He came up behind her as she stood on the balcony looking down at the river of freeway light flowing through the night into the center of Los Angeles. His arms wrapped around her, enfolding her, giving her his warmth. She nestled contentedly inside his cocoon and nuzzled the top of her head against his cheek.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she said.

"But cold."

"LA or the night?"

"Both, maybe. The night for sure."

"Yes." But she was in no hurry to move, enjoying the view and closeness. Besides, with his arms around her, she wasn't cold anymore.

"Come inside, hon. The fire's beautiful, too."

She turned within his arms and slid hers up around his neck, tilting her head back and seeking his lips. He bent to her, met her, nibbled at the corner of her mouth, licked his tongue across her lips and then pushed it deep between them. She opened to him, welcomed him, caressed his tongue with her own.

His arms pulled her to him, her breasts beneath her sweater pillowed against his chest. He slid a hand down her back to the base of her spine and pressed her inward to him. She wrapped herself around his legs, climbing high against his thigh. He pressed back, the bone of his leg nestled in softness. She wriggled like a pinned butterfly, pushing and relaxing with her hips.

"Mmmmm," he said after a while. "I don't feel cold now, but I still want to go inside."

"Why?" she asked, feigning innocence.

"Because the neighbors might object if I bent you over the railing."

"How much would they object?" she said, as if she were considering possibilities.

He laughed, turned and opened the sliding glass door, escorted her through it.

They sat on the sofa in front of the fire. Before long, she kicked off her shoes and slid down to stretch out on the clearly fake and very comfortable tiger rug, where he watched her bask in the warmth of the fire for several minutes before snuggling up behind her. It was not long after that that he kissed her over her shoulder, nibbling his way down her cheek, and she kissed him back, turning her head to meet his lips. His hand, at first on her ribs, slid upward to cup her breast. She pressed into his hand eagerly.

He kissed her ear, her throat, her neck. She let her head loll back while he nibbled and sucked and kissed her throat. She sighed and shifted her body to encourage him not to neglect her other breast. He slipped his hand under her sweater and trailed his fingers up across her ribs to cup the soft fullness. He could feel the lace of her bra, that mystical garment, holder of the holy. He swept his thumb across the front and felt her stiff nipple respond.

Pulling her backward, he urged her to lie down on the rug and then straddled her torso with his arms. He let himself down toward her, reached for her lips with his, found their soft silk, and kissed them gently. His tongue slipped out only a fraction, traced across her pouty lower lip, and withdrew. It returned, licked lightly at her lip again, then teased her upper lip. She held still, barely breathing. His lips pressed hers more firmly, insisted, begged her to kiss him, but still she held back. He ran his tongue over her teeth, put his thumb at the corner of her jaw and pressed, and when her teeth separated, ran his tongue into her mouth. And now she kissed him back.

The fire was warm and so were they. He raised her up and pulled the sweater up over her head. She shook her hair, reached behind her back and unfastened her bra, pulled it forward off her shoulders and let her alabaster breasts fall free. She lay back again, smiling slightly, letting him look at her. He took a deep breath, a sigh really, and lowered his lips to the tops of her breasts, cupping them beneath with his hand, each in turn, while he kissed the soft tops, kissed their outer sides and the fragrant valley between them, ran his tongue under them.

Her nipples were soft buttons against his cheeks as he nuzzled her breasts. At last, he moved to them. For a moment, his mouth was suspended above one rosy tip. He blew a breath that felt hot to her. Then his tongue licked the nipple and blew on it again, and this time it was cool. Her nipples hardened to pebbles, so turgid they almost hurt. He took one in his lips gently, and the soft caress was soothing and intimately erotic. The tip of his tongue teased the nipple's surface. She strained her breast toward his mouth, wanting him to suck it all into his mouth, nurse at her, drain her, use her.

He slipped a hand between her legs and cupped her sex. She could not help but rise to his touch, seek it, let him know he could have it, let him know she was thinking of him being there where his hand stroked along her pussy lips through two layers of clothing, thinking of what it would feel like when he put himself in her and began to pump it in and out. She moaned and hugged him as his fingers pressed inward, pressed her already damp panties into her moist slot.

