Firelight

I sat on the big chaise lounge by the fire pit. There was a slight chill in the air; summer had began to give away to fall. These were the days I enjoyed most of the year and yet like spring they also seemed the most fleeting. I could not help thinking that we lived mostly in the extremes: hot and cold, light and dark. There seemed little time to hold onto the twilights, the dawns, the subtler moments of being, the connecting moments. Knotted pine popped in the fire pit, sending an arc of embers across the growing darkness.

"That's a serious look," Lily my wife said as she sat beside me on the chaise. Our house, mostly dark, loomed behind us. "What's that all about?"

"The contemplation of life," I said.

"Have you figured it out?" she said. She put her arm around me and toyed with my hair.

"No."

"Good," she said. "That would take all the mystery out of it."

I smiled. She kissed me. I returned her kiss. She nuzzled into the crook of my neck. I leaned my head onto hers.

A breeze breathed upon the fire, causing the embers to glow and sparkle.

"I like it when it does that," she said quietly.

"Me too," I said, looking a thousand miles beyond her into the darkness beyond the fire.

She poked me with a finger.

"What's that?"

"That, sir, is a poke."

I laughed. "So it is."

"I'd ever so appreciate you being here with me when I'm lying next to you waiting to be petted," she said.

"That would probably help the matter," I said, stroking her hair. I kissed the top of her head.

The fire quietly tickled the night.

She shifted her body, her one leg arcing over both of mine, her breasts pressing again my chest, near a full body hug. Her fingers toyed with my hair, brushed my ear, felt the day's stubble on my cheek. She nuzzled into my chest. She breathed deeply.

"You smell of wood smoke and working in the garden," she said.

"Let me go have a shower," I said, feigning to move.

"Don't you dare," she said, looking up at me.

We both laughed. I embraced her and held her closer to me. Her warmth and curve was inviting. I ran my hands over her shoulders and down her back. Her fingers bunched and knotted in the fabric of my shirt, like a kitten kneading. My hand found the small of her back. I lifted her top. She rose up from me and removed her top, laying it aside on the table next to the chaise. Her pearly bra shimmered in the firelight, the curves of her breasts accentuated by the flames. She reached behind her and undid the clasp. I reached up, fingers sliding under the cups, and freed her breasts. She laid the bra with the top on the table. She straddled me. She leaned in toward me.

"No," I said, holding her back. "I want to look at you."

How odd and pleasant it was to see her grinding confidence slide into watched demureness, the little awkwardness of a girl still within a woman. I cherished the sight of her. I cherished every curve. I cherished every freckle. I cherished the tell-tale streaks our baby, now this year beginning college, had left on her belly and her breasts. Now, here in the firelight it all seemed more magical. The soft glow of her. That radiance I had always seen within now shown without. And yet as her eyes coyly sought mine, I could not help but see the questions. Had her curves grown too full? Was she still pretty? Did I still find her as attractive now as I did then?

Women are too filled with doubts and men are too quiet or stupid to quell them. But surely, this thing more truth than any truth, I wanted her. I wanted my woman. I wanted her as the first day I saw her. I wanted her as the first day she told me I would never have her. I wanted her.

I put my hands on her hips. I let my hands slide up her belly and cup her breasts. She arched into me. I felt the warmth and weight of her breasts. My thumbs toyed with her aureole and nipples. The nipples grew hard at my touch. I pressed at them and circled them with my thumbs. Her skin had goose-flesh. She sighed and licked her lips and tossed her long dark hair. She squirmed a little against me in her straddle, her sex pressing down hard on me. I felt my cock hardening under her bottom. I rose up to take her left nipple in my mouth while my hand touched her right. I alternated and matched my tongue with thumb. I sucked her nipple. I pinched her nipple lightly. My free hand pulled her closer to me. Her skin was both warm and cool in the night air.

I broke the embrace long enough to remove my shirt and she stepped out of her jeans. Then we lay side by side on the chaise again, my arms and legs wrapped around her. I kissed her mouth, felt her lips grinding against mine. Our tongues teased each other. One of my hands knotted in her hair and pulled her head back, baring her throat. I kissed my way along her jaw and down the pulse point. My other hand kneaded her breast with more pressure now, more strength, conscious of pain, but more conscious of pleasure. She groaned, her legs scissoring beneath mine. My cock was hard and felt cramped within my jeans.

