Get REAL Ch. 04: Requital

It was like baking bran muffins, thought Marcos, smiling, as he methodically arrayed the tubes of oil colors to take an inventory of his needs. Combine a cup of wheat bran with a cup of flour, baking soda, canola oil, eggs, milk, molasses, and raisins; spoon the mixture into wells of the muffin tin, pop them into the oven, and thirty minutes later, they're done. Same ingredients each time. Same predictable outcome.

Making love with Maria was a recipe he had followed faithfully for nearly two decades: several handfuls of back stroking in the spoons position, a smattering of kisses, whisking with oral sex until she moaned in pleasure, and finally, entry with deep penetration, ejaculation, and body-rubbing in the afterglow to send her off to sleep.

She liked sex that way. It was predictable, and she was able to achieve an orgasm and post-coital relaxation every time.

He had wanted to try dates and walnuts or cranberries with orange peel, but she liked her muffins with raisins and nothing else.

Maria's foreplay made no time for role-playing or fantasy. She confessed to having no sensation in her breasts. Her anus was strictly off-limits. And aside from her scalp, which she loved having a hair brush raked through, her only sex organ was her clitoris. No wonder, justified Marcos to himself, that he sought sensual adventures with other women. Like now, with Cassie. Or, before her, with Randi, who had unexpectedly died three years prior.

"I'm going up to bed," Maria announced. "You coming?"

Depends on if you do, thought Marcos, then reconsidered before replying, "Guess I'm done here."

And he put down, on his studio table, the list of hues he would need to purchase for his next painting. He mounted the stairs with her to the bedroom for their nightly routine.

Would they make love tonight, Marcos wondered, as he watched Maria unbutton the day's tunic she had not bothered to change, slip out of her white pants, and throw them both into the laundry basket. She unclipped the clasps of her J.C Penney's vanilla bra and slid off her even more vanilla panties. He paused to ponder why, with so pleasing a form, she didn't flatter herself more with lacy lingerie. Or, probably more to the point, flatter herself for him.

Bearing two children had taken only a minor toll on her body. She had gained some weight in her hips, but still had that Bosc pear shape he had been attracted to so long ago. She bore the color of the fruit's skin, too--a rich Mediterranean complexion that could be rendered with pigments of yellow oxide, burnt sienna, raw umber, and white. Her hair was shoulder-length ivory black, with nary a gray strand, that framed her classically proportioned face so beautifully that he could have painted her day after day--if she ever had been willing to sit for him. Another sore subject.

It was early, so they might. Or would she be departing in the morning before the sun rose to make her rounds at the hospital and need to get right to sleep? He wished he knew.

For as long as he could remember, he had had to muster elaborate scenarios to have sex with Maria. After all, one can salivate for the same muffins only if really hungry. And now with Cassie on his mind so much of the time--and on his conscience--he was finding it impossible to dream of sex with anyone but her. She was so fresh, so new, so agreeably different...one night a spinach salad with tomato and mozzarella drizzled with olive-and-garlic-infused oil and balsamic vinegar; and the next, mesclun greens with avocado, mango, goat cheese, and toasted pecans splashed with lime juice and extra virgin olive oil.

She flossed. He flossed. She brushed. He did likewise.

He recalled having to conduct these same mental preparations for Maria when he and Randi had had their long love affair. The two of them had met weekly, to paint en plein-aire for a couple hours. Then, to celebrate their accomplishments, they rolled naked on the cool moss. Or frolicked bare in the summer rain. Or picked wild raspberries, and, shedding encumbrances of clothing, filled each other's mouths with warm, sweet-tart moieties--before smearing their red pulp on lips and over cheeks, squashing handfuls on their chins and watching the berries ooze crimson down necks, stain pale breasts, fill belly buttons, and tangle pubic hair with pulverized scarlet bits. Then, amid the bumbling bees and silent butterflies, cardinal strains and blackbird calls, they would nibble and suck every incriminating seed off nipple, vulva, and glans; slurping, squealing, tickling, giggling, panting, and startling all the meadow fauna with the succulently joyous sounds of a human love song.

So long ago. So clear in his memory. So different from Maria. So conflicting.

They got into bed. She turned onto her left side, away from him. He snuggled up from behind and wrapped his arm around her waist, lightly cupping his hand over her upper breast.

"Love you."

"Love you, too."

And they lay there silently. Each into private thoughts. Hers, he could only imagine, but likely something she found to worry about at work. Or to fret about their daughters in college.

He, on the other hand, drifted along, planning the next steps of his new painting. He found his way into an eddy of background options, now that the figure had been roughed in. The figure. His model, Tara. Tara and Cassie. And he was in the current again, paddling hard to gain the rapids. Cassie. Her tile art. The reception. Their evening together afterwards. Dancing. Close rumba. Provocative tango. Shedding layer after layer until their ultimate connection. Chest to chest. Skin to skin. That look in her eyes. The want in their loins. Tara's arrival. Big disappointment. Malbec. Rally. Double massage. Tasting Cassie. Hummingbird in bee balm. Black bear in blueberries. Fragrant nectar. Sweet, sweet fruit. Drunken senses. Double loving. Cassie from the head. Tara from the foot. Meeting at his base. Scaling him. With crampons. Axe. Piton and spikes. Reaching his summit. Surrounding him. Her lip hugs. His burst into the clouds like Mount Saint Helens. Oh, Cassie, My Cassie!

