The limo pulled into my driveway and stopped. The driver got out and quietly closed his door before walking behind the car to my side.

“Are you sure you want to be alone, Marina?” my brother turned toward me and placed his hand on my arm. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“Yes,” my sister-in-law chimed in, lean across to pat me on the knee. “Why don’t you let me stay with you. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and you can put your feet up have all the quiet time you want. You really should have somebody in the house with you.” She waved her hand at the street where a dozen people waited, respectfully keeping their distance.

The driver opened the door and waited patiently for me to exit the car.

“No. I’ll be alright, but thanks for the thought. I really would like to be alone for awhile.”

I started to step out of the car but my brother caught my arm and I turned back to face him, one foot dangling over the driveway.

“John, really. I’m fine. I just want some time alone to collect my thoughts.”

John released my arm and I stepped out of the car. There was a murmur from the small crowd with my appearance but they retained their respectful demeanor. They wouldn’t be any trouble. I knew they were gathering to light candles tonight to honor Tom. Many more were expected and I could already see a dozen more walking up the street.

“I’ll call you later, in case you need anything,” Tessa called.

“Not until tomorrow,” I replied. “Sean will be home soon.” Already, I was relying on my son who had lost just as much as I.

“Ok. Tomorrow, then, but call if you need anything.”

The driver closed the door and escorted me up the sidewalk to the porch, then held the screen door open while I retrieved my keys and unlocked the door. He didn’t say anything as I stepped inside and waited for me to close the door before shutting the screen door. I heard his footsteps retreating and put my hand to my forehead, struggling not to cry.

I dropped my purse on the floor, letting the black, lace shawl follow it, then walked unsteadily into the dining room and bent to open the buffet cupboard where we kept our meager supply of liquor. I chose the single malt scotch that Tom had favored. I wasn’t a scotch drinker but I knew it was the perfect selection for me right then. I grabbed a glass and carried the bottle into the living room.

Setting the bottle down on the coffee table, I picked up the remote for the TV and turned it on. The DVD player was still on and the screen filled with a picture of Tom and me, much younger, before Sean had been born, or even thought of. My finger poised over the play button but I didn’t push it. Instead, I carried the remote to the entertainment center and set it down. Picking up a picture of Tom, I returned to the couch and sat down, setting the photo down and pouring myself a stiff drink that almost filled the small glass.

Leaning back, I stretched my feet out and used my left toe to push right shoe off, then dropped the left with the aid of my right foot. I twiddled my toes, flexing them in the black hose. I took a long pull from the glass and gulped the whiskey down, its bitter taste screwing up my face. God, Tom. Why do you like this stuff so much? Liked, I corrected myself. Oh, God, Tom. What am I going to do?

So young. He was gone so young, just forty-nine, in his prime. Tears began streaming down my face but there were no sobs.

How could you leave me alone like this?

What would I do to fill the years? There’s no one else like him. I’ll never love like that again. I’m empty, and all I see ahead is emptiness.

Oh, Tom. Why?

I took another drink and was surprised to see the glass empty already. With a small exclamation, I leaned forward and refilled the glass. Settling back, I took a sip and rested the glass on the arm of the couch, at the ready.

“Oh, my love. I miss you so much, already,” I sighed out loud.

After another sip my eyes focused on the picture on the table. Tom and Sean. I looked up at the TV where the picture of me and Tom, so much younger, still looked enthusiastically into the living room, full of the vigor and excitement of youth. My God, that was such an exciting time, not long after the start of the movement, and the discovery of the great tree. On Earth Day twenty-six years ago.

So young, but even then, he was a natural leader. The way he had handled the publicity campaign about the tree made him the poster boy for our movement and set the direction for their lives. And now, of all days — Earth Day — the country was mourning the loss of one of its treasured environmentalists. The dedicated were congregating outside right now to pay homage. Soon, there would be hundreds.

Oh, Tom. You were such a good-looking boy then. What would they have thought if they knew what else you discovered that fateful day in the forest, the thing that started our love life on its incredible journey? What would they have done if they had witnessed our moment of sexual discovery, of hunter and prey? Would they have understood? Would they have followed you then? I think not, yet you risked it all, for me.

