Page 22

Bella

We rode into the night, the starry sky greeting us as we left the city, opening in all it’s sparkling majesty before us.

We stuck to the back roads, away from any light that was not starlight.

I wish I could recreate the beauty that is the starry night sky on paper and on skin.

I’ve tried many times, but it never captures the real beauty of it.

But I’ll keep on trying. Until I get it right.

It took us four hours to get to the house on Sunset Beach and yet it felt like a short ride. Too short. We’re sitting on the wooden porch, watching the glistening black ocean move like a lazy snake, holding each other, needing to be close.

“This place is some kind of perfect,” I say, gazing into the stars reflected in his eyes. “Why haven’t you ever brought me here before?”

He grins. “I didn’t have a good enough ride, and my uncle was always here.”

I almost ask where his uncle is now, but I don’t want to hear a sad story tonight. Only happy ones. Only good ones. Especially the kind that need no words.

We seem to be on the same page about that because he kisses me and I swear I can taste some of that starlight we’re enveloped in. Our tongues do the dance we’ve done a thousand times before and will a thousand more. A million.

Then his lips trace kisses down my neck and that’s another kind of perfect.

He knows all my spots, all my triggers, the good ones and the bad.

And he’s hitting them all as his lips travel further down, trailing kisses along my collar bone, my breasts, my nipples, as he frees them from the confines of my shirt and bra.

He lays me down on the lounge chair we were sharing, kneels beside me and continues his sweet, tantalizing dance of kisses.

My skin is burning with desire, with want, while the cool ocean breeze grazes my skin, providing balance.

And I suddenly realize I truly don’t need anything more than this. That my life is perfect in this moment.

So I relax into the kisses, give myself to the pleasure he’s giving me, sink into it even as I float miles above the earth.

Before I know it, I’m naked, covered only in kisses. He’s naked too, balanced above me, his eyes full of stars.

“You taste so good,” he says. “I could do this all night.”

“Then do,” I say and smile at him.

That earns me another shower of kisses that lift me even higher on the waves of this perfect pleasure I was afraid to remember because I missed it so much.

Nothing else matters when we’re together, when we’re sharing our love like this.

Never did, never will. I was a fool to try and leave it all behind.

For thinking I had to. Because there was never any leaving him behind.

He enters me and it’s just as right as the kisses, more so because it makes us one, which we already always are anyway. The rhythm of our lovemaking is like the rhythm of the ocean, of the wind, of breathing. Natural and right.

Everything is perfect and right when we’re together like this. It’s the only way things can be.

The waves of pleasure I was floating on a million miles above the earth are now all inside me.

Intensifying with each thrust, coiling and exploding, then relaxing and unwinding.

A dance of stars, of breaths, of moans and kisses.

A dance as natural and right as the rightest thing in the whole universe.

We’re in no hurry. Just as we were in no hurry to get here. Enjoying the ride, the closeness, erasing the years that we spent apart until I’m not sure they ever even happened.

But soon there’s no more holding back the orgasm he’s bringing me to, no more drawing it out. And that’s perfectly right too. I come as he comes, seeing stars even where there is none, the pleasure burying me under its suffocating weight even as it lifts me higher than I’ve ever floated.

His embrace keeps me grounded, brings me back down to earth, his breathing as it slowly steadies the sweetest music I’ve ever heard, his warm body pressed against mine the best thing I’ve ever held.

“I love how synced up we are,” I say. “But that makes perfect sense. Because you’re a part of my soul.”

“And you of mine,” he says. “The best part.”

“You’ve always been my light,” I say. “You know that, don’t you? And I wish I could be that for you.”

He holds me tighter, envelops me in his arms, creating a cocoon just for us. Maybe this time I’ll emerge as the butterfly he deserves me to be.

“You are and you always will be,” he says. “I’m going off to war soon and I’ll need that light of yours with me.”

“War? What kind of war?”

He makes a shooshing sound, tells me to forget he said anything. And even though my heart is starting to race, I let his soothing caresses lull me back into that world where there is no time, no hurt, no pain, nothing but bliss and pleasure. Nothing but him and me and our love.

And certainly no war. Maybe I dreamed hearing him say it. Because dreams are already overtaking my mind. And it’s only the best ones. The ones I haven’t dreamed in a decade or more.