Making the Hook-Up

by Cole Riley

  “Take this wine into you, Kira. I made it with my hands.”

  He handed her a glass. She reached for it. As she took it, she felt his fingers lightly touch her hand. She backed away slightly, feeling the charge from his body.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just…”

  “It’s just what?”

  “There is such a strong energy in you. I felt it in your hands. You would think I’ve never touched you before.”

  Imbe let out a hearty laugh that journeyed through the cave, bouncing about on every wall within.

  “We’ve never touched in this way before, with patience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve kissed. But always with a wanton passion that was impatient and all too ready to jump into sex. “

  “What’s wrong with sex?” she giggled.

  “Nothing. Taste the wine.”

  Kira put the glass to her lips and let the smooth taste wash over her tongue. She bit her bottom lip, realizing how glorious wine was, when done right…no preservatives and filled with love.

  “How is it?”

  “Delicious. It is potent. It reaches inside and warms me, without intruding.”

  “Yes. You just made love.”

  Imbe leaned forward to kiss her. He gently tasted the remnants of the wine she’d drank. He then leaned back.

  “And now, we’ve made love.”

  Kira took another sip of the wine, then kissed Imbe. The kisses were different. There was a deep wanting that awakened her imagination. She wanted to make love to Imbe, but she also wanted their intimate moment, wrapped around the essence of the wine, to last. She was experiencing a new level of sexuality and eroticism that was bordering on explosive. She sipped more wine.

  “Are we ready?”

  Kira blushed not knowing what to expect. Imbe knew what she was thinking and decided to rescue her from her uncertainty.

  “The fish? Are you ready to eat now?”

  Her eyes widened and she began to fumble around for the plates. After preparing the food, she placed the plates in front of them and refilled their glasses with wine.

  “Where are the forks and knives?” Imbe asked curiously.

  “Today, we eat in the old way. With our hands. I will feed you.”

  Imbe was surprised, but up for the challenge. He’d never been fed by a woman before, except as a child by his mother. And certainly not by her hands.

  “Touching your food connects you with the energy within.”

  Imbe felt the tables turn.

  Kira picked a piece of the fish from the bone and lifted it slowly to Imbe’s mouth. He opened to take in the food and felt as Kira gently placed the fish in his mouth and her warm fingers pulled out from between his lips. Electricity ran through his body. He was tempted to hold her fingers in place by gently sucking them. But he let her go. She reached for a piece of spinach. Before he could finish chewing the fish, she was placing the spinach in his mouth. Her fingers had a life of their own. They spoke to him. He could feel that they too wanted him, in their own way. Kira felt his tongue twirl around her fingers as he licked every trace of seasoned moisture from her fingers.

  She ate a few bites of food and sipped some wine. A bird flew inside and perched on a high wall. Its wings were blue and green; its underbody was a golden brown. It was a tiny thing, little larger than a finch. They each admired the bird as it admired their food. Kira reached up to share some fish with it. Unafraid, it jumped down and took the fish from her hands, then flew away.

  “You are good with animals. Have you always been that way?”

  “Actually no. Never. That was strangely the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.”

  “You are the first time anything like this has happened to me,” he responded.

  Kira smiled and picked up a piece of mango.

  “Tell me what you were like when you were a boy,” Kira asked inquisitively as she munched on the mango slice.

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “I want to know everything about you.”

  Imbe curiously looked at Kira, one eyebrow raised. A heavy sigh emanated from him.

  “I was a boy who dreamed he was a man. And that man dreamed he would someday have a boy like me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she asked.

  “I saw myself in every aspect of my future. I saw me in the child I believe I will some day have. Strange, I know. But I saw myself as a man. I’m sure it is not the kind of thing most boys dream about. It wasn’t a dream I wanted to have. It just came to me nightly. In the dream, I dreamt. Odd, huh?”

  “Yes, very odd. So you dreamt you were a man, who dreamt he had a son?”

