Close Too Close (8 page)
She was still. Still. Stiff. Waiting like a deer knowing his death as I lifted her sari just up past her knees and kissed both caps. Kissing them as if they were the lips that kept me awake every night while I kissed them in my mind. I pulled her sari further up to the top of her legs, put my face against the skin of her lap, before pulling the sari back over me; pulling the sari over the kisses I placed on the inside of her thighs, pulling the sari back over to cover the desire that was turning me into this lion-like animal.
It didn’t matter I was covered. She knew what possible damage for our future I was doing with my kisses under her sari. Both thighs, insides.
And then as if I was the only one who could stop the train, I stopped and stayed there. Inhaling. Buried under the sari.
I stayed there, kissing her thighs while the seconds oozed to another measure of time . . . a sort of long second that made long minutes. Her scent getting stronger with each kiss. The vapours I let seep into my nose, down my throat, filling up each lung slowly with fruit and flower, peach-coloured vapours.
And just as I was to flick my tongue closer to the crevice of hair meets soft inner thigh, she slowly pulled the sari from over my head. Was she trying to shame me? Or engage me? Reality could be so damn harsh with this much blood pumping in my body. I didn’t raise my head in case.
A tear hit the back of my neck. I touched it and tasted it. Got up and slowly kissed the salt trails from off her face. Faces close, I moved in gently and kissed her lips. Finally. And softly, first – to see the reaction on her face – to the fact that the steam off my face smelled of that familiar place on her body and that familiar smell was on a foreigner’s face.
Allowing my desire to shift out of my way, I saw the face of a warrior leaking streams hesitantly. She kissed me back, at first to reciprocate, soft and moist and salty. She kissed me to say it was ok and right.
And then . . . she got lost. Her lips showed hunger. Deep, passionate, our lips fit perfectly around and on each other. And boy, could this one kiss. She kissed my past days of yearning for her. She kissed her days of feeling lonely here. She kissed all the tension, these kisses of gratitude. And she kissed my childhood, my face with a popped-out tooth. She kissed me like band-aids. And only after that kind of kissing healed every wound, did we kiss differently. We kissed and kissed and kissed.
More kisses released from her past came flooding out of her being. And just as we were losing grips and balance, she wrapped her limbs around me, pulled me deep and strong to her, and I picked her up like I had done many times before, but this time like a child, not the wife I walked over doorframes with. We kissed all the way back to the room which held our beds. We told the room that it didn’t need to hold our tension anymore.
Landing gently on her bed, we slowly began to make love, letting time get enveloped in the creases of the linens.
My lips to her neckside, travelling to both sides, inhaling the sandalwood soap still on her skin, letting her wet wisps of hair kiss me back. I unbuttoned her blouse at the top, letting her breasts rise up from her soil to greet the sun from my eyes. And my lips kissed while her body rose to meet them. Out of the pain of waiting, one of her hands unbuttoned the rest of her blouse and she reached for her left breast with one hand, and shoved my head towards it with the other. She didn’t let go of my head until I had her nipple in my mouth and kicked it around with my tongue. By the sounds she made, I could tell she was holding back. Holding her breast up and out for me to suck and lick and kiss, she wriggled under me – and when she had enough, the other breast was on standby as she shoved my head in that direction. And as soon as I had the other nipple properly between my lip-covered teeth, pressing down with just enough pressure, immediately pouring out of her lips came a deep sigh of relief, of pleasure, all of which made the heat in my boxers unbearable. With both my hands on her bare breasts, and my lips taking turns on them, she moved ever so slightly under me, allowing her mound to press up against my leg. I knew she was getting close, so I quickly pulled my hands off her and turned her to her side. She protested, but I pressed up against her firmly from behind. I had waited too long for this to not to last for a long time.
I kissed the back of her neck, tickling her with the heat from my mouth, my patches of stubble and my tongue. She squirmed as far away as my grip would allow her, but never too far to come back for more. After minutes of anguish, she desperately tried to take charge. I knew if I reached around and touched her in between her legs, she would have gotten what her body wanted right away. Again, I had waited too long for this moment.
So I slipped off the bed with my knees on the ground, adjusting her body towards me. Once her waist was in my hands, I slid her towards me by placing her legs over my shoulders. She tried to shove my head right into her, but I wouldn’t have it. I licked the sides of her mound, slowly and cautiously, careful not to enter her yet, enjoying every molecule that escaped from inside of her. I wanted every last drop in my mouth and not lost in her sari, on the bed or on the floor. My restraining her was confusing her, but she was not going to spoil the moment I didn’t even know I was preparing for. After all, this might be a one-time shot.
