There’s a glow coming from outside that lets me see Amber’s silhouette. She’s wearing that silky pajama again, and it kinda glows in the dark now.

She’s sitting on the edge of her bed. I could hear her moving, but I didn’t want to turn to look at her. It is enough for us to be sharing a room. It is enough to be this close and kind of dizzy around her, after everything that has happened.

“Have you got everything ready?” I ask her, politely, just because I feel like I have to.

And then she replies: 

“Well, there’s one last thing I haven’t solved.”

Her voice is soft as a caress. It’s the same voice I heard at the museum when we whispered in front of the best paintings, and it’s the voice she used at the end of the staircase, when I was looking at her and she was looking at my lips. I can tell she’s staring at me now. I can feel her black, piercing eyes on me, and somehow my heart’s reacting to that even if she’s several feet away, it’s dark and I’m covered from chin to toes. 

But I can’t help sitting up and looking back at her, at the end. Her energy is electrifying, and it’s huge. She's like a storm. She’s like a hurricane ready to devastate a town, and the town it’s me, and I will let her destroy me.

I reach for the light and it’s like an unspoken signal: before I turn it on, she jumps forward and grabs my wrist to prevent it. I hold my breath. Amber’s face is too close to me now, and I can see her nose and her messy hair and her eyes from up close, and she’s stunning and made of fire.

I want her to kiss me, but I hope she does not.

“No, don’t,” she begs, and her voice is kind of broken, and I can tell my heart is going to be too.

Why am I like this? How did we get here?

She softens her grip and I wish I was able to ask her not to. When her fingers move down my skin and find mine, I’m already waiting for her.

She’s just standing there, in the middle of the night, bent over me and staring with big, scared eyes. Her chest is moving up and down, and I can feel her pulse now, and it’s fast. Just like mine. But we should not do this, this is wrong. It is not a good idea. She’s jilted and I know better, and if I was clever I’d move away, because that’s the right thing to do.

And still, I do not.

Because I want her to touch me.

I want her to finish what she started at the hotel, to seal that promise, to break it tomorrow morning when she leaves. I’m ready to be Icarus and to die after touching the sun once.

We’re not seeing each other again, I think. This could be a one time thing, some sort of one night stand. A mistake. A thing to forget, the exact opposite to what we’ve been building.

I want her.

“Charlie, I’m sorry about...” she whispers, and she licks her lips after that, and I can’t control myself anymore.

I grab the back of her neck and close my eyes and kiss her instead.

And she kisses me back, too.

Her legs find a way to pull down the blankets when she sits on top of me. Her mouth is full of wishes, of hunger, and she moves as if she couldn’t get enough. Her hands are everywhere. She runs her fingers through my hair and then she pulls a little, and I moan and I hate it, but she bites my lips and I know she loves it. She’s desperate. She’s unleashed. She feels like she has thought of this multiple times before, and my hands find her hips and the skin in her back is warm and soft, and I hold her closer.

Amber undoes her shirt. I manage to remove mine. Rolling over, I straddle her now and she looks up at me as if some kind of celestial light was falling over us. I kiss her neck and hold her arms up; her hips are eager and I run the tips of my fingers down her body to find the exact place where she wants my touch, my kiss.

She pants the secrets of the universe to the ceiling, eyes wide. When I come back to her mouth, I’m the only one who can hear them.

I want her, I want her, I want her. I always have, since the first night, I don’t know why.

Her mouth is a sacred place and I’m willing to give to her everything she begs for.

“My turn,” she groans after her legs have stopped shaking, after her moans have faded and her breath has appeased a bit. She kisses me and down my jaw and across my shoulders, and we might get away with this, I think as her mouth moves down my stomach. I giggle because her bangs tickle me. I gasp when her lips find the right spot. I squirm, too, and her arms move under my legs, and I hold both of her hands tight as doesn’t let me go. 

When she whispers my name like she’s praying, like she wants to talk to God, I close my eyes and wonder how could this not be some kind of miracle.

I go to Matt’s house in the morning. Amber was not in the room when I woke up, nor was there a note, not a single sign she was ever there in the first place.

I knew this would happen, but that doesn’t help a bit. 

“We shouldn’t have done this, Amber,” I said at some point of the night, trying to find her eyes in the darkness, trying to make her pause for a minute so we could both catch our breath. “This will never have happened once you’re back home. You will not acknowledge it and we both know it.”

“It is happening now,” she said, and her lips were too close to mine, and she was knowingly driving me insane. She was enjoying it.

I can’t stop thinking about her face, her bright smile, the way she touched my hair softly, brushing it away from my face. I kissed her fingers and told her she was beautiful, and she giggled and told me she thought I was pretty too.

“Charles, you there? You want sugar, or not?”

I blink and look at Matt and nod, softly. I’m at his kitchen now. I should focus, but I cannot.

“Yes, please. And another coffee, too. I will need it.”

“I thought you’d try to sleep this time, since it’s such a long flight,” he says, confused, and I know I told him so, but I changed my mind.

“No, no,” I shake my head, feeling numb, and still try to smile. “That’s okay. I’ve dreamed a lot this weekend.”