by A. S. Kelly
It’ll pass, I tell myself, even if that seems quite impossible at the moment.
I stand up, intent on going back to the house and trying to get some sleep. I clean my hands the best I can using the drop cloth and I turn off the music.
I go to the up-and-over garage door that was left ajar to let in the pleasant sound of the quiet rainfall, when it is opened quite briskly from the outside, making me jump back in panic.
The door stops at halfway up and someone stoops down to pass under it and closes it again. He stops moving, embarrassed and clumsy, his hands jammed in his pockets.
“What are you doing here?” I ask sharply, turning my back to him to avoid showing him how shaky I am.
“Why didn’t you come to the pub?”
He ignores my question.
“I was busy,” I say unconvincingly, although I feel myself falling like the pieces in a child’s game of dominos, falling piece after piece.
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Okay, that means I’ll do the talking.”
He steps towards me and all of my senses go haywire. His scent infests my mind and the very sound of him breathing so close to my face sends my senses into overdrive.
“I’m not a good talker, I never have been,” Aaron says. “See, I’m a person who reacts to things. I base my beliefs on fact and on convictions that were sacred to me until yesterday. My whole life went to hell a long time ago, Ciara. I lost my parents, I almost lost Rain… And my music, the only thing that kept me on two feet. And then there was the woman I told you about. She left me empty, arid and hopeless. I was in love with her but I didn’t know how to keep her close to me, I wasn’t able to give her what she needed. She accused me of not having enough to give. She told me I’d never have enough to give any woman and I believed her because I was hurt, in pieces and completely alone. I thought I wasn’t cut out for these things, that I couldn’t handle a relationship, a real, romantic, intense melding of two lives together.”
“Don’t talk to me about her.”
“I need to because it’s important for you to understand how much this terrorizes me.”
“What ‘this’ are you referring to?” I say, confused.
“Me and you.”
“There is no ‘me and you’, Aaron. We had a night of sex. We can put it in the archives and pretend like nothing happened.”
“I can’t do that.”
I watch him move in, dangerously close to my lips.
“I can’t help wanting these lips.” He brushes them slightly with his own and I feel my legs tremble. “Not after knowing how they taste.” He kisses my cheek before going down to my neck and breathing me in. “I can’t live without your scent. I want to feel it on me every day,” he whispers against my sensitive skin. “What if I told you that I already miss it, more than the air I breathe, all of it? That I miss everything about you.”
It feels like I’m trying to swallow a rock as Aaron talks quietly into my ear. His voice is like a fire that burns all of my instincts. I turn my head so that our lips meet and the second the heat of his mouth mixes with mine, I give up all of my defences.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer to me. Aaron lifts me up and I wrap my legs around him, he pushes me against the wall and presses his body against mine.
“I miss you,” he sighs on my lips. “I’d like to have you around, to see you at the pub, for you to bum around my house. I’d like to be able to kiss you in front of everyone, hold your hand and fall asleep with you in my arms. I’d like to tell you all the things you deserve to hear. I really would…” He caresses my face and lets a finger drop to my lip. “I adore your mouth, your blatant smile and your absurd pink hair.” He smiles. “I adore all of your colors, the light that stems from you, your dreams. I adore every damn thing about you, Ciara.”
I squeeze my grip around his waist and put my hands in his hair, pulling him to me.
This time it’s me who devours his mouth.
He wraps me completely in his arms as I go on nibbling his lips, looking insistently for his tongue and breathing him in.
He takes a few steps in the direction of the table where my colors and paintbrushes are without pulling away from me. With the sweep of an arm, he brushes everything that was on the table off of it, setting me down.
“God, Ciara,” he pants, breaking away from me slightly. “I’m not able to control myself when we’re in the same room. Do you understand what you’ve done to me? I can’t keep my mind off of you… You have become my obsession. When it comes to you, I’m not able to be rational.” He runs his shaking hands over my curves covered by my clothes and my body reacts by catching fire. “I can’t resist touching you.”
I bite his lower lip and he moans, hoarse and sensual, right into my mouth.
“Please Ciara… I need it. Right now. I need to feel that you’re mine.”
—
AARON
hat I came here for. I didn’t want to make her mine here, on the table in the basement—but looking at her, her eyes, that mouth… Everything about her turned me on in one second.
I need to have her, to feel her inside of me and to know that she wants me too. If I don’t have her I’ll lose my mind.
“I need to feel that you’re mine,” I tell her impulsively, with my heart going a mile a minute.
She grabs my shirt and rips it off in an instant and when I realize this is her response to my request, I do lose control over my body, my mind and my damned heart.
“Ciara,” I breath the words in her face. “Are you sure?”
She slides a hand down to my painful erection and squeezes it through my jeans, forcing me to give a moan of suffering.
I cannot resist any longer.
I take off her top and plunge my head between her breasts to do away with that useless bra in one efficient bite.
