Facial

He kisses me,
desire a thing growing
between us. When he pulls my hair
I fight like a fury,
his neck in my elbow’s crook.
He pulls my hair, pulls me close
he kisses me.

Detached and floating
I watch myself
growing wet between my
thighs, his fingers
spreading flowers
along my skin that blossom,
fragrance of me everywhere.

I want him from this corner
where I hide my heart
but he is kissing me now
and he never asks me
but I sink to my knees
and oh
he is hard in my mouth
and his scent
draws me deeper
and he tastes clean and warm.

He says, Oh, exhales,
I lean back and see
his pleasure, pearls
in the air that touch my skin.

When I rise, his eyes burn,
but distant, glazed,
looking for me.
I am here, glistening
with his passion
on my face, pearls
upon my lips
in the half-light,
and turning away,
the body he just
entered,
where he still resides,
only to write this poem
while behind me he breathes
and watches
and waits
for me.

Too Tired To Flirt

She looks hot.

She always does to me.

But even I have to admit we’re just too tired to flirt tonight. Too tired to read another chapter. Barely awake enough to write this post.

She’s still beautiful, but we’re in that distant land where tired people go, when they think about bed and little else.

She’s just pulled back the sheets, and swung her smooth legs into the bed, pushed her books to the floor, and smiled at me, that smile that says, “Sleep is a deep pleasure and a little too rare lately.”

Yeah, baby. Me too.

I’m going to crawl in bed next to her.

I’m going to kiss her on the top of her head, breathe in her scent, put one arm around her shoulders.

Then we’ll sleep, and the house will be filled with the sounds of our dreams, and we’ll wake up maybe a little more whole.

I’m lucky.

When I wake, she’ll be there, and the sun will be in her hair, and she’ll be sleepy.

She’ll be mine. That’s all I need.

And a little sleep.

Hope & Time

I’m writing this on my laptop. I’m at a table not far away from where Hope and Julie are chatting. We met friends at this restaurant and broke into little groups. The two of them have things to talk about, as Julie’s boyfriend has been staying with us. There’s girl-talk that needs to take place.

They don’t look like mother-and-daughter in that way that suggests boredom, resentments, and shame. They look like friends at times, like a young aunt and her niece. But they are both wise, passionate, ageless.

Julie’s 18 now, slim and attractive: she and Hope are easily the most beautiful, self-possessed and therefore sexy women in the room. She doesn’t look like Hope did at that age. But she’s got the same eyes. They’re bright and alive and laughing and curious.

She’s like Hope that way. Men think that she’s looking for them: a couple of guys earlier were eying them, measuring their chances, maybe were put off by the unpredictable dynamics of a thirty-something with a teenager.

Mating rituals: what can you do.

But she’s really looking for something a lot deeper. She’s letting her curiosity loose.

As a father I want to put Julie in a time capsule. She’s always been wild and independent, never the frilly, clingy daddy’s girl. She loves me out of her own resources, making up her love for me like she does everything, like an artist trying new things on the canvas, erasing things, beginning again.

Hope’s in love with her. I can see in her eyes the sharp, happy-sad sparkle of complicated emotions, the desire to be Julie’s forever-friend, to warn her against things that will hurt her, to let her make mistakes. Hope’s told me, “I have to be careful. I always want to live my youth through her again.” But Hope’s better in her thirties than she ever was, and the mistakes just make her more herself. And she knows it, and she lets Julie find her own way, gives advice when she’s asked for it. Right now, she’s listening, and I’m not sure she’s not got a tear forming in her eyes for the moments she’s sharing with our daughter that won’t come again and will disappear eventually into time.

These Irish girls. So passionate. So beautiful. So willful and stubborn and insane.

We’ve wished Julie had gotten Hope’s red hair. But that didn’t happen: she’s dirty-blond, long legged, and right now leaning towards my wife and whispering something that makes them both blush a little. Hope gives a quick glance at me, smiles maybe a little sadly, and I know that tonight I’ll hold her and she’ll tell me what was said, and Julie will know she will tell me, and Julie will tuck away into her heart some more evidence that love between people is physical, open, as wild as she is.

Maybe Hope and I will make love, caught up in that sad vertigo that comes from seeing things change. Maybe we’ll just fall asleep, wrapped in time as if it were a blanket.

We’ll get older. Hope will remain beautiful. I’m not sure what I’ll become. Julie will step into our places, and remember us, two people who found happiness for a little while in a life that doesn’t promise any such thing.

On Giving and Being Used

Hope and I have spent a lot of years struggling through the usual shit that couples have to deal with, figuring out how to communicate, how to fight fair, how to choose battles without being patronizing… the whole array of boring relational skills that are like arithmetic to an engineer and make the building of bridges possible.

One of the things we’ve both figured out is the difference between giving and using.

Sometimes you just need to fuck. Let’s just be honest.

This is Hope’s week for it. I’ve got some grading to do, nothing I can’t shuffle around my schedule. It keeps me up late, keeps me busy, but if Hope needs me, I’m there.

She, on the other hand, is swamped. As a graduate student, mother, owner of a small business, she’s got more than enough on her plate. But she’s deep in research just now, and against the deadlines.

So tonight she’s locked in her study, growing gradually more frustrated. I help the kids with homework, play guitar with our son for a bit, watch a basketball game with our daughter Julie, do a little Mario Kart (yes, I’m avoiding grading my papers… what’s your point?).

Around the time that the kids are wandering off to read and get ready for bed, Hope appears in the doorway. She’s dressed in her pajama shirt, bare legs, anklet that’s her constant companion in moments of stress. She’s got a strange look in her eyes, half wild-eyed research martyr, half hungry.

She motions to me. I follow her into the study.

The door shuts behind me, and she is in my arms, her lips warm against mine.

“I need life,” she says in a low growl. “I feel…”

There’s no need to explain.

I lift her, place her on her desk, stand between her thighs and kiss her. She devours my kisses, hungry, needy.

I love taking off her panties when she’s like this. She lifts her ass and they slip down her legs, off her ankles, to the floor.

I unzip my pants. Her fingers are frantic on my buttons.

“I just need…” she whispers, her voice shaky with sex, with this contest she is having between feeling trapped and feeling alive.

I kiss her between the words.

“I just need to be fucked,” she manages to get out. “Do you mind?”

The evidence of my not minding is firm between her thighs. I pull her from the desk, turn her around, bend her over it, my hands in her hair, gripping her. Her cheek is lying against her research, her eyes closed, oblivious to it, triumphantly shaking.

