part that allows me to be aware of the two selves, one emerging from the other like a cicada shedding her exoskeleton and leaving it on a tree branch. Something for the other animals to wonder at.
“Would you like a drink?” he asks as he wanders off to a bar near a waterfall and pool.
“What do you have?”
“Scotch, brandy, wine…you name it, I’ve probably got it.”
“I’ll take some red wine. Whatever you’ve got.”
“I don’t have any wine glasses up here. Do you care?”
“Never use ’em.”
“Good, me neither.”
I take a seat on a ledge along one of the pools.
He walks over with the drinks, sits next to me and sets mine down between us. I look at him, picking mine up.
“ Beaujolais nouveau . Imported from Toulouse.” His French accent is quite good.
“I love this wine. One of my favorites.”
“I love it too. One of the few wines I really like. The only one that actually tastes like strawberries and doesn’t just say it on the bottle.”
“I once drank one that said on the bottle it tasted like bacon with a hint of burnt tire.”
Stafford lets out a deep, bellowing laughter.
“Who writes that shit?” he asked, curling forward with laughter.
“What are you having?”
“Brandy to follow up the vodka I had before.”
“You need to get proper smashed before hooking up with me, huh?”
“Naturally—” then, “Of course not.”
He displays that false modesty, the almost childlike humility that I find so disarming in him.
I lean in for the kiss. Fireworks explode across our lips, lightning passes in our heads. I’m so high now, I feel dizzyingly sick. An overload of feelings. I take off his polo. Then I help him take off my shirt. I run my hands up his torso, feeling his muscles that glisten even in the near dark of the room. He lifts my long skirt, rolling it up. I pour the last of the wine down the hatch before I help him get the skirt up. He reaches up my inner thighs, sending pleasure rippling up through the core of my being. I’m not wearing underwear. He fingers my front-bottom, tickling the five o’clock shadow I did not find time to trim earlier. My bottom grass. With two fingers he spreads the lips, all the while looking on me with a holy reverence.
Stafford touches the beady tip of the erect clitoris and flicks it once, then massages it between his inner forefinger and thumb. The pleasure is coming in waves now. My once tense stomach muscles seem to have vanished in a liquid pool on the marble floor. Instinctively, I tense and loosen the muscles throughout the lower region. Kegel exercise, I think it’s called. I breathe heavily, moan, then sigh. As I sigh, he kisses me as he plays with me down below. Touching gently along the edges of my down under, Stafford kisses down my long neck, along the inner collar bone, to the supersternal notch.
Taking a break, he removes his pants, underwear and all. Like lightning, I grab his saluting penis. It’s a brusque cock, a penis with attitude. Ever so gently, I run my fingers from the base to the tip and it throbs at my touch. Nice work, lieutenant, I think as I go for the base again. I feel Stafford’s hand on my wrist, moving it away from the lieutenant, as he eases me down onto my back with the other. The ledge I lie on is cool and hard and smooth. I spread my legs for him, welcoming him. I’m looking at the ceiling now—not even at the ceiling really, but into space—as he rubs the large throbbing head around the vaginal arena, brushing my labia and erect clitoris into the octaves of euphoria. Then comes that sublime moment: he slides the tip of the head into my wet slit. He rolls it around the entrance, as though testing the playing field. Then he slips it in. I gasp. He lumbers forth. Sliding it way past the entrance and all the way home. I seem to feel his penis pressing my insides up. Could this really be happening? Is it that huge? I sigh as this happens, then contort my face. He backs up. Then thrusts