Desire Me

Chapter Fifty- Eight (Ignite Me)

Original Book Series by Tahereh Mafi

(For legal reasons and also because Juliette is 17 in the book. I'm basing this intimate chapter on my own imagination, and instead of 17, she will be 18. So in this version/my interpreted view of the chapter. She is actually 18.) You can also read the beginning of the full chapter in the original book.

"Are you asleep now?" he asks.

Yes, I think. I don't know. Yes.

I nod.

"That's good," he says quietly. He lifts my head, pulls my hair away from my neck so my face falls more easily onto the pillow. He shifts so he's beside me on the bed. "You need to sleep more," he says.

I nod again, curling onto my side. He pulls the blankets around my arms.

He kisses the curve of my shoulder. My shoulder blade.

Five kisses down my spine, one softer than the next. "I will be here every night," he whispers, his words so soft, so tortured, "to keep you warm. I will kiss you until I cant keep my eyes open."

My head is caught in a cloud.

Can you hear my heart? I want to ask him.

I want you to make a list of all of your favourite things, and I want to be on it.

But I'm falling asleep so fast I've lost my grasp on reality, and I don't know how to move my mouth. Time has fallen all around me, wrapped in this moment.

And Warner is still talking. So quietly, so softly. He thinks I'm asleep now. He thinks I cant hear him.

"Did you know," he's whispering, " that I wake up, every morning, convinced you'll be gone?"

Wake up, I keep telling myself. Wake up. Pay attention.

"That all of this," he says "these moments, will be confirmed as some kind of extraordinary dream? But then I hear you speak to me," he says. "I see the way you look at me and I can feel how real it is. I can feel the truth in your emotions, and in the way you touch me," he whispers, the back of his hand brushing my cheek.

My eyes flicker open. I blink once, twice.

His lips are set in a soft smile.

"Aaron" I whisper.

"I love you," he says.

My heart no longer fits in my chest.

"Everything looks so different to me now," he say. "It feels different. It tastes different. You brought me back to life." He's quiet a moment. "I have never known this kind of peace. Never known this kind of comfort. And sometimes I am afraid," he says, dropping his eyes, "that my love will terrify you."

He looks up, so slowly, gold lashes lifting to reveal more sadness and beauty than I've ever seen in the same moment. I didn't know a person could convey so much with just one look. There's extraordinary pain in him. Extraordinary passion.

It takes my breath away.

I take his face in my hands and kiss him, so slowly.

His eyes fall closed. His mouth responds to mine. His hands reach up to pull me closer and I stop him.

"No," I whisper. "Don't move."

"Lie back." I whisper

He does.

I kiss him everywhere. His cheeks. His chin. The tip of his nose and the space between his eyebrows. All across his forehead and along his jawline. Every inch of his face. Small, soft kisses that say so much more than I ever could. I want him to know how I feel. I want him to know it the way only he can, the way he can sense the depth of emotion behind my movements. I want him to know and never doubt.