by Bourne, Lena
He gasps and groans at the same time as my hand closes around his thick, hard cock, which is just as hard yet soft as the rest of him. And just as perfect. I kneel back down, not breaking eye contact with him as I taste it, tentatively at first, with just the edges of my lips, drawing another groan from deep in his chest. The sound reminds me of booming thunder, heralding a storm that I don’t think either of us will survive intact. I don’t want to survive it intact. I want the cobwebs and heavy fog that’s kept me down all these years to flee before this storm, dissipate and disappear forever, never to return. And I think this coming storm has the power to make that wish come true.
I take the head of his cock between my lips and moan as the fullness of his taste enters every last inch of me. I lick and suck on his cock, eliciting more gasps and groans, adding some moans of my own to the mix when I can. The world disappears again as I focus all my attention on giving him this pleasure. I barely feel the flames on my back, or his hand that’s a fist in my hair now. His taste and his hardness, his groans of pleasure, are all there is, and I feel lighter than air again, yet grounded in the moment as I’ve never been before.
I could do this for hours, but I need us joined in more than taste and touch, moan and groan.
With a final lick, I release his cock, watch his expression of slight shock and disappointment change to eager anticipation, as I pull on his arm and tell him to lie down. His grin widens even more once I straddle his lap and smile at him.
His slick cock is pulsing against my clit, the vibrations it’s causing rippling all the way to my chest and into my heart.
“It’s all you,” he says by which I’m sure he means that I’m taking too long getting us to the next step.
I take too much of his big cock too fast. It opens me in a dizzying mixture of pleasure and pain, eliciting a sigh that’s almost a scream from deep within me.
A few moans later, the pleasure wins out, like I knew it would. I slide up and down on his cock slowly, my arms gripping his shoulders for support and comfort, our eyes locked just as seamlessly as our bodies are. His eyes are soft with the pleasure we’re sharing, yet the fire burning in them is clear, unwavering and beautiful, calling me forward, giving meaning to the rhythmic gusts of pleasure his cock inside me is causing.
I lean down and kiss him, moan against his lips as he returns it and bucks his cock deeper into me at the same time. In this moment we’re joined as perfectly and seamlessly as any two people can be-in mind, body, soul, and pleasure. His breath is mine, as is his heartbeat, and I’m returning it all in kind. His cock is hitting some center of pleasure deep within me that no one else, not even me, has ever found before, but he’s doing it expertly like he’s always known exactly where it was.
Soon I can no longer fight the flames of pure pleasure our joining is stoking up inside me. They grow higher and higher, become a wall in my mind and my body, searing, devastating, yet gorgeous, inviting, all I ever wanted. I step into the flames, become one of the gorgeous, unique shapes they create. Yet I remain whole, unharmed, frozen in a moment of pleasure I never imagined possible.
But I’ll be reborn from this inferno, stronger and more beautiful than I was before, of that I have no doubt.
11
Anne
We spent the day in bed. Had breakfast there and lunch too. Lying side by side with our legs and arms and lips entwined, feeding each other with more than just food. Now, as we make dinner together, a part of my mind is still floating in that softness, that carefree fog, we created for ourselves, where no thought, but how to give each other even more pleasure can enter. The sky outside is thickening with the approaching night, the sweet scent of redwoods, grass and summer flowers that bloom in the evening is mixing with the smell of the stew we’re cooking, and the bread that’s almost done baking in the oven.
It’s the perfect end to a perfect day. The perfect start to a new life. The perfect reminder of the happiness that was and can be again.
“Hey, do you have any pictures from Sunnyvale?” I ask with a wide smile on my lips, which fades when faced with the stony expression on his face, and his silence.
“Only, I left all my pictures in Seattle,” I add more quietly, finishing my thought, while unsure whether I should at all.
He stays silent, the fire that I’ve grown so used to seeing in his eyes sputtering out and dying.
I busy myself with tossing the last of the chopped vegetables into the simmering pot, so I won’t have to see the last of the flames go out. I couldn’t handle that.
“I might, in one of the boxes upstairs,” he says finally, his voice just as stony as the rest of him is right now. “But why do you want to look at those?”
Why do you want to open that wound? That’s what he’s actually asking. But looking at old pictures and remembering doesn’t need to be sad. I stop stirring the pot and take hold of his hand, wrap it in both of mine.
“It’s been a long time since I could handle the memory of who I was before my entire life changed and things started to go downhill fast,” I say. “But I’m ready now to see the girl I used to be. The happy one.”
He smiles a very faint little smile, takes his hand away, but grabs mine right after and leads me to the table where he sits me down in his lap.
“The past is gone,” he says once I’m firmly ensconced in his arms. “No use dredging it up.”
I feel softer than air, and the world is just as perfect as it was a few moments ago, but the firmness in his voice is driving a wedge right through all that.
He kept the past in his life. Sure, he sealed it away into boxes and let years and years worth of dust bury it, but it’s still there. So I don’t think he means that.
“We wouldn’t be dredging up the past,” I whisper. “We’d be remembering the good times.”
