Fleeting Comfort And Pleasure

'I'm lost...soon I'll be lost over you,' she began but Aiden silenced her with his kisses. She then resumed, as he prompted her to do.

He groaned and grabbed her head with both hands; wove his fingers in her hair; felt Lucinda's moist lips and tongue, her loving claims on his erect flesh making him look at her. She had, finally, broken out of that web that had kept her in another place, or state of mind. She was with him, only with him.

'Enough...enough!'

He could bear it no longer. He pulled her off his cock and her knees and saw the wonderful droop and sway of her breasts as she did so. He pulled Lucinda to him and, as he pressed his mouth to her parted lips, felt her hot breaths; noticed how her eyes were wild and glazed with passion.

He forced his tongue into her mouth, in a ferocious kiss, as he guided her further up their bed, and pushed her legs wider as he knelt between them. Then, he plunged his penis in slow sliding movements into her heat, into that moist clamping haven that he again ached to know of.

They were hungry and desperate for each other, with their frantic lovemaking a purposeful confession, and demonstration, of their overwhelming need to know of each other.

'Darling, I'm with you!' she cried out and could do little to control his actions.

'And I'm with you!' Aiden met the wild glistening look in Lucinda's eyes and he knew that she had discovered a new, crazed need for him. She whispered endearments, clawing and pulling on his arms. She could control her responses no longer. 'Yes...let it all go again!'

Lucinda arched her back, then wrapped her arms and legs around his twisting and plunging body; shuddered as he burst into searing pulses of release as they climaxed together.

'Every moment...every moment that I still have with you counts...every moment, Elsie.' He saw her nod quickly; saw the trembling of her lips as he spoke out and bent to kiss her lips. He kept glorying in the heat of the woman who had claimed him once more without a moment's reprieve.

Lucinda finally slumped back onto the bed, still quivering from her rousing orgasm. Aiden could not move. She held him tight, wanting him to remain inside her body.

'You said it shouldn't happen...'

'Yes, I know.' She pressed her fingers to his lips to silence him again and felt Aiden suck upon them.

Her face changed from a look of ecstasy to one of disbelief, to wonderment, and, finally, to one born out of love. He had set her free from all that prevailed in another life; one lived away from him and that she would soon return to.

They remained in each other's arms, their eyes communicating their deepest and unexpressed feelings. Aiden eased from her body and he felt Lucinda shiver before he lay back on the crumpled sheets beside her. He kept Lucinda in his embrace and met her look upon him and saw the welling up of ears that he brushed gently away.

'I won't paint those,' he murmured.

'No don't...there may be too many of them.'

Lucinda lay upon him and Aiden felt her shiver as his hands stroked her enervated skin, from her shoulders down to her hips, her buttocks, the tops of her fleshy thighs then over her belly as far as that was possible. The sharing of touches and breaths conveyed a deeper union of bodies, hearts, and minds.

'No more, you said.'

Aiden felt her move and he watched Lucinda as she kissed her way down his chest and belly, her lips tugging gently on the hair to be found there, until she once again caressed and kissed his now flaccid length, squeezed on his sac.

'You've stripped everything else away from me,' she whispered. Lucinda wanted to know of this just once, the taste of their union on what had claimed and loved her, whenever they had sought it of each other.

Soon, she would see this man standing at his easel, a different look on his often gaunt, bearded, face as he considered the work in progress; his lean, unashamedly naked, body belying the energy that he brought to his loving of her.

She dared not ask what was to be seen upon the canvas. Another picture, from days ago, already showed her what the man was capable of.

They had known of companionable ways, in his apartment or hers, those times are interwoven with frolics on the beach, a swim in waters that were never warm enough for her but that his playful ways made her forget or put to one side. They shared in their lunches and drinks; would then saunter back to the apartment and share in moments of tranquility; he painting and she reading or, unnoticed by Aiden, she watching him as he worked; a moment's glance alerting her that he was aware of her being there, after all, or was it to confirm a detail that needed further work?

'You'll have to rely on your memory of us being together,' she said, sitting up from the sun-lounger that had enabled her to remain in his company and as he wished it to be.

'I've got a few hours more of you being with me,' he replied, glancing her way. Aiden was obliged to stop as he was overcome by a sudden fit of coughing. Aiden saw her move from the lounger, her purpose clear; to be with him now. He moved away from the easel and prevented her from progressing any further. 'It will pass...'

She quelled the instinct to be angry, but Lucinda remained intent on speaking her mind. 'I said, only days ago, that there would be no secrets between us.'

