You, You, You

DROPPING THE LEASH

Thanks to Eddie’s serious lead foot and my reluctance to tell him to slow down, we made it to L.A. two and a half hours ahead of the bus.  We had some time to kill before everyone else showed up, so Eddie and I made our way into our little shanty of a cheap hotel room to relax and clean up.  

As I clicked the door shut behind us, I reached sideways to turn on the light switch.  There was a brick wall just across from the window at the end of the room, so not much light was able to enter.  In fact, judging by the looks of things, I wasn’t sure if the light of day even touched this place!  Yikes…

Wait, my hand isn’t moving anymore…

“Izzy, let’s keep it dark.  Let’s light some of your candles… the ones that you had in your room in Mountain View.”  Eddie had covered my hand in his much larger one and prevented me from flicking on the lights.  I smiled at his fingers practically swallowing mine up—they were such beautiful hands.  They were soulful.  You can see so much about a person in their hands…

“All right,” I said softly, walking over to my bags.  I was still gazing dreamily at his smooth knuckles, sturdy palms, gentle callous lines, delicate fingertips as I pulled some candles out of my duffel bag and lit them, hardly watching what I was doing.

“Iz, you’re starry-eyed right now, what are you thinking about?”  Eddie asked, amused at my staring but barely letting it show.  

“Hmm?”  I snapped out of my trance and back to consciousness.  I walked back over to him after setting the candles out around the room.  “Oh, nothing.  But… your hands.  I wa—it’s nothing.”  Okay, maybe I was still half-tranced.  I laughed at my inability to shake the stupefying gorgeousness of this man.

“My hands?  They’re just hands,” Eddie said, now smiling and chuckling, but inching closer and closer to me.

“No!  No.  No, they’re definitely not just… hands.  They’re something else entirely.  You know how they say eyes are windows to the soul?  Hands are hidden clues to something even deeper.  Well, that’s my theory anyway.  Never met a person I couldn’t interpret by looking at their hands.  You can tell so much about who someone is… inside,” I explained.

“Oh I see.  You sure are a different breed, Isabelle Antoinette.  A different breed of human.  Why don’t we lie down and you can let me know what my hands say to you?”  He placed those magic hands on my hips.

“Or… you could let your hands do the talki—“ Eddie’s eyes were already wandering down from my face to my tank top, jean shorts, and Converse-clad body as I spoke.  His mouth came down to meet mine in one delicious, dizzying kiss, cutting me off in mid-corny-awful-can’t-believe-I-said-that-sentence.  He withdrew a tiny bit and whispered into me.

“Shhh… Izzy, I don’t want to talk.  Let’s communicate instead, you and me,” he breathed right into my still-open mouth and I felt his fingers go up underneath the hem of my shirt.  My knees went utterly weak as he caressed my skin so gently it felt like a hundred butterfly kisses all over my waist.  I exhaled heavily, letting words escape me and grazing the perimeter of his mouth with my lips.  His mouth closed and a slight moan escaped from somewhere in his throat.  

The way his hands moved up my body, barely making contact but causing so much sensation… 

The way he responded to my hands on him, making little sounds and sighs that were only meant for my ears…

The way he gently lifted my tank top over my head and ran his palms down my raised arms… 

The way he cradled my shoulders, looked into my eyes, ran his teeth over my collarbone, kissed my chest, my hair, my neck…