Forty-nine

RIO EXCUSED HERSELF soon after being thoroughly kissed by each person there.

“I want to be home at whatever hour Matt comes dragging in,” she said. “Besides, I think this party is headed where I don’t need to go without his okay. Which, by the way, he will probably give, so watch out!”

We all laughed and when she left, we started cleaning up the mess. With only nine of us at the party, it was easy to put the house back in order. I came in from taking the recycling out to find the seven remaining ladies in a huddle.

“No orgy tonight,” Lissa laughed. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You and Kate get the big bed tonight,” Melody said. “Lissa is taking Allison and Whitney to Kate’s old room. I get Wendy and Bree in the closet formerly known as Wendy’s room. But don’t be surprised if things get switched around in the middle of the night!”

Kate might have said she was going to fuck my lights out, but the fact was that we were already near lights out by the time we made it to bed. Still, we couldn’t stop ourselves from making love. We whispered our dreams. I was all for getting married the next day if we could find a preacher, but Kate shut me up with a kiss that warmed my heart.

“We have to plan this and make sure our friends and families can be with us. I’m only getting married once. It doesn’t need to be big, but I want my family with us. I’m not about to get on Deb and Saul’s bad side. I don’t want to go to Nebraska for Christmas and find a double-king-size bed in the guest room and a sleeping bag in the hall for me.”

“What do you think about the Fourth of July?”

“Tony, that’s such a special date for you and the whole family and I still feel bad about not being present for Melody and Lissa. Do you think they’d be okay with it?”

“I think they’d be thrilled.”

“So would I, darling. And if you move just a little deeper, I’ll be even more thrilled right now.” I obliged my Kitten and pushed into her more deeply, rubbing my pubic bone firmly against her clit. She went over into a long, sighing orgasm during which she whispered, “My husband. My husband. My husband.”

I awoke at four in the morning after sleeping with my fiancée for nearly three hours. I opened my eyes and found Wendy looking at me across Kate. She smiled at me and nodded. I kissed Kate on the forehead and she stirred, hugging me to her.

“Kitten,” I whispered. “Darling, I have to go paint.” Her eyes fluttered open sleepily.

“Mmmhmm. Of course you do. I’m surprised you lasted this long.”

“It’s so hard to leave you in bed, though,” I sighed, kissing her.

“Tiger? Will you stay with me while my husband abandons me for his studio?”

Wendy snuggled closer, displacing my hand over Kate’s breast.

“Mmmhmm. ‘Night.” I slipped out of bed, dressed and headed for the studio.

Parrish blues and yellows filled my canvas as I hummed and sang along with a Keith Jarrett album that was pumping through my baby speakers into the studio. The male reclined. I knew it was male, though slender and smooth. Ethereal. Floating on a cloud of ... Not like a cloud in the sky. More like a feather bed—fluffy and filled with light.

Next to the male a female form—the curve of her hips accented by his straight slender lines. Her leg thrown across him with his leg parting her thighs.

I’d begun buying white and extenders in quart cans, almost like the house paint we’d used on the wall. The extenders gave the oil a translucency that enhanced the depths of the built-up colors. I was glad I had them. This vision burst on me as we made love. It was irrepressible and when I got to the studio, I’d grabbed a huge canvas to sling onto the easel. Forty inches wide and thirty tall, it was easily the largest canvas I’d ever used to paint in this style. Squeezing Prussian blue directly onto it had sent a chill down my spine when I began. Each dollop of paint on my palette knife made the breath catch in my throat as I imagined the sheer scope of disaster that could befall with one misplaced stroke.

His head was thrown back. He was in death throes, the expression on his face a cross between pain and pleasure. I worked my way up the canvas, working progressively from foreground to background rather than the typical background forward. A third figure emerged as I moved up. She was pulled out of their bodies, a blur of motion between them as if she had been a part of them. Her back arched with her breasts thrust upward, the expression on her face pure joy as she experiences her first breath. A rising spirit. A burst of sunlight through the upper clouds that highlights the slight mound at her sex, then tapers to legs that have not yet fully emerged.

The lover with a hand raised, the spirit’s hand emerging from it as she ascends, is no less in climax than she.

Climax. Yes. Not death, but the little death. The moment when the spirit transcends the mortal and two people—no, three people—are more than the sum of their parts. They have reached the moment.

Ecstasy.

I smelled the coffee before I felt the lips caressing mine. I opened my lips to hers and for a moment basked in the feeling I’d had as I painted and felt my love poured onto the canvas. I opened my eyes and Kate looked deeply into them. I was lost in her power over me.

“I love you, darling,” she said. “I love you with all my heart.” She moved aside slowly to let Wendy have my lips.

“So beautiful, master,” she said softly. “So wonderful.” When she pulled herself away from me, Melody and Lissa rushed in to fill the void. I wasn’t sure if I was awake or still dreaming as they bathed my face with kisses and probed my mouth with their tongues.

“Our love,” Melody whispered.

“Our joy,” Lissa replied.

“Coffee?” Wendy asked. We all broke out laughing. Well, I guess I was awake. I’d fallen asleep in the recliner at the studio after I’d finished painting. That had been about eleven this morning. It had taken six hours to paint.

“What time is it?” I croaked.

“Nearly one,” Kate said. “We got worried that you hadn’t come home yet or called. But none of us got out of bed—well, except to change beds—before noon, so we just grabbed coffee and came over to the studio when Bree, Allie, and Whitney left.”

“I had to paint.”

“You sure did. This is so emotional it makes me want to cry and dance and sing and make love all at once,” Melody said. She was standing in front of the easel with Lissa. Kate and Wendy pulled me to my feet and held me as we joined them in front of the canvas.

“How do you do it?” Kate asked. “I wish I could understand.”

“Don’t worship my paintings, Kitten. I’m as much in awe of yours.”

“No. I understand that, finally. It took a while to get it through my thick head. I don’t feel inferior—no more than I feel inferior that my body is female and yours is male. I love mine, but I love yours, too.”

“How many now?” Melody asked.

“Uh ... this makes seven.” Eight, but we won’t count Rage.

“You should exhibit.”

“Seven in a year. I can’t produce this commercially. And I don’t know how long it will last. I don’t understand where they come from, so I don’t know how many are there.”

“For now, you’re right,” Lissa said. “You can’t show these yet. Though, the family would like a private showing of all of them someday soon. You can trust us not to pressure you to do more. Even if this is the last one you ever do like this, it will always be precious to us.”

“Using the Trips was brilliant,” Kate sighed. I jerked around to look at her. The Trips? I looked at the painting again. I’d captured the ecstasy that I felt when Kate and I were together. Wendy was a catalyst that bound us. It was the same as when Lissa and I were making a baby and Melody was with us. But as I looked at the painting, I could clearly see the shapes and face of Willow with Sunday emerging as ecstasy from his joining with Rainbow.