Cynthia's Two Lives

CYNTHIA'S TWO LIVES

She was woken by the shrill bleat of the alarm clock. Jeffrey was off on one of his jaunts that the car enthusiast's club arranged with almost military precision. His absence would again give her time for herself and to deal with the riot of emotions, and the unmistakable gnaw of longing, that she felt for another man.

"Are you okay?" Jeffrey asked. "You seem to have had a bad night of it."

"Yes, I'm fine. I'll get up and make some breakfast," she replied and looked at him as Jeffrey left their bed, his somewhat overweight frame not to be disguised by his pyjamas. "It will be a long day for you again."

"You don't mind me attending the car club's events, do you?"

"No, not at all. You have your hobbies just as I do."

During the night she had been restless, had tossed and turned so much that even Jeremy had been woken from the deep sleep that always overwhelmed him. Excuses had been made for her restlessness, but no explanation was given for what she had gone through, one dream following hot on the heels of another.

Images of another man swam before her closed eyes as she lay back on the pillows. How could she disclose what the dreams, and even her thoughts during the waking hours of every day, were about?

She had dreamt of being in another man's embrace. She had dreamed of being kissed by him. She had dreamt of being naked in his arms and when she had woken she had felt aroused and confused that her emotional involvement with Julian had gone so far. She has said nothing in response to his looks upon her, only a fleeting gaze across the art room where the art club met every week, on a Wednesday, and Julian was always there for the morning session, just as she was.

But there the similarities ended, for he was a gifted artist and sculptor; she but a dauber who attended the art club gatherings to be sociable and to create something. Phrases, what she wanted to say to him came to mind, now, just as images of her with him had drifted in during her dreamy sleep.

Had she dreamt of going with him, dreamt of being unfaithful to Jeffrey again, just as she had been when on holiday in Kenya and she had taken an African lover while Jeffrey had gone away on a short safari? Fidelity had suddenly been kept on a very short leash for the two nights that he had been left in the holiday compound that she and Jeffrey had created when they had lived in that country.

And now she was possessed by thoughts of Julian, a gifted artist who was much in demand for his work, and a man so different from Jaali, the man she had given herself to and so lustfully. What was the matter with her, that she again thought of straying, and with a man who lived not so far away and whom she would see so often that exercising control over her feelings, and actions, would demand everything of her.

She had never thought of herself as promiscuous, not even in her younger years and before marrying Jeffrey, but her thoughts now, and behaviour some months ago when in Kenya, had made her think, again, about what motivated her to feel and behave as she now did.

Were her feelings, or latent lust for a gifted man, simply an acknowledgment that she had suppressed a promiscuous streak for long enough and that she should now give full expression to the woman she was or had been, a woman faithful to Jeffrey? Her trip to Kenya had confounded her for the ease she had fallen from grace, even if it was in her eyes only. But she'd had fun and had known of physical pleasure that had gone far beyond what she had believed possible, moments heightened by the knowledge of whom she had surrendered to and then coupled with.

Julian, the man who now possessed her thoughts, had given no overt sign of his attraction to her, but he had offered encouragement to the work that she did in the art club. Only too prosaic circumstances could be a cover for what played out between people when another's eyes weren't on them. In her case, she already knew that Julian had become engaged by her presence whenever the art club met.

"Just where am I to go with this if Julian acts on what his look upon me suggests is at work in him?"

She wrapped a thin dressing gown around her body and went downstairs. Alone for the day, and with Jeffrey away when the art club met, she had time to deal with all that now possessed her waking thoughts.

Dreams sometimes had a habit of becoming real.

♥

Seeing Cynthia again at the art club meeting had made him realize just how much he had missed the woman over the days since the last gathering. She was tall, and slim but not skinny, and possessed a lovely, softly tanned, complexion and skin, her greying hair like a crown and cut short and making her face all the better to see.

