Joy

I’ve swallowed a nest full of butterflies.

Wait. Butterflies don’t live in nests.

They live in a swarm.

Actually, that’s not right, either.

It’s called an army. I remember from one of my science classes.

I set a hand on my belly, trying to quell the army inside it.

What is wrong with me? I’m thirty. I shouldn’t be this nervous. But it’s not nerves. It’s excitement. It’s the thrill. It’s the wild, fantastical feeling when you fly upside down on a roller coaster.

But with an army?

I scratch my head as I wait.

Screw it. I need to know what it’s called. As I pace across the iron footbridge in Canal St-Martin’s, the emerald leaves of the trees glistening from the earlier showers, I unlock my phone. “Google, what is a group of butterflies called?”

She answers in her pleasing robotic voice. “A group of butterflies is called—”

Fingers brush across the back of my neck. “A kaleidoscope.”

I don’t just shiver. I shudder. My bones melt. Heat swirls through me. That voice. That accent. This man. I turn around. Soft moonlight frames his face. “How did you know that?”

He shrugs, a grin lighting up his handsome features. I want to run my fingers along his jawline. But I don’t yet have the permission to touch him freely whenever I want. “Marine biology,” he answers.

“Butterflies aren’t marine life.”

“True,” he says, then takes a liberty I haven’t. He runs the back of his fingers across my cheek. I gasp, and then it turns into the start of a moan. “I don’t know, then. I suppose I picked it up somewhere along the way. Maybe because it sounds prettier than a swarm.” He takes a beat then says it again, “Kaleidoscope.”

It’s both beautiful and sensuous, like everything he says to me.

“It is prettier,” I say breathlessly, because his fingers are on my face. His body is inches away. The air crackles between us and my body hums as if I’ve tuned in to his frequency. There’s something in the air tonight, and it’s the anticipation of a night that’s not ending.

It’s only beginning.

“I’m glad you could meet me here. Do you know why I chose it?”

I shake my head, swallowing past the dryness in my throat. I want him to quench my thirst. A cool breeze flutters by, and I shiver. He tugs the collar of my pink jacket closer together. “Are you cold?”

“Not in the least.” I lean my hip against the green railing.

“I’ve been working on a list of my own since I met you. A list of places.”

“What sort of places?” I’m floating, as if I’m watching this moment from later tonight, or tomorrow, or a few years from now. I’m living in the present, but I’m also keenly aware that this is a time I will return to, over and over. This is one of those pivots in life. When you see everything through this prism.

“Places to kiss you.”

I close my eyes for a second, my knees going weak. I can’t touch the ground. I’m falling, sinking so far under I will lose myself. And I want to be lost in this night. He reaches for my arm, steadying me.

“Where?”

“I want to kiss you at Moulin Rouge. I want to kiss you at the top of Notre Dame. I want to kiss you in one of the covered passages, down a quiet hallway, where our footsteps echo as we escape the crowds. We’ll find a deserted doorway, and I’ll pull you into it and kiss you like crazy.”

This is desire. This is what poets write about. This is what songwriters croon for. This feeling, and the sense that it can’t last forever, but you want it to. You want to cocoon yourself inside it with your lover.

“God, yes,” I say with a groan that’s nearly ripped from my body. I want him so much. I want him to kiss me, to take me, to fuck me. I don’t know how to contain this much longer. I don’t have room for it. I’m going to burst with lust.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you on bridges,” he says, running his hand down my arm. “Kiss you at cafés and in museums. I wanted to devour these perfect lips at the flower market.” He brushes his fingertip over my top lip, and I go up in flames. Portrait of a Melting Woman. Canvas: Paris. Medium: flesh and desire.

“I’ve wanted you to kiss me everywhere,” I say, grabbing his shirt. “I’ve wanted all those kisses. In front of the Eiffel Tower. Under a streetlamp. On my roof.”

It’s his turn to groan. A sexy, dirty, masculine sound that reminds me we aren’t just playing kissing games. We are a man and a woman on the edge.

There’s only one agenda tonight.

“I want to take you everywhere,” he growls, threading his fingers through my hair. “Kiss you on every street corner.”

“In front of every shop.”

“But most of all, I want to kiss you here.” He runs his finger along the side of my neck, and I stretch, giving him room, giving him all the room to rain kisses down my neck, and he does.

Oh God. He does. His lips sweep across my skin as night falls, as I fall, as this kiss reverberates in my body, as it echoes in my bones.

He touches the hollow of my throat. “And here.” He presses his lips there, and I murmur.

This man is going to reduce me to nothing but lust and a wish for him to take me home and strip me bare.

“And here,” he says, dusting his finger over my top lip. “This is my favorite place to kiss in Paris.”

“Please,” I whimper, and then we stay like that, hovering as if we’re holding a pose, lips brushing against lips.

We slam into each other. He pushes me against the railing, and I grab at him, clawing at his shirt, yanking him close. He crushes his lips to mine. A brutal, searing kiss. It’s hard and it’s ruthless and it feels like being claimed.

We can’t go back to who we were. There’s no more time to act as if we’re only friends. He kisses me deeply and passionately and madly, and I kiss him back, and we don’t just kiss with our lips. Our whole bodies are in this. He’s grinding against me, and I’m jerking and tugging and pulling him closer.

But I can’t get close enough to him.

I clasp his face, my thumbs on his jaw, his hands in my hair, and we devour each other. I feast on his lips, and he seems to revel in my mouth, and I’m going to climb him. I’m going to jump him and climb him and do filthy things to him in public. I ache for him. My body is begging, crying for him to fill me. I’ve never ever felt like this. Never wanted someone in this kind of bone-deep, soul-crushing way. I can’t take it anymore.

Judging by the way he breathes and groans and grinds against me, by the way his tongue fearlessly explores my lips and mouth, by the way his hands rope through my hair, he’s as lost as I am.

Or maybe we’re both just finding what we want.

“How close are you?” I ask.

“A few blocks away.”

“Take me there.”