I love her urgency. I love how wet and ready she is: she is coming already on the fifth stroke.

No.

I don’t mind.

Kissing

I got this email from a reader not long ago:

If you had to say what turns you on most, what would it be?

I can’t really choose. Getting turned on is about moods. Moods change. My morning turn-on isn’t the same as my noon turn-on or my late-night turn on.

What I can tell you is what I’m thinking about tonight.

Kissing.

Jamie and I had been to see a movie last week, and we got in the car, and I swear as soon as his door closed (he always opens the door for me) it was like telepathy. We were in each others’ arms, kissing, the softest most urgent kiss. His tongue always feels to me like a promise.

And my mouth makes its own promises.

But as we made out in the car, his hands in my hair and caressing my face, I realized, what turns me on isn’t just the kissing. It’s the feeling that that’s not just his breath we’re sharing, it’s our lives and our minds.

I’ve carried his children. I’ve become familiar with every inch of his body. He loves me, and his passion is all for me, and he puts his passion into every kiss.

Baby. That turns me on.

De-Tux

I’m still happy from the party we just got back from a couple of hours ago.

A little tipsy and a little in love and very turned on.

And I was just thinking, next time I sit down with my daughter I’m going to tell her that there are many kinds of happiness a woman can have, but one of the better ones is being really, really good at undressing a man in a tuxedo.

And I’m really, really good.

The Silence (?) of Hope

Hope and I had a date last night.

Maybe some people wouldn’t find it terribly romantic to ask your wife to come to work with you, but Hope loves it.

We both have pretty lively minds, and we both love the university: there’s something about the life of the mind that we both find rich and erotic. And she likes to watch me teach. I like to listen to her wry wit and raw intelligence as she participates, becomes that most erotic of all things, an intellectual partner with me in the classroom.

My Friday night class on Renaissance poetry is a good choice. There’s a nice mixture of young, bright students and non-traditional students, people who are starting a second career or looking to counteract a midlife crisis with a little learning. (We learn around forty what it was we wished we had done better. It’s our second chance. I hate people who sneer at the “midlife crisis.” It shows they don’t know what the importance of a “crisis” really is.)

So a little before seven Hope came in and took her seat. Plaid skirt, black sweater, black boots. I wasn’t there when she walked in, but I knew the effect she had. (My T.A. one term, a nice kid named Andrew, once told me playfully but truthfully after class, “Don’t bring Hope to class. Can’t concentrate. Absolutely cannot.”)

Anyway, when I got there, she was chatting with a girl half her age named Brianna and Edward, an older gentleman (the sort who gets all courtly around my Hope) who works in one of the local industries and who decided his life would be better for having a few more sonnets in it. Hope wasn’t flirting, but she’s never exactly not flirting at the same time.

I called the class to order with a joke or two, and as I took roll, my mind drifted back one hour when Hope was seated on the desk of my library carrel, the door locked, but emphatically not sound proof. My hands were on her hips, and she was whispering in my ear.

“I’ve been working on my quiet, Doc. I think you’re gonna like this.”

Hope is not quiet. She’s not a screamer, but she doesn’t ask her body to hold back in sex.

One hand was gently stroking my hair. Between her legs, her other hand was gently playing with my cock. Mine was holding her thong, wet and still warm.

I smiled at her.

“I don’t believe you.”

She kissed me. I could taste her smile.

“Make you a deal, Doc. If I make a noise, I won’t wear panties in your class.”

Grinning, I kissed her again. I could feel my cock throbbing. The woolen skirt was bunched around her hips.

I sank to my knees.

I tasted her arousal, let my tongue play around her labia, her clitoris. She was beautifully, gloriously wet. Smooth.

Quiet. I glanced up at her. Her eyes were bright, alive, looking down at me. One hand brushed her hair out of her face. She was breathing hard. She was quiet.

It was sundown-quiet outside the door. We hadn’t much time before class, though.

I slipped a finger into her, found the rough patch of her g-spot. I massaged it with my finger while I licked my wife. One leg moved, draped over my shoulder. Her fingers were still in my hair.

She was silent.

But trembling. Hard.

When I stood up her hand slid down my body to my cock, guided me in. She was still breathing hard. But silent.

I was in her deep.

She tasted her arousal on my lips, and smiled.

In class, she glanced at me with a smile and crossed her legs. I knew my semen was drying there, up in that perfect pussy, soaking her red thong.

Which she had kept.

But it was the smile that made me think, as I reached for a thick text of Spenser, “I’m in love,” and made me sure I’d give of my best.

For her.

Again.

Reverie

During dinner with my girlfriend, who is fifteen years my junior and giddy with lust and serious with love for her own young man, my mind kept running to the university where Jamie was teaching. He’s concentrating now – explaining, instructing. And then the lips part and the smile flashes across his eyes: that moment of recognition when he’s connected with the synapses of his twenty-something pupil.

“God, I wish I were there,” I keep thinking as I fold my hands under my chin and look into Christie’s eyes. I’ve sat in J’s classes before. It turns me on. I always find myself on the edge of my seat, legs crossed, unconsciously shifting in the chair, my right leg gently rubbing up and down my left. I alternately watch him and then his students. They’re bright and beautiful: a mix of youthful energy and wit, sex and intelligence.

A thought crosses my mind.

A glance at my phone tells me that if I leave now I could be at the college seven, maybe ten, minutes after class, when he will be seated at his desk, back to the door, unaware of my presence as I slip across the floor barefooted, so as to surprise him.

“Don’t turn,” I whisper in his ear, as my right palm touches his shoulder and slides down his right arm. I lean into him. “I want you, Doc, and I wouldn’t wait.” I kiss his left earlobe, my breath hot on his cheek. My hands press firmly in and down his chest. I can tell he’s closed his eyes. My hands wander lower and then back up. I kiss his cheek, intoxicated by his scent and the feel of his rough beard on my lips.

My right foot kicks the door shut.

You’re Welcome

My eyes caught the bedside clock this morning. Almost seven.

Hope stirred a little. She’d heard it too.

Our daughter’s dog, scritching at the door. Unmistakable signs of an animal anxious to get outside.

Hope mumbled into her pillow, “Go shoot the dog. Then Julie.”

This is morning humor: Hope would no more harm the dog (whom she pretends to despise) than the daughter, who is her best friend.

I heard Julie’s very sleepy, annoyed, whispered exchange with the hound, a clatter of claws on tile, a door open and shut. The house was quiet.

