Her hair is damp enough that even in this pale light it's two shades darker than normal. Its sweat-soaked strands cling to her back, weighed down upon her pale skin. She breaths heavily, but with a kind of composure. Even in this state of fatigue she keeps her wits about her. Never letting down her guard, not truly. She just trades the full mask for a smaller one and tells me it's the real her. There's not point in arguing. If the only time you can have a woman, truly have a woman, is when she lets you see her then that's all you'll see.
It's better not to dwell on things we'll never have.
My hand slides up and down the curvature on the small of her back, riding up and down. I stroke with one finger, two, three. I tickle a little until she gives out a small moanβmy cue to resume stroking her. And I do. I try and show her that I adore her with the back of my knuckles as I drag them up and down her spine. With my finger tips as they press into her shoulders. With the whole of my hands as they cup the sides of her neck, or glide along her thighs, or swim though that matted, dark forest she calls hair.
She shifts, and turns to face me, curling up on her side and placing her elbow into the mattress and the side of her face onto her hand. She has beautiful eyes, not that I can see them now. All I see is the dim light reflecting off them.
I stare into them, wondering if she can see mine, or if we're just looking at one another.
I can hear her smile, the little crack that her lips make when her lips lift so high they part her lips a little is the only sound besides our breathing. She shifts a little, and makes her way to base of my feet in the same position.
And then I'm just the man with his feet planted on the bed and back against a headboard in her room. I wouldn't rather be anyone else.
I can see her face more clearly now, or the outline of it. It's enough to fill in the blanks. Of course, I don't have to be looking at her face to see it. Sometimes, I can't get rid of it. Sometimes I spend the whole day trying to chase it away. To focus on something else that matters more in the moment, but it always comes back. I think about her face and I smile and I hum to myself. And even now, trying to be so in control, I look at the soft edges of her features and I smile.
She taps my foot playfully with her free hand, drumming a little beat on it, then the other.
I try and dodge her next switch with a pivot of my ankle, but she's too quick. She taps it harder and laughs. We repeat the new game a few times before she stops. A somber mood descends as she swings her body to the edge of the bed.
"I'm really glad you came back." She says it with a tone that I've come to recognize as difficult for her to muster.
"I'm glad, too." I don't know how I sound when I say it, though. I'm just trying to sound strong. I'm always trying to sound strong.
She takes my ankles in her hands and she pushes them apart with a slow, easy force. When parted she slides on her stomach between them and places a kiss on my left ankle, then turns her head and kisses the same sport on my right side. She kisses her way in a tennis-match fashion, her lips pressing harder the more muscle and skin she encounters.
By the time she's climb to my knees, her arms buckling under her from lack of strength, she stops to grin. She looks so different when she does. Girlish and playful. She presses against my knees to open them up and pouts when I fight to hold my position. But it doesn't take her long to rise to her knees and grunt, to force them apart a few more inches before placing her hands on my chest and leaning in to kiss me.
We kiss for ages. We kiss for an entire day and night cycle to get right back to this moment in the darkness. Or at least that's how it feels.
Then she pushes herself off me and puts a hand atop each knee. She kisses her way down my thighs, nibbling and biting and pressing the whole of her face against them as she goes. She stops, and giggles, and starts kissing her way back up to my knees before moving back down. When there is little room left to negotiate, she brushes the tip of her nose against my cock and she swings from one side to another. Each bounce makes more and more of her face brush up against me, until the whole of her face is pressing against me and her lips are kissing my balls.