Chapter XII #2
He looks up, surprise slapped across his face.
We’ve safely avoided “us” territory until now.
We look at each other silently for a beat.
Then he places a hand on the back of my neck and kisses me gently on the cheek, just above the jaw.
The place where his lips make contact heats as if from a chemical burn.
“Me too. I felt that way too,” he says with his hand still at my nape.
He reaches to tuck a rogue piece of hair behind my ear.
I can’t tell if the gesture is to reveal more of me or just a gentle impulse; I welcome it either way.
“I liked it, and then I was mad at myself for liking it,” he says.
“I think I’ve been leaving in half measures for a long time, and I feel shitty about that. Your way seems braver.”
He fumbles with his hands, then returns them to his pockets.
“I like the sound of my own voice a little better when I’m talking to you.
I haven’t felt that way in a while. Like you said, liking myself.
I forgot what that felt like.” He strides ahead of me, hands on his hips, and then he turns on his heels to face me.
“Anyway, that’s what I told Antoine about you.
About why I did it. Kiss you, I mean—which really isn’t some grave offense.
Charlotte and I, we are supposed to take this time to live different lives.
” He pauses, one hand rubbing the back of his neck.
“I think I just hadn’t quite considered that it wouldn’t only be a break.
But here, with you . . . I can’t stop thinking that this is what romance is supposed to feel like—giddy at the prospect of all these mundane tasks.
I’m not even thirty, and I was already resigned to going through the motions.
” He traces a circle in the dirt with the toe of his boot, around and around, as if waiting for the soil to reveal some hidden message, perhaps a cue card.
“What I mean is, I don’t know what to do with you.
” The word you from his mouth is changed now, rounder and richer, and I like hearing it so much, I nearly resent him for it.
The question of what to do with me was never supposed to carry weight. And yet, I can feel it—the heaviness.
He is close to me now, close enough that I can smell the sweet glaze of his spiced deodorant, his skin, his sweat. The tenuousness of his restraint. I think about the thinness of the space between us, I contemplate how permeable plain old air is, and then I lean in and kiss him.
This time feels different. That delicate boundary crossed already.
We are no longer toeing a line or probing at a thing.
I want him achingly as he presses against me and kisses me deeper, more assuredly.
I can no longer taste the glancing notes of trepidation that raced through his mouth in the cellar.
His hand settles on the small of my back, urging me toward him, flattening me against him; I weave my fingers through the hair at the base of his skull, pulling as if it were possible to bring him any closer to me.
He bites my bottom lip, slides his tongue farther toward the back of my throat, as if he’s passed tasting.
He slides the fingers of his other hand up the leg of the loose, forgiving fabric of my shorts.
His forefinger feathers back and forth, toying with the edge of my underwear.
I hold him more firmly, shift my mouth to kiss his neck.
Keep going, I try to tell him without saying the words.
Don’t stop. I’m afraid of breaking the spell.
I’m afraid other bits of logic will slip into my consciousness.
Don’t stop is the only phrase I can hear. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
Henri slides two fingers beneath my underwear and inside of me, and I feel so lethally turned on, my skin hurts. Turned on has never seemed so correct a term. Like I’m surging with high-octane energy. Something with enough force to electrocute—to shock.
Slowly, Henri moves his hands to my waist and takes a few panting breaths.
I find his eyes, and he looks stricken, stunned.
He cradles the back of my head and lowers me to the ground, positioning himself over me, arms on either side of my shoulders.
I feel the textured ground beneath me, the combination of divots, rocks, roots. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
“Are you OK?” he whispers, biting my lip.
“Yes. Are you?”
He nods and lurches forward so quickly, his tongue collides with the wall of my teeth.
We both laugh—the absurdity of our wanting, the near-youthful exuberance—and he slides his hand up my shirt, running his fingers along the terrain of my rib cage.
I pull at his belt, pawing at the latch, and he reaches down to unbuckle it himself, kicking his pants off.
Something about his bare legs against the earth looks innocent—white briefs, the Calvin Klein logo circling his waistband.
Then he presses against me, and my head dips back at the hardness of him.
