Chapter 4 — The Point of No Return

Éric

The door to her room opens before I even knock.

She knew.

She was waiting for me, naked under a half-open black kimono, like a provocation. No useless words. No pretense. Her gaze pierces through me. I feel like I'm suffocating already, even before entering.

I take a step.

She slowly backs away, turns her back to me. The fabric barely slips over her shoulders, revealing the perfect curve of her back, her offered nape. She still doesn't speak. She doesn't need to. Everything, in her body, in her slowness, in her way of precisely ignoring me, calls to me.

I close the door. There's only us. The air is warm, almost humid. A dim lamp casts a soft light on the unmade bed. A slight scent of black fig and incense hangs in the air. Intimate. Dangerous. As if this room were not a place, but a fault line.

She stops at the foot of the bed, puts her glass on the low table, then turns to me. Slowly. She stares at me without blinking.

— You came.

— I don't know why.

— Yes, you do.

Her words are needles. She pierces my defenses without effort.

I don't answer. I could have fled. Pretended it was just a game. But I'm already caught. Already caught since she looked at me at the bar. Since she spoke my name with that husky voice that seems to come from a forbidden dream.

She approaches. Slowly. Each step shakes my certainty. She doesn't look at me like a married man. She looks at me like a man who is hungry. And she is the feast. A sacred offering you're not allowed to touch, but that she forces you to bite into.

She stands in front of me, her breath against mine.

— You're going to ruin everything, Éric. And you're going to do it again.

Her fingers undo the knot of my tie. She has no hesitant gestures. She undresses me as if it were a scene already rehearsed in her head. A scene whose every line, every silence she knows. My shirt falls to the floor, followed by my belt. I don't move. I let her do it. I've stopped thinking.

Her gaze slides slowly over me, merciless. Not to flatter. To destroy. She knows I'm hers. She feels it in my breathing, in the tension of my muscles, in this weakness that runs through me entirely.

— You still think you have a choice?

She pushes me gently. My legs hit the edge of the bed. I almost fall onto it. She straddles me, the kimono wide open. Her bare skin burns me. Her thighs squeeze me like a sensual slap. She leans down, and her mouth crashes onto mine, without restraint.

It's chaos.

Her taste is stronger than I had imagined. Wine, spices, skin and fire. She kisses to possess, not to seduce. She takes me. Her tongue seeks mine with rage, demands. Her hands grip my hair, scratch my neck, drive me crazy. She wants me whole, and she tears me away from myself.

She sits fully on me, her pelvis against mine. My breath catches. She undulates just enough to make me lose control. I feel everything. Every vibration of her body against mine. Every sigh she steals from me.

Her nails dig into my shoulders. She dominates me. Not in a power game. In an evidence. She is the fire, I am the wood. She is the storm, I am the man without shelter.

— You look at me as if I were your downfall, she murmurs.

— Because you are.

She smiles. A slow, predatory smile.

And then she gives herself. Totally. Cruelly. Slowly.

She arches, offers and imposes herself. Her body against mine becomes a war without respite. She doesn't seek tenderness, she wants to hurt me, mark me, haunt me. And me… I want that. I want her to leave a trace. To replace everything else. To crush Clara, my name, my morality.

I lose everything.

I lose my breath when she presses against me.

I lose my balance when she kisses my neck.

I lose my faith when she moans against my mouth.

I lose myself in her. Willingly.

And when she finally trembles, in a wild spasm, her hair stuck to her forehead, her scratches on my skin, her sex against mine in a feverish rhythm, I abandon myself. I collapse. I exhaust myself in her as if it were the last time I would ever feel something real.

We stay there. Naked. Stuck together. Sweaty.

She slides her head onto my chest. My heart beats fit to burst my ribs. My throat is dry. I want to speak, but I find no word that doesn't ring false.

She murmurs:

— Now, you can't turn back.

And she's right.

I've fallen.

Not in love, worse: addicted.

I absently caress her hip. Her breath calms, but I can no longer breathe normally. Everything seems unreal. And yet, this is the most alive moment I've known in years.

A shiver runs through me.

Not from cold.

From lucidity.

I just broke something. Something that will never be mended.

Clara is surely sleeping at this hour. Maybe she's thinking of me. Maybe she told herself, tonight, that it was time we talked. That we found each other again.

But it's too late.

I'm elsewhere. Far, very far from our marital bed, from our apartment with its too-white walls and too-polite silences.

I'm in a hotel room, in the hollow of a body I don't yet understand, but which already possesses me.

And I know, deep down, that I will come back.

Again.

And again.