Yes, he hungered for the woman seen in her artist's smock, a scarf tied casually around her neck; a woman with long slender legs, firm thighs, and a narrow waist that flared at the hips, her bum shaped so wonderfully by her slacks. And, he had taken delight in seeing the slow sway of her breasts under her ribbed, magenta-coloured, scoop-necked cotton jumper before her smock was put on. The sculptor in him, he who had crafted many pieces of a woman's figure, imagined their weight, took pleasure again, now, on seeing their sensuous droop. He'd wondered about her and seeing Cynthia dressed so alluringly he no longer needed to reimagine how her nipples poked at the fabric of her jumper, that they were big and rounded.

"I sure want you woman," he murmured and felt the ache in his groin and the tightening in his sac. His prick needed a workout and he sure wanted it to be with her...while there was just the chance, now that her man was away for the day as he so often was with fellow car enthusiasts. Cynthia had offered this information when they had stopped to talk over a coffee, and as everyone attending the art club's gathering took a break.

Something had provoked her into telling him that.

Now, the meeting was over and the afternoon stretched out before him. He gathered up the debris of his work in clay and stuffed the debris sack that he'd had the foresight to bring along with him, thinking all the while of Cynthia Roberts and that figure of hers, how he ached to see her and to explore and know of that haughty woman's body that he marvelled at. Wonderful as it was to see it, her figure belonged to someone much younger than Cynthia was known to be.

He sought to engage her in conversation as the meeting slowly, noisily, broke up. "You have done as I suggested and worked on a collage. You must be pleased with the result, Cynthia?"

"I am and thank you for suggesting it!" she laughed and meeting his approving look upon her, the artist's smock put away. She stood before him once more in her billowy slacks and her magenta sweater, the scarf again loosely fastened around her throat. It was a stylish and casual look that set her apart from other women in the room.

"I'll go further and suggest that you call in sometime...at my studio. I can show you the range of skills needed for what you can now do. I'd like to do that...if and when circumstances allow."

He knew of such a moment. It was now, but wanted his overt suggestion to sink in. Cynthia, like so many others in the club, knew that he lived alone once more, his long-term partner finally breaking off their relationship when her stated aim, marriage, was not to be fulfilled. He had seen no compelling reason to travel down that particular road again.

An enthralling distraction from his emptier life, where women were concerned, stood before him. Cynthia lived nearby and could meet to pursue a purposeful liaison but they have no ties. That was the plan but would she agree to it, if asked?

Cynthia's pouted smile gave him the answer he sought.

"Is an hour, or so, from now, too soon?" she murmured, not looking directly at him.

He chuckled. "No, it's not and I like your certainty. I've wanted to ask you for some time, you know?"

"I only sensed it, didn't know it, from how you look at me sometimes, Julian." Cynthia gathered her things under each arm as she looked around them, just to be sure they could not be overheard. She pouted. "I'll...I'll come as I am, shall I?"

"Yes, do that. I want to see the real woman that you are, not the haughty one. I already know the one that I prefer and want to know a whole lot more."

♥

She made ready for the short drive through the open countryside before the steep and twisting road took her up the escarpment and to the entrance to Julian's studio and home. She studied her reflection in the mirror. That Julian had given her the eye so overtly was something new! Crazy as it was to meet them, those looks had set her mind racing. Just what had he seen in her to arouse such appraising glances upon her over the weeks since she had been back from her holiday in Kenya?

"What madness, but I want to go through with this."

She raised her arms above her head and stretched, saw how her tummy tightened and her ribcage and hip bones showed as her sweater rode up, how her breasts sagged. Julian had taken in how she was dressed and she had felt the fluttery feelings in her tummy as she met his admiring looks and realised what lay behind them. Julian had hopes of seeing her when no one else could interrupt or witness what might play out between them. Best of all, perhaps, would be for them to meet in the seclusion and privacy of his home and studio, a workshop set apart in the woods surrounding his home and where he fashioned his sculptural pieces.

She could not put from her mind Julian's changed ways towards her. It was no mistake of hers to think that he had given her the eye on more occasions than she could ever recall, and she felt both dismay and a strange pleasure that wayward thoughts of him now brought upon her. It seemed only too clear what lay behind them and his looks upon her ignited wayward imaginings of her 'going' with him; imaginings that she had never had for any local man, ruggedly attractive in his ways as Julian certainly remained.

