Tremble

Kaden curled her fingers into Asher’s shirt once more, the taste of his lips was on her tongue and she savored it. She wanted him to crush his mouth down onto hers more than she could even comprehend, but he didn’t. She was positive that he could feel her pulse beating against his hand where it lay on her neck, but he made no snide comment about it. She arched her back as she pulled his snug shirt away from his body and towards hers, hoping he’d follow, but still didn’t.

Asher stared down into her eyes, clouded from her want as she snaked her tongue against her lips. He smoothed his thumb against her pressure point and ground his teeth together, gulping his aching need to have her and replaced it with a building anger. “Like I said, a kiss is all it would take.”

She stared through his dark eyes as shadowy strands fell before them, making them darker than they actually were. She wanted to reach up and move them from the dark, deep pools of night, but found herself frightened to touch him in his current state of growing anger. “But, I want you to.”

His head shook as he released her hand from the door and gripped the wrist that scrunched his shirt. His breathing was shallow as he tried to unlock his jaw. “No, you don’t. You want Callum. I’m not Callum. Whether you want me to be or not, I’m not normal. Get it straight, you’d regret this encounter the moment you’d close the door. As much as that tempts me even more, I don’t want you to regret and feel guilt – not yet at least.”

He pushed his mouth with bruising force against her neck, just beneath her ear, right where her hair would cover the bruise in full. He bit against the flesh and sucked it deep between his teeth, his tongue swathing against it for a moment before he pulled back. Kaden had his shirt locked between her fingers as she hit her head against the door with a soft thud, her eyes closing in pain and ecstasy. “Asher…”

As he licked over his lips and pressed his forehead against hers, his hand holding her neck with tender, focused fingers, he whispered. “That, precious, I know you won’t regret.”

He pulled away from her and his fingers started to slacken in their grip against her neck. Her eyes were showing her confusion on a whole different level now as Asher started to back away. “Asher? Where are you going?”

Asher turned his head back to stare at her, her fingers still locked snuggly into his shirt. She felt frozen back against the door, but she didn’t want him to disappear. He’d been so caring and charming the last five minutes that she felt as if she was having a breakthrough. She didn’t want this to be utterly forgotten by the next day in school. She had a feeling that, with Callum gone, it wouldn’t be forgotten tomorrow. No, she concluded, it’d be exactly the opposite. “Home.”

She pulled her hand away and curled it against her chest before she took a step back. Kaden wanted to be able to rationalize this feeling as something – anything – but it was coming up blank. As she watched him walk away without so much as anything that could be considered adieu, she ruled herself with infatuation. She was attracted to him, more so than she found herself attracted to Callum. He’s what I need, though, she tried to convince herself. She knew, as she sat out on the steps of the porch, that Asher was bad news for her and Callum.

She knew that, but she figured there wasn’t anything that she could do. She couldn’t stop herself, she couldn’t make Callum stop herself, and she wasn’t entirely sure she actually wanted to stop herself. The rational thought was to ignore him and devote herself to Callum, but rational thoughts and reality dissipated tonight. She needed to understand him.

Running back inside, she pulled the sketchbook from under the cushion and situated herself back down onto the porch. She left it on her lap and watched it flip open with its worn-out pages. The picture it opened to was another one of her. She was backed against a wall with one hand level to her head that was clenched into a fist. With a gentle hand, Asher covered over her tight-knuckled fist, but the strain was in his wrist. The picture was focused on a side-view of them, his head angled down to touch her forehead as she tipped it back into the wall, wide-eyed. Her lips looked glossy and moist and his teeth sunk into the rosy flesh of his plump bottom lip. He shaded in the flush of her cheeks and the fingerprints lining her neck. At the bottom of the picture, there was the calligraphy that ghosted against the edge of the paper. “You’re” was lightly sketched.

Kaden started to piece the two pictures together, “Soon you’re” was what they said together and the possibilities of what the next word could be were endless. She hated to admit that she was excited to figure it out. She also hated to admit that she was enthralled to get these pictures. She stuck them inside her pillowcase and would pull them out to gaze at his amazing artwork. It was like he had studied every aspect of her body, all of her crease lines and every curve of her face and shoulders, the shape of her clavicle and all of the different expressions that dominated in her eyes.

