In the middle of the night, it was nearly impossible to tell if the train was still moving.
Maybe it was our exhaustion or possibly it was the overpowering darkness out the window that held us still, but as we sat in the dimly lit compartment, I had a sneaky suspicion we were stuck in time. After two weeks of traveling, we had finally made it somewhere between the border of Italy and Switzerland. The only thing we knew was that sometime in the morning we would make it to Lausanne.
As we hung there, frozen in space and who knows what else, she pulled the orange from her bag and leaned close to me as she began to peel it. The window was still open, the remnants of her cigarette lingering in the air as I watched her fingers dig into the soft flesh of the fruit. Someone had given it to us in Italy. Possibly it was her one-night stand, although I didn’t have the nerve to ask.
Once the thick pith was removed, she switched seats until her body pressed against mine. I watched as she pulled the segments apart in her soft hands and I swore I had never seen the color red before that moment. When she raised one to my lips, I ate it without thought.
She ate the next before placing the fruit on the small ledge beneath the window and swinging her leg over me until she sat on my lap her mouth inches from my own. I could taste the sweet raspberry tang of the orange on my lips, and I could smell it on her breath.
“They say that if you share a blood orange on a train that you have to make love.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think I read it somewhere,” she said, tugging up her dress until I could see the bright white of her underwear against the grey of my pants. She undid my zipper with silent fingers, and I reminded myself not to ask serious questions. Questions always sent her away.
“And what would happen if we didn’t?” I teased, my hands running up the back of her thighs to cup her ass. My fingers dug into her skin as she hovered above me, her lips brushing mine only in theory.
“I suspect something terrible.”
I was hard in her hand as she breathed against my neck and for the first time all night I felt the train move, lurching to one side and then the other as we wound our way through the mountains. When I pushed the fabric to one side I could barely make out the blonde hairs the covered hid her from me.
She closed her eyes as she shifted this way and that, rubbing me against her skin as she struggled to find the right angle. I couldn’t look away, but neither could I help her as our bodies ached to connect without accomplishing the task.
It was only when I slid my hands under her shirt, tearing the buttons open until her chest pressed against me as my fingers encircled her throat that we finally acquiesced to the demands of the blood orange.
Finally, inside her, I kissed her chin as I held her tightly, wondering why we had never done this before and if we would ever do it again. She didn’t open her eyes as we fucked, and no matter how many times I kissed her cheek or her lips her mouth remained shut. There were sighs of lust and moans of want, but in the darkened car I had to wonder if we knew each other at all.
It must have been twenty minutes into our slow and mindless joining that she arched her back and opened her eyes for the first time since we began. Looking about with a nearly feral groan she gripped the fruit from the ledge, squeezing it tightly in her hand until the juice dripped down her wrist.
I felt her clench around me as she pushed the now mess of blood colored flesh into my waiting mouth. Biting into it, the sweetness returned all at once, and I was no longer human at all. I bit again, tearing into it without regard for how one usually eats an orange and her fingers trailed the bits across my lips.
It was only when she dropped the remains of our sacrament that she kissed me.
As I thrust inside her and as she clenched around me, we kissed and bit another like animals in the dark. It’s possible that I came. It’s possible she did too. But all I remember is the feeling of her fingers grazing my cheek, the motion of the quickening train, my hands pulling her to me as if to consume her, and the desperately sweet flavor of the blood orange as we kissed for the very first time.
I awoke to a sharp light shining through the window and a burst of cold air and smoke from her cigarette. Sitting across from her, her skirt and her blouse were perfect. And resting gently on the side table was a perfectly round un-eaten piece of fruit.