I bite through the fabric and Ciara arches her back to me, allowing a heavy sigh to escape her lips. I back away to remove her leggings and she lets me, holding my gaze impatiently.
I grab her legs and drag her to me, making her push up against my erection that is begging to be freed.
Ciara must have read my thoughts because her hands go straight to the buttons on my jeans, opening them quickly and putting her hands inside my boxer shorts to squeeze my hard, pulsating member.
“Jesus!” I cry as her cold hands make contact with my hot skin.
Ciara comes closer to me, wrapping me up in her legs. I close my eyes instinctively and hold myself up on the table to avoid crumpling to the floor as she goes on touching me slowly and sensually.
I caress her over her underwear as she breathes on my collar. I slide a finger under the fabric and into her. Feeling her heat does something to me that I don’t have words for.
I remove her panties, I grab her hips and enter her with a deep thrust. She grabs onto my shoulders and moans in my ear.
I can’t stop myself, I can’t control myself, I cannot wait.
I sink into her, full and deep, holding her tightly in place by the hips and with every push, I feel a little part of me leaving me forever. It’s going out of me and becoming part of her.
I kiss her neck, her shoulder and drop down to her chest where that familiar scent of her luscious skin welcomes me back. I taste her with hunger and impatience, biting her over the fabric before lying her down on the table. My fevered hands run over her before resting firmly on her hips.
She grabs the edge of the table behind her, fully enjoying each of my thrusts. I grab her ass and dive into her repeatedly and she abandons herself to my hands and my urgency.
“I need you to be mine, Aaron,” she whispers before letting herself go to pleasure and with a final deep push, I come inside of her, washing her over with my heat and all of the things I am unable to say.
I drop my head to her chest, breathing with difficulty as she runs a hand gently over my back all the way up and down again. After a few min
utes of silence, I squeeze my arms around her and kiss her shoulder.
“Ciara…I…”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to, believe me.”
“I know. One day, but not today.”
I lower my head in shame in front of this woman who is so sure of herself, one of a kind and so absurdly fabulous that I wouldn’t change a hair on her head, no minimal detail, because Ciara is a force of nature, she is light and life itself and I just want to be next to that, to be the man she deserves, the man she can love and who will love her.
I would like to, to try and change what I am but it’s so hard and I don’t know if I’ll be able to put my past behind me and live this love with her.
I move out of the way to let her gather herself in heavy silence and full of a sense of insecurity that surrounds us.
She gets dresses and pulls up her messy hair into a ponytail before looking at me.
“I don’t want to hear you say something now that you could later regret. When you are ready to let your heart do the talking, I’ll be willing to listen to your voice.”
“I can’t go on like this. Not after having been inside of you.”
Her eyes hang over me with a threatening air, pinning me into the corner of the room.
“I can help you get over your fear, I can stay by your side and squeeze you when you’re feeling alone. I can love you. I can do all of that for you, and maybe a lot more, but I can’t do it if you refuse to let me get near you, if you don’t trust me. I can’t decide for you, Aaron.”
I nod and bite the inside of my lip before speaking too much. She’s offering me a way out without being forced to say, here and now, what I have on my lips, but am unable to completely let go of.
I gather myself as well, picking up my shirt from the ground and slipping it on against my will.
“I’m sorry Ciara, you can’t imagine how sorry I am. You deserve everything. You deserve a complete man who is sure of himself, not a fucking coward. I want to be that man, honestly, I do. I want to be that for you.”
I caress her face and kiss her forehead before leaving the garage and her life one more time, after having taken everything and given nothing in return.
And I get in the car and sit behind the wheel without moving for at least ten minutes, trying to analyze these last moments here tonight.
I came here to talk to her, to apologize, to tell her what an ass I am and then… I jumped her, again.
She is giving me everything, she is allowing me to act like the biggest of all assholes and she’s giving me time to figure out what it is that I really want.
And I took advantage of the situation, her body and her heart because I know that she loves me. I see it in her eyes every time I look at her and with every kiss and every push inside of her.
Her love is bright and beautiful.
Mine must become so.
23
CIARA
I watch him close the garage door. I hear him open his car door and then hear it shut again. I hesitate with an impatient heart, hoping that he’ll turn back on his tracks, that he’ll break into my garage and take me in his arms and tell me that he’s finally realized that he loves me and he can’t do without me.
The minutes go by painfully slowly and with them, creativity disappears, swallowed up by the solitude and silence that is hovering around me.
I gave myself to him completely. He asked me to be his and I conceded, fool of this love and of this stupid hope to have him for myself.
I hold my arms around my waist and give in to my discomfort. He’s gone, taking all of my dreams with him. I let him go because I want him to be free to choose and he didn’t feel an obligation to stay with me or say the words I hope for just because we made love again—in my safe spot, my hiding place that I’ll never be able to look at again the same way after tonight.
