Quake

The key slides in and the door glides open and shut silently.  Almost a year after the quake the association finally fixed the warped doorframe and replaced the door and hardware.  Now I don’t wake you when I work the late shift.

Cindy has left the stereo on; Helen Jane long’s ‘Porcelain’ sweetens the air and takes the edge off my nerves; it lends a peaceful quiet in the condo I haven’t experienced in weeks.  I go to the status board after I’ve put away my coat and bag, and read her notes for the day.  Past days’ notes linger; med references, therapy notes, an aphasic episode. But today, Cindy has written only three words:

‘A Good Day.’

I smile.  Oh, so few and far between, the good days. 

I shed my clothes bits at a time until I’m in the bathroom.  I take a shower, letting the hot water rinse away the residue of work and worries.  I adjust the spray until it’s a caress.  I close my eyes and let the water mesmerize my senses; until it’s no longer a spray of water but the caress of your hands and lips.  It slides over my shoulders, down my back and over my ass; hot and smooth.  I feel myself stirring and unconsciously shift my weight.  Now a rivulet pouring over my breast becomes your tongue on my nipple.  It tightens, contracts; it’s hard and sensitive and I can’t keep my fingers from catching hold; rolling and pulling until I gasp. 

I’m hard now, and my hand moves down, gliding over my flat stomach, and it’s your hand traveling down, until hot water and fingers surround me; touching the hard flesh and the hot, silky recesses; until I shudder and cry out.  I know you can hear me; I’m holding nothing back as I make myself come.  I give you this moment; a gift.  You know I’m fantasizing about you while I climax.  I picture you in your bed, listening, becoming aroused; the images in your mind as I groan and gasp are a slow, sweet torture, tempered by the remembered delight of driving me over the heights yourself.

I dry myself carelessly; I’ll press my hot and moist skin against yours and let the feel of it drive you even higher into passion. I dab on a bit of perfume; the brand I wore the first night we made love.  Just enough to tantalize you.  I put on a pair of red silk panties; one of a set of a dozen, rolled up like roses, that you gave me for our last anniversary, and a red silk camisole.  Oh, red silk against my still-sensitive privates; so erotic.  I can’t wait to show myself to you.

 The bedside lamplight burnishes your hair to gold and bronze, and although it’s been almost a year since you’ve spent any time in the sun, your skin is still Copper-Tone bronze from the life you led before the quake. 

As I come closer, your aqua-crystal eyes startle and entice from the contrast with your hair and your tan.  They have a shine in them tonight that I haven’t seen in weeks.  The light that trips off your gaze are twin flames through frosted windows.  It’s the old heat you used to switch on like an engine; tonight it’s full throttle.

“Hi, baby,” I whisper, and lean over to kiss you.  Lips, tongue, teeth; all clash and battle for superiority.  I feel your hand on my shoulders, then in my hair, and I have to surrender and let you lay claim to your treasure.  I let you hold me until I’m gasping.  You’re breathing for me; your lips sealed over mine.

Finally, you break the kiss, but your breath isn’t only short from desire.  “Shh, darling,” I say, and I caress your face.  Your eyes close and you nuzzle my palm as I whisper soothing words to you.

“All…all good, my Tess.” You don’t speak much anymore, but when you do, in brings me such joy.  Your voice is throaty and sultry.  Somewhere in the last year, the Scots from your father has come to the fore and the brogue that used to come out only when you were tipsy is full-out all the time.  It’s so sexy, and reminds me of the night we met.

“How’re ya, darlin’?  A long day for ya?”

“Not so long,” I reply.  It’s so good to talk to you, but I can’t keep my hands off you.  Cindy dressed you in your deep lavender silk pajamas; our secret code.  I sit beside you and pull back the covers.  I love the feel of silk on your body. It’s still hard from the life you led before the quake.  The silk over your muscles is erotic and calls to my hands to roam all over you. 

We are so lucky, my love.  So lucky the crossbeam hit you low, so lucky it didn’t crush you, and take away all your movement and feeling.  I share my gratefulness for our luck in a kiss that takes your breath away.  When I pull back, your eyes are on mine.

“Babe.”

Your eyes are smoldering now; you want my hands on you.  I want my hands on you. I touch you; the silk and the hardness of your muscles are making me crazy.  I kneel beside you on the bed and let you undress me.  I only need to help a little bit and that’s good, because when your hands brush against me, I’m too distracted to be much help.

