Ties That Bind

What separates one certain face, one certain voice from all those encountered in several lifetimes and launches them to a special place in the heart? Is it a simple matter of features...the line of the throat, chin and cheeks...the arch of mouth...the angle of the eyes? That is perhaps the first step, the one that we call chemistry, that sets all that is to follow into motion. I have been drawn to many over the years - some for their incandescent beauty; some for the imperfections that find harmony in my soul; some for their simplicity; some for reasons I would be hard pressed to explain.

I can recall countless smiles cast in my direction - everything from the shy greeting of a girl in the first bloom of youth to the brash invitation of a jaded nymph to the tempting pout of a flouted and crossed lover. I close my eyes and count the many others that watched me surreptitiously or with brazen and wanton lust...that flirted...that accused...that begged for something beyond the ordinary from this all too fickle heart. And I have heard all the conversations spoken in the dark, in those discreet and intimate moments before dawn stretches its lethargy through my limbs and threatens to bury me in some beautiful stranger's arms. I have had countless secrets confessed to me,or plucked without permission when I was too impatient to wait. I have tasted an eternity of protestations of affection..or deep abiding love...and hung on the thread of their intentions with a need so acute it threatened to be my undoing. I have known the bitter beauty of disdain, rejection, loathing, fear, and found them all a single resounding note of my inadequacies and flaws.

There have been moments when the parade of "almosts" and "not quites" and near misses threatened to overwhelm me. Many have been my own fault. I am a demanding lover, no doubt about it. I operate from selfish motives more often than not...and my penchant for double standards is the stuff of legends. I am mercurial - quick silver that runs through your veins as a taste of ice one minute...a hot and quick slap to the senses the next. Sweet words flow from this tongue like warm summer honey...and I will wrap my victim so lovingly in them that the trap is never seen. I am the rebel dream in leather that slides through society like a wicked and delicious lie - the beautiful monster that drapes her black wings around a halo of steel and barbed wire. I had reached a point where my myths threatened to consume me...to become me, expertly performed for the audience that claimed my heart - and each of those faces craved nothing more...they all but demanded it.

My body count of lovers, of easy and willing flesh...or of those who played the dangerous game of refusal, tempting me beyond the breaking point is legion. The number of limbs that have wrapped around me...the flawless skin that has warmed my own...the sweet friction my tongue has lapped and savored...the swagger of hips that has pressed my own in the sharp cry of midnight when sin is bartered and stolen is the litany of one who has loved too well. I have felt the fearless heat of matrons searching for pleasure never tasted from husbands...and the timid innocence of maids begging to be torn and twisted into something ripe and feral. And yet each time after passion slowed and cooled our blood, something always seemed strangely out of kilter as if a small piece of the world had gone missing or I had been found wanting...lacking.

Your eyes were the first to raise a question to my own...your smile was a challenge...your voice one that brooked no games, only the truth in whatever form it might take. You wanted no disguises...you craved no masquerade...and you made it abundantly clear that impressing you was going to require more than parlor tricks and romantic sleight of hand. You had a way of cutting to the quick like a surgeon...and knowing at just what point to capitulate...and make me believe it was my idea. You demanded my best..and my unrehearsed worst...and settled for nothing less. You took my flaws with an open heart..bore their rude brunt and fine-tuned them into a voice I did not know I possessed. I brought you the complex and frustrating...you recreated serenity and simplicity. And you wove this tapestry of me...of us...with a passion that matched my own. The ties that bind are eternal...