Like a soft explosion of mist, your hand reaches out for me. I take a step back, both out of pure reflex and because I know the hand belongs to you. I've memorized your entire form by now. I know you up close, in the dark, from afar, and as faint shimmers along the periphery of my vision.

Your pale skin is a living canvas that never hides your emotions, your most primal and secret acts. The way you blush when you're excited or nervous. The way your hips have been left with pale red imprints from my hands, or how your back will show the jagged lines my nails made when marking you. The curls of your auburn locks fall just shy of your shoulders. The crystalline, dusky color of your eyes, fixated on me now as you slide the shower's glass door shut.

Random frames from last night play through my head, flashes that lead up to this surreal moment. Telling my friend I'd drop by, but only for a few light drinks because I had to work the next day. You showing up with some new guy, some arrogant prick I immediately felt like punching in the face. Both of us avoiding one another save for random eye contact throughout the night and I would always wonder what you were thinking when your gaze would linger for more than a few seconds.

Then I'd fix a new drink, stronger than the previous one, to dull that thought process. In the last few months, I've spent more than enough time trying to figure you out, to forget you, and to no longer ask why it seemed so easy for you to move on while I was still looped in some kind of stasis.

I woke up in a loveseat, body stiff from sleeping curled up in such a cramped space. You were asleep on the couch nearby, alone, your hoodie being used as a pillow. I always loved to see you like that.

When awake, your eyes always seem to hide so much, like the beautiful blue in them was merely swirls that covered up a darkness beneath that you could never let others get too close to. But I did try; at least I can say that much. Asleep, though, you seem entirely at peace.

I checked my watch, happy that I still had time to grab a shower and maybe a quick bite before work. Plenty of time to wake up and shake off the slight hangover pounding in both temples.

First, though, I grabbed a spare blanket from my friend's closet. I covered you up and silently cursed at myself for watching you to way I used to. Like when you used to spend nights at my place and each breath you would exhale felt like a warm breeze across my skin. I'm watching you like you're still mine. I don't know if you ever were.

At least, I thought, I can just take a shower, leave, and put you out of my mind bit by bit as the day goes on.

But, you're here now, only a few inches away. Every stitch of clothing gone. Every curve of your voluptuous frame shiny with what's splashed against me and ricocheted onto you. Several teeth bite your lower lip as you reach out for me again.

I stay still this time, paralysed from need, my length already growing from slow strokes. Whenever we've been together, one simple touch like that from you always sets things in motion. The same goes for the several times since we parted ways as a couple. It hasn't changed.

Lately, each day and night has been like drifting through a fog, lights and voices trying to reach through each tendril that surrounds me. Much like the steam that surrounds us now, every breath and movement changes its path, its collisions.

Your presence is like that to me; a force that can break through the cold chrysalis my heart has been encased in, turning the debris into pure heat and need that screams louder than everything else inside. The other parts of me, the ones that should make me leave or ask you why you showed up last night with some shallow clone of me, fall silent. I become all animal instinct here, ready to spring into motion, to claim and mark my territory.

We collide with a sound akin to a slap. Your hair, left in tangled curls from the water, whips against my neck as we kiss. Hungry lips are raw and ignited, as they cover and crest over one another.

Your entire body shivers against me as if your every cell brims with feverish anticipation as I grow harder from the slippery friction of your hand. My own hand trails lower now and I savor the surprised gasp you utter when my fingers part your smooth slit, trespass beyond lips, and delve deep within where you long for me the most right now.

Even as the water rains down on us, I can still tell the difference between it and the heat that pulses inside you, quivers through your inner muscles as I begin to probe them.

Our times together have swayed between soft and sweet (you even once confessed that I was the only person you ever felt like you were really making love with) to just furious bursts of taking one another. I burn for you either way, the fires just fan out and sweep over us with different speeds. In the end, we're torched with the same intensity.

Everything feels raw this morning to me, basic and immediate. I just want to take you now, remind why you always come back to me.

I spin you around and see how caught off guard you are, eyes awash in a mix of surprise and need. Then, a playful grin, because you know you're the only one who can summon this side of me, this ravenous animal that lies dormant until charged into life by your presence. A part of me hates that you can render me so untamed. Deep down, though, where my desire for you is inescapable, I still give in. Lose myself in you.

You follow my cue and ready yourself, one hand against the wall, the other clutching the top of the shower door. I break into you, a singular thrust entirely filling you, sending shakes through both legs.

