The Couch
His fingers brushed against hers. It was an innocent touch, a simple thing. Then why did she feel like it lasted just a moment too long? Why was his skin so warm and familiar? Easy and inexorable.
She remembered again those words that she thought that she had imagined. Words spoken from his lips, quietly like a secret.
"Are you going?"
"Yes, I have to this time." He looked down as if disappointed, but she didn't know why. Yet she did. His eyes looked like an unstable mountain on the brink of an avalanche. Chunks of snow crumbled bit by bit, and he was trying to hold back the flood. So was she. She was too weak. Please, please don't let it fall…
Their hug goodbye was just as full and easy as it always had been. Crack and crumble.
She had no intention of telling him that plans had changed. She would be staying home after all, and he would be away. Simple. The avalanche would remain dammed. Only… he knew. Like some omnipotent being, he knew. He appeared on her porch.
"I came in early and she's out of town. I can't get into the house. Can I stay here?"
No. No. NO.
"Of course." Crumble.
They watched Tv and laughed and drank. She smiled until her cheeks hurt. They moved closer and closer as the hours wore on. He nudged her with his elbow, and the sip she was taking spilled down her neck and onto her shirt.
"Shit! I'm sorry."
"Dang", she said, looking at her shirt. "This is new!" She pulled the wet V neck away from her skin, fluffing the thin white cotton. The lace of her bra was visible, just a bit.
"You missed some." With a laugh, he leaned in and licked the rivulet of wine from her neck. She shuddered. It was shocking. She had imagined what his tongue would feel like, but she didn't expect to ever feel it on her skin. A gasp escaped her lips and she pushed him away.
"Holy shit, I'm sorry", he said with his hands in the air. "It's good wine. I thought it shouldn't go to waste." She was a bit dizzy, but that seemed like a fully reasonable explanation.
"It's ok", she smiled. "It is excellent wine."
His eyes darkened, and his hand moved from hovering in the air to lightly touching her shoulder. "There's more. I'll just…"
His tongue travelled in long licks from her collar bone all the way to the corner of her mouth. Wide, wet strokes of warmth that burned and left shivers trailing behind. She held as still as a statue while her heartbeat went wild. He reached the edge of her lips and paused, looking deeply into her eyes. Every inch of her skin tingled. Her eyes were wide and expectant.
"One last drop", he whispered. His tongue licked the seam of her lips, tasting the last of the wine. Their breaths came out in a huff and mingled together. The summit of the mountain slipped, and the avalanche came thundering down. He crushed his lips to hers. Her slack mouth allowed his tongue to plunge inside and brush against her own as their lips slanted back and forth. Left and right. Tangling. Gasping.
Swept away, she found herself lying on the couch, covered completely by his warm body.
"Oh my god", he whispered, "Finally."
He kissed like a force of nature, wild and dangerous. He nudged her legs apart and settled his hips against hers, grinding and pushing. He felt like heaven and hell; like every good and bad decision in her life had led her to this moment. She threw her head back as his lips travelled the length of her neck. His hands swept underneath her skirt and hooked the edges of her lacy underwear. They came apart like tissue paper.
He pulled off his shirt, revealing a spectacular body. His shoulders were impossibly wide and his arms were thick and strong. Lost in the fog, she leaned up to nip at a tasty-looking pectoral muscle. She healed the bite with a soft kiss. His fingers dipped into her. He was amazed to find so much wetness.
"Fuck! You are perfect." He hitched her leg over his shoulder and licked her knee. "I can't stop. Please don't tell me to stop."
Her voice came in gasps. "I won't. I should, but I won't."
He lined up their bodies and plunged inside. He shouted. Her back arched and her head pressed against the cushions. It took a moment for her to adjust to the shock of his size, but it wasn't long before she could take all of him. She gritted her teeth. Her fingers dug into his waist, his shoulders, his hips.
He paused for a moment, admiring the bow of her lips, the splay of her hair, and the passion in her eyes. Even his wildest fantasies didn't measure up to the beauty that laid below him in reality.
She bucked her hips. "Go", she pled, "I'm ready. Go."
His eyes went wide, but he didn't need to be told twice.
