LOST IN A DANCE OF DESIRE
"Hi, I'm sorry it's been a while, Aunt Gabi," Luke told her as soon as she opened the door in response to the bell ringing and then the loud rap of his knuckles on the wood. "The place sure looks a lot tidier since I was last with you.".
With an admiring glance, Luke stepped past her into a house that felt like a second home to him and where Gabi always welcomed him.
"Come in!" she urged, her heart seeming to swell with love for him and wanting to close the door and for them to be alone. The warmth of his smile always had a calming effect on her. "I sure have missed you after all we had to do a week ago, making my house as safe as possible before the hurricane struck. It could have gone much worse for me if the storm had gotten closer."
"We helped each other through," he readily admitted. "And now, my work brings me back and makes it easier to be here with you."
"Where I often think that you belong."
Luke met her wondering stare on him. "I guess that's so wherever we are together."
Gabi had hunkered down in the spare room of his parent's place a few miles out of town. Once they were all together, they had seen out the worst of the storm and after some thirty-six hours had left the shelter and checked on the damage, to clear up the debris as best as they could. Gabi had soon returned to her home but it had not felt the same without Luke close by and for them to be free to say and do as they pleased when they were in her place.
"Yes, I'm glad about that and now I'm seeing you again."
"It matters, does it?"
"Yes, you know it does, Luke! Stop your teasing of me."
His eyes settled on her as he smiled and took in what she was wearing, a crinkly dress with thin straps shaping a voluptuous and lightly tanned body, the tumble of Gabi's breasts straining the fabric as it clung to her skin in the muggy heat of the evening.
"You sure look good, Gabi. May I say that?"
"Yes, you know that you can!" For a sixty-three-year-old woman, and a relation of his, she shouldn't feel that way about Luke or depend upon him as much as she did. But they got along so well that it scarcely mattered what their family bond was. "Remember, darlin'...don't go calling me 'Aunt Gabi' all the time...but Gabi. We settled that the last time we were together."
"Yeah, I know. It's how I think of you now...as Gabi."
"Good, now come here!"
She hugged him, or rather she surrendered to his embrace upon her and looked up into his eyes. She knew Luke was strong and had all the vitality of a twenty-two-year-old young man. Their bond had always been close, but his help in getting her to safety and living with the rest of the family as the storm blew through, and the floods that followed, had redefined their relationship.
"You've sure got this place straight in no time at all," he said, complimenting her. His bag fell to the floor as he said it and as he met her look upon him. "The yard looks almost as good as before..." He had spoken lightly, as was his way whenever they were together, but he stopped as she again stood close and touched his arm in a show of possessiveness and familiarity. "I couldn't get away and be here with you, before now...I sure wanted to."
"I know, and that's why it's special when you do come here to stay. You've got an excuse; your work brings you here...into this suburb."
"You're the reason and my work clearing up after the storm is just a cover."
With Gabi dressed in the way that he now saw, it was a wonder that he had not done anything about his feelings for her. But he sensed that her touch to the bare skin of his arm, as they stood close, and loved to be in each other's company again, might finally break down the barriers to them sharing deeper intimacy.
He sure wanted that, because there was no other woman who got under his skin as Gabi succeeded in doing, and with little or no effort. Her presence, the sight of Gabi with her tight curves, and her choice of perfume, never failed to work their magic on him.
There was no question about it. He lusted after her and he sensed that this had gotten through to Gabi, a woman who had lived alone for so long that he wondered where she thought life would take her, and if she understood that he was keen to fully share the days and nights that he spent with her.
He remained captivated by the sight of her, a curvy grey-haired woman as he followed Gabi into her spotlessly tidy kitchen. The woman before him was agile and possessed easy grace, appearing statuesque, at five foot nine, and he was only marginally taller.