She had seen how attentive he was to others in the group, women mostly, who sought his advice, but she felt that he acted in this way mostly for her. His unwavering gaze, not what he had said, made clear the place she had taken in his thoughts while she was with the others in the art group. However, she would have been alone for the afternoon, maybe into the early evening, and she was now possessed by her hopes of him, of them, and the fleshy delights that Julian might introduce her to, were it to go so far and Julian sought it of her.

As she picks up her car keys from the table she glimpses her reflection in the mirror, its size and carved frame making it such a feature and brightening the hallway. Is she really to go through with this, her assignation with a gifted and attractive man, an artist with the unflinching stare of his hazel-brown eyes and soft captivating laugh?

It was a laugh that captivated her and was heard only hours ago when she had answered him and said she could be with him this afternoon. She'd caught him off guard by the immediacy of her reply, and he had tilted his head as much out of surprise as to offer a wondering look; a look as if to reveal his surprise on hearing her answer. She had found it uncommonly warm and also sexy, a look of wonder as Julian seemed to take in her appearance through new eyes.

She hopes that such a look will be on her as she undresses for him, or he takes off her clothes and she does the same for him. The artist has patience in capturing the moment on the canvas and perhaps that restraint will be deployed upon her and heighten every moment of pleasure that will then follow.

The car seems to drive itself; her thoughts are on him and what she seeks from every moment that they can share. Infatuation and lust for him are making her do strange things. What are the boundaries to moments like these?

Julian waves as she slows to a stop under the trees. He's outside taking a call on his iPhone. It is soon brought to an end as Julian steps towards her, a hand outstretched and she takes it.

"I thought this moment would never come..." he says, his voice soon trailing away as he takes in her appearance before him.

"And I wondered if it would. I've hardly slept the past few nights...nor have I eaten or drunk anything, not really."

She's unsure if she has ever felt quite this way. If rational behaviour comes with age then she would not be here and with him, the look of his approving eyes upon her enough to suggest that there will be few preambles to their first time of going together. Lust will overcome all reason, and she has told him already that he has dominated her thoughts.

The artist is not before her now, but a man and lover. He seems to look into her soul as their eyes lock. She knows that there's no way back from this, but even if there was she knows that she'd get lost and not find her way back to a known place in her life.

She wants him to see and know the body that is clothed, for now, in a sweater and slacks, her hair mussed by the breeze that rustles the leaves on the trees. She won't think too far ahead about how she will behave when he is close, at the art club, and after everything has been discovered and shared. Her body feels tense; there's a knot of longing in her belly as his hands caress her neck and he presses against her.

"You've known that I've got you in my blood, haven't you?" he kisses slowly. "You know that I want to see and know the woman underneath the clothes you wear and the reality of who you are, Cynthia."

She nods. Boundaries have been crossed before. Sense has given way to impulses once or twice before, but those times were far away from home. There can be no compromises and she does not care what the emotional cost might be after he has possessed her, nor where it will end and when. But why should it end, if an arrangement can be reached that suit them both? She wants to touch and caress; to be touched and caressed. She wants his body against hers.

"I'm here for you," she kisses before she closes her eyes and is oblivious to where he takes her, and which door he walks through as they enter his home. She wants to become lost with him and to melt, to fuse her body with his, and to make real what Julian has only had her know by the look of his eyes upon her and a few carefully chosen words.

He does not tease about her impatience and there is nothing she can do to hurry things along. She has had moments of thinking about him and how it would happen between them, were it to happen.

Step by slow step, with exchanges of kisses, they reach the bedroom, Julian's place is more of a lodge than a house set in woodland.

Kissing and trailing caresses over each other's bodies they tear away their clothes, shiver as naked skin brushes against naked skin and hands grope, trail caresses over secret places or she grips his penis, arcing out from Julian's belly, its tip swollen and glistening.