The comforter came up to Hope’s ears. Her hair, I thought sleepily, is like the sun, and the flowers on the comforter are drawn to it.

No, I thought, that’s just stupid.

I could feel her body’s warmth, realized I was staring.

I keep falling in love with her, this instant of recognition. It comes most often in the evening and in the morning. Daytime is friendship time, talking and joking with one another or doing the many little dance-steps that are required to keep life in the United States from falling to pieces: bills, taxes, shopping, maintenance on the house, maintenance on the kids, basketball games and football games, medical issues, tuition, parties and meetings and of course study and work.

But in the evening when we’re facing one another over a glass of wine or over dinner, or reading in bed and talking to one another, opening that stored up kindness to each other; and then in the morning when there’s nothing but the two of us, warm in bed, I realize how lucky I am, and my body tells me so.

I reached over and put an arm around her this morning. We were both naked from last night’s sex. She felt my arm, and almost without waking any further she settled in against me, her ass against my cock, her right leg tucked around mine to hold me closer.

I just held her, breathing in the scent of her hair, the morning scent (she almost always smells clean), the warmth. Outside the window some quality in the light told me the snow is melting a little.

Her motions were so practiced, so natural: she raised her knee just a bit, and her leg pulled me closer.

Sleepy desire.

I was hard, and my cock-tip just kissed her smooth freshly-available labia. Her right hand snaked around behind her and gently caressed my neck, pulled me closer still.

We like to pause there at the labia, my tip pressing against her clitoris, hard and pressing. My arms were around her body as we lay there on our sides, one hand cupping her breast. Her breathing got a little shallow.

She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

I could feel a little trickle: she was wet, very.

We waited there, suspended.

The tiniest pressure of her finger on my neck, a little nudge from her ankle tucked into the space between my feet, and I was moving forward, slowly, savoring her wetness, her slow acceptance of my love.

I was all the way inside her. Really deep. And there we lay, not fucking, only barely awake, but coupled, one flesh, the way we were meant to be. I held her tightly and massaged her breast as gently as I could.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” I whispered back.

“You’re welcome. Very.”

Conception

Finals are over. I’m exhausted and emotional and I want to talk. Weeks of distance and travel due to my grad school studies have kept Jameson and me farther apart than we’d like.

I’ve been lying here in bed, reading, thinking, listening to the wind outside my window, my right hand dropping behind me to gently twirl the little silver heart that dangles from the slender chain around my right ankle.

Something’s been playing on the outer edges of my mind the past few months. I hear him walk into the bedroom and stop. I’m facing away from him, lying on my stomach. “God, I’m glad you’re home” I half-whisper as I roll over, and sitting up, clasp my arms around my knees. We just look at each other. I’m never sure whether I should smile reassuringly or just let my face go slack. After years of marriage, little things like that still make me uncertain, but I no longer think it matters that much. Details are sometimes less important than the big picture.

“Something’s on your mind,” he notices.

“Mm-hm.”

I rest my chin on my knees and look up at him. Suddenly it erupts out of me, and I’m not sure if I’ve decided to say it or it’s simply fluttered out of my mouth like something from Pandora’s box: “Our children are beautiful.”

Surprise maybe flickers over his eyes, but he is quiet and grave. He is listening.

My head pops up, my eyes widen and my words all come out in a rush. “It’s crazy, I know, but Jamie, lately I keep remembering when we conceived Evan and I want to do it again.”

I feel excited and nervous. Some part of me knows this is not rational and therefore I shouldn’t be doing this. But I want to say it. I know I can and he’ll hear me.

I’ve been scared he’d tell me it was the inevitable result of going back to school. That he’d analyze me and find that I was susceptible to the blush of youth and fertility of the brilliant, intelligent twenty-somethings that surround me now.

“It’s more than school, you know.” I hate it when I get defensive like this, especially when he’s not even provoked it: there’s no reason for it except my pride. “And please God, don’t say it’s a midlife crisis.” I can tell my face has that red, angry look that it gets when we fight.

But he isn’t fighting.

He’s leaning against the closet door, looking at me, waiting on me to say more and he’s looking so goddamned intent, and maybe even pleased, that I fall back onto the bed so I can say this thing without looking at him. “Do you know how sexy it was? The night we conceived Evan?”

And that seems stupid. I’m talking to this man that I know and love and who was with me, and I feel color begin to rise in my cheeks. “J. You came to me, and you touched me, and you took me, and you filled me with our child.”

Saying it makes me feel for an instant like I’m falling. Then it makes me wet.

I close my eyes. I am remembering. I am thinking of all the years of sex, all the pleasure, the talk and laughter and tears, remembering his body and mine.

And yet, there was something in this act of procreation, his gift of semen and sperm and himself, the fertile warmth of my own body radiating out and drawing him in, our orgasm together as he filled me, that made me his. (I am almost disturbed by how powerful this image is, like we are two primitive humans in a tribe and he chose me, made me his and filled me with his children, taking me night after night, suckling my breast to remind me that my breasts too are for the nourishment of our children, and leaving his scent on me and his semen, glistening on my body, his mark. It is rough, primal, patriarchal bullshit and very silly. It is also more powerful than I can say, and I am breathlessly wet.)

He crawls onto the bed (”like a predator,” I think), his hand skimming my legs and coming to rest beside my body.

I turn my head to face him. I feel an intense desire within me. (The cavegirl in me, I think absurdly, wants him to choose her, her body makes her ready, sends out her pheromones to call him.)

He doesn’t say anything at first. His eyes are just searching my face, making sure I’ve said it all. His hands are strong and firm and they know how to hold me here. His body is over me. I can’t get away, I think irrationally. There’s no way to escape. Why does this turn me on?

But with an effort I swallow down my desire. There’s one more thing to say. My tentativeness is gone.

I put my hands on his chest, push him on to his back.

I slide a leg over his body and straddle him, taking my tee off then leaning down until my hair touches his face. He loves this, the curtain my hair makes around us, shutting out the room. I am seducing him, making him want to fill me with our child. I feel a thrill when I feel his hard cock against my ass. The feminist professor I had in college sits in the back of my head as she often does, scolding me for what I am doing, for what I am about to say. But I am wiser than she ever was: I know myself. I know not only what I can be but what I am.

And I tell him who I am. My voice is calm and sure now, and, as turned on as I am, I am more clear-headed than I’ve felt in weeks.

