Nash
She was winter. The cold, cool stretch of emptiness that you think will consume you. The frigid bite you think won’t ever leave your bones, the one you try to pretend isn’t there, but can’t keep out of your head.
She was fall and the scent of a fire, the crackle of heat, the coming of change you try to pretend won’t come, but does anyway, that you wait for the whole year, that you wish away when it finally comes.
She was summer and the scorching warmth of sun and sin, the slick feel of lotion and the spray of ocean water, the salt of that taste on your tongue and the cool, crisp relief that comes over you when you dip inside the bottomless water.
She was spring, the fresh sweet smell of jasmine and the honeysuckle temptation of light and love and beautiful rebirth that cannot be ignored. Willow was the phantom spark of all those things I loved and hated. The things that tested me. The things that healed, all wrapped up in that tempting silhouette, in the sweet surrender of her body pressed against mine and the whisper of a tease in every syllable that formed my name from her full, thick lips.
“Nash.” It was song, sweeter than Coltrane, hurt worse too, my name, the hidden tone of promises and pleasure I stopped telling myself I didn’t want.
Four seasons laid out before me. Willow’s wild hair fanned against my pillow and her waiting body—pale skin and a trail of freckles that crossed her chest and dipped with the curves along her stomach.
“Nash,” she said again, reaching for me when I came to my knees, looking down at her, wanting her with an ache nothing had ever worked up in me.
There were two small lines along her hips, lightning on her skin and the round bends of her breast, the sweet arches along her hips, down her thighs when I touched her there. That look though, went deeper, settled closer than the scent of her skin or rise in my body when I watched her shimmy out of her clothes and crawl on my bed, waiting, ready for me to react.
Now I was and I had to breathe deep, separate the want someone else held in my dream and the urge to take what was mine and mine alone; what I wanted for myself because of the sensation only Willow moved in me.
“Take off your shirt,” she said and I did, working one shoulder at a time out of that cotton, discarding it because it kept me from her. She touched me, nails against the lines and letters over my body, her mouth, her tongue warm and soft on my neck, over my chest, traveling like a wanderer, searching, seeking.
We came together like colors, moving into a gradient of light, of motion that reminded me of the sea, waves and water, sand and shore. We were sweeter than those Coltrane chords, went deeper than each note.
“You taste like honey,” I told her, moving closer, lips and tongue on her flesh, in the dips of her body. The invitation open, ready as she pulled me close. I took another bite, moving her apart with my knee, holding her tight until there were small marks from my fingers against her pale skin and she shuddered, gripping, clawing at me like she couldn’t get close enough.
“Nash…” and that melody spurred me on, had me forgetting control and patience and all the swagger I thought made me smooth. I was nothing but feeling, touch and taste and desperate, desperate want with her under me, with me slipping inside, deep, sweet.
Free.
Later, when my body cried out, when I thought I couldn’t move enough to even leave her body, Willow cuddled next to me, fit like a puzzle piece against me. We didn’t sleep. There was only the sound of our breaths and the slowing race of my own heartbeat pulsing in my ear.
Her skin was the softest I’d ever touched, sweeter than the honey I swore I tasted from her neck when I kissed her and it reminded me of things I thought I’d figured out when I was a punk kid.
“You’re smiling. I can feel your lips stretching against my forehead.”
“I am. Sated. High as hell off you.” I moved back to catch her gaze, smiling when she looked half buzzed as me. “You remind me…” I touched her arm, let my fingers move over her elbow, to her wrist. “You remind me of what I always thought I knew about women when I was a kid.”
“What was that?”
It was probably stupid, but it was real. Everything I felt with her, right in that moment, everything I said, it was the realest I’ve ever been. Willow wouldn’t let me hide, so I decided not to try.
“The way a woman looks, the secrets she keeps, that mesmerize a punk kid with no clue what happens behind those doors, behind those pink curtains. It got me wondering, all those years, when the girls in gym class disappeared before me and my boys had finished our game on the court. Why’d they leave so soon? What did they do in that locker room that took up so much damn time?”
“Did you ever figure it out?”
