My lips parted in surprise.
I said nothing in fear of breaking whatever sudden confession this was.
“I spent the last month wondering how to speak to you and he did it so easily,” his thumb rubbed back and forth on my inner thigh.
Nails dug into the hard material of the door, while I remained still at his shocking words.
“You are the first and last thought when I wake up and before I go to bed.” The rubbing stopped. “My brain isplaguedwith the possibility of getting to know you again, that maybe the past seven years of space between us was nothing but a blip in time and here in this moment is where you and I have always meant to belong.”
He took a deep, broken breath. “But when I hear another man making you laugh, my existence starts suffocating me and I want to erase myself from your life to make sure you always laugh that way.”
I want you to make me laugh, Christian.The words scratched and fought on the tip of my tongue. Dying a quick death, leaving behind a bitter trail of fragmented letters.
Insides stammered, mumbled, and made fools of themselves at his words.
Dark eyes and even darker aura, Christian hacked my senses to respond solely to him.
My presence completely shattered at his words. It’s as if I was on my knees but instead of looking up, there he was.
Begging on his knees right in front of me.
We were not equals in this world, but the intensity of his gaze and the sudden shift in his feelings risked belief that—in his heart—I was more than an equal.
Language wasn’t meant to be universal. There are so many in the world and all are entirely unique. I excelled in English, German, French, Turkish, and somewhat Urdu.
But none of them prepared me for the difficulty of mastering the language of Christian.
Just when I’d think I understood a phrase, a simple dialogue fornicating from his lips—the meaning changed, and I stood barely comprehending it.
My head tilted to the right as Christian nuzzled his way up my neck, my cheek, my eyes, to the top where he simply breathed.
“In another world,” he whispered against my temple. I felt the world shuttering around us, my heart skipping feverishly fast with its hands wrapped around my neck. “I’d gently press my lips to yours and it would be real.” The sudden press of his lips against my skin awoke something tangible and inevitable inside of me.
“And maybe,” he continued. “It would be more than just… kissing.” My eyes involuntarily shut as the words danced in my mind.
In another world.
In another world.
In another world.
I was so fucking tired of Christian switching up on me.
It didn’t count as touching if I didn’t touch his skin, right?
I opened my eyes and dragged my palms up his jacket.
He moved a breadth away, looking down at me with a dark unexplainable look that made me want to slap and kiss him at the same time.
There was no waiting another second when the moment existed in the now.
He could push me away, kiss me in front of another man, and leave me. But I was done being the good one.
I was done being the respectful woman I’d been raised to be.
We only lived once in this world and these feelings were too astronomical for me to keep inside. Christian could live with his restraint, with this undeniable affection we had for each other—but I won’t.
A month of silence kept me thinking and too many thoughts destroyed my heart. This marriage wasn’t gonna last forever and I owed it to myself to drown in these emotions and pretend that maybe an eternity would pass before we broke up again.
