Ignite Me

“Up,” he says, gasping for air. “Lift your arms up.”

I do.

He tugs up my shirt. Pulls it over my head. Tosses it to the floor.

“Lie back,” he says to me, still breathing hard, guiding me onto the table as his hands slide down my spine, under my backside. He unbuttons my jeans. Unzips them. Says, “Lift your hips for me, love,” and hooks his fingers around the waist of my pants and my underwear at the same time. Tugs them down.

I gasp.

I’m lying on his table in nothing but my bra.

Then that’s gone, too.

His hands are moving up my legs and the insides of my thighs and his lips are making their way down my chest, and he’s undoing what little is left of my composure and every bit of my sanity and I’m aching, everywhere, tasting colors and sounds I didn’t even know existed. My head is pressed back against the table and my hands are gripping his shoulders and he’s hot, everywhere, gentle and somehow so urgent, and I’m trying not to scream and he’s already moving down my body, he’s already chosen where to kiss me. How to kiss me.

And he’s not going to stop.

he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, “I think,” he says, “my heart is going to explode,”

No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh

Because my friendship,” he whispers, “comes with so many more benefits than Kenji could ever offer.”

I want him to know it the way only he can, the way he can sense the depth of emotion behind my movements. I want him to know and never doubt.

His eyes darken, deaden, all of a sudden. He looks toward the wall. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t ask me questions you already know the answers to. Twice I’ve laid myself bare for you and all it’s gotten me was a bullet wound and a broken heart. Don’t torture me,” he says, meeting my eyes again. “It’s a cruel thing to do, even to someone like me.”

a moment I actually want to say no. No, I’m not scared.
I’m petrified.
Because being this close to you is doing things to me. Strange things and irrational things and things that flutter against my chest and braid my bones together. I want a pocketful of punctuation marks to end the thoughts he’s forced into my head.
But I don’t say any of those things.
Instead, I ask a question I already know the answer to.

Oh God,” he gasps. He jerks back, breaks away. “I can’t do this. I won’t survive it.”

He wraps me up in his arms, not caring about the eight sets of eyes watching us.

“Are you okay?” he’s saying. “God—are you okay? What happened? Are you all right?”