The alarm clock woke me, but I pretended that it was her kisses.

“Stay,” she pleaded through a smile. A whisper in my ear so intoxicating that it felt like some unknowable incantation.

Her lips were slow and gentle on the back of my neck as her fingers ran through my hair. A most tempting bribe.

I groaned through a closed mouth while one hand squeezed my shoulder, and she worked her fingers down my back with the other, muscles tightening only to soften at her touch. Ropes of hard-packed tissue made docile by her hands.

“Don’t go,” she sleepily laughed, wrapping her legs around my hips, her torso warmly pressing into my back. The sheets were safe, soft, and warm, everything that the outside world was not. The room was dark and cool, but our bodies radiated a defiant heat against it. The sun had only just begun to cast a bluish-gray across the sky.

I groaned again as the negotiations escalated. I kissed one of the hands that were now around my shoulders, my lips working down the fingers of my most enticing jailer. I could feel her mouth curl into a smile against my shoulder blades.

She began singing into my ear between those slow, soft kisses, and she nearly won the argument, but I would not be the same man she begged to stay if I did so.

I regretfully began to peel her legs off of me. “Nononono…” she giggled as her nails covetously scrapped around my shoulders. I turned and grabbed one of those hands, painfully sliding away until we were connected just by two hooked fingers. I leaned in to kiss her knuckle as we softly stared at one another.

I turned to leave but was stopped at the door one last time, “hurry back.” I approached the foot of the bed and could see the glow of hope in her eyes. Had her campaign been successful? No such luck. I knelt and kissed the top of her purple-clad foot firmly. A promise with no words.

I finally opened the door to no further resistance. The madness of the outside world roared in my face, but I was armored against it now. I plunged into the breach without hesitation, for I had orders to hurry back.