I sipped my scotch and shifted my eyes to the picture on the table, focusing on Tom, standing arm in arm with his son. My gaze turned back to the young man smiling next to me on the TV and my mind followed, back to that day in the forest.

Despite the huge trees, the heavy rain managed to break through the canopy, drenching our small group working its way along the rugged deer trail beside the small river running through the rain forest. An hour since our last stop, we were relieved to see a widening in the trail ahead with an old tree lying alongside, almost as if it had been placed there for us to rest upon. Just before we arrived, the rain stopped and the sun burst through the trees, lighting the little clearing with its blessed warmth. It was a beautiful moment.

The men stopped in front of the log, allowing us girls to doff our packs and sit down. Tom looked up, following the sun’s rays, and announced his belief that the rain was done. Trusting his own prediction, he began shedding his rain gear, and the rest of us followed suit.

Ten minutes later we were all relaxed, still sipping from our canteens and munching trail mix, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Tom, already restless, wandered down the trail to the next corner and I admired his lithe physique a he moved gracefully through this mystic forest like he was part of it. He stood at the corner, shielding his eyes and gazing intently downstream. I was about to join him when he turned and started back our way. Tom rejoined the group but he didn’t say anything until there was a lull in the conversation.

“I think I’ve found something,” he said.

“What?” several of us chorused.

“A tree.”

There was a huge burst of laughter.

“A tree?” we echoed, looking around at the giants surrounding us.

“Yeah, a big tree”, Tom repeated.

“You’re kidding,” Rick mocked him.

“Nope,” Tom replied, unruffled by the sarcasm. “These,” he waved his hand around in a semi-circle, are just sticks.”

We could see he was deadly serious and, one by one, we all squeezed past him and ran down to corner just fifty feet down the trail. Every one of us gasped when we turned the corner. There, a hundred yards downstream, stood the largest spruce tree we had ever seen. Though barely average height, its girth made it humungous. Its enormous trunk and branches were draped with lichen, giving it an ancient and mystical appearance, especially within the mist left over by the recent rain. Everyone jumped with joy and ran down the trail and then across, stumbling over the stones pebbling the bubbling creek.

I waited for Tom and accompanied him, linked arm in arm, as he sauntered down the trail, savoring the others’ joy while soaking in the magical presence of the tree. Gurgles of pride surged through my chest as we approached the others, their excited chatter swirling around the base of the giant. It was fully half an hour before someone suggested we proceed further down the creek to see how far we were from the ocean. Everyone started off but Tom said he wanted to stay behind and the rest understood, leaving him to revel in his discovery. Nothing was said when I stayed behind. They quietly accepted my decision to remain as appropriate. Our mutual attraction wasn’t a secret.

Tom and I moved into the relative shadow behind the giant trunk, stepping through the deep, spongy moss which stretched up from the ground to cover a large tree that had long ago fallen at the giant’s feet. Leaning back, we curved our backs over the fallen fir to stare up the massive trunk, peering through the maze of huge branches as far as we could.

My reverie, partly focused on the tree and partly on what Tom was thinking was broken by his lips suddenly latching onto mine. Although startled, I didn’t struggle or even protest. We hadn’t yet been romantically involved though everyone expected it to happen. My arms curled around his neck, one hand slipping down over his shoulder while the other sought his head, grasping a handful of his long, curly hair. I pushed my body up against him, spreading my breasts outward and nudging my pelvis into his. Our kiss deepened, unrushed but intense.

I felt so alive!

The kiss ended and Tom pulled away to gaze into my eyes. On sudden impulse, instead of dreamily returning his loving look, I jerked my head up and nipped his mouth, piercing his lips and drawing a tiny drop of blood. With a wild laugh, I slipped around him and ran away, giggling as I sprinted through the forest. I had easily covered twenty or more feet and leapt over another log before Tom took up the chase. We ran around, hooting our excitement, until he finally caught me, right back where we had started.

