Breathe .: 1.16.11 :.

I woke up that night, drenched in sweat and barely breathing.
The thing about nightmares was that you couldn't prepare for them. They sneaked up on you when you are at your most vulnerable, wrecking havoc and mayhem when you are totally defenceless.
My shirt clung my back and breasts suffocating me.
I lifted the sheets and sat down at the edge of the bed.
He came in with her book in her hand looking weary.
He placed it on the bed next to me.
I couldn't help but think about how he keeps drifting away from me. Which only makes me cling harder and lose all sense of self worth.
Funny, The only thing I'd ever dare to change about him is how good he was at escaping me.
"Its just a nightmare, don't worry. I just need to calm down and maybe take a shower." I said looking away.

He touched my fingers, 
Traced my palm all the way up to my wrist.
He kissed the sensitive bulking vein, licking it, tantalizing the raging blood inside.
He brushed his lips where he knew my quick pulsing would tease them. And he bit, licking his lips intoxicated. 
I just stared at him.
Watched as his lips curved in a crooked little smile, I knew he noticed the quickening rate of my inconsistent heartbeats and I felt my cheeks warm and blush at how innate my reactions to him were.
I couldn't look away.
He was such a rush.
I wanted him immediately.
Excessively.
Almost, violently.
He sucked going up my arm and I gasped.
A delicious shiver moved through me.
When it came to him, I was more than willing to be devoured.
And then he stopped, closed his eyes and stiffened.
"You're the greatest risk I've ever taken." He said, looking at me.
He pressed his lips, almost too gently, to mine and continued "And the greatest reward."

I didn't know how badly I craved those words from him, until the very second he showered my senses with them.

I couldn't tell him I loved him over and over again, although I knew it affected him when I did.
But he told me once, he never believed the overused "I love you"s, he justified his comment by saying he never believed them because they hadn't been backed up with truth, trust, or honesty.
The words meant little to him, which was why he refused to say them to me.
I tried not to let him see how badly it hurt me that he just wouldn't say them. 
By now, I figured, it was an adjustment I'd have to make in order to be with him.

I exhaled, letting him inhale me in, in a thrill of that exquisite moment, where he was breathing nothing else but me, I couldn't help but love him, and with every inch of me, I told him just that.

Fearing that it might scare him, "I won't take it further than you can handle," I promised, looking at his glittering eyes in the muted lighting, knowing he knew exactly what my body meant, and how to read between my words. "But I will take you to the edge Babe, with me."

He groaned and I squirmed closing my eyes, feeling both aroused and exhausted. The day and night have finally taken their toll on me, leaving me empty, and with nothing left to hold on to.

He stared at me, and he knew.
He always knew.

"Take your clothes off, sweetheart." He ordered. "I'll start a bath for you," he said backing away.

I opened my eyes and caught him by the shirt. It was the same shirt he had worn that lovely day in january when we met.
I didn't know what to say; I just didn't want him to go.

He understood. He always understood. I couldn't let him go.
"I'm not going anywhere." He cupped my jaw in his hands and stared into my eyes, allowing me the intensity and laser focus that had snared me from the beginning.

Leaning down, he kissed the tip of my nose and both my cheeks, pulling me tighter into him.

The irony here, is that I thought I had the power to make him melt, but that embrace was making me think I've had the heart of a volcano in my grasp. Being wrapped in his arms was the most wonderful feeling in the world. His hands stroked the length of my spine, all the way down to my hips, gentling me.

He rested his chin atop the crown of my head and took the longest breath I have ever heard him take.
I tightened my arms around his waist, giving him comfort and acceptance, and gratefully accepting both in return.

My hand fisted in the cotton of his T-shirt.
"Angel," I breathed, lifting my head to press my cheek to his, I licked around his right ear, and whispered "you can't let me go, either."

That was when he kissed me.
His kisses were gifts.
He kissed with everything he had, with power, passion, hunger and love.
He held nothing back, giving me everything, exposing everything.
Bare, naked, and stripped.

I felt tension grip his hard frame, his hold loosened around my ribcage, his lungs heaving. He was moaning, and barely breathing, he grabbed a fistful of my hair tilting my head at the perfect angle. Waiting. "Your whiskey kisses are fucking mine." He said as he breathed against my parted lips.

The kiss ended, and I swear it seemed time had laid still in honor of us.
I was shaken. I couldn't stand. Breathing was a foreign concept.
Left emotionally raw and open, by the most intense moment of my life, I cried.

Dropping to his knees, and putting back on the edge of the bed where I was, his face was directly in front of mine, I reached out to stroke his jaw and neck, I could tell he was as spent as I was. "I need you. I need us to stop fighting." I said.

"Angel, we don't fight, we just need to learn to stop scaring the hell out of each other." He said.
"If I needed you more, I couldn't function." I murmured looking away.
He lifted my hands to his lips, kissed my fingertips and said; "Sweetheart, I hope you never grasp the intensity with which I thirst for you. And besides, so what if we fight? I'd rather spend the rest of my life arguing with you, than laughing with anyone else."

I can't describe the sound that escaped me then, it wasn't a gasp, or a laugh, or a sob, it was a mixture of all three.
I loved him more in that moment,than I ever would have thought possible.

He turned around, staring at the half eaten bar of chocolate on my night stand, looking at the lit candles all around the room, his eyes shined hotly and I laughed. "No."

Standing back up, he stared at me, his eyebrows arching, eyes intense, he wrapped his left hand around my throat, fisting my hair with the other.
"Sweetheart, You do not get to deny me your body. I am going to do whatever the hell I want with melted chocolate and your body, because it'll please me and that will please you. I say when, I say how. Now repeat that."

Laughing, I repeated "you say ..." I gasped as his mouth wrapped around the tip of one of my breasts through the ribbed cotton of my shirt. "Oh, God."

He nipped me with his teeth. "Finish."

My entire body tightened, so quick to respond to that authoritative tone. "You say when. You say how."

Smiling he said "there are things you can bargain with, darling one. But your body and soul aren't negotiable."

My spine arched and he placed his free hand on the small of my back coaxing my flesh into flames with the circles he expertly drew with his fingertips. My hands clutched his thick mane of hair, an instinctive response to his relentless, delicious mouth on me.

He put me through hell. On purpose. Made me suffer. There was no end in sight. And I loved it.

For better of for worse he was my soul mate. The other half of me. In many ways, he was my reflection. My missing puzzle piece.

"I love you. Still not the right word, but I know you want to hear it." He said.

"I need to hear it." I agreed softly.

"Okay. But as long as you understand the difference." He said, "People get over love. They can live without it, they can move on. Its overused and degraded. Its a trend. Love can be lost and found again. But that won't happen for me. It can't. The truth is, I won't survive you. I wouldn't even want to."

My breath caught at the look he gave glancing back at me.

"I'm obsessed with you. Addicted to you. You're everything I ever wanted or needed, everything I've ever dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you. I never knew how good it felt, not to breathe until you. I never knew my heartbeats were capable of reaching 102 without bursting. I would have hunted you down long ago had I known you existed, you wasted yourself on the wrong people, but i'll be damned if I let them have the best of you, let alone the last of you. Whether you know it or not, you're mine and you've always been, mine."

The world left me with the scraps of what was left of me, and now, for the first time ever, I was completed. 

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, not parting our lips for even a second, he swept me up in his arms and carried me into the bathroom, with him.