We're out to dinner. Small intimate restaurant, dimly lit, candles on the table, soft music just hovering in the background. Our fingers touch each other across the table. We're both searching other each other's eyes over the wine glasses trying to ascertain each other's true feelings. Does she? Does he? We try probing into each other's souls. You are speaking softly to me, laughing from time to time. I find it very hard to focus on your words. You are so much warm voice enveloping me in a blanket. I am watching your mouth move, feeling the strong urge to reach out and trace your lips with my finger, just to touch them, to feel the ridges of them against my fingerprints. I don't know what you are saying at this moment. Please, don't stop talking.

I wonder if you feel this same desire for contact that I do. I feel the electricity jumping from your hand to mine. You must feel it too. How could you not? My hairs are on end with all the voltage flowing along my skin. You rub your thumb gently along my knuckles, in slow rhythmic strokes. It is hypnotizing. My body trembles, little tremors running up my arm and spreading throughout my body away from the epicenter of your touch.

You've stopped talking for a moment. You are smiling at me because you know the effect you have on me. I think you know my sense of sound dimmed for a few minutes while my other senses turned up the volume. Words escape me. There is only this moment. I can only bite my lower lip and try to say to you with my eyes, what my tongue cannot form into intelligent conversation.

We don't want this dinner to end. We already know where it will NOT go. We've agreed to that, both vowing for this meeting, if fireworks spark to let them, but not to follow through to their final burst of spectacular light and color. We drag dinner on for hours, merely holding hands, and taking bites between conversation, allowing our feelings to flow around us through us to each other, enjoying the time we have together.

The restaurant is closing. We can dawdle no longer. We hold hands as you walk me leisurely to my car. We are still lingering over the trailing end of our evening together. You pull me close for a long slow kiss. My knees weaken and I fall against the car door. It is better than I had imagined it would be. Mouths sliding together, tentative tongue testing the waters, before becoming more insistent, caressing and slipping easily against mine, as if we had been kissing like this forever. All senses are focused on this one warm glowing, bursting to fire sensation.

Time stopped.

We are both dizzy, afterward. You stroke your fingers through my hair.

"I've been wanting to do that all night"

I know the feeling. We are storing up memories for later use. Storing up these snippets of time, these sensations. We are recording the taste of each other's lips tinged with the remnants of wine, the feel of soft tresses, the scent of each other, the sparkle in each other's eyes. All of these things we don't know we are hungry for, catching up on lost time, filling in the blanks, saving for the future.

I slip my hand between the buttons of your shirt, unbuttoning one for better access. I run my palm against the curls of your chest. I close my eyes memorizing the placement of each hair. I need this. You close your eyes imprinting the feel of my hand moving over you. You wrap your arms around me. I lean into your embrace, committing the feel of your arms to memory. I breathe in the scent of your neck, I flicker my tongue over your skin to taste that slight saltiness. These I file away for future reference as well. You are doing the same thing. This evening is important to us both. It is to be savored.

We do not know when or if we will meet again.

How can I let you go?

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