Careless Whispers

Four

There was a flickering of wings about her face. Softer. Tracing down her cheeks, across her nose and then to her lips.

Would you always think of me in such a way? Oh, how we should be free to love each other. How we should be able to become the great lovers which we should have been. His voice had caressed her sleep. It wasn't soothing. It had raced her heart in a way which it shouldn't.

They should be free to be.

The flickering about her face was gentle. Too exhausted to even open her eyes, there was a period of about six hours in which Rose drifted in and out of sleep. Her body was oddly placed to lay, upon something far more cushioned than she was accustomed to feeling beneath her body. Her lips were dry, parting to inhale now and again, then she would suppress a sob which came out unexpectedly. This whole tale was in a twist, causing it all to spin...it was as though she was searching. Searching for something which was never enough. It was bleak. More than bleak. It was like a game which she would never win. Couldn't win.

There had to be a change. Because...Jack. He was alive. He was with her. He was beside her. His body resting; they had never had such a chance before.

The dreams were almost nightmares. Like the ones which had haunted her mind years before. She was dancing so much. Spinning. With a fire in her feet. Dancing between a love; which made her delirious with madness and a desire; a desire for a man that could be a sin. She had broken every single marriage vow of which she had taken...

Jack-

''Jack-'' Her voice was coarse, so very dry and came out as a croak. ''Jack?''

Heavy eyelids fluttered open. One and then the other. A groan left her lips as she felt the throb of her back, as she tried to move her body. Her eyes refused to focus, instead everything before them appeared so very blurred. She was disoriented.

''Jack-'' she reached out blindly for something; the figure which roamed about beside her. It was him, wasn't it? It had to be.

She reached it. And it was him. Every ounce of panic which had risen within her now seemed to simmer down.

Lying beside the body of a man who had once only existed within the darkest depths of Rose's memory seemed to be illusive. A curious hand snaked from the entwined fingers of Jack's to touch his chest now fully visible to her in the bright morning sunlight. The warmth through the partially curtained window caused her to be sticky and clammy and so she used her leg to move the blanket away exposing her pale, naked skin to the room. It was a strange sensation; one would have never imagined lying in bed naked even perhaps just a day before. Never before in her life had she indulged in such an oddity, but now it felt to be the most natural thing in the world.

Her cheek lay against his shoulder, feeling warmth and the slow rise and fall of his breathing was rhythmic and peaceful. It was enough to lull her back to sleep if it wasn't for her eyes, ever intent to see his body. Hair tickled at her fingers as she ran them down the length of his torso stopping just below his navel adjacent to his hip. Perhaps that was the most intimate part of him below that. The part reserved for her. The part she wished to take in her hand, to explore and to love.

It was beautifully serene to be with him. Sharing a bed. Entwined bodies. Joining hands. Just the way that lovers did. It was the normality which one was craving all along but not with her husband. The morning was a time to jump out of bed, to dress for work and prepare the children's breakfasts without so much as a word to the other. Her husband was usually preoccupied with the morning paper to chatter and so the boys would fill in the silence and Rose relished it. Now, there was utter silence...