If We Exist

21.

- You're bleeding.

I inhaled his words, held them captive in my chest where I heard them reverberate inside my head. A waft of cold air travel up my shirt as he drew away from me.

The place where his lips had once occupied, now belonged to his imprint—a second layer of skin which ached and thawed. A trail of goosebumps made their way down the length of my leg, and I shivered.

Yuri was grinning.

How was it possible? How was it possible that time hadn't stopped altogether, that the floor hadn't splintered and swallowed me whole?

My hand came up to my lips. I felt them stretch open beneath my fingers, moving apart like tectonic plates. My voice sounded foreign. Far away.

- I am?

He nodded. His smile was so bright, brighter than the sunlight spilling into the room. I was helplessly reeled in like a piece of plastic by his ever so blue irises. I was weak to their pull, their ebb. I washed into him, drowned in the movements of his body. His jeans-clad leg brushed along the length of my inner thigh, his woolly sweater rubbed against my sleeve. Neither of us spoke, yet the room was filled with noise. We shifted, rearranged. His chest pressed up against mine. Everything came to a standstill except our hearts which beat like an orchestra of dissonant instruments against each other.

Yuri's fingers hovered less than a centimeter from my lower lip, and like a phantom touch, they already evoked the stinging to come. I swallowed. His eyes glanced down at my lips before he tilted his head and moved in.

The one prayer ingrained in me: Lord have mercy, flashed in neon before my eyes. I wasn't one to pray, at least never with any heartfelt inflection, but then again, my heart had never felt like it was coming apart at the seams.

I didn't think it was possible for the constricting pain in my chest to worsen, until his tongue dart across my lower lip, and I realised: oh. I didn't have the time to react. One second he was there, and the next, he was pulling away.

He blanched.

- I'm sorry. He shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he'd just done. A sheepish smile seeped into his expression.

My insides felt gouged out, uprooted, and squashed against the roof of my mouth. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other under my scrutiny. His eyes darted downwards. He was just about to say something when I noticed my hands fist the fabric of his coarse sweater. My lips crashed into his with a frenzied hunger I could scarcely believe came from inside me. Yuri staggered back, yet I wanted him closer, closer than what was physically possible. The back of his legs hit the chair next to his desk. He jerked in place to steady us. Our lips moved in tandem. It wasn't enough. I wanted to inhale him. I wanted him melting into me. I wanted his skin draped over mine like a fur coat. I opened my mouth.

I wanted too much.

Our teeth collided, and the growing tension, bordering on pain, in my groin snapped. Yuri untangled himself from me, shoulders rolling with silent laughter, and I gave in to an awkward breath of air that fell somewhere on the spectrum between a moan and a sigh of relief.

- Steady. He said it like he was calming a feral animal. I felt my whole body flush warm under his amused gaze.

- Here.

His hand came around the back of my head. We met torso to torso. He brushed my hair back with his fingers—intertwined them in the strands. My scalp ached from the previous night's assault, but I don't think I would've moved had I wanted to.

- Don't bite my face off. He whispered over a growing smile.

It was the fourth time our lips were about to touch. I ought to have known what to expect, yet still, the flutters in my stomach flared to life.