Insomnia 12

Too restless, I listen to the wind breathe through the screen on my window, always exhaling; it does nothing to sooth me. There is fierceness in me that pushes like the wind, radiating from my skin. Always exhaling; like a long slow scream that started five nights ago. My gums ache and my mouth is raw from its discontent.

I can not sleep. I can not rest. I can not say why. Movement becomes my measure of time. Exhaustion is a worthless endeavour, a vague wash of purple under my eyes and fingernails. The dreams walk before my waking gaze. There is an immediate need for violence as though stung and to weep as though spurned, yet there is no wasp to slap, no lover to despise.

What would loosen my throat? What would transform this mania into bliss and allow me to inhale? I want to covet something, someone so that I may define my aching, trilling tension, to find release so I may sleep.

Would you let me pour this scream into you and willingly suffer the echoes of it in your mind and blood? Shall my hungry lips and hands take your flesh? Would such a violation secretly please you?

I will knock on your door, my heartbeat in my fingertips, in all I touch. Would you open it to let the dark spill into your hallway? Could you know of the corporal succubus outside its protection who is not there to thieve but to share her damnation?

I see in your eyes my fierceness reflected. When the heartbeat in my fingertips glides across the skin of your cheek I see the sleep fall from your countenance and I know you hear the scream. I see your throat go tight in anticipation, your pupils eclipsing the brightness of the iris. The click of my heels creates eddies in the tension suffusing the hall. I see the moisture of the night air glazing your bare skin. The sound of the door closing behind me holds the finality of a guillotine. The silence is too thick for words.

I cannot kiss you, but let my fingers drift over your chilled skin. To kiss you would be my undoing and I do not wish to come undone. Not yet. The wall behind you holds you up to my scrutiny. I place one hand on either side of you and close my eyes as its cool texture braces me. My dry, soft lips move across your throat and brush your collar bone as I breathe you in.

That simple touch is transformed into controlled violence as my brittle need manifests in my lips. I can hear it in your breathing. My lips glide down and my tongue curls out and over your nipple. I can feel the moan in your chest. The thin scratching of my nails on the wall raises your flesh in goosebumps. In the perfect silence sound becomes a sword-edge, so sharp and swift that it moves through tomorrow's twilight. Blues and purples and weeping whites fill the moment as night soaks into the emptiness between breaths.

Sweetly, I lift my cheek a hairsbreadth from yours, as Psyche must have done while revealing her secret Lover before he was burned by her that night, betrayed by her restlessness in the broken dark.

"My beloved," are the only words that I can whisper. I see your eyes close and I know you will not abandon me, that you will forgive my need. I caress the curve of your throat with gently crooked fingers, trailing my nail over the ridge of your collar bone, then, a fingertip to meld our heartbeats.

I inhale your scent, my other hand tracing the line of your jaw as you embrace this most delicate invasion, but no kiss. Not yet. My nails move over your skin, my breath alive and warm against the flush of your cheek, the scream in me passing between us like an ancient phantasm. I am trembling.

"Please." My last word is so very quiet I don't know if you hear. There is pain in me like my bones should bend from the wanting, from the wild in my blood. I know you have heard when you turn your lips to mine. Dust to dust has never felt like such glory as lips, dry and smooth as burnished gold, meet.

The blood turns.

Cold fire, like that which nests between stars, slides beneath our skin and the dust is burned away to leave softness, moving with the pulse our moistened lips share in that kiss. Without asking your fingers open the buttons of my coat while my fingers drift into your hair, nails teasing your scalp. I can feel your entire body shivering in your lips.

Your hands slide into the shadow of the coat and over my bare flesh and your arms follow to coil around my waist. Like a slow, curling heat your touch climbs my spine. My hands glide over the globe of your shoulders and drop to let my coat fall away in a soft pool of black at my feet. It is wonderful.

Simple.

Wordless.

Just like a scream fading to a sigh should be. The wild in me spreads over us like satin wings to catch every gasp and whisper so that we may soar. Your mouth steals my despair and I want to weep because you did not leave me to my torment. Compassion and submission and courage are your gifts as you draw me in tight to your body.

Your name is coarse in my throat as my mouth consumes you. All other words break.

I can breathe.

Sensation crashes in. The salt of your skin tingles on my tongue. Your pleading, thundering heartbeat hammers beneath my palm. Long, smooth arms weigh upon the small of my back. Your head rolls towards my hand as it slips behind your neck, my fingertips teasing the nape while my lips insist on snatching fragments of your arousal from your mouth. The feel of your moan is heaven. I want to fall into you, to steal you and consume you and set you upon the crown of the world.

I cannot taste enough of you. My fingers drift down your tapered waist and across your flat stomach, pausing on the peaking crests of your hips. They delicately, deliberately interpose themselves between your tingling skin and the loosely tied waistband of your pants.

The restraint is both maddening and exhilarating as I smoothly slide the fabric away, my nails trailing its descent down over your thighs. Skin to skin, now, you step completely into my embrace, your lean body drawn tight with a deep shudder as you collapse into your passion. Your lips are ravenous, covetous of my skin, kissing and nipping all that they pass over as your knees bend to the floor. My breasts are firm and high beneath your hands and to touch them is to embrace delicious slavery.

I feel the whisper of my name between your kisses like thorns against my flesh. Yes, my love! Drink me in like absinthe and fall like an angel corrupted knowing I wait in the dark of your dreams. Knowing I will never leave you. Let passion be your crime and my unstoppable addiction. Your hands are irresistible, moving like a ghost's, over and through me, like spider silk spun through my body, freeing the wild and the wanting from deep within.

I meet you upon your knees to taste the lust upon you lips. Like a melody I am there on your tongue; bitter, sweet, potent, carnal, innocent and damned, layer after layer of language made into sex, into taste and scent and texture and perfect desire. I slide around you, taking you, robbing you, feeling you in my body and blood.

Our moans fall into shivering silence undisturbed by breath or voice as our souls threaten to break. Flesh is transparent in our sharing as I arch back, opening my breasts and belly to your touch and kiss while I draw you in deeper. I am yours to consume, I am yours to murder, I am yours to complete. I gasp your name like a prayer and move my hips against yours. Your hands crush them to you with feral strength, your growl mixed with choked pleasure as the wild and the wanting take you. You bend over my arched body, groaning as you thrust, your arms wrapped tightly around my lower back. My nails find deep purchase in your flesh. My lips crush yours in that spiralling moment of ecstasy remaking each breath, each movement into the image of rapture. How can the mortal coil possibly endure? When shall we perish in flame and decadence?

And then in a moment, in a scream, it is over. You whisper the name of your Goddess, your Lady, my name, trembling and clutching me as your body clings to that moment of passion and the name of my Lord, my lover, you, is upon my lips as I kiss your face, feeling you shiver.

I move your hair back from your eyes and meet them, deep and dark, lost in pain and bliss. Words are set aside as useless when desire is the breath between our blistering skins. I feel your pulse bursting from your veins and you grip my wrists, as you look away because it is too much to endure. Yet, the heat is nothing compared to the agony of our bodies being parted.

I cool your skin with more kisses and caresses so delicate they would shame a butterfly. I use ancient words passed on in the heart to recapture you, words that have never sounded so sweet. With them comes sleep and gentle arms to cradle you as you listen to my voice stretch beside you and walk you into the dark of your dreams.