A familiar ache

Tonight, I saw him.
Not planned. Not expected. Not even dressed for the kind of trouble that sort of reunion could have invited.

He brushed past me in the lounge — the smell of something deep and familiar trailing behind him, like smoke and memories.
And just like that, I was undone.

The years didn’t dull the way he moves… that quiet confidence, like he knows exactly how to touch a woman and make her lose her name, her breath, her good sense.
The way he looked at me — not with shock, not even surprise — but with recognition.
Like he remembered the way my skin tasted before my name crossed his lips.

My body responded before my mind could catch up.
A slow throb between my thighs.
A sudden heat blooming along the curve of my neck.
The ache of wanting — heavy, ancient, and hungry.

It took everything in me to stay seated, to not cross that velvet space between us and press my mouth to the corner of his, just to see if he still tasted like sin and salvation.
To ask, with a glance, a breath, a kiss —
"Do you still remember how I fall apart for you?"

Now I’m home, stripped bare in every way that matters, still trembling with all the things I didn’t let happen.
Fingers tracing ghost marks over skin he hasn't touched in years.
A familiar need swelling in my chest, low and slow like a storm rolling in over the water.

I don’t know if I’ll see him again.
I don't know if I could survive it if I do.
But tonight, I’m wrecked and blooming for him all over again.
And it’s a beautiful kind of ache to carry.

— Ivy