by Tasha Jones
I nodded and crossed the room to him, but as soon as I put my hands on his tie, he drew me in for a kiss. I smiled up at him. “What was that for?” I asked.
He shrugged as I turned my attention to his tie. “I needed that.”
“Are you worried about this?”
“The election is around the corner and I just don’t feel ready.”
I nodded, not really sure what to say, other than, “Well, I love you, and Britain would be lucky to have you in Parliament.”
He chuckled. “You’re only saying that because you have to.” He planted a kiss on my forehead.
I finished up his tie. “I don’t have to do anything, my love.” Although it felt more like I was trying to convince myself of this than him.
Chapter 10 – Edward
I was obsessed with Nisha. Her face, her voice, her scent occupied my every thought, as damaging as that sounded. She was like the stunning goddess that had always lurked around my forgotten dreams, the whisper that woke me in the morning and the song that ushered me to sleep. As I sat in that campaign meeting, surrounded by people who were obsessed with me, all I could think of was her. I wished every moment with her was twice as long; every kiss tripled; every night, an eternity. It seemed like no time was enough time and yet she would disappear. On evenings like last night, I’d call her house and her cell and get her voicemail. She’d never return my calls when she missed them and, beyond that, she seemed reluctant to tell me what she did when she wasn’t around me. Her life was as elusive as her mind and I was rapidly growing impatient to know everything about her.
“Edward!”
I looked up to find myself staring at the image of my opposition: George Trent. His snake-like smile lifted goosebumps on my skin. I glowered at his impossibly blue eyes and his white teeth. His shiny skin looked as if he had walked right into the studio from a tanning appointment. He was a conservative, and disgustingly so; a part of a coalition to pull Britain off the brink of socialism. He was a puppet of America and a kiss-up to the Obama administration. He claimed to speak of the future, but he was a shame to the English. “Yes, yes. George is a bane and should be brought down at all costs.”
Peter glowered at me, folding his wrinkled sausage fingers in front of him. “It is a true shame that this is your election and you are paying the least attention out of all of us.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m also running a company.”
Peter leaned in to me. “So is half the population of this conference room!”
“Is there something in particular you wanted to tell me?”
“Nothing, besides ‘pay attention!’”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“George has a bastard child,” Felix spoke up.
My eyes went wide. He was married, had been for almost a decade now. “How old?”
“Four.”
I moved my legal pad from in front of me, resting my elbow on the table. “Are you serious?” The faces of everyone around the table were answer enough. “Does the wife know?”
“Our sources tell us that she is oblivious.”
I gulped. “That’s heartbreaking.”
Peter stared at me with those beady eyes of his, an ape ready to strike. “No. That’s golden.”
My stomach turned. “This makes me extremely uncomfortable.”
“The way that your campaign has been going so far makes me uncomfortable,” Felix jumped in.
“Are you really that disappointed in me?” For some reason, I felt like I needed to defend my own reluctance.
“I have no idea what’s going on with you! I can see it in your eyes. You’re distracted.”
Peter glanced at me, an odd expression on his face, as if he thought he knew something about me that no one else did. The trouble was that I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what that was. “Do you have something to say?”
“Where are you planning to take this Nisha flirtation?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I could feel my skin crawling at the fact that he would even begin to think of what I had with Nisha as a mere flirtation. “I’m in love with her.”
His eyes flashed wide, as if I had just declared my intention to go to the moon.
Felix sat down across from me, his hands folded in front of him and his brow furrowed in a serious way. “You can’t be.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Are you trying to tell me how I should feel?”
“She’s not good for you,” Peter argued.
“I know what’s good for me.”
“Do you know anything about her at all?” Felix asked.
I grimaced, taken aback by this question. It was like he had read my mind; managed to reach inside of our relationship and extract the one imperfection that remained; like he knew something I didn’t. “Do you?”
Peter bowed his head, for some reason, completely avoiding my gaze. “Look, I don’t care what either of you have to say. Nisha is the love of my life and, quite frankly, I don’t feel comfortable discussing my love life in a conference room.”
Felix sighed. “We only bring it up, because we cannot attack George this way unless you are impeccable in comparison.”
“Am I not?”
“You are dating a..."
“A what?” I demanded.
“She looks like a model or a bimbette.” Peter said.
“She’s the most intelligent woman I have ever met in my life.”
“Are you planning on marrying her?” It was retort, a malicious retort, and from Felix nonetheless.
But as soon as the question was raised, I could think of nothing else to say, but, “Yes.”
Felix sat back in his chair, his jaw slowly drooping lower and lower.
“That is exactly what I intend to do. If she will have me, I will be engaged by the time you can get your damaging story to the printing press.”
“There is no need to be condescending,” Peter snapped.
