Daydreams, continued

The door clicks shut behind him, and he leans against it, towel in hand. I raise an eyebrow, smelling a game afoot... The palm turns upward in silent question: Are you going to hand that here or not?

The only word to describe his slow smile is "Cheshire"; he opens the towel and holds it as if offering me my coat. The answer is likewise silent and likewise unmistakable: Come and get it.

Monsters or cities of gold. What is there to lose? I gingerly step out of the bathtub...

I adore this man. After the stories I've heard from him, you would think that the female body held no mysteries for him, no surprises. Frankly, they're what's made me a touch nervous about this kind of display: will I eventually be another brief, bawdy story? How will I fare in the retelling? I stare at myself in the mirror before bathing and wonder; some days I'm confident in the answer. Some days I'm not. Fighting the urge to chew my lips or cross my arms about myself, I tip up my chin and brazen out that small handful of steps between where I am and where he waits.

And what do you know, his eyes *do* go more gold than green. There is hope.

There's this strange reverent possessiveness in his touch as he wraps the towel around me. I can feel the warmth of his hands through the terrycloth, up between my shoulderblades, drying the water from my skin and kneading loose the muscles I hadn't realised I'd been clenching. Standing chest to chest, forehead to forehead, his body supports me while his hands both explore and administer. My ribcage, my waist, my low back... If I wanted to distract myself, I could introduce you to those muscle groups by their proper names. Assuming I could remember any of them at the moment... Fingertips meet sacrum and splay out to follow the cradling bones of my hips, the swell of the muscles attached thereto... Brief hesitance as his palms reach the lower edge of the towel, and then it's skin to skin, his palms cupping my ass. As he presses me closer to him, I'm not certain which of us is purring.

"You like that, then?" he asks, and I feel and hear that smoldering smile. Rhetorical question. He knows I like it.

"The cobbler goes barefoot; you know I like that." I murmur, dropping my head to his shoulder and trying to breathe, trying to still the shaking that's beginning in my knees.

"And this?" he rumbles, shifting his hands minutely. My awareness explodes to encompass the city and then contracts to the two inches of flesh pressed beneath and between his fingers. Perineum, my inner anatomist whispers as I gasp, and labia; I don't care just as long as he doesn't move. That my breathing comes back ragged is answer enough to prompt a small purr of his own.

Pads of warm, slightly callused fingers trace those hidden lines, lightly, intently, gliding on moisture that has nothing to do with the shower so recently abandoned and everything to do with the comfortable heaviness I feel building. "Don't move" becomes "don't stop" as I dig fingernails into his shoulders for balance.

Once down the centre of me, not pressing, only stroking...."Sweet gods, and you call me a tease..." I snarl, trying to arch enough to solve the problem...

"Patience, girl," he laughs, retreating to the safety of the towel and squeezing my ass through it.

It is all I can do not to rake welts across those shoulders.

And then one hand is at the middle of my back, clenching the towel tightly enough to leave terrycloth prints across my breasts. The other cradles my skull for a fleeting moment before balling into a fist in my hair and hauling my head back. Barely time to register the sting before lips descend on lips and I'm undone.

My world becomes a volcanic swirl of lips, teeth, tongues, roofs of mouths. Which of us they belong to, and which of us directs which of them...it's all lost in the flood. The lovely molten flow of a kiss long imagined, long denied, long awaited, finally tried... Maybe there're hands involved. Maybe they skim our surfaces like the wings of a ray as it swims, maybe they cling like barnacles for dear life. Hypothetically there're legs; neither of us fall. Who knows, really? Even my inner anatomist, so concerned with nomenclature and procedure, is stunned silent by the assault, the welcome, welcome assault on our senses. There are bodies. There have to be, else there would be no sensation. And if one thing exists beyond shadow of a doubt, it is this sensation.

And these:The warmth of a towel across the backs of my feet.
The smoothness of a well-worn t-shirt across my bare--and bared--chest.
The dull ache of fingers gripping my arms.
The world returns in the sound of our breathing. My gasping his exhalation; him desperately drawing in what I sigh away.
And that delicious comfortable weight pulses.

"I want you."
I know it more than I hear it.
He doesn't repeat it.
He won't.
I'm not even really certain he knows he's said it.

All doubt has been charred to ash and washed away with the tide. As I bury my hands in his hair and pull him in for another soul-swallowing kiss, the answer is, as ever, silent and unmistakable: Come and get me.

Daydreams

At seven thirty in the morning, I roll off of his sofa, grateful for a constitution that only needs a late-night meal and four hours' sleep to be freshfaced after a long, loud night at our local pub. Given the choice, he never rises before noon. I don't understand how he can lose the day that way, but this morning it serves me well: No competition for the shower.

He's been in this apartment for as long as I've known him, but there're still boxes in the kitchen and office, and a five-gallon jug for brewing mead seems to've taken up permanent residence in his guest tub. Such is life; I raid the dryer for a pair of towels and pad quietly into the master suite. Not the first time I've slid past him on the way to impose on his hospitality. Afterward, I'll make him breakfast and we'll be square.

