Page 68 of Sigma

What’s happening? Who am I? What is this?

I don’t know. I can’t deny it, however. Can’t stop it. Can only acknowledge the madness of this moment and its power over me.

Abruptly, he breaks the kiss. He doesn’t pull away, however. His eyes meet mine, holding them, daring me to look away, defying me to stop him. I can’t. I won’t. His eyes are the wild infinite black of outer space, fathomless depths pulling me in.

His hands move at my waist. Unbuckling the belt tightening my tunic around my waist. It jangles to the floor. Nose to nose, his eyes unwavering on mine, he gathers the hem of the thigh-length tunic in his hands.

Then, in one smooth swipe, it's over my head and billowing to the floor at our feet, and I’m in leggings and a bra, and my skin is prickling, pebbling. My breasts ache, feel heavy. My nipples harden against the inside of the bra as his hands breeze over my bare shoulders. It’s a light touch, an introduction. Downward, slowly, over my spine, his hands big and warm and strong, skating downward. His hands grasp my waist, and then his palms graze over my ribs and stomach, pausing again at my waist, just above the swell of my hips.

“You spoke of choices,” he murmurs. “This is a choice, is it not? What choice will you make next?” His hands go to mine, cradling now, holding rather than imprisoning, guiding. “Would you touch me? Would you strip me further? Would you bare yourself to me?”

God, what?

I close my eyes—but it’s too late. I remember him nude. He was a god, bare and unapologetic, carved to please my eyes. Hewn from heaven itself to fit into my hands. I remember his manhood rising erect and proud.

I remember standing naked in front of him, naked with him. His touch halting just short of my breast.

What would that feel like? To have his hand on me, there? I’ve been touched by men before—I’m no virgin…but never anyone like him.

My breath catches—what would it feel like to touchhim?

What choice will you make next?

Madness. It’s all madness. Surely I’ve gone mad, that’s the only explanation for this.

How else would you explain my decision, consciously made, to fall further into this fever dream?

It is a choice, this time, when I free the clasp at my back and let the bra fall to the floor at my feet. I’m possessed, surely—possessed by some wild, hormone-crazed creature. Not me. Not rational, responsible, mature Corinna Roth. I can’t rationalize this away. It’s me. Just…some other me that’s just now seeing the light of day for the first time—a tiny, tender, fragile little flame suddenly exposed to pure oxygen.

Because the truth is, this madness is intoxicating. I’ve never intentionally done wrong. Never taken the forbidden thing, never stolen that which was off-limits, never snuck out for the party I wasn’t allowed to attend.

This is…the opposite of everything I am. This is pure and utter insanity. Wrong. Terrible. Irresponsible. Forbidden. Everything about it is just…bad.

And it’s what I would imagine a pure hit of ecstasy to be, a rush of some grade-A narcotic coursing through my veins.

I shudder uncontrollably as he pulls away enough to look at me, bare from the waist up.

“So…” he swallows hard. Starts again with a lick of his lips. “So fucking perfect.”

One big, hard, powerful hand presses against my belly, low on the right side, just above my hipbone. Pauses there. His hand is hot, and I burn where he touches me. Shudder again. Try to breathe and cannot. His eyes are wide and deep and black, pupils dilated. His jaw grinds. His breath rasps past his teeth. With a nearly inaudible groan, his palm scrapes upward, catching the weight of my breast in his hand and holding it. I gasp, my eyes shuttering closed as billowing heat smashes through me, pooling between my thighs, tugging on my breast from the inside.

His thumb flicks over my nipple, the soft little nub going hard and erect. He lifts my breast and lets it fall, swaying. And now both of his hands reach to cup my breasts, lifting them. He fondles them reverently, thumbs against my nipples, lifting and squeezing.

I groan at his touch—it sends a flurry of heat into the void aching inside me; the void is at once in my soul and in my body, centered low, behind my belly button. The more he fondles and caresses my breasts, the lower the void sinks, the harder it pulls at me. Demanding my response.

And the more he touches me, the more I somehow know only his touch can fill that void.

I shake all over.

I touch him. Grasp his shoulders, fill my hands with his chest and his shoulders and his back—this too helps douse the wildfire hunger of the yawning void. So I touch more. His back, lower. His belly.

God, the void.

It’s like hunger, but hotter, deeper. A more echoing emptiness, a more demanding need.

I’ve felt pathetic approximations of it with previous…lovers, I suppose I could call them.

But never anything like this.