The women on this island are mindblowingly beautiful. It's a fact I can't escape. One I don't try hard to, because it's torturous, but I can't want it to stop. If the schoolgirls waiting for the bus drove me crazy back home, this seems like the price to pay for already being out of my mind
( ... )
I link my arm through his, my fingers reflexively curling around his forearm. The warmth of his skin is palpable, though I know that also has something to do with the part where I can feel my own body temperature rising, a byproduct of all the alcohol. There's something so innocent in the gesture, this chivalry that's enough to make me tempted to blush like some kind of naive girl all over again.
"We'll see once I start, right?" I murmur, taking a step or two on slightly shaky footing. I stop. Probably not the best idea on the whole, and I turn, bracing one hand against his shoulder as I step in against him, bending one leg at the knee and leaning back until I can pry one heel off, then switching to do the same with the other. "I'm just going to avoid potential injury altogether," I add. Without the heels, he's much taller than me, and I have to glance up, my fingertips resting lightly against his chest.
With the shoes off, she comes up about to my chin. It's almost a relief. It takes some of the pressure off the effort required not to just lean in and kiss her as she rests against me. I don't possess the ease and smoothness something like that would require without the both of us participating. A shared idea. I don't know if it's the beer or her, the light weight of her hand, but I'm starting to feel a little more confident that it could be at some point.
"We'll see about that," I answer, speaking half into her hair. "Careful." I don't yet move. I don't want to risk being the one to hurt her. Out in the jungle in her barefoot, probably drunk, there are all kinds of other ways for her to get hurt. I'd rather stay still until she indicates she's ready. "You're tiny."
Sitting, we're just about the same height. Standing is slightly more jarring, especially now that I've ditched the heels. It's difficult to see him as anything but young in the face, but he carries that height so nonchalantly that it ages him almost instantly. Even David was never this tall, and I'm pretty sure I beat him out in the height department with certain pairs of shoes.
I tip my head back to meet his eyes and nod once, encouragingly. "I'm good. The paths are there, and we'll just have to find the closest route to the beach, right?" His other comment, murmured against the crown of my head, earns him a laugh. "You're taller than I thought you were. C'mon, I'm ready. Nothing to worry about."
I've had enough to feel slightly flushed, warm, in the humid tropical evening, but not to be on unsteady on my feet. I figure that's a point in my favor for the moment, although she's alright, I think, with her shoes off. Arm out for her again, I lead the way out of the Hub and down to the path. Once you hit the boardwalk, it's all wooden planks worn smooth, whether by the builders or so many pairs of wandering feet. I still wonder if she's going to be okay. It makes me think of Callie, crossing all the rough gravel and rocks that made up her driveway, barefooted and fine.
Make up. Make up her driveway. She's still there, they're all still there, in some unknown present tense. I'm the one who's somewhere else, some other time.
"Alright," I answer, squinting into the half-dark. The moon's growing bigger, not yet full but bright, and there are lights on the path. I'm still figuring out my way around, though. "How's your plan of having fun going?"
I've walked these paths barefoot before, usually on my way back to the Compound after a walk down the beach and back, and there's something about the sand and sea salt on my feet that makes me feel alive, too good to want to spoil the feeling by slipping shoes back on. I've felt disconnected from my life for so long that it feels good to just be carefree again, to not be thinking about the job or a case or anything involving home right now. It's a little hard for me to dwell on the past when I'm caught up in the present, with him, the fingers of one hand curling into his arm as I clutch onto my shoes with the other
( ... )
Her eyes catch the flare of light from one of the lamps strewn up and down the path and I shake my head. "No," I tell her. The boardwalk needs more lamps like that, but I still think it's kind of amazing there are any at all. Nothing about this place makes sense, nothing. I almost tell her so. "Not even close."