“The good times are what we’ve had these last couple of days,” he says with a chuckle that’s much too strained to be believably happy.
He leans in to kiss me, but I pull away after the first sweet peck.
“Yes, I agree. Being here with you has been like a dream I haven’t dared dream in a very long time,” I say, because it’s important for him to know that. “If it weren’t for you, who knows where I’d be right now. Probably locked up in Benji’s basement.”
I shudder as I say his name, and Matt stiffens beneath me. It’s the first time I’ve mentioned my husband in days.
“I lost myself since I left home,” I plow on, ignoring the sour taste Benji’s name left in my mouth. “That’s why I’d like to look at the pictures, to remember.”
“I don’t like remembering,” he says, and despite the quiet softness in his voice, I can hear the hard no to my request. And the apology. He can give me so much else, but he can’t give me this.
“My brother’s death hit you hard, didn’t it?” I ask quietly, and he stiffens even more.
“It’s not just that. It’s everything that happened afterwards too,” he says curtly. “Living in the moment, that’s the key to a good life.”
I open my mouth to contradict him some more, but he chuckles. “Especially if they’re moments spent with you.”
He sounds much happier now, and leans in to kiss me right after. This time I let him. The stew smells on the verge of getting burned before I finally break away to serve it.
He’s helped me turn the nightmare that was Benji into a bad memory. And I wish I could turn his bad memories into something he can face, but tonight’s not that night. Just by mentioning it, I’ve caused a dark crack to appear in the perfectness that’s been this day. And I don’t want it to get any wider.
* * *
He left the kitchen saying we need more wood right after we finished dinner. But that’s not what he went to get. He’s upstairs, making a lot of noise.
“Here,” he says as he reenters the kitchen and dumps a heavy box onto the table, stirring up a cloud of dust. “I think that’s all of it from Sunnyvale.”
His voice is mechani
cal, robot-like.
“We don’t have to open it,” I say, setting the plate I’ve been drying down on the counter along with the rag.
“I won’t,” he says and grins. “But you can, if you want to. I’m not gonna stop you.”
If his kisses and caresses, and the subtle care he shows for me in everything he does, weren’t telling enough, I now no longer have any doubt that he truly, genuinely cares about me. Not the idea of me. Not who I could be. But me. Anne. The woman I was and am.
“Thank you,” I whisper, stand on my tiptoes and kiss him lightly. I can taste dust on his lips, but that fades as soon as he deepens our kiss and shows me the true depth of his devotion to me.
He lets me go and nods at the box, looking at me questioningly.
“Not right now,” I say and laugh. “There’ll be time enough later. Right now, I want to finish off this perfect day with the perfect evening and night.”
He grins. “Good idea.”
Then he scoops me into his arm so suddenly and expertly, I shriek in surprise as the ground disappears from beneath my feet. But he is the ground beneath my feet and all the support I’ll ever need. I have nothing to worry about in his arms.
12
Anne
It’s been a week. A week of nothing but pleasant conversation and pleasure-filled nights. We still haven’t touched on anything serious. I even put the box with the photos from Sunnyvale back in the spare room unopened. We’ll open it together, when we’re both ready to do it. He’s clearly not ready yet.
For now, it’s enough that we keep enjoying each other’s presence in the moment, unhindered and unburdened by anything that happened before. No baggage, no bad memories, nothing anchoring us in the past and preventing us from sailing forward. It’s a beautiful thought, but there are things tying us back. Tying me back. And even though I’m no longer the woman I was, I still know Matt and me spent these last couple of weeks in a bubble. A soft, healing, beautiful and perfect bubble, but all bubbles burst.
I’ve been systematically cleaning the cabin for a couple of days now, airing out all the pillows and blankets, and even his clothes, which got most of the moldy smell out. He’s been doing odd jobs around the cabin, hammering nails, painting the railing on the porch, chopping wood, humming and whistling to himself, happy and carefree. The way we’ve settled into this domestic routine so effortlessly would fool anyone into thinking that we’ve been living here together for a very long time. But I know that’s just part of the bubble. One of the better parts, and the one that makes me think this is meant to be.
But all bubbles burst.
And the harder I try to push that thought away, the harder it resists. It keeps popping into my mind when I least want it to, sometimes even when we’re kissing, even when we’re making love. Even now, as I stir the glass of lemonade I made for him. He’s chopping wood, sweat glistening on his bare, perfect back.
“Here, I brought you a drink,” I say and hand it to him.
He grins and drives the axe into the log he’s using as the chopping block with a movement so perfectly manly and so practiced it sends a jolt right through my pussy.
Who cares about bubbles? He’s all man, and he’s all mine and I want him all the time, from the moment I wake up until I pass out at night.
“Maybe we could go into town later,” I say anyway. “I need to wash my clothes, and I could really use a few things from the drugstore.”
Until now, it’s only been him going into town, and even that just to get food. He never asked if I wanted to come along, and I didn’t either.
He drinks half the glass of lemonade, eyeing me through narrowed eyes.
