Page 88 of Sweet Chaos
This wasn’t fucking. He was making love to me. His eyes never left my face, and I took the weight of his body, welcomed it, as our fingers entwined, our hands clasped on either side of my head while he glided in and out, his pace unhurried like he wanted to make this last forever.
Nothing,nothing, could hurt as much as it did when Dylan made love to me. And it was in that moment that the thought of losing him became almost unbearable. A physical ache that squeezed my heart and stole the breath from my lungs. I would have cried if he hadn’t been watching me so intently, like he could read my every emotion.
Our climax wasn’t fast, it wasn’t pounded into me, rather coaxed and drawn out, my body unfurling like a flower reaching for the sun. A slow climb to uncharted territory. It felt like he was deeper inside me than ever before, our bodies fused to the point that I didn’t know where he left off and I began. My thighs clenched tighter around his hips, my clit rubbing against him as our bodies soared into shared orgasms that left us breathless and clinging tightly to each other. Like we might fall off that imaginary cliff if we let go.
His forehead dropped to mine, our chests heaving as we struggled to regain our breath, and for a few long moments we stayed like that, not talking, not moving, just breathing the same air with him still inside me.
Afterward, he rolled off me and we lay side by side, staring at the ceiling, his tattooed hand wrapped around my thigh, his thumb making lazy circles on my skin. It felt like the point of no return. An all or nothing moment. I wanted all of him. Nothing less would satisfy me. And that revelation was as exhilarating as it was frightening.
Like free falling off that rock cliff with no safety net to catch you. I was all in, but was he?
Love was only for the brave. It made you more vulnerable than anything ever could. When you gave someone your heart, you also gave them the power to destroy you. Here, take my heart and don’t trample all over it was what you were saying by uttering those three little words. And maybe that was why he’d never said them. Down deep, he was just as scared as the rest of us mere mortals.
I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand, peering down at his face, my hand over his beating heart. He was just staring at the ceiling fan, lost in thought. I wanted all his thoughts and all his words and all his memories. I wanted all of him, every broken piece and jagged edge and twisted truth. “Why did you leave this space blank?”
He didn’t say a word. His stormy blue-grays studied my face, and there was so much intensity in his gaze that I had no idea what he was thinking. He was silent for so long that I gave up waiting for an answer. I withdrew my hand and flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan. Mixed up, confused, and hopelessly in love with someone who couldn’t say the words. Was I the only one who felt this way? Maybe I’d been fooling myself all along. Why had he asked me to move in?
My head turned when he grabbed a Sharpie from the bedside table and guided my hand to his chest, placing my palm flat against it. Tipping down his chin, he traced my hand onto his skin in blue marker then lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the inside of my wrist before he released it. I watched the marker move over his skin as he wrote a word in block letters inside the hand: HER.
It almost filled up the blank space.Almost. Unshed tears swam in my eyes, distorting the image.
“Dylan,” I whispered, brushing away the tears. He was mine, and I was his.
He smiled like he hadn’t just stolen another piece of my heart. “Yeah, babe?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just…” I swallowed, trying to find the words but there were only three words and I’d already overused them. So, I just kissed him, a long, lingering kiss that would turn into something more if I didn’t stop it now. This was an emotional overload. I was two seconds away from bursting into tears, and I didn’t know how to handle it. So I pulled away and stood up. “I’m going to take a shower and get ready for dinner.”
I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away. Before I stepped inside the bathroom, I looked over my shoulder and my eyes met his. He was lying on his side, his head propped in his hand, heart beating under the Sharpie tattoo, an expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher.
“What are you thinking about?”
I expected him to make a sexual comment or not even bother to answer. But he rarely did or said what I expected. “I was thinking that this is the best birthday I’ve ever had. Nobody has ever loved me the way you do. Don’t let me ruin this. Don’t let me ruin us.”
And I died. I was so choked up I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.
This was what Dylan did. This was why he owned me. Body, heart, soul. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His naked body was a masterpiece. A work of art, from the tattoos inked on his sun-bronzed skin, so dark against the white sheets, to the chiseled muscles, he was lean and lithe and so masculine.
But how could I promise him that? I couldn’t.
He was busy on his phone now, dark brows drawn together, scrolling through texts or emails, not even looking at me. “Go take your shower, Starlet,” he said, his eyes still on his phone screen.
* * *
After I showered, I slipped into a short cotton dress. It was simple, off-the-shoulder, the color of the clear blue sea on our doorstep. Dylan stood behind me and I watched him in the mirror. He brushed my hair off my shoulder and placed a kiss on it, the stubble on his jaw lightly scraping across my skin sent shivers up and down my spine. It didn’t matter how many times he kissed me, touched me, devoured me, he still made my knees weak. This couldn’t be good. Why did I have to feel so much of everything?
He left the bathroom door open and I watched him step under the rain shower.
Before I had a chance to fully appreciate the view, my phone rang, dragging my attention away from Dylan’s naked body. It was my mom, and while I was tempted to ignore her call and let it go to voicemail, after what had happened to Dylan, I closed the bathroom door and answered the call, taking my phone outside to the terrace with a sea view.
“Hey Mom. Are you okay?”
“Hello darling. Are you at home?”
I watched the pink and tangerine sky as the sun dipped lower into the sea. This wasn’t home. It was the place where I came to lose my heart. “Um, no, I’m—”
“Just a minute. Your father’s home. Simon,” she called. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
I sighed as my mother conducted a conversation with my father before she came back on the line a few seconds later. “He’s been working too hard. He comes home exhausted.”
