You've been haunting me with your presence, ethereal and unshakable, as you are now in my bed, where you always should have been. Your eyelids are mostly shut and I know you are driving yourself to that place in me in which you were always present, my very core.

I clasp down on you and am intent on making it difficult for you to advance. I raise my head to the side of your throat, to distract you with my tongue, to draw small exclamation marks of purposeless passion on your skin. I want to remind you that as cruel as the present may be, it is all we have.

Sure enough, as surely as I still know you despite the time we've been away from one another, you lose grip on your rhythm and sight of your target. You moan as deliciously as only you can and I wonder how it is that I can't remember anything but these sounds and the smell of your body, as though nothing else ever existed.

The candle's flame flickers as I grasp you tighter, never stopping my licking and sucking, my occasional biting, my driving you mad with unspent desire, which is now paralyzing you.

I want you. I want you this way forever. But I cannot make this moment last any longer. I set your body into rhythm again by rocking my hips back and forth, faster and faster, until completion is incarnated in your cries and my body absorbs your essence, the whole of your essence. Its quivering tells me that I have reached my climax as well, that I have probably been as vocal as you have in the process, but I was being blind and deaf, mute and numb to everything but you.

I needed nothing more than the delicate pressure of your weight when you rest afterwards on me.

You give me time to recover and don't show your eagerness to take me in too, lest you rush me beyond my stamina. I know you well enough, though. Tears form. At the back of my throat they sting and suffocate, but I will not release them. I will have none of that tonight, as I am incapable of thinking about tomorrow and all that it may bring, or take away.

To be continued...