Don't let go!

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.