Suddenly, abruptly, without a seconds thought, she lifted
her head from where it rested on the coffee table, lent forward and kissed him.
It wasn’t a standard kiss, a small kiss, a passing kiss or a kiss meant to
express mild affection or brief emotion, it was a kiss that literally stopped
the seconds moving across the face of a clock. The rush of breath quickly faded
to the moment and her lips, he tasted her lips, the same lips that he’d glanced
at so many times. He’d always wondered how they’d taste, bitter sweet,
tempting, or even cherry chap-stick but either way, he knew they’d be ever so
soft.
Whispers, moments of exhaustive fleeting rapture, the
emotion of loving someone in secret finally realised. He felt her move again
across the surface of his mouth, expressing her desire as if he were the very
mention of her thoughts, alive, real, that very present. She moved back, still
with her hand holding the back of his neck, gently caressing his hair, looking
straight into his eyes. The smiles appeared, the happy finality of expression
realised, she glanced down, lowered her head slightly and looked back into his
eyes, “I’ve been waiting a long time to do that!”
Without a reply, with barely a rational thought within his
mind, with blood flowing through his body, he bridged the gap between them and
locked his lips around hers again. Sure, of course, it went without the very
words he could have mentioned, that he desired her, wanted her, appreciated her
friendship but above all, he wanted her hand within his. Like a small flame, flickering,
starving, begging to be fed, to be caressed with life, he could feel his
emotions flare with such force that he was glad that there was a table between
them.
For too long, for an age amongst men, he’d wanted to be with
her, to hold her hand and to ask her to never let go. He’d been falling, he’d
been failing, his resolve dripping away bit by bit yet ever wishing to flow
over her like an ocean of moments. He wasn’t the kind of man to express such
things, to endure his mind onto another’s soul, but it was within him, like
that flame, burning. ‘A man should be a man,’ he’d say to himself ever so
often, ‘but a man should also never pretend to ever be more than the emotion he
wishes to share with another.’
His hand finally moved to the side of her face as his
fingertips touched her soft warm skin. He moved away, moved his hand to hers
and as the room filled with the very reason why they’d come to be, he held her
hand and finally said what he should have said weeks before, “Don’t let go!”
They both moved from the table and ran towards the exit. They knew that they
might not make it, they knew that the chance of success would be slim but, like
two hearts beating, the rhythm would drive them forward or they’d fail trying.
