He lowers his head and closes his mouth over mine. And the kiss is anything but gentle. He thrusts his tongue inside my mouth and takes and takes, and shares his breath. I press myself closer to him, push my breasts into his chest. I lean into him and part my lips and allow him to fuck my mouth with his tongue.
The kiss seems to go on and on. I lose myself in the softness of his lips, the hard demand of his tongue as he swipes it across my teeth. He winds his fingers around my knotted hair and tugs. Pain slithers down my scalp. I moan deep in my throat. I am alive. I am here in his arms, with him. I tear my mouth from his, stare into his face, "Tie me up again and fuck me."
He stares into my eyes as if taken aback, then chuckles. "This is why I can’t resist you. You always surprise me, Sparks."
"I…do?"
He nods.
The sun filters through the clouds and I blink.
"Well look at that." He glances up at the sky. "The storm blew over."
I stare about me, and sure enough, the rain has faded away as quickly as it had started. The pale orb of the sun lights up the bottom of the clouds with a silvery lining.
He rises to his feet with me in his arms. I glance down to find that the rope which winds around me is also wrapped around his waist. "We’re connected," I mutter.
"Eh?" He strides down the slope, his long legs eating up the distance.
"The rope," I swallow, "I am wearing it and so are you."
"Imagine that." He shakes his head. "Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be entangled in my own rope."
"I'm also very muddy."
"I prefer you dirtied up, Sparks." He chuckles.
It’s a strange feeling... To be carried. It makes me feel cherished, cared for, like I could lean on him. Something I haven’t done since…
I had been a small child and my father had wiped my tears after I had engaged in a particularly bad fight with the school bully…who had been much bigger than me. He had been called to school that day and my principal had had a word with him. My father had been disappointed in my behavior, yet he’d also comforted me.
He’d told me that I need to choose my battles wisely, for I could never hope to win all of them, but I could minimize the risk of failure by deciding which challenges to go after.
And since meeting Arpad… My subconscious has decided that he is the biggest challenge of them all. I haven’t known what to make of it… Clearly, the disagreements between us, resulting mainly because of his heavy-handedness, have made me think that I hate him… But all along, it has been a precursor for the attraction between us. And something more… This sense that we, somehow, fit together. Two parts of a puzzle, whose big picture I still can’t see... But there is this need to find out what it might turn out to be.
So, I press myself as close to him as I can, allow myself the decadence of luxuriating in his strength, his solidity, the utter masculinity that resides in every angle of his body, the thud-thud-thud of his heart against my cheek as I close my eyes and drift off.
"Sparks?"
"Hmm."
"I need to get you out of these wet clothes." His voice rumbles around me, the heat of his body a siren’s call. I turn, lean toward the source of the warmth and he chuckles.
"Just need to ease this shirt off you, okay?"
I crack open my eyes to find he’s doing just that. He slides the shirt off one shoulder, then the other. Goosebumps erupt across my skin. The world tilts and I turn my head to find he’s carrying me into the shower cubicle. He lowers my feet to the ground, then supports me as he turns the shower on. The hot water is a shock and I sneeze once, twice.
"Shit, hope you’re not going to catch a cold, sweetheart."
Sweetheart," I mumble, my eyelids so heavy I can barely keep them open. "You called me darling earlier, then baby…" I murmur under my breath.
"You have a preference?"
"All of them... All the time." I close my eyes and relax against his big body as the hot water soothes me.
I must have dozed off again, for when I come to next, it’s dark. I rub my cheek into the soft pillow, glance around the bedroom. The rugs on the floor, the door to the closet in the corner, the table with the two chairs pushed up against the window…. Right, guess I must have fallen asleep during the shower and Arpad had put me to bed again. I glance down and find I’m wearing another of his T-shirts. The material is soft. Not because of being washed too often; it’s just the quality of what he wears. I bring my arm to my nose and sniff. The scent of detergent and Arpad fills my senses. My stomach rumbles and I realize I am hungry. Guess I must have recovered if my body wants to be fed so insistently. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and stand. My ankle protests. I lean my weight on it and find it holds. Okay. Good. I limp to the door, open it and walk through into the kitchen.
His back is to me. Once again, he’s wearing a new pair of jeans with a sweatshirt. Over one shoulder is a kitchen towel. As I watch, he bends over the skillet where he’s stirring something, then raises the wooden spoon to his mouth and tastes something. The biceps of his arm bulge, the planes of his back bend and dip in an all too familiar symmetry. My toes curl. I drink in the sight of his narrow waist, the tight arse, the powerful corded thighs that flow down to meet strong hamstrings and his feet… His gorgeous feet are bare again.
