” she says, pushing up to her knees and bending me forward to kiss me proper on the lips. The angle is awkward
but neither of us care. It’s dirty and languid, somehow both too slow and over too soon. All the while her fingers continue
to tease, tickle, press, and fuck deep inside of me. Her thumb slides back up to my overstimulated bundle of nerves and I
drop my head to her shoulder, overwhelmed.
“Nikki,” I whimper.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” she says, kissing any part of me she can reach. “You’re doing so good for me. So good.”
I feel it building inside me again, twisting up higher and higher—the urge to run away from her and the urge to dive deeper
and never let her go—a war waging inside my head as I dig my teeth into her shoulder, riding her hand to my own release, taking
it myself this time instead of it being given.
“That’s it,” she says. “That’s it. It’s okay to let go, baby. Let yourself feel me.”
I come hard on her hand and feel her smile slide across my sweaty hairline, dotting me with kisses as she shifts me back.
Nikki cups both sides of my face with her wicked hands, crawling up onto my lap as I fall back in the chair. She presses gentle
kisses onto the corners of my eyes, letting me catch my breath before slowly peeling herself away.
“You look so beautiful like this,” she says, holding out her hand to me. I take it, floating a little.
She leads me over to my couch and carefully arranges us so that I’m tucked safe against her, her heartbeat drowning out all
of the thoughts in my head. It’s been so long since I could just let myself feel like this—blissed out, warm, and safe. Protected
for the first time in a long time.
Protected. Safe.
The thought breaks through my skull like an ice pick, my breath picking up as I struggle to breathe.
Nikki isn’t that. She can’t ever be that again. This has to be just a one-time thing. I can’t let myself—
“Hey.” Her hand stills in my hair. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, but my voice sounds funny even to me.
I move to slide back but she holds me in place. “Don’t run again, Andy, please. Just . . . let me have this for a little while
longer?”
“Let you have this?” I ask, and this time when I pull back, she lets me go.
“Us,” she corrects, her brow furrowing. “What’s happening right now? I just made love to you and now you’re—”
No, no, no, no, no. I can’t do this. I can’t get attached. Love isn’t . . . can’t ever . . .
“We fucked,” I say, and she winces. “We fucked in the kitchen like a couple of horny teenagers. We didn’t make love. How could
we make love? You don’t even know what—”
“Don’t lie to yourself,” she says, fully sitting up now. “You can believe a lot of things about what went down between us
but don’t pretend I didn’t love you with my whole heart as best as I goddamn could.”
“Your best wasn’t good enough,” I say quietly.
The words hang in the air between us and then shatter all over the floor, slicing us through with good intentions and half-hearted
attempts at forgiveness.
She bites the inside of her cheek, looking up and to the side, but even in the dim streetlights streaming in my window, I
can see her eyes shine wet with emotions.
“I know it wasn’t,” she says, looking back at me. All of her bravado and confidence that came with the knowledge that she
could still make my body sing falls away to expose the vulnerable woman in front of me.
I want to wrap her in my arms and hold her forever, I want to scream at her to get out, but I know neither of those reactions is fair.
The cold realization that I’ve let things get too far, got too carried away—that I should have never followed her out into
the darkness, and never pulled her back inside my light—drenches me in ice. Tonight was a mistake, clearly, one that we’re
both going to have to pay for. We’re not who we were, this shouldn’t have happened.
I wanted closure. Instead I’ve reopened a wound.
It’s bewildering to have the body of a stranger still feel so familiar. Because we are strangers now, and I need to remember that. We’ve lived entire lives in the years we’ve been apart, and the fact that she
still remembered to kiss her favorite beauty mark on my thigh tonight doesn’t change that at all.
Nikki was fine. I saw it myself on socials and interviews and on the screen. When the tornado of our relationship had passed,
her house was still standing. It was only mine in tatters.
I don’t know if I can let that go. I don’t know if I should.
“How did you just go on with your life without me?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” she says, reaching for my hand, but I pull back. Nikki stares down at the space between us, ever growing as I
shift to standing.
“You moved on before I ever even left.”
“No, never. Is that what you think?”
“That’s how you acted.”
She rubs her arms with a sigh, and it looks like she’s hugging herself . . . or holding herself together.
Why am I doing this? Why did I do this?
“I can go,” Nikki says, slowly getting up. “If you’d like me to. I didn’t mean for . . . I don’t want you to regret what happened.”
“Yes, I think that’s a good idea,” I say, even though a part of me is screaming to make her stay.
“You can call me later?” she says. “If you want to talk? I just don’t want to ruin what tonight meant to—”
“Tonight can’t happen again,” I insist, perhaps because I mean it, but also to get a reaction. I don’t know how I feel about
anything anymore, everything so jumbled up and confusing. “Just to get it out of our systems, right? And now we have?”
Nikki slides on her coat and then stands in front of me. “If that’s what you want.” She presses a gentle kiss to my cheek,
before whispering in my ear, “But for the record, Andy, so we’re perfectly clear on this: I’ll never get you out of my system.
I wouldn’t want to.”
I stand rooted in place as Nikki darts down the stairs. Because she had, many times over, hadn’t she?