My lip curls around your earlobe to whisper three words I've never said to anyone before. They still you, make your sex clench harder around me, the body speaking more than words have the capacity to at times. But you'll remember those words.

You are mine.

I want those words to sear into you, be a mark inside that only you and I will know the existence of, a mark that will always stay with you. A mark to ensure that anyone else who takes you will be a faint whimper when compared to the deafening echoes we've made in each other. I want everything in you to shiver when you think of me, for you to remember this animal you've made.

I want it all to be carved into your mind. The sound of flesh smacking against wet flesh. The way I nuzzle into your neck and smile when your head tilts to welcome me. When my teeth sink down. Not hard enough to break skin, but enough to mark you as mine. Sometimes it's not enough to leave the message inside. Sometimes you have want it imprinted where everyone can see.

I want you to never forget the way I occupy you like no one else can, touch places deeper inside at the exact force and pace you crave. To never forget how you never need to tell me how to explore, how to ignite you. All I've ever needed as a map is my own desire for you, to let instinct interpret and follow your every signal.

Like when your legs widen just a little more for my arm to curl around you and massage your clit. The extra heat makes your smooth nub even more sensitive, this tiny nexus of the achy currents that shoot throughout you. I feel your hand rest over mine and apply more pressure. Saying to use more force, to not let go.

My free hand becomes greedy. Its appetite for your body, ceaseless. Fingers roll along your nipples and squeeze. My hand is around your throat, not to choke, but to hold you steady during each deep thrust. My palm runs along your spine, up and down, nails dragging along that beautiful pale canvas. I've created an atlas you will conceal with clothes later on; a living map that tells of our secret time here.

Part of me wants to say how much I've missed and needed you. That I almost hate you for leaving but hate myself more for not doing anything to stop you.

There is so much to say that we never form words for and pass along. In that sense, you and I are one and the same. We pull others so very close to us without warning them of the cold and dark things in us that will push them away, possibly hurt them beyond consolation.

You and I have always communicated best together in places like this. Behind a locked door, bodies locked together on your small bed. In the claustrophobic confines of a parked car late at night, merged. In the steamy womb of a shower where, as everyone else is still sleeping off last night's liquor, we're all motion. Almost rabid. Bodies turned to pure harmonious lust.

Your moans reverberate with so much more force in this enclosed space. The impact of skin from each thrust vibrates through the floor and us. I impale myself deeper inside you once I feel you beginning to shudder and pulsate around me. I go faster, nearly as close as you are to release.

You cry out for me to go harder and I never relent, pumping your sex into a flood of ecstasy. When you clench around me and your knees start to tremble, my arms become a circle, a lock around you, to help steady your balance and mine.

I burst inside you seconds later with one last thrust. I can feel your hands squeezing mine as I combust and fill you with my hot seed, almost all of my senses obliterated.

A stillness washes over us, ragged breaths calming together. You turn and kiss me again. So slow and sweet, the way you always kiss afterwards.

It's as if we've expelled a fury from within us; pushed some nameless darkness back in the tides of our climax. Part of me almost hesitates, but I still kiss you back and hold you tight. I know we have to go soon. That I have to let you go again. There's nothing to say right now and maybe that's for the best. We can just enjoy the calm aftermath together for a few more minutes before we part.

I'll think about everything else between us later. How sometimes you'll need more from me than the inklings of a friendship. Need us to be more than the secret encounters we initiate.

I wonder if that's all there really is between people, these connections that never seem to last. Instinct and reaction. Consequence and devastation. Messages and signals none of us have the codex to properly translate.

I wonder if it's all grunts and moans and wants. The obliterating flash of ecstasy at the end. The cold after we pull away. The ache to start it all again. To take and be taken. Prey and predator. To entirely occupy and be occupied by another.

I wonder what you really want from me, how long we can keep churning in this cycle. I know the ground you and I walk is very fragile and could split beneath us at any time. I don't know where gravity will steer me if that time comes. I don't know what I do to get through the pain without you, the pain of not being close to you while we pretend (as we kind of do now) that we're virtually strangers.

We share our own unstable universe at times, one of beauty and feverish pleasures that could collapse unto itself. I suppose that's why our encounters are almost desperate rushes at one another. It's why you always reach out when you sense me in your proximity. It's why I mark you when I can, inside and out.

Because, if it might not last, we still want to be all the other knows.