Chapter 12 #2
Sliding my fingers up his arms, I cupped his shoulders, threw my weight on them, and slipped on top of him.
Groaning deep in his throat, he welcomed me into his arms, his hands reaching for my hipbones, using them to bring me right up against him.
Then he looked up at me, amazed, his mouth open, waiting to be kissed again.
So I kissed him, more deeply, more earnestly this time, golden firelight burning through my eyelids while the wet warmth of his tongue lapped over mine.
His hand on my hip roamed up, his fingers sliding under the hem of my sweater. Liquid and heavy was the heat of his palm as it rested flat below the hollow of my navel. I heard myself moan, a low, pleading sound. Anything he wanted I would have done in that moment. Anything.
“You like that?” he breathed out, his hand still there, still pressing.
With eyes closed, embarrassed by the sheer magnitude of my desire, I only let out a soft, “Mm.”
“Does it make you feel…”
“Yes, so much.”
“Me too,” he rasped.
I knew that already. I could feel him through our clothes, rising beneath me, wanting me as I did.
The heat of his body crawled up my inner thighs, his solid form seeking the softness of mine.
He held my face in his other hand, his thumb tracing the shape of my lips.
And as if to test the extent of my surrender, he let it sink into my mouth. Deep. Deeper.
Breathing heavily, he kept his finger there for a moment longer, feeling the slow, sensual sweeps of my tongue, then, with a fresh rush of desire, he removed it and seized hold of my nape, bending my head back across his palm.
His mouth landed open on my throat, hungry, his teeth scraping over my skin.
And his other hand—still there, where I wanted it, pressing down between my hipbones.
It was all I could think about now. The hot pressure of his palm. The possibility of feeling it lower.
“Fuck, Anya,” he cursed, dropping his forehead on my shoulder. Both of his arms came low to wind around my waist. He held me to him. Close. So close I could feel the fragile rhythm of his heart against mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I told him, aching for more. “I like it.”
He lifted his head and looked at me, eyes dark and glazed, still wanting, still needing me as much as I needed him. But then, with a ragged exhale, he said, “We can’t. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to?”
“No, Anya, believe me, I want to,” he sighed, his brows pinching upward. “I’ve wanted this for so long I do not know who I am without this feeling.”
His words nipped at my breath. This is a product of time, was what he was really saying, of the absolute understanding of each other. Something that would not distract me from my life but instead consume it altogether.
Tremulously, I exhaled into him, “But?”
“But you’re in a very vulnerable position right now. And I don’t want to take advantage of that,” he said.
“I know you don’t,” I whispered, cupping the sides of his neck, the pronounced veins under his skin so hot they made the pads of my fingers tingle as I traced them. “Isn’t that enough? That I know and understand the situation, and I am, very enthusiastically I might add, consenting to it?”
“It’s not that simple,” he argued.
“Can it be simple?” I pressed. “Can’t we just be two people enjoying each other for a night?”
He drew back a little, and I could tell from his expression that he was hurt, that I had hurt him.
Ever since that night at Sullivan’s, the dynamic between us had shifted.
Now he was the one afraid to get used while I remained unaffected by the trivial labels and attachments of life.
All of my cautiousness and overthinking, the life I used to be so afraid of disturbing, had lost its meaning, and so I no longer felt the need to protect it.
I was tied to nothing, and he was tied to everything.
“I want this to mean something,” he said in a careful, measured tone of voice. “To mean something else than what it’s going to mean if it happens now.”
“Does it have to mean anything at all?” I asked, my heart throbbing with a broken, hopeless feeling.
Because my desires no longer matched my reality.
Because deep down I wanted this to mean more too.
But what future could we possibly have when I couldn’t even imagine a relationship that extended beyond the edge of tonight?
After all, this was all I had to offer. This was all I was. A present tense of a person.
Quietly, Kai replied, “Everything means something, Anya. Even nothing means something.”
With slow, half-conscious movements, like waking up from a dream, I untangled myself from him, but when I tried to stand up, he seized my wrists and drew me back down on his lap.
“Look,” he breathed, his eyes gentle despite the firmness of his hold, “this is very new to you, or at least it feels new to you, and that scares me. I don’t want us to rush into something just to end up hurting each other. ”
“Yes, I know,” I said more crossly than I meant it, feeling defensive and embarrassed and painfully frustrated with myself.
“Perhaps if you get your memories back—”
“I don’t want to get my memories back,” I cut him off, my throat pulsing from all the tears I was holding. “I want to make new ones. Here. With you.”
“I want that too,” he reassured me. “But I still think we need to take it slow. For your sake.”
At a loss for words, I relaxed into his embrace, staring over his shoulder at the fire through the metal screen, the fragmented view of the logs surrendering to the flames.
I had never done that. I had never given myself to anything so completely.
And that was all I wanted now. To give myself to him.
To be myself through him. Like heat came from log and flame.
Kai squeezed my shoulder to draw my attention, but in the shadow of pride I could not bring myself to pay him the tribute of looking back.
“I really want to make this work, Anya,” he whispered.
“So you said,” I muttered.
“But you didn’t say anything.”
Shaking, feeling something in me crack, I heaved, “Kai, I’m half in love with you already. And I did notice. At work. I did notice you notice me. I just… I didn’t want to admit it because… I don’t know, because I’m stupid.”
I tried to stand again, but he regathered me into his arms, his fingers prying mine away when I raised them to my eyes.
“Look at me,” he urged, and the more I resisted, the firmer his grip became, recapturing my wrists and twisting them down.
