Chapter 1: The End & The Beginning May, 2006 & May,1975
May 2006, Sunrise at the Lake
Darryl awoke to the almost inaudible buzz and vibration of his wristwatch alarm. As usual, his nude body was neatly spooned with the beautiful and equally nude body of his wife of nine years. His morning semi-erection was cradled as neatly between the cheeks of her shapely bottom as a silver punch ladle in a velvet presentation case. His left hand cupped her left breast, held there by both of her hands, where she had draped him across herself like a human coverlet.
He looked lovingly at her, and although her 40th birthday loomed just ahead, her body didn't betray her age. She was as shapely and firm as when he had first made love to her a decade before, and she had seemed young even then. In part, this was a result of the healthy diet and regular gym and yoga program she had adopted to survive the rigors of her full touring schedule as a musical superstar. Even now that she toured only one month a year, she kept a home gym and a personal trainer. It was too structured a program for him, but God, he loved the results on her.
He leaned over and inhaled her scent and the fragrance of her hair. He never got tired of it. He gently started nuzzling her neck and nibbling her ear. One eye opened; she rolled her head back to catch him in a kiss. "Hadn't you better leave before my husband gets home?''
"Too late, he's already here."
"Is he mad?"
"Nah, horny old bastard just wants a little, too."
"What the hell, the more stiff cock to start a girl's morning, the better I say. Speaking of, want me to take care of your best friend there?" She reached and put an affectionate hand on his now full morning erection.
"Later, you randy old hussy, didn't I already take care of you once this week?"
"I love you, you old fart, but the day you only fuck me once a week, then it's God help the paper boy."
It was pretty much their standard morning fare. Hardly likely to get them a spot on the Comedy Network, it was their continuing joy at being together, bubbling over into a happy celebration. It was a happiness that seemed their destiny from childhood, and yet had been lost and found and threatened yet again. Both of them knew by what tiny margins their happiness had been secured, so each new day was cause for new joy.
But this was not just any morning. This was their morning. That particular May morning that was now their anniversary but had held a special significance long before their marriage. "Happy 'Us Day, '" he whispered as he nibbled her ear lobe, "Shall I open the curtains?"
"Yes, my love."
Ironically they slept most nights with the curtains open, but on this night, they liked the added drama of opening them. Darryl reached over, hit a switch, and the floor to ceiling draperies, covering the entire wall, gradually opened. It was almost totally black outside, with only the first hint of dawn in the sky.
She turned to him with a little smile. "Do you think they will be there, on the dock, like us? I think I'll cry if they are."
"And I will be just a little disappointed if they aren't. But they will form their own friendship with the lake and the dawn as we did. Now, my love, how will you greet the dawn?"
"The same way I choose every year; I wish to greet the dawn on our special day with the love of my life inside me. Make love to me, Darryl, beautiful love."
And the two, man and woman, friends, lovers, husband and wife, began a familiar dance. Each other's body was comfortably familiar and yet still fascinating and exciting. What experience brought was timing and balance. She would need more time to reach her peak; therefore, she received more time. His time came later and in measured amounts.
Courtney, like most women, wanted to kiss a lot. Their love making always started with a generous round of kissing, deep, passionate, lip-chewing, tongue-tangling, breath-sharing kissing. And it lasted until she indicated she was ready to move on. Moving on in Darryl's case meant moving on to kissing the rest of her, which was fine with him, because there wasn't a single square inch of Courtney he didn't like to kiss.
Sunrise is short, so their pace was more rapid than it might have been otherwise. Darryl had to forgo his favorite leisurely tour of her neck and shoulder in favor of a more direct route to her breasts. He loved her breasts, their roundness and firmness belied her years, their softness and the large firm nipples called to him. He could lose himself in their warmth and womanly scent. She held his head to her with both hands, as she looked down at him tenderly. He teased her nipples by alternately using his tongue, his lips and his teeth. Courtney liked all of these; in fact, she liked having her nipples played with a lot. They were hotwired directly to her hidden female treasures; as a result, she was already quite wet. A mutual favorite was for him to simply suckle like an infant, which never failed to get her eyes closed, her head thrown back and her breath reduced to a series of little gasps.
"Oh Darryl," she gasped, "I'm already so wet, I could take you now; I want you now."
"Right on time, as always, my darling, the sun is rising."
