by A. S. Kelly
As if the only thing she cares about in this moment is me.
Is it really possible for a girl this young and beautiful, so sunny and full of life, to have fallen in love with me?
The water turns off and it’s with great difficulty that I try to think clearly.
“Ciara…”
“Shh!” she hushes me with a finger to her lips.
She gets out of the shower, dripping water everywhere while she looks for a towel to wrap me in.
She’s strong, confidant. She’s a wonderful woman, absolutely perfect.
And what am I?
A weak coward. A man who is damaged, body and soul.
She wraps the towel around me and as she’s trying to keep me warm she shakes like a leaf. I open the towel and wrap her up with me in my arms and my heart, which I had feared lost forever in a black hole, starts beating strongly to remind me what I feel for this woman… God, it’s love.
We stay embraced like that for a while in silence, both wrapped up in the same towel, counting out heartbeats and breaths. Then I break away from her and wrap the towel around just her because I no longer need it. There is no other warmth I want to feel other than her body. I take her hand and bring her to my room. I sit on the bed and pull her to me and make her sit on my legs and breathe in her scent which is the only air I want in my lungs by now. Then I take off the towel and lay her by my side. We get under the covers and I hold her as tight as I can. Her head is up against my chest and I kiss her hair and take in her scent, breathing in so deeply without a pain in my chest.
After such a long time, I find myself touching a woman’s body, this woman, who is able to wake something dormant in me, to open my eyes and my mind and make me question my way of living until now.
The words coming from the stereo left on in the bathroom are the only ones I can hear.
What if you stay and… Break your plans tonight… Lay your hand in mine… There’s no guarantee we’ll make it, make this thing right… But break your plans for me tonight.
This night needs nothing else. I don’t want to think about anything other than her hands entwined in my heart. I don’t need words, promises or comfort.
All I need is the heat from this embrace and the understanding it brings. There is no magic formula to make this all work out the right way.
It’s not possible to choose who you love and how to love them.
I’m learning it first-hand right now.
I’m learning it thanks to her.
We fall into love, we roll around in it, then we get up and fall back down again. And every time we fall, it’s more devastating than the time before. We carry the marks it leaves on our souls and our skin for all the rest of our lives.
But that’s no reason to stop trying.
Because without love, what the devil are we? What I have I been all these years?
I should have understood that once I crossed that line that it would be impossible to go back to how things were before.
We’re no longer talking about Patrick’s sister. We’re not talking about a simple friendship.
Now, we’re talking about the woman that I love.
I was bent and damaged but from the cracks in my heart, the light has managed to penetrate.
And there’s no way to darken that light now.
18
CIARA
I am lying down next to Aaron, body against body. I got undressed in front of him, took off my clothes and every other thing because I want him to really see me for the first time.
Aaron holds me to his side and continues rubbing my hair and breathing in my skin. It’s a feeling of being wrapped up in warmth. It’s both intense and reassuring.
There is no desire between us right now, there is no unbridled passion. There is mutual understanding and a need to hold one another with great tenderness.
He’s calm now and his breathing has gone back to normal.
He hasn’t said anything, he’s let me take care of him, and the fact that I saw him in his moment of greatest need is enough for me. He trusted me, and opened his heart to me and let me in. That’s all I asked for.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair.
“Don’t even say that as a joke. All of us have our moments.”
“Well, it sure seems like I’ve had a lot of them lately, and always when you’re around. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He sighs in frustration.
“You’ve been too strict with yourself and now you’re paying the consequences.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask nervously, biting my lip.
“There’s not a lot to say.”
“If you don’t feel like it, it’s not important, I just thought it might be good for you.”
“Talking about it isn’t going to change things between us, Ciara.” His words punch me again right in the chest, and even though I’m in love with him, even if I would like to help him, I’m not willing to let him break my heart.
I break away from his arms and the cold hits me immediately. I get out of the bed, pick up the towel left on the floor, wrapping it around me with the intention of leaving the room.
He doesn’t want me. He’ll never want me. It’s useless for me to go on hurting myself like this.
“Ciara, please…”
“That’s enough,” I reply dryly, turning to face him but my apparent self-confidence vanishes in an instant the moment we make eye contact and I see him lost again.
He gets up too, completely nude and the sight of him, like a well-defined statue standing before me, provokes an ache between my legs. He comes close to me, and draws me to him, closing his eyes.
“I’m begging you,” he whispers. “We’re still in time.”
“In time for what?”
“To stop. We just have a few seconds, Ciara, a few damned seconds because when I open my eyes again and see you there…” He sighs in frustration. “I won’t be able to keep my hands off of you.”
I don’t care if he locks me in here with a key!
He really wants me.
“You want me?” I ask him before his eyes are able to confirm what I never would have imagined. “But you refused me. You told me it was all a mistake, that I was like a sister to you, that—”
“It was all fucking lies.”
