Fleeting Comfort And Pleasure

Aiden saw her look away and saw the set of her lips change for only an instant. He then saw her nod as if a truth had to be spoken out if they were to deal with whatever might be found, and shared, with each other.

'I travel down here every year for a week of rest and recovery. My husband is confined to a wheelchair, now...he had a stroke that destroyed the man that I married, and the father of my two children. There's...there's,' she said and faltered, 'there's a lot to deal with every day and I need some space, just a bit, for myself and myself alone.'

Lucinda met his considerate look upon her. Gone were the bravado and flirtatious glances. Instead, she now met a softer and more considerate gaze of the man beside her; the two of them seated under a parasol and oblivious to all around them.

She heard Aiden sigh. 'I'm sorry, Lucinda. I apologize for my gauche behavior ever since you arrived it seems to me. The painter in me got the woman before me all wrong...'

Lucinda reached out to touch his arm and it made Aiden look at her. 'You flattered me that you should see someone else to make you do that.' She was startled by his sudden movement.

'Damn...damn these things!' His iPhone had interrupted them. 'It's my sister, Susan. She runs the gallery with me...the place near Bath that I took on when I decided to make a life of it...painting and sketching. Selling them even.'

Lucinda heard his jokey ways of it and watched him as he left the table and leaned against the rail that was at the edge of the quayside and that gave onlookers a view of the few fishing trawlers that looked on this place as their home port. Aiden was seen to talk for a moment or two only. He then glanced her way and beckoned for her to join him. She did so, unhesitatingly.

'I've been instructed to bring back a few mementos. It's my sister's code for small fossils that we can sell in the gallery...or as props for my pictures. Those that I paint of the cliffs over there...and there. It depends on the light and the time of day to get the image I want just right.'

She stood by his shoulder and followed his gaze to where he pointed. 'I walk along those beaches every day.'

'I do the same, at a time much too early for you I imagine.'

'Is that an invitation to join you?' she smiled, her touch to his jacket tightening for an instant. 'What is early?'

'Six...six-thirty. I go out before breakfast and get my ideas straight for my work. I then paint from then on for hours...as the mood takes me. I could even paint you...if you managed to sit still for long enough.'

'Not in the Freud or Spencer styles you won't!' They shared in their laughter. Lucinda looked at him with stilled eyes and she met the same look upon her from the man she had only just met but had, somehow, forged a bond with already. 'What's happening?' she whispered.

'Dare I say, after everything that has gone before, that you're letting go, even if it's for a few days?' They stood at the railing and looked down into the waters of the harbor and kept being jostled by tourists that thronged all about them. Aiden put an arm around her waist and Lucinda decided not to refuse him this pass on her. 'I'm here at the apartment when you come back from your dinner. Talk it all out with me if it helps and come for a walk along the beach tomorrow. I'll sketch or paint you in softer ways and still find the woman underneath your skin...'

Lucinda nodded and clenched her lips to silence any reply. It was enough to simply squeeze his hand, the one that held her to him and caused a riot of feelings to course through her body. Another man's touch was on her body and she knew that his ways of seducing her would not be resisted for long. She had sought a change of environment, not the man in her life. Both were now to be discovered if she conceded to him.

If she was really to let go, she wanted it to be with Aiden. Of that, she was already certain.

♥

She saw the dim light in his apartment and took that as a sign that Aiden was up, perhaps still at work or reading. It seemed that the man existed on little sleep, if what he had told her earlier was anything to go on; that he went out for a walk not long after six thirty on every morning that he was here.

The evening with friends, and supper, had passed by in something of a blur. They had thought it to simply be exhaustion after her journey; the sudden loosening of her resolve to keep a hold on everything when in Tom's company and caring for him. They sympathized when she said that it was time for her to leave and they arranged to meet up again and for them to walk along the seashore and have lunch somewhere. She had no believable excuse to decline their suggestion.

But now...but now she saw a shadowy figure appear at his window, then the shape of the man more clearly as he came to stand at the railing of his apartment's balcony.

