Losing It: A Collection of VCards (27 page)

We both jump back from the barrier.  The arrangement of rocks has left us with only pin-points of light.  They fall like constellations across Garrett’s chest.

“What are we going to do?” I ask. 

“Wait,” he says.  “When those things out there leave, we’ll try to go out and get some of what they were eating, if we can.” 

He’s all sense and intelligence, but I realize I’m staring. 

Garrett’s bare chest is right in front of me.  I haven’t seen it since we were bound, when we used the
cisoras
to remove each other’s clothing.  I forgot how hard and smooth his lines are.  Skin like velvet.  His amazingly smooth nose.  But nothing could ever compete with the aphrodisiac of his smile.

I look down, expecting to see the tatters of our bindings.  They aren’t there.

“The bindings are gone,” I say, lifting my wrist into a dot of light. My throat closes up.  I’m flooded with absolute joy and utter panic.

“It means we’re bonded,” he says.  “The Addo said he saw us.”

“We’re married?” I squeak.

“Yes.”  His voice is the way I first heard it, that day when he walked into the library and asked to sit with me.  Deep and lovely, Garrett’s voice is the only one in the world that can make me feel safe and even excited to be stuck who-knows-where, in a cave with him.

The clawed pig sniffles at the hole we just filled and then makes its way back down the rock pile outside.  Taloned hampigs…yes, that’s what they look like—guinea pigs, but bigger and rounder, and more hammy.  With the thing gone from the hole, I finally exhale.

And notice Garrett’s eyes, fastened to one of the pinpoints of light that touches my right nipple.  It spotlights the small pink peak.  Garrett’s arm skims through the thin beams as he reaches for me.  His fingertip grazes my collarbone and I curl my shoulders, pulling my chest back with an awkward laugh. 

“Don’t be ashamed,” he says softly. 

I laugh again.

He reaches out once more.  This time, I don’t move away. 

Why should I? 

This is Garrett.  My Garrett. 

I step in closer. 

There’s only us.  Garrett and I are literally the last two people on Earth, if that’s even where we’re at right now.  I’m grateful we didn’t let go of each other. 

He softly touches his finger down on my collar bone, trailing it to my chest.  Then he moves his fingers in a way I don’t expect—not toward my breast, but toward my arm instead.  He grips my bicep, tugging me gently toward the largest saturation of light.  He moves me into the points of light, so they glow over my body, his fingertip tracing a soft path down to my hand, which he takes and raises over my head.  He turns me in a slow pirouette.

Back in the hotel’s prison cell, when we performed the bonding ceremony and he cut my clothes off, I was terrified to look at him or let him look at me.  That’s not the way it is now.  I’m not afraid anymore and can’t imagine I ever will be again when it comes to anything about Garrett.

“Us,” he says as he steps in close, catching me on the turn, sliding his arms around me.  Our energy tingles between us, live wires just waiting to touch.  And then we do.

His kiss is an entire world.  A million generations, all proud, whisper in the air around us, waiting to begin again.  Garrett still tastes like citrus, a whole garden of it that I may never taste anywhere again, except for here, on his tongue.  I can live with that, as long as he keeps kissing me.

I smooth my hands over his broad shoulders, down the velvet-covered muscles of his arms.  I feel the thick belt of muscles around his stomach, but I can’t move my hands any lower.  I’m intrigued, but not brave enough to make the first move that will set everything in motion.  Despite my love and desire and resolve, my face burns like a boiled plum.

“Is this okay?” Garrett whispers, as his fingers slip down my stomach, to the soft spot between my legs. 

I startle again, not meaning to and kind of embarrassed that I keep doing it.  His fingers still, patiently waiting for me to catch up to what we are doing.  I get up my guts and scoot toward him again. 

He kisses me first.  Then his hands move over my thighs and he tells me, “I love you, Nalena.”

I would laugh and tell him my mother always warned me about boys that said that while I was naked, except I know he isn’t lying. 

And he is my husband. 

How wild and awesome is that?

“I love you more,” I say.

“Impossible.”  He kisses the tip of my nose.  “I love you to the moon and back.”

“I love you from dirt to Pluto,” I tell him. 

He kisses me in earnest, a kiss so deep and so moving that my whole body quivers from it.  I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer so I can feel every inch of him—especially that part of him that has always made me feel a little shy and nervous—and excited.  It twitches against me as Garrett lays me down on the ground. 

The dirt is soft as sand, but I hardly want to think of the ground when Garrett is raising me up so high above it all, erasing gravity with just his kiss.  It’s the closest thing my spirit can get to flying again, while trapped inside this body.

Garrett moves over me, kissing my neck. 

“Are you okay?” he murmurs in my ear, “do you want to, Nalena?”

“Yes,” I whisper.  It feels like a crime to admit that I want him as much as he wants me.  To consent willingly to what I’ve always been encouraged to avoid.  But we belong to each other now.  We’ve crossed that distinct line between the black-and-white world of utter, unfulfilled misery and the magical land where having sex isn’t wrong anymore.  Where it is even—kind of—expected. 

