As You Awaken

5. Illicit Affairs

Part I:

Kenza was startled awake. She sat up, gasping for air, her chest heaving under her dampened t-shirt. It wasn't a nightmare, or the visions her mind's eye that had pulled her out of her sleep. It was the calm. The quiet underscored only by the chirp of the Goldfinch in the oak tree just outside the window. She had slept through the night for the first time in much longer than she could remember.

She peeled the crisp, French blue linen covers from her body. She was in Noa's bedroom, in Noa's t-shirt, but he was gone.
She followed the sound of water coming from the adjacent room in the hallway, and pushed the cracked door open.  She was greeted by a warm cloud of steam, and Noa's body behind the glass in the shower.

"You slept well," he said with his eyes closed and his back turned to her. Even with her bare feet, and careful steps, there was no sneaking up on him. 
"You keep your gun in there, too?" She quipped.
The glass door slid open, and Noa held his hand out for her. She stepped forward, and he tipped her chin up to him, and then held her face in his warm, damp hands. She swallowed, and closed her eyes as the steam rose around them.
Something about his home, his bed, his reassuring hands, it all felt like a sensory deprivation tank, like she was cradled in something away from everything else. Noa pulled her shirt over her head, and took her into the cocoon of the glass enclosure. She felt the pressurized stream of hot water hit her back, and then her hair, and then her face.        
She felt Noa's lips on her collarbone, and then traveling up her neck, and jaw. He wrapped both arms around her, pulling her flush to him, and then enveloped her lips with a kiss. Kenza kissed him back. There was no fight this time, no biting words exchanged, no practicing a pre-determined distance from him even when he was inside of her. He was tender, and she couldn't bring herself to not let him.  

When he pulled back from the kiss, she opened her eyes. She was discovering the subtleties in him that she had never allowed herself to indulge in -  his irises, the color of dark rum, the paper thin scar in his left eyebrow, the endearing asymmetry of his smile. He discovered something, too, now that they were naked in daylight.                      
"This is new." Noa's fingers traced over the tattoo on her hip. It was intricate, single line lace that wrapped to her outer thigh. A garter clip hung from the embroidery. It lifted from her skin in delicate shadows, and masterfully camouflaged the black ink that preceded it. Four harsh black letters used to spell out a name. Noa knew what she had covered up, he knew every inch of her skin.
It was like he knew of a weakness that she felt was a betrayal to herself.

She shoved him against the glass, and pressed her lips back into his.
"Fuck me," she hissed as she laced her fingers through his. He didn't deny her. He never did. Noa wrapped her around himself, and spread her open to plunge into her. Their moans punctuated by the clinging of the glass against its chrome frame penetrated the quiet of her one night sanctuary, and drugged her just enough. Kenza dug her nails into his shoulders, and he was rendered animalistic. He bore into her until tears flooded her eyes, and the euphoria sedated her, unwinding the tension that had gripped the evening before. She savored the dizziness before her feet touched the tile again, knowing she would have to sober up quickly.