I was trying to scramble over the large, moss-covered log when Tom caught me from behind just after I had jumped atop the log and was using my hands and elbows to pull myself over. Tom grabbed my jeans by the back pockets. I tried to jerk away and he tugged harder to pull me down until my jeans gave way, sliding over my rosy buttocks and down my muscular thighs, past my knees and into a pile on top of my boots.

Time froze that moment, with me stretched over the top of the log, hands clutching its mossy coat and my naked butt and legs dangling over its side, and my eyes turning to look at my pursuer in shock. Tom stepped back, startled, but his eyes ran appreciatively from my boots to my quivering bottom. A strange look befell his face and he stepped forward, half stooping to place his hands on the back of my calves. Slowly, he stood, dragging his cold hands up my legs until they caressed the outside of my cheeks, sliding over their prominence before his fingers slipped into the crevice underneath to cup my bare, panty-freed flesh. Even more slowly, his palms dragged down my inner thighs, then climbed back again.

Tom’s hands grasped my buttocks on the return trip, squeezing them firmly, and pulled. I released my hold and gradually slipped down the mossy curvature of the large, fallen log until my feet hit the ground. I leaned forward on the mossy carpet, silent and submissive. Tom’s hands continued their caressing traverse up and down the inside of my thighs. I turned my face into the moss and waited. I recognized the sound of his belt sliding through its buckle but still I didn’t move ... nor did I budge when his jeans whispered down his own legs.

I expected to feel him pressing into my back but the first touch was his fingers slipping through my hair, taking firm hold of my head. Only then did I sense his prick nudging between my cheeks, searching for my womanly treasure. His treasure. His reward.

He slipped inside me and I expelled a muffled moan into the moss. He continued his attack, pressing forward, sliding inside me, ever advancing with a cock that was much longer than I expected if not as thick. I stretched up on my toes to accommodate his length but it was mostly him that lifted me. I groaned into my soft, green mask. I can’t explain the wild thought that echoed through my mind, the first time I had ever experienced such a feeling.

Take me. Possess me.

Tom’s grunts of pleasure whistled past my ears with every straining thrust. They were long and slow as he dragged his long tool all the way out and then shoved it back in again, grinding my pussy into the moss-covered bark, forcing it to embrace Mother Nature.

I don’t know how long we fucked. It seemed to go on and on. So long it seemed to be life itself, a life that would never end. Tom had long ago released my hair in favor of grasping the moss above and to the side of my own gripping fingers. I could see the muscles of his forearms straining with the effort of his thrusts.

He was no longer grunting but was rather breathing in an extended moan that rose up and down in cadence with my own, and his lunging assault. I was pulling myself up and down with him, or rather, I was pushing myself down to follow his retreat, then resisting his upward attack, twisting my bottom, trying to wrench the surging orgasm I somehow sensed was coming out of his body before he was ready to release it. With every passing moment, with each surging thrust, his power was transferred into my body. He may have launched the assault but I was assuming the upper hand. He wasn’t giving me his seed, I was sucking it out of him.

My pussy had never gripped a cock so firmly. It’s slippery clasp denied its full retreat. Even if Tom had wished it, I doubt he could have withdrawn. He was mine, like a cobra trapped in cave with no exits, he couldn’t escape until his lifeforce was spent. I turned my head to the side and cried my triumph to the tree, clamping Tom’s cock in a death clasp, refusing retreat, holding him in my slick, twisting grip until his seed seared my inner walls. Only then did I release him, but he was back immediately, shouting as he bucked wildly against my ass, gushing more of his hot fluid.

“Yes,” I cried. “Fill me,” I shouted.

Again and again he shoved in and out, pausing longer each time as he attained full entrance, his legs trembling in the effort to hold me off my feet, until at long last, he sagged backward and fell, spent, to the mossy ground.

I remained against the log, my naked ass swaying in front of his glazed eyes, as if still not satisfied, teasing him with my unfulfilled need. It was a lie. I was fully sated, satisfied more than I ever had been, but my body instinctively signaled my lover that I could take more, all that he could give.

We were fully dressed, sitting atop the log, when the tinkle of the others’ chatter warned us of their approach long before they came into sight. They teased us about the awed glow that surrounded our faces and permeated the space around us. The magic of the tree, we replied.