“My pussy was meant for your cock. But my womb was meant for you, also. You were meant for many things, beautiful things. But the most beautiful thing you do is hold me hard on your cock until your cock in me is a miracle, and you give me life. You always tell me I am beautiful: what you mean is, my body is fertile for you in a way nobody else’s could ever be. The highest thing we do…”

He stops my mouth with a kiss. I’m not finished speaking. I try to pull away, but he holds my hair in his hands now. My breasts are against his chest, he can feel me wet against his thighs, and he is holding me too tightly to move, holds my ass and my hair, and I am lost.

He breaks the kiss. Beneath me he is breathing rapidly. I know he’s only kissed me and I already look freshly fucked. I can feel heat, energy, light almost, rising in my body.

I’m not sure if I’m lost in a fantasy or some mystical awareness of this moment, what it means to be joined to my husband in this fertile, intense instant.

When his cock slips into me, it isn’t like it usually happens. Normally I am ready to ride him and come immediately. Now, I suddenly rise above him. He has taken me: now he is mine. I feel my orgasm radiating from my uterus, a gathering of light that will grow as he nears his own.

It is thirty minutes later, maybe, when I finally lower my head to his, and he takes me in his arms, and, for the moment, I am sated. I can feel the silk of his semen in my body, I can feel the gathering force of life.

And it occurs to me, as I sleepily milk his cock with the muscles that nature gave me for this purpose, that all sexual pleasure is a shadow of this moment, a cry of life to be given form.

For this reason, we fuck. For this reason, I fall in love again five times before morning.

The Importance of Anklets

Jupiter and Venus are doing a pas de deux in the night sky, and they’re far and away the most sad and joyful things up there.

They get close, they seem as though they want to kiss each other, then they are forced off into their separate orbits, Jupiter swinging out so far away, Venus speeding along close to the sun.

Reminds me of me and Hope right now.

It’s the end of term, and the irony right now is that I’m the one who should be swamped with work, but she’s the one who never seems to have any time. My stuff is easy to rearrange: I can shuffle the end-of-term papers around, handle students through email (they’re not on campus anyway). There’s a lot to do, but it’s just a matter of pacing.

Hope, though… well, she’s got a schedule too, and hers is killing her.

I can always tell: it’s a tone of voice with her. She gets a little more ironic, a little more focused, a lot less easy to distract. She hates to be knocked off her rhythm when she’s managing her schedule.

That includes sex: I can send her a suggestive text, and I can tell by her reply that she’s not saying “No,” but “Not now.” It’s not a rejection of me, and (thankfully) it’s not what I’ve seen in some spouses, that horrible defensive declaration that “You’re not the boss of me.” We’re a little beyond that.

No, it’s more like the best that anybody could do: confronted with an amorous spouse, she smiles sweetly and turns back to what she’s up to. I could take it personally. But I think I shan’t.

We have a code.

It’s her silver anklet.

The one that I can feel against my cheek when her ankles are on my shoulders and I’m fucking my beautiful wife to orgasm. The one that shines in the dark when we make love and when her slender creamy legs wrap themselves around my body and draw me into her.

When she hasn’t time just now, or is noticeably short with me, she clips on the silver anklet that she knows turns me on no end. It’s her way of saying, “I haven’t forgotten you: but I can’t allow myself to be drawn into sex right now.” It gives us both some dignity. It keeps her from having to explain herself. It keeps me from guessing whether the schedule is an excuse.

It means, “As soon as may be.”

She’s on the living room floor right now, in a pajama shirt and black panties, her work spread out on the carpet in front of her.

Her legs are tucked up under her, her face a strange mixture of concentration and bemusement. I love that look, the intelligence and wit shining from her eyes, her red hair scattering the light from the lamp.

Beneath her, I catch a glint of silver.

We’ve gotten into vid-chat, Hope and I.

I’ve been mulling over why it’s been so moving to us both.

I think I know.

In the middle of the day, or when one of us is traveling, we pull up Skype and there we are. I go full-screen.

There’s her face. She’s a little pixelated, colors maybe a little distorted by bandwidth issues sometimes.

But it’s her face, and I think after the last chat, I’m able to say why it effects me this way.

“Hey, baby. You look good.”

“You too. It’s good to see you.” We saw each other a few hours ago. We’re pathetic.

There’s silence. We’re just kind of looking at each other. I love that she’s not very self-conscious. She’s wearing a black jersey, jeans. We make a few passes at conversation.

“What’s going down today?”

She wrinkles her nose, smiles. “Your son’s been a good kid. He brought home a girl. To do some dumb social studies project.”

I raise my eyebrows. I don’t want to speak for some reason. I just want to look.

“Yeah,” she says, interpreting my silence as a question. “Cutie, too. Name of Andrea. They collared the library all day.” The library is our living room, all hardwood floors and bookshelves and couch and desk. It smells of books.

“And you?” I ask. She’s always so damned cheerful. I love that.

“Oh, me… well, I’m good. Missed you terribly at eleven thirty.” We know what she means. She wanted me, wanted sex, yes, but a talk, to be held, to play, wanted her best friend, and bowed to the terrible necessity of work and The Real World.

Suddenly I know what it is I want to say.

“Do you know how you look to me? You look to me just as you do when we’re lying in bed.”

She looks a little surprised. She doesn’t smile, but her eyes tell me to go on.

So I do.

“You look like you do when we’re side by side, and you’re wearing nothing but your shirt and your panties and we’re just talking, and you reach down and you hold my cock while we just lie face to face. This is what I see: this red-golden hair falling around our eyes, wrapping us up in this curtain. Nobody else can see us. Nobody else can hear us. Your hand on me. My fingers between your thighs, this slow talk and tease we do so well.”

There’s silence. We’re just staring again.

A loud crash comes through the computer speakers.

“Oh, shit,” she says. She looks at me lingeringly for a moment. “Need to go. Don’t be late, okay?”

At dinner, she is wearing the black jersey, a plaid skirt. She looks like a New England Episcopalian housewife who loves sex and likes money. We chatter with the kids, tell jokes. Her legs are just visible to the right of the table. I love her legs. We exchange happy looks. This is us, at home, happy.

After dinner, she stands with her back to the bedroom door. The skirt, unbuttoned, falls to the floor, and she comes to my arms. We kiss.

On the bed, her legs enfold me, her tongue is warm in my mouth, and her pussy is damp in her black thong. We are face to face, eye to eye.

“Like this,” she breathes.

“Oh, Jesus, yes. Like this.”

We are side by side. When I enter her, she closes her perfect, bright eyes for a second, opens them, and then touches her lips to mine, and says, “Just like this.”

