After tonight, if she’s ever had any doubts about how I feel she won’t anymore.
I kiss her deeply, the kind of kiss you feel in the deepest parts of your being. I mark her as mine and she claims me as hers.
We’re cautious, gentle, taking our time and studying one another’s body.
This isn’t the frantic, desperate love-making, fucking, whatever you want to call it, that typically overcomes us in our moments of passion.
This is real true love pouring out of our bodies and into the other person. She takes, I give. I take, she gives. It’s a dance we seem to know well despite never having performed it before.
When the dance ends we lie tangled in one another’s arms, the sheets barely covering our sweat covered limbs, trying to soak in what’s transpired in this bed tonight.
The realness of it.
I kiss the top of her head which she tilts back to look at me. “That was beautiful,” she whispers on a fleeting breath.
“It was.”
For once, I’m at a loss for words, because I know without a doubt while my heart beats inside my chest, giving life to my body, it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s hers. It’s always been hers, it was only waiting for me to find her.
33
Mia
I curl my body against Hollis’s toasty warmth. I don’t know how guys always manage to be so warm, like their own personal furnace or something. I lay my head on his shoulder and his arms wrap around me. He tucks his head close to mine.
My body is worn out, but my heart is full.
Hollis rubs his finger back and forth along my skin, grazing gently against my bare arm, and I can feel sleep beginning to beckon me. My eyes keep drooping closed, but I fight it, not wanting tonight to be over.
I can’t hold it at bay for long and within minutes I’m dozing off.
I startle awake at the sound of my front door slamming open.
I sit straight up, Hollis doing the same beside me. If he’s in here then…
“Who is that?”
Hollis jumps out of the bed in less than a second, grabbing a pair of loose gym shorts from the drawer and yanking them on.
“Stay here,” he hisses.
“I’ll do no such thing,” I seethe, wrapping the sheet around me. “I’m not sitting in bed like a naked sitting duck for whoever is—”
“MIA! HOLLIS! GET YOUR ASSES OUT HERE NOW!”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, tears springing to my eyes. I swear my heart drops right out of my body.
“Shit,” Hollis curses, his panicked eyes meeting mine.
I tumble out of the bed, tripping over the sheet, but Hollis is already there giving me a hand to help me up.
My lower lip trembles. “He’s going to hate me.”
“No, baby, he’s going to hate me,” Hollis says, giving me a sad look.
I tighten my grip on his hand, but he pulls away, refusing to look at me.
I can feel him slipping through my fingers, literally. Already an arctic blast seems to come from him.