Our relationship started that day and never ended until Tom’s death. Though we never attained the magic of that moment, we experienced many others. Our sex life was one of adventure, chase and capture. I couldn’t remember ever having a normal, let’s-go-to-bed-and-make-love union with Tom.

It was always chase and capture. Always initiated unexpectedly, though it seldom really was. A look, a fleeting glance, a slight movement of some kind ... I would run ... Tom would chase. He would take his prey, crowing in victory until it overcame him and he succumbed to my own triumph which superceded his own. Always the same. Sometimes the attacks were short and violent, other times they were prolonged but intense, but always, the end was the same. Tom, spent, believing he hadn’t quite fully conquered his kill, already desiring, already craving full dominance, knowing he couldn’t really ever attain it though its form lay limp and seemingly defeated before him.

Was that the magic that kept our smoldering, mutual desire so intense for so many years? I believe so. To be sure, our dance was completed many times under the noses of friends, family and even strangers. Certainly, that danger sometimes made the sex more enjoyable, more intense, but on other occasions it didn’t matter at all. The near public act was just an accident and didn’t intrude on our own world.

My eyes focused, losing that forest from so long ago and the many escapades since that flitted through my mind in minutes, or perhaps seconds or fractions thereof. They captured the picture of Tom, standing next to our son, Sean.

Sean. He looked so much like his father when he was that age, only taller and more muscular. Did he have that primeval spark of life like his father? I had never seen it but maybe it would surface with the right woman, as Tom’s had with me. Tom had said so many times that he had never felt that way with a woman, had never felt the need to hunt, like he had with me. We were meant for each other and now he was gone. So young. I would never find another like him, could never be with another man.

My hand, I idly noticed, had slipped between my legs. Instead of removing it, I pulled it up, dragging the hem of my dress higher, exposing the lacy black slip and matching garters above my nylons until my fingers curled over my panties, absorbing the heat emanating from the bodily memory of my fallen lover. Laying my head back on the couch, I let my fingers strum across the front of my panties as I pulled the black dress even higher so I could open my legs to improve the access to my suddenly throbbing mound.

One last time, Tom. I’ll come for you one last time...

My eyes fixed on my late husband. I barely registered Sean’s presence in the picture next to him, though strangely, my thoughts flickered back to his image several times even while my eyes were glued on Tom’s face. I was wondering why it didn’t bother me to have him there in the picture, with his father, watching me slide my panties to the side so my fingers could slip inside my damp slit.

Oh, God, that felt good. How can you do this with him there? What’s wrong with you? Because they’re both in the picture, damn you. I’m doing this for Tom. Now shut the fuck up.

I hooked my fingers and jammed them inside.

Oh, yeah. Tom, give it to me.

I closed my eyes and frigged myself, letting go of my dress so I could twiddle my clit with the crooked edge of the thumb of my free hand, splaying its index and middle fingers around my labia.

Tom, that’s so good. Feed me your long one. Nice and slow. Tease me with it.

I arched my back and thrust my hips forward in one long, slow grind.

Somehow, I had done away with our requisite chase, the drama of our ritual hunt and the thrill of the final capture, that always preceded our lovemaking. Maybe it was because my thoughts had already been there or maybe it was due to my sudden extreme horniness, or the incredible tension of the day. I don’t know. All I knew was how good Tom felt inside me. Well, my fingers really but it was Tom’s face that floating in front of my closed eyes.

How strange. Sean’s face floated behind Tom’s. His image bigger but distorted and more distant, less stable.

Oh, God. That really is good, Tom. Way up there. That’s it. You’re close, aren’t you. You always go deep when you’re close. Yeah. Give it to me. One last time with all those people outside.

Tom’s image began fading.

No. Not yet. I’m not done yet. Stay with me Tom. Stay with me.

But Tom wasn’t listening. His image continued to fade, and then he was gone, disappearing through Sean’s misty image. My eyes tried to follow. For once it was me chasing Tom but it was no use. I couldn’t catch him.

I was alone. So alone.

