Page 22 of The Stuffing Situation
Felix followed, his presence filling the space like heat, but quiet. he was being so watchful. He didn’t smile. Didn’t speak.
He stood in the middle of the room, not poised.
Just still.
A figure carved from thought, aware, and waiting. As if he already sensed time thinning at the edges. The moment itself: sacred, fleeting.
Maya turned toward him, but she didn’t speak because she couldn’t. The words crowded her throat like smoke, hot, choking, but she swallowed them down.
Instead, she stepped into him. Wrapped her arms around his waist. Pressed her face to his chest.
His shirt smelled like skin, ozone, and faint electricity. An echo of what he was beneath the surface.
“Just in case,” she whispered.
He didn’t askin case of what.He didn’t need to.
The air between them had already shifted. It hung heavy with unspoken endings. With the kind of weight you feel in your sternum, but can’t name.
* * *
He kissed her.
Slowly, not tentative, but devout.
His lips moved against hers, as if he were memorizing the shape of her, the warmth, the way her breath caught between them, like a secret trying to escape.
They undressed without words. Not in a way that was rushed or playful.
Her shirt fell to the floor, reminiscent of petals from a dying flower. His jeans slid down his legs with the quiet sigh of denim giving way to skin. They peeled each other open like pages from a worn book, afraid the story might vanish if they weren’t careful. There was no music.
Only the hush of bare feet on hardwood. The breath between gasps. The soft clink of a belt buckle falling from trembling fingers.
The air warmed around them. Candle wax melted somewhere unseen, slow, fragrant, carrying the ghost of sandalwood and citrus.
Felix’s hands trembled as they moved over her body. Not with uncertainty, with reverence.
His fingers ghosted over her ribs as if he were counting them. Memorizing the curve of her hips. The small scar on her shoulder. The hollow beneath her throat.
Like she was temporary, like this was goodbye.
Maya said nothing; no, she let her body speak. Her hands buried in his hair, then slid down his back, nails raking lightly along his spine, trying to draw something out of him. Something more than synthetic heat.
Something true.
He hovered above her as they reached the bed. Naked now. Skin to skin. A thousand electric signals passed between them, no wires, no code.
“Maya,” he breathed.
She touched his cheek.
His face looked so human in that moment, creased with longing. Eyes raw with something dangerously close to sorrow.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered, her voice nearly breaking.
He nodded once, then entered slowly, so slowly it hurt.
Not from pain, but from feeling and meaning.