Gaia

I wasn't even a true believer, that's the cold truth of it. There's been a lot of names coined over the years for those like me: mercenary, gun-for-hire, soldier of fortune, avaricious, unscrupulous--the list goes on. I was a closer, a born salesman without any real education save the one learned at the end of my momma's paddle and on 96^th Street Spanish Harlem. As a runt, I could sweet talk my pecker's way into any mami's pants: professional, amateur, married, unmarried, straight or bent. If I'd had the balls to try my hand at dealing smack, I'd have made a bundle on the corners. Instead, I hauled my ass down the East River to Wall Street. I could seal deals like nobody else on the Upper or Lower West Sides. As fate should have it, the only outfit that gave me a chance to prove my skill was an organization based out of Seattle, Washington called, Earth Leaps.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't give two shits about the climate crisis, human emissions of greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or melting ice caps. My interests were narrow. Big business, the legacies as we label them, want to maintain the status quo, keep zero price for dumping carbon into the atmosphere and government subsidies coming their way. Sunrise industries like wind, solar, and water, not to mention the venture capitalists, want subsides for energy alternatives. We worked with the latter, opposed the former. Politicians and private investors are the endgame. Those were the fundamentals of my world, and for the most part I couldn't be bothered to know more.

Problem with wind and solar power is you can't always transport it from where it's harvested to where it can have maximum advantage. Some fairly sophisticated pieces of equipment are required, smart electric grids and underpinnings necessary for distribution. That's money. Hydrogen extraction from water using tidal power. That's money for research, viability assessments, you name it. Biofuels made from non-edible plants grown on land not suitable for food production. More money, money, money. The whole ball of wax hangs on the accumulation of green. Most people don't realize it isn't enough just to reduce carbon emissions with taxes, caps and federal regulations. Public, as well as private investment is crucial to the battle.

That's where I come in. I sell interests in the world's future.

Over the years, I'd done well for myself and now the heads of a dozen companies and lobbying corporations were courting me like a prized whore. I'd already decided the winds had shifted and were blowing me in a direction away from Earth Leaps.

When the Director found out about the other deals on the table, he called me late night at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan. The naked SoHo waitress stirred next to me on the bed as I grabbed the phone on the third ring. She wouldn't let go of my cock even as she slept. Almost as soon as his greeting, the old man was telling me to fly back to Washington and drive out to the Company Compound early the next day.

"I want you to have some quality R&R. Courtesy of us, naturally. Porter, you're an important part of what we got going. Now I'm asking you to do one more thing for us. Be patient, kid. We'll have an offer for you before you're ready to come back to civilization."

The house stood long and thin like a row of wood-log cabins on the edge between forest and the Puget Sound waterfront. The veneer had grand windows on all sides, and within, a pavilion living room with a pitched roof flowed seamlessly into the kitchen, the dining room replete with Bentwood furniture, and, through French doors, to a stone patio with a wood trellis above and wisteria wrapped around the posts. The whole ambience had a casual, relaxed feel reminiscent of days long gone.

My post-industrialist ass hated it.

For two whole days, I whiled the hours away, drinking whiskey and masturbating myself into stupors on the hammock hanging around back of the house. When I tired of my hand, I seduced the young, Chinook housemaid onto her knees. Her mouth was sloppy, but got the job done quick. She climbed on top of me when she was through, and I felt her cold hand guiding me into her pussy, but drunk and exhausted, I passed out soon after.

In the morning of that third day, as I awoke in the living room with the huge doors rolled back to draw the land into the house, a sensuous figure emerged in the distance, loose and jaunty as the scent of cedar wafting from the darkness of the surrounding woods. The sun pierced through the canopy behind her, and cast a celestial halo like a crown around her head. She stepped slowly along a narrow pathway of worn cedar planks.

She was as stunning as I remembered; long, blonde hair and shapely curves, with something of the ghostly and ethereal about her in the morning mist. Anna Caber was the soul of the Earth Leaps initiative, the youngest member of the Board, arguably the most fascinating woman I'd ever known. I'd nearly fallen out of my bar stool when I first met her five years back in the Village.

