His kisses

*ZOE*

We reached for each other the moment we were in the house. Our lips met like we had done this a hundred times, but the feelings that enveloped me were foreign.

Warmth burst out on my skin like my sensory neurons were on fire. My clothes, which once felt too short, now seemed like too much.

Arman cradled my head like I was something precious, his hands on my cheeks like a soft caress, completely opposite to how he devoured my mouth.

I have never been wanton. I had never wanted like this.

It was my fingers that tugged at his jacket; it was me that popped his buttons. Every part of me sang when my fingers met his bare chest.

“Zoe,” Arman said my name like a plea as he broke away from my lips, yet his lips did not leave my skin, trailing over my neck to come back to my lips.

Whatever he was doing worked because I found myself calming down, taking deep breaths and feeling control come back to me.

Arman pulled me into a hug, wrapping his arms around me like he was scared to let go.

“Hey,” I spoke first, slightly embarrassed by how I’d thrown myself at him.

Arman placed a soft kiss on my lips in response, his arms still around me.

It felt real.

It was also a reminder that my position here was fake.

I tried to move out of his hold, but he didn’t let me. “You’re doing it again,” Arman scolded, “trying to run from me. Why do you do that?”

“I tend to want to think about things before I do them, but sometimes I think about them while I’m doing them…” I was saying rubbish.

Arman smiled. He let go of me reluctantly and led me to his sitting room. “We’re not going to do anything you’re not ready for.”

I nodded. I wondered if Arman was generally a gentleman, or if he had just forgotten how to be a rogue.

I looked around his place. “How does staying here make you feel?” I asked him. “Remembered anything?” Memories made in his personal space should be easily remembered.

“I don’t want to remember anything,” Arman confessed. “I don’t think there’s anything in my life worth remembering. I just… I just want to move on. I think I remembered the only person worth remembering.” He squeezed my finger and guilt caught up with me again.

“You don’t know that,” I winced.

“I do,” Arman insisted.

I was nothing but his delusion. The doctor had been right; I was only a means of escape. But that would mean he had something he was desperate to escape from, and while Arman had lost his memories, I doubted if whatever this demon was had lost its memory too.

Our chemistry was as potent, and even more so off-camera, as it was on-camera.

We ended up side by side on his couch, looking into each other’s eyes and talking. We didn’t touch, except when he randomly touched my cheeks, my face, my hair, or even my lips.

I felt… whole.

“Medicine was nice, I sometimes enjoyed it. It was tasking, but what isn’t,” I told him about my old life. I told him about my mom, my dad, and my brother. It was when I told him about my nightmare that he pulled me into his arms.

I fought the urge to cry.

“I wish I had perfect words to make you feel better. I wish I was in a place to talk about parents,” he sighed.

I assumed he meant the fact that he could not remember his.

“It’s alright.”

“Let’s talk about other things. Good things,” he suggested.

I gave it a thought. “So far, the highlights of my life are meeting Rachel, meeting M.J., and acting.”

“Tell me about your first love, and everyone else you’ve loved before you met me,” Arman asked.

My smile cleared off. “I wasn’t always pretty. People—men—didn’t like me.”

“I’m not going to believe you’ve never been in a relationship, Zoe,” Arman said in disbelief.

I wished it were true, too. I shrugged. “If you had met me before M.J. did, you would never have looked at me twice.”

“That’s a lie.”

I had no interest in arguing with him.

I stretched my body, relaxing on the couch.

“There is no part of you that is not beautiful. Not a single fucking part,” Arman swore.

It was hard to believe him. In fact, it was easy to not believe him. Arman was living in a delusion and unfortunately, that I was pretty was a part of it, but I couldn’t tell him that.

Arman stood up, leaving me on the couch. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I didn’t bring you to my house to starve you,” he said, leaning to place a kiss on my forehead. It was hard to not enjoy this state of delusion; I leaned in, meeting his lips with mine.

The kiss was soft, wet, and short, but it wasn't any less potent than our first kiss. I didn’t want to let go.

Arman chuckled. “You love kisses.”

I found myself responding, “Yours.”

Arman pulled back, looking at me with glistening eyes. “It’s hard to believe you when you say things like that.”

“What do you intend to cook?” I asked, obviously changing the subject. Another thing about Arman that didn’t change: he still thought of me as one that used men and weaponized my attractiveness. An attractiveness that was only recently born.