Chapter 28

As he recovered from his third explosion deep in her eager throat, Luke’s mind nibbled on the chewy rind of a nagging but ripening guilt.

She’s been sucking me off for well over an hour, and by the look in her eyes I can tell we’re nowhere near done. We’ll get up to something kinky in the shower, have a little breakfast, and then we’ll be right back in bed. All the early signs of a day-long bacchanal are plain. Bill’s coming back on Thursday, so this is our last full and uninterrupted day of sex for at least a little while. I can tell that she doesn’t intend to waste a moment of it. Not that I mind, of course, but...

Kathryn was impatiently tugging on his cock, urging him to get up and join her in the bathroom. I’m so close to done with my work. In fact, I don’t actually need to be here to order wine. I could help her prepare the cellar for the new arrivals, leave the stocking of future deliveries to them, and call it a finished project. Except...

He groaned as she gave up on moving him from the bed and instead returned to noisily slurping on his shaft. Except that I don’t want to. Why would I? Being here, with her, like this ... it’s my own personal paradise. Still...

His next release was approaching far more quickly than he would’ve guessed, given that it was his fourth of the morning. As always, she parceled out the full measure of her limitless skill at need, and the timing and tenor of his peaks were entirely under her control. I’m marking time. Not wasting it, but between the sex and the irresolution, I’m outstaying my welcome in any number of ways. The next few days are going to be frustrating. Bill’s going to be here for a while, and while he is I have to work. But if I do, I’ll be closer to the end than ever. Still, I can’t delay and pretend forever. Sooner or later, I have to leave. But before that...

Lifting his hips from the bed, he poured another load of cream into her mouth.

We have to make a decision. I have to make a decision.

Finally acquiescing to her demands, he rose and allowed himself to be led towards the shower.

But I don’t want to.

If anything, his initial assessment of her sexual hunger understated its intensity and focus. They made love in the shower. Had frenetic sex on the bed. Urgently coupled with her bent over the table and the sofa, pressed against the wall, on the floor, holding on to the sides of the bathroom sink...

... and then she playfully dragged his naked body across the driveway, through the house, and onto the patio, where she fellated him poolside (while immersed in the pool), straddled him for reverse-cowgirl anal on a shaded deck chair, wrapped her legs around him while using the outdoor shower, and then — shattering one of her self-imposed boundaries — went back inside and laid herself across one end of the dining room table so he could feast on her dripping sex until his tongue ached. Back in the guesthouse they made gentle love, napped, fucked like animals, napped again, kissed like long-sundered lovers whose lips would never again part, ate, and then spent the rest of the evening pounding each other into exhaustion. Few words were spoken — none were needed, and only a handful were even possible amidst their urgent copulation — yet their absence loomed over the delirious abandonment of their rutting like an ominous storm cloud.

The next day began as a repeat of the previous, with Kathryn repeatedly sucking the very life from his turgid organ, but to his surprise she rejected his amorous advances in the shower. “Save your energy. I have plans.” A short while later, they were in her car. She brushed aside all his queries until they pulled into a forested glade. Signs indicated a small network of trails winding their way into the trees.

“Is this where you came with your therapist?” he asked as she handed him an overstuffed pack and shouldered one of her own. He could smell food, and by the weight he guessed that there was wine as well.

“Yes. In fact, we’re going to do the same walk. And when we’re done, you too will be able to say you came here with me.”

“Not that I object to any of your plans, but why?”

“Luke,” she admonished with a sultry wink, “if you don’t know by now...”

“Stop looking around.”

“It’s just ... I mean, I don’t want to be a prude or anything, but this is really exposed, and...”

“Shut up. Give me ... oh Jesus that feels good.” Luke was somewhat less than smoothly slotting her drenched cunt, pinning her against a large oak that did little to hide them from someone approaching from any direction save directly opposite the tree’s thick trunk, but aside from a pair of open zippers and a hasty rearrangement of their undergarments, they were still fully clothed. Unfortunately, it did little to reduce his anxiety.

“What if... ?”