She sure had curves and even under her floaty dress, they were tight even if the cups of her strappy dark-blue dress offered only scant support to her heavy breasts. He'd always loved to see her smile, Gabi's teeth so white against the light tan of her skin, but along with that was how her eyes seemed to sparkle and linger on him. It was at such moments that he knew that he meant something more to her than Gabi gave voice to.
"I'm in my usual toom, am I?" he asked with a suggestive look and with a smile creasing his face. She followed him across the hallway and watched as he lifted his bag effortlessly off the floor.
"Yes, you are, darlin', only you won't be in any room if you're so forward," she answered lightly and on a snorted laugh of disbelief that he should suggest what was so clearly on his mind. He wanted to be with her, and all that it meant now sent a tremor of longing coursing through her body as she imagined what would have happened if she had said, "No, 'you're sleeping with me."
How she now felt it would have been easy to admit to her deepening lustful feelings for him. He had gone further than she had in disclosing just how deep the bond between them had become.
She loved his rugged appearance, his square-shouldered build, how his black silken hair curled out from under a cap that he still wore. She reached out and gripped the rim, her actions goading him to remove it.
"Yes, that's better. I can see you now that you've taken it off for me. You're indoors, after all."
"Yeah, sure, sorry...I forgot to do that from the moment I saw you, I guess."
There it was again, his slow and teasing reply to what she had said and that was so characteristic of him.
Luke sat down on the hall chair and unbuttoned the laces of his work shoes. He soon kicked them off, followed by stripping away his socks. Gabi had seen his relaxed ways about her home often enough, but now the sight of his large-toed feet, their slenderness, had her thinking of so much more.
"Do you mind?"
"No, Luke, just you relax all you want. I'll go and get supper ready. It's only pasta and some garlic bread..." She leaned against the doorpost, close to where he was seated, and gazed back at him. No, she wasn't imagining it, the air seemed to crackle with a tension between them that was different from all the times before.
"Suppers that you always make so well."
He took his bag up to his room but left it unpacked.
Gabi heard his footfalls on the landing above her, then on the stairs, as she hummed absentmindedly, working to put the finishing touches to their meal, turning occasionally to look his way as she heard him come into the room.
Luke soon closed the space between them.
"Cook it real slow, Gabi, because there's something I want to settle...need to settle before I burn up. It's all because of you and who we've been these last few weeks or so."
"Running away from this?" She gasped as Luke impetuously embraced her and she had to still the sudden progress of his hands over her body, one clamping on the swell of her breasts as the other fumbled with the skirt of her dress before it caressed the warm skin of her thigh and moved to cup her mound. "Luke...Luke, darling!"
She had fallen so quickly under his spell and felt a palpable rush of longing for him.
"Make it real with me? Let's stop running away from what has happened between us, Gabi...please?"
She couldn't stop trembling, both from anticipation of what Luke would do next and from an overwhelming sense of guilt that she was succumbing to him so readily. A threshold in their lives was being crossed.
"Luke...Luke!" she groaned as she tried to still the progress of his hands over her body and to set free all the captured emotions, and longings, that she had never spoken of with him. "Luke, can we...should we go on?"
He moved until his hands cupped her face and she gripped his wrists as she gazed into his eyes, Luke's breaths warm and tempting as they wafted over her parted lips.
"Yes, we should...we should go on and we see where it takes us. We're like...like two moths circling the flame."
"And we surrender, fall into the trap?"
"Yes, and it's not a trap but a situation we've lived with and want to explore further. That's how I see it."
Gabi clutched the front of his shirt as Luke leaned in to kiss her deeply. It was no longer a familial kiss but that of an expectant lover; hesitant, wondering, desiring of so much more and where it would lead them.
They had slowed in seeking kisses from each other, but Luke's hands had not stopped in cupping and caressing her breasts, pinching hard nipples through the cotton fabric of her dress, or clamping on her hips as she was made to mould her body against his, leaning back in Luke's embrace.
"You're so beautiful and have so much for me, Gabi..."