All day, the wistful skies mirrored my mood, grey, darker by the hour, into the silvery black of night. I do not close the curtains. I never do. I stare out, and these seconds are the worst form of torture.

In the City of Light, I seek illumination.

Six-fifteen, across the boulevard, three windows up, and directly opposite, a candle is lit.

This was her gift to me, sitting on the floor; it stands like a priest between us, virginal in white with red horizontal hoops. She left it with a scented note in sensual script, it is a bougie-calendrier de l’Avent, a graduated Advent candle. Twenty-four days, a Catholic rite, and I will burn in hell for using it this way.

My trembling hand strikes the match, it kisses the wick and a golden tongue of fire flickers into life. It almost dies. Fragile and precious, I pray it will not expire.

The flame grows, reaching out.

I wish she would.

Two small Suns in a city of cold windows, I can feel its warmth within, and my desire glows.

Six-sixteen…

We sheltered under a restaurant canopy from the teeming rain. Her skin shines like a quicksilver moon, pristine as the virgin snow that sleeps in the Jardin du Tuileries. She stared into my eyes with an ethereal gaze, and I heard nothing at all, except the rousing song of my desire.

She has no name.

I am barred from her apartment by the locked black doors to its mezzanine, and the back gate rusted shut through years of neglect.

The irony, I am that gate.

Six-seventeen…

The streetlights illuminate, casting out the inky shadows, and their waxy pallor brightens her naked body. She is made of curves that require blasphemy, her shoulders broad, with a collarbone I yearn to kiss. Breasts that flare from her torso are the teardrops I have cried so many times. My eyes venerate the cleft of her bare sex.

My breathing stutters as the warm satin provides a final caress and pools around my ankles. I am naked, too, embraced by the cinnamon-scented air.

It is our ninth time. From one red band on the candle to the next, it burns for one hour, and my body ignites.

My vibrating phone does not startle me.

“You want more?”

I am breathless, “Yes.”

She does not purr, but slinks towards the window.

“You want this body?”

“Yes.”

She turns and moves with the gait of a dancer, goading my need to worship how she flexes. She sits alongside the candle, and I mimic her posture. Facing her, my knees drawn up, the parquet floor warm on my behind.

The heat licks my shin, promising more.

“Open your legs.”

I brace with my arms, lean back, and let my knees fall open.

Slowly.

I have learned to keep perfectly still. This is her rule from our first night. Filled with a shy longing, embarrassed at my nakedness, I was fearful of what came next.

My pulse answers the only question of myself, and tonight, I ache. I cannot see details, only the soft halo the flame paints on her thighs and sex. The night air slides between my legs like her beguiling tongue. I am soaking wet, and have been since four o’clock when the sky began to bruise.

My scent rises, mingled with beeswax.

Six-twenty-three.

“Lift the candle, do it as I told you.”

It trembles in my hand and roams as a pool of light. I want her stare to devour me. I lead it around my breasts, along my midriff, to my sex.

The wax pools on a precipice. It spills a single hot white tear down its side and drips onto me.

The pain is bright.

It is exquisite.

I welcome it.

If I touched the swollen folds of my sex, it would weep like that, too.

I cannot touch myself.

Not yet.

“I looked for you today,” I whisper towards the phone.

This is my confession.

“You did?” There is no lilt or affectation.

The candle drips again, smarting my thigh, and I gasp. “Rue de Rivoli. Place Vendôme. I walked until I was frozen.”

“Go on.”

“I sat in the café near the restaurant, hoping you would come back for me.”

My breathing shudders. She knows I need her, and I do not care.

Across the boulevard, her right hand moves. Slowly, slowly, up the inside of her thigh. It stops just short. She waits. My heart slams against my ribs as I watch her tease, and I pine for the same. Welcoming the rising obsession, I want to nurture it and feel its madness. I must sate her, and I will die trying.

Six-thirty-six.

“Reward yourself.” She does not whisper; she is cold, and it makes my body hot. “One finger only, slowly.”

I trace the cleft of my sex, barely grazing, and spill the syrupy slickness, spreading it on my clit with single, shivering strokes. My hips lift without permission. The candle rocks, and the wax finds the tender skin just above my knee. I bite my lip to stay silent, but the sound leaks out.

She hears it, and her head tilts. “You feel it? You want me there?”

“Yes.” I whimper, “I crave your touch.”

Then her hand moves, deliberate circles now, unhurried. The flame obscures my view. I yearn to see her fingers to fuel my tortured imagination.

Six-forty-nine.

I am trembling with arousal.

“Show me. Two fingers.”

They slide in, grazing the smooth, slick walls. My eyes widen, lips parting in a simpering pout, and I bay in short, panting breaths. She watches my rhythm, and I have learned so much already. Whimpering louder, I petition for mercy.

“And your clit.”

My thumb finds it, and I continue my confession in earnest, my voice flinty and cracking.

“On the second night, I came so hard I knocked the candle over.” My breathing shudders, “Wax everywhere.”

“You left it there until morning like a stigmata?”

“Yes,” I gasp, and my body jolts. “On the fifth night, I whimpered your name even though I do not know it. I made one up. It tasted like sin on my tongue.”

“My cunt tastes sweeter.”

This stronger moan betrays my wounded heart. Her body writhes, spine curling, jerking her hips as her fingers quicken. We are keeping perfect time. My body and mind unite as one perfect insurrection. More wax spills, hot, smarting, then consoling. It is her caress; I am doing her bidding.

Seven-o-five.

“Faster now. Show me your hunger.”

My heart leaps; I have permission to abandon all restraint.

Fingers thrust deep, my thumb relentless, rolling my hips against my hand as if I could fuck the dark out of the night. Hot wax kisses my tender inner thigh again and again.

Each burn is her brand: mine, mine… mine.

I am louder, my mind reckless. “I want your mouth where my fingers are.”

She purrs. “I want to feel your breath when you say the O Antiphons against my cunt.”

“Yes!” I cry out. “I want you to come when I whisper ‘O Clavis David’ and drink every drop of your orgasm.”

I see her thighs tremble.

She is close.

So am I.

Seven-ten.

Our death and resurrection beckon. She is cruel to us both, her hand slowing, drawing it out.

I drip wax on my breasts in penitence. The sting and my cry sharpens everything; the ecstasy is almost unbearable.

My surrender is complete. “I imagine your tongue writing all these numbers on me.”

“Nine here.” I draw it on my clit.

“Ten here.” Traced on my swollen folds, I press my fingers deep inside.

Her animated pace quickens, and I match her.

I groan hard. “Until Christmas Eve. You finally open your door, and you fuck me all day and night.”

The tension within balloons, “…the next day, my present… to you is… my heart and soul.”

“I will take you… as my pet.”

“Yes!” My body soars, failing to hold back the inevitable, “Your… pet.  Your… fuck… toy.”

She croaks with the sudden stiffening of her whole body. Head thrown back, her body wracked with seizures. With her loud cry, I feel it in every fibre of my existence. She heaves for air, and each sob is her need for me.

That knowledge throws me over the edge. The white-hot elation feels endless. I shudder so violently that wax spatters everywhere, pain and rapture intermingle as I buck to shake it free.

When the waves pass, I stand on shaky legs.

“Until tomorrow.” She offers.

I seize it. “Tomorrow.”

Seven-seventeen.

The flame licks at the tenth ring. She extinguishes it across this impossible distance, and a thin ribbon of smoke rises as an answered prayer.

Darkness swallows both rooms, and she fades from view.

Tomorrow the candles will burn, her words will scorch harder, making my confession filthier.

And she will witness my next unspoken absolution.