“You worry too much,” she grunted.

“I’m cool with outdoor sex, but I’m not an exhibitionist,” he hissed.

“I know you’re not. But have you paid attention to my bikinis? Have you noticed how I dress for certain formal events?”

His lust flamed at the memory. “Um, yeah.”

“And?”

“And you are. I get it. But...”

“Be quiet and concentrate on how this feels. The sooner we both come, the sooner you can get back to your Victorian modesty.”

The crunch of a heavy boot crushing fallen twigs caused Luke to freeze in place. Kathryn stared at him, silently demanding that he continue, but he was too panicked to move. She pulsed her vaginal muscles a few times, but when she was unable to rouse him out of motionless, she sighed and carefully reversed their positions, pushing him against the tree and taking up a rolling, grinding motion of her own. Slack-jawed at her brazen audacity, he leaned as close to her ear as possible and whispered, “Even if they can’t see us — and that seems unlikely, given the way your hair’s swinging around — they can certainly hear us.”

“So?” she shrugged, sighing with pleasure and pumping with greater urgency. “Let them hear.”

“But...”

“Hold on. I’m almost there,” she whispered. Slamming her lips against his, she plunged her tongue into his mouth and convulsed in orgasm. Her groans, though muffled, were most definitely audible. The presence of their as yet unidentified voyeur had indefinitely delayed his own peak, though he remained erect. After a few moments to catch her breath, Kathryn quietly ended her impalement, dropped to her knees, gave his rod a thorough (and, to his ears, unnecessarily loud) slurp, and then stuffed his erection back into his shorts. Deftly rearranging her own clothing, she took his hand and stepped from behind the tree to greet their audience, forcefully dragging him with her. He was painfully aware that his unsated arousal would be visible to their unknown audience, and the thought itself caused him to deflate.

An older man, his skin bronzed and wrinkled from decades under the sun, peered at them from beneath a weather-stained hat. His well-worn hiking clothes showed signs of extensive use. If he was surprised by their current tableau (or what preceded it), he showed no sign, though his brief glance at Luke was followed by a much more careful and entirely uninhibited study of Kathryn’s irrepressible curves. “Sorry to disturb you folks,” he offered in a gravelly voice. “I thought I heard a cry for help. By the time I got close enough to learn the truth of it ... well, it didn’t seem like you required my assistance,” he added with a wink. “I’m still here because I didn’t want to startle you.”

Luke reddened, still too taken aback to speak, but Kathryn smiled as she teased him in return. “I’m not so sure I believe you. I think you waited around for a completely different reason.” Luke’s shock at her brazenness only increased.

“Okay, you caught me,” he responded, still showing no sign of embarrassment. His voice turned wistful as he continued, “It’s been far too many years since ... well, it’s been a long while. But don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. There was even a time it might’ve been me on the other side of that tree. Anyway, I’ll take my leave and let you two get back to it, if you like.”

Letting go of Luke’s hand, Kathryn closed the distance between herself and the man, resting a hand on his shoulder and studying his wizened features. Despite his earlier equanimity, even he couldn’t keep his eyes from widening at the proximity of someone so beautiful ... especially when she released her hold on his shoulder and stroked her fingers down his chest, stopping just below his ribcage before breaking contact. “I’m sure she enjoyed it as much as I did,” she said, startling both men by giving him a tender kiss on the cheek.

With a satisfied grin, he turned and walked away at a surprisingly jaunty pace. “I don’t recall any complaints,” he called as he disappeared around a corner.

“Are you ever going to move from that spot, or am I going to have to call a rescue team to extract you from the forest?” She was still staring at the place where they’d lost sight of their voyeur, and though her words were light, there was an obvious undertone of gentle mockery.

“I’ll be okay once I get over my disbelief. For one thing, I’m clearly not cut out for public sex. And for another, I was beginning to think you were about to give him a handjob or something.”

“I definitely thought about it.”

It took Luke a few moments to process her entirely unexpected answer. “You ... wait, what? You did?”

