A Wind Blew Through Me Pt. 07

Author's Note

Hey everyone, obviously it's been a while (understatement) since I added to this story. There's a couple reasons for that. Chiefly, for a long time I was frankly baffled at where to take these characters next, and it seemed better to let this sit a while than to force something onto it I didn't like or feel right about.

But there was a reason for that too. This story and these characters have prompted a journey of self-discovery for me that's been going on for a few years, and back when I wrote the first part of this I frankly did not have the language or understanding to write this chapter. In case it's not obvious from what you've read so far, Greg and Katherine are each imbued with significant aspects of my own personality that have been in conflict and conversation over the years, usually subconsciously.

I don't want to overshare and psycho-analyze myself too much here, but the interesting thing is that when I wrote the first part of this I consciously identified more with Greg, but as the years have passed I've come to understand that Katherine/Amy embody some things that are more authentic to myself that I've had a hard time accepting and embracing. Which is to say, I regret voicing all of this from Greg's perspective at this point, and it feels odd to put myself in that headspace again, but I can't change that now and actually I think it works pretty well for where I'm going with this.

Anyways, thanks for coming back, I have a vision for where this is going, and I'm excited to finish the work. I hope you enjoy it.

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When I awoke the next morning, the sense of unreality lingering from half-remembered dreams only seemed to deepen as my mind glided over the events of the previous day. The only thing that convinced me I hadn't hallucinated the entire thing was the soft warmth of Katherine's body against me. It felt like she was still asleep behind me, her breathing was very slow and deep. It felt like another perfect moment, so I lay there awake letting my mind wander over the bizarre events of the last several days and weeks.

This moment was remarkably beautiful. Probably the rest of my life was bound to be downhill from here. A lifetime of loneliness and disappointment had taught me to expect more of the same, and so a big part of me expected this romance to end as suddenly as it began. But she was still here. Still breathing against me in bed. Probably when she woke up we would have sex again. Probably she would find a way to make it mind-blowing. It was stupid to worry about the end there was no reason to think it was coming. Yet.

But it still nagged at me, even over the blissful memories of the life changing sex we had in this room the last few days. I wanted to push it out of my mind, but my mind rebelled at the Pollyanna optimism of the desire. Finally, I heaved a frustrated sigh at myself, and I felt her stirring behind me, pulling her body closer to spoon me as she returned to the waking world.

My cock responded autonomically to her skin pressing into me back and she reached a hand over my hip and wrapped her fingers around my shaft. She began to stoke me very softly, wordlessly, occasionally reaching down to caress my balls for a few seconds before lightly gliding her fingers over the tip and foreskin.

I surrendered to her touch and to my body's reaction to her. I wasn't even thinking about it when I began to ejaculate into the sheets, and she let out a pleased hum into my neck. She licked her fingers clean of my cum and wrapped her arm around my waist, pulling me into her body and whispering into my neck, "I love you."

"I'm not sure love is a strong enough word for how I feel about you." I said hoarsely, my voice rasping on the sleep and the aftermath of being pleasured.

"That's just because I just jerked you off while I was half asleep because that was the first thought that popped into my head when I woke up," she answered lazily, still sounding something like half asleep.

I flipped around to face her a little too suddenly, startling her a little with the visceral reaction her words provoked. Her eyes widened and she looked suddenly quite awake.

I cupped her cheek in my palm before she could respond. "No, I--" I realized mid-sentence what I was contradicting and snapped my mouth shut for a moment to better collect my thoughts. "I mean, I do love you for that, but I don't just love you for that. For your sexuality, I mean, which is something I love very much. I mean..." I trailed off, not even sure what was about to come out of my mouth, but certain that it needed to come out anyway, "I mean I love you, the human being, more than love, more than anything. Before I met you, I didn't know people could be like this, like you, and now that I know you, I feel like maybe there is hope, maybe I can find a way to be happy in this world, and not just intertwined with you, as much as I love being intertwined with you, but because you have shown me that I am not alone, and that other people are sometimes just looking for an excuse to be kind to someone."

The look on her face was hard to read when I finished. There was a lot going on inside her and my heart froze with anxiety as I waited to find out what that was.

Her eyes dropped to my lips for a few seconds and I watched her think about kissing me. Her eyes fell further and off into the middle distance as she took a breath and said, "That's really beautiful, Greg. I... don't know exactly how to respond," her eyes shot back into mine, kinder and softer now, "Some of that sets off my monogamy alarm bells, but I don't think that's how you meant those words." The kindness had morphed into a bit of sadness as she finished, and the statement hung like a question in the space between them.

"No... what I meant was to tell you how important you are to me, Katherine," I said, that nagging anxiety bubbling to the surface and overwhelming my inclination not to ruin this moment. "But yeah, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about how this is going to end up."

