by M. Leighton
Still behind me, Levi presses his lips to the curve of my neck, palms moving sensuously back up my arms. His fingers are extended and, as they pass my chest, the tips graze my straining nipples, causing me to jerk with excruciating delight.
“All night,” he whispers into my ear from behind, “I’ve thought about how this material was touching your naked body. Scraping over these.” As he speaks, he rubs his palms in circles over them, barely grazing the tingling flesh of my nipples. I arch my back, silently begging him for pressure, pressure that he refuses to give.
“Rubbing over your stomach,” he continues, his hands going where his words are taking me, skimming the skin of my trembling belly, pausing only to dip a fingertip into my navel as he passes.
“Caressing this beautiful ass,” he murmurs as one hand slips around my waist to cup my butt.
“Once, when you were dancing at that club, your arms were raised and I thought I could see this curve.” With a finger, he traces the place where my ass and thigh meet. “I wanted to slide my tongue along this gorgeous crescent.”
That single digit retraces the crease from the outside of my leg toward my center, moving dangerously close to where my need is greatest. I push my ass back, giving him access to my core if he wants it, reveling in excitement when I meet the thick bulge of his erection.
I hear air hiss through his teeth, and the hand on my stomach flattens, holding me still as he flexes his hips into mine. A tiny whimper escapes my lips, and I let my head fall back onto his shoulder, silently giving him permission to do anything he wants.
He bends enough to run his hand down the back of my thigh, cupping it from behind and lifting, up and out to the side, spreading my legs for him. Cool air rushes onto my damp flesh and more heat pours through me.
“I wondered what you’d say if I bent you over on the dance floor, among all those bodies where no one could see, and slipped a single finger inside you.”
The hand on my stomach descends, his fingertip slipping between my parted folds and tracing down to tease my entrance.
“What would you have done?” His voice is so low, even I have to strain to hear it above the pounding of my own heart.
“I…I…” I stammer, my breathing so fast and heavy, my head is light with it.
In one excruciatingly slow movement, Levi eases his finger into me, pressing deep and then easing back out. He moves the slick tip between my folds, up to tease the tight bundle of nerves once, twice, three times before sliding down and into me again.
“Would you have slapped me?” he asks, his words a sensuous rasp over my senses. “Or would you have asked me to do it again? Talk to me,” he commands softly. “Tell me what you want.”
“Again,” I pant, gulping at the chilly air of the room, shivering at the weight of it on my hot, sensitized skin.
Levi’s lips move from my earlobe to the curve of my jaw, trailing across until I turn my face toward his.
“That’s what I was hoping for,” he confesses right before his mouth takes mine.
His kiss is gasoline to the flames that were already blazing in me, and suddenly he is ravenous. His tongue moves against mine in a rhythm that matches the movement of his fingers. As his mouth becomes more demanding, more voracious, so does his hand, more fingers pressing into me, working their way deeper and faster, pushing me toward the edge.
I lean back against him, letting him have his way with my body, unable to support myself steadily. Levi takes full advantage of my submission, devouring my mouth and controlling my body.
My mind is spinning with sensation, oblivious to everything except the man wrapped around me from behind, setting fire to my insides one stroke at a time.
With an increasing pace, he rubs me. Inside and out, pumping then massaging, back and forth between the only two places on my body that can feel right now. The whole world, the whole universe is narrowed down to his fingers and the explosive magic they’re creating.
My walls flex around him, sucking, sucking, sucking. Begging greedily for more. He growls at me, moving to jackhammer his fingers, in and out, in and out. My one straight leg bends at the knee, and I move in the opposite way, riding his fingers, gasping into the night.
A sharp, guttural cry splits the stillness of the air. I hear it, but it barely penetrates my consciousness that it’s me, that it’s the sound of my release. I can only feel. And now I feel everything. My entire body is alive. With Levi.
His tongue, his lips, his fingers, his chest—he is everywhere, holding me together as I come apart in his arms.
Color explodes behind my eyes. Fiery reds, vibrant purples, brilliant whites—they burst like fireworks, raining sparks over my face, into my blood, onto my skin. Long, slow spasms pulse through me, stealing my breath and further weakening my knee. Throb after throb, my climax pounds through me, turning my muscles from rigid wood to warm flowing honey.
As I work to catch my breath, Levi eases me back down to earth, his fingers moving slowly and more slowly and even more slowly as my climax wanes. And when my legs lose their ability to hold me, he scoops me tenderly into his arms and carries me wordlessly into his bedroom.
I know it’s his without seeing or touching a thing. I’m surrounded by the scent of his skin, enveloped by the feel of the man himself. It’s like his things have an energy all their own, a heavy masculinity that I can detect in the air.
“I want you in my bed,” he mutters, striding across the floor with single-minded purpose. He sets me on the edge of the bed and gently pushes me back until I’m lying flat on my back. “I want to see you come on the sheets I sleep on. I want these walls to hear the sounds you make when I bury my body inside you. And I want to look down into your face when I make you lose it in my bed. Because in here, you’re mine. All mine.”
His words… God! They’re sex and sin and every dirty thing, clawing through my insides, tearing them apart, filling me with need, inch by delicious inch.