My fingers grew still and I sagged into the couch. Listless.

Alone.

Well, not quite. Sean’s image, once so wavy, was growing stronger, solidifying, becoming less misty. Comforting. I felt safer, more connected, the clearer his face became. Ah, Sean. I need you now. You can’t know how much you mean to me.

Sean’s face was right in front of me now. He was smiling, but his smile was different. It was full of Tom’s wisdom and ... his hunter’s confidence. My fingers moved. Just a twitch, sending a tingle rocketing through my pelvis. Oh, God. I twitched again. This time on purpose.

“Mom? Are you ok? There’s so many of them...”

The door slammed, cutting off Sean’s yell.

I snapped my head forward off the couch, eyes popping open, hand quickly shoving my dress down my closing legs, feet yanking off the coffee table, rattling the picture of my two men but not toppling it.

Sean rounded the corner of the entrance hall and stopped in his tracks.

I could see in his eyes what a picture I made. His mouth sagged open.

My dress must not have made it over my knees. Glancing down, I saw the lacy hem of my black slip barely halfway to my knees and the dress still near my hips. My left hand was on my knee but my right was still trapped between my thighs. My face had to be flushed because it felt hot, or was that the heat rising from my lap?

“Sean,” I whispered, my eyes unable to hide what he knew to be true, that he had just caught his mother pleasuring herself in front of a picture of his father and himself, a picture he knew normally sat on top of the entertainment center, not on the coffee table in front of his mother’s open legs.

The shock slowly wore off Sean’s face. His mouth closed but he kept staring at me, at my still partly open legs, hand firmly inserted between my thighs where a woman’s legs thickened in their approach to her magical haven. I tried to pull my hand away. Tried to push my dress down. Tried to close my legs tight.

But I couldn’t.

I just sat there, looking sideways at Sean’s face, unable to move.

Sean was looking at my legs. He hadn’t looked at my face since he first rounded the corner and then looked down. He was staring.

Why couldn’t I close my legs?

A wave of heat pulsed through my groin and my body shuddered. My vision blurred and when it cleared, I saw Sean looking at me, straight into my eyes.

I had never seen him look that way before, so strangely. Mesmerizing. Commanding.

He stepped toward me. I shuddered again. Such a strange feeling. Not fear, yet a similar sensation. I felt like ... prey, but I wasn’t terrified. I was horrified, and thrilled.

Sean took another step, then another, and another. My face turned to follow him until he was standing in front of me, still staring into my eyes.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink. His knees nudged mine and they moved apart, my legs loosening their hold on my limp hand. Finally, I found the strength to move and I pulled my hand from between my thighs but it dropped on the arm of the couch as if it had accomplished a feat requiring all my strength.

Sean leaned down, eyes never leaving mine, picked up my hand, and dropped it back between my legs. He placed his hand on the arm of the couch to brace himself, then pushed my dress up my legs with his other hand. He didn’t hurry. Several times, he brushed the dress higher, and the slip, until they were as high as they must have been before he burst through the door. I didn’t protest. I simply returned his gaze; his intense, mine subdued.

Sean grabbed my arm, holding it by the wrist, and pushed until my fingers were draped over my panties, then dropped it. I sat, immobile. Again he grasped my arm, moving it up and down, then letting go. Still, I didn’t move. Patiently, Sean took my hand and moved it up and down, slowly, in longer, more deliberate strokes. Again, he let go. I moved my hand, barely, but he seemed satisfied and stood up straight.

I kept moving my hand. It hardly moved but I dared not stop. His eyes commanded me. For a moment, he was like his father and I felt this exhilarating urge to bolt and run away, to laugh sexily to encourage the chase, but I didn’t. Not because it was so wrong, but because I couldn’t move. His eyes held me paralyzed. It wasn’t because I was frozen in shock by his entry. It was him holding me still, unable to flee.

Sean’s hands dropped to the belt of his black suit. I noticed the large bulge there and for the first time registered his excitement. I knew what he was doing and all I felt was anticipation, wondering if he was as long as his father as the lump in his pants promised. God forgive me, I didn’t even think about how wrong that thought was.