She liked my smile. She’d said that a half a dozen times. I saw what Will thought of me, how she went all still, all quiet when I threw a smile her way. There was something in the press of her lips, how the smallest tip of her tongue wetted that full bottom lip in the middle, like she wanted to taste me on her mouth, like my smile reminded her how much she wanted me right there.
I didn’t answer her, just flashed that smile slow, subtle like I knew she wanted it. Just the right side twitching up, my lips protruding like they waited for her to take up what I offered. Willow’s gaze shifted, moved over my face like there was something she looked for, maybe something she wanted to find that I wouldn’t give up easily. And when that glance stayed too still, too focused on my mouth, I relaxed the muscles around my lips just enough to slip my tongue along my bottom lip. Her focused shifted, followed the change of movement and gave away what I knew she wanted.
“No.” The whisper of the word pulled her attention back to my eyes and I fought like hell not to smile again. Couldn’t give away all my cards. “Not then. Not all at once either. That came with time. High school, college, all the females around then, all the bodies and scents and senses I’d never felt before, all those mysteries I wanted like hell to figure out, it was sensory overload and, little punk I was didn’t have a damn clue.”
Willow pulled her long hair over her shoulder, let the slip of loose braid move along her bare shoulder until she held the breakaway wisps between her fingers. Like feathers, like movement and grace I’d never seen anyone manage before, that woman could blink, pass a look over her shoulder and bring any man to his knees. But I had not lied. Lessons got learned in college, when every female that came at me made it easy to uncover certain secrets. I had to learn and back then, eager as I was, those lessons got taught quick.
Willow’s hair reminded me of pebbles wet from the river, the color darkening with each press of the current. “I learned, but even then, all the stuff I figured out, never prepared me.”
“For what?” She gave me a little of that knee-bending glance and I pulled my attention to the thick tendrils of hair she loosened from the braid to weave between her long fingers. She held her breath when I took the hair from her hand.
“For the one and many.” She wanted me to clarify. She wanted answers and I had them, but I liked the way she smelled. I liked how warm her skin felt when I brushed my arm against her back. I wanted to live in that moment just for a little while, to suspend our reality until there was only the feel of our skin together. Something that was wet and warm and somehow right all at once. “Women, to a boy, are scary, so fucking scary that we don’t know to catch hold of that fear. It burns in our guts, and it’s that sensation we run from. Every man, no matter what kind of man he turns out to be, is a scared punk at ten, at sixteen, at eighteen when it comes to women.” Will shuddered, the thin hair on my arm brushing along her spine when I slide my fingers between the wave of loose braid that fell on her shoulder. “We don’t understand why girls get us all twisted up inside, make us feel like we could either scream or get sick or explode all at the same time. And then, you get a little closer to the many things that keep a man spent over a female. Things that as a kid has you running scared. As a man, though, when they let you closer, you get a little clarity. A little realization and damn do you want to unravel those mysteries. You get a touch, a small one and if you’re really lucky, next comes the taste. That only makes you want more and maybe if you got game, if you’re cool, know to handle your business, then you get another taste, a deeper one. The touches get you closer to a taste, until you think you’ve found it all out—what a woman has, what you can do with what she has.”
“And then?”
“Hell. Then? Then she unravels another mystery and all the mess you think you knew about women is nothing. Then you realize you know nothing about them. Then you realize there is so much more to know until you know the truth.”
“What truth is that?”
“That you’ll never understand it all. That every woman has a level of mystery no man could possibly discover. There are many. That many starts with one. It starts with the held things she won’t ever tell you, no matter who you are or what you can do for her. The one and many that you spend your life trying to discover. It’s an addiction, really. Like drinking something that tastes so fucking good, something you believe will fill you up but only makes you realize you could never be full. It makes you drunk. That touch, that taste, the bodies, the smell, all the things that make a woman so tempting. You want to drink…it all up.”
“Nash…” My name came out like a purr and Willow brought her fingers back to my chest, circling around the thin hair there, moving over my skin and I felt every touch she made. “Do I make you drunk?”
I pushed her close, my mouth hovering over hers, our bodies pressed firm, nearly back to where we’d been just minutes ago. The smell of sex and sweat filled my senses and I lowered my voice, not caring just how real I got right then.
“Sweetness, no woman alive could make me drunker.” Then I kissed Willow, deep, long and got so high I could look down and not see the earth.