"End up?" she said, visibly confused. She looked at my face carefully for several long seconds, considering me, and several realizations seemed to dawn on her in quick succession. She took a deep breath and started, "Oh, hun, you don't... you're so..." she exhaled the rest of her breath in an exasperated sigh, pushing herself up to sitting in the bed. I rose to mirror her.

"Sorry, I'm struggling with where to start." she explained, taking a moment to collect her thoughts. She was serious but not defensive.

"Are you aware that there are people that do not practice monogamy but do want and seek and maintain meaningful romantic and sexual relationships?" she asked. It could easily have been a condescending question, but her tone was even.

I considered the question for a few moments. It sort of broke my brain, and I began to realize somewhere in the back of my mind that I had been equating two things that were not necessarily equivalent.

"It looks like that's a no," she observed, putting a palm on my knee and drawing my eyes back into hers, "different people have different names for what they practice, but the most general term is ethical non-monogamy. I could yammer on for an hour about all the different things that can mean, but I tend to feel sympathy for the polyamory or even relationship anarchy side of that spectrum. Which means I do not desire sexual exclusivity with a partner, and I don't see much value in drawing clean lines between friends, lovers, and partners."

I nodded along as she spoke, feeling like a long-elusive puzzle piece was being slotted into place, but not quite ready to verbalize how.

"So anyway, it kinda looks like based on your face this is the first time you've been exposed to this concept. I get it. Monogamy is an extremely normative idea, even in queer spaces. Not that you spend a lot of time in those, but I'm just saying, even most gay people are monogamous, or at least profess to be." She paused, seeming to realize she had begun to ramble. She blinked a few times and finished her thought, "so probably I'm guessing in your head you've been equating being romantically involved with me with being 'in a relationship' with me. I don't make that distinction. And that doesn't mean that I don't want to be with you, or even be committed to being with you regularly, just that I don't participate in the whole exclusivity-monogamy thing. So if we are going to be 'together', you're going to have to try and decouple those two things in your head."

She stopped talking for a while and gave me space to respond, but I was so lost in thinking about what she said that I did not yet have the capacity to speak.

"I'm realizing now that I tell you this that this is a weird and shitty time to be having this talk. That's on me. I guess..." she paused, eyes wandering the room as the thought, "the way we met was strange. I didn't really intend to do much other than fuck you. I didn't know I would fall in love with you or bring you on this trip or... ask you to fuck me while I sobbed uncontrollably. So like, probably if we met on a date or something that would have been a good talk to have up front, but that's not how this played out and it honestly didn't occur to me that I needed to back up and do that until right now. So like, if you decide you have a massive monogamy hard-on and this is a deal-breaker for you, then..." she trailed off, shame and sadness creeping onto her face, "...fuck. That would really suck. For both of us. I mean, I did tell you that I don't do the girlfriend or wife thing early on, so it's not like I was hiding that, but I didn't realize you needed the whole non-monogamy primer to really grasp what that meant. So I'm sorry if..."

"Katherine." I said, she let the sentence die and looked into my eyes with regret. "My ignorance is not your fault." I said simply. We looked at each other for a long time. She looked like she was about to cry from relief and probably the many other things flying across her heart. "That's a lot to think about for sure. Thank you for taking the time to help me understand. I know you said you don't do girlfriend, and at the time I guess I didn't know what you meant. I mean, I know what the words meant, but I didn't know that non-monogamy was like, a real thing, that people practiced, or that I could practice. I think I'm going to need a bit of time to think about my relationship to those ideas. And I should probably do some reading, so you don't have to educate me more than you already have."

Her eyes dropped to my lips, now with a great deal of longing, and she leaned in to kiss me. Not a kiss of affection or familiarity, but a kiss the begs for more.

"Fuck me." She said, muttering between kisses, "please. Right now."

I pushed her back onto the pillows and swung my hips between her legs, kissing her constantly. It was not a very thoughtful gesture from either of us, but a burning need to feel more physical intimacy.

"Put it inside me," she said, looking down at my cock as I leaned back to position myself. She spread her legs wide and begged for it with her eyes. I pushed my cock into her pussy and then wrapped my arms around her body as I began to fuck her. She wrapped her legs around my hips and pulled me into her with each thrust.

"Cum with me," she muttered into my ear, her voice bleary with the swell of an orgasm.

I made no effort to stop what she started, and we came together in a set of erratic, jerking thrusts.

I rolled over off her when we had finished, and she rolled right into my arms, nuzzling her head into the crook of my shoulder. After a few minutes of breathy silence, she looked up at me and asked, "Are you hungry?"

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