With my trembling heart and my stomach in butterflies I decide to go to the house and go to bed where I will surely pass the rest of the night flushing out all the remaining tears that are in me. I collect my brushes that are strewn about the floor and go to shut the garage door tightly when I hear a dull thud from outside that makes me jump back.
I wait there, frozen in place, biting my lip, hoping that he’ll appear before me but when the door opens, it’s not the man I was hoping to see before me coming into my garage.
“Hi,” he greets me as he pulls the hood off his head.
I shiver at the sound of that voice that now seems distorted and devoid of any of its former kindness.
“Judging by the silence and the darkness all around it would appear that by now everyone’s gone. There’s only you here. Or to put it better, there’s only you and me.”
I step back away from him when he grabs my arm forcefully.
“Is it possible that you still haven’t understood?”
I swallow hard, unable to speak or move.
“I tried being nice with you, to be the kind of guy a woman likes, or rather that a woman like you likes. But it seems as if you prefer this handsome dark tough guy who is impassive. A guy who saved you from an unpleasant situation one time and then uses those brownie points to get between your legs… But Ciara, this time, I’m telling you, he won’t come. No one will come between us tonight.”
This time? Oh God.
“He won’t be back, you can be sure of that.”
A shiver of terror runs down my spine. I squeeze my eyes shut to placate the tears that I’m unable to hold back.
“Shh… take it easy. You know I’m a nice person, you said it yourself, right? If you had only given me a possibility, a shred of hope, it wouldn’t have come to this. You understand that, don’t you Ciara? This is all your fault. You should not have led me on like you did. But you always act like that, don’t you? You bat your pretty eyelashes, you make doe eyes… You whisper in my ear and touch my hand and then he shows up and Mark doesn’t exist anymore.”
He slowly lets up on his grip on my arm.
“Be very careful. If you try to even let one syllable out of that mouth of yours I swear to you that things are going to be a lot more unpleasant than what you imagine.”
I nod because it’s the only thing I’m able to do. I am paralyzed with fear, petrified by his voice and frozen by his unwanted touch as he viciously caresses my cheek. He grabs me by the arms and throws me against the wall.
“I want to assure you that I’m not a violent person and under different circumstances you could have gotten to know the best of me, but you’ve really pissed me off big time. I don’t like being pushed aside, especially for someone like him.”
“But I… I never…” I try to speak between my sobs.
He breaks out in a bitter laugh.
“Don’t tell me that you were about to recite that old part about never having led anyone on… You, and your smiles, your kindness, your availability, without even taking into consideration the way you go around dressed like a tart, with those tight pants that scream out ‘please, jump me!’ Well good then,” he continues, getting closer to me and taking my chin in his hand. “I’m about to make you happy.”
—
AARON
What am I doing here? Why am I sitting in the fucking car instead of being with her? Why did I walk out like a common bastard instead of staying there with her to talk and let her know what I feel? Why didn’t I uncover myself to her, lay it all out, just enough to let her know it’s not her fault that I’m a hopeless asshole.
How could I have taken advantage of her love and walked out without having the courage to tell her that without her I’m not even able to rationalize all these things.
I slam my hands on the steering wheel repeatedly, cursing myself a thousand times for being such an idiot and not seeing something that would have been visible to a blind man, for not having listened to my heart that is screaming at me that I need to stop acting like a coward. I have to go back in there and tell her that she…
… She is my sa
lvation.
I go to open the car door and jump out when I see a vaguely familiar image cross the street and head straight towards Ciara’s house. I stop my hand on the door handle as I watch the scene from the rear-view mirror. A man, maybe a boy, with a black hooded sweatshirt… something that brings me back to…
Shit.
I head towards the garage in four seconds.
He’s already inside.
I go back to the door I left from and can hear talking, almost sobbing.
I swallow without being able to get anything down because I’ve got my heart in my throat. I try to concentrate as best I can and I can hear his voice over Ciara’s cries.
All of my muscles tense up in alertness and my tendons swell in order to remind me that I would be able to kill with my hands, any man who even thought about getting close to her.
I go to open the door but then I realize I don’t know what it is I’m going to find in there, I can’t risk it. So, I go behind the house, jump the wooden fence that guards the garden. I look around, take a terracotta vase and throw it at the window. I move the glass away without thinking about those shards that are lacerating my hands, and I jump through the window into the dark kitchen. I head towards the door that leads to the basement garage and open it, trying not to make too much noise, although my instincts are to kick the walls down. I go down the few stairs that separate me from the scene when I hear his last words: “Now you’re mine and no one will be able to separate us again!”
And the blind fury that strikes me full on is something instinctive, uncontrollable and violent that falls directly on him.
He isn’t aware of my presence until I’ve got my hands on his shoulders and I throw him to the ground. I sit on him and start punching and punching and punching. I can’t see anything, I can’t feel anything other than this crude rage and the irrational need to feel his cold dead body under mine.
I hit with no regard to what’s around me, I hit without thought of tomorrow or what the consequences will be.
I hit to kill.