I’m not sure of anything anymore, I couldn’t even swear to you that my name is Ciara. When he looks at me with those lost eyes my brain just does something funny.
I wasn’t born yesterday and I’m not so young that I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve had a couple of ‘friends with benefits’ situations, but I’ve never yet had any serious relationships. I like having my independence without any ties or complications, as I’ve waited to finally take flight.
I’ve had relationships of little importance, something to distract myself, something that would help me avoid obsessing over him all the time, which was not healthy for me. He’s made me cry alone in my room on many a night.
I take a deep breath, ready to make my move, knowing that I risk hurting myself, again. Because until yesterday, this was just a dream for me. One of those impossible Don Quixote-type dreams. It consumed my days and my nights knowing that I couldn’t convert it into reality. Now, instead, here I am and it’s quickly becoming real and scary. If I jump over this obstacle with both feet, there will be no turning back for me.
Because this is my dream come true.
Aaron, the boy I’ve loved since I was thirteen years old, is here. And he’s here for me.
I run my nails over his back, scratching his contracted muscles under my fingers. Aaron lets out a moan that echoes in the silence of the room and that provokes a heat that flashes through my body.
I hold myself to him and I can feel his erection against my waist.
“Tell me,” he whispers, his breath hot on my neck, pulling my hair to the side with his hand. “I need to hear you say it. I need to hear you say that
you want me, now.”
Oh God, does he really need to hear it?
“I… I want you,” I whisper, hardy audibly, overcome as I am with emotion that is closing up my throat.
“No, that won’t do,” he says, making fun of me. His voice vibrates on my skin.
He slides a hand under the towel and caresses my side, sliding down to my bottom and squeezing against my warm skin.
I think I’m going to pass out in a few seconds.
“I want you… every part of you,” I tell him, lifting my head to look at him.
“God… Ciara!” He quivers, resting his forehead against mine.
“Tell me again, please.”
His confidence wavers a second and I feel him shaking under my fingers. This man is fragile and vulnerable.
Despite the fact that he’s dedicated his life to others, despite the fact that he’s always been there for everyone else, he is a man alone and he’s insecure about his own needs. He needs me. He needs me to take control now and he needs me to take care of him, of his body, his mind and his soul.
Of all of him.
“I want every part of you. Show me who you are, Aaron. Allow me to look into your heart and to take care of it.”
And with timid eyes Aaron draws his mouth to mine. I feel his fear of letting go on his lips, I taste his torment and I let it inside me and get mixed up with my desire to protect him and keep him safe from the storm and grant him a haven where he feels safe, secure and loved.
He wraps me in his arms and lifts me up before setting me down in the middle of his bed. He takes a moment to look at me, passing his hands through my hair.
“Come here,” I say.
“Tell me that I’m making a mistake, that I shouldn’t…”
I pull myself up and give him my hand. “Aaron… Come to me now. I just want to love you.”
His eyes are full of emotion and transmit all of the tenderness of his soul and his heart which are both, perhaps, lost at this moment or covered by a fog. But I’m here to uncover them and to show them to the world.
To show them to him.
He accepts my hand and kneels down on the bed, then he pulls me towards him, making me sit on his lap.
“Tomorrow we’re going to regret this.”
“We’ll think about it tomorrow.”
“Promise me you won’t Ciara, because I couldn’t stand it.”
“I could never regret doing this with you, Aaron, even if you broke my heart,” I tell him in all sincerity, because it’s the truth.
Even if tomorrow morning he wakes up saying it was all a mistake and that he feels nothing for me, I couldn’t do it.
I could never renounce the man I love.
—
AARON
I throw the towel on to the floor. Her body brushing against mine makes me lose that last bit of control that I was clinging to.
I watch her and fill my eyes with the sight of her: eyes, head, soul.
And heart.
She takes my nape in her hands and pulls me towards her chest, silently asking me to put my head there between her full, tense breasts. Afraid that it might squash my heart I brush one with my lips. I’m hesitant to touch her, to kiss her, to really have her. She’s too precious to be contaminated by some useless man like me.
“Aaron,” she whispers. “Please!”
I let myself go to her, I let myself be transported by her caresses and her warm voice. I breathe in her scent before taking one of her nipples between my lips, making her moan right into my ear.
I am so hard and excited that just hearing her like that would almost be enough to make me come.
I caress her back as she scratches mine with her nails and it seems like she’s penetrated not only my skin but my worthless soul.
“Ciara…” I moan into her chest as she wraps her legs around my waist, folding them behind my back. The pain I feel between my legs in unbearable, I’d like to get some relief but I want to take all the time I can before the new day gets here, to taste what her skin is like and never to forget it again.
