The Forbidden Fruit...
The below posting is a little romantic musing I had one night while listening to a song. I enjoy writing about things spontaneously… just getting an idea and going with it, not really knowing where it will end up. I am quite a sensual person – smells and tastes evoke memories in me very easily and I try to incorporate that in the things I write. Normally when I write, I get a fragmented idea – some part in the middle or a really good ending, but in this case, the first line of the piece was literally the first line that came into my head. I liked the wordplay, so I went with it. Afterwards, I thought it could make a really good novel — but then I decided to go with my first instinct (my mother always says to trust my first instincts) and leave it as it is. I hope you like it.
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The first bite of the forbidden fruit tasted like cherry.
I had often imagined that first, succulent kiss, in the long, sleepless hours between dusk and dawn. I had thought coffee, perhaps – lingering on his tongue, laced with the sweet subtly of two sugars. Or maybe mint, the peppery scent of which had sometimes fanned across my cheeks when he leaned too close. Or, if the first, inevitable taste of the fruit came after a night of reckless abandon, possibly his kiss would be flavoured with the unique zest of aniseed, after three or four Sambuca shots.
As his lips touched mine, with the tentative delay of someone who was either wrestling with their conscience, or desperate to savour every measurable unit of time, I realised I had never guessed cherries.
I knew I would forever more associate the scent with him, and the illicit moment when we stood in the drizzly, January rain at three in the morning. I would forever hear the reverberating thud of the nightclub music, pulsing along the street from the open doors. I would feel the rhythm of techno music in my chest, beating in tandem with my reckless heart.
I would always be able to conjure the glint of conflict in his eyes, as he grappled with the insistent needle of doubt. We two were not meant to be a grand romance, but a fleeting occurrence one semi-drunken night on a rain-slicked street. Our moment was not meant for the observation deck of the Empire State Building, on beneath the epic shadow of the Eiffel Tower. As his eyes searched mine, turbulent with desperation, I knew that he understood this – and that knowing we could never be anything more made the moment a necessity.
When he kissed me, our bodies were inches apart, so afraid were we that touching would break the spell – that months spent imagining this moment into reality would be for nothing, as the true repercussions shattered the delicate chemistry holding us together. The sweet taste of cherries, then, made me kiss him deeper, to savour the essence on my tongue – to memorise it with the awareness that it would never happen again.
My knuckles hurt with the effort of clenching my fists, so that the urge to touch his prickly cheeks, or sink my fingers into the midnight strands of his hair, would not become victorious in the game my conscience was playing. This man was not mine – not mine to kiss and definitely not mine to touch. Despite the possession of our mouths, I reconciled my integrity by convincing myself that if I didn’t touch him, we had not trespassed into forbidden territory.
Then, when his fingers slid along the back of my neck, into the rain-soaked tendrils of my hair, the fraying cord of my restraint snapped under the weight of my yearning. Our bodies crashed together – my arms around him, his around me, binding us in a cocoon with a rampant vortex of lust that was rapidly spinning out of control.
I wanted to believe it was the tequila coursing through my veins, mixed with a heady dose of adrenaline, but I knew it would not have mattered; sober or drunk, I would have grasped at this moment every single time. In fact, it was a miracle that it had taken eight whole months to get here. I had been in too deep the first moment he had made some innuendo, and looked at me with eyes that could see into the darkest, most forbidden part of my mind. Eyes that could recognise the truth I had tried so hard to deny: that I wanted him more than I had wanted anyone or anything in all my life.
All too soon, the moment ended and I began to process every minute detail of the seconds just past. I heightened every one of my senses, absorbing each with the precision of a forensic detective trawling a crime scene.
I knew I would miss nothing, and when I climbed into my bed, alone and cold from the rain, I would lie in the darkness and replay our kiss – over and over until exhaustion claimed me.
When I woke up, I would want him again and knowing he could never be mine would create a void – a deep, empty, bottomless vacuum of despair – and I would wish I could forget every detail I had tried so very hard to remember.
I’m excited about a new project I have started working on. I remember thinking about this concept some eight or nine years ago, but now seems like a good time to write it – and the ideas have been coming thick and fast, which is always a good thing! My plan is to write a collection of short-ish stories each set in a different city across the world with the hero in each being from that specific city. My current WIP has taken me all the way to Paris – I’m thinking hot Frenchman…. I’m thinking Olivier Martinez a-la Unfaithful… helll-ooo. 
