Chapter 3

The flight to Estonia was long and mercifully uneventful. Normally Bill slept like a baby on even short flights but this time he was too keyed up thinking about what awaited him in Estonia. He was almost exhausted by the time of the final leg of the flight, the one from Amsterdam to Tallinn. He had to make a connection at Amsterdam and was not amused that his arriving flight deplaned at the very last station on one long concourse and that his departing flight was departing from another end station at the end of a different but equally long concourse. The clincher was that he only had 35 minutes to travel the distance and make the connection.

Bill thought there must be a law, call it Bill's Law of Travel, stating that the time available to make a connecting flight is inversely proportional to the distance between connections. He got to the boarding station just in time to hear last call for boarding. It was about 9 A.M. local time when his flight jetted off from Amsterdam.

Tallinn's Ulemiste Airport was small by international standards but seemed fairly modern. Even though the airport was diminutive, the lines were short and the wait for customs was minimal. As Bill stepped out of the customs room, he turned around to get his bearings and had just figured out where to find those usually waiting for arrivals when he felt a tentative tap on his shoulder. He turned around expecting to see one of his fellow passengers and saw instead Kristel standing there shyly smiling at him. Bill had seen her pictures, he had even seen her on web cam and he knew she was beautiful... but the reality of her presence rendered him speechless.

Bill had never been comfortable around beautiful women. It was like he wasn't supposed to be there. It was as if he reverted back into the shy high school nerd of 25 years past and again became a fumbling tongue-tied blob of Jell-O. On some subconscious level he knew that his staring at Kristel must make her uncomfortable, but he was also powerless to take action even to say hello. Then he noticed her obvious discomfort. Could it be she was regretting his coming? She reddened, as his stares grew longer. Finally, she broke the ice by stating the obvious, "You came, I very happy."

That was all it took. Bill threw down his coat and small bag and swept her up into his arms hugging her tightly to his body. He whispered into her ear, "Your beauty just overwhelmed me, I am so very happy to see you too."

Her hair smelled of flowers and her neck had the teasing aroma of a delicate jasmine scented perfume. She was wearing tight black jeans and a pink and white wide-striped sweater blouse that perfectly matched the ski cap perched jauntily on the back of her head.

As Bill hugged her he could feel her hardened nipples pressing into his chest and immediately knew she was not wearing a bra. Somehow her doing that for him swept away the last of his uncomfortable feelings and he knew that this was his Kristel, the woman he deeply loved and who from the kisses, from her warm greeting and even from the way she dressed and smelled also loved him. He knew that he was one hell of a lucky man.

More sure of himself, he simply stated, "I need to claim my bags and then we can go. I packed light, as you suggested, so there are only two small bags."

She led him to the baggage carousel where his bags were already sitting and Bill unlatched the handles and wheeled them behind him as they walked towards the front of the terminal. "How did you get here?" he asked.

"I drove papa's wagon. It is old, but has room for your bags."

"You are smart and practical as well as beautiful." Kristel again reddened at the complement.

The drive from the airport into the city was short only about 4 kilometers and the traffic seemed to flow nicely. Kristel was an excellent driver, something Bill would never have expected from one so young. They skirted Old Town and drove until Bill was sure they must be in the country again. Finally the car slowed and then pulled into the driveway next to an older looking two-story residence. Kristel looked at Bill and smiled. The small yard was bright and cheerful with miniature flower beds brimming with tall plants and bushes, none of which appeared to be in bloom.

Inside, the house appeared small by American standards, but Bill noticed an upright piano with what looked to be a guitar case leaning against it in the living room. No one else was home. Kristel explained that both her parents were at work and that although they had wanted to be here for his arrival, they had not been able to arrange time off. Bill stopped inside the house to look around but could tell Kristel seemed impatient. She grabbed one of his bags and with a quick motion for him to follow her, began to haul the bag up the short stairway to the second level of the small house.

The second floor was primarily bedrooms and a small catchall room. Kristel opened the door to a small bedroom at the end of the hall and explained that this was the guest bedroom where he would be staying. She sat his bag down next to an old looking highboy at the foot of the bed and opened the drawers to show him they were empty. She sat on the bed with her hands flat on the bed on either side of her and looked up at Bill, seemingly unsure of what he would do next. Bill sat his bag down next to the other and nervously sat on the bed next to her. His hand soon found hers and as he lifted it off of the bed she surprised him by moving quickly to sit on his lap. Bill might have been more aggressive at that point but his jet lag seemed to have finally caught up with him so instead he sat quietly and lovingly held her on his lap, content to let her move things forward at her own pace.

