Chapter 3

I awoke in the dark of night. I was surrounded by the fragrance I hadn't noticed before, but would never be truly happy without again. There were also a myriad of tactile sensations... the linens touching parts of me... the deep softness of the pillow on which my shaggy-maned head lay... and warm, soft flesh pressing against me. Drifting back to sleep under those conditions was immensely better than sleeping in on a rainy Saturday morning.

When I woke again, something was wrong. The pillow and linens were still there, but the warm yielding flesh was gone. I felt a terrible loss for a few seconds, but my nose informed me that Sabrina was cooking. A woman doesn't get up and cook if she's unhappy, does she?

I had to search for my clothes. Like a drunkard, I had no idea where I'd left them. I found bits and pieces scattered along the hall, where they'd been dropped. They were mixed in with pieces of her clothing, lying together, touching each other like we had touched each other the night before. I suddenly wished I had fresh clothes to put on, but covered my pale, skinny body with what I found. It was almost sad, somehow, to pull my things away from hers.

She was in the kitchen, humming. That was music to my ears in more ways than one. I stood and just looked at her for a minute. Her back was to me as she stood at the stove. She had put on the same T shirt she'd had on the night before. Being a tall woman, the shirt covered only half her buttocks. They were bare.

I hadn't put on the jock strap. I hadn't even seen it. It would have been handy just about then.

I must have made a sound, because she turned and her face lit up. The relief in my stomach was palpable.

"Hi. I was just about to come get you," she said. "Can't start the day on an empty stomach."

She loved to eat. Of course she needed a lot of fuel to keep that body going.

She put down the spatula and came to kiss me. I was intimately aware that I probably had morning breath, but she had been married a long time and knew how to kiss without that being a problem. Her mons pressed against mine gently, briefly, and she backed off, leaving her wrists on my shoulders.

"I'm glad to see you still find me attractive," she smiled.

"You've ruined all other women for me for eternity," I said.

"Nonsense." She tossed her beautiful mane of hair. "Eat something. You have to go. I have plans today," she said.

Sadness gripped my gut. It must have shown. She laughed.

"Oh, don't you worry. We're going to do that again."

She came back for another kiss and then leaned back again, just enough so that Bernice and Rhonda could tickle my chest with those fantastic nipples.

"We're going to do that again lots of times." Her gold flecked eyes stared into mine.

"Yes ma'am," I said back, feeling goofy.

She laughed again and went back to the stove.

Oddly we didn't have all that much to say to each other over breakfast. I think we had communicated quite well the night before, and that was enough for then.

I know it almost killed me to walk out of that kitchen. She didn't see me to the door. She kissed me one last time there in the kitchen.

"You have to go now," she insisted, pushing me away. "I'm having trouble controlling myself right now and I really do have things I have to do today."

"Control is way overrated," I suggested.

For that I got another laugh, a warning squeeze on the front of my pants from the Amazon warrior princess' gauntleted hand, and a forceful shove toward the living room.

"I'll call you," she promised as I dragged my reluctant feet to the door.

She did call me too. Later that night.

"I'm free all day after noon tomorrow," she said into the phone.

Again, she didn't tell me who it was, and again she didn't have to.

"You still haven't asked me all the questions," she reminded me.

I had my hair combed when I showed up this time. Martha, next door, was standing on her porch. She "Yoo Hoo"ed me and I waved the clipboard at her and smiled. She waved back and smiled as I pushed the button beside Sabrina's door.

Sabrina was a classy lady. She didn't come to the door naked or anything like that. She was dressed in a sweatshirt again. This one was purple and had "K State" emblazoned above Bernice and Rhonda. The power cat under the letters had Rhonda in it's mouth. Or maybe it was Bernice. I hadn't learned which was which yet. In any case, the power cat didn't stand a chance. It looked like a bobcat trying to carry off a hippo. There weren't any 'periods' there, so I suspected she was wearing a bra again. Her smile was genuine, but there was nervousness in her eyes. She led me to the living room and sat in a recliner. I looked at the couch and my knees got weak again so I took an easy chair instead.

"Are things awkward between us?" she asked.

"Hmmmm" I responded. "Other than the fact that the most beautiful woman I ever met is interested in me, which is impossible to believe, and that I had the most wonderful night of my life in the bed of the Amazon warrior princess, which is impossible to believe, and that since all this is impossible to believe, yet I'm here... I'd have to say I feel a little awkward."

"Amazon warrior princess?" she probed.

"Uh... sort of a nickname... like Bernice."

Her cheeks got pink and she wiggled in the chair. The nervousness in her eyes vanished.

"Could you ask me the rest of the questions... in bed?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be able to remember my own name in bed," I said, a little breathlessly.

"Oh, well then I guess we'll have to do it the old fashioned way," she said. She was decidedly pink above that purple sweat shirt.

Sabrina was like that. That's why I said she was classy. She wanted something... something she knew I wanted too... but she was able to handle that desire... to delay gratification in a way that made that gratification as gratifying as it was possible to be. Her control, and the knowledge that she wanted exactly what I wanted, and would still want it later, gave me the control necessary to retain my composure.

So I asked her the questions. All of them. And she answered them, talking about how, once they were married and their sex life became more normalized, they worked toward the goal of children. That was really all she wanted, in addition to glorious sex, of course. When it became clear that no children would issue, she had come up with some relatively tame fantasies to replace the passion that trying to make a baby had inserted into their lovemaking. Pat, though, hadn't been into role playing. He felt like that cheapened the relationship. She hadn't pushed it. A few years later his symptoms began showing up as the cancer spread, and then there were the years of his lingering suffering as she cared for him. She wasn't sad that he had died, in the sense that he was just a shell of his former self, and his death ended the agony for both of them. But that didn't mean she didn't miss him, or need what she had lost.

