Inside Sheni Again

They parted without definitive plans. Nakam knew he wanted her again by the time he pulled into his garage. But it was her place to call the play. They had agreed on a single rule. No contact. Not so much as a text saying hello.

Weeks passed. Nakam decided to consider the encounter a one-off and looked ahead. Three days before a flight to Norway, the card arrived. Nakam switched his plans. Ten minutes after he entered the bedroom at the beachfront rental, Sheni was on her knees with him in her mouth as both twisted every which way to remove their clothes. He traded places with her while she undressed. Sheni's pointed nipples and first wetness made her gratitude clear. But Nakam sensed a lack of energy.

"Nake," Sheni said as he stood, "we get major screaming Mimi sex one time per twenty-four hours. I don't want to waste it when I'm Friday-tired and stressing from work. You don't mind if we wait 'til morning?" She gestured to his mostly erect penis. "He won't be disappointed?"

"He doesn't have quite the same control over me," Nakam said.

Sheni stretched out on her side with her head propped up on an elbow. Nakam imitated her. Talk filled the spaces between kisses. Sheni deflected his one personal question. The kisses and conversation faded. Nakam turned out the light.

Putting off sex lasted until about three-thirty a.m. Lovemaking became inevitable with the first hard kisses. "Lead me out to the water," Sheni said in his ear.

She wore her nightgown, Nakam a pair of shorts. One look at the empty beach--what else would it be at this hour? Sheni asked--and they dropped their clothes on the stairs. After fussing a pair of long towels into place, Sheni laid down. The moonlight showed Nakam her long body. Water rippled ashore ten feet below them.

"Tell me one scenario from your fantasies about us," Sheni said.

Too weary for originality, Nakam started to say, "The night you met my ex-girlfriend at a party," but Sheni erupted in laughter before he could finish.

"You would do?" Sheni exclaimed in a gruff voice. "With the mouth you would do? For me?" She laughed so hard she shook. Nakam drew back his hands to wait her out. "Your uncomplicated ex-. Uncomplicated. That's for sure. I'm teasing. Sorry. Wait, no I'm not. She was nice, Nake. Very uncomplicated. No, no, seriously, seeing her made me feel more confident. It was proof you really did like zaftig."

"You're too tall to be zaftig."

Sheni wiped her eyes on a corner of the towel. "I don't blame you for remembering that night. We were all-in."

"Except for the dialogue," Nakam said.

"I have many times thought of our fuckings."

"Please stop."

"Should we try to re-create the moment?"

"The first phase. I need more sleep for the acrobatic parts."

On the way home from the party, Nakam had bowed to persistent questioning and related descriptions of Sona's technique and preferences. Sheni most loved that Sona offered instruction.

"Squeeze," Sheni told him in the gravelly Sona voice. "Squeeze other one. Look down body to see what I give you later."

Nakam took his lips from her cleavage. "You know, the poor woman didn't talk like a pro wrestler."

"You will do on me your mouth?" Sheni said, but nearer to Sona's mezzo-soprano. And, after his exasperated sigh, "Here, I'll switch voices back and forth and you can make believe you're in a threesome."

They had gone to his place after the party. The foreplay had reached a point where Sona made a familiar gesture--index fingers pointed in opposite directions.

Nakam moved Sheni's sprawling hair out of the way and placed his knees on either side of her head. Crawling, he positioned his face over her crotch while Sheni sucked him, moving her mouth up and down with not so quiet little yes noises, um-hmmm, om-hmmm. When she allowed him in deepest her throat gave a sharp choking click. Nakam's penis seemed to strain to become more erect. Sheni settled her pursed lips at the tip of it, the same as Sona had done a few months before the party. Slowly she moved her lips from left to right to left, back and forth, but always pausing to tenderly suck the tip--again imitating Sona.

Their actions repeated other bits and pieces they remembered from that night. Years of get-it-done sexual experience filled in the rest.

"I am liking your mouth that fucks me at the same time I am sucking," she said. Nakam's pleased nonverbal reply made her squirm her ass. Sheni occasionally gave little jumps as he continued. "Go to where you enter women and do."

