Wood

True to her prediction I'm hard again, and I reach past her and turn off the shower. W step outside and wrap ourselves in fluffy white towels, but I'm almost at breaking point. I grab her and pull her towards the bedroom. When we're there I lift her in my arms and fling her onto the soft coverlet, her towel tumbling to the ground. She stares up at me with a glazed look on her face and I take in the sight of her perfect body.

Her legs are parted in anticipation and between them is a glistening flower more exquisite than any other. I lower trembling fingers to her slit and scoop up some of the sticky wetness. Lifting my hand to my lips, I taste her nectar, making her groan even though I'm not touching her.

"Take me!" she cries suddenly. "Please David -- take me!"

Breathlessly I lower my body to hers and with one swift thrust, bury myself in her. She cries out again and I withdraw and plunge in again, building up slowly but egged on by her sobs of pleasure until we are bucking and thrashing on the bed like wind-tossed branches. Her tight little pussy is drenched and her entire body rocks back and forth with my pounding.

"I want to come inside you," a voice that is not my own is saying. "I want to see my seed running out of your beautiful pussy and down your thighs."

She motions for me to stop and roll over onto my back. Then she straddles me, drawing my penis into her slippery cunt, and begins to rock back and forth. The sight of her riding me, her breasts rhythmically bouncing up and down, the almost-painful pleasure on her face as she slides up and down me, all come together in a blindingly perfect sensation. My orgasm is a volcano erupting, a seedpod exploding; it is lightning and thunder and life and death. May collapses next to me, spent by her own climax, but she has enough left to draw my hand to her thighs, where our combined juices have created a hot, sticky mess.

I rub my finger in it and lift it to my face to catch the scent of our sex. It smells of the earth and the sea, of damp soil and exotic plants. May smiles at me.

* * *

There's not much to tell after that. I left the next morning in a glow of happiness, but didn't hear from her again for the next three days. Then one morning I came outside to see that same white flower perched on my porch, bearing a note that explained in some detail how to care for it. In a postscript, she told me she'd left that morning to go home -- her grandfather was back and she had plants of her own at home to care for (her words).

There was a telephone number at the bottom, and a short, final note.

"That's my flower," it said in neat rounded handwriting. "I'm leaving it for you to care for. It'll flower again next year. If you keep it alive -- if it does flower again -- if you want to -- call me. May."

I smile, despite myself. Ephemeral -- the girl, the flower. But I can wait, endure the possibility that the beauty might never return.

I've placed the flower on my workbench, and I called the local teen to cancel his gardening services. From now on I wanted to smell the fresh air and feel the soil under my fingers. I'll still make furniture, of course. But sometimes now, when I look at the wood, I stop and imagine not the furniture, but the living tree.