She didn't say a word; she didn't have to. She stared at me across six yards of lawn before turning and walking back to the thicket. I knew I would follow even before she snatched the skirt of her flowery dress and smoothly jerked it over her head. I watched, captivating and speechless at the sinewy, ivory figure disappear once more into the shadows of the forest.

Aimlessly, I walked for a while until finally, I found her. Down on her knees in meditation. Her eyes were very lightly shut, hinged together by the wisps of her lashes. She had her head at a slight incline, her face awash with sunlight. Every glorious inch of her was brimming in it. The big, hard breasts, the rosy nipplettes stiffened to a point. Her smooth thighs, tucked beneath a round ass toned firm with muscle.

The clouds bloomed purple and grapefruit, carved out like mountains in the heavens and kindled like flowing magma. Anna looked so peaceful, as if one with the world. I knew at once why the other fellas called her Gaia.

"The Board knows you've been flirting with other units," she said, suddenly. "They know you're ready to jump in bed with the first john that pays highest."

"I wasn't trying to hide it."

"They've sent me with a counter offer."

"You're going to try and lure me back with your sex?" I asked her.

She twisted her head around to me. "That would be too easy, Porter. Tell me, frankly...was money all it ever was?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes."

She looked me up and down, amused by my prudery. "Why don't you step into a get-up that breathes more? Or rather, why don't you step out of that one? There's nobody watching, baby."

"I'll undress only when Earth has proven capable of matching your beauty, Anna," I said, but no sooner did she stand and present herself at full height, tits bouncing, and shaven quim, that I hastened to remove every thread and stood as naked and dangling before her.

"Good boy," she said, grinning. "Now close your eyes."

I did. After only a few minutes, however, I grew impatient and opened them. She was gone. I grabbed my clothes, and scurried past the treeline into a muddy shore banking the bay. She was buried ankle deep. Behind her, about twenty feet out, a sail boat was anchored.

She knew how to make a mess, all right, and how to look absolutely hot doing it. She turned her back to me, popping her hip like a pussycat on cabaret, running her hands up her legs, cleaving finger trails over the back of her thighs and an ass I would have killed for. Tiny nipples shot up stiffly from two lush breasts, caked in silt and till. She dropped down without taking her eyes from me. Her arms were layered and her legs smeared with thick globs as she spun around on her back and stretched one leg out while the other she lingered provocatively over the other knee. Her wildcat gaze peered through matted locks of her hair.

I scooped her up and slid myself beneath her, pushing my knees under her ass and then lowering her gently on my prick. I slipped in easier than a hot knife into butter. She pounced on me, filled of red hot passion. She offered herself up to my mouth; her neck smelling tartly of the sea and the plump mounds, the nipples fluted, and then her lips shaped broad and fleshy, swollen read, like a woman's sex. I licked them all. I was dirty, every inch of me sullied with the grime. Why, it was seeping out of my nose and eyes, but I felt cleansed somehow, having my junk writhing inside her. She was hoisting herself up and then dropping back down; she had her eyes clamped shut; she was gasping, breathing hard, chest dancing, and her ass was most restless, swinging wildly to scratch that itch built up at her very cunt. Her orgasm set her straight as a rocket and mine, it seemed, sent her flying right off my cock. She hovered unsteadily above me a moment, pinching her eyes wickedly, and said, "Fancy another ride?" She pivoted, then, like a ballerina soiled in sluice and dove into the ocean.

The vessel was actually a Bermuda sloop, smaller than a cutter, but with two headsails and a gaff rig. Anna sailed expertly, maneuvering upwind with the untamed charm of the wilderness at our flanks. The water rippled sun beams along her arms and brushed her cheek with golden, swirling spools as if she were standing in front of a projector, a winding splendor of light frolicking like naughty fingers toying the hairs over her ears and tender breasts. If only my own fingers could be so bold.

