Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,23
I was paralyzed as he raised my UNC sweatshirt and his cool hand made contact with the same skin that had once swelled with child.
My thoughts nosedived into filthy territory. The blunt tips of his fingers traced up my ribs lightly.
“You hated getting bigger. I remember how you fretted over every pound, but your body was just as sexy. It was a different kind of sexy, curving in places that had always been toned before, but I wanted to touch you all the time.” He breathed into my ear, his body moving slowly closer.
I felt hot all over. There wasn’t enough air in the room, as I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself. I wanted to strip off my sweatshirt the rest of the way and go add a parka all at the same time, as emotions and temptations battled it out inside my head.
“You did touch me all the time,” I tried to sound matter of fact, but every word came out coated with honey.
Fingers ghosted down to trail over the elastic band of my shorts, and I grabbed his hand to stop him, sure I’d explode if I didn’t.
“…I miss touching you,” he said softly.
My gaze snapped up to meet his, and we only paused a moment before our lips melded together in a slow, rediscovering kiss. Gone were the hurried, rushed movements of our past. These were touches of two people who’d gone to the edges of each other’s souls and back. Our mouths moved and our bodies felt, but the emotions were old and numbed, making the experience unique in itself.
It still felt good. I barely realized my clothes were being removed until I was naked. I wanted it to be like riding a bike, and in a way it was. I still remembered the motions and technical thrill of the building momentum between us, but it was lacking the fullness of my heart that used to swell with emotion like it might burst.
“We should sleep.” I told him breathlessly, pulling away.
In the end, it was the foreign detachment marking the experience that stopped me.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started that.” I detected the tiniest ounce of relief in his reply, and I knew all of this was just as hard for him as it was for me. We were in the same boat, just trying to figure it all out.
With the wine weighing on my mind, I kissed him one last time on the cheek before rolling over and closing my eyes to sleep.
+++
Click ClickClickClick
Vigorous little ticks woke me from my slumber, and I had no way to tell how much time had passed during my deep sleep, except for the sun that rained in an opened window as it rose in the sky.
I sat up, squinting against the light, and swiftly pulled the sheet up with me, realizing my exposed state.
“Cam?” I asked his back. He was sitting in front of his desk hunched over a laptop. “What are you doing?”
Glancing over his shoulder at me with a familiar grin, he snapped his computer shut. He swiveled around fully to face me, and tossed his wire rimmed reading glasses on the desk behind him.
“Good. You’re up.”
“How long have you been awake?” My voice was still hoarse from sleep.
Fully dressed in dark jeans and a dress shirt, Cam looked like he’d been alert for hours even though I knew it couldn’t be long after sunrise.
“I never went to sleep. You know how I’ve been struggling with writer’s block? Well, last night after you passed out, I sat down at my computer and banged out the rest of my rough draft for the next book.” He was talking excitedly, his words running into one another as they raced to the finish line. “I already emailed it to my publisher in New York, and they want me to fly out as soon as possible to talk with my editor. They’ve been putting pressure on me for months to finish it, but I just couldn’t make anything sound right, then BAM Adley Adair is back in my life, and it flows out of me like a waterfall…I think that might qualify you as a muse.”
“I don’t like that sound of that one bit.” I told him scowling. Tucking his white sheet closer around my naked body, I sat Indian style in his bed. “This new book better not even have a character’s whose name starts with an ‘A’. I’ve retired from my book starring days.”