by A. S. Kelly
I was about to lay my heart down by telling him my real feelings.
—
AARON
“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she says, raising her chin and crossing her arms almost in challenge. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m grown up. I’m twenty-two years old and I’m a woman,” she concludes, leaving me and shutting herself off in the bathroom.
I let myself fall down on the bed, grabbing my head in my hands.
The problem is that I have noticed and I’m acutely aware that she’s no longer a child, that she’s grown, grown a bit too womanly to tell the truth. She was undressing in front of me and… shit. I can’t even tell you when was the last time that a woman got undressed in front of me.
I shake my head and try to chase away that absurd thought. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten to her when I did, and I don’t even want to think about it, because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
Of course I know she’s playing tough with me and, after all, that’s what she is. She’s stubborn and always has been, even as a child. But I know it’s all a sham and that she’s still shaken up inside.
I know that sensation by heart.
After a few minutes she comes out of the bathroom. She’s washed her face and there’s no trace of the make-up that had been running down under her eyes and over her cheeks. Her face is clean and simple and her big clear eyes are red and still display the fear she is trying to hide.
She must have cried a lot.
I close the distance between us as she looks for something in the closet. I lean my head on her shoulder and breathe in the scent of her hair.
The scent of a woman.
“Excuse me,” I tell her, before allowing myself to touch her skin again, this time without retracting. She is breathing heavier now but keeps her shoulders to me and so I gather my courage, battle the fear, anxiety and every other scary emotion that’s going through me right now. Because I need it.
Right now.
I need to touch her.
I wrap my arms around her waist from behind, pulling her towards me, mixing her scent with mine and once again I am filled with that same emotion which forces me to close my eyes.
I keep holding her close to me, fighting against the demons that have been living in my soul, fighting against my own mind and heart.
I want her.
I want to feel her.
I need to feel a body next to mine.
Her body.
I rest my head on her shoulder breathing in the skin on her neck that is calling to my lips like bees to honey, hoping and praying that I don’t have a heart attack on the spot, because I’m telling you, that’s what this feels like.
“I would never allow anything to happen to you, Ciara,” I whisper in her ear. “As long as I’ll be here. Nothing.” I sigh and I know full well I’m not saying this because Patrick is her brother and my best friend and because I’ve seen her grow up right under my nose from the day she was born.
I’m saying it because I really think it, because my instinct to protect her comes from someplace deeper and more intimate. It’s something that needs room to grow and is clawing its way to come to light. It’s so deep within me that I’m not able to weed it out.
Because I need to feel once again something that goes beyond this trench I hide in, that pushes past that barbed wire that protects my heart and the wall that I’ve built around myself. Something that brings me back among the living, real living and that stirs me up, heart and soul.
And that something, damn it, only comes out when I’m around her.
•••
We get in the car and sit in silence for ten minutes. She just looks out the window. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt and she’s holding herself, arms clasped around her cardigan almost as if she wanted to protect herself.
“Are you sure you don’t want to say anything to Patrick about this?” I ask her again.
She nods her head without looking at me.
“You should talk with someone.”
“How about you?” she asks, turning suddenly to look at me with a hard, tired expression.
I sit up, ramrod straight in the seat and meet the eyes that are piercing me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh please, Aaron. Let’s not play around. I was on that roof too.”
The roof. I knew sooner or later that would come up.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Are you sure about that? You were having a panic attack. Has it ever happened before?”
“It was just a few minutes. Really, it was nothing.”
“It scared me,” she says, lowering her voice and I can feel my chest knotting up.
“I’m sorry. It certainly wasn’t my intention to scare you.”
“I was worried about you.”
She was worried about me? Once again, I can’t think of the last time anyone has expressed a similar sentiment.
“There’s nothing for you to worry about, Ciara,” I assure her. “And then, these are… adult things.”
What a dumb thing to say, I realize the minute I hear myself say it.
“And what am I? Let’s hear it? Am I a child?”
“I didn’t mean to imply that,” I try to walk-back my stupid remark but by now, the damage has been done.
“I’m not a fucking child, Aaron! I’m twenty-two years old and I’ll be graduating very soon, you know that, right? I work, I paint, I study and I have a very active sex life!” she yells at me in anger.
Sex life? Very active?
Too Much Information. I really didn’t need to know that.
I turn to look at her and by the grace of God I’m just about able to avoid causing a chain reaction of car accidents. I am able to turn into a residential street just in time and pull into the first available parking space. I switch off the ignition and turn to her again.
“You… you…” The words die in my throat.
She shouldn’t even have a sex life.
