I want this uncertainty gone.
I turn my face up toward the jet, closing my eyes as the water pelts my face. I breathe deep, drawing in water and steam, trying to steady my heartbeat.
I know better than to be optimistic, but even as I forbid myself to think it, I cannot help but reflect that the word surprise is seldom associated with something negative.
It might’ve been a poor choice of words on Winston’s part, but his moment of excitement seemed to confirm this choice; he might’ve chosen a more pejorative term had he wished to manage my expectations of disappointment.
Despite my every silent protest, hope takes hold of me, forces from me the dregs of my composure. I lean my forehead against the cool tile, the water beating the scars on my back. I can hardly feel it, the sensations there dulled from nerve damage. Scar tissue.
I straighten at a sudden sound.
I turn, heart racing, at the soft shudder of the bathroom door opening. I already know it’s her. I always feel her before I can see her, and when I see her—when she opens the bathroom door and stands there, smiling at me—
My relief is so acute I reach for the wall, bracing myself against the cold tile. Ella is holding two mugs of coffee, dressed the way she often is: in a soft sweater and jeans, her dark brown hair so long now it skims her elbows. She grins at me, then disappears into the outer room, and I start to follow her, nearly slipping in my haste. I catch the doorframe to steady myself, watching as she rests the coffee mugs on a nearby table. She slips off her tennis shoes. Tugs off her socks.
When she pulls her sweater over her head, I have a minor heart attack. She’s facing away from me, but her back is bare. She’s not wearing a bra.
“You were sound asleep this morning,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at me as she unbuttons her jeans. “I was afraid to wake you up. I went out to get us some coffee, but the line at breakfast was really long. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
She shimmies out of her jeans then, tugging them down over her hips. She’s wearing a scrap of lace masquerading as underwear, and I watch, immobilized, as she bends over to yank off the last of the jeans, pulling her feet free.
When she turns around, I’m struggling to breathe.
She’s so beautiful I can hardly look at her; I feel as if I’ve stepped into some strange dream, the debilitating fears that gripped me yesterday somehow forgotten in a moment. Heat courses through me at a dangerous speed, my mind unable to grasp what my body clearly understands. There’s so much I still need to say to her—so much I remember wanting to ask her. But when she steps out of her underwear and walks through the open bathroom door, into the shower, and then directly into my arms, I remember nothing.
My brain shuts down.
Her soft, naked body is pressed against every hard inch of mine, and suddenly I want nothing, nothing but this. The need is so great it actually feels like it might break me.
“Hey, handsome,” she says, peering up at me. She runs her hands down my back, then lower. I can hear her smile. “You look too good in here to be all by yourself.”
I can’t speak.
She takes my hand, still smiling, and rests it against her breast before slowly guiding it down her body; she’s showing me exactly what she wants from me. How she wants it.
But I already know.
I know where she wants my hands. I know where she wants my mouth. I know where she wants me most of all.
I take her into my arms, hitching her leg around my thigh before I kiss her, breaking her open. She’s so soft, slick, and eager in my arms, kissing me back with an urgency that drives me wild. I tilt her head back as I break away, kissing her neck, then lower; slowly, carefully, replacing my hands with my mouth everywhere on her body. Her desperate, anguished sounds send shock waves of pleasure through me, setting me on fire. She reaches behind her, searching for purchase against the tile wall, her back arching with pleasure.
I love the way she loses herself with me, the way she lets go, trusting me completely with her needs, her pleasure. I never feel closer to her than when we’re so entwined, when there’s nothing but openness and love between us.
She touches me then, gently wraps her hand around me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, hardly able to contain the sound I make, low in my throat. All I can think in this moment is that I don’t want this to be over; I want to be trapped in here for hours, her slick body against mine, her voice in my ear begging me, as she is now, to make love to her.
“Please,” she says, still touching me. “Aaron—”
I sink down, without warning, onto my knees. Ella steps back, confused for all of a second before her eyes widen with understanding.