“Of course. Luke,” she countered, turning to face him, “I always think about it. I almost never do it, and in fact it’s been a long time since the word ‘almost’ belonged in that phrase, but things have changed and the old rules don’t necessarily apply anymore. You’re why they don’t, remember? Why is it so hard for you to see that?”

“I...” Whatever counterargument he’d been about to muster, it died on his lips. With a resigned sigh, he admitted, “I guess by now I should know better than to be surprised, but I am. It’s just ... I mean, you didn’t even know his name. For all you know, he could’ve been a serial killer. I’m so far out of my comfort zone that I can’t even begin to think about how I feel about any of this.”

Her brow furrowed. “Luke, sit. We need to have a conversation.”

“In the course of human history, nothing good has ever followed a woman telling a man that ‘we need to talk,’” he muttered as he looked for a comfortable place to sit, shrugged, and propped himself against the tree they’d been using for concealment.

“Then let this be the first,” she said, sitting directly in front of him and hugging her knees to her chest. “I want you to start by being completely honest with me. How long after we met did you decide that, should the opportunity present itself, you’d sleep with me?”

“What’s the shortest measurable unit of time?”

“Be serious.”

“I am. Because the answer’s ‘sooner than that.’ There was never a shred of doubt that I wanted to. It was completely obvious, at least to me, that a premature or clumsy ‘move’ would end in disaster, but an actual opportunity never seemed to present itself. Nevertheless, while my reasons for wanting to grew exponentially over the course of our conversation, they were there from the start.”

“Well, thank you. I wasn’t quite as horny as you, I guess,” she teased as he blushed. “I didn’t commit to the desire until the evening was closer to its end, which is why I disappeared into the night before it could happen. Anyway, I’ve explained all of that before. Once you came out to the lake, though, how long did it take for me to initiate sex with you?”

“About a week and a half, depending on...”

“No need to delve into definitional minutiae. I remember what happened, and you’re correct. You arrived on a Monday, and starting the following Wednesday the barriers fell — though the Champagne unquestionably helped — and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Now: how long did it take me to invite Wendy to join us?”

“I have no idea. You hinted that you also found her attractive from the start, but...”

“Never mind,” she said, cutting him off, “that was an unfair question. You weren’t in my head, so you’d have no way of knowing. The answer is that the time from the moment you confessed your love to the moment I picked up the phone to set up both the date and its aftermath was a matter of hours, at most. Think about that while I move on to the next question: how long did it take you to talk me into hooking up with Alejandro?”

“Fifteen minutes or so? I’d been thinking about it for a few days, long before I was consciously aware of that particular opportunity, but...”

“That doesn’t matter. This isn’t really about you, it’s about me and the duration of my sexual decision-making. Fifteen minutes sounds about right, though you should probably add the delay while the two of you debated and schemed until it turned into a threesome, because I also dithered and changed my mind during that time. Finally, how long did it take me to agree when Alejandro proposed that Faith join us?”

“I think you said yes before he’d even finished asking.”

“Exactly. So, once I decided to abandon my vows and male that first terrifying leap into your pants, everything that followed came more easily and with less hesitation. I never even considered saying no to Faith. How much or often did I hold back that weekend? Even though you know it was full of firsts and moments that required absolute trust, did I say no to anything of actual consequence? I slowed you and Alejandro down a few times when your enthusiasm threatened to cause me excessive pain, but I never stopped you, and I was never inclined to. Do you understand where I’m going with this?”

“Your resistance gives way more quickly with every passing day.”

“Yes, but it’s much more than that. First of all, it’s not about resistance; it’s about the gap between what I want to do and what I think I should do. The person you met — the woman who wouldn’t just follow you back to your apartment, no matter how interested she was in doing just that — isn’t who I really am. It never has been. This is. And, as I keep explaining, you’re bringing it out of me. More accurately, you’re returning me to who I was all along. Who I really want to be.”

He considered this for a while. “Still, you weren’t actually thinking about having sex with that guy, were you?” His incredulity remained palpable.