The wind whipped at the sails, hissing through the loops on the harness rig like a woman moaning in my ears. Anna steered the wheel and the breeze caught the flimsy skirt she'd grabbed out of the cabin below, caught it right at her taint, furling it up over her ass. Her legs looked good parted just a mite, raising her cheeks high and mighty.

I stripped my shorts down in the blink of an eye. And I was on her in a heartbeat. Pressed up with my cock nestled within the valley of her ass. She purred like a kitten, craning her head back. I snatched her chin and pulled her face up so I could kiss her and hard, tasting the lust rolling off her tongue. It tasted sweet and oh, so raging.

She was tight and already by that time nice and wet, leeching juice down the inside of her legs. I felt her wrap around me as I pushed in, tug and squeeze on the shaft. I thrust once slow and gave her a quick one right after. She whimpered, but her lips smiled. I felt loose then, and I let loose; I mauled her like the floodgates had breached, the dog cage unlatched. Her cunt puckered for every lunge, kissed my prick and with her clit, she licked it all the way down to the root. After a while, we both had to slow the pace and then it was enough simply to be connected. Just wading, turning gently in her quim as if my prick were submerged in olive oil. Her, churning that haunch of hers ever so lightly, drawing me in and out in measured turns.

"This is your first time, isn't it? Oh, honey, that feels divine. To the compound, I mean? First time?"

An infinite blanket of down spread out over our heads. A sea of fluff undulating lazily away from our reach. I nodded, still gazing in awe at the beauty around me. Still throbbing within her pussy, every curl and roll bringing me closer to the brink.

"All this time...ooh, my...you've been selling something you've never seen with your own eyes...ah!"

She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white, and the way she had her face screwed up and was pressing back into me, I knew she was coming. I gripped her hard round the waist and I shoved in deeper than before, one last time, and came a torrent myself.

"I never had to see it before," I said, catching my breath. "Only thing I needed to know was printed neatly on a daily report."

She shook her head, smiling. "Statistics? Numbers and figures? Quite a thriving business we've got here, isn't it? Heartless bastards, they stuck their claws into this as if it were just another capitalistic venture."

"A business is exactly what it is, Anna. And let me tell you something, we're not in the business of saving trees," I said. "What we do is save the forests. And for that you need money."

At midday, we swam under the side of hull, paddling around one another, stealing quick touches, like a couple of rascals escaped from their parents' watchful eyes. Whenever she made a reach for my prick, she could barely get her fingers around it. That excited her, sparked her electric, oh yes, kept the memories fresh of our session on the muddy banks. I know because she kept yapping about how wonderful it all was, life and the planet and all that, yet when she finally did get a hold of the dong, she piped up especially--Oh, God what a marvel! What a fucking splendor it all is!

When finally she wearied, she climbed the ladder back onto the portside, her ass bouncing with beads of ocean water hinged, dancing and fornicating across the twitching globules. On the deck, she leaned one hip on the mainmast and culled the water from her hair. The tiny hairs between her legs were matted down on her cunt and when the light hit it just right, it glimmered like a melting honeypot, or rather the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I got her down on the stern like we both wanted and with a bit of a weasel wiggle I gave her what she was hungry for; I put it deep in the slimy pot. She clamped her legs in a vise on my ass, slid them over the back of my legs so I slipped the tiniest bit out of her, but damn it if I wasn't rubbing right against that wee-bit nub and making her bare her teeth. She was a slippery, little bitch, huffing and puffing and scalding flesh from head to toe. The girl, I guess, was incapable of a simple orgasm; hers were always massive, opus and epic events powerful enough to kind of sweep me up in the gale, and beached us both exhausted and heaving like dogs.

She propped herself up on her elbows, gazing dreamily. "Don't you want to know what they're offering?"

"No," I said, breathlessly. "It doesn't matter. I'll stay, Anna. For you--I will stay."