I feel a flash of jealousy that his form can so quickly offer that kind of promise, can grow and swell and shapeshift.
I nudge at the waistband of my shorts, and he pulls them from my hips, along with my underwear.
He props himself up as he tugs his own underwear down to his knees.
My eyes jump from his dick to his bicep to the line of his thigh, my brain trying to make a memory of his body.
I arch my hips, and a soft, needy whimper escapes against my will.
Henri is staring down at me, and his swollen lips part in response to the sound.
I place a finger between them, then wrap my free hand around his dick, bringing it closer to me.
“Should I . . . protection?” he asks, verbally fumbling.
“IUD,” I say, and his brow furrows. I grin. An English term he doesn’t know. “Contraceptif. I’m OK.”
I coax him inside me. Two sharp intakes of break, in unison, then: He is thrusting upward, upward, upward, and I am no longer thinking.
It’s just him pulsing, beating within me as though he’s connected somehow to my own circulatory system.
My fingers curl involuntarily, useless. He urges himself forward, and my vision goes white.
I have the distinct and preposterous sensation that just maybe, the right man inside me could be enough to make me believe in something spiritual, something divine.
His fingers move between my legs, and I grasp at the dirt for purchase.
“Henri,” I gasp without meaning to. “Alice,” he exhales back, and I feel each of my muscles bracing for release, then all of me shuddering with pleasure.
A flood of relief—a reprieve from the tension that has been building, and building, and building.
I palm Henri’s back, and he drops to his elbows, nuzzling his head against my neck. “Henri,” I say, meaning to. “Alice,” he gasps as he comes.
He hovers over me as we both come back to ourselves, the vines.
He rolls to his side, his chest heaving, and I collect more pieces of him: the ridge of his sternum, the hair across his chest. He glides two fingers between my legs, feeling the dew of his own cum where it lingers on my skin.
He lifts his fingers to my mouth. “Taste,” he whispers, and I close my lips around them.
“Vanilla, ammonium, tinfoil. Like salt and something just heated.”
He kisses me. “Something just heated. That’s you.”
He stretches an arm out so I can roll over onto him, and I rest my cheek against his bicep. He breathes heavily for several beats. “I . . . definitely feel like a human.” He smiles between labored exhales and cups my chin with his hand.
I trace my fingers along the sides of his abdomen, relishing the quietness of being alone, unclothed, side by side.
I catalog the constellation of scratches, bruises, smudges of dirt decorating each of our forms. I hadn’t felt it all before, the violence of rugged earth against raw body—but now, we both have this odd latticework of evidence, some testament to the fact that this act indeed transpired, staged on cold earth.
“How are you?” I ask, whispering so close to his face, I can see individual lashes.
He strokes my hair and breaks eye contact to look up toward the sky. “I feel like this was . . . correct. I’m sure there will be other things I feel later, anxiety and all that. But right now, this just feels like it’s supposed to feel.”
I smile, nestling my forehead into his arm.
“And how do you feel?” he asks, turning back toward me.
“Definitely not like a robot,” I reply with a grin. I feel like a person, I should say. How lovely and inconvenient.
“Good.” His smile is sleepy, sated. Wizened, perhaps. “Shall we get back before they send a search party?”
By now, it’s dark enough to imply we’ve been gone too long. Everyone will be showered and downstairs, buzzing around, slicing bread and setting the table.
We sit up and toss our clothes back on, brushing dirt from each other’s limbs, pointing out the scratch marks and indents mottled into our flesh with glee.
He removes twigs from my hair and smooths the mass of it down, turning me around as he does so to ensure that he’s assessed our damage from each possible angle.
“Good?” I ask, and he nods.
“Even better. Quite remarkable, actually. And me?”
“Quite remarkable, actually.”
We walk back, shaking out our garments, and as we near the house, he slings an arm over my shoulder—the most outsized, uppercase gesture he’s dared in front of the others.
But in this moment, we aren’t hiding. Not from Antoine, not from each other.
It feels good, the largeness of him wrapped around me, the two of us moving as one more tethered thing in this landscape of intertwined vines.