Shorts #04: Speechless

She had often wondered if he ever felt anything other than optimism. If he was ever down. If he ever hurt, or was tired, or just needed a shoulder to lean on. If he ever saw her as more than a friend he wanted to be kind to. Now, watching him with his hands between his knees, arms resting on his thighs, disheveled, pensive, she wondered why, unasked, her question had been answered.

What had happened? And how could she help?

He hadn't said a word since she had walked in and found him sitting there, by the window, the armchair not cradling his spine this time, but merely housing a body tense and ill at ease. His eyes never left the hands whose fingers he clasped together. His hair was mussed, as though he had only just that second run distracted fingers through it. His face was grim, shadowed by the late afternoon sunlight.

She kicked off her shoes, dropped her pocketbook on the bed and went to wash her hands. She had never had the chance to do anything for him since he had asked her to move into his home. He had always been the one to give — praise, support, encouragement — and all she had managed to give was gratitude. Despite the vast difference in their circumstances, and even knowing, as she did, that what he was offering was nothing more than a home, her desire to give everything she was and had to him was unabated. She knew he would not have her body, though she was eager to give it, and had no use for her heart, though it was his for the taking.

Today, she would give him something he needed, and hope it would be enough to lighten the burden that seemed to be weighing him down in the chair. She dried her hands, and picked up the oil she used to smooth her skin at night. Walking back into the bedroom where he sat, she approached him determinedly if cautiously, and when he did not acknowledge her, she sank to her knees in front of him.

"Bad day today?" she asked.

He raised dark eyes to her face, nodded, and then said, as she touched his hands with hers,

"Nothing for you to worry about, though." He held her gaze, and she felt somehow he wanted her to leave him alone. This time, though, she wouldn't. She had helped him once before, nursed him back to health at a time when he was most alone. It was for that reason that he had given her free access to his home and his protection.

"Here, Jon, let me help you!"

She rarely called him by name, and even more rarely touched him. Today, though, things would change. She did not know what the future held for her, or whether he would remain in her life, in her world, or she in his. But the time had come to take control, to give back to the one man she had learned to trust. Because trust was love, and she knew that she loved him.

He looked at her when she kissed his entwined hands before pulling the tie from around his neck, but otherwise did not react. He still did not react when she separated his fingers, and finished unbuttoning the shirt, peeling it off his shoulders. He still did not react when she untied his shoes and slipped them and his socks off his large feet. But he never took his eyes off her.

He inhaled deeply when she trailed trembling fingers down his abs to the waistband of his dress pants, but didn't respond when she pulled the buckle on his belt and slid it through the loops. When she pushed against his chest, he sat back and watched her unbutton and unzip his pants.

"Get up a sec," she ordered him, and he stood up, his hands fisted at his sides. She wondered why, but did not remark upon it, only pushed his pants down his legs, leaving his black boxers on his hips.

"Step out of them," she told him. He did, without demur, and when she led him to his bed he went and let her arrange him on his belly, arms at his sides, face toward the door. She folded his clothes and put them on the chair, then fetched the oil and went back to his side. She had not spent a whole year working as an assistant to a massage therapist without having learned something. She would try to ease his tension as her gift to him, and give herself the gift of his muscles and skin.

He turned his head unexpectedly and pinned her with his gaze as she sat next to him on the bed.

"It'll work better if you straddle me," he murmured. "And if I'm naked, and you're...less fully dressed, that would be even better!"

She blushed, but stripped to her bra and panties without a second thought. He watched her as she did so, and then, before she could tell him to, he turned over and raised his hips. His eyes never left her face, and she hooked the waistband of his boxers and pulled them down and off his legs. His cock was hard, and her shock could not have been greater if he had cold-cocked her.

Suddenly unsure of how to proceed, she stared at the evidence of his arousal. She had seen him naked before, when she had had had to clean him up once when he came home dead drunk and muddy from falling over in his newly turned but unplanted garden, so she was not uncomfortable with his nudity. But she wondered how she had missed his sexual interest in her. He had never, even once, indicated that he was moved by her in any way. So obviously, this must just be a response to some other stimuli unrelated to her unremarkable body and personality. She picked up the oil and told him to turn over again.

"No."

His refusal stymied her as it excited her, and for the second time in less than five minutes, she was stunned speechless. Being a quick-witted woman, however, she pushed past the shock and asked if he wanted her to start with him on his back.