We probably talked for two hours, about this and that, some of it pertaining to why they got together and why they stayed together, and some of it just talk about how she felt. I didn't say all that much. There was a lot of sadness in the room. Eventually we wore out mentally, and it was quiet.

"No more questions?" she asked.

"I've asked every single one," I said.

"Good," she said. I will be forever astounded at how much she could put into a single word.

"I need to tell you something," she said.

"OK," was all I could think to say. When you're an exceedingly ordinary man who has the attention of an astonishingly beautiful woman, you kind of live on pins and needles. Not believing that she could actually be genuinely interested in you emotionally makes you think that the dream will come to a crashing halt any second. You kind of cherish each second it doesn't. But you still worry.

"I love you," she said.

She held up a hand to keep me from saying anything.

"I'm not in love WITH you," she said, "but I love you."

"I'm not sure I understand that," I said honestly.

"I was in love with Pat," she explained. "The sun rose and set on him as far as I was concerned. I'll never feel that way about another man I think. I'm not sure I'd want to. Losing that was very very painful Bob."

I nodded.

"But I've also never felt about any other man like I feel about you. I think about you a lot - not all the time, like with Pat - but a lot. I love what happened between us. I want you in my life, and I don't want you to go away."

Me? Go away? Run away from the Amazon warrior princess? Was she insane?

Apparently my face is much more expressive than I thought it was. Or I had lips that spoke that I didn't know about.

"I want to make love with you," she said. "I'm going to want to make love with you a lot of times."

My heart was thumping in my chest like a jack hammer.

"But I'm not sure about it," she said.

The jack hammer ran out of air. A massive sand compactor took its place, threatening to push crushed ribs through my skin and ruin my best T shirt. I couldn't have said a word if there would have been any words in my brain. I was also strangely out of air. Maybe that jack hammer had used it all up.

"I'm not sure I want you to be IN love with me, and I'm afraid that if we make love, you might fall in love with me," she explained.

I gasped for air. It was either that or pass out.

"I've upset you," she said softly.

I held up my hand. If she kept talking I'd just explode. She started to say something and I pushed my palm at her twice. She bit her lower lip, which just about undid me, but I breathed and counted in my head until my breathing was relatively normal. I got to sixty-six. Along the way I decided I had to tell her what was happening to me. It might be the worst thing I could ever do, but I had to or I'd end up in a straight jacket.

"Sabrina." I got that much out. She just stared at me.

"Maybe I can explain everything I've been feeling some day," I said. "I don't know. My brain doesn't work very well when I'm around you."

She took a breath and I pushed my hand at her again. I was mildly surprised to see it still up there, facing her. I put it back in my lap.

"I'm not sure what being in love feels like," I said. "If it's any more intense than what I've been through in the last few days, I'm not sure I'd survive it if it happened."

Now she just waited for me to go on.

"It's a little bit like hoping for a drop of rain, because you're parched and there has been a four year drought, and then it rains twenty inches in two hours. I'm the slave of the Amazon warrior princess, and I'll do whatever she requires of me to stay a slave. If that means not falling in love with you, then I'll die trying not to fall in love with you."

"You have such a way with words," she sighed.

Me?!

She stood up, towering in the room.

"Come with me slave," she commanded.

I bet she kissed me twenty-five times on the way to the bedroom. They were long, wet kisses and Bernice and Rhonda tried to push me through the walls during them. She was gentle, in a man-handling sort of way, and I felt like I was in the midst of that flood of twenty inches of rain that had poured down on me.

But I could swim. I was a strong swimmer. And I held onto Bernice and Rhonda like they were life preservers that would support me in the flood.

In the bedroom she disrobed me, making me stand naked in front of her. She stood back, looking me up and down. I was, again, painfully erect, but her eyes looked at every part of me, not just the proof of my desire.

"You're not much to look at... slave," she said. "But you'll do. Undress me," she ordered.

I wasn't to find out until a month later that one of the fantasies Sabrina had, and that Pat would not indulge, was the fantasy in which she was HIS slave. She had wanted to be taken by the man she loved so much. My unplanned nickname for her appealed to her in ways I couldn't understand. Her fantasy wasn't based in submission or domination, it was just a role playing fantasy that she thought might be fun. And, when I pronounced her as my mistress, she simply altered the fantasy a little bit and ran with it.

Since this was her first fantasy being actually acted out, she kind of slipped in and out of her role. As she raised her arms for me to get Kansas State University out of the way, and her flat belly came into view, I couldn't help but put my tongue in her navel. She jumped and her hands came down on my head. The shirt, which was already over her head, got stretched a mite while I drove my tongue into her little cavity and grabbed her buttocks.

I also couldn't resist moving upwards, pushing the rest of the shirt out of the way. The bra she was wearing opened in the front. If Goliath had been standing beside us, and if there had been a stone in that bra cup when I released the catch, he'd have sworn David was right there.

Bernice and Rhonda were truly magnificent, and my mouth watered as I nosed all around the nipple on one of them while she tore the shirt off her head and flung it across the room. I had a pretty good idea in that instant how our clothes had gotten thrown everywhere in the house the night before.

I kept kissing and licking the areola all around the nipple. I didn't put an eye out, but only because I was thinking about what I was doing.

"You're teasing me," she said, her already low voice even huskier.