Forget / Remember: French Kiss

You’re not supposed to forget things when you’re married, when you’re in love.

The sacred little things, the conversations that first wrapped you together in a veil of mystery and confidence, shared memories, the exchange of hopes.

Of course you do forget. Small details.

The hard part maybe is that you start to forget the things you shared. You tell your lover things, and she becomes the guardian of these memories and images and hopes and fears that were once your private property. So you don’t have to remember obsessively, or even competently.

Hope lost her diary.

She sat at the kitchen table, and if she were the crying sort her tears would have been a torrent instead of the quiet diamonds glistening on her cheek.

“That book contained so much memory.” She was staring at the table, green eyes washed out, empty as she turned inwards to find what might have been there. I just listened, poured tea, stirred in lemon and sugar, passed it across to her. When you know somebody the little acts of love become something as unconscious as gravity. You’d miss it if it weren’t there. You don’t think about it when it is.

“Walking home in the rain, my jeans wet. Doug’s friend, walking next to me.” She smiles, almost shyly. “My first French kiss.” She ducks her head, laughs, wipes a tear from her nose. She blushes.

My wife blushes. My wife who loves sex, who can unselfconsciously have a conversation about literature while gracefully stroking my cock, who kisses me with the paced hunger of a true lover. Blushes.

I feel a little catch in my own throat, in love suddenly.

“I know. I’m blushing.” Then, irrelevantly, “I was twelve.”

I ask her, “Tell me about it. Each detail.” I want to hold this memory with her, to know what little girl was suddenly reawakened there at our breakfast table, what little girl is threading her way through those blushing memories as timidly as a newborn colt finding her way through a pasture of flowers.

She blushes more furiously. Her face is nearly as red as her hair.

“I can’t. Oh, god. Why can’t I say it?”

I know, but I know she doesn’t yet. Maybe there is some small privacy in our long life together, some small area where you have to admit, “We have built this life together. But there are things not even you can share with me.” In those hot blushes I see that there is a furnace near the core of this woman that I never quite will touch, because I wasn’t there in the rain with her, was not there when she had her first French kiss. But there, in the lost diary, was the truth of the matter, scrawled in the handwriting of a twelve year old girl, the importance of the thing, something nobody now will ever know.

We’ve talked about that kiss, of course: but it was a story: “His name was _____. It was at _____. It was…. nice.” Now I see that even in our intimacy, she, perhaps like me, held something back, some hint that she is mine and yet always her self.

So I ask, quietly, “What did your diary say?”

She looks dreamy, far away, her eyes still glistening with tears that are joy and grief, memory and the glittering innocence of a twelve year old girl.

Her voice is barely a whisper. She is my wife. She is twelve years old. I am a ghost, barely there.

“I love the French.”

Just that.

And I am imagining that somewhere that book lies on the side of a road, or in a ditch, washed with mud-black drain-water.

And I imagine that some boy will pick it up, wipe the rain from his glasses, turn over the pages, and fall in love with a girl that I may never know, but who grew up to be known by me. And I say a little prayer for him, that he can stand the ache of knowing so beautiful an ember that would catch flame in Hope’s blushes.

I Wish

I couldn’t sleep tonight, so I began turning digital pages. I came across something you’d written a while back. It wasn’t anything terribly important; actually I find now I can’t even remember what precisely it was — something for the discussion board — but Jamie. It turned me on. The way you talk to me, and for me, and with me — so fucking hot.

I began turning more digital pages. I saw pieces where we’d bared our souls and laughed and loved and goddamn I wanted to wake you and press my naked body against yours and whisper “Make love to me — Speak the language of the body with me.” But you were so peaceful tonight. And beautiful. And I didn’t.

I wish I had touched your face, stroked your cheek, touched the places on your body that I love so well; kissed you softly but with all the intensity gathering in my body — kisses that are my attempt to breathe you in and telegraph “I love you” and “I want to be with you forever.” But tonight it seemed right to let you dream, as dreams have been so lately absent.

Be at peace, Jameson: know that I love you and want you.

Tonight and always.

Your own

Creamy Skin & Black Panties

Hope doesn’t like to hang out in the sun. (That whooshing sound is the closing of windows from guys who like their erotic writing poolside. Sorry. We have to tell the truth, insofar as we write anything…)

She’s got fair, white skin that bruises easily and burns within minutes.

She’s determined that skin will last her into old age, too, and decided long ago that the brown but leathery skin that can manage to look good on men (with a little care) isn’t for her.

Fair enough.

So all that white skin and red hair?

Well, she looks really amazing in a loose black sweater and black panties.

And nothing else.

Which is how she looks now.

I walked into the bedroom a few minutes ago, and she was reading. Knees up, red hair hanging around her face, glasses perched adorably on the end of her nose. (Can I say I’m one of those guys who likes coming on glasses? Okay then. If you like smart girls (or at least smart-looking girls), you get it without further explanation.)

She looked over the top of her novel. She smiled at me and turned back to it.

I’ve been sitting here, writing about her, my cock hard, but my heart soft as wax sitting in the sun.

God, I want her. Reading is sacred around here: not even sex is allowed to interfere, technically. (It often does.) Now and again, she peeks up at me and catches me staring. She smiles. Is it my imagination that she parts her long legs?

Is she saying, “Hey, best friend. I know that little rush of sex in your blood makes you feel more alive. And you know what? I’m here for ya. I’m here to make you feel a little more alive”?

I’m posting this.

Then I’m asking her a question.

“Hey, lady… would you much mind if I kissed you?”

Maybe I won’t say where.

Marital Text

Hope is driving with our son, somewhere between Texarkana and St. Louis, coming back from visiting relatives.

Our texts are flying back and forth. She’s on her cell. I’m on email, which gives me the advantage.

We do this because we miss each other. We’re hungry for each other and we don’t want to say so, not quite directly. We touch one another, we sniff one another for the scent of self-disclosure, waiting until it comes.

Hope: Want you to check bit-torrents for [x}, do you mind?

Jamie: Done. Anything else?

Hope: That's it. Few hours outta Texark. Stopping for dinner soon.

Jamie: How's the drive with Evan? I swear, girl. He's a little Freudian.

Hope: LOL Maybe a little. U jealous?

Jamie: Not at all. Well, yes, that he's in the seat next to you.

Hope: Grin. He's sleeping. I'm listening to Rape of Nanking.

Jamie: Some kind of rape, surely...