Maria's hand was stroking his outer thigh. He had an emerging hard-on, poking into the crevice of her buttocks. She was responding to the invitation he hadn't realized he had sent. Panicking, he replied by stroking her back with clammy fingers. His head wasn't into this, although his cockhead said otherwise.

Flashback to flailing bedtimes with Maria in the Randi era. He would start off aroused, get that unwanted guilty feeling, start to sweat, lose his erection, and then have to fabricate an explanation for Maria. Or she would discover his flaccidity, turn over, and give up on him, even when he was genuinely feeling affection for her and so desperately wanted to make love, to pleasure her in a different way than with intercourse.

Any minute, he knew, she would reach down to stroke his penis, and find it had sagged, which only increased his dread and likened the predicted outcome, a vicious cycle of doom.

Surely enough, her hand grasped his wilting erection, relaxed its grip, and started to retreat when--whether it was from something that had not gone well at the hospital, or the evening's call from their daughter wailing over her midterm, or the anticipated visit of her never-satisfied mother-in-law, or any number of hair triggers--Maria flipped. Wigged out. She squeezed his cock and twisted it.

"Ow!" he yelped.

And she was upright, the covers thrown off, and he was roughly and rudely rolled into the prone position. Maria landed hard onto his back, took his thinning hair in one of her fists, and, with the other hand, delivered blows to his bare buttocks, pommeling his cheeks with her palm, spanking him viciously.

"Owww!" Each smarted.

"Ow! Ow!" They stung.

"I hate it when I need you inside me and you can't do it. (Whack.) I get up early every morning. (Whack.) I work hard all day. (Whack.) I come to bed beset by problems that I can't get off my mind. (Whack.) All you do is have naked people come over to look at, make paintings that never sell, and go dancing at night. (Whack, whack, whack.) You have to love me when i want it. It's part of your job! (Whack.)"

Shocked, stunned, speechless except for a howl with every blow, Marcos took it like he imagined one does a caning in Singapore. Or was it more deserved? Strangely, though, it had an unforeseen effect. Like when he pinched his nipple or plucked a pubic hair. It got his blood flowing, not only to his hindquarters, where he imagined cherry red patches were blistering up, but to his groin. And he saw Black. Not the color, but the horse. "The Black." The Black Stallion.

He had read it to his girls. Vividly he recalled the scene of The Black in a race with a dozen thoroughbreds, being whipped down the home stretch in a final sprint to win. He was that horse. Maria was riding him. He lengthened his stride beneath her, gaining strength with every crop strike. He was powerful now, vigorous, and virile.

"I wanna fuck you!" he shouted, struggling to buck Maria from his back, roll her off, and still retain some of the hair on his balding head. When Maria toppled over, he reared, as her grip on his scalp wasn't fully relinquished.

Maria looked with surprise at his buttocks, glowing like the elements on their electric range, incredulous that she could be so possessed by her requital as to inflict such damage--yet marveling at the ever-reddening cock that stuck up in her face.

Marcos was possessed. He became every male animal whose hindbrain was delirious with the scent of a female in heat. He leapt upon her, plunged deeply into her wanting wetness, stretching against her tightness, responding to each of her gasps with another thrust, ramming hard, slathered with foam, straining in anticipation.

Then, unconsciously, Homo sapiens reappeared. Marcos slowed his pace to grant Maria her own moments of pleasure, pulling part way out and shortening his stroke to rhythmically fill her sacred space. And to ride the writhing of her pelvis. Plumb the depths of her moans. Receive the sharpness of her nails digging into his flanks, holding him in close confines.

He waited, restraining himself. Delighting in her delight. Alerted for her signal.

It came. Her thighs squeezed him tightly. With a cry he was off, his pelvis thundering toward her, driving solidly into hers.

"Harder, harder!" Maria commanded, and he complied, making the mattress rumble and the headboard shake.

As they built to their climax, he stared into her olive eyes, and professed his love; she tightly clenched her lids and screamed her own affirmations. Moments later, he did the same.

He slumped, letting his weight come fully to bear upon her, and inhaled the fragrances of sage and prairie grass, savoring the feel of her earthiness beneath him. There was still affection there.

Their breathing slowed. She asked him to roll off. He hugged her closely, and kissed her face--her nose, her cheeks, her chin, and then her mouth to silence the apologies for the welts on his buttocks.

"I needed that, I guess. Probably will in the future, too," laughed Marcos.

He was on top of the world. He had satisfied his wife. They both had found something new. And he could now love Cassie with abandon, he realized, and, if necessary, be punished for it every time. It was a little twisted, but it would make it possible to love two women again. Just like during all those years with Randi.

He sighed.

Those were some of the happiest times of his life.