Sitting on his lap put Kristel's brown doe-eyes almost perfectly in line with his own and although Bill was afraid that he might put her off with his staring, he was powerless to do otherwise. He was almost hypnotized as he gazed deeply into what great writers had called 'the windows of the soul'. Those same great writers had spent countless words on this subject, words that until that moment Bill had never fully understood. This one look and Bill was lost in those warm liquid, limpid pools of brown. So entranced was he that World War III could have broken out and he would neither have cared nor moved. He was sublimely content. He was at home; in his own very special Garden of Eden.

The surprising thing about this was that his staring didn't seem to bother Kristel. She seemed to be content to sit there, on his lap, letting him feast upon the richness of her soul. Bill wasn't sure how long they sat there. For the first time in a very long while he was truly happy, centered in the one place, the one exact spot in his world where nothing else seemed to matter.

Bill didn't want to move or cause this to end but he knew that eventually it must. Looking into Kristel's eyes was similar to the anticipation he had known as a young boy, lying in bed on Christmas Eve, thinking about the morrow and the treasures that would be under the tree. Such anticipation always heightened his joy, and sometimes when it was unfulfilled created its own sadness, but it was always a special pleasure all by itself. One of the things Bill had learned as he grew older was to not rush blindly past those times of anticipation but to stop and wait for the treasure that each of those moments had to offer.

Eventually the looking had to end. When it ended, it ended with a kiss. No not a kiss, but 'The Kiss'. Normally a kiss has a kisser and one kissed and we all know where we are during that process. 'The Kiss' was somehow different. Bill and Kristel's lips seemed to touch as if of their own volition. They had kissed in the airport but that seemed not to have been of consequence. 'The Kiss' started out for Bill with the feeling of Kristel's lips, her full wet warm erotic lips, gently pressed against his. Each pair of lips was conforming to the others and yet undemanding.

'The Kiss' was leisurely, exploratory and unhurried. Not exploratory as in Bill's tongue trying to find the bottom of her throat, but exploratory in that their lips were tentatively divining the limits of their mutual pleasure. 'The Kiss' was a tactile delight such as one rarely encounters above the neck. That was not to say that the pleasures generated by 'The Kiss' were limited, because Bill felt them throughout his body, stimulating him to even greater levels of feeling. 'The Kiss' lingered and each could feel the others lips almost pulsing with fire. 'The Kiss' was so hot that both were feverishly branded by their passionate desires. The flavor of Kristel's lipstick was indescribable but Bill knew that forevermore it would be his favorite flavor.

That was all external and suddenly there was something new as Kristel's tongue was gently caressing the inner surfaces of Bill's lips. Bill's heart was pounding almost as if she was knocking at the very door to his soul. It was a teasing touch in that as he parted his lips to admit her further she withdrew almost as if she was the child who would ring your doorbell and then run away. The sense of loss as her tongue moved away was so great that Bill pressed his tongue lightly at the juncture of her closed lips to gain another taste. When Kristel opened her lips she opened them only slightly and when his tongue entered she closed her lips softly trapping his tongue in a warm, wet embrace. Bill was so delighted that he felt cold beads of sweat break-out across his brow. He felt like he had as a boy with his first woman as he had realized that he was involved in something that was way beyond his experience. Bill wondered how Kristel, how any woman at such a young age, could captivate a grown man so completely?

Usually when a man and woman sat on a bed and kissed with such passion things would soon move beyond kissing to other more intimate caresses. 'The Kiss' could have been such a springboard but Bill felt inadequate at the moment to fully explore these other areas. If this was just a kiss, what did he know that he could ever hope to teach her? Part of the confidence that Bill had felt, rested in him being the more accomplished lover and yet he had never had a kiss leave him so weak in the knees that he knew that he could not even stand up.

Towards the end of 'The Kiss' Bill's feelings of inadequacy began to surface and he felt almost suffocated by the dread feeling that Kristel was far too special to really care for someone as commonplace as he. Desperation twisted his gut as he realized that she may soon tire of him and then move on to find a lover who was more her equal.

'The Kiss' ended for Bill with that note of dread and also with it a feeling of exhaustion. Bill was surprised when he saw that Kristel seemed to suffer from the same concerns. In the aftermath Kristel immediately wrapped her arms around Bill, as if she needed reassurance from the physical contact. She then pulled Bill into an almost desperate hug and began to repeat something in either Russian or Estonian. At first he didn't understand and then Bill smiled as he recognized the words again, "ya lublu tebya, ya lublu tebya, ya lublu tebya." Bill began to softly cry in happiness as the words were repeated over and over in his ear as if she needed to get that message across to him. Bill's lips at her ear, began to mimic the phrase alternating the words with the English, 'I love you, Kristel.'

This was the true and proper ending to 'The Kiss.' It was a place where both Bill and Kristel took joy from simply being together and also in finding pleasure in the promise that there was more to come. 'The Kiss' was not an end but a beginning. It was sufficient for the moment and they could take comfort that in that moment. It was as if they had pledged their lives, wrote their vows, and were now one.