We kiss and he moves his hips against me, spreading my legs further apart.  I feel about as helpful as a CPR dummy.

“What do I do with my hands?” I ask.

“Whatever you want,” he says.  It would help if he could give me some direction.  I try to recall love scenes from movies…but can’t.  I’m sure none of the leading heroines did what I am doing right now—fumbling and fidgeting and sort of freaking out.

Garrett guides himself to my opening with one hand.  The pressure there makes me bite my lip.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he says.  I don’t want to tell.  I want to do this with him.  Make him mine and make myself his.

I hold my breath as the pressure intensifies. 
I can do this…I can do this…everyone says this is fun…

I reach up, to put my hands in his hair, and jab him in the cheek with my nail.

“Ow,” he jerks back a little, laughing.  I feel hopeless.  I’m going to slice him to bits or bore him to death by laying here like a mauled dog, before I get the chance to lose my virginity.

 Garrett takes my hand and places it on his shoulder.  The muscles beneath his skin make me think of a satin bag stuffed with mallets. 

Garrett smoothes his thumbs against my temples.  He kisses my chin.  He lowers his mouth to mine.  His kiss pulls me completely loose of gravity.  I move my tongue in his mouth, tasting his familiar citrus, feeling his body in my hands, filling my nose with his clean scent.  I relax.  The awkward part of the dance is suddenly done, and then it’s just me and Garrett and our bodies.

Something else strange happens too.  As I kiss him, I feel my spirit press up inside my skin, squeezing flat against the muscle and fat and cutaneous layers, like my soul is trying to seep out wherever it can, to be closer to his.  To join it.  I open my legs a little more and Garrett pushes the whole way into me.

A sharp streak of pain makes me suck in another breath on top of the one I’m already holding.  It seems like the slice of pain should be enough to separate my spirit from my skin, free us both to join together as one in the air, but we’re still trapped.  Our bodies begin to move together, taking what little togetherness we can from one another.

I don’t have to say a word.  From the way Garrett moves inside me, I know he feels it too.  I wrap my arms and legs around him, every shred of pain fills me with hope that this pairing will break us both open and let our spirits flood out.  Having felt that freedom before, it’s hard to feel him so singularly between my legs.  I can’t read his thoughts this way.  His emotions don’t run through my mind.  Everything is muddled by our scents, and how our skin moves against one another, and the sounds that we make. 

The desire to be part of him so completely again aches inside me. 

My spirit searches for an escape hatch, but only bumps against my skin.  It’s a misery, not being able to get close enough, but this slightly heightened pleasure is the closest we can get to flying again. 

I feel his soul buck against the bones that hold it firm.  Mine rises up to catch him.  My heart pounds as my body tightens up all over, holding him in, even as I stretch to my max—

We’re almost there—

almost free—

His kiss is crushing and intense as his body releases inside me.  Our moans break from us instead of our spirits, combing out the silence with sharp teeth.  A beautiful sound.  The release is incomplete, but it has to be enough. 

My body grips him, trying to pull him deeper.  The roar of our raw current races through my arms and legs.  The ends of our wires are touching and I moan again.  It has to be enough. 

We collapse together, his chest to mine, our gasping breaths synchronized. 

“Are you okay?” he asks.  I laugh.

“Did I hurt you?” I ask.  He laughs.

“Did you
feel
that?” He kisses my cheek. 

“We were almost flying,” I say.  “I miss being part of you.”

“I do too,” he says.

“This can be enough, for now,” I say and then he finishes the conversation with another long kiss.  We finally separate, although we don’t move away from each other.  Laying together in the ash, it’s only a matter of time before we have to rise up and take the stones from the opening again, but for now—

From a far distance, we hear the shouting.

Our names being called by familiar voices.  Sean ,Mark, and Brandon are hollering.

We scramble up, unsteady from such a fast landing.  Gravity fastens our legs to the dirt.  Garrett pulls a stone from the cave entrance.

“We’re in here!” I shout, pulling off another.  The animals outside scatter in the opposite direction.  A few more stones and, on tiptoe, I see our family walking toward the cave.  Iris, holding Sean’s hand.  Sean and Brandon cup themselves discreetly.  Iris walks along, oblivious to her nudity and plucking at fronds of plants as she passes.  Mark, taking up the rear, guides a huge animal toward the cave.

“What in the world is
that
?” Garrett wonders aloud, both of us throwing off stones as fast as we can.  Sean notices the falling rocks first.  They race to help us clear the rest away.

Garrett and I emerge, covering ourselves as best we can.

“We need some bendable leaves in the worst way,” Brandon says.

“Look what we found!” Iris shrieks, gesturing wildly to the animal lumbering beside Mark. “We found a dinosaur!”

“It’s stranger than that, Princess.  It’s a
dragon
,” Sean corrects.  His gaze meets Garrett’s eyes first, then mine. 

“Where in the world are we?” I ask.  Sean shrugs. 

Garrett squeezes my hand.

“This must be…”  He pauses to look at his siblings, the dragon, the weird trees around us, and then back to me.  He quirks an eyebrow. “Heaven?”