The moans Sheni gave with his tongue rotating inside her sounded like a woman who had reached the end of a long wait. Nakam kissed his way higher until he met her middle finger. Taking its place, he pushed his tongue as far into her folds as possible. Neither had showered before bed and they had lain under blankets for four hours. Sheni's strong odor excited him, as did her usual lack of pretension or shyness, and the windblown spray on their bodies.

"Is good," she breathed. "So wonderful. Keep this what you do going, please."

Sheni started grinding against him with such force that Nakam had to finish her with his fingers. Gasping, she told him to roll over and slid her mouth up and down on his penis with machine-like power and rhythm. She switched to her hand an instant before Nakam's climax broke. Semen landed as high as his neck and shoulders.

Sheni suggested going into the water to wash. "Cleanliness won't matter when I drown," Nakam said.

"You haven't learned to swim yet?"

"As soon as I overcome my terror."

"Bounce up as the waves hit you. Your body will bob in the water. I'll rescue you if necessary."

When it became clear Nakam intended to stay ashore, Sheni scooped up a handful of wet sand to scrub him. The eastern sky lightened. Sheni swam while Nakam admired the crescent of her ass as she glided through the water.

Thereafter they rendezvoused every second or third weekend. The locations varied on occasion, a bed and breakfast here, a swanky city hotel there. But most often they got together at her house.

Lovemaking merged what they knew they liked--and what they knew the other liked--with a now-and-then exploration of something one of them had learned along the way. In terms of emotional intimacy, the relationship fell short of even friends with benefits. When Nakam cooked for her, he shopped alone. Sheni refused to let him help with the yard or the house, except when she needed to push the bed back into place. Questions about the work week or her daughters met with a frown. "I'm not letting you into my life again," she said after his third or fourth try.

Sheni's warmth, while genuine, stayed within the stated limits. Still, Nakam enjoyed what she shared. Outside the bedroom, their similar intellectual backgrounds and complimentary senses of humor sparked an increasingly comfortable give-and-take. Deeper down, a little of their rapport returned as each caught glimpses of the ways the other person had changed for the better.

Sheni pulled off her towel one Sunday. "Tell me one of your stories about what happened when we stayed together. One little story," she exclaimed when Nakam hesitated. "I've raised two girls, lost Dad, and endured a disappointing marriage. At this point, you screwing me over at age thirty feels like a dull ache. Describe our make-belief life. Fuck my mind the same way you fuck my body."

Nakam fell back on a scenario he had imagined a dozen times.

"You've had a baby not long ago," he began. "Too weird?"

Sheni guided his hand lower and pushed her hips forward. "Keep going. In both ways."

"We had to wait weeks after you gave birth to have sex again. In about four weeks, you expressed a slight interest. We took the baby to a public place, one of the first times, and when he had nursed, he fell asleep in the car. I put him in the bassinette next to our bed. Downstairs, you ask to sit close on the couch. We start kissing passionately. In the story, I know you're recovering, and I only put a hand on your waist or stroke your cheek. The baby starts crying--hearing him affects us like a fire alarm--but when I jump up you place my hand on your breast and tell me we'll start with little things soon."

Sheni motioned him forward. He pressed against her and ran a hand over her hip and ass.

"My body changed after I had a baby," she said against his mouth.

"It's fuller but incredibly firm."

"Now or in your story?"

"Both." Her mouth opened under Nakam's kiss. "After the baby," he whispered, "a new energy radiates off your body. Love. Gentleness. I'm not sure. All I know is it draws me to you. One day, I'm cleaning the kitchen. The baby's in the swing. You ask me to put my hand under hot water before inviting me to place it inside your shirt. Squeeze, you tell me. But gently or it'll be a mess."

As Sheni laid back Nakam sat up on his knees to caress both breasts.

"You say to me you want to feel my hand down there while he takes a nap. When the baby falls asleep, you come to me wearing a flannel pajama top and nothing else. I touch you between the legs. The wetness pours from you, I can hear the sound it makes when--Sheni, what's wrong?"

Sheni pulled the pillow over her face and sobbed. Gulping in her breath stilled her heaving chest and she let him wipe her cheeks.

"Please tell me more," she whispered.

Though dubious, Nakam resumed in the same tone of voice. "I bend to kiss your wetness. I'm tasting you for the first time in weeks. You become even wetter. As you lay down you open your legs wide and ask me to lightly touch your clitoris as I lick you."

Sheni let out little gasps. Her arms reached over her head. Nakam smiled at her submission.