I had had enough of this. The room seemed to be closing in on me, as every wall felt shorter and shorter, the ceiling crashing down and oxygen seeping through the cracks. I was tired of being examined and judged. I had had enough of Peter’s beady stare and Felix’s damaging strategies. And, to be honest, I missed Nisha. “Look, I’m done for the day. If you want to ruin this guy’s marriage, his life, over a bloody election, go ahead. But count me out.”
“Where are your teeth, Ed?” Peter asked as I shoved my chair underneath the table.
“Don’t call me Ed.”
“You’ve gone soft,” Felix said.
“Forgive me if it makes my skin crawl to think of the kind of conversation he will have with his wife after this hits the headlines.”
Felix stretched his huge arms out to each of his sides. “Hey! I didn’t ask him to cheat!”
I huffed out a deep breath before I responded with, “You’re lethal and you scare me.” I didn’t wait for any more words to be exchanged before I walked out of the office, leaving the both of them there.
***
Nisha
Something was off with Ed. I could just feel the tension in his lips when he kissed me and in his arms as he ushered me into yet another hidden Italian restaurant on the Southbank. I would have wondered out loud about this. I would have asked him what was on his mind, but the truth was that my mind was so packed with worries that if I tried to stuff anything else into it, I might have exploded. As we were shown to our seat, my mind wandered back to Valerie and my mother. I had been working less to account for my time with Ed, but paying more to have Valerie watched all the nights that I had to be out. Mother was less than satisfied; less than pleased. But what could I do? I had been sucked so deeply into this fairytale world that I could hardly imagine a way out of it.
***
Edward
Something was off with Nisha. I could feel the tension in her smile, the shadow behind her brilliant eyes. There was a frown hidden behind her every smile and her radiant skin held wrinkles of worry. I u
shered her into her seat, but instead of taking mine, I got on one knee. My heart was pounding against my chest, but I knew that if I hesitated just a moment longer, I would never do it, and then I might have regretted it for my entire life. So I said, “Nisha Johnson, will you marry me?”
***
Nisha
It was beyond my wildest imagination. My prince wanted to make me a princess. He was proving his love with the oval cut diamond he had presented me with. His eyes were wide and earnest, almost tearing. Pleading. Every fiber in my brain was telling me to say no; that there was no way this could possibly work; that I couldn’t even trust him with my deepest, darkest secret. But my heart: my heart had swelled in my chest and butterflies flew around in my stomach like it was a miniature garden. So I went against all reason, and I said, “Yes.”
Chapter 11 – Nisha
Two bottles of wine later, we were stumbling into my apartment. I wasn’t sure if it was the cloud of drunkenness, or the weight of the ring on my finger, but I was distracted. As the door shut behind me, slamming back into place, the sound of it echoing through my densely packed, empty apartment. A small voice in the back of my head told me that he shouldn’t have been there; we shouldn’t have been doing this. But I didn’t listen.
I didn’t care. “I love you,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around him.
I felt his hands resting on my waist as he kissed me, his scruff scratching against my cheek. I leaned into him, arching my back and holding on to him like my life depended on it. As we stood there snuggling in my kitchen, it felt as if we no longer existed as two different people. I felt just as much him as I did myself. He pried my lips open with his tongue. I felt the sharp, hard muscle in my mouth, urging me on. We somehow managed to work our way down my short hallway and into my living room. As soon as our feet hit the Persian rug I had picked up at a thrift shop in Camden, he grabbed my thighs and hoisted me up.
I was more a part of him than ever. I was literally flying, impervious to gravity, to pain. I trusted him with every fiber of my being, with every neuron in my mind. How could he betray me? How could he hurt me? We were one and the same and nothing, absolutely nothing, could diminish what we had. With the power of a lion, but the grace of a gazelle, he managed to lower himself onto the couch and me onto him. A little voice in the back of my head silently thanked God that I had not gone with the floor length gown that I had been pondering all afternoon.
He was the most comfortable seat I had ever sat in and looking down at him, he looked the most vulnerable, yet powerful that I had ever seen him. His eyes glistened in the moonlight and his mouth, framed by the stubble of his growing beard hung slightly ajar, as if he meant to drink me in through the air. “I love you too,” He replied.
I could smell the after-dinner liquor on his breath and it only made me want him more. I leaned down and kissed him, my skin practically melting at his touch as his hands explored every part of my body. I could feel his fingers tracing my every rib, before moving on to the folds of cloth that covered my waist. He fiddled with my dress before simply slipping his hands under it. I wrapped my legs tightly around him and clutched at his thick head of hair.
His kisses travelled from my lips to my jaw and down my neck. My eyes flashed wide open at the sensation of his lips suckling my skin. I could feel the warmth of his breath and his decisive tongue in there somewhere, tracing circles all over my neck.