“Look at me, Anya. You’re not stupid. Please, don’t feel rejected.
I hate that I’m making you feel like this. ”
“I don’t feel rejected,” I croaked. “I’m just embarrassed.”
Gingerly, with a gentleness that broke me, he let go of my wrists and leaned in to press a kiss to my temple, his hand pillowing the side of my face. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, okay? I’m just asking for a little bit of time. That is all.”
“What are you so afraid of?” I asked, finally lifting my eyes to his.
He raked his teeth over his bottom lip, his face heating. “I guess I don’t want to be the person you chose because you didn’t have anyone else to choose. Because I’m one of the very few people that feel familiar to you.”
Needing the comfort of his closeness, I tucked my face in the crook of his neck as I confessed, “I’ve been wanting this for a very long time now. Long before that night.”
I felt him stiffen beneath me, his fingers, which had started tracing lines up and down my back, pausing at the knuckle of my spine. “What do you think happened that night?”
“I’m not sure,” I murmured. “But I think it’s connected to that word. Nostalgia.”
To my surprise, Kai’s expression grew hard, almost revengeful. “Anya,” he said sharply, “what if something seriously messed up happened during your last assessment? What if they did something to you?”
Rapidly, I shook my head, knowing well what he was about to say next. “No, I can’t go back to the Center, Kai. I was so scared. I was so… I thought I’d die in there.”
Slipping a hand over my nape, he brought my forehead to his. “Okay,” he said, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth as if to encourage me to do the same. “Okay. Let’s just forget about it for now, yes?”
I said nothing, and we lapsed into another tense silence.
I would have given anything to know what he was thinking of me then, of my very stubborn and somewhat unreasonable way of handling all of this.
But I couldn’t bring myself to ask, to restart this conversation and risk tainting even more of our moments together.
Clearing my throat, I cast a vague look at the table over my shoulder. “You think we can finish all of this?”
The smile he gave me was small and strained, his eyes melancholy-black. “I always cook way too much.”
“Let’s clean up,” I said, but the moment we stood, Kai took my hand in his and guided me back to the sofa.
“Sit,” he instructed. “I’ll do it.”
“But you cooked.”
“You cooked too.”
“I don’t think pouring olive oil on the salad counts as cooking, Kai.”
With exaggerated command, he pronounced, “Don’t move.”
Thanking him, I reclaimed the forgotten book and woolen blanket, and for a while I just skimmed through the pages, listening to Kai move around the kitchen.
Over the clamor of crockery, I could barely pick up the static coming from the radio, although now that I was focusing on it, the noise did seem to echo louder, harsher.
Curiously, I turned to look at it where it hid in the far corner of the room, its silver antenna glaring in the dim.
A sudden disorientation washed over me, as if I’d just woken up from a long afternoon nap.
For several moments I was unable to discern where or when I was.
The house slipped away from me. The sofa evanesced through the air, and the cushions beneath me dissolved one by one until I was floating in nameless, open space.
Breathless, I shut my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, and for a split second, the light filtering through my closed eyelids was not the orange of the fire. It was blue.
Blue.
Heart pounding, I shot up from the sofa and stumbled toward the exit. “Hey, Kai?” I called out, reaching with tremulous hands for my shoes. “I’m going to go outside for a bit.”
I heard his muffled “Okay” just before I shut the door behind me.
Shivering, I stepped onto the porch. The nightly mist was coming down in waves, and the clouds hung over the sky like a blanket, comforting and oppressive all at once.
The level of darkness was novel to me. There was no moon, no streetlights, no haze of neon signs, just a perfect, velvet-black void.
I grabbed the railing with both hands to steady myself and took a few deep, cathartic breaths.
In and out. In and out until I felt enough grounded to my surroundings that the pinpricks of panic settled down to a faint discomfort.
And then the door creaked open, and the gentle sound of Kai’s footsteps approaching alleviated even that.
“You’re going to freeze to death,” he said in a low, smiling tone of voice as he wrapped a blanket around me from behind.
Warmed and relieved, I leaned against his chest, surrendering to the sublime calm of his presence. “Thank you,” I sighed.
His arms banded around mine, his lips moving hot over the tip of my ear. “Is this okay? I feel like I can’t stop touching you.”
“I don’t want you to stop touching me,” I whispered to him. “You’re the only thing that makes sense to me anymore.”
“I know,” he said, and there was pain in his voice about it. Pain and sadness and longing because he didn’t know how to translate this feeling any more than I did.
“Kai?”
“Mm?”
“When you had your assessment, did they ask you that question about life being in your hand?”
“Yeah.”
“And what do you think? Is it in our hands? Or is it all just fate?”
He considered it for a moment, the breath of his body moving us both as I rested the back of my head on his shoulder.
“I think fate is just the feeling you get when you finally figure out how you want to live your life. A sense of purpose that gives meaning to an otherwise pretty pointless existence.”
“So it’s in our hands,” I decided.
“I think so,” he agreed. “We hold it, and we decide what to make of it.”
“And what happens when you unclench your fist?” I wondered.
“You don’t,” he said, and as if to underline the words, he tightened his arms around me.
“Never?”
“Never. You keep your fist clenched. And the more painful it gets, the harder you grasp it.”
Above, the clouds separated from each other just enough for a sliver of moon to appear, spotlight-bright in the absolute darkness. That was who Kai was to me. A radiant celestial object, tirelessly pushing through the unknowable black of my life.