One Wish

Realization suddenly began to dawn on her. "Oh my God! Keith! My mother!" she exclaimed in horror. "After the accident, after they took me back home to recuperate, while I was doing so in a coma for the most part for a long time, the stress of it all..."

"Yes?" Keith urged her to continue as Joanne fought for someway to better organize her thoughts.

"My parents, they separated. My father couldn't deal with the situation any more, he'd always been at odds with my mother anyway. And she blamed him for what had happened, for allowing me to move out of the house, even though I'd moved in with my brother. She'd always been over protective of me, something that had caused many fights to occur between them over the years. By the time I'd actually begun to recover, beginning therapy, my parents were legally divorced. Even my memory wasn't as good as it should have been, too many missing pieces. When she told me that you'd fled in horror at seeing my condition, telling her that you couldn't take on the responsibility of sharing a life with someone so disfigured, partially crippled, I grew to hate you. Despise you!"

Listening to her talk, the pain, suffering she'd gone through during her long recovery after the accident, including countless reconstructive surgeries, Keith began to slowly understand her long built up animosity towards him. He also realized she held many of those same feelings towards her father, which is why she'd taken on her mothers maiden name, just as Beth had. Once Joanne was well enough, she'd moved out to the west coast to build a new life for herself. She'd landed a lucrative job in sales, finally putting her past behind her. Until fate had so cruelly caused Keith to stumble into her at the show.

"It wasn't just fate that brought the two of us here, to this place, to this time Joanne. It was destiny. All these years I've been searching for you, without really knowing that I was. Everywhere I looked, I looked for you, even though I knew, or at least thought I knew, you were dead. Every relationship I've ever been in, or attempted to be in felt wrong. Everywhere I turned, I saw you, or bits of you in other people I came to know or work with. I've been wandering around aimlessly searching for you Joanne. And now that I've found you again, I can't ever let you go!"

"But I don't really look the same way I once did Keith. So much of me, has changed, is different. There is very little of me that hasn't been replaced, or removed all together," she added turning away from him.

Keith sat down on the couch next to her, taking her chin within his hands, turning her face back around towards him as he spoke.

"It's not the package I fell in love with Joanne. But the person inside. That person is still you. Sure, you look a little different here and there, but the moment I saw your eyes, I somehow knew it was you. And besides, you don't look all that much different to me anyway, you're just as beautiful to me now as you were then."

Before she could respond to what he'd said, or react to what he now did, Keith rushed her taking her face within his hands, pressing his lips to hers in both a tentative, yet lingering kiss. Patiently, he waited, wondering and hoping at her response. When she did, it was like opening the floodgates on a dam. Joanne responded to his lips upon hers kissing him back with a forgotten longing that took him by surprise. She clenched him to her, her arms slipping around his back, pressing him against her until their bodies meshed together tightly. Keith's hands, fingers, tangling themselves within the softness of her hair, one hand resting comfortably upon the back of her neck, sensing as well as feeling the flood of goose bumps that arose

Still kissing her, she whispered his name over and over as though in prayer, which to some extent, she was praying. Surprised, overwhelmed, yet relieved beyond measure at the emotions that coursed through her soul, cleansing her spirit with renewed hope and wonder. Keith responded in kind, her name upon his lips as he continued to toy with her upper lip, gently sucking the sweetness of her flesh within his. Their tongues periodically dancing together in a too long forgotten sensation that had them both dizzy, as well as breathless as their souls renewal continued on to even greater heights of hopeful expectation and ecstasy.

An eternity later, Keith sat back, his mind reeling, his emotions jumbled to the point that he couldn't think clearly. Every nerve ending within his body was on fire, and by the expression on Joanne's face, she was going through the exact same thing he was, only she was able to speak, where Keith could not.

"Keith, I want...No, I need you to make love to me. Now! Right now!" she all but demanded of him.

"Joanne," he began finding his voice, but she cut him off.

