CALDERON'S DESIRE

FACE TO FACE WITH MY OBSESSION

ADRIAN

I didn’t want to be here. I walk into the gala with Danny in tow, he left me immediately and walked towards the bar,. Now alone, i decided to take a walk but something or rather someone stopped me in my track. Mira. I couldn’t breath, For a moment i thought i was hallucinating because my brain has been playing tricks on me fir a year now. But this looked real. She is standing by another lady, both laughing and making joke, inspecting one of the tall canvas frame set up for live painting.

My fingers curled up against the railing as every details i tried to forget came crashing down on me. She didn’t see me. I picture her mouth as it parted when she was under me. Her voice barely a whisper begging me not to stop. I swallowed hard, a slow, brutal ache tightening low in my gut.

A year. The thought of her made my c**k hard. An entire year has gone by without seeing or hearing from her yet my body is reacting as though she has been carved into my spine.

I drag my eyes greedily towards her, she has changed her looks, her hair was shorter now with the curls bouncer than it was that night, brushing over her shoulder. The dress, a beautiful mauve colered gown, with the back dipping low enough to make me taste for her body. She moved in a way that ignited the fire in me. Even though i left her, i still can’t forget her, not even when I f****d other women hoping to scrub her phantom scent off my skin.

And now she was just… here. At a gala i didn’t know she had interest been at. Except she was. I watch as she lift her canva bag, her fingers move rhythmically through the frame. She was a painter? A fact i didn’t know. I knew nothing except her name and the sound she made when she climaxed. But seeing her now, surrounded by color and light and creation, something in me—something I’d kept chained—snapped taut.

I wanted to go to her, grab her hand and pull her to a corner claiming her body, tilt her face and claim her lips but would she recognize me? Would her body remember mine? Then she laughed at something one of the event staff said. A small soft sound causing something to twist inside me, that laugh was supposed to be for me. My jaw flexed as heat crawled under my skin, sharp and territorial. I don’t think she remembers me but i remember more than enough for both of us.

My hand tightened on the railing until my knuckles whitened, i thought leaving her that day meant i had closure. I don’t get attached with one- night stands. Why does hers feel different? Looking at her now, beautiful, untouched by the mess i had becomes made me realize i should never have walked away and now i have seen her again i am not planning on doing that a second time.

**********

What stunned me the most was that she had become even more beautiful. I let myself look at her from afar, her beautiful green eyes, the kind of eyes, you don’t notice at first until suddenly you do, and then it’s too late, because now you’re lost in them, searching for landmarks that aren’t there. Her pink- colored lips i had kissed more times i could count that night. I wonder if it would feel the same now. If i would loose my sanity when i get close or if the girl i am obsessed with only existed in my memory.

She stood in front of one of her canvases, completely unaware of me, studying a tiny brushstroke like it was the most important thing in the world. Has she always been like this? Focused and lost in details?

My chest tightened as i step closer. Sensing the movement behind her she turns and for a moment her gaze held mine, her eyes doesn’t widen. Her breath didn’t hitch. She didn’t even blink twice.

She simply offered me a polite smile, the kind you give a stranger.

“Good evening, sir,” she said softly.

Sir.?

I almost laughed. If she had looked at me the way she looked at me that night, she would not call me that but right now she doesn’t remember me. Her attention drifted back to the painting—her painting—and she added, “I hope I’m not standing in your way.”

“No,” I managed, voice far calmer than I felt. “You’re fine.”

She nodded, then returned to studying her work, completely at ease beside me… completely unaware she was standing next to the boy who took her virginity a year ago. I should say something, tell her my name or at least force the memories back into her head but instead, I just stared, wondering how fate could be so cruel—and so generous—in the same breath.

What stunned me the most was how she had become even more beautiful.

A year ago, in that dim hotel room, all I’d seen was the silhouette of her body, the curve of her waist, the wild bounce of her hair, the sinful arch she made when she gasped, begging me for more. yet somehow, even then, I’d known she was beautiful.

But now?

Now, under the soft light of the ballroom’s chandeliers, she was devastating. Beautiful green eyes. A gentle, focused expression. Full, peach-soft lips I had kissed until I ruined them. My hands twitched at my sides, remembering the way she tasted. Remembering the way she whispered please against my throat.

I wondered—almost violently—if it would feel the same. If she would melt for me just as easily.

If her body would recognize mine the way mine recognized hers instantly. She didn’t know me. Didn’t recognize me. Not my face, not my voice. Not the man who had taken her apart in the dark and left before sunrise like a coward.

“Why are you here?” I cut in.

I couldn’t stomach small talk.

Not when she sat a few feet from me, looking innocent and soft and completely unaware of the hold she still had on me.

She blinked, startled by my bluntness.

And then she gave a shy little smile—polite, nervous, beautiful.

“I got invited to show my work.”

She sat there with her hands clasped around her paint brush. A year, and she still made me feel like a man standing in the wrong room with the wrong oxygen.

“That is nice. My name is Adrian. Adrian Calderon” I say.

“Mira Vale, nice to meet you.” She says as she places her brush on the holder beside her.