My hair still smells of cigarrette smoke and beer, a fact which amuses and annoys me by turns. I neither smoke nor drink beer. Hold it back with one hand for now, and with the other, balance my weight on his nightstand to lean over his sleeping form and kiss the tip of his nose. Easing back up, I'm careful not to disturb his overflowing ashtray. This one.... I wouldn't change him. Wouldn't shift a thing about him. But can you tell he's a bachelor? Feather-light, I smooth his sleek blond hair back from his face. My bachelor. I'm careful not to make a sound, shutting his bathroom door behind me.

We don't need to go into the finer points of my pre-shower routine, do we? At the end of it, I'm standing in front of the mirror giving myself the critical eye. That's still me, alright. Nothing new to see. Although I've got to admit, there's a special little thrill in knowing that the wall behind me isn't my wall. A slight flush starts in my cheeks and spreads as a handful of interesting ideas propose themselves and then set themselves aside. No, kitten. That way lie monsters. Stop that.

But when my hand reaches to lock the door... ... ... I don't.
~*~
The room is thoroughly steamed, and I am thoroughly soaped. There are few ways nicer than this to start a morning. I close my eyes and turn my back to the water, loving the way it scours my skin., loving the heat it pours over my bones. Bliss. Decadence. Wonderful... Bracing my palms on the wall, I arch to focus the stream on my low back and legs. Next in line is my hair, which until now I've kept topknotted out of the way. At the moment, it's damp, but still mostly dry. First, though, one more shot of bliss for the shoulders.

It's the temperature change that makes me open my eyes. There he is, half in, half out of the room, still as a painting. Eyes wide, I go still myself, a deer in headlights, wondering just how much distortion this transparant curtain is good for. When I move, it's to kill the shower.
"I knocked," he says, in a different voice than I've ever heard before.
"I wasn't listening..." I answer, peeking round the curtain like it's actually a barrier.
"I noticed..."
Silence for a while, while we each try to read the other's expression. "So," I finally say, with a nod at the door. "Are you coming or going?"
"Do you have a preference?"

Do I have a preference... Yes, actually, but here there be... ...

...He's beautiful. The tension in the air makes it almost too thick to breathe. I can feel him from across the room, a tightly contained maelstrom of heat and promise. Any other man would've walked right in and the hell with what I thought about the matter. But this one... there's the power to do just that rolling around in him...but there's something... infinitely more human and vulnerable there, too. Not just because *he* wants to come in, is he asking. He wants me to want him there enough to say yes. And if I don't, then he won't. Pride and honor won't let him.

Yeah. Here there might be monsters. Or cities of gold. And the only way to know is to go exploring.
So.
"Yes, actually, I do." I reach out for a towel.
He steps in to hand it to me.
~*~

It's alright to look back, but it's rude to stare...

Fell in love with a guy once because he was more of a wordwhore than I was--both of us were loquacious writers and voracious readers. His taste in music also drew me in. He was the only person I've ever met whose tastes encompassed mine and then surpassed them. Where I heard a tune and either consumed it or set it aside, he heard poetry and kept it all. The man astounded me.

We shared an adoration of NPR, too. Many's the lunchbreak we'd spend on the phone, talking about things he'd heard on Writer's Almanac, things I'd heard on Morning Edition, memories or thoughts those things sparked...

He was the first man who ever realised that my most powerful erogenous zone was between my ears. Draped me in poetry like other men try to do with jewelry. Made love to me with words long before he ever touched my skin. Introduced me to Erica Jong and Susie Bright and Robert M. Pirsig and Banana Yoshimoto, technicoloured my life for a while. Then reminded me that my body was a temple by worshipping at the altar for hours on end. Sweet God, that man...

This fellow changed the way I look at the world. Helped me appreciate the journey, not just long for the destination. Showed me the divinity in all the common things...

Things between us ended gracelessly. Despite being in the same close-knit social circle, we've managed to neither see nor speak to one another more than twice since. And that makes me sad. I miss him, miss the conversations and the comfortable silences. Sometimes something will remind me of him, and I'll reach immediately for the phone or the e-mail to share it with him...but then remember that he hasn't answered either from me since we split, and that he's happier this way...
...
...
...

This afternoon, I was listening to NPR. I don't know if the program is nationwide or just specific to our local station, but it made me think of him. Independently released folk music, either traditional Celtic stuff or stuff about Celtic life. No big huge names, just people singing their honestly-written lyrics. Straight up his alley. He's probably heard of a few of these people...

Today, I was able to listen without that edge of bitterness or regret.
Today, I could remember the things that were beautiful about us and smile.

And I didn't pick up the phone. And I didn't e-mail him.
(I have, however, posted this... ~sheepish smile, shrug~)

So that's something, right?