Ripping the page slowly and cleanly from its confines, she folded it up and stuck it under her leg, both so it wouldn’t blow away in the nighttime breeze and so that she wouldn’t forget take the picture he obviously wanted her to see. She only went backwards from that picture. She saw the one that he drew in class about the class and one of himself in his bedroom drawing the picture of himself in his bedroom. He drew a woman embracing him, but she didn’t look like the one who was fainted over the arm of the couch. She had her arms wrapped tightly around Asher’s neck and half of his face buried deep into the contours of her clothed shoulder. His eyes leaked tears that made watermarks down his cheeks and into her shirt as the woman’s lips pressed tightly to his temple. Her eyes were closed. Asher’s hand pressed in the space b
between her shoulder blades and gripped the clothing tightly between his grasp, his knuckles white and firm.

“I’ll always love you, Asher. No matter what you do and don’t feel. I’m not her. I won’t ever send you away like she did. I don’t want you cry, son. I want you to be happy.” Beside Asher’s head, it said, “Say it again.” Under the first passage, the woman said, “I love you, sweetie.”

Turning the next page, another passage dominated from edge to edge.

[Entry 3]

The second I got off the plane, she welcomed me with a hug. She kissed my cheek and said, “Welcome home, Asher.” It was the first time I felt like I belonged anywhere. This was home; it was the only place that ever felt like home, if home had a feeling. I felt at ease for the first time in all of my eighteen years. She’s always embracing me and telling me she loves me.

My mom said I didn’t deserve to receive embrace. In fact, my mother hasn’t embraced me since I was seven years old. She hasn’t said that she loves me and meant it since I was seven years old. She told me that I was undeserving of love. I didn’t deserve the air she breathed. She and Ben both said that.

And for the longest time, I believed them. I believed that I didn’t deserve love from anyone, not even God. And for the longest time, I believed that no one could look at me and smile. But she did. She loves me and hugs me and kisses me and tells me that she’ll never be like them. And though it makes me feel young, naïve, and downright stupid, like some sort of innocent child I grip onto her words and cling to them. They make me feel normal, like she deserves.

And that’s what I want to be sometimes: normal.

The next series of pictures were of the woman who was embracing him, her name was Katherine, and all of them centered on the same thing. She was always dressed in a long-sleeved gown with luscious, detailed angel wings. They all had different captions but were nearly always the same picture. Some of them she was suspended from the floor, some of them she was embracing Asher, and some of them she was watching over him when he was lying in a restless position on his bed, touching his cheek with gentle, careful fingers. Kaden felt a ping of jealousy from this woman. She was always portrayed as something beautiful and sincere, something noble and peaceful. Kaden was used for intimidation and manipulation.

She sighed and closed the book up, she’d accidently forget it at home so she could go back to thumbing through it, her endless endeavor in understanding him. She stood up and stretched, surveying the area with attentive eyes. Something, maybe just a fear in her mind or a knowing in her gut, told her to keep looking, just keep looking. Maybe she was waiting for her one of her parents to arrive so she wouldn’t be alone in a big house or maybe she thought that Asher was still out there after nearly an hour of reading through his sketchbook. She was more than tempted to call out his name and watch him emerge from the dark street.

But, alas, she closed the door behind her and walked up to her bedroom and tumbled into bed.

***

After hours of deep sleep, Kaden rolled to the side and jolted out of the black abyss of her comatose. It was a creak that she heard, groaning and giving way under someone’s weight. She was afraid to move from her spot, but whatever it was behind her, it stopped moving. With her eyes clenched closed from fear, she flipped onto her other side and buried half her face into the pillow. Slowly opening her eyes to nothing more than slits, she saw a figure looming in her computer chair. His long legs stretched out and dug the heels of his boots into the hardwood and his long arms curled around the armrests of the chair. In his lap was the sketchbook, propped open with one of his long fingers. His eyes would flick up between his shadowy locks and down from the book to her face.

She spoke with a croak to her hoarse voice, “Asher?”

That curling smile resurfaced, tugging at the edges of his mouth as he snapped the book closed. “In the flesh,”

“What are you doing here?” Kaden whispered slowly as she sat up onto her hands. Asher pushed back from his chair and stretched his long limbs.