I free her from my arms and I make her lie down on my bed. I lie next to her and my hand runs down her soft body: neck, chest, stomach before stopping between her legs, a soft place which seems to go ablaze just by my touching it.
Ciara arches her back and the way she gives herself to me, and not just physically, fills my emptiness and covers each piece that was left under the shadows like a lawn full of daisies under the summer sun.
I touch her and she moans again, whispering my name.
How is she able to say it in that way?
She opens her eyes and looks at me intensely while I move between her legs, excited but trembling. I haven’t touched a woman’s body in a year and I’m full to the hilt of emotions, desire and frustration. I’m terrified that I won’t be able to contain myself and I don’t want her to think I’m some vicious bastard that was just looking for a way between her legs. In reply, she rests her hand over mine, causing me to move and her confidence makes me feel like a jackass: a man unable to love a woman as she deserves to be loved.
I go to her mouth and lick her lower lip as she opens hers to let me in. I devour her, almost not allowing her to breathe as my fingers get lost in her heat.
Ciara lets herself go completely, throwing her arms above her head and continuing to look at me. It excites me even more and at the same time makes me nervous about a disaster here in the sheets.
“Aaron…” My name vibrates on her lips.
“Say it again.”
She doesn’t deny me because as I move my fingers deep within her she repeats my name again and again.
The sensation of her body shaking and her innermost core contracting under my hand leaves me no escape. I have to feel her.
Now.
I don’t let her catch her breath because in a few seconds I invade her body, entering her without hesitation.
“I’m not able to resist you,” I confess, pushing myself all the way in. “God… I can’t…” I let slip and place an elbow near her head to avoid crushing her under my weight.
“Don’t hold back for me, Aaron. I want you exactly as you are.”
She could not have said anything more right, more erotic and tender all at the same time.
How is this woman able to understand, to see beyond what everyone else sees and always say the right thing just when I need to hear it?
She holds me tightly to her, making me lose my balance, falling on her. She holds on to my arms and wraps her legs around my back, raising her hips to meet me, trapping me in a painful, exciting way.
“I want to feel you… I want to feel all of you.”
I push inside her, transported by passion, wrapped in her body and her warmth. I’m able to feel her sex contracting against mine. Her delicate scent mixes with mine and with the aromas of sex.
“God!… Aaron!” she cries, scratching my back and looking me right in the eyes, maintaining this contact with me, uniting us, not just in body.
The idea of finding me so close to someone, so in harmony with someone, leads me to push harder and faster because I am exploding with desire, sexual frustration and something else I don’t know how to name.
But it’s not enough for me.
I need to touch her, to feel every curve, every detail, every fucking centimeter under my hands.
I need to feel that she’s mine.
I pull myself up and pull her with me, making her sit on my lap. She puts her hands in my hair and pulls on it forcefully, seducing me with her open mouth on mine, hot and sensual. When I feel her tongue searching for mine with insistence I grab her hips and I push my hard, throbbing cock into her.
To be inside her again.
Ciara grabs my shoulders as I hide my face in her chest, tormenting her breasts with my tongue and my teeth, a complete slave to her body that is burning under my hands.
She moves with confidence on me as I squeeze her bottom, encouraging her movement and
biting her lips in escape because by now, I’ve completely lost myself in her.
Ciara arches backwards and throws her head back so that her hair cascades down her back, offering me a view of her neck and chest, and it makes me push hard, dropping my head onto her chest and letting me enjoy the orgasm that is bubbling up painfully from within me. It’s blinding. Her screams come a few seconds after that and her nails dig back into the skin on my shoulders as her body vibrates against mine.
Her head falls now to my shoulder, panting and shaking and I slide my hands down her sweaty back, allowing myself this intimate moment between us.
She breaks away from me slowly. There’s not a hint of embarrassment or regret in her eyes. She smiles at me, confident and satisfied and I can’t help bringing my mouth back to hers and capturing her in a kiss that bonds this unforgettable moment which I will savor for the rest of my life.
She falls back onto the bed and I slump over her as if this young woman had to bear all of my weight and everything I’m carrying with me.
And it’s a scary feeling because I never would have wanted for her to get dragged down in all of this, which is too much for her.
But it’s too late now. I’ve got Ciara under my skin. She’s part of my bloodstream now and I don’t think I’m able to detoxify by this point.
Not after having discovered what it means to make love with someone who, overnight, has become the other half of my soul.
19
CIARA
I wake up disturbed by the light that passes through the heavy curtains in Aaron’s room. I feel a heavy weight on my chest and realize as I lift my head that he’s blissfully asleep on my left breast.
I move just slightly and he rolls onto his back, lifting his arm over his head.
I let my fingers run down his face, along his chest and abdomen, then run along his pectoral muscles, provoking his involuntary smile.
He’s covered up to his waist with his V-line just visible as it disappears under the sheet.