"I know, it probably doesn't make sense, but I don't care. Right now I need you more than I've ever needed anyone or anything in my entire life."

Keith sat mesmerized watching Joanne as she reached up and began toying with the top button of her blouse. "Keith? As much as I want this, I also don't want you seeing how badly disfigured I am, would you mind turning off the lights?"

Keith stood, turning off the overhead lighting, returning to the table lamp sitting behind him. Rather than turning it off completely however, he removed his shirt tossing it over the lampshade. Subdued, but certainly not in total darkness, Keith turned back towards her. He knew she was dealing with emotional scaring just as much as she was dealing with the physical scaring that she was so afraid of letting him see.

Joanne said nothing. Part of her was grateful that he'd at least made it tolerable for her to continue undressing. But even more importantly, by Keith's simple gesture, she knew of his acceptance regardless of how she appeared, or might appear to him as she finished slipping off her blouse, reaching behind to likewise allow her bra to fall from her shoulders.

Sitting once again next to her on the couch, Keith waited patiently, watching her, watching as she nervously allowed her breasts to reveal themselves. Her hand momentarily covering her left breast even as her right, near perfect breast came into view.

"Don't be afraid," Keith whispered. "Don't ever be afraid Joanne. I told you, I love who you are, I'm in love with the person inside, regardless of how bad you might think things to be, I don't see it that way. And you need to know that," he told her gently.

Perhaps it was her moment of truth. Joanne found herself holding her breath, allowing her hand to fall away from her breast. She watched for any sign of repulsed expression to etch itself within Keith's face, but none came. The bright red line of puckered flesh that extended itself at an angle across the upper slope of her left breast down to the soft curvature below looked angry even now.

Joanne flinched as Keith's hand extended towards her, reflexively bringing her hand up once again. But by now, the tip of his finger had already pressed itself against the upper tip of her scar. Keith began tracing the ugly red welt downwards, softly drawing his finger upon it. To her amazement, Joanne felt relief, even excitement begin to tingle beneath the still sensitive flesh of her breast as Keith's finger tip lovingly, slowly continued to follow the path of her wound.

Even before he'd completed the exploration with his finger, he leaned forward, his lips now pressing where is finger tip had only moments ago been. Still holding her breath, Joanne gasped, Keith's lips and tongue bathing the sweetness of her flesh with a gentleness that surprised even her. As he made his way along the path of her tiny disfigurement, he paused momentarily where the brush of her hardened nipple against his lower lip caused him to detour. He savored it briefly, flicking it ever so lightly with the tip of his tongue before drawing it within his lips, barely sucking it, more a kiss in fact before releasing it to continue on his way.

When his lips had at last finished their journey, he retraced his steps, relocating the hungry needful bud of desire that stood so proudly waiting for him. He captured it, lovingly toying with it, as his hand now likewise claimed its neglected twin.

"Oh God, Keith!" Joanne allowed herself to cry out, her hand coming up behind his neck, pressing him even more intimately against her breast as he devoured her aroused flesh, allowing the electrical charges of excitement and desire to dance playfully against the surface of her now super-sensitive skin.

Slowly, Keith kissed upwards until his lips nibbled at the nape of her neck, a fresh storm of goose bumps exploding across the landscape of her soul, the hair on her neck standing on end in eager anticipation.

"I will never again let you go," he told her, his words sliding against her like fine silk as his breath lingered, his thoughts echoing, reverberating within her heart causing it to beat harder and faster within her chest.

They again kissed, and this time it was with a passion that Joanne thought herself incapable of ever experiencing, ever knowing again. Fiercely, their lips sought out one another's. Their tongues sparing in an intricate, sensual display of wanton need, desire, and unbridled passion such as the likes of which neither one had ever known.

"Make love to me Keith, please," she breathlessly urged him again. "I need you, I need to be a part of you, and you, a part of me."

This time Keith didn't even hesitate, reaching down, he deftly slid the zipper of Joanne's slacks downwards, easily placing his strong firm hands beneath the twin cheeks of her ass, lifting her, pulling away the slacks slowly away from her in one simple fluid motion.

