Can Anybody Find Me?

Chapter 9

She stared at Rimmon and her eyes were drawn down to the tangled blanket. She always kicked blankets off in her sleep, and somehow Rimmon had ended up with one leg cocooned in hte blanket and the other one flailed out, exposing his bare torso. His chest was bare, tattoos a dark contrast to his skin. They almost didn't look real, so vivid and dark looking in the moonlight filtering in her window. Lone watched them, almost expecting them to writhe into life. She felt mesmerized by them and found herself tracing the faintest touch up one with her finger. It was slick and delicate feeling and without thinking, she followed the finger with her tounge, licking the tattoo and tasting his skin. Rimmon's skin flashed with goosebumps, but he remained asleep.

Lone watched his face with fascination and she lightly explored his exposed flesh with her fingers. This was absolutely insane, she simply did not do this sort of thing. But mental protestations aside, Lone found herself almost compelled to see him naked again. She'd started to try and untangle the bedsheet from around his leg so she could pull off those damn sweatpants and take him into her mouth when he woke up.

Lone froze, seeing Rimmon's confused expression. "You stole all the blanket." she offered as an explanation, grateful that the darkness hid the shame colouring her cheeks. She'd wanted to take him in his sleep. How pathetic was that?

"Oh. Sorry." he offered sleepily and shuffled, quickly disengaging the blankets. Lone settled them out evenly again, hearing Rimmon's breathing drop off into sleep again. But there was no way she was falling back to sleep after that. Her nerves jangled with frustrated arousal and adrenaline. It was like she was gonig into a fight and having foreplay at the same time.

With Rimmon asleep, she slipped out of the bed and opened her window. Just outside the old push up window, was the fire escape and she slipped out onto it, grateful to the air htat felt cool against her skin. Ever since yesterday she had been feeling off, weird compared to her usual distant mellowness. Her moods seemed more volatile and she was becoming obsessed with touching people. It wasn't right, it wasn't like her and that made her anxious. She was loosing her mind, like her father had. Soon it wouldn't be safe for her to be around people or she'd hurt them.

Lone was just grateful that Gavin had kept his mouth shut on what had happened between them, it would have hurt Belle. And Rimmon. Lone looked back through the window to see Rimmon sprawled out in her bed, taking up the room where she was like it was all for him. She chewed the inside of her cheek and honestly thought about her random surges of lust. Did she want to sleep with him? Just thinknig about it made her shudder, the skin prickling fear of being trapped surging up and helping convince her that no, she was definitly not ready to be sleeping with anyone. Or at least, not with him. Yet. Unless he kissed her again. Dammit. She was confused and torn, part of her still too traumatized to consider it, and the other part apparently saturated in hormones and too doped to think straight. Wonderful.

She shoved the internal struggle aside and just focused on her breathing. She felt...connected to the world around her like she hadn't before. As if after a very long winter in layered sweaters, she was suddenly outside letting the air caress her skin without obstruction. It should have felt exhilerating, but instead Lone found it made her feel vulnerable. Lone sighed and sat down on the fire escape, the metal digging into her back but she ignored it. She just enjoyed the solitude, knowing no one could bother her out here.

She must have drifted off to sleep, out there on the balcony because moments to dawn, she woke up, hearing a window open. She stayed still, trusting the shadows around her to keep her presence hidden. She saw Gavin at Belle's window, leaning out into the fading darkness. Although the sun was just beginning to kiss above the horizon, Lone was confident that she would stay hidden in the shadows, the buildings around htem acted as a sunblock. So she stayed still, knowing movement would give her away, but feeling like a voyuer as she jsut watched him from her patch of darkness.