Wrapped in each other's arms, they hugged and kissed deeply and tumbled farther down into that special sex dimensionality where the real gradually dims and the urgent, tactile, desperate world of mating becomes everything. The smell of the wood fire blended with the smell of them. Up close, scents were magnified -- the faint perfume at her throat, the very different perfume left on her hair by her shampoo, his antiperspirant intermixed with volatile scent from his armpits, the fragrance musk of her moistening sex. He smell/touch/kissed her breasts, and she inhaled his glistening presence.

When he began to unfasten the front of her slacks, she did the same to him and did not stop even when his fingers were faster and slid, cool at first, into her panties and through the covering scrub of hair and found the damp slot. Her breath caught in her throat when he slid his finger downward to nestle between those wet and sensitive lips, but she released the button and hook that held his pants together and, as the sides parted, slipped her hand under the waist of his white cotton shorts and found his rigid, straining erection thrusting to meet her moist palm. She held him, slid her hand up and down, which prompted his own ragged breath in response.

His finger felt for her hole, found it, and easily slipped in to the big knuckle. She was wet, slick, aroused. Her hips urged him to push his finger the rest of the way in. She strained to get more when he reached deep. She wrapped both hands around his pole and jacked it toward her stomach.

He pushed his face away from hers, down over her neck, her breasts, her ticklish middle that pulled away from his kisses into a shallow basin framed by her hips. He kissed her stomach and bellybutton. He kissed the top of her bush and the very beginning of her legs, the valley of her groin, pushing her slacks and panties down as she lifted her hips to help him. He slid his face farther down and nibbled lightly near the top of her sex. He pushed her pants and panties down around her ankles and helped her take them off, then turned and began to kiss his way up her legs.

He kissed lightly over her calves, and even more lightly in the soft flesh behind her knees. He trailed his tongue over her thighs mixed with intermittent nips and kisses until her reach the valley where they joined. Pushing her legs up and out, he spread her, pushed his finger into her again, gnawed on each of her outer lips and thrust his tongue as deeply into her as he could.

Finally, when she thought she would explode with tension and longing, he slid his tongue upward just a little more and, stiffening and lengthening it, traced around and around the bump at the top of her opening. What started as a sigh of relief rose up in her throat to a whimpering cry that faded off into a shuddering moan. Her hips squirmed involuntarily and then she pressed them forward, consciously and eagerly, inviting his tongue, seeking his tongue, demanding his tongue.

"Oh, jeez," she sighed. "Oh, god, that feels good."

Still his tongue avoided the tip, rolled around and around it instead, almost touching, then dipped downward and plunged into her again, pushing and reaching, then slid out and upward to roll around and around the path that circled her clit. She tried to guide his tongue with her hips, reaching for it, wanting it against her there. His hands, which were on either side of her pussy, holding her open to his attack, pressed down and forward, pinning her to the floor and preventing her from succeeding. Instead, he dropped downward, avoiding what she wanted. He pushed his tongue into her again, slathered it inside her like a blind, slimy thing slipping and sliding in their mixed juices as it discovered her shape by feel.

And then he moved forward suddenly and dragged the rough velvet of his muscular tongue right across the most exquisitely sensitive top of her button. Her entire body jerked like she'd been punched in the middle, and her hands flew down to bury in his hair. She thought she was going to push him away, but by the time her hands actually found his head and twined in his hair, she could only for a moment hold him away and keep him from pressing in, but just for a moment before her will and fear collapsed and she shifted like a sail changing tack and pulled him into her, reveling in the feel of his tongue as it chased and traced and lashed back and forth and around and around and down and across -- Oh! Oh! -- across again.

She heard a whine in the distance and it was seconds before she realized it was her own voice, and even though she tried to stifle it, even though she clenched her teeth and clamped her lips tight, the cry fought its way up and out of her nose, rising in pitch and volume. It turned into a series of panting, quickening breaths, which she realized dimly -- as if through cotton, through layers of blankets -- that those sounds of another woman in another room crying out her passion were her. Because she was coming, and she had no time to worry about sounds. Right there, in the magic spot at her center, the waves of pleasure -- though pleasure is such a weak word for it -- the waves of pleasure that had rolled up and out and through her suddenly reversed course and pulled inward, from her toes, which thrust and released like a ballerina seen sideways, and from the top of her scalp, which tingled and crawled and sent electric shocks downward. The waves flowed up her legs and down over her shoulders, then quivered her thighs and convulsed her stomach muscles. And then everything clutched and contracted and collided and exploded outward in a blinding flash like the birth of a universe, and she was coming and crying and coming.