She unbuckled my belt and then undid the clasp of my jeans. Her fingers worked the zipper down. Her hand cupped my cock and balls, so tight within the boxer briefs. I pressed against her hand. Her hand slid under the elastic of my briefs. Her fingers found and circled my cock. She stroked the head with her thumb. I groaned into her mouth.

She began to kiss her way down my chest. Hurriedly, I kicked off my sneakers and wriggled out my jeans and briefs with her help. She knelt between my open legs, looking down on my cock as I had looked upon her. For the briefest of moments I wondered if she saw too much salt in the pepper of my pubic thatch; I wondered if this "old man" still pleased her. And then, then, she knelt onto her elbows and took my cock in her mouth. Her tongue worked wonders around the head. Her lips did the same as she kissed her way down and up my hard shaft again and again. My hands knotted in her hair. She sucked my cock. My woman sucked my cock. Though my eyes had closed in pleasure, I could still see flames dancing inside my brain.

When the moment grew too close, I pulled her away from me and patted her cheek. She kissed her way up my belly and chest. I kissed her, ever so slightly tasting myself on her lips.

"Belly," I said, patting the chaise's cushion.

She lay upon her belly. I lay against her, a leg covering her, my hand roaming across her shoulders, my lips kissing along her spine. Her skin glowed in the firelight. Smooth. Warm. Sweet. My cock pressed hard against her leg.

I slid my hand under the elastic of her pearly panties and let my nails brush across the tender flesh of her bottom. She trembled at the touch, her skin goose-fleshing doubly so. She groaned. My hand slipped over her bottom and down under her. Heat. Wetness. She groaned again.

I rose up. She looked back at me, started to move. I held her there by gently pressing against her back. I took her panties in my hands and slid them off her bottom and removed them. I tossed them to the other side of the chaise, as if these most intimate of apparel had been claimed by me as I would very soon claim their owner. I knelt between her legs. I put my hands on her hips. I lifted her by her hips and she moved to her knees, her elbows resting on chaise's cushion. I saw the pear-curve of her bare bottom in the firelight. I saw the glisten of her wetness between the swollen lips of her sex, now also glistening upon her inner thigh as it seeped from within her. I circled her bottom with my open palm then let two fingers trail up her inner thigh and brush her sex. She groaned.

I moved closer, my cock wedging against her inner thigh, sliding up to meet her sex. I guided my cock with my hand, tracing the swollen slit with the very tip of my cock. Up. Down. Her hips wriggled. She wavered over her hands, her nipples brushing the cushion.

I entered her. I held myself deep, unmoving, enjoying the moment of connection.

Then we began to move. I thrust. She rocked back to meet my thrust. Slow at first. Growing steady. Moving together. Completely.

She tossed her hair. I held her hips. We moved.

She shifted lower onto her elbows. I tucked my hips at the end of each thrust. Human geometry completed perfect angles.

Her pussy swelled around me and I swelled within her. Were it not for our skins containing us, we would have become each other.

She reached between her legs and played with her clit. I fucked her from behind as she played with her clit. My woman took pleasure from me and gave pleasure to herself. She mewled. She gasped. I found myself wanting to fuck her harder, wanting to grind into her. She moaned as my strokes deepened. Her fingers worked at her clit. I felt her begin to shake.

I took one hand from her hips and moistened a fingertip between my lips. Feeling her quiver, feeling her ever so close, I pressed the tip of my moistened finger against the tight ring of her bottom, entering her there too.

She cried out in release. Trembling. Convulsing. Inside and out.

Her sweet madness drove me to mine, and plowing into her in one final deep thrust, I came. I ground into her, trying to completely empty myself, almost succeeding on the verge of unconsciousness.

I slid my hands under her arms and lifted her to me, to hold onto her, to hug her as we fought to remember how to breathe. I held her tight and she eased against me. Carefully, but not gracefully, I lowered us to the cushion. We lay side by side in each other's arms, fitting like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

No need for moving. Just feeling. Slow breathing. Slow. Breathing. Quiet.

And the firelight. The firelight shiny in her eyes.