Today though, the image of her invited others. A cascade of possibilities, of opportunities that I would later regret not pursuing. Other opportunities I did pursue, as did she.
We were young, alone, and free.
No other ingredients needed. Life was simpler then.
I got up and she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. “Good. You can reach better than I can.”
I placed my hands on her waist and pulled her to me, pressing my erection against her ass. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Darn.”
“Here,” I said, pressing against her more firmly, running my hands to her lower abdomen, down the crease formed by her thighs and mound. “Now.”
“We can’t,” she said.
“We can.”
“We shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“We have a perfectly good bedroom with a perfectly good mattress. With perfect curtains and complete privacy.”
“The world is our bedroom,” I said. “According to Shakespeare.”
“Oyster,” she laughed.
“No one’s around.”
She cast her glance into the corners of our little world and beyond. “Hmm.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something. It wasn’t no. I could work with it.
“I need to hang laundry still,” she said.
“So hang laundry. I’ll help.”
She reached into the basket for a t-shirt bearing the logo of a marathon I hadn’t run, sponsored by a bar I never frequented. I reached beneath her dress for her panties. The hem of the dress went up. The panties went down. She kicked them away.
I stroked her hips and she paused in the hanging of a shirt. My hands moved up her waist and then to her breasts, taking the fabric of the dress with them, exposing her to the sunshine.
Her fingers wrapped around the clothesline in an attitude of self-bondage.
I moved before her and knelt, lifting the hem of the dress over my head. Within the tent of her dress, I smelled her summer-kissed skin and a hint of arousal. It was warm and heady in there. Sunlight strained through the fabric, dappling her skin, rendering this cocoon warm and intimate. Before me downy tufts of pubic hair hid a promise I never grew tired of. With my thumbs I spread her lips. With my tongue I touched her nub. From her lips, a sigh.
All the while, she stood there on the balls of her feet, her legs now spread to accommodate me. I imagined her hands still grasping the clothes line.
She swayed gently to waves of what I hoped was arousal, goading my tongue in its dance. From above, I heard her breath alternately hitch and gasp. We’d been together long enough for me to have learned the language of her body, but not so long that I’d grown indifferent to it. The Goldilocks zone of any relationship.
I eased my hands behind her to cup her buttocks and kneaded their smooth firmness with my fingers.
She came quietly. She’d never been overly vocal, but the setting probably muted her release even more than usual.
Her hands alit on my head, still covered by her dress. She whispered, “You done good.”
She took a step back and I emerged from my cocoon. The wind cooled the moisture on my face. She held out a hand and helped me to my feet. She led me to the bench from which I’d admired her before and fumbled around with the button of my shorts. Soon I was naked from the hips down.
She pushed me onto the bench and, facing me, straddled my legs. She held my cock in her hands. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. I just hadn’t realized it.”
She rose then, positioned me just so, and then sank down upon my cock.
“Just stay like that,” I whispered. “For a little while.”
She leaned her forearms on my shoulders and touched her forehead to mine. Outwardly, she hardly moved. Inwardly, her muscles clenched around me.
“You’re a witch,” I gasped.
“What?” she said, all innocence.
Subtle movements played over me, enough to keep me at cruel attention, not enough to grant release. It was something Viv excelled at. Benevolent torture.
I reached my hands beneath her dress and caressed her breasts. It wasn’t enough; I wanted to see her naked, see her familiar body exposed in an unfamiliar setting. She didn’t complain. We were hidden behind the house and exposed only to the fields that were leased to farmers we knew only in passing. We shared this place with only the insects and the birds that preyed on them.
I pulled the dress over her head. No complaint.
My eyes must have widened. Some quality of the light revealed her to me anew, this playground of flesh that she had given me permission to explore. I hardly deserved it.
Viv knew me well. I was about to say something obvious, something possibly stupid. She shushed me by placing her lips to mine and rotated her hips. Her breasts swayed slightly to the movement, nipples grazing my chest.
My hands rested on her hips and she slowly rose and fell. A slow strobe of sensation. Her embracing warmth followed by the touch of a cooler breeze when we separated.
She leaned back, hands laced behind my neck, affording me a better view of our joining. My flesh in hers. For a moment, I felt dissociated from the picture and the sensation as though it could hardly be me nestled in this most private of spaces. How had I been deemed worthy enough to enjoy a union that was both incomprehensible and natural? A joining of the flesh so pleasurable that I’d often wonder why we hadn’t done it earlier or more of it later.
Dad.
She rose and fell upon me. At some point, conscious movement always surrenders to physical imperatives. She quickened her pace, punctuating her movements with occasional mewls and gasps. I watched as her muscles moved and undulated beneath her skin, a body focussed on climax. Her hips swivelled and swayed, releasing me and claiming me anew.
I closed my eyes and concentrated.
Dad!
And then the rush, the out-of-body moment of release. My hands were around her waist, holding her in place, impaled.
She exhaled long and slow.
Then she wrapped her arms around my head and pressed it to her breast.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
I started guiltily. A second ago I’d been young again and fucking, though that was hardly something to feel guilty about. Now I was back, an old man, a husk whose vitality had long evaporated. I was still here and Viv lived only in memories such as these.
“I’m fine,” I said.
My cane had fallen from my hands and I bent to pick it up, almost tipping over from the bench in the process.
My daughter gave me a look normally reserved for naughty children.
Such was my life now.
Jo had been right. I would become depressed and maudlin, more so because I didn’t know anymore whether I’d relived a memory or had engaged in fantasy. My mind had gotten so unreliable of late. I smiled in spite of it.
“Thanks for bringing me, Jo. It was nice to have it back for a moment.”
She never asked what it was.
After we returned to my apartment and had enjoyed a coffee and a slice of cake, I walked Jo to the elevator.
The doors slid open and out stepped a man I suspected of slipping religious literature under my door as though my diet of bereavement needed a side of God. He was a religious guy. A deacon of some sort. I disliked the man intensely though we’d shared only a few words over the years. It worked this way sometimes.