Sunday, January 1 #5
His lips caressed the length of her jagged scar with tenderness.
Then he crooned a soliloquy of steadfast devotion.
“There’ll be no thunder while I’m here …
Nothing will harm or frighten you while I’m with you.
You’re always safe in my arms … I promised to be there for you, and I’m never going to leave you, honey …
You won’t have to worry anymore, sweetheart. ”
Angelica squirmed, tucking her head down. “I don’t want rain in my eyes.”
He kissed her cheek. “Do you want to try to stand? You can lean on me, and the water won’t hit your face,” he said.
Her heavy mane of hair fell, framing her shimmering face as she nodded.
Garrett lowered her to the shower floor. As the water coursed down her back, Angelica clung to him as she always did.
Enclosed in his arms, Garrett’s words came to life like a song, each line finding its own rhythm.
“You hold me, and I’ll hold you. I will never let you go …
If you want to splash in puddles, I’ll splash with you …
If you want to move, I’ll move with you …
If you want to travel, I’ll be by your side …
I’ll go wherever you go … We’ll be so happy, darling. ”
With their nearly naked bodies skin-to-skin, Garrett began to feel something. Something far greater than the effect of the kisses he bestowed on Angelica’s face. Something he mustn’t feel under these conditions. Not at a time like this. Hell, not now! Who knows when, but definitely not now.
But this was human nature. He felt it—what a man is supposed to feel when his flesh presses against the flesh of a woman. Not just any woman—the woman he loved. Garrett was coming undone as his feelings intensified and his groin ached.
How much self-control could he have while showering with Angelica, anyway?
When she’s wearing black lace-trimmed bikini underwear, her cleavage bursting out of her matching black bra.
Her breasts tempting and teasing his bare skin, her hips calling out to him, and her fingertips clinging to his raw flesh.
And she’s breathing hot breaths onto his naked chest.
Garrett was losing it, losing the willpower he had held onto for so long—far too long, in fact.
Bottled up and locked inside, for way too long.
Everything was unraveling under her seductive power.
His body moved beyond reacting. He couldn’t stop it.
You can’t stop it when you’re nearing the final stretch of the climb.
Soaring, mere steps from the climactic apex, he completely lost it all in Angelica’s arms.
With ragged, quickened breath, he realized that holding her graceful body close to his, titillating him, wouldn’t be enough. How could it ever be enough? Everything sent him to another realm. His wasted mind and body flashed a glimpse of what if.
It would be a slow dance. Very slow. He’d carry Angelica to the bed and lay her down lovingly, as if she were fragile, hand-blown, etched glass.
In awe of her beauty and worshiping the woman who had captured and owned his heart, he’d crawl to her in his nakedness and plead for mercy.
He’d comply with all her wishes. Only then would he approach her, lie beside her, and begin the dance of the only two people in the world on the bedroom dance floor.
Garrett would weave his hands through the wild, torturous tresses that drove him to madness as his lips fell to her brow and he began caressing her.
As his lips sailed with a slow, savoring pace down her exquisite porcelain features, his fingers would follow the line of her slender neck, coast over the slope of her luscious shoulders, and slide like on ice along the delicate plain of her back to the clasp of the lace bra that could topple any man’s knees.
One hook, two hooks. He would peel off the dainty lace enshrouding her femininity.
Ever so tenderly, his lips, tongue, and fingertips would lose themselves in the velvety, sumptuousness of her breasts.
He’d continue his leisurely descent to her waist, glide over her firm hips, and, with gradual finesse, remove the last lacy layer veiling her. Then the moon and stars would shine a spotlight on them, just them. This was to be a loving, private performance.
Pulling Angelica to him, their mouths would mesh. Gentle yet driven, they would explore only what they could explore, creating a rhythm as they tangoed with tangled legs, shimmied, twisted, waltzed, and swayed to the merengue and the Macarena.
Finally, Garrett and Angelica would move into a two-step, passionately performing the electric slide to the heightened, sultry tempo of the music of the night—the fiery wedding dance of their bodies and souls.
“Garrett,” Angelica said, gazing into his eyes.
His eyes locked onto the face that held the key to his heart as he pushed a strand of wet hair from her cheek. “Yes, darling.”
