BLACKOUT
—Laughter bubbles, a merry tinkle of joy.
A hand, draped on a shoulder. Fingers sliding down an exposed back.
Feet moving, dancing.
Lips touching a cheek, rough with stubble.
Another laugh.
The dance floor bathed in colorful flashing lights, washed in thudding dance music, bodies moving, brushing, sweating. Hand in hand. Hand on hip. Hips against hips, writhing to the beat.
You, me; who are we? No one.
Where are we? Nowhere; everywhere.
Touch is electric. Eyes spark with fire. Rocket fuel burns in my veins, scorches in your gaze.
Your hand grazes my cheek, and I remember with shocking clarity the way you sounded as you came, and I can't remember anything but this moment and that sound—your groan, my moan, our mated breaths and the soft slide of skin on skin.
The music pounds, pounds, pounds. Bodies bump into us as we glide together, eyes locked and warring. The myriad unspoken things hang between us, but we say nothing. Mouths are not for speaking, not in this wild glut of chaos and chemistry.
Mouths are for tasting sweat, stealing kisses as hips gyrate and grind, as hands clutch and palms press.
Lips are for stuttering against stubble, not speaking; tongues are for tangling, not talking.
You sweep me away from the crowd. A quiet corner near the buffet table hosts a fraught moment, the titanic freight of unspoken sentiments boiling between us—it's too loud in here to hear, but you see the things we've not said coruscating between us like lost and fallen stars, just as I do.
They glow like neon signs—my feelings, your need, our rightness, our wrongness; it's all there, prose written in the lingering looks, poetry scribed in stolen touches.
There's the bride, dancing with her husband, her slender brown fingers interlocked behind his neck, toying with his red hair, her eyes blazing her wild love. He gazes down at her, and for them, there is no one else in all the world but each other.
Do you want that?
Do I?
A surge of humanity finds our quiet corner, and we're parted.
I find you alone outside beneath the rose-wreathed arch, moonlight silver on your skin.
The silence is crushing.
Eyes gleam in the starshine.
Still, there is nothing to say, if only because there is too much to say and our throats burn from too much alcohol and from the weight of the unspoken.
Sidewalk squares pass underfoot. It's blessedly cool after the humidity of breath and the heat of sweat and the crush of dancing and drinking and eating and merrymaking.
Your hand is in mine. It feels right.
The hotel rises before us, doors swish open, ghost closed; the lobby is silent.
The elevator is slow.
You stare at me as we wait for it.
Your eyes burn, goddammit. Like galaxies and quasars, they burn.
—Don’t look at me like that.
—Like what?
There's no reason to answer—you know. I know.
The hallway distorts, morphing into a miles-long tunnel of swirling light from rotating sconces. The floor tilts, an Inception -like twist of reality, and then there's a wall at my shoulder and you drop the keycard on the floor. You fall over trying to retrieve it.
Our room is dark. Silent. Still. It still smells faintly of our sex.
You open the blinds and starshine bathes the planes of your face, illuminates the heat in your eyes.
—I’m going to kiss you.
Your warning is too little, too late: I'm already closing the distance between us.
The blinds rattle as I push you against them.
Clothes fly this way and that. A bowtie hangs from a lampshade. A thong drapes over the handle of the room's telephone. A tuxedo jacket is stained by the pink of a dress; a male sock is wrapped around the white loop of a bra strap.
Hot flesh begs for touch.
You kiss me, and I forget how to breathe. Is your heart pounding like mine? I press my hand to your chest and feel your pulse—it pounds and pounds like the music on the dance floor, pounds like mine, erratic and wild.
The mattress welcomes us.
For a long moment, we only kiss. That moment is a glorious forever; it’s the kiss that will always be.
Just you, just me, just a kiss.
It should have stopped there.
But it didn't.
It wasn't ever going to.
The moment we locked eyes on the dance floor, we both knew how this was going to go.
The kiss becomes something else.
It's a fusion of souls.
But it's just a kiss. Just a stupid kiss.
Hands cup aching flesh. Lips suckle, tongues taste rivulets of sweat. Thigh against thigh, sliding and crushing. Fingers entwine, palm to palm, squeezing tightly as we find each other.
You move slowly over me. You do not look away from me, and I cannot even blink. Cannot breathe.
I am lost.
I taste your heartbeat in the instant before we crash into each other. We cling to one another, gasping, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, heartbeats shattering in unison, flesh mated and moving.
You kiss my eyes as we come together.
—That's just sweat .
You don't believe me any more than I believe myself.
But then, your cheeks taste of salt as well. I kiss them and kiss them and taste your tears.
You're inside me; it's endless; I'm breathless.
But then, I'm inside you, too.
It lasts forever. We move and we dance and we don't say a word.
You devour me.
I envelop you.
You come, shuddering and silent.
Who knows the rhythm of the hours we spend, tangled in the bedsheets? I don't. You don't. There is no clock, only the stars fading and the moon receding to a dim silver sliver as black sky becomes gray and gray becomes pink.
I gasp against your lips once more, our orgasms synchronized and endless, and I'm weeping and you're seeking the truth in my soul through the windows of my eyes, and I hear the words I won't let you say and I hear my own words like ghosts in a graveyard, my own truths hidden in the rampant chaos of my pulse as we come together, and you shake and you tremble and you cling to me.
Dawn is red and orange and pink fire in the sky as our last night on earth comes to a close.
What if—
Those two words hang between us. Did I say them? Did you?
Nothing follows them. There is nothing.
Nothing.
I'll always remember the way your heartbeat sounds as I fall asleep.
I'll always remember the taste of that last kiss, stolen in the final moments before sleep takes us both—