  “Yes, crazy, I know.”

  “Odd, but not crazy. It’s an interesting dream for a child.”

  “There is more. In my dreams, I saw the woman I would have my son with.”

  The silence between them filled the air. Sounds of the ocean interrupted the silence. Water beat against rocks. Kira’s heart beat, but not in her chest. It beat in that place where life was born. She wanted to be reborn through Imbe. She wanted him to plant within her the seed of a life she’d never forget. She wanted the magic that lived inside him.

  “Would you like more wine?” Kira asked uneasily.

  “I want more you,” Imbe said as he lay back on the sand in the cave.

  Kira’s hair fell forward as she crawled closer to Imbe. She straddled him as he watched her every move. He never took his eyes off her. She bent down close to him, but did not kiss him. His breath smelled like mangos, fresh and sweet. He touched her raven black hair and twirled her curls around and between his fingers. Her brown skin became deeper brown in the candlelit space. She heard him moan as he closed his eyes for a moment. He touched her face then looked at her.

  “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, stop it. I’m sure you’ve seen many beautiful women in your day.”

  “Yes, beautiful on the outside. But your beauty is complete. Your outer beauty is astounding. Your inner peace and kindness is amazing. And your mind,” he sighed. “Your mind has made love to me a thousand times over.”

  She felt him moving beneath her. But not his hips, just where she sat, on his manhood. What was once at ease, was now paying closer attention to her presence.

  “I feel you.”

  “You made it happen,” he responded.

  “How do I know I made it happen? Maybe you just…”

  He took her by the shoulders, pulled her to him and began to kiss her in a way that stopped her heart. There was no more sound. The wind stopped, the shadows froze, the water was silent and the floor was no longer beneath them. Everything disappeared and it was just them. Kira felt his hardness throbbing between her legs, rubbing against her panties that were now moist. Imbe wanted the cotton to dissolve from between them. But it didn’t. It kept their passions at bay. Her sweet scent began to fill the cave.

  “You smell sweet,” he said.

  Kira kissed his neck and slowly moved down to his chest. She hunched her shoulders, unwilling to move for fear of no longer feeling his throb beneath her. She lifted her dress higher to feel more of his flesh against her skin.

  “Take off your shirt.” Imbe obeyed.

  His body was entrancing. He rippled as he moved beneath her, pulling each arm out of his shirt. He tossed it aside, causing the candles to move with the light breeze from his shirt being thrown.

  “Do you want to read to me now?” Kira asked.

  “I want to read you,” he said. “I want to begin with each letter on your body. Your nipples are L. Your navel is O. Your lips are V. And your sensual glory that throbs in time with me is E. Every inch of you is L-O-V-E. Love. Your movements are the words I read. And us, together, is the story I want to tell you. Yes, Kira, I want to read to you. I want to read you our life together. It is a timeless tale of two people, in love. I want to te
ll you of their adventures together. I want you to hear the action and suspense of places they’ve been and the things they’ve seen, together.”

  Imbe squeezed her hips into him. His hardness pressed against her firmly.

  “Yes, Imbe. Read me our story,” she moaned.

  “Once upon a time, in a land far far away, and long long ago, there was a couple. They met each other in a past life, but centuries later, didn’t recognize each other when they returned.”

  Kira lifted her tank top over her head and pulled it off.

  “They met in a small village one day,” he continued. “They felt something familiar, but because they were trained in the ways of their new world, they had forgotten the ways of their old world, and about the power of spirit connection. They’d forgotten how to connect through mind. They continued through their lives, always eyeing each other askance, but never speaking beyond hello. The attraction was a fierce one. It overpowered them, but they were afraid.”

  She placed her top across his nose. He inhaled the scent of her, mixed with gardenias and lavender…and a touch of verbena. He grabbed the top and pulled it closer, to inhale deeper. He placed it next to her glass of wine which was nearby.

  “Why were they afraid?”