“Not sure that’s such a great idea,” he says, his eyes still suspicious slits. “The cops are looking for you, and…”
His voice trails off like he’s not sure what other arguments against it to voice. There is only one argument: Let’s keep the bubble going for as long as we can. I want that too. But Benji won’t go away. The bogus charge he has on me won’t either. And eventually Matt will have to go back to his real life too.
I don’t know what he does now, though I know most of what he did in the past, as a field doctor and later, in military hospitals in Rome and Washington. His present life is as much a mystery as it was on the day we met. And I no longer want it to be. I want this bubble we created to be our future, but it will need to burst first. That much I know.
“I’ll have to deal with all that one day,” I say. “I can’t just stay hidden up here forever.”
That’s the first step in us creating a life together. That I also know. But I don’t say it. Mostly because I don’t know how to begin explaining about Benji. Even to myself.
“You sure about that?” he asks with another very enticing grin. “I like our arrangement very much.”
“Me too,” I say and take another step towards him in clear invitation for him to hold me. Which he does without needing more prodding than that. He kisses me, his lemon scented lips offering me refreshment too, and so much more.
“Fine, if that’s what you want,” he says and releases me. “Get ready.”
I kinda want to take my request back and just stay here another night, hiding from the world with him, kissing and making love and talking by firelight.
But the only way we can make this perfect bubble of ours real is to stop hiding it. That’s another thing I know.
* * *
We took my clothes to the single laundromat in town, joked around while we waited for the wash cycle to complete, since neither of us has used one of these places in ages. For me it was in nursing school, when I lived in a tiny one-room apartment right above one back in Seattle.
“It was a cheap kind of place,” I conclude telling him the story. “But at least it always smelled like clean laundry.”
“I bet,” he says and chuckles. “So tell me, how many fights did you see break out over who got there first?”
“More than I can count,” I say. “One time an old lady, who could barely walk threw an armful of some guy’s clothes right into the street. I saw them arguing from my window, him all red in the face from trying not to hurt her, and she yelling and gesturing like she was in her prime. I managed to break them up, helped the guy pick up his stuff and calmed her down enough to apologize. All I kept thinking was, ‘I hope I’m that feisty when I get to her age.’ She was at least eighty. And now, I actually might live to be that old.”
That last sentence I spoke came out on it’s own, but it’s the total truth. The silence that follows is far from carefree and fun, but it’s not sad either. And that’s pure understanding and compassion in his eyes as he looks deep into mine. It’s like he can see the whole scene I just described and all the crap I went through with Benji, which is mostly what I’m seeing right now. Those memories have lost a lot of their edge over the last week, but they’re still plenty sharp. Especially when they blindside me like they just did.
“You’re quite the little warrior, aren’t you?” he asks.
“I used to be, yeah,” I say quietly. “Just not when it came to my own life.”
The understanding in his eyes is suddenly clouded by a very dark shadow.
“Your clothes are done,” he says hoarsely, then clears his throat. “Let’s put them in the dryer and go to the drugstore.”
It’s an abrupt end to a conversation that could take a week in itself, and one he’s clearly not interested in having.
We haven’t talked about any hard things, not even when we speak of my brother Billy. We just keep talking about the good times as though none of the bad is worth mentioning. It’s not. But the bad must be cleared up. Or at least faced. It’s the only way to move forward.
That’s the gist of the advice I’ve given to countless young women, and some men too—victims of abuse, or poverty, or being abandoned. The bad must be dealt with, so it can be put to rest.
I made the mistake of ignoring the bad with Benji and it could’ve—would’ve�
�cost me my life had I not woken up in time. So I know you can’t build anything solid by ignoring the corrosive things from your past. They’ll just eat away at the foundation, and come back to haunt you eventually.
But does he even want anything more than a fun couple of weeks with me?
I’m suddenly very afraid the answer might be no. Maybe that’s the real reason he’d prefer to just keep hiding from all the problems standing in our way.
* * *
Doc
She’s been trying to turn the conversation to her husband all afternoon, and I think I’m getting too obvious by always changing the subject. But this last week has been all about finding everything I ever fucking wanted—finding something I didn’t even know I was looking for—that I’m just not ready to talk about the reason we found each other in the first place. The reason that might still end up tearing us apart forever, one way or another.
Maybe she just wants to talk about it. Maybe she just needs me to listen. But maybe she wants to talk about going back to him. I can’t hear that.
“Doc? Doc, is that you?” Roxie calls from across the aisle where I’m browsing for batteries and such, while Anne is picking out whatever she needs on the other side of the store.
I turn to greet her. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“I haven’t seen you in awhile,” Roxie says as she comes closer. “Is everything alright?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I ask with the widest smile I can manage after just thinking about the bastard that hurt Anne. “How’s everything with you?”
“Hudson’s been coughing and he’s running a bit of a fever,” she says. “I came to pick up some stuff for him.”
“I have stuff for him in my surgery,” I say, feeling a little guilty for not checking in at Sanctuary at all this past week. I hope all her son has is a common cold.