continuation:

The reverence in your attitude as you knelt between my thighs thickened my throat, and I had to swallow hard to get past it. With thumbs and nose and tongue, you set to work at unravelling my tightly-knit composure. With teeth and two days' growth of beard, you teased the unknit strands into frayed, mostly-incoherant fluff.

While I still had use of my hands, I gently gathered your hair away from your face, focused on not pulling it out by the roots, and watched.

Watched your smooth brow, serene closed eyes. Watched the light on your shoulders. Watched the perfect focus you gave to the task at hand.

"You look like you're praying," I thought, and didn't realise I'd spoken until you answered.
"I am."

Art, I have been:
Sensory sculpture, a painting in flesh, matted and displayed for the artist's own pride.
Nourishment, I have been:
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the connoisseur, his napkin left folded neatly on his plate when he was done.

I have been refuge and conquest.

I have been mother and whore, albeit *very* poorly compensated.
But never before had I been anything like sacrement.

...

Under my breath, I'm saying all manner of thing to myself. Sweet encouragement, rough taunts, things that would be fighting words if any lips but yours or mine shaped them. Hands and breath and words and images, all of them twisting together to try and coax the climax out from its hiding place and into the moonlight.

Nature takes the pace over from intent. What were, in the beginning, carefully measured strokes, are now basic, instinctive, elemental as a tide. Sweat beads on your back; we grip and gasp for air before we're swept under. And from your throat, the sweetest sounds...

Sweet mother of God, so close... A little closer... oh, please...

"Are you going to come for me? Come on, baby.

God, I wish I could be there to watch you."

...

If I lie on my left, I should be able to curl up around your legs while you smoke. I should be able to drift gently into the eges of sleep listening to your measured inhalation, exhalation, tap. Feeling your free hand stroke my back or rest on my hip.

If I roll onto my right, there should be warm, strong arms--one beneath my neck, one tight around my ribs. There should be a nose behind and below my ear. There should be warmth and security and an exchange of "I love you" before sleep.

My hands and memory may be able to "relieve the pressure" as well as yours do. But neither of them can do a damn thing to make the cold feather pillow at my back feel anything like your chest and stomach. And that's the real pressure that winds me clock-tight.

Nothing to do but accept it and reach for sleep.

Tomorrow there'll be a life to live, maybe work to do, and a phone call or two to keep it at bay.

But it still remains that I miss you.

Love you.

Love you, too.