“Well, you’re right about one thing: we didn’t know his name or anything about him. And you’re also correct that he could’ve been a creep, or worse. He wasn’t, but he could’ve been. No, I wouldn’t have had penetrative sex with him, but I was very close to ... look, dear, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, or doubt for one second just how much I love you, but I’ve always been especially attracted to older men. Always. And yes, for better or worse I’m sure that’s yet another hardwired artifact of my past. Anyway, I was already turned on because of what we were doing, where we were doing it, and the knowledge that we’d been discovered, and I admit that I was was a little more turned on once I got a look at him. But what really got to me was the sadness in in eyes. It’s pretty clear that he had a wife, that he lost her years ago, and I don’t think he was lying when he said it’d been a long time since he’d experienced sex of any kind. You accused me of wanting to give him a handjob, right?”

“I didn’t accuse you, I was just...”

“I accept the correction. But the fact is that that’s exactly what I was thinking about doing. Very little risk to me, you, or him. Just something I’m damned good at that would bring him a form of happiness he hadn’t experienced in a very long while.”

After a bout of incomprehensible stammering, Luke managed, “Would you have let him touch you as well?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. If he wanted to. Or if I encouraged him,” she added with a wink.

Luke was stunned by her answer. “You’re actually serious about this!”

“That I was thinking about it? Yes. I probably wouldn’t have. Even if I did, I might’ve just scared him off. And remember that we’re talking about a few seconds of idle erotic whimsy; it wasn’t like I had some elaborate plan or massive internal debate. It was a fleeting notion, at best, but I did have it.”

“So what stopped you?”

Her expression hardened. “Don’t be sarcastic. Luke, you have my heart, my love, and more of my sexuality than anyone has ever been granted, but you do not own my body!” The heat of her warning singed the air between them, and his face flushed as his pressurized jealousy turned to crushing shame at the realization of how he’d been simultaneously infantilizing her and taking his possession for granted. And yet, when he responded, it was in a rush of words that very quickly grew into a desperate confession of the true source of his anxiety.

“Kathryn, I’m sorry. You’re right. You’ve not only told me this is who you really are on more than one occasion, you’ve made it quite clear that this is very much an outgrowth of our relationship. It’s just that it’s so headlong. I feel like I’m being dragged behind a high-speed train every time we’re together. You talked Wendy into our bed. You maneuvered Irina into mine. We had sex with a famous photographer that you already knew, and an even more famous supermodel neither of us had even met. You wanted me to dominate you, and once I tried — even though you didn’t say it out loud — you wanted me to learn how to do it better. Which I did, but then your past resurfaced, and I’m still having trouble dealing with that. We’re here in the woods having public sex, some random stranger strolls by, and out of the complete blue you tell me that you’re thinking about stroking him off. Your husband’s about to come back for some indeterminate amount of time, which means I get to find out whether or not watching you and Alejandro together will actually help me deal with the two of you and the images crowding my head. Especially as you and I aren’t going to be together while he’s home. Meanwhile, I’m going to cook for the two of you, and while I’m looking forward to a day learning from Sevinay, I have to admit that the rest of it fills me with dread, because I’m always afraid that I’m going to say or do the wrong thing, or even just stare at you in an inappropriate way and ruin everything. Plus, hanging over all of that is the elephant, the mastodon, the prehistoric megalodon in the room: you know as well as I do that we’re a lot closer to the end of my stay than to the beginning. We still haven’t talked about us, and I have no idea when there’s going to be an opportunity. I just ... I’m sorry for dumping all that on you at once, but I don’t know who or where I am anymore. The only time I feel on solid ground is when I’m inside you, and now even that’s starting to feel unsteady. Does that make any sense at all?”

Tears moistened her eyes as she squirmed closer and planted herself on his lap, cradling his head against her soft breasts. She was silent for a time, but then, to his consternation, she started chuckling. When it became clear that she couldn’t control her mirth, he pulled his head away and shot her an annoyed look. This caused her to fall backward and laugh even harder. Eventually, she got herself more or less under control, though she was still staring up through waving leaves at the bright blue sky instead of looking at him.