I grabbed a chunk of his hair and drew his head back, pressing my own lips against the taut skin. I could almost feel him shuddering beneath me. His hands, which remained wrapped around my waist, grew softer, becoming mere whispers as I began to feel a distinctive hardening beneath me. I rubbed against his bulge, the wetness between my own legs seeping through the dress.
In one swift movement, he ripped the straps of my dress off of my shoulders, letting them slowly fall down my arms. He pressed his nose against my shoulder, taking a huge whiff of me. I completely wrapped myself around him, as tightly as I could. As close as possible wasn’t close enough. In the next moment, I could feel his lips on my chest. He massaged me there, his fingers flicking me, driving me mad with desire.
I drew his head back, smothering him with a kiss. My fingers worked quickly to unbutton him, my hands pressing inside of his smooth Gucci shirt to the hairy chest underneath. He bit his lip as he squeezed my bum, the painful pleasure ringing through my muscles. “This couch is great,” he said as his lips found their way back to my neck. I was squirming under his touch, my nerves standing on end from the mere sensation of it all. “But do you have a bed?”
I giggled at this, glancing down at him as his head dipped back to my chest. “Of course I have a bedroom, Ed,” I muttered.
“Wonderful.” With that, he grabbed my legs, standing up again with me in his arms and carried me across the parlor and down the hall.
“Do you even know where you are going?” I asked, the second time we stumbled into a wall.
“I am a master at special reasoning.”
I giggled at this as he finally succeeded in getting us into my bedroom. He stopped right by my bed, and as I climbed out of his arms, I internally kicked myself for picking that day not to dress my bed, but settled with the fact that he probably wouldn’t even notice, much less care.
My hands finished off the rest of his buttons, slipping his shirt out of his pants. He stood there kissing me on every spare part of my face as I went to work, unbuckling his belt, undoing his button and pulling down his pants. His bulge poked right through his Calvin Klein boxers, the tent forming a shadow on my aged, hardwood floor. I wanted all of him, inside of all of me.
Driven by drunkenness, motivated by love, I dropped down to my knees, peeled off his boxers, and took him into my mouth. His sigh floated through the air, penetrating my ears as my mouth stretched to encompass all of him. I could feel his large hands, his heavy fingers on my shoulders, in my hair, egging me on. My eyeliner had smudged, my lips were swollen, but I had never been happier in my life.
“Come here, love,” he whispered, drawing me up from the ground. He took my head in both of his hands and pressed his lips against mine. Our essence slipped all over our faces and my legs split, my skirt hiking up as his hard manhood slipped in between my thighs.
In the next moment, I was on my back on my bed and his body was pressing onto mine. His meaty arms, his smooth back, the cuts of his muscles, the tufts of hair: it all drove me mad. He stood at the edge of the bed and ripped off my dress. I was so mesmerized by the taste of him in my mouth, by the glow of his skin in the moonlight, to care what happened to my dress.
I grunted as he pressed himself on my now-naked body. It felt so warm, so right. I spread my legs, allowing him to fit neatly on top of me. My jaw swung open, my eyes flashing wide and my gasp filling the night air as he shoved himself inside of me. My entire body shuddered at the sensation of his hard manhood inside of my sex. My legs locked him in as he thrust in and out. In and out. I grabbed his neck, my arms pressing him down on top of me until there wasn’t a single space of air between our bodies.
We were one in the same.
I clenched my legs and he yielded, rolling under me. I pressed my hands onto his shoulders as I hopped up and down, his hands spotting my lower body. I could feel him pressing right up against me in the most perfect way, my nails digging into his skin, my fists slamming against his chest. “Oh God,” I whispered.
He slapped my bum, his hips slamming up against mine as I collapsed on top of him. His hands squeezed me as we both plummeted towards our orgasm. My toes curled, my hands squeezed into fists and a screech slipped out of my mouth as he shuddered underneath me.
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
I rolled off of him, my head finding a perfect place to nestle, right above his armpits. We held hands. And then we slowly drifted off.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Chapter 12 – Nisha
I woke up to a splitting headache
… and to pounding. When I rolled over, my body hit another. I opened one eye at a time, to find Edward lying right next to me, his right hand stretched towards me and his left placed on his chest, just so, as if planted there by the meticulous director of an art film. A smile played on the edges of my lips… before the knocking continued. As I stumbled out of bed, trying my best to fight through the headache, the light sensitivity and my burning throat, I labored to wrap my head around who could possibly be at my door this early on a Sunday morning. “Coming!” I yelled in my hoarse voice as soon as I had shut the bedroom door behind me.
As the knocking continued, I failed to catch a grip on what was going on. I failed to even remember what the date was.
“Nisha! Open this door!”
