Dark like your eyes were, I thought, and madness picked at me with a single ebony claw. I hadn’t seen that. I’d been panicking and imagined that there was something wrong with her eyes. I’d imagined that when she touched me…
“I need you,” she said, drawing one pale arm out from beneath the covers. “Come lie down.”
“We need to figure this out. We can’t just go to bed. This is serious, Del.”
“I know, but right now I need you to hold me. I want you next to me.”
Slowly I came forward and stopped at the bedside, drawing off the jacket I’d used to cover myself. My jeans were still soaked and they clung to me coldly like a dead second skin. I stripped them off along with my boxers and when she lifted the blankets for me to crawl beneath I saw that she was still naked. The sight of her body in the soft light as well as the longing look on her face brought about a warmth in my center, and despite the anxiety that still gripped me, I felt myself stiffen as I laid down beside her.
She intertwined herself with me, nuzzling close beneath my chin and wrapping her arms around my back. We stayed that way for a time before my hands started to play across her skin that was now warm. She sighed and drew even closer, her hand sliding between us to grip me. We moved together for a time on our sides, a thankfulness in our caresses that I’m sure we both felt. It was as if something of great velocity had narrowly missed us and the only way to show our gratitude was to pour ourselves into one another. When she rolled onto her back and I moved above her, she whispered something that I didn’t absorb right away. The sinuous rhythm of our bodies was too much and it was only minutes before our climaxes rolled through us both, the simultaneousness of them leaving us breathless and shaking.
She fell asleep as the clock downstairs tolled eight times, and I stared up at the thick drape of shadows that coated the arched ceiling of the room. Del’s breathing became a metronome that lulled me into an uneasy drowse between sleep and waking. Images rose and fell behind my eyes. The outline of Del’s shoulders and head slipping beneath the water, her appearance in the yard seconds after I raced inside to call for help, the black pools her eyes had been for a moment. I shoved the thoughts away, sinking deeper into the mattress and closer to her. It had been one of the ‘stranges’, as our neighbor, Harold, had said to me sitting on his porch sipping cold lemonade one evening.