She reached and took his organ in her hand. "I see the sun is not the only thing rising."
He turned toward the window and sat with his legs out straight and together. She turned the same way and straddled his legs, sitting in his lap and impaling herself on his erection. Thus joined in sexual union and held in loving embrace, they watched another May sunrise over "their" lake. They watched silently as the light shifted through the delicate palette of sunrise colors that reflected off the lake's still waters and flooded their bedroom. The richness, yet subtlety of the range of colors mirrored so perfectly the love of these two whose relationship began with a kiss on this very lake, on a morning just like this, when they were eight years old.
The light was now just bright enough to see the end of the dock. The figures of a little boy and a little girl holding hands could just be made out. Darryl blinked once to be sure. "They're there, all right. I suppose it really had to be." He only heard a swallow in reply. He looked, and her eyes were misting.
Suddenly she gasped, and he turned back in time to see the little girl kiss the little boy on the cheek. She wept openly now. "Hold me, Darryl, I suddenly feel old."
"You're not old, my love. I have the body of a beautiful young woman in my arms."
"Make me feel it; make me feel young again, Darryl, make love with all the raw passion you ever felt for me."
He realized that what she was looking for was the awe, the obsessive, sometimes clumsy worship of her body that a woman gets from a young man overwhelmed by her beauty. Not difficult, really, in his case; worship of her body had never lain far below the surface. Now he just released his feelings. He lost himself in her body through every sense; he felt her smoothness; he smelled her scents; he tasted her essence; he listened to her breathing; he looked at her beauty as though for the first time. Losing himself in her beauty, he found himself greatly aroused by the object of his worship.
Courtney in turn was the beneficiary of all this tactile homage in the form of kisses and licks and fondles and caresses, and she appreciated every one of them. But to be the object of such adoration is the greatest aphrodisiac of them all, and soon she found herself on fire, absolutely on fire with everything female in her crying out for fulfillment. "Darryl, damn you, FUCK ME NOW, oh now."
He felt much the same urgency, so he immediately got between her legs and without the least pretense at ceremony or embellishment; he lined his cock up and thrust forward. She thrust towards him, and her relief upon him filling her was audible. Now they fucked, pure and simple; style and technique were ignored in favor of physical release. It was like temporarily throwing off the burden of civilization, society, Cosmopolitan, and returning to the jungle. And it felt very, very good.
It was unlikely from the beginning that this intensity could be sustained, and it wasn't long before both were making tell-tale signs of rapidly approaching climax. Courtney had already had a small pre-tremor, but her closed eyes and the spreading red flush across her breast were sure signs of a huge orgasm coming. For him, it was eyes tight shut and grunts. Unusually, there was no verbal communication or warning. But it proved unnecessary; the first contractions of her orgasm massaged his sensitive organ where it lay, cradled inside her softness. This caused his climax. In turn, the warm flood of his seed deep inside her triggered her final release.
The two collapsed together, totally sated and exhausted. Darryl propped up on one elbow and gazed lovingly at her. "Feeling more loved now?"
"You always know how to keep me from feeling sorry for myself. Seeing them on the dock made me feel almost obsolete, like a dinosaur."
"It's just the cycle of life; we're all part of it. It's their time now to hold hands for the first time; we've moved on to a different time in our lives... And I have to point out that the unseemly little display on the dock merely means you have managed to raise a daughter who's just as brazen a hussy as her mother was... And the world's a better place because you did, there's never an adequate supply of brazen hussies to go around."
"It does seem like just yesterday. Do you remember that morning? And by the way, brazen hussy indeed, I was scared to death. Sneaking out with a boy; I'd never done anything like that in my life."
"I remember it perfectly. And you may have been scared, as you say, never having done anything like that in your life, but it didn't stop you from kissing me."
"OK, I have to give you that one."
"And proposing marriage to me."
"Well, technically, it was more like a prediction, I didn't actually ask you."
"More like a threat."
"But I was right; you did marry me, so now I want to be treated like your wife, please, Darryl." So they set aside their memories temporarily to celebrate the May morning in other ways.
