17. Vapas
17
VAPAS
N o!
I drop back onto my chair and scoot back from the table. As I move to remove my hand from hers she clamps her free hand down onto it. The room spins. The drink has gotten to me and blood is rushing to my head. I shake it to clear it, but all I accomplish is making the room tilt wildly.
“Phoebe, no,” I whisper. “No. I am sorry.”
“No,” she insists. Gripping my hand between hers, pulling me back towards the table, towards her. “Vapas, I am the one who is sorry. I overreacted. It’s not?—”
“No,” I snap, jerking my hand free of her grip.
My dragoste. I cannot betray her. Why did I get involved? I should have let this human be taken by the Maulavi, then none of this would be happening.
The moment I think it I am ill. I do not mean it, would never say it, but even thinking it offends all that I believe I am. All that I want to be.
She stares with her large, wide eyes brimming with unshed moisture and my heart shatters. I approach the table, her. Slow. Hesitant, torn on what I am going to do. She is beautiful and so many things she does reminds me of my dragoste.
Her lip trembles. Her full, sweet lips that taste of flavors I’ve never had in my life. Every bit exotic as they are erotic. A drop of water, they call them tears, falls from her eyes. I catch it on my thumb, wiping it away.
“Vapas…” she says, her voice a soft caress in my ears.
“Sorry,” I say.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No more. No sorries. Please. No.”
She stands, pushing her chair back, both hands flat on the table as she leans in closer. The scent of her fills my nose. She has a scent that I’ve only smelled once before in my life and it has been so long that it took me some time to figure it out. She smells of baobab. The trees that grow on the surface, the wood of which we craft our mudrosti from.
Known for its hard core but soft on the outside, making it the perfect material to carve our life histories on. Every Urr’ki travels to the surface once as part of the rites of passage into adulthood. We go to the surface and find the stick that will be our mudrosti. Where we will carve the story of our life, adding our story to that of our people.
She is like that. Soft on the outside, curving in every place I could ever desire in a female, but beneath that softness there is a hard center. Hard enough to be unbreakable. She comes closer.
And closer.
I lean in too. Pulled closer by the whirlpool of her. The pull is more than I can ever hope to resist. As inexorable as gravity holding me to Tajss, she pulls me in. A tremor races over my body.
“Phoebe… I?—”
She puts her lips on mine. I try. I try to resist. To be true and to keep my word. I try and I fail.
Her lips are soft but insistent. Plush, yet demanding. I give in, my mouth moving with hers. My arms ache with need and desire to hold her but this is her show, not mine. I gave my word to protect her. I meant it and I also meant it that I would never, under any circumstances, force myself onto her.
Until I did.
Until I did and then what? We are here. Even the way she kisses reminds me of my dragoste. The love of my life who should be waiting for me in the next world, but maybe we are wrong. Afterall, none of us have been to the next world. How could we? This one hasn’t ended.
When I was a child I would wonder about this. What did all the people who had lived before do while waiting for the next world? Did they know? Were they resting in the graves peacefully?
Her tongue pierces the seal of my lips, pushing away my inane musings. I try to cling to them in a desperate attempt to keep the other, more insistent needs back. Struggling to keep desire at bay. I cannot let my body have what it wants, what it is so clearly signaling that it thinks it needs. My throbbing, aching cock is so stiff and my balls so full they hurt.
She wraps her hands around my neck, pulling herself up and onto the table. She moans into the kiss and I groan. I growl as desire becomes tumultuous. Overwhelming reason and conscious thought.
I grab her waist and roughly jerk her across the table and into my arms.