As nervous, fearful as she'd been at letting Keith see her less than perfect breast, she'd thought revealing her artificial leg an even harder obstacle to overcome. To her amazement however, as Keith's hands slid down her thigh towards the stump where her knee had once been, he released the catch, undoing the strap that held it in place. Gingerly he allowed the false limb to rest comfortably against the side of the couch on the floor. His had immediately cupping, caressing, the smoothness of her flesh, shocking her with his tenderness as he explored what only now remained.

Once again Keith stood, his eyes never leaving hers as he divested himself of his remaining clothing. His arousal now obvious as it sprang into view, telling her at once of his desire for her, of his love for her, seeing her only as he remembered her to be, and always would.

With surprising ease, Joanne removed the last barrier guarding her femininity, tossing the light blue cotton briefs she had worn up and over her head, laughing unashamedly, uninhibitedly as she reached towards him, pulling him first down onto the couch, then backwards. She pressed the tips of her fingers into his chest indicating as she did how she wanted him positioned for her. Easing onto his back, Keith smiled as Joanne lifted herself, settling down upon him, feeling the softness of her sex nesting against him, though not as yet capturing the turgid essence of his ever growing desire. Once again they kissed, the feel of her soft breasts pressing lovingly against his chest, his hands reaching down to cup the firm taut cheeks of her ass, kneading them contentedly within the palms of his hands as their lips and mouths once again devoured one another.

He wasn't even sure when or how it happened. His mind still reeling with the joy of her lips pressing against his, the feel of her breast comfortably trapped within one hand, the other still caressing the fleshiness of her ass. But suddenly, the liquid silkiness of her internal self had captured him, surrounded him, and now bathed him in exquisite mind-numbing rapture.

Her movements now just as fluid as she, Joanne melted into him, against him, expertly, yet tenderly. Keith slowly driving into her as deeply as could, as fully as he'd ever been, becoming a part of her in one long loving thrust that claimed them both in spiritual union that surpassed anything either one of them had ever known before.

Only after long precious moments, unmoving, yet remaining joined in a newfound universe they'd created together, did they finally move and explore the vastness of pleasure that awaited them both.

As their coupling had begun, as easily and as smoothly as though they'd been making love for hours, so too was their mutually explosive climax. Before either was hardly aware of it, they were consumed in rapturous bliss that exploded within the minds eye, their universe of stars mingling in a cosmic display of such magnitude that for a moment, their spirits were indeed combined as only the two of them could be.

Keith felt as though he were floating, still fully aware of Joanne's presence as the silky softness of her being continued to caress and encompass him.

"You have but one wish. Make it now! Make it now!"

#

Keith felt the warmth of the morning sunlight coming through the partially drawn curtains, dancing upon his face. As his eyes opened, his vision blurred momentarily as he attempted to take in his surroundings. Finally it began to clear. Sitting next to his bed, Joanne sat with her head bowed forward, arms comfortably folded across her breasts, sleeping.

"Joanne?"

Strangely, Keith's voice sounded weak, thirsty. "Joanne?" he managed to say again, this time shaking her awake from her slumber.

"Keith? Oh my God Keith!" Joanne screamed rushing to his bed, screaming his name over and over, kissing his forehead before tearing out into the hallway screaming for someone to come to his room.

He smiled. She looked just like she always had. Beautiful and perfect as ever. He didn't need to look beneath the covers to know that his leg was gone. The vague impression of stepping out onto a landmine, the concussion, the spread of fiery shrapnel digging into his chest creasing him from the top of his collarbone in a diagonal across his heart.

Placing the tip of his finger on top of the hospital gown he was wearing, he knew exactly where the angry red slash began, and where it ended without even looking.

Joanne, beautiful, beautiful, Joanne stepped back into his room, her eyes filled with joyous tears, and a love Keith knew he would find with no other.

His wish had come true.