Lancelot's fall

I left him standing by the bar, turned and walked toward the elevator.

Had I listened to my instinct, I would have slapped him hard and called him a coward before storming off like a category-three hurricane. But I didn’t want the magnitude of my anger to show, so I made sure to control my posture and speed as I made my way out.

That of the gentleman – as he liked to call himself – was his favourite role. It seemingly fitted into some fucked-up self-image he felt compelled to uphold. It was a cross between Yoda and a knight in shining armour, and I was sick of it. Sick of trying to coax him out of his breastplate, sick of having his self-righteous shit thrust upon me when he knew perfectly well I would have thrown myself at his feet, heart body and soul, if only he’d graced me with one tiny crack in his unfaltering façade.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath as the elevator doors slid shut before me.

It had been humiliating enough to declare that I was in love with him while he tiptoed around the words as if they were the edge of a lava-filled chasm. I did have some dignity left and I wasn’t going to beg him. He could have me, all of me, and yet he chose to stand by the bar and watch me walk away. The evident truth blazed red hot just under my own fury: he loved me, of that I was certain; he just didn’t love me enough.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved the thought down, deep down beneath the thick layers of anger and frustration and sealed my decision not to mourn him by slamming my room door with such force the framed watercolour hanging next to it crashed to the floor. The noise felt good, so loud it shot pain to my eardrums, but in the silence that followed I felt utterly empty and I let myself fall on the chair by the window, my head in my hands, my lungs suddenly filled with sadness.

The knocks on the door didn’t surprise me. I assumed a disgruntled neighbour or someone from reception had come see what all the noise was about. They did have a point – it was well after midnight – so I hauled myself out the chair to go make my apologies.

I opened the door and there he was.

He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me with an intensity that stopped my heart in my chest, and in the next instant he lunged, and his body collided with mine, pushing me back, almost knocking me off my feet as his mouth claimed mine with an urgency he’d never shown me before.

I didn’t have time to rationalise what was happening, the sensations swept me away almost immediately: he tasted so good and his tongue was so demanding. He was almost breathless with desire. Whatever defences I had crumbled to nothing and I felt my body soften and open under his touch, like that of a wounded prey surrendering to the urge of its killer.

He gathered me against his chest and with his arms tightly coiled around me he found a way to swing the door shut, before lifting me off my feet and pushing me flat against the wall. As his hands slid downward to hoist me up onto his hips he broke the kiss and rested his brow against mine. I saw something in his eyes then: a last flicker of control, the shadow of the gentleman, beaten and fleeing the engulfing sea of passion. I smirked and took his face between my hands, while down below his fingers had pushed their way past my skirt and were now ripping my underwear away.

“Say it,” I demanded with the little breath I had left.

Somewhere inside the blue of his irises the last piece of armour glimmered, but time was quickly running out: when he slipped his fingers inside me I felt his erection throb against my inner thigh. I quickly opened his trousers and closed my palm around it. He moaned out loud and sought refuge in the crook of my neck.

“Say it,” I repeated, squeezing gently.

He tensed his legs and thrust desperately into my hand, sending liquid fire to fill my insides and spill unchecked all over his prying fingers. His breath came in gasps, hot against the skin of my neck, but somehow he managed enough willpower to raise his face and shift his gaze back onto mine. I held him in place, stroking him lightly, waiting for him to be ready, until suddenly something told me that he was. The way he brushed his lips on mine gave it away.

“I love you,” he whispered, and with a sudden shift of weight he thrust himself all the way in.

The gentleman had fled.

Lancelot had fallen.

The end came quickly for both. Like a landslide it rolled down his shoulders and crashed into her with violent quakes, bursting white behind his eyes before every bone turned to honey and all that remained were the mellowing ripples of heavy breathing and synchronised throbs. He didn’t wait for the moment to pass, awkwardness would not ruin the beauty of what just happened. Moving gently to her side, he gathered her in his arms and cradled her in the curve of his body, closing his eyes as her cheek came to rest against his throat. Here, he thought, wishing to envelop her whole being in the niche between his shoulders, this is where you belong.

And so the hours unravelled between crumpled sheets and shifting pillows as the moon trailed her parabola up and down the sky. And like the moon the lovers’ pace waxed and waned, leaving wakes of gasps and giggles, and watery-eyes kisses. Waves of passion, some high and mighty, some low and lingering, they all broke in turn, until sweet exhaustion reigned, until bodies could give no more.

He used the last of his energy to draw her close and adjust his position so she could rest against him. Drained of all strength, her body felt soft and pliant and easily fit the lines of his own under the top sheet he drew over both.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” she whispered, but her eyes were already closing.  “Just promise… you won’t leave while I’m asleep.”

He tightened his arms around her and brushed his lips to her temple.

“I promise,” he said softly. He then watched her face grow softer as she rapidly drifted into slumber. 

Symbols

Our sex is a midnight symphony
          full of low brassy notes, revolving melodies,
          the strummings of heartstrings, and rapt tapings
          on hollow drums;
paired hollow cavities
filling with a steady murmured hum of airy soprano windpipes
greeting note to note in minor keys;
frantically quickening: accelerando, doppio movimento, stringendo…
                    Crash!, symbols, and a piccolo,

ritenuto.

Something a bit hot.

Come and unclean my plain nude lips.
Compel these bored shred of lines.
Equip them with loud bothersome moans,
Fingers that puncture my nectured core
not one sweetling, but three sweetlings.
Ah yes, 
my mind’s gone soggy, sticky fluid like hot honey.
You smirk while you wriggled your tongue
tracing my senses to my navel to my breast.
Sucked the pillow kiss of it.
Eyes ablazed.
My nails found your hair
like a rabbit under a hole.
I hurled in upwards,
you roared and laughed.
Sinister devil-minx looming above my face
parted my legs, and bended on my ear.
“I haven’t even started yet.”
And so, the night would end without an ending
but countless chapters of wet sweet delights.