May 1975, Sunrise at the Lake
The two little girls huddled under the covers, giggling and whispering like little girls always have, since sleepovers were invented. Robyn Kedrick was entertaining her second grade classmate Courtney Archer at her grandparents' lake house. Their topic of conversation at the moment, as it had been most of the night, was the third guest in the house, Robyn's cousin Darryl. Her grandparents treated Darryl like one of their own and kept him when his parents' State Department careers took them overseas. Both girls thought that Darryl was very sweet and very cute and not "icky" like most of the boys in their class. He always treated girls nicely and didn't play mean tricks.
What was most exciting was that Darryl had promised to sneak out and take Courtney down to the dock to watch the sunrise. It sounded terribly exciting and romantic to Courtney. It did to Robyn, too, but she was just a little jealous. "Do you think he will really come?" whispered the excited Courtney, for the tenth time.
"He'd better," teased Robyn, indicating Courtney's attire, "Or you got dressed up for nothing. Besides I told you, my cousin always keeps his promises."
"No one always keeps every single promise, even Mommy and Daddy sometimes don't."
"Darryl does, my last birthday he promised to come to my party. He got the flu and had a temperature of 102, and his mom wouldn't let him, but she sent the present with Peter next door."
"That doesn't count as a broken promise if you're sick and can't help it."
"It does to Darryl; he snuck out of his house and rode his bike all the way over to my house. He didn't come in, because he would have made us all sick. I was cutting the cake when I saw his face at the window. He waved and stuck a note to the window and left. Nobody ever knew he was there except me."
"What did the note say?"
"Just 'Happy Birthday, I told you I would come.'"
"I don't understand, Robyn; he didn't come in, and you already had your present; why'd he do it?"
"Don't you get it, Courtney; he came just because he'd promised to."
"Oh I see, so that's why you're sure he'll come tonight."
Both girls started at the sound of footsteps outside their room. "Shhhh," whispered Robyn, "he's here."
"I'm a little bit scared," whispered Courtney, "I never snuck out with a boy before."
Robyn hugged her friend. "It's OK, it's not just a boy; it's Darryl. A lot of girls would trade places with you right now," she said. "And I'm one of them," she thought.
There was a tapping at their window. They opened the curtain, and there was Darryl's big open smile. He motioned towards the back door and disappeared. The two girls giggled their way to the door. Fortunately, the grandparents' bedroom was upstairs, and they were sound sleepers; assuming that they were unaware of the night's activities. Robyn held the door open, and Courtney snuck out into the darkness. She couldn't see a thing.
"Right here, I'm right here. Let your eyes get used to the dark." She felt a hand take hers and give it a reassuring squeeze.
Young eyes accommodate rapidly, so almost before she was used to the idea of holding a boy's hand, Courtney could see enough to walk without tripping over a root. Darryl didn't seem to have a great deal to say; he just seemed eager to get down to the dock, so they walked on in silence. When they got there, Darryl walked right out to the end and sat down. "If you take off your shoes, you can dangle your feet in the water. Don't be afraid; the water is only about two feet deep here."
"I'm not afraid, and I'm a very good swimmer, Darryl Sanders; what about you?" she asked with a little huff.
"I'm sorry, Courtney. I just guessed things about you without asking."
"It's OK, you get used to it, if you're a girl. Boys always act like you can't do anything. You don't do it much. That's why I like you." She moved over to sit closer to him.
"Darryl, why is it so important to you to always keep a promise?"
"If you don't keep all of your promises, how are any of them going to mean anything?"
"Then promise you'll never bring any other girl out here except me."
"I can't promise that, Courtney." He ignored her pout. "Part of keeping your promises is to only make promises you can keep. I'm only eight; how could I promise that. Your family could move away."
The sun rose high enough to reflect a gorgeous play of pastel colors, capped off with a fiery rim of reds and yellows from the surface of the lake. The all too brief show held the two children mesmerized. Little Courtney turned to Darryl. "Wow, that was great. Thanks for bringing me. Does this mean that I'm your girlfriend?"
"I like you. You're very pretty. But I think we're too young to be girlfriends and boyfriends."
"Well, I don't care what you say, Darryl Sanders; you're my new boyfriend, and there is nothing you can do about it." She grabbed him, and before he could react, she gave him a big juicy kiss on his cheek. Then she hopped up and got just out of his range. "And something else, Darryl Sanders, I'm going to marry you someday." With that unanswerable parting salvo, she ran off towards the house, leaving him clueless as to what had just transpired. As a member of the male gender, this particular state of confusion would, in time, be accepted as normal.