She saw him wave slowly to her, or was Aiden beckoning for her to be with him? She waved back before she brush her windswept hair away. Her actions made her blouse tighten across the swell of her breasts and now she felt, again, what she had been possessed by all evening. It had been a sense of keen anticipation, the hunger to know of him and to share in an impetuous rut with the man whom she gazed at. She wanted to be taken out of only too ordered ways.

She pushed the key into her apartment's door but she had so little time to put her bag on the floor. He was soon with her and she turned on feeling the touch of Aiden's fingers trace a path over her body; felt his hands then cup her face as he looked at her in the dim light cast from her rooms.

'Meet me in this, Elsie? I know already that it has to be with you.' His breaths were on her parted lips as they stared into each other's eyes. 'Some things...some things, they just happen.'

'Yes...yes, they do!' she kissed, feeling the slow seducing slide of his tongue over her parted lips, his embrace upon her suddenly tight and his caresses coaxing. 'It may be wrong to do that so soon, but I need this!'

'So do I...I knew that the moment that I saw you again.'

It was crazy and impetuous, her impulses overcoming all reason and restraint. She felt the gnaw of desire in her belly and the urgency to know of a man again, a compelling stranger whom she had met but hours ago and who had found the words, or behaved in a manner, to have her cast away all restraint or propriety.

'Stay here, be here with me! Close up your place...I'll be waiting.'

Lucinda slipped out of his restraining embrace upon her. She would be with him and pursue what she had hoped would be her rediscovery of an ordered world with a man and lover; not the world she was in and that had been turned upside down; a world that she had stepped out of for a while only.

♥

Aiden's attention was focused on her naked form, on the indolent swell of her breasts as she lay on the bed and languished under his slow, wondering, featherlight, finger-tip caresses. Her body, the softer flesh to her thighs, seen to be marked by where he had been in taking her.

'Enough, for now...enough, Aiden, please?' she whispered; a hand stilling the progress of his touches upon her and then drawing him into a slow kiss. 'You'll spoil me...and...and I have to deal with what I have done with you...and so soon.'

'What we have done. I began this, remember?'

'Yes,' she smiled, 'there is that too.'

Aiden brushed her hair away from Lucinda's face. He delighted in all that had been discovered and shared, finally. He had coaxed her into letting go. He had found, in Lucinda's responses, that she had rediscovered unrivaled pleasure and the sharing of delights that, he heard from her whispered entreaties not to stop, she had not known of for some time.

'Don't go! You don't have to go, just yet, do you?' she asked, her grip on his hand tightening. 'Put my mind at rest by staying here with me, would you?'

Aiden understood what she was asking of him only too well. 'Being with you is not going to be a fling, Lucinda. I know that already, crazy as that may sound to you.'

Lucinda turned in his embrace as she lay in his arms and looked at him; felt a rush of affection for her accomplished, tender, and patient lover. She brushed her fingers over his face; felt the harshness of his beard; the hair on his chest and then the softer, downy hair that spiraled down to his groin; the harsh mat of hair to be found there; hair that was now mingled with her own. She gently held his flaccid penis, felt its girth and she shivered. The man had brought so much and she had clung to him as her spirit soared through her climax and the tempest of his release.

'You've taken me out of myself, completely...thank you.'

'Rest, for now,' he kissed. 'Tomorrow we'll go for a walk along the strand...you can look for fossils and also help me with that. And I will draw and sketch...a picture of you. There's no one else in my life. It's been a barren wasteland for some time, as you'll see in some of my other work.'

'Here, on show here?'

'No, on the web on my gallery's website.'

Lucinda felt his hold upon her body ease away in a slow, tantalizing, slip of his fingers over her skin.

Just how was she to deal with all that had been discovered with him? How could she conceal the change in her that this time away from a dysfunctional life, that she led, had wrought upon her? It would be heard in her voice when she called to check on Tom, but also upon her return to him.

She was on the threshold of an affair, and most surely the illicit liaison of a lifetime. Lucinda turned and lay against this man who had claimed her.

'Help me with this, Aiden?'

He drew her slowly onto him and she bent to kiss his lips; met the prick and flicker of his tongue; shivered in response to the questing press and caress of his fingers; soon felt the rush of emotion course through her body as Aiden slowly, but purposefully, claimed her.