“I’m … I’m married,” she stammered.
A million wrongs exploded in Garrett’s mind, and if his heart could have stopped that many times, it would have, but it missed just one beat.
Momentarily stilled, it restarted with a staggering jolt as they stood in the mantle of the fog.
A fog that encircled them as much as it emotionally eclipsed them.
Garrett rested his cheek against Angelica’s drenched hair and sighed from the depths of hell. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Garrett?”
Even though his heart had been shaken from its foundation, he never stopped loving this woman. Garrett’s words and voice masked the pain his crushed heart felt as his inner self replied, “Yes, honey?”
As the water flowed over Angelica, and not relinquishing her hold on him, she asked, “Why are we in the shower?”
He cupped her face and peered into the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. “We’re here because you wanted to dance in the rain. We can stay in the rain for a long, long time … We don’t ever have to leave … We can stay in the rain forever and always, Angelica.”
But he knew they couldn’t stay together forever. Not together anywhere, forever. There would never be a “together,” ever.
Garrett held Angelica, the fairy who stole his heart, tightly against him, burying his face in her hair.
The water swirled, mirroring the tears within him—tears she never saw and perhaps wouldn’t understand even if she did.
Those invisible tears mixed with the spill running down her back, flowing where he imagined his hands and kisses would go.
They tumbled to the tiled floor and were sucked down the drain.
There were no more words. Words couldn’t heal what had already been said or take them away.
“I don’t feel—” Angelica murmured as her arms fell away and she slid down his slick body, fainting into his arms.
* * *
Life, circumstances, and necessity interrupted Garrett’s broken dreams. The roadmap of mute scars she bore surprised him even more, but it didn’t deter him.
He unhooked the bra he’d longed to unhook, removed the rest of Angelica’s scant, wet clothes, and laid her on the bed.
He then touched where he’d been forbidden to before, dried her off, found her lingerie, and put back on what he’d just taken off.
He locked away his fantasies and desires forevermore when he helped her put the rest of her clothes on.
Aside from comfort, few words passed between them. “Are you warm enough? Do you want to put on socks, honey? Where’s your hair dryer? Did you eat today, Angelica?”
With both of them dressed and Garrett dreading the words that must be spoken, he carried Angelica into the living room.
She released her arms from his neck as he eased her onto the couch. “You’re a good man,” she mumbled.
He didn’t answer.
After she nibbled on some toast and drank orange juice, he went back to the kitchen, where everything was in tip-top shape and under control—except his emotions. Garrett hated himself, not for anything vile or forceful, but for what might have occurred in the shower.
How did he go from the best of intentions to longing?
From one extreme to the other? What the hell’s wrong with him?
He should have gotten Angelica out of her wet clothes, wrapped her in blankets by the fire, and taken a long, cold shower—alone!
Or he should have had some beers. Ed was right; he lost it ages ago.
With a coffee mug in hand for Angelica, Garrett returned to the living room to face her one last time. Face the jury, hear the verdict, and be convicted of lust.
Along with her jeans, she wore the long-sleeved T-shirt he gave her the other night when she got chilled at his house. It was the first warm top he found in her closet. She appeared so small and adrift in the oversized shirt, with its sleeves quadruple-cuffed.
While studying Angelica, he realized that, beyond her bout of hypothermia, something else was wrong with her. The realization made him feel even worse about himself.
This wasn’t the woman from the diner, nor the one with the “deer-in-the-headlights” look. She didn’t shed any hysterical tears, but her dazed stare was unsettling. What happened to her?
There were no recent injuries or marks on her body, yet her emotional state suggested otherwise.
Angelica didn’t seem to have an ounce of anything left in her.
She resembled a snowman (or is that a snowwoman) melting in the hot sun.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness overtook him.
He specialized in fatal crimes, not in the illnesses of the living.
Garrett placed his hand on her arm. “I need to take you to the hospital, Angelica. You’re not well,” he said softly.
“I’m not sick … I don’t need to go.” She took a long, shallow breath that hung motionless in the air, as if waiting for the next to take its place.
At a loss, he sat beside her and handed her the steaming caffeine brew. She clutched the cup with both hands before taking a sip. They slipped back into an unnerving hush—a hush that chewed him to bits, convicting him even further.