"Do you want to go off now?" he asked.

"Do you want me to?"

Nakam stopped, instead cupped her sex in his hand and pressed.

"One day your parents tell us they'll care for the baby to give us a night out," he said. "You put your arms around my neck. Buy condoms again, you say--the ones in the black box. With your I'm-horny expression, you tell me, tonight, we're going to do something else we've never done before."

Nakam described the never-was evening stage-by-stage, until they reached the part of the story with Nakam kneading each soft breast until a cream-colored bead appeared.

Next to him, Sheni begged him to frig her again.

"When you're swollen and ready," he went on, "you move from on top of me to on your knees next to me. You lower one of your breasts to my mouth and massage it until I drink. I can't get enough. I gulp down the milk until it runs out of the sides of my mouth. You put yourself on my cock. Then I suck the other breast while you ride me harder and harder, forcing me far inside you."

In the present, Sheni moved onto him. Nakam kept telling the story until she was gasping against his chest.

"More," Sheni said as she waited for him. "Don't stop."

"You're crying."

She pulled him forward by the privates. Nakam climbed onto her and at her command pinned down her wrists. Her tears rose, streamed a moment, and retreated. He kissed them away, and twice, and three and four times, until he put his cheek against Sheni's damp face and with easy movements worked through a slow, sustained release.

A little later Sheni asked, "Does that story make you orgasm when you're alone?"

"Without fail."

"Yeah, but men always orgasm."

"That image makes it more intense, though."

"Is it a thing about lactation? Because, let me tell you, nursing is the least sexy activity I can think of."

"It's a thing about your tits," Nakam said.

Sheni asked for a story more often as time passed. Nakam went along because whatever he invented always led to wild expressions of pleasure. Imagination never failed him. In fact, new stories rolled out so prolifically he never had to repeat one.

One afternoon, Nakam mentioned an English garden they had visited on a trip and Sheni exclaimed, "I remember" before she described the odor of the flowers, the chill that underlay the warm sunlight, the buzz of frantic bees. From then on, the pair experienced the stories in a head-spinning present that overwhelmed their senses while inviting each of them to re-inhabit actual moments from the past.

The last of these powerful but safe encounters took place after their longest time apart.

Sheni broke contact for two months. Nakam had heard her reiterate their one rule enough times to know the penalty if he broke it. Yet throughout her absence he kept creating stories to tell her. But now he sprinkled in more and more details about their unlived life together--picnics and kitchen arguments, children and friends and coworkers, European vacations with preschoolers, Sheni in the guest room with the flu. When the fictions absorbed too much headspace, he made an appointment with a psychologist that he never kept, because Sheni broke her silence with a text message asking him to meet. She followed up with the location of a beachfront homestay she had once visited for a weekend getaway with college friends.

They spent a steakhouse dinner unable to warm up. Sheni even tried to break the ice with the news that her oldest daughter had given birth to a girl. With anyone else Nakam would have asked to see a photo and checked off the usual questions. Instead, he replied, "They're both well?" and left it at that.

A walk on the rainy shore finally started them talking.

"The town closes the beach when there are strong rip currents," Sheni said over the noise of the surf. "When I was here with my friends, a guy told us the rips form in this curve in the shore, not far from where the pier collapsed."

"Can't you see the currents?" Nakam asked.

"You need to know how to look for them. The guy explained it. I remember you need to stand on the hill behind us to get an elevated view and look for smooth water."

They passed the collapsed pier.

"I stepped away from you on purpose," Sheni said. "The first week, I thought about you non-stop. Not in a romantic way. I want to make that clear." Nakam indicated he understood. "I had sex with another guy, Nake. Lots of sex. A work friend I dated last year. To try to--to make the thoughts go away."

"There's no commitment between us."

"This is me. I don't have affairs. I don't have one-night stands."

Nakam nodded. "You play for keeps. The desire went away?"

"Not because of the sex. I simply, I don't know, wore out the need. Or stayed away from you long enough."

"Maybe it's best to keep our distance."

"Great idea. Except--" Sheni stopped and turned to him. "How do you feel right now? On, you know, that level?"

"I'd take you this second if it was warmer out here."