“But first, I want to taste what’s mine.” That gruff, primal statement is all the warning I get before Levi presses his hands to the insides of my thighs, spreading me wide and licking my slit like I’m his favorite type of ice cream.
I jerk, moaning in pleasure, still tingling from my first orgasm. Levi winds his hands around the backs of my thighs, holding me open to him as his tongue slips deep inside me.
The wet licks, the soft pants, the sounds Levi makes in the back of his throat as he works his mouth, his lips, his tongue, and his teeth over me are almost more than I can bear.
I reach down to thread my fingers into his hair, holding his face to me as I move my hips in rhythm with his mouth. I whimper helplessly as he drives me mercilessly toward yet another peak.
He slides his fingers into me, rubbing the tips over a spot deep within me, stealing my breath and causing me to shudder.
Then he’s gone. His weight, his heat, his touch. Outside the buzz in my head and the roar in my veins, I hear the rustle of his clothes and a wrapper seconds before he’s back, stretching out between my legs.
He urges my knees up high along his sides, tilting my hips up toward him. He arches, lining up the broad head of his erection with my entrance. I catch my breath and hold it, time standing still as I wait for the moment when he will push forward, plunge into me, rip me open and fill me up.
He presses in slightly, then pulls out to gently press in further.
“Oh Jesus, you feel so good,” he pants, almost desperately as he hovers above me. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” I promise breathlessly, rocking beneath him, pleading for more. “Please. Now.”
He groans, withdrawing and bending his head to my breast. In one smooth, savage motion, he thrusts into me and sucks my nipple into his mouth.
I scream out. A brief spike of pain as he tears into me is followed by the most unimaginable pleasure I’ve ever known. He is so big and I’m so full with him, I find it hard to breathe, to think, to function.
&nbs
p; He licks and sucks and bites greedily at first one nipple and then the other, moving slowly and gently inside me until I relax and my body stretches to accommodate him.
And then he starts to move in earnest, pulling out and plunging back in, thrusting, circling, pounding, grinding. Sensation erupts inside me. In my chest, through my belly, behind my eyes—I feel Levi everywhere, on every surface, like he’s scrubbing through my very blood with a decadent friction.
I’m moving mindlessly beneath him. Grabbing, scratching, holding, arching. Until he moves his hand to straighten one of my legs and reaches between us.
The touch of his fingertip to me is electric. It’s blue fire and white light, and I can’t fight the ecstasy of it. His name gushes through my chest, pours into my throat, and sprays from my lips, and it’s the one word that looses the animal in him.
When my walls begin to pulse around him, Levi levers himself up onto his hands, his long, smooth back arched toward me, and he moves with such voracious need, I squeeze my eyes shut and give myself up to the tornado of sensation he unleashes.
Time bends and twists like hot glass, my climax washing over me in wave after never-ending wave. I’m vaguely aware of Levi’s roar of release and the stiffening of his body. I’m distantly cognizant of his collapse on top of me, his weight warm and welcome.
I don’t know how long we lie this way, his heavy chest smashed flatly against mine. I only know that, as I drift back down to my reality, all I see are stars and all I hear is the labored symphony of our breathing.
********
I’m afraid to close my eyes, afraid I’ll fall asleep. I feel like Cinderella, and the midnight hour is closing in on me.
The whole evening, well after the fire at the hotel anyway, has been magical, and I don’t want it to end. I’ve been running from the strike of the clock ever since, wishing only to prolong the enchantment.
I’m lying under a wedge of sheet, one arm and one leg draped over Levi. My cheek is pressed to his heart, the sure and heavy thud of it hypnotic.
Our time together has been damn near perfect, so much so that I don’t want to go to sleep and wake up to reality, reality where I’m blind and he no longer has the patience for me. That’s happened a few too many times, and none of them hurt me as much as this time will. I can feel that certainty like an ache in my bones.
“Levi?”
“Evie?” His tone is like melted butter. Warm. Satisfied.
His fingers are trailing lazily up and down my arm, and I can feel the light coating of hair on his leg tickling mine.
There is one thing that’s marring the moment, one thing hanging out there like a loose leaf whipping in the wind.
“Are you ever going to ask about my eyes?”
A pause.
“Why would I need to ask about your eyes?”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“I know all I need to know about your eyes. They’re deep, rich chocolate, almond shaped, rimmed with lashes other women probably hate you for, and they sparkle with your lust for me. What more do I need to know?”
I can’t help laughing, despite the subject matter. How does he do that—take everything in my life and make it good? Even the bad.
“You know what I mean. I’ll tell you if you want to know.”
“Do you want me to want to know?”
I shrug the shoulder that’s not smooshed against his side. “I think curiosity is natural. I don’t take offense.”
I don’t tell him that while I don’t take offense, more often than not my deficit makes me feel like a freak. Like an outsider. Something different, and not in a good way.
He fingers stop on the curve of my shoulder. “I don’t want you to think it matters. That you can’t see, I mean.”
“I appreciate that, but I…I want you to know.”
And that’s the truth. I don’t know why, but I do. I want him to know all of me and still be okay with it. Still want to be here. Still want me.
