Beautiful Burn(8)

“Sure. It's peaceful, and the rowing is good exercise. Come on, there’s a path.” I snagged her hand in mine to lead her. I heard the singing sand whispering beneath her feet as she followed me down the shore a few hundred yards. “Here.” I stopped and gestured. It was the perfect spot to fully appreciate this moment.

“I love it,” she mused as she stood, eyes big, while she took it in.

The bright white, clapboard lighthouse on the shores of Old Mission Point was always a sight to behold, but if you stood in this exact spot as the sun dipped in the sky at just the right angle, the old building seemed to be lit with flames. The orange rays of the setting sun reflected off the crisp white and seemed to glow, slowly enveloping the structure in a fiery effect that progressed until the entire show faded as slowly as it'd come when the sun finally descended below the horizon line.

“How have I not known about this? I mean, obviously I’ve been to the lighthouse before, but at sunset…” she trailed off. “I wonder if I can get it on my camera.”

“Nope, no cameras.” I stopped the hand digging in her back pocket.

“What?” She looked up at me with eyes all big and doey and confused.

“Don’t worry about capturing it, worry about experiencing it.”

“You’re insane.” She laughed, but still, her hand dropped. “Take me up close.” She smiled and locked our hands together, taking confident strides up the narrow, sandy path. The dune grass brushed our thighs as we walked, hand in hand, and my mind raged with one question: What the fuck was I doing?

I was enjoying this moment. The last few years I’d been living in an oppressive cloud, and this, this was my first breath. My first possibly reckless moment since college and I was going to live it.

“If you get much closer than this the fire effect fades.” I stopped her, our feet sliding in the sand and making a soft rasping noise.

“Close your eyes.” Her eyes fluttered closed almost instantly. “Now imagine it's 1920, the Isle of Skye.” I murmured in her ear, lulling her with my low, melodic tone. “You vacation here every summer, in the same beachside house, and you look at this lighthouse every day.”

“‘To the Lighthouse’?” she breathed. I knew she'd catch my reference to Virginia Woolf's classic novel.

“Imagine the burning desire to see it up close, to touch it with your own hands.” My gaze hovered on the creamy skin at her nape. “But the path is too rocky and the waves are too wild to cross. It's impossible. You're only ever left looking. Wanting...” I trailed one light finger across the sensitive flesh that begged for my touch.

“It sounds like hell,” she sighed, her eyes fluttering closed when goosebumps erupted across her skin. She was so sensual, so beautiful, so attuned to me like I was to her, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to taste the skin on her neck, sweet with the taste of her sweat-dampened skin. Every primal urge that’d been buried deep inside me exploded and the tenuous restraint I'd possessed slipped through my weak fingers.

I dropped her hand from mine and as if linked by the same marionette line, we turned to face each other. With shallow breaths and tentative fingertips, I trailed up the bronzed skin of her arms to land at her exposed collarbone. My eyes bore into hers, seeking permission, begging for acceptance, as my thumbs ghosted along her jawline and my fingers wove into her thick hair.

Her throat muscles pulled taut as she swallowed, her eyes swimming with emotion I couldn't even begin to understand. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I leaned in, my lips seeking hers. We'd been so far apart these last years that it was a shock to have her here -- the million miles that had existed in the space between us now closed to a distance of just centimeters.

My lips brushed with hers and as if an atom bomb had dropped, every cell in my body exploded and hummed with pleasure. I pressed closer, confident that she wouldn't push me away when her palms splayed across the broad angles of my chest.

The slow, tentative kiss consumed us. Before long my tongue was thrusting between her lips and finally -- finally -- I knew what she tasted like – decadent caramel, subtle vanilla, and a hint of menthol from her cigarette. Her taste was natural, both sweet and minty, and as addictive as cocaine to an addict. Because I was already crossing more lines than I'd vowed ever to cross, I pulled away, savoring the taste of her on my tongue. My eyes scanned the soft angles of her face, the dark eyelashes shadowed across high cheekbones, lips so perfectly full and elegantly-shaped they could have been created by a sculptor’s masterful hand.

When her eyes fluttered open to meet my gaze, I spoke. “Imagine wanting something so badly, you're consumed with yearning, seeing something every single day, knowing you can never do more than look.”