After a while of her moaning out the names of her gods, I decided to stop. She dug her hands into my shoulder as if to slap me for being so cruel. Forcing her to stand, I stepped her over to the wall nearest the bed and kissed her passionately, letting her lick my face, coated with her scent. Her breasts were pressed up against my flat chest, and though my newly-grafted nipples were de-sensitized, my whole chest was on fire. I wanted to press up against her harder, I just needed to feel that close, that smashed-up on someone, to almost become one. I continued to touch her on my way down to the floor, squeezing and teasing just to hear more of these new sounds I never knew about.
Once on the ground, I lifted all the sari pleats and skirt to her waist, placed my mouth on her dripping clit and licked her juices, still without entering her. I knew she would make me more. And how she did. It seemed like she wasn’t going to stop. Her juices were running down the inside of her leg, and I followed the stream upwards towards her door and finally entered. My tongue was in as far as it could go and she rode it. Her body slowly going up and down, my nose rubbing against her clit. These were different sounds. We stayed like this for a lifetime, losing grip on the baggage we were tired of holding onto so tight. And then, all of a sudden, she grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me off the ground with such ferocity. She told me that she couldn’t take it anymore and whispered, ‘Please, Mr. Jay, can you please?’
I guess it was the earnestness in her tone, the fact that she and I had embarked on a journey we knew we’d have to process at a later time, or that neither one of us had had sex in a long time. I listened to her.
We moved back to the bed and I rubbed her whole body as she lay in front of me. I rubbed her as if I was giving an ayurvedic massage, pushing upwards from her belly, over her heart and out above her shoulders. And when I could sense she was calm, I went down between her legs, pulled up her sari and continued again. First in circles and figure eights around her clit, over and over with an increase of tempo, and right when her temperature rose again, I entered her with my two fingers. She started wailing a song with each thrust in and out and in between. I steadied my pressure with my tongue and let my fingers pull upwards,
just a little
, to hit her special spot. In between her moans, in the milliseconds of quiet calm, you could hear the sounds of lapping and of my finger in her volcano of liquid fire, and with every shift in my body to greet hers, you could faintly hear a similar sound coming from inside my jeans; a beautiful re-mix of her body and mine stirring together our bodies’ liquid desires.
We were in motion, on this ocean.
We moved in sync and my tongue did tricks.
Her pelvis shifted down, I pulled up more.
She rode my fingers, and rode my tongue.
Her body bucked and danced against both points of pleasure.
And right as she came, her hands reached out and grabbed my head. I saw her stomach clench upwards and she quaked under me, hard; the loudness of her screams muffled by her thighs suffocating me. I felt her clit pulse in my mouth, and her insides constrict my fingers like a ring she was putting on me to ensure I would stay committed in her. She quaked some more until it had all left her body, until the ring left my fingers, until her clit landed like a marble back in a groove. And when she was finally relaxed and released, after the last aftershock, I looked at her. She was glorious. Spent, but glowing. Smiling and crying. We held each other until she slept.
I also fell asleep, but woke to her hands in my pants, and her mouth on mine, kissing me again. I told her I wasn’t ready that morning; that eventually I might be, but that I needed some time. I told her that it’s harder to release my grip from my baggage around my body. She responded with, ‘That’s why you came here, to go back home emptyhanded and lighthearted.’
Seven months later, and every day since, I wake up with her head in my neckside. And almost three to four times a week, I wake up with her hopeful hands in my boxers. Today might be the day she smells me.
SPRING
1.
T
he closet is hot and dark and something sharp is pressing into his calf. Still Jewel pulls him close, closer. The boy is hesitating, he can tell, not outwards, but in that inside way that makes bodies heavy. Jewel knows that hesitation too well. He feels it himself even now, but he has never been able to stop himself when it comes to touching. Once when he was a baby, he had battered a lit candle. The wax had slipped slow motion, hardening on his hands. Even as he was hauled off screaming, his mother said he had been reaching still, looking still.
His hands are holding the boy’s torso, ribs sharp, muscles smooth, arms by his own sides. Jewel moves his hands to his chest and slides them on up, past collarbones, funnelling his throat, the boy’s face a flower in his palms. The boy’s hips give a little, lean for a tender second against Jewel, and he feels the light shoot from the base of his spine, down down.