The night was late, my sheets tangled from tossing and turning, and my mind fuzzed by fading inebriation. Sleep would not come readily this evening, and the dark call of a midnight cigarette needled at me from beyond my closed bedroom door.
Eventually my indolent impetus was overcome, and I heaved myself from sweating semi-sleep and into a shambling upright position. I quietly shuffled through into the hallway, my softened senses greeted by the sight of shadowed corners, and the mingled smells of spilled beer and cigarette smoke.
There was heavy stillness in the air, matched in weight by the sleepless fog swirling in my brain.
I slink into the living room, and there she is asleep in a knot on the couch. She is shrouded in pillows and made secret by a mountainous duvet, but neither do anything to muffle the hated siren song that is her.
She is visible as only a twisted mop of short black hair.
I move quietly passed her, trying in vain to keep my magnetised eyes from drinking her in.
I put her at my back as I approach the fly screen window, my desire for a peaceful smoke turning to a need for relief.
I carefully crack open the window, and allow the hum of the night city to drip in. The cold runs over my bare chest and thighs. My desperate skin prickles, and I heave a private sigh as I spark up a smoke and pull the heat down into my lungs.
I freeze as I hear stirring behind me, but it's only her turning over in her sleep.
Even the sound of her movement intoxicates me, and there is a nameless shiver in my gut as I think of the handful of half-touches we have shared.
The memory of them maddens me, and I cannot know if there was ever intent behind any. My mind spirals into the incomprehensible labyrinth of real and imagined desire, and there is hate too. Hate for her mystery, and hate for my captivation with one so forbidden.
There is seven years between us, and though I have ever admired her wicked intellect, she is in attitude and experience a child.
With a little breath, she is up. I hear her yawn and the tired slap of her feet over the parquet floor as she shuffles toward me.
I am agonisingly aware that I am garbed in boxers only, with nowhere to hide the more demonstrable evidence of my lust.
There is an unwelcome twitch below, and already my heart begins to quicken.
She hums a tired greeting as she enters my space, helping herself wordlessly to a cigarette. The smoke curls across her small lips and over her smoky eyes. The orange light of the empty city adores her pale skin.
I see that she wears only a t shirt and underwear, her pearl-white thighs bent in supple curves as she takes an improvised seat on the windowsill.
I try not to look, but her shape insists. Without beholding her, I am yet imprinted by her irresistible form. She is a woman of black on black, but the underwear peeping out of her shirt is a girlish pink.
"Can't sleep?" She eventually asks without interest.
I shake my head, throat numb and mind focused on stifling the heat that spreads through me.
"You went to bed early." She says through a sparkling puff of smoke as a tram trundles by.
"I'm getting old." I reply in a joking mumble, my eyes fixed on an uninteresting streetlamp down the way. "You've still got university energy in you."
"Ha." She exhales sardonically. "It's less a student thing and more a family thing."
I laugh painfully, cringingly aware that her brother slumbers in the next room. My friend.
I push him to the back of my mind, and focus on maintaining control of the here and now. The residual fog or alcohol makes it difficult.
The conversation wanders along with my eyes. One cigarette turns into two, to five, and to more drinks.
She sits there like the personification of temptation, her arched neck vulnerable and asking to be grasped. Her braless breasts, secret, make their hidden curvatures known as she adjusts her position.
I can't help myself. My manhood stirs to obvious readiness.
I turn away, feigning an interest in something unseen.
Her silence, notable in one so chatty, presses onto my hot skin.
I feel a trailing finger on my hip. A single digit, whose attention is as fleeting as it is intoxicating.
I sigh tightly, my eyes screwed shut. It will only become real if I turn to look. If I can hold on for a few heartbeats, we might be able to chalk the touch up to something imagined or accidental.
I don't have it in me. I steal a glance at her, and it's like the icy kiss of opium. One is not enough. I fix her in my sight, and realise in my belly how close she is.
I could enwrap her in my arms and take her here and now. She is slight, and vulnerable. I could heft her with ease, and have my way.
Her sombre eyes lock mine, and they speak knowledge of my inner intentions.
She is flushed, and the snow-driven white of her skin throws even the scarcest of blushes into red-hot prominence.
The shadow of her gaze flicks to the obstinate bulge in my boxers, and out from her parted lips comes an invisible breath of acute realisation.
I cannot speak first. I cannot initiate. There is still space to turn around. To avoid the looming catastrophe.
She says nothing, her gaze oscillating between the ever-expanding evidence of my carnal desire and my unblinking eyes.
As my chest heaves up and down, an artful smile curls the corners of her desirous lips.
Her dainty hands with their flaking black nail polish reach forward, fingers arrayed into a torturous curve a hair's breadth from the fuzz of my boxers.
All that keeps me from taking her is the stillness of the moment. The quiet before the storm. I have only a handful of breaths to adjust course.
A powerful throb inopportunely presents itself, and my craving is accidentally met with her palm.
Now I am lost.
My eyes shut, and my body shivers.
I feel a single finger slip under my waist band, and the slowest of tugs exposes me to her.
"We can't." I say non-comitally, holding out hope that her resolve proves stronger than mine.
"Why?" She asks with smirking curiosity, and I can feel her breath against my member's turgid skin.
I cannot answer. Reason has already fled me.
"Tell me to stop," she says, her fingertips so close to my pulsating erection that I swear I can feel the static. "and I'll stop."
My heart riots in my chest, and already the pre-cum glistens.
"I can't." I rasp, feeling weak.
She holds herself still, her flawless fingers running alongside the inside of my legs.
"Tell me to start, and I will."
The last of sense evaporates. I urge her with the slightest of nods.
A single finger runs from the base of my dick to the head, and there lingers in slow circles.
Now, as my breath shudders from me, I am truly beyond salvation.
