Art: Night of Passion 6

(Previously...

My dear reader, recall how it began: the stairwell chase, her vanilla scent masking the traffic hum below, her almond eyes demanding what I pretended not to want, the deal, the touch, the plunge. I played the distant lover, stubborn, descending flight after flight, but dusk found her waiting in my suite, wide-eyed at my longing. Beauty is mysterious and terrible, and the battlefield of the heart had only just begun its war. Now, in the haze of aftermath, the truth spills out like smoke toward the ceiling.)

I blew the cigarette smoke onto the ceiling and whispered, “I said that I will, bebi, but I don’t know if I can.”

“That brings a strain to my heart, Obi,” she replied coolly, reaching for the cigarette from my lips without raising her head from my chest.

The white linen was in a tangle around our bodies, the clothes a trail from the living room to the bedroom of the presidential suite.

Obi, what are you doing?

Something inside me was running riot in revulsion at my predicament. It had become a thing. A dangerous thing. Me giving and her taking, till the little bit of soul I had left hung precariously in the balance of godless morality and downright buffoonery.

I didn’t say a word. I knew she was listening to my heart beating in trepidation, however much I tried to regulate my breathing.

“Why, Obi?” She purred, crawling the length of my chest to whisper in my ear. “Why, she nibbled at my ear and blew the smoke in my face.

I reached for the stub and put it out in the ashtray by the bedside table, rolled back, and there she was, holding my gaze like a hawk to its prey.

“Can you leash your dog? His hunger for blood seems insatiable, and I don’t remember signing up for this.”

“Signing up for what, Obi?” Again, the purr…

“Don’t bandy words with me, Darce,” I replied, softly, yet simmering like a volcano underneath. One death was a little too much.

“You’re no saint yourself, Obi. Sin is sin; there is no scale to measure the biggest. And if our Lord is as gracious as the believers say, your soul may be the darkest coal, and your fingers dripping with red, yet you are never too far gone for grace to find you!”

“What!” I couldn’t mask horror this time. She was quoting spiritual philosophy to me.

“I’ve never had red on my ledger before. I confess I am a rascal and a buffoon; I have lied and maimed, but never crossed the line until that night.”

She stared at me in bewilderment, like she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“This is the first time you’ve ever been bare to me since we ever met. You should do it more often; it will do you good,” she said, smiling.

“Can you keep him in check? I’m afraid a dungeon portfolio would be a catastrophic element,” I said.

“This is mine, not his,” she said, trying to sound as reassuring as she could be.

“Are you not afraid?”

“I am,” she replied.

“It doesn’t feel like you are afraid with me. Please, be afraid with me,” I said, cupping her chin with one hand, the other on the small of her back, and gently pulling her into my embrace, kissing her fleetingly on the lips.