In those patches between lights with only a bit of moonlight peering through the trees, I can see the line of her profile in shadow, the tiny curve of her nose, the slight pout of her full mouth, the slope of her neck. She's outlined in shadow and light, and she's beautiful. That makes sense, maybe. The part where she's here with me doesn't, I don't know if she does, but some things are simple.
"Good," I quickly reply, tipping my chin down and turning my gaze ahead of us to the boardwalk that continues on. The sound of the beach only grows louder the farther we walk, and pretty soon the wood gives way to yielding sand underneath the soles of my feet, a soft and cool contrast to what we were walking only a few seconds earlier. It's a feeling combined with the alcohol in my bloodstream that contributes towards giving me something of a giddy headrush
( ... )
I break into a trot after her, stopping some distance from the waves to watch her. Part of me is gripped by the fear I'll fail her, that one minute she'll be there and the next the water will pull her under and there'll be nothing I can do to stop it. It's as clear as fact in my head, the way she disappears like she never existed at all. It's only her laughter that pierces through, keeps me here, my hands in my pockets
( ... )
The judgment is what goes first, they say, that little voice in the back of your head that warns you against making a sudden choice, a snap decision that you might be bound to regret no matter which way you decide. The drinks remove all of that, but only to an extent, enough for me to feel that voice tickling at the back of my brain - not enough to sway me in any direction but just enough to be irritating. I close my eyes, trying not to let the sensory overload overwhelm me - the smells, the sounds, the sensations under my hands and feet
( ... )
My blood pounds in my veins like a warning, an alarm going off, telling me now's the time to push her away, to make it stop. This place isn't fair. They say it takes all the damage away, like you can step out of the ocean and be clean again, everything you did and had done to you stripped free of your bones. It isn't true. That blank slate is nothing more than the way serial killers can walk around back home and no one knows there are bodies in the basement, because people don't wear their cruelty on their skin. It's something darker, deeper, something under the surface. The bad things don't go away. We just wind up somewhere knows about them
( ... )
A strangled sound rises in my throat, somewhere between a sob and a gasp, and I hang in that moment of uncertainty, trying to decide which direction to turn in the second that his mouth collides with mine and takes the breath right out of me, almost like a punch in the stomach. There's no pain in this, though, not physically anyway, and this is something I know, something I can do, if only to help me forget
( ... )
The sounds she makes echo in my head, the first telling me to let go. I hold on tighter, though, hands sliding against her back to pull her against me. Every small motion of hers feels less like a surrender than a demand and I submit gratefully, sucking at her lip, tongue pressing between hers. She tastes of salt and alcohol and things I don't have names for, soft and hot, and I remind myself again and again not to think, not to think so much, except I keep thinking about that and about whether I'm doing it right or if I'm still shit at this. Of whether or not it's wrong to make use of advice another woman gave me when the other thought I can't shake is how badly I want to fuck her. There's nothing here but miles of sand and sea, no one around to see us, nothing to stop us from going at it right here and now if we wanted. And I do
( ... )
There's a hand against my back suddenly and I tense, only for the slightest of moments, just initially. I should have expected it with a dress like this one, but it's been a long time since anyone's touched me that intimately, not even necessarily in a sexual context. With Wes it was always heated, but the passion was tempered down by need, by my knowing I could literally beat him up in our bed and he would still keep coming back to let me take it out on him. Part of me wonders if he needed the punishment as much as I needed to dole it out. There's none of that here now, none of that desire to be rough, just desperation, just the need to feel something, even if it's only for a few more seconds. I can afford to be greedy. I've been selfless for too long, and I'm not holding out anymore
( ... )
Just the feel of her leg against me like that drives me wild, and I tighten my grip on her thigh to keep her there. It's what I hoped for when I walked up to her, or on the way to it, but it's not what I expected. Even here where gorgeous women are a dime a dozen, there's no reason any of them should want to go anywhere with me or do anything. But here she is.
