CONTENT NOTE: this post contains erotic and explicit writing

I have imagined your hands in such great detail.

I’ve dreamt of your hands stroking and smoothing my anticipatory skin. The slight drag where your calloused pads catch, reminding me that you are more used to working with hard, inanimate objects than with sensitive, malleable flesh.

I’ve pictured the shape of your fingers intertwined with mine, and felt our hands meeting: palm to palm in Shakespeare’s holy palmer’s kiss.

And I’ve fantasised about the eventual moment when your fingers slide inside me, reaching and beckoning to release more and more of me.

Despite having such a strong imagined familiarity with your hands, I have never imagined your kiss.

Strangely, a kiss from you feels so much more intimate than surrendering my body to your touch.

A kiss from you would mean tasting the story of your day: the bitterness of the coffee you drank this morning; the sweetness of the biscuit you did not refuse; and the richness of the steak you ate for dinner.

A kiss from you would mean a shared breath. The very essence of life being drawn from my lungs and into yours. The oxygen fuelling the blood pumping through our hearts. No pretending now that this is just a carnal exchange – not now our hearts are involved.

A kiss from you would mean your lips, your tongue, your teeth: exploring, tasting, sucking, biting. Densely packed nerve-endings sending out scores of messages to my biddable body: blood rushing faster; breath now in audible gasps; slumbering parts of me being awoken and engorged. And parts of you too.

A kiss from you would mean a thousand different things.

After the kiss there would be no going back. Regardless of whether we ever saw each other again, we would be joined forever at a cellular level. The intimacy shared through the kiss would not be just about the physical and the emotional, it would impact at an even deeper level: it would be – in that moment – a merging of our souls.

A kiss from you would be my undoing. And also my salvation.

A Kiss From You is taken from my book, Desire Lines.

Read more chapters from the book:

Preface // Chapter 1 // Lilith and the Daemon: short story // Chapter 2.