Headlights(96)

“I think…” she says, touching my chest, “you’re gonna have to look.”

The music swells and that maddening pressure, vibration, static. Hannah’s seen my memories. She’s lived them. And … I know she’s right. Of course I do. Of course that would be the final thing. Maybe what this creature outside the door wants.

But I can’t do it. Especially here, especially now. I don’t … I lean my forehead against hers. “Not yet,” I say. It’s pitiful, my voice, the words.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.” And she reaches up to touch my face as she kisses me.

Again, silence. Just us in the kiss, and that other-world, the one we occupy together. That in-between. I feel it now. Know. Something is in the bedroom still, pressing in on us. And maybe it can access our other-space, certainly some other-space. But this one, the one we inhabit right now, together. It’s just us. Just Hannah and me.

And in the bathroom … Her tongue against mine, my hands sliding through her hair. Every inch of my body is on fire. No kiss has ever felt like this. I have never felt— It will never be enough. I can’t pull her close enough. And the way I feel her, know her, in this moment. That want, that thrumming ache. It’s not just mine. Her, tasting me, touching me. Her tongue sliding against mine. I think to grab the take-out container, get the meat, give her more. But the container’s fallen to the floor, to the blood. And I know it won’t satisfy her anyway.

Hannah, fighting through this hunger, this need, to calm me. To bring me back. Hannah, who is here with me, really here. Sharing this burden, all of it.

I want to do the same. To help her. Give her … something.

And then … a thought.

I pull back and brace against the sound, all the sounds, flooding back every time we break contact. I lift my bandaged hand. Hannah’s eyes land on it. She realizes what I’m doing.

She’s about to protest, about to say I don’t have to, but I shake my head.

A tear falls down her face, and I lean forward and kiss it. I pull back, her chest rising and falling, and she watches me unwrap the bandage. I swear as it peels the dried blood from my skin, Pain. Want. Certainty.

I let the bandage fall to the floor, and I hold my hand out in front of her.

The wave of desire that hits me is almost unbearable. Her eyes on my hand, the way she’s looking at it. I am painfully hard. Have been for I don’t know how long. I don’t know what’s hers or mine anymore.

She reaches up, takes my wrist in both her hands. She locks her eyes on mine.

She opens her mouth and slowly traces her tongue from my wrist, up my palm, to the base of my pinky. My cock twitches against the counter. Everything terrible, incredible.

She licks from the base of my pinky up to the tip of my finger. Over the blood, the exposed muscle, just a light flick. I suck in at the pain. But also the look of her. Her eyes on mine, her tongue on my skin.

She does it again, and I groan, push my hips against her. My cock straining through my jeans. She arches her back, presses herself against me and Jesus. I set my good hand down on her thigh. As she leans forward and closes her mouth over my finger. As she sucks slowly from the base to the tip.

The room spins. I don’t move. I don’t pull it back. It fucking hurts, and I feel sick, but … the look of her. Feeling, knowing. How much she wants it, loves it. I squeeze her thigh with my other hand, and she moans, staring at my bloody finger, her brow knit in pain and want, and— She looks up at me, a final ask. I can feel her disbelief, that I would offer this.

Her. Hannah. I’d say yes to anything. I will say yes to fucking anything.

I’ve been a goner from the very beginning.

I nod.

She makes herself pull back, and I can see how hard it is for her. Can feel it. The sound pressing in, all of it. I keep my hand held there, waiting for her, ready when she wants it. Her chest rising and falling beneath the sweater, the outline of her perfect tits I have tried not to notice. She reaches down and fumbles with the button of my jeans. I lean back a little from the sink so she can undo the zipper. I help her with my good hand, slide my jeans down below my hips. I almost tell her she doesn’t have to do this, that I’m giving her what she needs, and I don’t need anything in return.

But I can feel what she feels, hear what she thinks, not quite in words. But I know. She wants this as much as I do. God, I have never wanted anyone like this. Have never wanted anything as much as I want this, now, with her.

Her, across the table from me at Woody Creek, her with that pen in her mouth at the three-sided shelter, her running on a mountain trail, her in my fucking dreams.

Everything in this whole mess of a life to get us here. She’s so unbelievably perfect.

She unbuttons her own jeans. Presses her hands to the countertop to lift herself. I grab hold of her belt loops, work them down over her thighs, her knees, step back and pull them off, let them fall to the bloody floor. She lowers herself to the counter, and I slide my good hand up her thigh, around the back to her ass, squeeze it just a little. She groans, kisses me again. Whimpers. I pull her closer to the edge of the counter.

She touches my chest, trails her hand down until she reaches the top of my boxer briefs. Then she runs her fingers over the length of me, the thin fabric all that’s between us.

Jesus, I say. Out loud, in the other-space, I don’t know. You’re gonna kill me.