Rules of Lust #2

"Whether she tells you or not, she’s terrified of you." - Kāma Sūtra, I:4

Heat level (1-5): 🔥🔥

Notes: Written in Sanskrit the second century CE, The Kama Sutra is a seven-volume guide for organizing and understanding the chaos of passion. Originally translated into English in 1833 as Principles of Love, I retell it here for a modern audience as Rules of Lust. This is the second rule. Many will follow.

Pairs well with “Something We Lost” by Sequoia

“Build her a house near the mountains, near water, with trees and a garden. Here, you will teach her pleasure. Go slow. Have respect. Whether she tells you or not, she’s terrified of you.” - Kāma Sūtra, I:4

He’s waiting for me, by the open front door. My heart constricts as I see him, a tight knot of hurt and want. I can’t breathe. And yet only now, only when I see him, can I finally breathe at all.

That’s how it always has been with us. The love that hurts. The passion that aches. The need that satisfies the hunger that only it makes.

This place, it’s beautiful. Rows of oaks, leaves falling sharp and red. The peaks of the mountains to the left; the unfurling shore to the right. Like a dream. This house he lives in is new to me. And only an hour away. He built it, he told me, so he could be close. In case.

“In case what?” I’d asked.

“In case you. Me. Us.”

And even if not, even if I never forgave him, he said at least he would see the same moon. The same stars. At least the sun I felt would be the sun he felt. The wind I felt, the wind he felt. The rain that fell on my skin would also fall on his.

. . . . .

The beauty of the place is hazy. Out of focus. Because all I see, all I really absorb, is him. There. Waiting. For me. All tattoos and muscles and don’t fuck with me.

But in that toughness, I also see softness. Of apologies. And hope. And a plea to give him one last chance. To have mercy on him; to let him into my heart again.

Mercy. The currency of goddesses. The coin of queens.

The power that is mine to give. And take.

. . . .

He flicks his cigarette aside when he sees me coming down the drive. I’d forgotten that, how he holds his cigarettes, pinched between thumb and forefinger, like a joint. In everything, down to the smallest gesture, we are opposites. The two of us, we’re milk and ink. Light and dark. Hush and fury.

He steps forward, cracking his neck side to side.

The sound of gravel under my tires. The hush of wind in the leaves. And then us, our eyes meeting, for the first time in so long.

My whole body shakes. Nerves. Anticipation. I’ve thought about this for so long, on so many nights. I’d hear his whispers as I slept. Feel him beside me. Only to find myself alone at dawn.

But that was before. Before the heartbreak. Before the mess.

. . . .

Now again. In the moment. Looking at him. Taking him in.

The man I love more than everything. The man who crushed my heart. The man who treated me like his soulmate. And then like dust. But who I never stopped loving, no matter how hard I tried.

He had been fading from memory, and yet clear in every dream. Clearer now still. Somehow, he’s even taller than I remember, even brawnier. Darker, with a two-day beard. Flecks of gray at the temples, but only a few. He looks older. Kinder. Though I’m sure that’s just my heart opening back up again. Because he isn’t kind. Never was.

But he tries to be. For me, anyway.

. . . . .

I slow to a stop and put my car in park. Then I take a deep breath, close my eyes, switch off the ignition, and begin to open the door.

But he shakes his head at me, walking toward me. Then opens the door for me, watching me all the time. I get out of the car and stand up.

His intensity. His focus. His heat. The indefinable things I had lost to time, all rush back. Wing beats of memory, drumbeats of lust. Louder now. Inescapable.

“I thought I would never see you again.” Emotion thickens his voice. And I remember now how he sounds when he first wakes up from sleep.

I swallow hard. I am to blame for this, for this long absence. I want to apologize because I don’t know what else to do. I kept the door between us closed. But I refuse to apologize. Refuse to assume any blame.

“I missed your eyes,” he says, with a sheen of tears in his own.

Emotion catches in my throat. Words all tumbling in my head. Say the true thing, now. Say what you feel. “I don’t know how I lived without you,” I whisper.

He rocks back, imperceptibly, but still. The tension lowers. The comfort comes back. That strange liquid warmth of two people who found themselves in each other.

“I didn’t live without you. I just counted the fucking days.”

. . . . .

Being close to him now, I find myself coming back to life. The sharpness of the sun. The gasp of the breeze. This fall light, always this time of year with him. Building fires, staying close. As the days close in, as the darkness lengthens, that’s when I crave him most. And now here he is.

He runs his fingers over his stubble, eyeing me. Not touching me. Not yet. “Tell me how you feel.”

“Nervous,” I say, barely getting the word out before my breath hitches my voice. Fucking nerves, giving me away. Turning into nothing but trembling need.

And yet. And yet. It’s different now. Steadier. The worst already happened. We were already lost to one another. The storm already shipwrecked us and now here we are on the shore.

He smiles then, a little. But not a friendly smile. Cocky, arrogant like he’s thinking, You belong to me now and I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want. “Yeah?”

He’s an asshole, deep down. I know that. I can’t admit to myself how much I like that. Or won’t. I want to be repelled by it, that badness. But I’m not. I’m pulled into it. Moth to flame. Asteroid to planet. Matches and gasoline.

He is my best worst thing.

. . . .

He takes a step into me, close enough now that I feel the heat coming off him. Something about that heat—the heaviness, the sultriness—tells me he’s just showered. His scent, that scent that is only him, comes to me on the breeze. Again, I can’t breathe. And then I can. Like I haven’t been able to since I saw him last.

His tattoos cover both arms, right down to his wrists. And a new tattoo, coming up from his collar.

My initials, right there over his jugular. My mark on his most vulnerable place.

He seems me looking. Narrows his eyes. Tilts his head to the side to show me. “Hurt like a motherfucker. That was the idea.”

“I never wanted you to hurt.”

“I hurt you and I needed you to hurt me back.”

“Never.”

“That was what hurt most of all.”

Mercy, goddess. Mercy.

. . . . .

How long passes? A minute. Ten. A second. A year.

The light glistens in his eyes. Sunshine coming in low. Winter sun, nearly. The light watery and thin.

He sweeps a lock of my hair away from my cheek. “Fucking relax,” he says. “Right now. You hear me? Relax.”

Oh Jesus, the growl. He touches my cheek with his knuckle, a knuckle and no more, and my eyes flutter shut. My heart thunders in my chest, and every muscle in my body throbs. “I’m trying.”

“What I need to teach you, teach myself, it’s a process. We have to fix what I broke.”

 “It wasn’t just you.”

Another growl. “What the fuck did I do in this life to deserve you?”

Another thing I forgot. Sometimes he says things and I can’t answer. Can’t speak. A blush comes up into my cheeks. And I smile. Because I’d forgotten this and now, I remember. And he does, too.

“There she is.”

. . . .

Lips trembling. Body warming. All that anticipation, all my nerves, begin to settle into something silkier, easier. Steadier. The ocean after a hundred-year storm. It’s just him. And it’s just me.

All over again.

He takes another step into me. And he says, “Tell me, now. No bullshit because I’ll fucking know it. Are you afraid?”

I swallow hard and nod. Eyes still closed. Words still gone.

“Say it.”

“A little,” I whisper.

His arms around me now. My knees weak. The feeling of home after a long and awful time away.

“Let me show you how much you mean to me. Let me show you how much I need you.”