Page 83 of Kept in the Dark

“You were also looking at the moon the night we met.”

“I love the moon. I used to pretend there was this tragic love story she had with the sun—they loved each other but were doomed to be in different skies forever. She would disappear once a month, and that was when they could be together, and she’d come back getting fuller and fuller of love, which would start to wane when she missed the sun.” I laugh a little, hearing it out loud in my adult ears. “Doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I was, like, five.”

“It makes sense to me,” he says quietly. “My mother told me when I was a boy that the moon was watching me sleep. I remember thinking it was a very large eye, blinking very slowly.”

I smile. I like that. I like how he listens. I like how he offers his own details to make mine feel less lonely. It’s just so fundamentally human to make up stories about things we don’t understand.

“How do you say ‘moon’ in Russian?”

He turns his head. I can feel his breath against my temple when he says, “Luna.”

“Oh,” I say, a bit surprised at the familiarity of the word. His boat. “That’ll be easy to remember.”

“Da.”

I can feel his eyes on me, and it’s making me hyperaware of the rise and fall of my chest, of the way my lips are slightly parted, of the tiny white puffs collecting around each breath in the cold air. My face is warm, like he’s breathing his own heat into me, or like his eyes alone are capable of eliciting a thermal reaction from my skin.

“Da,”I repeat faintly.

“You look cold, my med. Let me bring you inside.” He stands, not waiting for my response, and holds out his hand to me.

My heart thumps fast and loud, and I swallow the thickness stuck in my throat as I take his hand. This is it. This is the moment where he fulfills his promises, or I find out that I waited for him in the dark, on a cold bench, not wearing any underwear for no damn reason.

He leaves me in suspense as we cross the patio, heading for the pool house, but he wraps his large hand around mine and rubs his thumb lightly across the skin of my knuckles as we walk in silence. I start to get concerned that he meant what he said exactly as he said it—I look cold, he’s taking me in to get warm.

When I reach for the door handle, since I’m closer, he drops his hold on me, and disappointment swells.

He’s killing me.

It’ll be the first documented case of death byyearning.

Screw being mortified. Apparently, I have to say something and explain just how badly I need him. I turn to face him, but he fills the space behind me. He doesn’t let me pivot away; he steps us both forward through the doorway. I feel his lips on my neck, and my knees turn to jelly. I fall back, leaning against him for support.

“Nicole,” he breathes into my skin.

Nee-cole.

My breath is coming in way too slowly to keep up with my racing heart, and my body feels like it’s prickling in all the most sensitive places.

I ache. Everywhere. From that deep, clenching emptiness inside my core to the heaviness in my breasts. I’m burning for him.

He kicks the door closed, plunging us into darkness, and I spin against him. His mouth is on mine in a second, and I part my lips immediately to let him in. Our kiss is all desperation. It’s sloppy, and open, and hard with the need to get as physically close as we can. I feel surrounded by him in the best possible way—his scent, his taste, his warmth—and I can’t wait to know what it feels like to be so full of him that I can’t breathe.

I reach up to grab his waist, to pull him even closer. My hands settle against his soft cotton shirt, clenching as I bite his bottom lip. When I give it a tug upwards, he pulls away.

“Take off your dress. Now.”

25

Nicole

I would melt if I wasn’t so sure I was on the precipice of combustion.

Thrill at his words, at the command, zings through my stomach. My body snaps to do what he says, peeling my nightgown off before my brain can even catch up. As it slides against my skin and falls to the floor with a soft swish, leaving me completely naked while he’s fully clothed, I’m suddenly grateful for the darkness. In the dark, I don’t feel like I need to cover my imperfect, dimpled skin, or stretch marks, or moles and divots.

I work hard to love and appreciate my body the way she is—for all the things she does for me, like carrying me through the world—but sensitivity towards the judgments of others is deeply ingrained. I have good days and bad days like everyone, and most of the time I manage a certain amount of ambivalence towards my appearance and trust that sexual attraction is so deeply personal that there’s no point questioning it.

Now, though? Even ambivalence is tricky when every damn inch of him is so tight and hard, and it’s such a contrast to my own body…