Hope: Ah. We're on the same wavelength. Off and on. Variable mood.

Jamie: Same. Could go either way.

Hope: You choose. I'm driving.

Jamie: Mere matter of curiosity. If I were your driving partner, would you want my tongue or fingers on your pussy?

Hope: Okay. I'm wet now. Nice work, Doc.

Jamie: What're you wearing, angel?

Hope: Black capris. Off the shoulder sweater. I'm such a disappointment.

Jamie: Are you? When does the disappointment begin?

Hope: Fingers, then?

Jamie. Oh, yes. Fingers. In your capris. While you drive.

Hope: Fuck. I like you.

Jamie: We do seem to work well like this, yeah?

Hope: We do. Have I mentioned I want you in [A]?

Jamie: Strange town to choose. Why?

Hope: Just passed through [D]. Keep thinking about it.

Jamie: Hotel?

Hope: Jesus, Jamie. Anywhere. Do you know how much I LOVE sex with you?

Jamie: Yes. I’m in the mood to finger you while you drive for a hundred miles.

Hope: Damn you.

Jamie: And then to fuck you all night.

Hope: Better.

Jamie: I love you. You make me hard just by texting, you know that?

Hope: I’d hoped. I miss you.

Jamie: I’m hard for you. I’m keeping it for you.

Hope: Soon?

Jamie: As soon as you bring that hot perfect body within the circle of my arms.

Hope: Jamie.

Jamie: Hope?

Hope: Can I just say I like it when you say “fuck”?

Jamie: Yes, you can say that. Can I say I like it when you say, “fuck me”?

Hope: Hell. Damn. Fuck. Fuck me. Yes.

Jamie: Hey. Come home soon, huh?

Hope: As fast as this car will go. Good night, my Jamie.

Jamie: Good night, sweet love.

Odds are good that by the time you read this, Hope will be home. She doesn’t forget these conversations. She’ll have been thinking about it… for a hundred and fifty miles. That’s one reason no woman ever holds my attention for long, except Hope. She remembers. She holds on.

And I’ll bet she’ll whisper to me, “Fuck me.”

Most of all, she’ll mean it.

Meantime, angel: damn you for not being in my arms.

Damn you for not filling the space around us with the halo of your red hair and the scent of your perfume.

Damn you for not enclosing me in the circle of your legs, the magic circle that erases time.

Fuck you for not riding me right now and letting me see that transluscent erasure of time that renders you 17 years old again, fresh, almost virginal, while you ride my cock.

Bless you for coming home as fast as six cylinders will carry you.

Stay wet.

Stay ready.

Expect me.

I’m ready for you.

Days Off in England / On Not Swinging,

We haven’t talked about the spanking, really, except in light jokes about the difficulty Hope is having sitting down. Maybe it was a passing fancy of Hope’s. Maybe her (rather sore) bottom has objected to that particular kink. She’ll let me know.

In the meantime, the college library is closed for the weekend. The librarian (I’ll call her Allison) is a wonderful girl from somewhere in Yorkshire whose accent can still be detected under her carefully scrubbed speech. I reminded her yesterday that that’s almost two thousand years’ worth of history in that accent: Celts of various sorts, Angles, Saxons, Danes, all mixed and marinated by Normans. She smiles this melting smile.

She likes me and Hope, and we like her back. She offered to open the library for us on Saturday, but we told her we’d like to spend the weekend in the Midlands. We asked her to come meet us at the Perch, our favorite pub in a building that predates the European colonization of the New World, a short walk across a meadow in Binsey. She gave us the alarming news that the roof had burned off the place last May, that it was still finding its feet, and offered to meet us back at another spot to toast the Fourth of July (”But you mustn’t tell…” and then in a coy English country-girl accent, “I’m a good English girl”).

So the evening of the Fourth of July found us at a fresh pub (again, walking distance) in a light rain that threatened, came and went. The English daylight lasts longer than we’re used to, so it felt like drinking in the afternoon.

Allie was there already, young and fresh in a red sweater and pleated black skirt. (Generally speaking, English girls don’t have legs as nice as Americans, but Allie’s are, as Hope noted when she met her, “carefully designed to ensnare visiting professors.”)

She brought her brother, Evan (coincidentally the name Hope chose for our son), a good-looking, witty, and intelligent man of 25 who reads everything.

The four of us sat in a covered garden (Hope delicate on the wooden benches). A few American students were gently getting drunk on English beer in honor of American independence from England.

We were soon talking animatedly about politics, both English and American. Whether Evan collared Hope’s attention or she collared his, I couldn’t say, but I was happy to just feel the energy radiating from her that I can always feel when she’s resting her eyes on a new man, doing the complicated dance she does with her own desires, his, keeping it honest, keeping intelligence and kindness and sensuality all as close to a boil as she can.

For my part, I was more than happy to engage the brilliant and attractive young Allie and have her talk all to myself.

Hope and I don’t swing. We definitely understand the impulse: we have never been shy about talking to one another about who in our circle turns us on. But swinging takes a kind of carelessness. We could probably handle hearing, “S/he was amazing in bed,” but neither I nor Hope particularly want to fuck somebody we don’t genuinely care about. And to hear, “I really do love him / her, and am falling in love with him / her” is more than we ask our relationship to carry. We are partners, and we protect that jealously.

But Hope knows when I’m turned on by somebody else, and she tolerates it with an amused boys-will-be-boys attitude that isn’t condescension. She understands it herself, really, and she knows that to be turned on by a person is to make a connection with them, one that might enrich us as individuals, and so as a couple. And so, sitting next to her as she leaned forward towards Evan, her thigh against mine, I knew she felt it when Allie and I made our connection.

Allie’s eyes are hazel, deep and glittering. Her hair is light, and Princess-Di short. She was leaning towards me as if I had been the only man who had ever really understood her. I was listening, talking, laughing with her, and we looked into one another’s eyes a little too long, and I felt my stomach drop.

Hope felt it too, I think. But she is never judgmental. She kept Evan in her sights, this attractive younger man who, I seriously do suspect, was falling for her a little bit (because men just often do).

If Allie and I savored our emotional connection with a low-grade smoldering mutual desire just a little longer than the conversation lasted, on our way out to the car-park to put them in their little blue compact, so did Hope and Evan.

Hope and I held hands on the walk home. We didn’t have to say anything, really.

In an English accent laced with a tiny tart edge of the Yorkshire countryside, Hope said, “I think she rather fancies you, Jamie.”

