chest, lips meeting his, forcing him to lift me, climbing into him, losing myself. Saying his name. “Mine…”
He pulled back at last, smiling as he stared into my eyes. “That’s all I need to hear.”
He carried me to the bedroom that way, as I nibbled at his neck and ear, and the corner of his mouth, the hard warmth of his body sparking into mine. He flipped on the light with his elbow, but I reached over and flipped it back off, uncurling myself from him long enough to yank the dust sheet from the bed in a single flourish and discard it in the corner. Then I raised the blinds and opened the windows, allowing the stars and distant streetlights to bathe the room in an ethereal glow. A cricket chirped from beyond the window screen, and a night-ferried breeze swept the room like the wide caress of a cool hand. It would only last for a couple of hours, I knew. Then the scorching sun would be back, and we’d have to face each other in the stark light of day. Face those questions he wasn’t asking as well. But I turned back to Ben anyway. If a couple of hours was all we had, I didn’t want to waste a minute.
We filled ourselves on each other, and once we were sated, sweaty and loose-limbed, lying in a tangle in the middle of the bed, we opened our bruised and swollen lips, and simply talked. How many people get the chance to talk to someone lost to them forever?
“I knew it. I knew you weren’t dead,” he said, leaning on one elbow, toying with my hair with his free hand, while I passed the single glass of wine I’d brought back to the bed between us. He took the sip I pressed to his lips, and some dripped down his chin. I leaned over and licked it off, my thigh curving up and over his hip. “I felt your presence inside me, around me. Like you were watching, though not like the angels in a far-off place. Was I right?”
I nodded. “About one thing…I’m definitely no angel.”
“Tough talk, tough girl,” he said, running his hand under the covers, along my side. Chills popped up on my thigh, and he smiled. “I always liked that about you. Except…now you really are tough, aren’t you?”
Now his hand moved to my left arm, where scars from my latest battles rose like Braille on the otherwise smooth skin.
“Find it unattractive?” I asked, dodging the question.
“Obviously,” he said, slipping a hand between my thighs. I was still wet from our lovemaking, and his fingers slid along the soft skin with gentle ease. I sighed into them, my eyes fluttering closed. His voice, however, had them winging back open. “So how did you do that? That leapy thing?”
“I thought you didn’t care.” I sure didn’t at the moment.
“I said it didn’t matter, and it doesn’t.” His fingers explored me, brushed me open, slipped inside. We both sighed. “I didn’t say I wasn’t curious.”
I opened to him further, lazy and unguarded. In body and speech. “And remember what I said? All of life is one big dream. What if you’re dreaming now? What if your real life awaits you on the other side of night? You’ll wake and I’ll be gone.”
He rolled over on top of me so fast I didn’t have time to save the wineglass. It tipped, spilling chilled, fermented juice between us, dribbling down my chest, soaking into the bedsheets as I stared up at Ben, startled. His eyes were wild now, and filled with the questions he was trying so hard not to ask, instinct telling him if he pushed too hard, I’d be just that…lost to him. And Ben wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight.
“You’re the only woman who’s ever been strong enough for me. Did you know that?” He scraped his nails against my wrists as he pinned me beneath him, and I simply lay there, open to him, not exactly proving his point. “I like that, you know. A strong woman needing me.” He lifted himself up, one hand on each side of my head, and shoved my legs open with a thigh.
I swallowed hard and traced the tattoo circling his right bicep, following the waves of pattern with my battered fingertips. I couldn’t speak. I was quivering inside, and I lifted to meet his flesh, though he pulled back, smiling at me in the dim light.
“It’s a different kind of strength,” he continued, like he’d thought about it for a while. His erection played lightly against my belly. “Being the soft spot where a strong woman can rest.” He lowered his head, hair falling over his eyes, and when he glanced back up at me through it, his smile was untamed. “I fucking love it.”
My answer was my sigh, my breath as it caressed his cheek, my mouth as it played over his. As our tongues met he was inside me again, hard and fast in a solid stroke. I reared beneath him, wordless noises scattering across the moonlit room, my sigh turning into a needy moan.
“This is real,” he said, thrusting, the impact sealing our bodies together as one. “This is all there is.”
And feeling my acceptance, my need equaling his, he eased up, hooking his right ankle beneath mine, and flipped us easily, so I was on top. I gazed down and met his eyes, swallowed hard at the challenge there, and began to rock. Yes, I thought, as waves of heat rose through me, up my belly, making my head light. He licked wine from my chest, and I sighed his name into his hair. He was right. This was all there was.
After that we really did talk. I answered what questions I could-yes, I was alive, but yes, I was different too. No, I had no contact with my sister. Yes, that was in order to keep her safe. And I posed a few pointed inquiries myself. Did he miss the police force? Why wasn’t he still writing? Who the fuck was Rose?
Then he led the conversation into a linear questioning about what had happened the night of my disappearance, what had happened subsequently, and what was going to happen next. I answered these with mumbled half truths about a secret life-nothing about the sanctuary, Shadows…and certainly not that I’d found Joaquin-and ultimately the vague responses piled up between us and we fell silent, him trying to think of ways to draw me out, me wondering where I could hide.
So I distracted him by disappearing beneath the covers, mouth too full for words, and by the time I emerged again, he was too breathless to ask any more. We sipped directly from the wine bottle after that, propped up on each other’s flesh until the pastel colors of predawn seeped into the inky sky. I got up and shut the windows, knowing heat would begin bleeding into the room within the hour.
Ben watched my every move. His eyes fluttered shut from time to time, but he opened them again by sheer force of will, only letting a smile and relief pass his face when they found me again. I drifted off myself, and that was unexpected. So much so that when I did awaken it was with a jolt, breathing quickly, eyes winging open. Ben’s breathing didn’t change.
I rose and dressed, knowing even as I did so that it wasn’t fair. I mean, here I was, a ghost lover returning to seduce my beloved, to keep him in essence from getting on with his personal life, when I’d known all along that come sunrise I’d leave him again. What I hadn’t expected was to feel this soft; the ability to be fragile with another person wasn’t even something I’d realized I was missing, and only the contrast between the lightness I felt with his arms around me and the heaviness that returned as I left that room made me aware of it at all. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
And how the hell was I supposed to live without it now?
And still I couldn’t help but think maybe I could return to him intermittently, even semiregularly, as me. It wouldn’t be a normal relationship, but what was normal? The guy who went to his nine-to-five every day, then stopped by a strip club on the way home to his wife and family? The woman who waited until her husband was away on business to invite the UPS guy inside? The couples I’d seen at the swingers’ ball who’d decided three was most definitely not a crowd?
Hell, I’d turned down mortals and superheroes alike just because the memory of Ben was stronger than the reality of anyone else. But if I left now-and I had to get Jasmine’s aura back to her soon-at least I could comfort myself with knowing Ben wouldn’t die with scorched lips and genitals.
I jotted down a quick note in the kitchen, telling him if he needed to get in touch with me to leave a message, unsigned, in the mailbox. Then I dropped the house key next to it before returning to the bedroom one last time. Just to look.
“It’s best this way,” I said from the doorway. “I promise.”
As I blinked back tears, I felt Jasmine’s aura loosing on my lids, the movement echoed just a fraction of a second after mine, and knew it was time to go. Letting myself out the back door, I leaped the block wall separating my house from the next, and sprinted away from my home and lover.
Away from my real secret life.