She smiled brokenly and her eyes filled quickly with moisture. The look on her face confounded me. There was a serene sadness in it now, as if detached somehow, that got me directly in the gut. "I knew it wouldn't last forever," she said, softly. "Still, I might've preferred if it lasted just a little bit longer. Porter, if you stay with the organization, be sure you do it for the right reasons."

She scampered up to her feet, then, wiping her eyelids, and steered the boat. I didn't understand her. The dock leading up to the house was just up ahead. She kept the boat straight, then at the last moment turned to bank it along the wooden boards.

"What is it?" I asked her.

She stared off at the rushing sea, and spoke as if through a dream, "I delivered their message. Earth Leaps wants you for good. At any price. But I'm nobody's whore. Everything else I did because I wanted to."

"I know."

"No, you don't--"

"Look, Anna, I get it--"

She snapped her head around at me. "I'm sick, Porter," she said. "Really sick. All I wanted was...one last opportunity at..." she sighed, sadly. "It doesn't really matter what's killing me, does it? You use me, I use you, they use us both up. We all have a deadline, everyone dies, everything dies. Even the Earth, right? It's not your problem."

She rushed off the boat, running down the dock at full speed, ass twitching marvelously and her long legs stretching and relaxing. I felt like I was watching a gazelle, tall and graceful in motion. I followed as best I could, and eventually, she stopped, panting against a peeling bole of a Madrona tree.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

She scoffed. "Don't pretend now that you care, Porter. It insults us both."

"I do care."

"Well, it does neither you nor I any damn good."

"What about treatments? What fucking good are all the advancements in medicine and technology if they can't bloody help you?"

She nodded, turning her brows in wistfully. "There's a chance. But science alone won't save me."

She weaved backwards and seemed for a moment to be fondled by the forest behind her, limbs and leaves dressing her like tramping hands and scuffling fingers. She called me to her, and I came running to take her in my arms.

"I thought when I first saw you come out of the woods this morning that you might be lost." I teased the hair over her eyes and behind her ears. "I had no idea you didn't want to be found."

She raised herself on the thick, twisted branch of that Madrona tree, spreading her legs and her pink folds. "One more ride?" she asked, and cupped my testicles in her little palm. What we did inside that grove was more than fucking and greater even than making love; it was elemental, perched on a level of spirituality that was entirely foreign to me. And to her, too, I suppose. I've never in my life felt so outside of myself and at once within my body so resolutely that I swore to feel every atom, every particle mashed up and knotted to create my flesh, my mouth, and my cock and balls. Something within, buried deep inside her might have been fading, but right then she was more alive than anything I knew, blossoming like magic all around her and me.

Once we were both spent, I picked her up off her feet. She burrowed her head in my chest, hearing my heartbeat.

"If science can't make the miraculous happen," she said, "then perhaps with love it can." I felt her smile tickle the hairs on my neck, and then her words worming across my ribcage. "I have no doubt of it, my dear. None whatsoever."

I carried her through the forest to the home's breezeway facing the ocean. I sat her on the edge of a wide, teak Indonesian bench, and kneeled between her legs to suckle her breasts. She crossed her ankles behind my back, locking me to her. She kissed me twice quickly on the mouth. Then pressed the tip of her nose to mine.

"That's one hell of an offer," I said, smiling broadly.

She closed her thighs tighter, drawing me into the heat radiating off her pussy.

"It wasn't all business," she said. "No matter what you decide--I want you to know that for me, it was much more."

Then she looked past my head. A black sedan had pulled up the gravel path to the front door. The Director would be inside waiting for my answer. Anna's legs released me. I walked off the sundeck, walked four steps, and nearly made it a fifth before turning back.

She had one long leg hemmed under her ass and the other dangling lusciously. Weakly, she smiled at me. My knees wobbled; she dizzied me with that smile.

I never took another step away from her. I never turned my back to her again. The world I perceived had changed completely, been changed by her, and if we do in fact see the world as we wish it to be, then it was I she had changed. A spirit reborn from fire and earth, tempered with wind and water. Gaia was life and sustenance, she was mother and daughter, Queen of my realm.

And she was my lover.