In the same accent, but deeper, I said, “Aye, and I think he fancies you, Hope. P’raps foreign is jus’ sexy.”

In an accent that was, that is, pure educated American South, she said, “What is it about youth, Jamie? Why is it such a turn-on?” We walked in silence a bit, our feet making that odd wet-asphalt sound that you hear in movies. She answered her own question: “I suppose I feel age a little bit. Maybe we cannibalize them for their energy, their delight in life. Maybe we ache to give our wisdom to somebody who can handle it.”

“Would you like to take Evan under your wing? Let him cannibalize your wisdom while you cannibalize his energy?”

She grinned at me. “You know I would. And I wouldn’t. I don’t even have to ask about you and Allie.” We’ve had this conversation: I teach undergraduate women. Yes: I would love to take Allie under my wing, protect her, give her sex that’s good, that only comes from wisdom and age, and…

And gradually watch her restlessly tire of it, I suppose.

Sex is unpredictable, a strange thing.

Time though. It teaches you things.

I put my arm around her. I drew her to me.

I suppose she was doing what I was doing: balancing desire with truth.

I took the beautiful image of Allie with her skirt around her waist, panties (knickers, to you Brits) dangling from one ankle, in the locked and darkened library (why are most of my fantasies, and some of my best memories, in libraries?), seated on a research table where that very day I pored over a manuscript, legs locked around my waist, eyes closed as I fuck her, and her voice with its sexy northern accent in my ear, “Jamie… It’s so good. It’s never been so good.” Her eyes fly open in my imagination, those intense, brilliant hazel eyes, and we are connecting, Allie and I, in love. I am her mentor, her demonic lover, and she is my secret, my soror mystica, the channel for all my wisdom, the cup that receives my energies and serves them back to me enriched.

I let the image sit in my breathless mind for a few seconds with all its ego and fantastic illusion.

God, it would be good.

And then I do something I do a lot.

I open the fist of my imagination, and I let the fantasy dissipate like so much mist, smiling at it as it goes, that alarmingly possible impossibility. Hopefully, I’m a decent guy, a good lover. But I’m just Jamie. I’m nobody’s salvation.

Hope gives me my space, though I feel her body pressing against mine, familiar, kind, maybe a little wrapped in her own private thoughts of Evan turning her face to the pillow and taking her from behind.

Letting it enrich her for a few moments, letting it give her life.

Letting it go.

Later in bed, her legs locked around me as I rode her for the third time, Hope whispered to me in a voice that seemed a little ragged, “There are some things youth can’t make up for.”

Thank you, Allie. Thank you, Evan. We love you.

Something New For Hope… and Jameson

Oxford, 5:30 AM

Still jet-lagged and struggling to get my head on straight. It takes a little time for the soul to catch up to the body when you fly so far. I fell asleep too early, got up too early. Now I’m naked except for the blanket I’ve wrapped around me.

A fine rain is falling on the streets of Oxford. The guest-house we are in is quiet. Hope’s body is stretched out, practically comatose with exhaustion.

She is naked. Sheets curl around her body like a woman in a painting, clinging, shapes of typhoons in cloth.

And she said last night as she was falling asleep, “Tell them. Write it when you can.”

Alright, then.

I can write it now.

In another hour and a half I’ll shake off the sleep, get myself to the library, paw through some manuscripts. I love my work. Hope will still be here.

And her perfect, smooth ass will be hot, reddened underneath the white, cool sheets.

I’d better explain.

On the plane, we were like a couple of teenagers. We were out of New York at 6:10, night falling over the Atlantic. Planes make us both hot. She likes wearing dresses on long flights: a casual, loose sun-dress that falls just below her knees, a navy blazer. Very sexy, very chic, very casual. Very much without panties, at least after she came back from the bathroom at midnight when the lights were out and we began to kiss on the plane.

I’m sure some of our readers have snuck into the bathroom together on flights: we have not. But the blankets over our legs hid a great deal of touching, and it was after I had caressed her hair with fingers still wet from her pussy, after her second orgasm of the flight, that she leaned her head contentedly against my shoulder.

“Is it good?” I whispered to her.

She nodded and smiled the smile of a contented animal, warm and sentient and barely awake. Already the exhaustion was creeping in.

Her voice was hypnotic, sleepy.

“I like it when you take me.”

I caressed her cheek.

“You like it gentle.”

Silence.

Her next words floored me.

“Mostly.” Then another silence. Then barely audible: “Mostly.”

It was the silence before the “Mostly” that told me what she was really saying.

We’ve been together seventeen years. This was new, this hesitation over gentleness. She loves me gentle. She loves me a little rough.

I felt like I was entering a new world, and there was one thing I really had to know.

“Is this a new thing you’re up to?”

She hesitated, her eyes closed, sleepy.

She nodded ever so slightly. “New,” she murmured into my shoulder. “And old.” Another long silence. The hum of the airplane engines made it tough to hear her. I bent my ear to her lips. She nipped my earlobe, sleepily.

“Sometimes, you need to just take it a little further. Not all the time.”

“More… more forceful?”

“If you like.”

I whispered in her ear: “If you like. I love you.”

She nodded. Her eyes were closed, still, but her smile was quiet, sphinx-like, deep.

“Yeah. You do. So take care of me, will you?”

My hand was between her thighs beneath the blanket. She was warm and wet and tight.

“Hope… you know I’ll do whatever you want, if I can. But I just need to be clear…”

“I want you to spank me,” she whispered back without hesitation.

This was new. Indeed.

The travel from Heathrow to Oxford was not, as you might expect, a simmering hotbed of sexual energy.

It involved a lot of haggling over fares, a hell of a lot of fighting back sleep.

But underneath it all was this odd, strange new thing that my wife sprang on me.

We got to the University at five, were greeted by the Burser and the Warden, and installed in a little cottage that the college owns for researchers like myself. It was quiet. The door closed at seven. Hope was in my arms, shedding her blazer, her shoes kicked into the corner, barefoot, barelegged, her hands hiking up her dress, her breasts against my chest.

“I’m fuckin’ tired, Doc,” she said. “But you promised.”

“And I will,” I said, kissing her on the lips, the neck, the cheek. She likes it forceful: my hands were in her hair, holding her head still. My right hand dropped to her perfect ass. “Just one question, though, my heart… why?”

She kissed me back, her tongue slippery, hot, wet, her pelvis grinding against mine.

“I’ve just always wondered, I guess. I’m not really sure why it’s never come up before. But right now, I want it. I want to feel like you’re making me be good. Good for you. I want to be… I dunno, Doc.” Then she had her dress around her waist, and her smooth wet pussy was in my hands. “Whip my ass, Doc.”