“What? You thought I was going to remain a little girl forever? Well, I’ve got news for you, Aaron. I’m a woman and I have had relationships, and I’ll go one better—I’m in a relationship right now, and he is an exceptional lover. It’s nothing serious, just unrestrained sex and sweat and…”
I cover my ears with my hands like a little boy that doesn’t want to hear the truth, but it’s not enough because the words ‘sex’ and ‘unrestrained’ have almost exploded my eardrums.
“Stop it!” I yell at her. “I cannot listen to you speaking about these things.”
“Ah no? How come, Aaron? You’re not my brother. Shouldn’t bother you what I do in my free time and who I fuck—”
“Knock it off! Don’t say that word again.”
“Which one? Fuck?”
“Ciara, please.”
“Fuck… Fuck… Fuck…”
This is really too much.
I look at her as she challenges me with raised eyebrows and a rage that has darkened her face in flames. She says it again stretching out each one of the letters in the word “f-u-c-k” and my self control goes out the window.
I grab her face in my hands and pull her to me. I look at her for an instant and before she can say anything her lips are on mine.
I am shocked, frozen and immobile.
And terrified.
She bites them a little to force me to open my mouth, but I keep them closed and cold.
But Ciara doesn’t give up.
She runs her tongue over my lips and a moan escapes me that I am unable to restrain, making her smile, greatly satisfied with her own efforts.
By now, she’s got me in the palm of her hand.
A moment later her tongue slides into my mouth, searching for mine and at this point I can’t do anything less than follow her lead, completely overwhelmed by the excitement that is invading my entire body.
She puts her hands in my hair, pullin
g it according to her movements while she has her way with me because I am no longer in control.
Ciara is the one dictating the rules.
She breaks off slowly, sucking my lower lip, she looks at me and lets her hands run down my beard before coming back to me and shaking the foundations of my existence.
I let her kiss me.
I let her in and take something away with her.
I let her take a piece of me.
And what I feel while I’m tasting her lips is pure adrenalin, it’s fire, it’s life that has sparked off something in me that I honestly thought had been swept away forever.
6
CIARA
“Fuck!” I say furiously.
Who the hell does he think he is, telling me what to do?
His eyes burn the moment in which that word vibrates on my lips.
Anger? Disappointment?
No, it’s something else.
And so I throw the gauntlet down and say it again—maintaining eye contact and flagrantly flaunting my determination.
If this thing is going to drag me down, I’m taking him with me.
Aaron impulsively grabs my face and draws me towards him. He looks at me, lost. He’s confused, he doesn’t know what to do so I decide to go to him, to take this occasion and take a leap, live for the moment.
I try kissing him, but he’s scared, shocked and frozen like he’s been struck by a bolt of lightning.
So, I bite him to force him to cooperate with me. But he does not.
That man is just as stubborn as I am.
I run my tongue over his lips and he emits a suffering sound that leads him to open his mouth and in that moment he concedes to me, allowing me to enter his mouth in search of his tongue. I now realize I had no idea what it means to kiss a man, a real man.
The only man that I want.
He relaxes and lets go of my face, bringing one hand behind my nape, drawing me closer to him and if there wasn’t the gear lever between us I would have already been on his lap.
He’s flushed with desire… that’s what it was.
I take his face in my hands and I hold myself to him because I want to feel him as close as possible to me, I want his heat that is overwhelming me to take possession. I run my hands through his hair, I mess it up and pull on it, wrapped up in the moment, by the excitement and the restlessness I feel vibrating all over my body.
Kissing Aaron is a tempest of emotions that come down over me in destructive fury, breaking me in two, but then putting me back together a second later, just in time to feel his big hot hands in my hair.
As I sit here hoping this kiss will never end, Aaron suddenly breaks away from me as if he has only just now realized what he was doing. His eyes flash wide in terror, before opening the car door and getting out as if the car was on fire.
I sit in confusion, trying to get my breath back without having the courage to go follow him, but then he drops to the ground with his head in his hands and I have a feeling we’re about to revisit the scene on the roof.
I open the door and get out, trying to pull myself together, hoping the cool night air will help extinguish the ardent fire that is still burning within me. I go to him and kneel down at his side.
“Aaron?” I lift up his head to force him to look at me and the desire that I previously saw flooding his eyes has disappeared, giving way to confusion and disorientation.
“Everything’s okay,” I assure him.
He shakes his head. No.
“How could I have done that? What the fuck is going on my head?” he pants. “Patrick is going to kill me!”
“Patrick doesn’t always has to know everything,” I say bitterly.
“He’s my friend, one of the best friends I’ve got. How could I have taken advantage of his sister like that?”
“Now Patrick is the problem? And let’s be clear about this. You didn’t kiss me. I kissed you!”
“But I didn’t stop you from doing it, did I? What kind of person am I? You’re still a little girl and I…”
“A little girl? Is that what you think of me?” I scream at him.