Cynthia trembles as if a man's possession of her body is an uncommon experience. But she sighs and is overcome with longing for him and the release of the tension she has felt whenever she has thought of him.

"Go on, it's what I want you to do!" she gasps as one of Julian's hands drifts down over her almost flat belly and between her legs. She leans back as his fingers caress and probe, slide over her pussy's parted lips, caress deeply within her, and touch one sensitive place, then another.

"You are a wonder to me," he kisses, "so slender and bringing so much for me to see, to touch, and to have."

She squirms under his caresses and loves what Julian's fingers perform on her and in her body, but she's becoming impatient and wants more. She tugs on his penis and reaches back awkwardly to do so. She wants Julian to be in her; the longing for the man she finds impossible to control.

She drags him down onto the bed and feels his hands in her hair as her head is drawn down to encourage her mouthing of him. She does it greedily, feels that domed tip slide over the roof of her mouth until it reaches the back of her throat. She works him with her agile hands and mouth and is worried that he'll lose it, her rhythmic sucking and jerking on him the acts of a woman lost in every moment of arousal and concession.

"I want to take you!" he calls out and she stops, gazes up at him, and sees his eyes fluttering out of pleasure.

"Then do that."

She moves to kneel before him, Julian's hands soon on her hips as, without a moment's hesitation, he pulls her onto him, and his deepening thrusts open the way to his unrestrained taking of her, their movements in such harmony that it seems as if they have done this before.

"I'll ease up the next time," he grunts as she pushes back and rocks her hips forward and back, from side to side, as his penis stretches and fills her, all control forsaken. Her legs shiver, her breasts ache from the fierce grip Julian has on them, her nipples wrapped between the fingers of each hand as he takes her.

"Julian!"

She is dismayed that he withdraws from her and she is pushed forward onto the bed. He collapses beside her but she has no time to take in what he wants from her. She is pulled roughly onto him and meets his fierce and deep, open-mouthed, kisses before she kneels over him and meets the lustful look of his eyes upon her.

"I'll never get enough of seeing you like this now," he calls out.

She knows it too.

She settled and soon became impaled on that hard staff of flesh that arced out from his belly, from the mat of hair on Julian's groin. She felt his penis's tip glide into her, Julian's attention to her breasts no distraction from what she wanted to pursue with him, pleasing as it was to feel his hands grip them, his mouth sucking on her achingly hard nipples.

"Oh yes, I want you there!" she gasped as she felt the bulbous tip of his penis brush over her vagina's walls and plumb her as she rose and fell upon him in a slow but rousing rhythm, bucking her hips and submitting to the grip of his hands to her body as Julian coaxed her into moving on him in circular motions, her muscles clamping and working him relentlessly, for as long as her energy allowed and his demands made clear that he wanted.

Julian failed to coax her to lie down, to move off him. "When?"

"Later, all of that from you later!" she cried out, failing to stifle her cries as she was taken to different heights of pleasure, Julian's energy seemingly inexhaustible. "I know how you want me...I know that now...I know how you want me!"

She panted harshly in her efforts and clung to him, putting her arms around Julian's neck as he sat up and embraced her, kissed her throat, and shared in the heat of their bodies pressed together. He crushed her breasts to his hairy chest and slid caresses down her back, coaxing her to thrust her hips forward and back. She needed no encouragement to work him and succumbed to the burgeoning frenzy that Julian's ways with her aroused.

The gifted artist was now her lover, the lustful admirer and possessor of her body. It had been a poorly kept secret and she had succumbed, was now giving of herself. Julian would be a passionate distraction from the ordered life she pursued with Jeffrey, a raging counterpoint to it all.

She might yet succumb to living out two lives and doing so close to home. The woman that many thought of as so withdrawn, closed in on herself, had another side to her nature that would have to be reconciled with the supposedly ordered life that she was seen to lead.

Julian's hands covered her swaying breasts, and his thumbs rubbed over hard, erect nipples, forcing another low, deep moan to escape from her open mouth. She seemed to drag in every breath that she took.