They settled for the house's master bedroom, on a bed the size of a baseball field. What started as Sheni laying nude in his arms became a long story with both contributing details between the hard breaths and moans and bouts of sucking. Their simultaneous orgasms stretched to the edge of endurance. Sheni wept--bawled--as the aftershocks of a phenomenal pleasure caused her hands to shake and leg muscles to twitch. Nakam sat on the verge of collapse with his head against his knees.

They awakened after dark. Sweat had soaked the sheets. Nakam followed Sheni to dry ground on top of the comforter. They listened to rain against the windows and the hum of the furnace. The dopiness of deep sleep refused to fade. Nakam turned on a lighted mirror in the bathroom and stumbled through the ambient glow.

Sheni spoke in a flat tone. "This situation is bizarre."

Nakam kept quiet. He could barely think.

"It felt weird and scary the whole two months," she said. "While at the same time, I felt excited--what, excited? it was more like inflamed or out of my mind--by the idea of sleeping with you again. Here I am under this guy, crying out and telling him he's a great lay, when I was really talking to you. Yet whenever I snapped out of one of these hallucinations of us being together, I only remembered a vague image or sensation."

"Like a dream?"

"Closer to a memory. But not quite that, either. It felt like what I imagined truly took place between us. Except not in our real pasts. But not invented and not the pasts of other people, either." Sheni shook her head. "I can't articulate the feeling. What scares me most is the temptation to stay in this imaginary place."

"Sure, why not? We're happy."

"What I have in this world, I don't have there." Sheni tapped her heart. "I know it. Inside, I know it. Friends, experiences, what I've learned--none of it exists. My daughters don't exist."

"We have children," Nakam said thoughtfully. "Our children. Their faces, the way they act--they must belong to the two of us."

"Those children aren't real, Nake."

Sheni's sharp tone made him flinch. No, he thought, but they seem real. As real as right now. And I want to see them again.

Another voice countered: Your life with Sheni would be this big and never get bigger.

Even the spotty memories made it clear he and Sheni lived a modest life. In one of his stories, for example, he detailed not being able to afford to replace the mattress where they had made love hundreds if not thousands of times. Thereafter, whenever their bodies came alive with the desire to add to their total, they coped by positioning themselves to miss the well-known lumps and poky springs and the soft place that caused the person on the bottom to sink to a comical depth.

I'm not alone in that place.

Sheni went to shower and locked the door behind her. When Nakam returned from taking his turn, she was gone.

Nakam drifted deeper into nostalgia on the drive home. Images of sex with Sheni had locked out reality when he approached a junction of two highways at top speed. He had a stop sign. The cross traffic did not. Too late he braked the car into a skidding, shrieking fishtail that carried him into the intersection. A pickup cut loose with its horn. Nakam let off the brake and coasted out of the way as the truck's tires shrieked.

Nakam pulled into the next gas station. As he waited for his hands to stop shaking, he violated the one rule. Nerves made it difficult to tap out a text, but he warned Sheni against falling too deeply into her thoughts.

"If she breaks contact forever," he said aloud, "maybe it's what needs to happen."

Sheni called him back. They agreed that sex without storytelling offered the best way to finesse the situation. Their trial run began with a wanton Friday night encounter. They met at a bar after the sit-down restaurants had closed. Their conversation bounced around--the chatter of two people distracted by thoughts they wished to avoid.

In bed they wore night clothes for the first time. By morning, her pajama shirt had lost two buttons and his shorts had landed on a table. The lovemaking lacked all harmony. Neither seemed to know what they wanted. When Sheni's pussy bloomed bright pink Nakam dove in but could not find a way to bring out her pleasure. Sheni begged him to fuck her while she played with her breasts, and despite the fact his sweat spattered onto her torso, Nakam could not finish.

"Tell me how we fucked during those years," Sheni exclaimed.

"Yes."

For the second time in their lives, the two of them shared the desperate sex of partners with no future, with orgasms that, however extraordinary, delivered more catharsis than gratification, and left behind emptiness.

The next step had to be abstinence, Sheni said. Familiar with the challenge of a week or more apart, Nakam blocked her on his phone and flew across the country to a city he had never visited.

Déjà vu followed Nakam down the somehow familiar streets. At a museum, he found his way around relics without looking at the floor map on his phone. Wherever he stopped or rested, an animal instinct told him someone was standing close. He kept feeling a person brush his arm.