Now I’m naked and I lie next to you.  I kiss you again, letting my hands roam wherever they wish, until your breath whistles in your throat.  I pause for a moment.

“No—no, Tess.  Don’t stop, Tess, don’t—”

A final kiss and I come to my knees, throw one leg over your hips and straddle you.  Your eyes are heavy-

lidded, your chest rises and falls with aroused breath, and as I settle on you, your hips rise to meet me.

“Oh, God, Tess.”

The full moon is shining through the window burnishing half of you in quicksilver while the lamp spills liquid gold over you.  “Turn off the light, babe,” I say.

Your hand shakes as you reach for the switch, and I know it’s from your arousal.  I feel you tremble under me now as I slowly unbutton your pajama shirt.  I tease you, pausing to brush my hand against a silk-clad breast, or tickle your sides; running my fingers up and down your ribs.  I bend often to kiss you, to take your mouth with mine, then trail kisses around your throat and jaw line.

Then I stop.  I slide my finger down the silky strip of skin revealed by your open shirt, from your throat to the last button still fastened over your belly.  I tease your navel, then undo the last button.  My tongue travels back over the trail my fingernail made.

I feel you whisper against my skin, your face pressed into my neck as I kiss your shoulders and neck.  “Oh, God.”  You shiver as I push open your shirt.  Then i move down and take as much time and care removing the Capri-bottoms, until you’re naked under me, and you’re brilliant, magnificent.  Your breasts, your stomach, your shoulders and throat; thighs, face, sex; all silver-blue in the moonlight.  You’re so beautiful, no matter the lighting, no matter where you’re lying.  You’re taking my breath away with no more than a look.

I see the uncertainty in your eyes that makes you turn away from me, but I hold your face in my hands and speak my thought:

“You are beautiful.  You’re my beautiful woman.  Nothing will ever change that.”  I kiss you deeply, sealing the promise in that kiss. 

Now I let my hands roam freely over your body; I can’t help myself, I have to touch you.  Smoothing my palms across your skin; you gasp when I touch a ridge of scar tissue.  Before you can retreat I bend forward and kiss the scar, then the next one and the next.  “So lovely,” I tell you before I cover a breast with kisses. I take your nipple into my mouth.  I feel your hands on my shoulders; I burn where you touch me.  After a moment your hands fall away; I reach for one and entwine my fingers with yours.  Your thumb begins to circle over that spot on my wrist.  So sensitive, so erotic.  No matter where your hands and fingers fall, they arouse me.  I moan as I lick and suck at your nipple, and feel your body respond to me, primal and instinctive, as it never has before.

I begin to move down your body and I feel you rise against me.  I almost start crying for the joy this moment is bringing me.  I trail kisses, lick the ridges of your stomach and ribs, and stroke your thighs with the touch I learned.  I can’t get enough of the taste of you. I kneel between your legs and look up into your eyes.  What was candlelight in a frosted window is now a bonfire and I feel its heat between my legs. 

“I want you, Aidenn.”  I’m surprised to hear the growl in my voice, and delighted to hear the answer in yours.

“Then take me, Tess, na leannan.”

And I take you, remembering every trick of tongue and lips and fingers I’ve learned that drives you into abandon.  You moan deep in your throat, guttural.  It eviscerates me, takes control and my own excitement builds.

You feel it; you know I’m there with you as your hips rise and my tongue strokes.  I reach between my legs and the moment I touch myself I pull you far into my mouth.  We both shudder, then the shudders become convulsions and the cry from your lips sounds like the climax of a choir in my ears.   We are spent together in moments.  Your cry echoes in my head, and it seems the bed is still shaking from our lovemaking. 

 

I rest, my cheek on your thigh.  Our musk fills the air around us.  I stroke your thighs and belly and feel your fingers again in my hair.  Your body is still shaking; after a moment I realize the bedroom is shaking.  I look up, pushing myself up on an elbow.  Your head is thrown back and you cry out.  It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard from you before.  It’s triumphant and wondrous.

Things are breaking in the kitchen, but you just say, “Come here, Tess…my leannan.”

“It’s a quake,” I tell you.  “I’m here.”

“Yes…it is…you are.  We did this.”  I pull you close to me, feeling the heat of your body linger.  You’re still trembling, but there’s no fear here; no pain for now.  “We…did…this.” 

Amid the sound of breaking glass and car horns blasting, and stone and wood creaking, you fall asleep in my arms, at peace for the first time since the quake.