The ocean's so close, the sound of her gasp gets swallowed up by the waves or by me, I don't know which, but I can feel it. I stop kissing her so I can kiss her neck instead, soft skin catching briefly under my teeth. I could swear I'm shaking, but I think it might be inside my head or under my skin. It's impossible to know anymore, my head gone blank but for the rush of blood in my ears, indistinguishable from the water, and the constant, throbbing awareness that I want her. I want to push her down to the sand right now, forget that we're somewhere public. It's late. It doesn't matter. I hope this counts as the fun she was looking for. For me, it feels desperately serious.
This isn't vengeful. It isn't controlled by my need to have power over another person, but I'll admit that I like having the choice here, having the ability to decide what I want in this moment - not to mention every moment that's happened since I've been here. I don't have to keep looking over my shoulder, and there's a freedom in that. It's a feeling I want to keep preserving in any way I can, and if that involves the sensation of his skin under my hands, as they slip down from his shoulders and underneath the hem of the threadbare shirt, feeling skin and lean muscle beneath my fingertips.
My eyes linger closed as his mouth moves along my neck, lips and teeth alternating, and the graze of the latter has me clutching a little harder, thigh squeezing against his hip. I feel my center of balance tilting as I tip my head back and for once I don't care that I'm in this nice dress, out in the middle of the beach, standing in the dark. I'm not going to waste the energy to bother caring, not about anything else but this.
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"We'll see once I start, right?" I murmur, taking a step or two on slightly shaky footing. I stop. Probably not the best idea on the whole, and I turn, bracing one hand against his shoulder as I step in against him, bending one leg at the knee and leaning back until I can pry one heel off, then switching to do the same with the other. "I'm just going to avoid potential injury altogether," I add. Without the heels, he's much taller than me, and I have to glance up, my fingertips resting lightly against his chest.
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"We'll see about that," I answer, speaking half into her hair. "Careful." I don't yet move. I don't want to risk being the one to hurt her. Out in the jungle in her barefoot, probably drunk, there are all kinds of other ways for her to get hurt. I'd rather stay still until she indicates she's ready. "You're tiny."
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I tip my head back to meet his eyes and nod once, encouragingly. "I'm good. The paths are there, and we'll just have to find the closest route to the beach, right?" His other comment, murmured against the crown of my head, earns him a laugh. "You're taller than I thought you were. C'mon, I'm ready. Nothing to worry about."
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Make up. Make up her driveway. She's still there, they're all still there, in some unknown present tense. I'm the one who's somewhere else, some other time.
"Alright," I answer, squinting into the half-dark. The moon's growing bigger, not yet full but bright, and there are lights on the path. I'm still figuring out my way around, though. "How's your plan of having fun going?"
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In those patches between lights with only a bit of moonlight peering through the trees, I can see the line of her profile in shadow, the tiny curve of her nose, the slight pout of her full mouth, the slope of her neck. She's outlined in shadow and light, and she's beautiful. That makes sense, maybe. The part where she's here with me doesn't, I don't know if she does, but some things are simple.
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The ocean's so close, the sound of her gasp gets swallowed up by the waves or by me, I don't know which, but I can feel it. I stop kissing her so I can kiss her neck instead, soft skin catching briefly under my teeth. I could swear I'm shaking, but I think it might be inside my head or under my skin. It's impossible to know anymore, my head gone blank but for the rush of blood in my ears, indistinguishable from the water, and the constant, throbbing awareness that I want her. I want to push her down to the sand right now, forget that we're somewhere public. It's late. It doesn't matter. I hope this counts as the fun she was looking for. For me, it feels desperately serious.
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My eyes linger closed as his mouth moves along my neck, lips and teeth alternating, and the graze of the latter has me clutching a little harder, thigh squeezing against his hip. I feel my center of balance tilting as I tip my head back and for once I don't care that I'm in this nice dress, out in the middle of the beach, standing in the dark. I'm not going to waste the energy to bother caring, not about anything else but this.
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