And she was bent over the bed, and for the first time in our seventeen year marriage, I spanked her.

At first I held back. I’d read of such things, and honestly, it had never turned me on that much. But as I held my wife over my knees and the light little slaps turned into hard thwacks, and those turned into rough, burning spanking, she was wet, and she came.

She shuddered in my arms, sobbing, tears in her eyes. “D-d-d-don’t stop…” I wanted to, really. I’m not a fool, and I know the psychological labyrinth we were starting down was a strange one.

This is going to change things.

“D-d-d-d-do you have a belt?” she shuddered, her orgasm coming from nothing more than the spanking I was giving her.

I did have a belt. I refused. Her ass, so creamy and perfectly shaped, such a beautiful ass, was already red. I suspected (I suspect) when daylight comes it will show welts.

I wasn’t ready to give her more than this.

“Not this time,” I whispered, and I planted a final brutal smack across her ass before I smothered it in kisses, tonguing her hole, making her come again and again. She sobbed herself to sleep, clinging to my body, whispering, “Perfect.”

I don’t really understand yet.

She’ll tell me: she tells me everything. But her last words were, “Tell them. Write it when you can.”

So I watch her sleep there as the sun, or what we can find of the sun through the grey misty rain, lightens the world, wrapped in dreams that I have yet to hear.

But she wants you to know. I don’t know any more than you do: maybe she means to explain herself, and then maybe I’ll understand a little better. Maybe this was an experiment. Maybe it was a long-deferred confession of something she needed to say to me (and for how long?). I just don’t know.

Yet.

But I know that before night, I will be both tender and tough with her.

She promised me, as I spanked her, that she would be a good girl and suck my cock, a promise that she has yet to fulfill here in Oxford.

Missing Connections

“I don’t want to.”

My eyes flew open. I’d just been on top of him, my hands in my hair, my back arched, his hands on my hips when I was hit by a wave of emotion. It was strong and intense. I leaned forward and placed my hands on either side of him. I saw in his eyes that he was struggling too. The feeling was something old and familiar and not entirely welcome. I rolled to one side.

I felt alone. Normally I prefer to work out this emotion together because being in his arms felt a damned sight better than here beside him, feeling separated by a thousand miles.

“Will you come here?” I indicated that I wanted him to come to me, on top of me.

“I don’t want to. I’m balancing my emotions and yours and it’s too much.” Him. He said that. He’s the guy. Yes.

The sense of isolation was overwhelming. My temper flared. I sat up on the edge of our bed. “It’d be SO nice if we could coordinate our individual needs,” I began in a fit of pique.

“We have been coordinated,” he said, mostly gently yet somewhat disturbed by my tone, and he brought up a few moments from earlier in the week, coordinated moments, moments when we were, yes, emotionally together, and yet, there was Now, this moment, and it seemed to say about each one of them, “That was a disaster waiting for an excuse to happen.”

It was happening. Not looking at him, I flung myself down on the bed facing my body away from him.

Being naked in moments like that can feel like a mockery.

Then I stopped myself. This never moves us forward.

“I know. I just needed to know – feel – you loved me. I’m doing my Girl Thing.”

“I know,” he whispered.

I turned over to face him.

“I put my arm out to you a moment ago,” he said.

“I didn’t see that,” I answered as he lifted his right arm so I could fit myself to his body.

“I know.”

He began to stroke my right shoulder and arm and we talked.

Being naked in moments like that feels like being wrapped in a warm quilt.

We have long realized that we will not always be exactly what the other wants and / or needs and there are even limits to what we can do at any particular moment, given the reserves of our emotional wells. We give and give and then give out. Just like any couple.

And there we were. Loving. It seems so easy when I write about it. It seemed so easy the moment we were doing it. Thirty seconds before it seemed like it was a universe away, like I would never feel like his best friend.

We lay talking for thirty minutes. He shifted in the bed and leaned down to kiss me. His kisses felt more intimate. We’ve opened ourselves and talked about what mattered to us. He kissed me in a way that I wish every human could learn, kisses that said “We do not have to be moving towards sex to be wrapped in our sexuality. If we do not have sex tonight, I will still kiss you like this.” It was a restrained passion, restrained because we were talking, and he was listening.

And he talked back to me, and I listened.

He feels warmer in these moments. I don’t think of him as “hot” then, though my hand falls quite naturally to his cock, where it stays, where I hold him and gently keep him hard, not to tease, but because he likes it, likes being hard while I am in his arms, my pussy wet, ready, open, but not so open as my spirit. Talking. Listening. Crying.

When he entered me after that, the world just dissolved.

Connecting

Girlydigs writes about my Postcard to Hope:

“I love the way you are connected to her.”

She gives me reasons to stay that way. So many reasons it’s ridiculous.

She keeps her pussy smooth for me.

She keeps her mind alert and witty.

She keeps her legs trim and strong.

She teases me.

She keeps her sense of humor.

She loses her breath when I fuck her.

She never tells me “No.” Only “Or we can…”

Let me tell you, we were in a chat yesterday and it was absolutely disastrous: every married man or woman knows the sort of thing. We’re talking, barely communicating, half-wanting to break away, half-wanting to break through into some region of the spirit where we’re open and sure and alive to one another.

We gave up somewhere.

But as soon as she was gone, I was thinking, “God, Hope, if I had you here, it would be like two months ago when we fought, and I don’t even remember what it was about, but I remember you didn’t tuck it under the carpet of your silence and force me to guess; and you came to bed and you slipped off your skirt, and you slipped off your panties, and your body was hot against mine as I held you in the weird heat of argument where we both feel shame, guilt, and recrimination rising up in us, two bodies defenseless and naked.

Somewhere, we found the magic path, the road that leads through it, and all the things got said and your (very few) tears were hot on my chest, and I held you tight, and I gently pulled your hair until your lips were touching mine, and we just breathed on one another’s lips.

I took you face to face, and you opened up like a flower and took my cock in your pussy.

One way or another, we’ll always find our way back there, so long as you keep believing it’s worth it, so long as the alternative remains unthinkable, to live a life where lying down together is wrapped in a silence to which we both submit, and we dry up like a dead pool and a rotting tree.

That’s not us: we don’t choose that.

That’s why we fuck like a god and a goddess together.

That’s why you’ll come home to me.

That’s why, when you do, you’ll find me hard and ready for my best friend.