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No, I wish he was inside me.
I break away from him, abrupt, aware of the way we’re breathing, like there isn’t enough air in the room.
I’m in trouble,I think as he stares at me with those sultry eyes that speak of a lust I’ve never encountered in my twenty-one years. It gives me butterflies…the kind that start in my belly and work their way down. I’ve heard of this sensation, never having experienced what it was like for myself. Before I can move away, he’s pulling me close again, pressing his lips to my cheek and then my neck.
“I’ve wanted to taste you from the moment I saw your flaming red hair and the way you looked at me like I was a mere annoyance,” he breathes into my skin. “No one has ever looked at me like that.”
“That’s what did you in?” I ask, my eyes fluttering shut as I try to remain composed. This man is makingloveto me. What the fuck?
“And your beautiful breasts that you hid from me.”
I pause a moment, thinking about my barely a handful boobs and how I hadn’t noticed him noticing them that night. My T-shirt hadn’t done much for my shape at the time but I’m sure that since then, he’s been able to take a gander at what I’m working with.
He called them beautiful,I think to myself, trying to stamp down my inner swoon.
“You sure know how to seduce someone,” I whisper, feeling like a fumbling and inept teenager. Abraham is well-versed in lover language, where I’m used to young men who fuck like jack rabbits and have to ask if you came.
“Will you show them to me?” He ignores my statement, pulling back to stare into my eyes. As if I’m promising him something priceless.
Yes.
“Only time will tell,” is all I can muster, hoping that in time, I start to truly feel as valuable as he’s making me think I am.
“You tease me with time when you know it’s not promised,Stellina.”
“Why do you call me that?” It’s hard to get the question out when he’s so focused on me, so close that I can see each of his dark lashes as he lowers his eyes to look at my lips.
“That first night, you were scared to look at me. You kept staring up at the stars like they offered you comfort when I just wanted you to look at me.” He presses a light, tentative kiss to my lips, soothing my slight discomfort at feeling so seen.
Moments of that first night come back to me like waves and I settle on one that has me pulling back from him.
I’m about to share a truth I’ve never uttered to anyone, and I can’t think of a better person to share with than someone who is my very own secret.
“You asked me why I dyed my hair.” I take a shuddering breath before I continue. “My mother was…unkind. She had a severe case of bipolar disorder and mixed with her alcoholism, it led to a lot of trauma. Anyway, she had dark hair and, in an effort to remove her from my identity, I did this to myself.”
I think about the day she died, the many missed calls I had waiting for me when I finished my last class for the day.
And when I found out she was gone, I didn’t rush home. I stayed and finished my classes and sent flowers. Because even though she’d been softer, needier, in the last few years of her life, I would always see the monster in her eyes. It was only held by a leash, able to strike with the slightest inconvenience.
This woman struck us, nearly starved us, and forgot about us too many times to count. Penelope Milas was unwell and the scars that pepper my body are proof.
“You changed your hair and I moved to another continent,” he whispers, pulling me back to him. I blink a few times, trying to keep the tears at bay. I haven’t cried over her in such a long time. And maybe I’m just crying over what could’ve been, had she gotten help sooner.
Mostly, I’m crying for the little girl I was with dark hair who flinched anytime her mother was near.
Embarrassment courses through me and I try to pull away, hide my face, anything to get the fuck away from him. But he doesn’t let me, shaking his head as I start to speak.
“Shit, I didn’t think I’d cry on our first date—”
“Ah, ah. Our second date,” he supplies with a smile, wiping my tears with his thumbs before he sits back, pulling me to sit back against him.
“We’re both two people just trying to find light in a world that’s fed us a lot of darkness,” he tells me, and it makes me want to ask about his darkness, but I can’t handle his along with my own.