“Then tell me.”
His fingers resume their trek up and down my arm, only this time more slowly. Hesitantly. I can tell he’s listening to me now.
“It was my freshman year in college. I was going to a party with a couple of my friends. A brownstone on the Upper East Side. Quiet street, good neighborhood. It was fun for a while. Until this guy started hitting on me. The drunker he got, the more…persistent he became, so I asked the others if we could leave. My friends weren’t ready, though, and I hated to ruin their night, so I told them I’d just get a cab. I snuck out the front door so the drunk guy wouldn’t follow me, and I started walking, looking for a cab.
“It was so quiet that night. It was fall. The air was chilly and almost heavy with the silence. Abnormally so, especially for New York. There were just a few sirens way off in the distance, like I was hearing them from a world away.
“I walked up a couple of blocks and decided to cross the street, still watching for a cab. I was coming out from between two parked cars, just a few steps away from the curb when it happened. I had my hat pulled down over my ears. I guess that’s why I didn’t hear it coming until the driver slammed on the brakes. I looked up and saw lights from a big SUV. Seemed like it came from out of nowhere. Flying at me so fast I couldn’t react. I still don’t remember impact. I learned after the fact, of course, that my head injury was so significant, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. That’s why I only remember flashes of things. Little bits and pieces. Things like a door slamming and a girl crying. I remember a bold, loud voice, like maybe an older man, yelling ‘Leave her! Leave her!’ I guess the ‘her’ was me.”
I take a deep, silent breath and swallow. It’s always hard to think back on that night, on all the details. Those details often bring back the more painful memories.
“I thought I remembered seeing a face that night, but the doctors told me that I couldn’t have actually seen anything. They said the bleeding and swelling on my brain and around my optic nerves was so severe that it would’ve affected my vision almost immediately. They were amazed I survived. But to this day, I think they’re wrong. I saw someone. I know I saw someone. Someone was trying to save me.”
Levi is absolutely still, even his hand no longer moving. I listen closely to make sure his breathing isn’t so deep and even that he’s asleep.
But it’s not. He’s awake. Just silent.
“I think that’s who called the ambulance. Even though they never found out who hit me or who called for help, I know that stranger didn’t leave me for dead. Maybe because he hit me. Or maybe he was just passing by. I’ll never know. I’ll never be able to say ‘thank you’ or ask why. But I learned a long time ago not to dwell on things like that. They could drive me crazy if I let them. So I moved on and tried to forget. Not really for them, but for me.”
Levi tugs me closer and raises his head so that he can press his lips to the top of mine, a gesture meant to comfort. And it does. He’s listening. And he cares. He just doesn’t know what to say. Most people don’t. I stopped expecting that a long time ago, too.
“What was it like?” he finally asks, his voice gentle and respectful. “After?”
I hear no pity in Levi’s question, just acceptance. It’s a little thing, one would think, but it’s anything but little to me. To me, it’s the difference between night and day, the contrast between cold and hot. It’s a burst of moist, fresh air blowing through a dry and arid soul.
I take a deep breath and exhale, somehow feeling like the hard part is over. Like I’ve unloaded a thousand pounds of age-old dead weight from my shoulders.
“At first, it seemed like my life was over. I mean, I was majoring in photography. Do you know how many great pictures are taken by blind people?”
Levi’s tone is tender when he asks, “How many?”
“None that I know of.” I laugh. The sound is a lot less bitter than it used to be. “For weeks, all I could think about was what I’d lost and how my whole future, all my dreams were crushe
d. Disintegrated. Like dust in my hands that just blew away. And my parents didn’t help much. Their version of sympathy was giving me one semester off to get back on my feet and figure out what to do with my life. That and a pat on the head to tell me they were sorry. So I wallowed for a while, of course, but it didn’t take me long to realize that wallowing was like digging myself into a pit that just got darker and darker the deeper I went. For those weeks, I lived in black and white. Aching brightness or inky darkness. Life had no color anymore.
“It was during that time that I realized color was what gave my life meaning. Color and shape and texture. I lived it. Breathed it. It had been my only focus for as long as I could remember. I felt like I was dying without it.”
“Then you found painting.”
I nod.
“But how?”
I inhale and smile, remembering the days that changed my life for the second time in less than a year.
“One spring evening, a few months after the accident, I was sitting outside trying to remember what a sunset looked like. I closed my eyes and tried to recall this beautiful sunset I’d noticed that night, on the last night I could see anything. At first it was hard. Everything was foggy and far away, like I was already losing that memory. And that terrified me—forgetting all those brilliant colors and fading clouds, forgetting the way the buildings seemed to reach up and touch the horizon, like fingers desperate to hold on to the sun. I was just as desperate. To hold on. To not forget. So I asked my mother to buy me some oil paints and a canvas. I thought that maybe if I recorded that last vision onto something, let that image flow through my memories, into my nerves and muscles, out through my fingers and onto something, that maybe I could hold on to it a little bit longer. I was so afraid of living the rest of my life in the dark, in just…blackness, I would’ve tried anything. I’d have done anything to remember the color.”
