The Last Warm Night (NSFW)
The door at the top sticks the way it always does. You lean into it, and then the city exhales, rooftops like dark islands, August still caught in the tar and brick even though the calendar swears September is ending.
String lights glow like a necklace someone forgot to take off. The little jungle we made in pots is still awake, zinnias and night-scented stock, rosemary and basil brushing our legs as we step through. A thin breeze lifts the scent and sets the bulbs to a slow sway. Somewhere below, a siren trails off. Somewhere farther, a train offers a low, soothing note. Up here, it is just us, the soft rug we dragged out in June, and a sky that looks closer than it ever does from the street.
You turn to say something but I am already moving, pressing you back to the railing by the tomato vines. The metal is warm against your spine. I push your shirt up so I can feel your skin. The day left heat there like a secret. Your breath changes. I smile before I kiss you, slow at first, as if tonight were a glass that might spill if we move too fast.
We always talk about the first night we came up here, how the air stuck to us and nothing felt heavy. You picked a leaf from my hair and tucked it behind my ear, and I knew you were going to ruin me in the right way. Tonight has that same pulse. It feels like a held note. It feels like a door we will not get again until June, and I am greedy. I want the whole thing on my tongue.
I taste you. I taste the last of the day, the mineral of skin and the faint bite of the rosemary I brushed with my wrist. You taste like a promise kept. Your hands slide down my back, slow, steady, claiming ground. The breeze sneaks under my dress and cools the heat you are making. Every contrast sharpens the next. The bulbs overhead swing and cast us in moving honey.
I take your hand and pull you down to the rug, between pots lined like witnesses. The terracotta keeps some of the day’s warmth. I guide your thigh between mine and rest there, a soft grind that turns into something less soft when you exhale into my neck. I want you to take your time. I want you to forget time exists. I want both things and I know I will get what I ask for because you know how to listen when I do not use words.
You kiss my collarbone. You kiss lower. I feel the shape of your grin against my skin when my breath stutters. I put a hand in your hair and close my eyes. The city falls away. It is just the rasp of the rug under my shoulder blades and the bloom of yes that opens and opens. The moon climbs out from behind a building like a coin lifted from a palm. The string lights blink and breathe. My name sounds different when you say it against my thigh. I answer with my hips. I answer with everything.
I make a sound. It leaves me before I can decide to be quiet. It does not matter. No one is close enough to hear. Or if they are, they will hear devotion and envy both. You learn my rhythm again like you are relearning a song you already love. You ease, then you do not. My fingers curve on your shoulder. I float and fall and float.
When the heat crests I think it might take the lights with it. For a second the sky is all I can see, dark velvet with little cuts of light. I open my mouth and give you the thing you came to take. You hold me through it. You make it last without making it cruel. When I settle, your smile is on my thigh again. You climb up to kiss me and I taste myself and you together. I pull you closer. I want you to feel how soft I am now. I want you to feel how ready.
You roll me to my side and pull my leg over your hip. The angle surprises a gasp from us both. You are careful and then you are not. The first slide is a homecoming and a new country at once. The breeze raises goosebumps along my arms. Your hand smooths them down. You kiss my wrist. You kiss the place below my ear that makes my spine arc like a bow.
We find a rhythm that suits the night. Not frantic, not slow, something that feels like footsteps that decide to run. My palm folds around the back of your neck and my nails press a small map there. The terracotta taps faintly when the pots sway. The rug grips my knee. Your breath grows rough. I match it. I guide you with a shift of my hips and a yes that is not a word.
You push in deeper and I forget how to do anything but take it. I open my eyes and the stars live inside yours. I think about how we grew these flowers from seed, how the first bud felt like a secret, how we put stakes in and tied soft fabric strips so the stems would not snap. I think about how we made this roof ours and how tonight we are trading it a vow it will keep for us. I think about nothing at all when you change the angle again and the bright hits, clean and sweet.
I ask you not to stop in a voice that sounds like it came all the way from June. You say my name like it is the last word in a prayer. The warmth under my skin has nowhere to go but out. I pull you in and hold you there. Your mouth opens on my shoulder. We break together. It feels like a fruit cut open and the knife left in the sun. It feels like late harvest. It feels like everything summer owed coming due at once.
We lie there for a while, bodies humming, breathing like the tide. The lights above us swing easy now. My dress is twisted around my waist. Your shirt is somewhere by the basil. The air has cooled, or I finally feel it. I roll to my back and look up. The moon is smug, and right to be. The stars look like pins holding the dark up.
You trace circles on my stomach. I follow your fingertip with my eyes and almost fall asleep doing it. Somewhere below, a neighbor laughs. The train offers another distant note. The tomato vine catches the light and looks like a script I cannot read. I rest my head on your shoulder and think about the calendar pages we will turn tomorrow, and the ones after that, and how some seasons arrive like a door closing and some like a curtain drifting across a window.
“Cold is coming,” you say, not sad, just true.
“We will steal from it,” I say, and draw your arm tighter around me.
You hum in agreement and nudge my knee with yours until I swing my leg over your thigh. The pose is lazy and possessive and perfect. Warmth gathers where our bodies meet. The roof holds our weight like a promise. The pots sigh on their saucers. I could stay exactly like this for a year. I know I will want other things tomorrow, and I will get them, but right now my only job is to be touched and to glow.
“Look,” I say, and tilt my chin to the sky. A little line of light burns quick and vanishes. A last flare. A last wink. You make the smallest sound of wonder and I feel it in your chest more than I hear it in the air. I kiss your jaw. You tilt, and I meet your mouth. It is soft and grateful. It tastes like the life we made out of a door to a roof and a handful of seeds.
When we dress again, it is not to leave. It is to sit with our backs to the warm wall and a blanket over our laps, a mug of something dark between our hands, our feet pressed together under the wool. The night keeps walking forward. The breeze gets bolder. The lights keep moving like they are breathing for us.
I tuck myself into your side and let my eyes close for a minute. You do not shift. You do not check your phone. You look at the moon and guard me like I am part of your garden. Somewhere a leaf lets go and skitters across a tar roof. Somewhere a door shuts below. Up here, we are the last warm thing, and we know it, and we glow a little brighter because of it.
I open my eyes and the stars have moved, or maybe we have. It is hard to tell when you are held like this. I kiss your palm. You press it to my mouth again like a quiet ceremony. The city exhales. We hold the breath a moment longer. The next season waits at the stairs, patient and sure. We finish our cups, gather the blanket, and promise the night we will come back.
We will. But this one is ours.
❦ ~with desire, Demi xoxo 💋
⚠️ Mature Audiences 18+ Only (NSFW)
