She was tall. Not awkwardly, but her height seemed to possess an attitude of its own accord, a complement to her bob haircut and sharp eyes which met his at several points throughout the night, holding his attention with a striking willingness he’d no experience receiving. In fact, it was a constant question throughout the evening whether it was the small amount of liquor he’d sampled or his mind alone that was painting a picture that simply wasn’t art. But he played Picasso, and when the flash of hazel studied him across a sea of busy revelers, he did not flinch as his years of insecurity had cursed him to do, but instead stood his ground, watched her, and grinned, a half-smirk that dimpled his cheek in a way that others had professed was irresistible; girls he’d bent this way and that while hunting for happiness before the sands expired signaling tomorrow’s union.
Yet they were girls, and she was a woman – her stare immediately tearing down whatever powers the watcher believed he’d developed over the course of a year during which he sampled forbidden fruit while sharing a bed with his bride-to-be. He believed he was beyond reproach, and there was little to disprove his swagger was well earned. Yet she across the way seemed too striking a vision of formidable loveliness, and though they’d gamely enjoyed this pursuit with their eyes over the span of this nightclub circuit for several hours, he’d not been within six feet of her, but was bound to her every move. And while their first several intersections were chance, by the time the watcher saw her on the dance floor alone at the final club, it was clear they were controlling fate.
It was late, and his friends had grown impatient with the crowded flesh press, all but two of the ten waiting outside, including the woman he’d share an altar with in less than twenty-four hours. Inside he’d hoped he’d see the woman, her long legs topped by a skirt that hid little and hinted at an infinity of pleasure. Finding her, his pulse quickened and the heat of attraction flushed him even as the chill of apprehension threatened to turn him around.
Now it wasn’t her eyes, her legs, the skirt or the promise that compelled him, it was her movement. Seductively lost in a constant thump of rhythm, she swayed her long thin frame as if the song were written to bring her body to life as art, perfect and impossible to deny. His trepidation overwhelmed by desire, he stepped forward onto the dancefloor just as she was joined by the man spied near her all night, a companion that looked like a friend wishing to be more.
The connection to this seductress – a tether comprised of raw allure and excitement – suddenly wavered, but as if she sensed this, she looked directly at him and smiled even as the companion moved in closer. And with that, the watcher across the floor was now hers.
The companion danced closer to her and she accepted his eagerness, yet maintained a safe distance from him, never missing a swerve or caress in the music that made her trim figure a divine movement of fierce lust. Her watcher felt her invitation, the beat guiding through the gyrating crowd and he knew how to match her rhythm and hold her attention. He moved as she did, hands by his side and music pulling the tether between them taut despite the companion’s unwillingness to yield. She held both of them in her orbit now, but the companion was losing ground, a roach released by the gravity of a sun fed by hungry attraction. She didn’t want him, she wanted her watcher, and he buried his worry and stepped closer to her until the companion was flung loose, unto the crowded undulating universe surrounding them. She grinned at his departure, eyes catching the light and sending it back to her watcher and then he was only a foot away from her as the pulse of the music slowed and with it, their bodies; reacting as if waves under calming skies, knees bending, hips swaying. She reached her arms up as if signaling for a God’s attention, and she could have had it, he believed, for she was immaculate flesh and luminance, and the spell of her seduction would have trapped omniscience because she could not be known.
His hands drifted around her, never touching but shadowing the perfect lines of body as she danced for him invitingly. Her smile – a purse of the lips with an upturned corner – drew him closer, and the space between them dissolved from a foot, to inches, to a whisper’s distance. They flowed together and his leg slid between hers, her sex hot against his thigh, his hand at the base of her back as they worked into each other, her eyes never breaking the constant gaze they now shared as if it were a view to a lose home they believed would never be found again. Everything around them fell away as if light had been erased from the rest of the world, only their bodies capable of reflecting a spectrum fashioned by their heat. She seemed flushed by him, her air lost to the vacuum of building ecstasy, and he pulled her tighter so she could feel the hardness she brought in him.
His other hand traced the length of her arm, landing on her hip and then glided up her side where he stopped at the top of her waist. The hand slid from her back and assumed a matching position on her other side. Then he brought her to him, their lips only centimeters apart, their eyes never straying.
A kiss would kill them, would ignite passions into an uncontrollable celestial fire that would consume a universe with ferocious need. They grinded into each other, panting with expectation, ready to turn the air to flame, when suddenly the music stopped. Now or never, he stared into her intently when a strong hand gripped his shoulder and his friend, a block of solid mass wearing a knowing grin, pulled the watcher away at the height of the moment. He smiled at her as he stepped away with his pal’s meaty arm slung over his neck, and she brought a hand to her blushing face, grinning at their flirt with disaster. Never exchanging a word, they parted.
He never forgot her.