“You misunderstood me,” he says, jumping to his feet. “That’s not what I meant.”
“And what did you intend to say? Come on, let’s have it?”
Aaron and I play out the scene, screaming at each other in the middle of the street as the rain starts to fall.
“I haven’t been a little girl for quite some time now, Aaron!”
“You think I don’t know that?” he admits, shaking his head dejectedly, his eyes cast down. “But it’s hard for me to think of you as—”
“—As a woman to be desired?”
“Never say it again!” He points his finger at me. “I could never think of you in that way.”
“Why not? I’m not attractive enough for you? I’m not sexy?”
“Please stop!” He comes closer. “I can’t do this, don’t you understand? I saw you grow up and… you’re… you’re his sister!”
“And Rain? Isn’t she your sister? And it doesn’t appear to me that Liam has caused all of these problems about his relationship with her.”
“It’s different. I’m not Liam and you’re not Rain.”
“No, that’s true. I’m Ciara, I’m just Ciara. I’m not Patrick’s little sister nor am I someone who needs to be protected. I’m not something you need to take care of, Aaron. I’m just Ciara, and it appears that’s not enough for you.”
“It’s not like that,” he says with a sigh.
I come in closer and caress his face. I look at him with determination, confident and at the same time terrorized, because I’m throwing myself in the arms of a man I’ve idolized most of my life, Prince Charming personified, even without the horse, and I never thought he’d look at me that way, like he’s looking at me right now, as if I am the woman he wants.
“It’s true you’re not a little girl, but you are young—too young for me. And you know that I think of you like a sister.”
I let go of his face and take a few steps back.
“It was a moment of weakness for me,” he says. “It won’t happen again, I promise you.”
I nod and swallow hard, and the disappointment of his refusal burns in me, despite the fact that I’m shivering in the freezing rain that’s beating down on us.
I get back in the car, well aware that I pushed the limit and have now ruined everything. Because once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, there’s no going back.
—
AARON
I park in the alley by the house and turn off the engine. We haven’t spoken since we got back in the car and the guilt is slowly killing me.
Ciara opens the car door and slams it. Then she opens the boot to grab her things and heads towards the house.
I take a big breath but am unable to fill my lungs with the necessary air. It’s going to take a lot more than a few deep breaths to get me out of this situation.
I join her and open the door, turn the alarm off and put on the lights.
“I’m going upstairs to get changed, there’s no need to wait for me,” she says drily. “You can get back to your adult things now.” She goes up the stairs and disappears from view.
My good sense says I should take her advice and get the heck out of here and distance myself from the very idea of her, of her mouth on mine, of our bodies so close together.
But how can I forget the way she tastes? How can I forget the feeling of having someone in my arms?
I shake my head and inhale deeply. I can’t leave things like this, I have to clear the air before things get too big and irreversible. Problems need to be nipped in the bud so that they don’t become insurmountable.
I can’t let her fantasise about something that can never be, compromise our relationship and ruin everything.
So I force myself to climb the stairs with my heart in my throat and a strange agitation in my legs. I knock on Erin and Patrick’s door, where she entered just now, but ther
e’s no answer. I push it open and see her bag on the floor and some clothes thrown on the bed. I hear the shower going in the other room and I force every single instinct to remain exactly where it is, well hidden under my skin, but the thought of her under the shower gives me an instant erection, the like of which I haven’t had in a very long time.
I am seriously losing control.
I pace like a lion in a cage around the room, fists clenched and breathing with a bit of difficulty because the desire to have her right now is beating me mercilessly, simultaneously I’m overwhelmed by all the qualms I had.
The water stops running and I can hear her moving around in the bathroom. Maybe she’s wrapping herself up in a towel, maybe she’s combing her hair, maybe she’s naked, wet and terribly excited.
The door opens briskly and she freezes in the doorway, looking at me intensely as if she could read very plainly all of the thoughts I was just having about her body. She’s just wrapped in a towel which just barely covers her most intimate parts, with wet hair falling around her face, without a hint of make-up in all of her natural beauty.
I close the distance between us with slow, uncertain steps. She doesn’t move a muscle, does not change expression; she’s punishing me in silence and I can’t blame her. I just told her that there could be nothing between us, that she was just a little girl and that I would never touch her again in my life.
All fucking lies.
Because I would skin myself for this. Because in front of me I see a woman sexy enough to make my knees bend. Because all I want now is to touch her, hold her and have her. Have this woman. For me.
When we are just a few breaths away from one another, Ciara tilts her head slightly, trying to understand my intentions which I think are evident even to the walls in this room.
With a hand shaking in emotion and something else that feels like a desperation to feel something for someone, I touch her face, closing in on her lips.