♥

Lucinda sat on a small rug, Aiden's canvas hold-all by her feet, and felt lazily content. It vied with a nervy excitement from all that she had discovered with him. The sun warmed the skin of her arms and legs, her floral print skirt drawn up, just enough, to feel warmth on the bare skin of her thighs, just above the knee.

She watched him find small items of fallen rock that she would split with a geologist's hammer that he 'happened' to have with him for this stay. They had already gathered four, small and exquisitely detailed, samples of fossils and would soon move on to a new location further along the shoreline. She hoped that it would be away from those in pursuit of trophies, just as they were; her hopes not driven by a fear of being seen with him, but simply to be alone with Aiden; to watch him work at drawing the scene before them; to finish the sketch that he had made in furious haste over a snatched breakfast, eaten much later than he was in the habit of taking.

He remained disconcertingly attentive; but not in a 'touchy-feely' sort of way. He gave her space; understood why she needed that; just as she had begun to understand his need for isolation, to withdraw into himself as he worked for a few moments and then relaxed again.

By these small, insignificant, ways she felt that they were drawing closer and understanding each other. She craved his company; he wanted her company, and he also thought of her as his muse; someone new to inspire him in his creative efforts. She met his smile and saw Aiden hold out a hand with two larger blocks of rock. She waved it away and instead had him hold out his free hand so that she could draw him down onto the rug and sit beside her.

There were few opportunities to feel 'free' and to be out of the debilitating grip of Tom's condition; the round-the-clock care that he needed. She was slowly letting go by being here now and feeling the warmth of the sun on her skin and the attentive, undoubtedly supportive, company that Aiden brought to her.

She came to a decision, impetuous as it was.

'You've persuaded me! I can't just sit here and watch you fooling around,' she said shielding her eyes and looking up at him. Aiden would have noted the soft pink nail varnish on her toes; they complemented her fingernails and the sunblock on her lips.

'Good, I'm glad' he grinned, and holding out a hand to her, 'come on, then.'

Lucinda stood up and unbuttoned the fastening at the neckline of her billowing blouse to reveal her pink tankini top. Her skirt fell to the blanket at her feet.

She was being taken out of her ordered ways of it, and now followed him into the surf. She found it to be surprisingly warm, even if it was at the water's edge. She laughed as Aiden flopped into the water and turned to look at her. She was nowhere near as confident as he was.

'I'm not going out far, so don't make me,' she told him, nervily, her steps cautious and slow.

'I'll look after you,' he soon answered and drew close, entranced by the sight of her and how the wet fabric of her bikini clung to her body. He delighted in the dusting of freckles to Lucinda's skin; the provocative shapeliness of her breasts and the soft tan lines that faded away until the beginnings of paler skin were revealed to his gaze. And then there was the soft swell of Lucinda's belly at the rim of her high-waisted bikini briefs that revealed the wonderful, mature, woman to his gaze. He loved the look of her just as she was now. 'I'll swim beside you...'

'Yes, but not too close, ' she felt obliged to caution him, and on seeing Aiden's undoubted interest in her; on meeting a look upon her that she had not seen in Tom's eyes for such a long time. He seemed not to notice her now, the smallest efforts that she made to dress nicely as she had always done until his condition took its toll on him. She understood the reasons for that only too well, but it did not keep her from feeling almost invisible as the woman she still felt herself to be and Aiden had made love to.

Aiden showed off and acted like a rebellious teenager as he performed handstands and fell over, or he porpoised around her as she settled down, the water up to her chin and she began to swim and meeting his watchful gaze as Aiden swam on his back as if to encourage her by remaining near and attentive.

'I'm glad to be with you like this and to see you let go.'

'Is it that obvious?' she said, stopping and then gasping as her feet could not touch the sandy bottom. 'Oh, God! We're out of our depth!' She gave him a panic-stricken look.

'It's okay, really it is,' he soothed and soon held out a hand that she felt compelled to take. He drew her to him as he walked towards the shore. 'Can you feel the sand now...wriggle your toes into it?' Lucinda saw him twist and turn. 'It's a foot massage with a difference!'

She laughed with him on hearing his boyish pleasure in speaking of it and then doing it. His hand still held hers and she wondered what he would now do. He began to rise and fall in the water in a quickening rhythm that she could do nothing about but follow.