A smile touched his cheeks for the first time, confusing her even more.

"No, Sandie," he said again, the smile widening. "I want to start with you on your back."

Stunned speechless was becoming the norm.

She watched the smile grow, his teeth showing as he reached for her hand.

"Come here," he commanded her, pulling her sharply forward.

She tumbled onto him clumsily, and struggled to sit up. He helped her, but would not let her move away. She was acutely aware of his straining cock, of the heat of his body, of the strength of his limbs, of the power of his touch. She felt on the verge of sensory overload just from having his strong hands hold her next to him. Taking deep breaths, and giving up, for the moment, the desire to say anything, she waited for what he would do or say next.

"I have wanted to touch you since the first day we met," he informed her, stroking his fingertips down the side of her arm. "You stood there, in the doorway of the coffee shop, looking uncertain, wondering if I had stood you up." He chuckled softly. "Online friendships are fraught with uncertainty, aren't they? I could see you trying to decide if you should leave, before you made a fool of yourself, or stay and be embarrassed when I didn't show up."

She didn't try to deny it. He had read her too well, and before she could bolt, there he was, saying hello and leading her to the table he had been occupying for the half hour before she arrived. It had been such a wonderful first meeting, after eighteen months of building friendship online and on the phone.

His hand pulling her down to his mouth dragged her from her memories, and the touch of his mouth on hers electrified her. He was kissing her, and she was turned to stone. She scrambled around for something to do, anything, though her rational mind, whispering from the corners, was telling her to open her mouth and devour him. She did, but instead of sucking him in, she asked,

"What was wrong earlier?"

Jon laughed softly, nipping her bottom lip before answering her, letting her up and sliding down the straps of her bra.

"I got home early and you weren't here as usual. I had been thinking about you all day, and was half hard the whole time. I wanted you."

Struggling to straighten away from him, to process his words, she shook her head disbelievingly.

"You have never once showed any interest in me, Jon. Never once!"

Her words sounded like an accusation, and though she didn't mean them that way, she cringed as she saw the way his face hardened. When he sat up suddenly, and grabbed her, hauling her onto his lap, settling her over his twitching cock, she inhaled deeply, expecting him to lash out at her. Instead, he stroked her body slowly, starting with her neck. And as he stroked her, he planted hot kisses on her flesh while removing the rest of her clothing.

"I wanted to give you time." He stripped away her bra, one strap at a time, squeezing her breasts through the cups before pushing them down and off. "You've been through a pretty rough time since Wade's death. I didn't want to come on too strong." He hooked his fingers into the sides of her pretty panties and pulled them down her thighs, raising her hips and sliding them off her legs. "With all that happened after, you were traumatized. What kind of a cad would I be if I dragged you into my bed and fucked you into next month before you had had a bit of time to heal?"

She registered the fact that his hands had stopped moving, that she was naked, and that he was looking at her intently, waiting for her to answer him. She didn't know what to say. She HAD needed time to heal, but she was used to men who took what they wanted from her without giving HER needs any consideration. And because, despite her emotions, she had wanted Jon from the first day she had seen him as well, she had read lack of interest into his actions.

Now he was seducing her mind with his words and her body with his hands and mouth. She felt his lips touch hers again and for the first time since this strange encounter began, she believed this wasn't a dream. The man she had fantasized over, dreamed of, and longed for was driving her crazy with his increasingly insistent fondling of her nipples, which he was even now pinching as he suckled her bottom lip.

"How much longer are you going to sit here wool gathering instead of kissing me back, hmmm?" he wondered aloud as he nibbled an earlobe, pushing her down onto the bed where he had been lying minutes before. "A guy could get an inferiority complex around a stoic like you, you know," he teased, in between intimately licking and kissing her on those other lips that had never before had such devoted and bone-melting attention.

For the first time since she had walked through the door, she relaxed completely and laughed. And found her voice again.

"I doubt that will ever be a problem for you, Jon," she murmured breathlessly, before letting herself be completely silenced by the return of his tongue to her mouth. His kisses were intoxicating, leaving no further room for conversation, and when she wrapped her legs around him while he finally settled himself between them, teasing and taking her heated, hungry flesh with his own, she decided that being inarticulate wasn't so bad after all. Instead, she could tell him how she felt with each thrust, each moan and sigh, each guttural cry that she could not contain while he systematically rendered her speechless.