  “Because they were not one with that which created them… the All. So they could not remember who they were and why the connection was so strong. So they tried to avoid it.”

  “So what happened?” She picked up her wine and took a sip. Imbe lightly thrust his hips up beneath her, reminding her of his desires.

  “They grew.”

  “They grew? What do you mean?”

  “They began to grow in ways they couldn’t imagine. As the years went by, they began to see the truth. Memories of experiences they never had came to them in dreams. They both began to feel a past that felt familiar but was still unfamiliar in many ways.”

  “Did they ever realize what the connection was?” Kira asked while tracing her name in Imbe’s chest.

  “Yes, but very late in their lives. It was as though they were lost in the sea of stars, flying to and fro, unable to find what they didn’t know they were looking for.”

  Kira looked at him quizzically.

  “Let me explain. Haven’t you ever had a feeling you were looking for something vastly important, but you didn’t know what it was? Like you knew there was something great for your life, waiting off in the horizon, but you just didn’t know exactly what it was?”

  Kira’s eyes lit up. “Yes, that has happened to me. And somehow, even though you don’t know what it is, you distinctly know when you don’t have it.”

  “Exactly!” he responded excitedly.

  “Please, continue.”

  “Well, one day, it happened. And even when it happened, they still didn’t really know that that was it. They had found each other. But they still played the silly courting games of the world, not giving in fully to what they both knew.”

  “Which was what?”

  “They were made for each other and had promised themselves to each other for thousands of years. They knew long ago that they would spend many incarnations together, and vowed always to find each other, no matter how difficult the journey.”

  Kira outlined his eyebrows with her finger. They were the most incredible eyebrows she’d ever seen on a man. They were majestic and strong. They regally accented his face. She ran her finger down between his eyebrows to his nose and then across his lips. He opened his mouth to suck her finger. She pulled back swiftly. He grabbed her and placed her finger in his mouth. Then he quickly sat up and took one of her breasts into his mouth.

  “How long have they been searching and finding each other?” she asked in pleasured gasps.

  He sucked gently, one, then the other, watching her head fall back and her mouth open. “I don’t know. But as the story goes, they hope to always find each other, no matter how many ages go by.”

  Imbe turned her onto her back, onto the waiting blanket, and cradled himself between her legs. He moved his tongue around her nipples and down to her stomach. As he moved closer to her life force, to the place where villages and worlds were created, her scent became stronger. It made Imbe melt away into a world where they were one. She smelled like coconut water. It was the strangest thing to him. But it was the distinct smell of coconut water. His desire to drink her essence was overwhelming. He placed his nose on her bright yellow panties. The cotton was sheer. She was ripe and ready to be taken to the moon and beyond. He wanted to go slow, but it had been too long. It had been easily over a thousand years since he’d been with her. He remembered what she couldn’t. The memories flooded in one night as the cool breeze from the ocean blew through his home on the beach. On the wind traveled his lifetimes. They were many, all filled with adventure and wonder…all filled with Kira. He saw her just as clearly as he saw the full moon that night. He knew he would not let her get away. There was no denying it any longer. She was the one he had been searching for. She was the one he had lost over the vast expanse of time. He would not let her go. He would hold on to her until their current journey was over and he had to search again. He would never stop searching. Until then, he would not leave her. He belonged to her and he knew it. He liked it that way. She rubbed her hands across his chest and again kissed his neck.

  “Kira, do you believe that two people can be made for each other?”

  “Yes. “ She closed her eyes and lay back.

  He looked at her breasts as the many shadows played across her body. They too wanted to touch her. They knew what he knew. Her soul was beautiful.

  “I want to be with you, Imbe.”