'I can't do that!' He had disappeared; she sensed that she was expected to do the same. He surfaced so very near to her, a broad grin creasing his face.

'Well? What's keeping you?'

'Aiden! I can't do that!'

'Yes, Lucinda, you can. Just try it and surprise yourself!'

She had time to gulp in a deep breath before he pulled her under then rose free of the surface, then down again until she could stand it no more.

'Stop!' she couldn't help but gasp out in laughter. 'You're a danger!' Lucinda now cried out, raising her hands to sweep away her sodden, glistening hair that now hung limply onto her shoulders, her bikini top all askew. 'And, you're looking at me again in that way of yours. Just stop it!'

'If only I could,' she heard him sigh and et his unflinching gaze. 'I want you to live it out while you're here, Lucinda...and to do that with me.'

'I'll try to do that, but slowly and safely.'

'Do it all while we're here and while you're with me.' He said it again, only Aiden stood closer and she felt a touch, his hand on her back to draw her against him in an only too public display. She felt his thumbs slowly caress her breasts. 'Close your mind to everything else, if you can...while you can.'

'Give in, and give in to you and my instincts and feelings, instead?' Lucinda blurted out, putting her arms around his neck and soon being lifted into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist and felt his lips press on the swell of her breasts, what was exposed to his gaze. 'This is crazy, what you're making me do! It's just crazy!'

Aiden had heard her gasp of both dismay and pleasure before Lucinda bent down to kiss his upturned face as he lifted her, playfully against him for an instant.

'If that's how it is in you now, and when you're with me, then yes...yes, it is, but it's wonderfully crazy.'

Their situation was unreal, now. She broke free of his embrace and began to walk, to swim, then walk again, back towards the shore and with the incoming, gentle swell helping her on. The prick of seashells was to be felt to the soles of her feet, but none of that bothered her now. Aiden's ways of it had lit a flame within her once more; taken her to a place that she had once dared not to go.

'Your body hurts, but you retain your distinct beauty and I've seen a moment's vitality again in you.' Aiden had caught up with her.

'But...but you're taking things too far with your looking and now touching me.' She spoke nervously, her mind in a whirl. She had felt him stroke her arms and now felt Aiden grip her hands as they stood in the surf, the water up to their waists. 'I'm not the woman you imagine me to be.'

'I don't have to imagine any of it,' he murmured, suddenly so very close to her that she could feel his breath on her face. 'You're beautiful, and I sense that you want to live it all out, while you still can.'

Lucinda knew that he could not keep from flirting with her. She expressed a deep sigh. What he had told her was only too true.

'Don't...don't, do that,' she groaned feeling his fingertips caress her belly and then the front of her bikini top. 'Being with me is one thing, but touching me like that is something else, entirely, while we're out here. Please...no more. No, don't do that.'

She broke free of his claims upon her, yet she felt an uncommon ache that Tom could no longer arouse in her as he had once done, it seemed ages ago. Aiden sought to touch and perhaps even to claim her, again, in an act of consoling, and undoubtedly tender homage. She soon made her way back to where they had been seated on the shingle.

'Is that the end of our morning together?' he asked. 'I'd like it if we had lunch together, al fresco, and out on the balcony and out in the sun. We could do that either in your place or mine. It's not as though we've far to go to either of them.'

'Yes, why not?' she chuckled. 'I think you said you had work to do later...'

'Yes, later. I can't think what you could persuade me to do instead.' She heard the suggestive way that he said it.

Lucinda took the small towel that Aiden now held out to her and dried herself as best she could. She then gathered up her clothes and dressed as before, watched him make no fuss but tug his shirt on and gather up their finds, and then put everything in the canvas hold-all once more.

They made slow, reflective progress back along the beach, their course meandering in and out of the soft tumble of the surf. She would glance his way but did not give voice to what she now thought of them sharing many precious, and only too-intimate, moments while they had the opportunity to do so.

'Well, lovely Lucinda? I have a drawing of you, that you can take away, but I want to paint a portrait of you. To begin with I want to take a few digital pictures and go from there. I want it to be a relaxed and unfussy pose and to see you out here in the fresh sea air and with the warmth of the sun on your face.'