“I can’t,” she says again, but her words don’t match her actions because her hands find their way beneath the hem of my shirt, her touch branding my flesh so that I know even when I walk away it will be like a tattoo there, permanent and painful.
I know before our lips meet again, before my hands slip beneath her shirt and skim up the line of her spine, before I let her undo the buttons on my jeans and slide her hands inside my waistband, before she tells me she “can’t” again that this is such a very bad idea. That I’m going to end up hurt and reeling with one more memory to cling to and to be haunted by simultaneously. That this time around I’m just as guilty as she is because I’m knowingly cheating with a married woman.
But I can’t stop myself. It’s impossible to hold back. With the taste of her kiss on my lips and the scent of her perfume in my nose and the feel of her skin against mine, I hope that if she can just feel me again, remember what we have together, if we can have just one more moment, then she’ll know it’s me who she wants.
Me who she’ll choose.
Me who will keep her safe and her eyes dry from tears.
Our breaths are shaky, our kisses are bittersweet, and unspoken emotion swells between us as we help each other undress just enough so that we can race with unsteady hearts toward the ultimate pleasure that I’m pretty sure will result in more pain. But I push the rational thought away, quiet her lips telling me she can’t over and over with my own.
We move in hurried but meaningful motions: my hands pushing her pants down, her hands stroking my dick. My fingers spread her open, the groan in my throat when I find her soaking wet. Hands skimming over warm flesh, the weight of her breasts in my hands, the creak of the console as I lift her hips up and she parts for me. The adamant repeat of “I can’t” morphing into a soft sigh of need when her muscles tense as I push into her.
And that singular sensation, my hard cock sliding into her resisting muscles undoes me. Consumes me. Blinds me from seeing the truths that I don’t want to face. That this is a good-bye to rival all other good-byes. Our kisses have communicated it all along, and now our bodies do the same through slow strokes, the tilt of her hips up to meet mine as I grind into hers, the bite of her nails in my shoulders, our unsteady breaths as we break momentarily from a kiss only for her to repeat her mantra before I kiss her again to stop her protests.
I move my hips slowly at first, the emotion and sensation almost too much to bear because how can we be this close and yet so far from how we used to be? But I find as much comfort as I can in the familiar little things: the gasp she emits when I brush my thumb over her clit, the texture of her tightened nipple against my tongue, the tensing of her thighs around my hips.
She won’t look at me, though. And I can’t have that. Can’t have her trying to shut me out now, so I still my hips when I’m buried to the hilt in her, leveraging her weight against mine, and bring my thumb and forefinger to her chin so that she’s forced to meet my eyes. Only when she holds her face steady, emerald eyes drowsy with lust but glistening with tears, do I continue the slow withdrawal from her body and then the bittersweet thrust to join our bodies again.
She comes in a violent shudder, her muscles tensing around me and my name on her lips for the first time since we started, but her voice sounds thick from the tears lodged in her throat.
“Beaux.” I groan her name as a blinding flash of heat surges through my body and possesses my movements so that when I grind into her one last time, I lose more than just my orgasm to her. Oh fuck. I lose so much more, but thank God I’m blinded by my climax so that I can’t think about it just yet.