  He took her skirt between his fingers and pulled it down, brushing her legs as he went. Her body was a work of art. An image of it was not worthy to touch the tainted walls of even the most famous museum. She was filled with the most exquisite flaws that made her all the more flawless. A cut on her right leg. It looked as though something had gone through it and it was never stitched. Maybe a stick or piece of glass. He kissed it. A scrape on her left shin. Maybe running through the woods as a child she scratched herself on a twig. Or her pet cat, Night, who thought he was only playing with her, took a swing at her. A deep scar next to her navel. A fall maybe. He kissed each one. She was filled with the most beautiful flaws. Each one was a piece of her life. The ones invisible to him, he knew, were the deepest scars. Those were the ones that traversed time and followed her to Cuba. He wanted to know her stories and life while she was away from him.

  “You’re amazing,” he said as he bent low over her, touching his cheek to her cheek. He touched his lips to her lips. He hovered, his mouth over hers, unmoved. He wanted to breathe with her, breathe for her, let her breathe for him. He wanted her breath of life to move through him and transform him, make him reborn. She exhaled into him, he inhaled her. It was all he could take.

  Their bodies intertwined. Their shadows intertwined. They began to move about the walls in syncopated strokes. The bird flew back in. It watched the shadows on the wall move in heat. The walls began to sweat. The shadows moaned and scratched and cried out with joy. Echoes filled the space. The bird chirped. But the shadows did not hear. The echoes threatened to extinguish the candles. The candles threatened to go supernova.

  The air was hotter. The shadows began to steam. With each stroke, the shadows echoed a love to stop time. Kira and Imbe were in love. And everything around them knew it. The walls would carry their story for all time.

  Their climaxes permeated the air, out through to the beach, into the ocean and across the sea. In a thousand years, they would hear their own voices crying out to them to remember. It would traverse the universe, and at the right moment, they would each hear their echoes of love. They would stop to listen, think it was a couple down by the beach, but it would be them, reminding each other to wake up, meet again.

  Tears ran down Kira’s cheeks. She looked at Imbe. Sweat lightly moistened his face. His breathing was heavy. He looked h
appy.

  “Nice to meet you again,” Kira said.

  Imbe pulled her close.

  “Glad to have finally found you,” he said.

  VELVET

  Fiona Zedde

  This place was nothing like high school. The people were different. They had sex, they drank; some, Sara heard, even had HIV. She walked around in a daze, soaking it all in, looking, she knew, as naïve as she felt with her big eyes and exclamations of “Really?” or “No way.” Her roommate, Raven, sat with her in the cafeteria, elbow pressed to Sara’s at the long table in the highceilinged room ripe with the smell of D-grade meatloaf, watery mashed potatoes, and the strangely colored peach cobbler.

  Most of the older students walked in then out of the cafeteria, carrying away plastic-wrapped sandwiches and small containers of juice, while the newest ones sat captive to their meal plans and limited social opportunities, staring down at the brown and white mess on the chipped canvas of their dinner plates. To Sara’s inexperienced eyes, the older students all looked so sophisticated. Never mind that most wore ragged jeans and oversized flannel shirts, with their hair long and stringy to their waists or blooming around their heads in intimidating Afros. And that was just the boys. The girls, or women, held Sara in thrall. She couldn’t quite look at them, they all seemed too bright, too beautiful, too confident. There was one girl who she did look at, though. Raven said that the girl’s name was Merille Thompson. She was a fourth-year physics major with glass green eyes glowing against her cocoa-bean skin and a head full of dark blonde curls.

  Now, when Merille caught her staring, Sara quickly looked away but not before she saw the smile and quick wink. She blushed, glad that the girl wouldn’t see the color through her teak skin, and looked down at her dinner tray. Beyond the glass doors of the cafeteria, the sun slowly sank behind the trees. From the corner of her eye, Sara could see how the falling sun haloed Merille, making her appear angelic and unattainable.

  “Stop being so obvious,” Raven said, looking down at her own tray. Today, her chemically straightened hair was braided back over her scalp like tiny fields of grain. Small wooden beads clacked quietly at the end of each braid just above her shoulders.