He walked over to her bedside and sat alongside her propped up figure, the back of his hand smoothing down the skin of her cheek and thereon down her neck. “Just watching what belongs to me.”

“Belongs to you? I don’t belong to anyone.” She snapped at him with furrowed brows, her hand rising to grab at his wrist to tug it away.

He grabbed both of her wrists and pinned them deep into the pillows, his face hovering over hers as she stared up into his eyes. They were dark and impassive. He wanted her to feel the anger in his grip, not in his expression. She looked up into the eyes and thrashed her arms around. This was unlike her, but she had been brutally jolted from a peaceful sleep to a boy staring at her.

He waited until she stopped thrashing and fell limp into her mattress. When she did so, he threw his leg over her and straddled her waist, his knees locking into her hips to keep her immobile. “You do. You belong to me, Kaden.”

She stared at him and felt the twisting knot in her stomach. She was gripping onto his words, much like she gripped onto his pictures. Slowly, he pulled his eyes away from her and moved his lips to the base of her neck. His lips trailed along her skin, nipping and sucking softly onto her neck. He was careful not to leave any more noticeable marks on her, but he left enough pressure into her skin that she would feel the ache afterwards.

His head pulled back and she held her breath, not admitting that she loved the tricks of his preforming lips. “Every last bit of your body, your sanity – it all belongs to me, Kaden.”

She gulped and stared at him, her lips parting once more as her eyes followed him. His thumbs massaged the insides of her wrists and she twisted her hips under him at the chills and trembles it sent up and down her spine. His lips were a mere breath away from hers and she found her eyes staring between his shadowy depths and his moist lips.

“Something tells me that you’re enjoying this, Kaden.”

“I am.” She admitted without even thinking through to her options. She arched her back and followed the wavering glances of his eyes.

He glanced down at her tongue wetting her lips as she flicked her eyes repeatedly between his tingling stare and his plump bottom lip. He leaned closer until his lips were nearly on top of hers, his breath falling past her lips and intermingling with hers. His eyes looked down her body as he ground his hips against her stomach, his knees locking more snuggly into her protruding hipbones.

“All it’d take is a kiss.” He warned with a raised eyebrow, but she knew that no matter the forewarning, he’d give in to her.
She nodded, “Yeah, I think you said something about that earlier.”

He released one hand and gripped her neck as her free hand shot into his hair. His thumb pushed into its normal spot and she ripped at the long dark locks of his hair, a boundless attempt to pull him closer to her. He searched manically through her eyes for a moment before he shoved his mouth down against hers, pulling her up by her neck to arch her chest into his.

They started to tumble and tangle into her sheets as she wove their legs together and his thumb rubbed chilling swirls into the sensitive skin of her neck. She broke her lips away to calm her jagged breathing as he moved his lips down her throat, the skin trapped between his teeth. Pressing a palm against her mouth, Asher sucked another bruise over the first one he created a few hours earlier. She wanted to moan out or scream his name, something to take away the burning exhilaration coating the walls of her throat.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him closer to herself, holding him closer so he’d return the gesture. Surely, he did. Until there was the loud sound of the hall light flicking to life.

He pulled away and stared at the flooding light pooling in from under the door. She pushed onto her elbows and stared at the door as well, one of her arms lacing around his shoulders and his hand pressed to the small of her back. Their breathing was loud and jagged as they watched the door open with a loud creak.

“Kaden, are you okay? I heard you breathing hard and I got scared. What’s going on?” her mother’s voice trailed in from the bright light of the hallway.

Kaden sat up in her bed and rubbed her eyes, looking around her room before her eyes rested on her mother. Asher was nowhere to be seen. “I was just having a bad dream, I guess.”

She nodded and walked over to press a peck to the crown of her daughter’s head before closing her door once more. Kaden buried the side of her face deep into the pillow as she swept her eyes from one side of the room and then the next. Her eyes located the black sketchbook that she had lazily thrown onto her desk, her desk chair turned and tucked neatly into the desk, like she’d left it.

All of it had been a dream. Asher had never been in her room, he’d never spoke those words that ignited a fire inside her, and he’d never kissed her like she’d imagined he would. None of it had happened, and she should have been relieved for that fact. No, instead, she was disappointed that it hadn’t been real.