Ethan stood over me, awaiting a response he’d never get. All I wanted was for him to go upstairs and make his call so I could fall asleep to the muffled sounds of his voice and dream of the angel who came to me when my eyes closed—my green-eyed angel with the voice of song and gentle, slow hands.
Ollie …
“Keep them closed,” he whispers in my ear. I know he’s beside me, his free and gentle spirit is radiating and raising every hair over my tingling skin.
We’re lying over his bed, completely still. It’s quiet now, aside from the air releasing through my nose and the shallow breaths coming from him. I don’t know what his plans are yet, but everything Ollie does is not without purpose.
His sculpted yet slender body moves over me effortlessly, and instinctively my legs fall to the sides to let him in. He’s holding himself up because I don’t feel his weight, and his palms clasp around my ears. I no longer hear anything, only a soft and continuous beating from within. It’s either his heartbeat or mine. I can’t tell.
His minted breath hits my lips first, and it makes me dizzy. I’m trying to remain still, but when Ollie’s mouth traces mine, the heartbeat in my ears slams harder and quickens with every sweep of his tender lips. Mine quiver, his breath shatters, and I taste him upon each inhale. We’re not even kissing, but his mouth still has a way of exploring mine and my lips part, anticipating his every move.
His mere taste is nostalgic, a slice of heaven, and I long for more. Slowly, his lips stroke mine, unapologetically yet forgiving. And how is it possible? He nips at my bottom lip, and a flame lights as I crumble. Each time I lift my head for more, he pulls away, and the loss slices through me.
It’s exhilarating. Almost too much to bear any longer. An ache forms inside my chest from the inescapable vibrant torture. Why can’t he give me what I’m needing? But I trust him, and so I remain still as I’m breaking apart beneath him.
Suddenly, Ollie’s tongue sweeps against mine, and every nerve bursts into flames. A fire flares behind my eyes. I don’t know why, but I want to cry. He’s inside my head, inside my chest, teasing my very heart, but he’s barely touching me, and it’s all too much.
A whimper escapes me, and Ollie surrenders, catching my mouth. My chest, it clenches with every stroke of his tongue, and we kiss as if emotions are bleeding out between the sheets. Tears roll down my face, and the salt mixes with his sweet taste. I don’t understand what is happening to me. I’m shaking. The beating inside my ears is so loud now. Its fast pace doesn’t match the slow and consuming rhythm of his kiss.
Finally, Ollie pulls away and grazes my wet cheek with his thumbs. Both his forearms and words shudder as he says, “Now, love. Now open your eyes.” Speechless, I blink three times as glossy green eyes stare down under wet lashes. “What do you feel?” he asks nervously, and his eyes bounce between mine as the crease between his brows appears.
I suck in air then release a steadier breath. Ollie was able to show me a remnant of the way I made him feel. The constant dilemma to fight or let go, and this was only a kiss. But Ollie managed to by shutting off my other senses. I closed my eyes. He blocked out my sound. The only touch was his lips his hands, feeding me his bohemian heartbeat. “Everything. I feel everything, Ollie.”
Ollie closes his eyes for a moment and licks his lips. “Do you understand now?”
I bring my palm to his face, nodding. “Yeah. I do.”
Shaken awake, I blinked my eyes open to Ethan, standing over me with a bag in his hand.
“Did you have a terror?” he asked with his brows bunched together. “You’re crying.”
I swiped the back of my hand across my cheek and shook my head.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” the mattress dipped as he sat beside me, “I have pants for you. A pair of jeans and these,” he took a pair from the bag and examined them, “sweats. They’ll probably be too big, but I grabbed the smallest size.”
It was the most he’d said in days.
Ethan was trying to reverse the damage he’d done, but couldn’t. We would never be the same, and all I wanted was to go back to sleep and be with the man in my dreams.
He would only come when the sun was out, never in the middle of the night, never when Ethan slept beside me.
I wished there was a way I could stay locked inside the dream forever and never leave, but Ethan always woke me. Ethan always took me away from him.
“Let’s take a walk,” he offered with a single shoulder shrug. “You need exercise. You can’t sleep your days away anymore.”
The last time we went for a walk, I’d taken off running into the woods but didn’t get far. He’d quickly caught up to me, wrestled me to the ground, and put me to sleep. Ethan was good at that. He knew just how much oxygen to cut off for me to lose consciousness. And the less I struggled, the quicker I was out and back in Ollie’s arms. That day had been the first time I dreamt of Ollie, and since then, it was all I wanted to do.
“Okay,” I mumbled through a sigh and sat up.
Victory laced his expression, and he broke the zip ties around my ankles. Once my feet would touch grass, it was game on. I would run, and he would catch me and put me back to sleep—back with Ollie. It would be a win-win for us both.
Ethan was right, the sweatpants were loose, but didn’t fall off my hipbones. Once my feet were securely inside my combat boots, he walked behind me up the stairs and toward the front door.
The same silver Nissan was parked in front of the cabin. The last time I’d seen it, I’d memorized the license plate number just in case, but I’d since forgotten the plate number, unable to contain information any longer. Even Ethan’s expressions had become unreadable. His body language, too. I had no idea what his plans or intentions were. Simply, I’d become a ghost, moving along to every demand and adhering to what Ethan had expected of me. I was nothing more than a shadow with morbid thoughts of everything I wanted to do to him.
I thought about breaking the glass cup against the dining table and slicing his throat. I thought about suffocating him in his sleep with a pillow. More than a dozen murders played out inside my sick head, none of which I had the heart anymore to carry out. There was a nagging voice stopping me. Ollie’s voice. The angel.
Side by side, we walked the trails in silence until we came across a clearing in the middle of the forest. Ethan paused and turned to face me with curious eyes. “I hadn’t always been like this, you know,” he began, and I pried my eyes away from him and toward the tree line. “I had my first kiss here,”—in my peripheral, he took a few steps to his right— “Actually, right here to be exact. Her name was Ashlyn. I was fifteen when she showed up one night on the doorstep of my family’s cabin wrapped in a winter coat over her pajamas, asking if we had a bottle opener.”
Ethan’s chuckle should have made me feel lighter, but it didn’t. I froze, catatonic and eyes fixed out before me, refusing to look at him and counting how many steps it would take before reaching the forest.
“I mean, what on earth could she need a bottle opener for? She was fourteen at the time, hardly of drinking age, especially at one o’clock in the morning. But later, I discovered it was for her father.”