'My cough's no secret and for the cause, there's no cure.' Aiden looked back at her and he knew that no more needed to be said other than, 'You've been more than fleeting succour to me. I hope that you've felt that from me and that, perhaps, I have been more than that to you also. Everything between us has become so spontaneous and felt only too natural like we were falling in love, but that it was something we could not concede to.'

♠

Lucinda packed the car, knowing that Aiden's eyes were upon her. Ever since the moment that he had entered her life she had felt more alive and had known that she was loved, consciously, more than for many years. She knew that she wanted so much more and realized that to be impossible. She also knew that something else, so very destructive, was also being played out in his life and that Aiden did not want to bother her.

They said goodbye. She felt his hold on her hands loosen and then fall away. She met one last lingering look upon her and then Aiden closed the door and was gone from her sight. Neither of them had wanted the moment of farewell to be upon them. Their loving through the night had been an avowal that they would have to go their separate ways once more.

'It's been a time that I'll always remember, Elsie,' he had told her, and she had laughed. His use of the word, 'Elsie', now held a cherished significance for her.

'The way you say it will always be with me, Aiden. Be kind in the painting, won't you?'

♥

THREE MONTHS LATER

'I'll get it!' Lucinda called out as she heard the doorbell ring. 'It'll only be the postie...'

She caught sight of Tom being nursed and saw his distracted look towards the hallway, where she now stood. Her man looked frail; had regressed in the last month or so, a process slowly begun within a week following her return from her holiday in Devon some weeks before. Of that, she had spoken to him, but few of the stories she told, or the pictures she had taken, seemed to register. Nor did they arouse a glimmer of recognition of places she had once been in and with him.

A large, box-like packet was held by a delivery driver. He held out a contraption and made her scrawl a signature, of sorts, on the small screen.

'Who sent it, do you know?'

'It says on the label, madam. On the back...'

Lucinda nodded and waited until he was out of sight and up on the roadway. She turned the parcel and gazed at a label and shivered as she saw a name -- Prescott Gallery, Bath.

'Aiden, darling, you shouldn't have done this,' she whispered, and on feeling a tightness in her throat, the rush of memories soon possessed her. She went to the sitting room door. 'I won't be a moment! I'm in the kitchen. There's a packet that I need to open. It may have been sent here by mistake...'

She closed, but did not shut, the door behind her, and soon laid the packet on the table and sought some scissors to cut the string bindings and to open one end, slicing through the tape that sealed it. Brown wrapping paper hid the item from view and a shake of the box soon had a letter flutter onto the floor.

The handwriting on the envelope was not a man's writing, it was too swirling for that, but the label on the packet told her all that she then needed to know. Aiden had hinted that he would send something on to her and its arrival had taken longer than she had hoped. To receive it sustained a tenuous link with him and all that had been shared.

♥

Dear Lucinda,

My brother Aiden, ever resourceful, was able to discover your address. It was his wish that you should have the painting that I am now sending to you with this letter.

Aiden said little more to me other than that he valued your company when you met in Devon, and at such moments when he was not collecting fossils for me, and he was not absorbed in his painting.

Aiden suffered from a progressive and debilitating illness that finally claimed him a week ago, but he continued to paint almost to the very end. He remained a very private man but he would not have spoken of you in the ways that he did, towards the end, if you had not left a deep impression upon him; and an inspiration to have him paint the enclosed work and another. The last piece, 'At Rest', of a woman sleeping, was sold at auction recently for a sum that would have pleased him enormously.

Aiden also said the woman, or women, in the two paintings were already spoken for; something that was of obvious regret to him.

As I have already written, my brother was a very private man, and he took to art late in life. That was a matter of regret to him, as evidenced by the portfolio of paintings, sketches, and other work that he has left behind and is a part of his estate and for me to deal with. He was a partner in the gallery that includes my work as a jeweller, and silversmith.

Among his sketch pads and books, there is his last one. He wrote 'Devon' on it, but the pad contains many images, and one above all is completed, in great detail, and in colors and materials that he was not known to use too often. That work is called 'Elsie'.

He wrote that name in a corner of the picture, with his unmistakable signature. Forgive me if I say, and conclude from your initials, that it is a picture of you.

The family always thought that Lucian Freud and Sir Stanley Spencer were his guiding lights. Elsie is more in the style of Picasso; simple, but only too evocative as a line drawing. The startling part of it is in the eyes of the woman portrayed.

Please, tell me if you wish to have it as an original. Otherwise, I will have a fine copy made of it and send that to you in due course.

Aiden often said: 'Art hurts, love even more so.'

I offer you my best wishes at this time and with the news that I felt compelled to bring to you.

Susan Prescott

♠