Braced on his forearms, she couldn't help but appreciate the view. His muscles were bigger and more defined than she expected, and his arms and chest rippled with effort and shined with a dewy sheen of sweat. She looked down and watched his abdominal muscles clench and relax and clench again. Her eyes travelled down the V shaped muscles of his hips to find the source of her pleasure as it slid in and out of her body. It was all too much.
Her head threw back of its own accord, overcome. His lips found her neck; they kissed, sucked and bit. His hips shifted, and her breath came in ragged gasps. He found the right angle.
"That's it. I got you now." She tried to nod but couldn't. The sensation was too intense. "Don't… stop…"
"Never." His deep, raspy voice was almost a growl. His thumbs flicked her breasts until she screamed and exploded around him. He helped her ride out the orgasm.
"My turn", he said. He pulled her knees over his shoulders and pounded into her like a machine. "Look at me", he ordered hoarsely. She opened the eyes she had been clenching tight and let them meet his stormy gaze. His muscles jerked. The cords od his neck strained and a muscle jumped in his jaw. His hips shuddered between hers.
"Fuck!" He swore a lot, she realized. Perhaps only during sex? She didn't hate it. His arms shook with the effort it took to hold his body up.
"It's ok", she breathed, "you won't crush me." With a sigh he collapsed on top of her, and his warm weight was soothing rather than smothering. She kissed his shoulder, and his lips breathed in shallow pants across her ear and neck. He pulled away.
"Fuck that was stupid. I'm so, so sorry."
She shook her head. "Probably, but I'm not sorry. Maybe now I can get you out of my head." She smiled that heartbreaking, glowing smile of hers. His chest swelled with the idea that maybe she had been thinking about him as often as he thought of her. He let his thumb brush a tangled curled away from her cheek.
"What do we do now?"
She ran her fingers through his hair, and it felt just like she had always imagined. Soft and spiky. "We go on as we always have. Nothing has to change."
The arm wrapped under her shoulder blades tightened, but he nodded. "You're right. It would be a disaster."
"More than a disaster", she agreed. "It would be the end of life as we know it." She absently caressed the muscles of his back. She meant the motion to be soothing, but the heat of her fingertips wove trails of heat on his skin, and he shuddered.
"We can have this, though. This one night." Revived, his warm lips travelled the length of her jaw. Gentle but insistent. She couldn't help her body's response, and her hips arched. They had already made the gravest of mistakes, so what was the harm in just one more?
He flipped her over and entered her from behind. "Oh!" She shook and gasped and bit a cushion to stifle the cries that wanted to escape her mouth. His hands gripped her hips, guiding them back and forth until she lost her mind and moved of her own accord. His fingers found their way between her legs, and the next minute she was seeing stars. His hips jerked and she was flooded. She could feel the drips falling in rivulets down her quaking legs.
He recovered for a bit too long before she nudged him. Chastised, he hopped up to find a box of Kleenex. She thanked him and cleaned up, observing that one of the best parts of being an adult was the lack of embarrassment. In her younger days she would have run to the bathroom in shame to clean up after sex, but this situation was much more mature. They both had spent decades having sex, and there was nothing left to hide. She handed him the box of tissues for his turn, and neither of them batted an eyelash.
For all of that maturity there was still an element of bashfulness, not about the mechanics of the act but about the boundaries of emotion and space. He returned from throwing away their tissues, looking uncertain.
"Do you want to go to bed, or - ?"
She considered it. She wanted him to stay, and adults went to sleep in a bed. She wanted to sleep with him in a bed, just not hers. Maturity came with a whole lot of baggage.
She shook her head, and slid a lazy hand across the couch. "Will you stay with me here?"
"Yeah", he nodded. "Yeah. Tell me where the blankets are."
She gave him instructions and he came back with enough linens to turn the wide couch into a bed. They fluffed and tucked the sheets and pillows into place in the faint glow of the television. They settled in, tucked tightly together like spoons in a drawer. He breathed in the scent of her hair.
"Jeopardy?" She asked expectantly. He groaned.
"I suck at Jeopardy."
"I know." She giggled and turned on the latest episode. They played and laughed, commenting on everything from the contestant's outfits to the host's sexy brown shoes. She won by a landslide.
"You're too smart for me", he laughed, squeezing her tight. Her breath came out in a woosh. Her hands slid along the strong forearms that were wrapped around her waist. Her giggles evaporated as she turned in his arms.
"In some ways, I'm not very smart at all." She pulled his head down for a kiss.