“Wasn’t the megalodon some sort of shark?” she asked, amidst another fit of giggles.

“What?”

“You said elephant, then you moved on to mastodon. I think what you wanted next on your list of traumatic metaphorical land mammals was a woolly mammoth.”

Despite his determination to remain confused and annoyed, he couldn’t help but join her in helpless laughter. Moments later he joined her on the ground, wrapping an arm around her waist as her stomach churned and heaved with merriment.

“I guess I jumped the shark.”

“That’s awful. You’re usually much cleverer than that. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“You’re right, it really was. How can I make it up to you?”

“Well, I think we’re alone.” When he didn’t answer right away, she twisted inside his arm until her face was inches from his. Her hand cupped his crotch, feeling for his shaft.

“You’re not serious?”

“Just how many times are you going to ask me that, Luke?”

“But...”

“I swear, if I knew how hard it was going to be for me to get laid this morning, I would’ve asked that nice older fellow to stick around.”

“By the way, I didn’t forget about your emotional distress.”

“Really? Because until you brought it up just now, I definitely did.”

“Awww, love, did I distract you?”

“You did. Three times. Though I’ll admit that I couldn’t stop listening for interlopers.”

“Yes, I noticed that you weren’t giving me your undivided attention. That’s something you will make up to me, but I suppose it’ll have to be later. I can see I’m not going to be treated to mind-bending sex while we’re out here. Not with you, at least.”

“Look, if you can track down the old dude, go ahead and go for it. Try not to give him an actual stroke, though.”

“Hilarious.” She punctuated her scolding by flicking a finger at his limp penis. It wasn’t a gentle flick, either, and he yelped at the sting.

“I’m serious,” he managed. “You’ve just about put me in the hospital a few times.”

“I know. It’s almost like my needs surpass those of everyone around me.” The comment hung in the air for a while, neither of them willing to drag it back to earth and crack open its threatening core. “Anyway, I wanted to assure you that everything you said before I distracted you with my ravenous appetites made perfect sense. What did you call it? A high-speed train? The truth is that it’s like that for me too. I feel it going faster and faster all the time. The primary difference is that you feel like I’m driving it, whereas I feel like you’re driving it. Maybe the real problem is that we’re driving it together, but neither of us has a hand on the wheel, knows where the brake is, or knows who’s going to reach for it first. If either of us ever will. Though I guess that’s what we have to talk about, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” They lingered in uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes, then — by unspoken mutual agreement — rose, readjusted their clothing, gathered the remnants of their intra-coital picnic, and headed back to the car. They said little on the drive, and when they reached the entrance to the guesthouse she stopped, kissed him, and turned towards her house without a word of farewell. He watched with regret and the soon-to-be-fulfilled promise of loneliness as she passed within and closed the door behind her.

A few hours later, she returned to the apartment and trudged up the stairs, looking weary and apologetic. He’d given up attempting to work, because it caused him to obsess about its end. Instead, he read through some of the kinky homework provided by Michelle, though it eventually proved too arousing to finish. Silently, she stripped off all her clothes and joined him on the bed, snuggling tight against his topless form but making no amorous advances. I don’t suppose she will tonight. After all, Bill arrives tomorrow.

Many minutes of wordless mutual comfort later, she sighed and stirred. “I was going to make dinner as a sort of preemptive thank you for the one you’re going to make with Sev, but I don’t have the energy. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind cooking, though I don’t promise anything elaborate. Are you hungry right now?”

“Not so hungry that I’m willing to let go of you.”

“Okay.” They held each other a while longer. Eventually, she released him and rolled to her back.

“Does this mean you’re finally hungry?”

Her eyes remained closed, but her lips curled into a small smirk before she answered, “So hungry I could eat a woolly mammoth.”

In the end, no extinct Eliphantidae were sacrificed, for he found sufficient enthusiasm to assemble a semi-authentic salade Niçoise (replacing the preserved tuna with briefly seared slices of yellowfin) and a bottle of somewhat aged Tempier Bandol Rosé that didn’t seem to impress Kathryn as much as he’d hoped.

