Just a Touch: Tactile Exercise

A while back, I realized that I had fallen into a habit. When I write, I rely on sound to describe moments. To combat my impulses, I decided to do an exercise to invoke physical touch, and what better genre to do it in than romance?

1.     Hands

In that moment, no words needed to be exchanged. I could feel everything right there in his touch. His thumb curved around my hand, and his finger slipped across mine. Like velvet sailing across a calm sea of silk, each finger found its place in my empty spaces. My heart stood still. In a big breath, my lungs deflated completely. The warmth of his palm barely grazing mine stole everything from me. My breath, my heart, my sanity.

“Don’t go,” he said. He was the softest thing in the room, but those words rang me like a bell.

2.     Wrist 

Without thinking, I threw my hand back and swung. I never even made it to his cheek. He snatched my wrist clean out of the air and locked his fist around it. I gasped, deep and sharp as he used his clutch to pull me close. Locked into his stare now, his grip softened, but only enough to ease my racing heart. Could he feel it? Steady thuds powered by adrenaline kept time in my wrist. His finger twitched over a tendon, then pressed on it firmly. I ached to know what his heart was doing in that moment. He had a steady read on my heart, and I was right where he wanted me.

3.     Forehead

Sweat dripped down my brow. I had never chased anything like that. Especially not a woman. She stood there and stared at me for a second, disbelief flooding her ocean-blue eyes before she cracked a smile. From it, a soft chuckle emerged.

“Did you just run across Florence to stop me from leaving?”

Sucking in air and huffing it out, I step toward her.

“No,” I said, cupping her cheeks in my hands, damp with sweat. She didn’t even flinch at the way I coated her in me. “I ran across Florence to beg you to stay.”

I dropped my forehead to hers. Rubbing her cheek with the pad of my thumb, I added, “I’d run the length of Italy to keep you.”

4.     Back/Shoulder Blade

My feet dangled down, ankles kicking against the cool stone wall. Strong and steady, I felt as though a single breeze could knock me off that mountain’s edge. But they sat so close to me, it was almost like they had their own gravity.

Their hands were planted behind us in that same stone as we watched the sun fall below the mountains. When there was nothing left except creeping darkness and orange streaks staining the sky, that hand came up from its place, rooted in stone, to the center of my back. Their fingertips were about as heavy as a butterfly, but the gravity persisted. Somehow, that nothing touch pulled me back from the edge.

5.     Hair

I couldn’t resist.

Bursting from my chair, I climbed across the table and into his lap. There, we crashed together for a kiss. His hands fell directly onto my hips.

But mine invaded him.

I buried my fingers deep into his hair, threading him to me. Soft and long, my fingers wrapped around his locks. Each strand did its part in hugging my knuckles. As I clenched it in my fist, he groaned. That sound alone worked to deepen our kiss and my grip on his pine-scented mane.