Everything

“Find me here and speak to me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light that's leading me
To the place where I find peace again”

It was the place that she used to dream about him. The place where she named him Albatross, where she first wrote about him, where she cried over losing him. So it was appropriate that it would also be the place where she lost her virginity.

In all honesty she always thought she would lose her virginity in her childhood bedroom, if for no other reason than she couldn’t imagine it happening anywhere else. But the thought of ever having sex vanished over a year ago, along with him. She’d written it only a few months after meeting him “let him be the only one to touch me ”, and she meant it still. It had been two years since then, one year with him and one without. She spent a year feeling shameful for her lustful thoughts and a year feeling utterly hopeless in the knowledge that she’d never see him again, so she truly didn’t think it would happen for her.

The night didn’t start off on a good note, what with him calling her neighbor. She would be lying if she didn’t admit to being pleased that he so readily agreed to sleep in her room, but she was keeping her boundaries. It was her idea to put up the physical boundary (albeit a flimsy one) but still, she didn’t like what he implied by neighbor .   

Her resentful feelings dissipated as soon as she heard his soft snores and saw his dark lashes flutter against his cheeks. He was so beautiful like this. He was always beautiful, but when he slept his outer appearance more closely matched his inner self. Soft, vulnerable, boyish, affectionate. Every time they had fallen asleep together he ended up snuggled in closer to her in some position or other. He had already crossed the blanket border by draping his right arm in the dip between her hip and ribcage. 

She didn’t move away, or put his arm back on his side. She just lay on her side, watching him sleep and feeling his body heat seep into her bones. A smile crept up on her face when she thought of what he said, about how he didn’t sleep well, especially indoors. But he always slept like a log when they fell asleep together. Some things never change.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep when she woke with the feeling of being overheated. 

Why did I wear flannel pajamas to bed in June?

But she quickly realized that wasn’t the reason she was so hot. It was the very large man pressed against her back, from chest all the way down to ankles. His right arm that once was draped, was now wrapped tightly around her waist. She knew she couldn’t get out of his grasp, she was trapped until he decided to let her go. She battled her lustful thoughts and her body’s natural response like Joan of Arc fought the English: she was virtuous, valiant, and ultimately unsuccessful. She tried not to think of how she liked being at his mercy, knowing full well he would never hurt her. Or how many nights she had pleasured herself to thoughts of him in this very bed. 

She had squeezed her eyes shut to ward off the images bombarding her, but they flew open the moment she felt it . She wasn’t stupid, she knew about the birds and the bees, she knew how male bodies functioned, but to feel it was something different. He had been very respectful in all the other times they had slept next to each other, very careful that she wouldn’t see or feel that part of him. It was warmer than the rest of his body, and pushed up against her lower back she could feel just how big it was. She’d of course thought about it before, they weregoing to get married once upon a time, and she knew based on everything else on his body that he would be large, but none of that prepared her.