As You Fall Asleep | styles

V | Lips, what have thou done?

| CHAPTER FIVE |

Wine is a particular taste for particular people. It's craved by those who have become accustomed to its bitterness and can perceive past it, the lustre of its fruit. I always was more of a whiskey type of man—until now.

Until I'm sucking the second-hand saccharine of strawberry and rose from the tip of a tongue, enclosed in a mouth that is not mine. Until the taste of tart and seeded fruit is tingling my loins and coercing me to moan for more. Until now, I was a whiskey man, but I'm afraid I've had a taste of something much sweeter. With one drop, I am an addict. Like an addict, one drop is not enough.

Somehow, Rowena is in my lap, her hips connected with mine. I'm caressing her hair like it's silk and pulling her closer into my mouth, almost as if, as I draw her further into me, her moans will subside the fortissimo screams of my subconscious damning me to hell.

I need to pull away, I need to disconnect before one of us gets hurt. But as we sit here, a pant for longing and unsatisfied lust fogging the air, my body can't seem to do anything but meet the friction of her groin as it presses down on mine. She's an oxygen mask as I consume her. In this moment, my lifeline. I'm afraid that when we break away I'll disintegrate into dust. I know because rejection is sharper than a blade and I'll do anything not to be sliced by the delicacy of love again.

I won't pull away. I don't want to pull away. I can't pull away.

She's a vascular type of desire—her seductive hands wrap around my libido and squeeze. My tainted lips find her jaw, her neck, that shadowed skin on the adjacent mark that makes her itch and writhe under my touch. She's pulling my hair and moaning my name. But her tone changes from one of carnality to one of alarm as my lips press to her flesh once more.

She pulls away. Already, the coldness seeps in. When I open my eyes, she's far away from me, painting a pattern in the rug on the other side of the apartment. Even though she's over there and I'm over here, the drip of regret and doubt percolating in her mind is audible to me. I sense it before I know it. Her lowered head, her hands replacing where mine lay moments ago, the unorthodox beat of her heart pounding through the shirt I was ready to peel off her before she cowered from me.

She regrets touching me.

A tremor quakes from the tips of my fingers to the core of my heart as we remain in the aftermath of our fire. A mantra of repentance: 'no, no, no, no,' falls like a gentle breeze from Rowena's lips. It sweeps across the floor and rocks me back into the chair. I'm on my feet as soon as I notice the proximity between us has decreased.

"This... this, this this... What we did... What just happened... it was wrong, it was all so wrong. What we did was wrong, Harry," she staggers.

"I know."

"It shouldn't have happened, it-it can't happen again, okay?" She walks towards me with her disconcerted posture and wide eyes brimming with dread. "Drew, he can't know about this. He can't ever know. He'd kill you, he'd tell my parents, and they can't know, no one can ever know, Harry. No one."

"I know. It's okay, Rowena. It's okay."

It's not. It's not okay. None of it is okay. Maybe it would be, if my heart wasn't thumping that familiar, menacing beat of disaster in my chest and my tongue wasn't running over my teeth in a desperate attempt to salvage any lingering taste of her in my mouth. Maybe it would be okay if, despite how wrong we both know it is, I didn't want to kiss her again. But I do, I want to touch her again in any way I can.

I hope Rowena feels the same way—if she does, it's enough certification for me to not ponder on the idea of insanity.

"I kissed you. You kissed me!" she cries.