“I’m sorry if you don’t like the wine,” he finally offered by way of apology. “Should I open something else?”

“What? No, sorry. I do like it. My mind’s just ... elsewhere.” She took an absentminded sip, swallowed it without pausing to analyze or savor, and stared at the wall for a while before continuing. “Luke, are we okay?”

The urge to dissemble, deny, and defend was enormous, but he shunted it aside. We’re already out of time for anything but the truth. “I think we are ... I hope we are ... but we’ve had a pretty unusual week. Extreme highs, extreme lows, and everything in between. Nothing’s as easy as it was before. It’d be better if we had a little more emotional distance and time to talk through all of it, but...”

“ ... we don’t. I’m sorry about that, too.”

He shrugged, trying to ignore the thudding in his chest. Does she mean that she’s sorry Bill’s coming home? No, that’s a ridiculous thing for me to wish for. “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Isn’t there?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? “I don’t think we have time for that conversation, either.”

“No, you’re right. We don’t. Not now. It’s just...” He waited for her to finish, but she was back to staring listlessly at the wall.

“It’s just what?” he urged.

“Your train analogy. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s incomplete.”

“How so?”

She stood, transferring their plates and flatware to the sink, then approaching him from behind and put her hands on his shoulders. He crossed his arms to cover them with his own, but the tension in her grip was impossible to miss. “Because there’s another train traveling in the opposite direction. It’s nowhere near as fast or exciting as the one we’re on, but it’s both coming from and going to somewhere I’ve spent a lot of time. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere safe.” He chewed his lip, absorbing this distressing evolution of his idea, as she continued. “The thing is, though: calling it safe assumes it’s on a different track. It might not be. It might be on the same track. Which means it’s headed straight for us.”

To this, Luke had no good answer. Only the same old questions, their warning bells clanging louder and louder as their train raced towards an unknown destination, the choices and decisions that led to bliss or catastrophe as unclear as ever.

Luke was wearing boxers as a sort of prophylactic. Kathryn was, as usual, wearing nothing. They were once again entwined on the bed — under the covers this time — but as before there were no erotic gestures being made. I’m still aroused, though. How could I not be, with her? An unwelcome insight followed. This is another demonstration of why there’s no middle ground for us. No hedging our bets. No half-measures. There can’t be. She’ll always make me feel like this. If we can’t be together, we’ll have to be completely apart. Anything else will be impossible for me. At least for a very long while.

“I should go.”

“I understand. You’re welcome to stay, of course.” That sounded needy, even for me.

“I know. Thank you. I’d like to. I want to. I feel safe here. Happy. Content. And yes, I feel the other thing as well. I’m apologizing a lot tonight, but I’m still sorry. Anyway, I really do have to go.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later, they were both asleep, knotted against each other.

At some indefinite (to him) time of the night — he’d made a point of keeping visible clocks, including his phone, away from the bed — he struggled to semiconsciousness as she carefully extracted herself from his enveloping arms. With a sigh of regret, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

When both the sun and he arose, many hours later, he was alone. Only her scent and the memory of her touch remained.

He was doing Kathryn’s job — carting bottles from one rack to another and changing their entries in the cellar database — in yet another transparent attempt to avoid hastening the end of his own, when he received an unexpected text. Putting the house and myself back together. Will miss work today. Sorry. Feel free to give me a creative detention. Sev says 8 a.m. tomorrow. He was still staring at it, trying to extract whatever hope he could from the reference to detention, when a followup arrived. Love you.

He put down the bottle he was holding, replied with the same two words, sat on the floor, and stared at the wall, wondering for the thousandth time whether what he wanted or what he felt was right had a stronger hold on his conscience. Eventually, he accepted that he wasn’t going to get anything useful done in his current mood, changed into his workout gear, and went for a run along the lakeshore, pushing himself harder than usual in an effort to forget his troubles for a while. When he returned to the guesthouse, he was dripping with sweat. Bill’s car was in the driveway, and his troubles came rushing back.