BEAUTIFUL HONESTY Part 02
Ben and Zoe figure out what 'they' are
Author's Note:
Zoe and Ben try to understand what they are now, and what's next, if anything...
This will be better if you've read
Part 01
first.
MP
~~~
You can't always get what you want
~ The Rolling Stones
~~~
Ben woke hours before dawn and was resting with his eyes open when a loon called from the dark. It floated, somewhere out on Loon Dance Lake. Its mate returned the call from further off. They weren't together, but they were connected. Soul haunting calls that always made Ben feel lonely. But not this time. Zoe lay alongside him, naked and warm.
He listened to her breathing.
Zoe
. They'd made love. If he explored between her legs he'd feel their sticky evidence. He wanted to touch her there, wanted to touch her everywhere.
Has anyone ever gotten her up with a massage?
He looked at the clock.
Not at 4:09 am
. He carefully slipped from the bed and pulled the comforter high enough to shield her from the cool air coming through the balcony door. He paused to watch her breathe as he covered her. It was like pulling a cloak over living art.
Fuck
. He hoped their union was unlike anything she'd ever experienced, because it was for him. They joined as man and woman so perfectly that it felt destined.
Made for each other
. Ben admitted to himself that he'd wanted to be with Zoe this way since they met. But years of working together passed without meaningful physical contact - until that changed a few hours earlier when he'd massaged her and then savored the exotic taste of her release. The flavor of life. Then he came, held in her vaginal embrace and she'd bathed his ejaculating cock in her second release.
Or third?
Their bodies knew. So did Ben. He was content in a way he'd never been. Like finally belonging where you are after a life's journey. Yet he wondered.
How will Zo feel...when she wakes up? 'Right' isn't enough. 'What I want' isn't enough. And she's already involved.
He shook his head and wondered again what he was doing.
Christ, they're buying property together.
He looked at her once more before leaving the room.
Zoe.
Even asleep, she felt him leave.
Ben passed through the doorway to his room and dressed in jeans and a sweater. He wanted to watch the sun when it rose over Loon Dance Lake.
Not surprisingly, no one else ventured from the lodge into the cold night so he stood alone on the shore. Ben reflected, and waited. He felt the darkness around him deepen just before first light. The lake was calm and covered by a mystical blanket of fog. Then, before night grudgingly gave way to day, loon calls erupted from the dark. Not their soulful drawn out calls but frenzied 'looney' cries that made it impossible to know if it was two loons or six, calling with such abandon it felt as if they only existed to alert all creatures to a new day breaking.
The wildness of the calls resonated in Ben's soul.
Zoe heard them from the bed they shared.
She wrapped the sheet around her naked body and went onto the balcony. She saw him standing at the shore with his back to her and remembered the first time she'd noticed him from a balcony in the Law Library, over a decade earlier. He looked like he belonged here as much as he'd looked out of place there. She became aware of the sheet's stickiness against her skin.
From our mating
. Her nipples stiffened, more with memory than the cool air, and she felt wet warmth where he'd been inside her.
The sunrise was fog softened when it came and promised warmth. Zoe remembered being warmed in his oiled hands.
Ben saw her on the balcony when he turned around...and stopped. Transfixed, just as he'd been in Law School. On impulse she opened the sheet to show herself to him, and held it open for his warm gaze in this cool air. She stood with a Mona Lisa smile.
For you. Come to me
. When she finally closed her arms the spell ended and he resumed approaching the lodge. He mimed drinking from a cup as he walked so she knew he planned to bring coffee. Then she returned to the bed and pulled
all
the covers over her goose bumped body.
Everything about last night was real and now he's coming back...
Before reaching the lodge's back door Ben encountered morning scents drifting from the kitchen. Coffee and bakery smells. He entered the work area as if he was allowed to be there and saw who he hoped to see. He walked to her and they hugged as he greeted her. "My beautiful Aada." (AH-dah) She had 25 years and 80 pounds on him and he always used her Finnish name instead of her Anglicized "Adele."
"How's the Finlander who went to the city and got all important?" She asked with a smile. Then she leaned back to hold him at arm's length and have a good look.
He looks really content
. She was surprised because although he wasn't a morose person he never looked this content. And she knew
that
look on a man's face. "Is that pretty girlfriend with you?"
"No Aada," he shook his head, "she found herself a handsome doctor."
"I never liked that one." She announced. Then she arched an eyebrow, "But I heard you were with someone in the hot tub last night?"
"Me?" He said with faux innocence.
"First with your lawyer friends but then one of them stayed and sat awful close to you." Aada's eyebrows were raised comically.
"Where do you get this stuff
Dah
?" Using his pet name for her.
"Mrs. Halvorsen." She was matriarch of the family that owned the lodge and had been one of Ben's high school teachers.
He shrugged and said, "I can't get away with anything up here." Then he looked around. "It smells awfully good in here, and I'm starved."
"I'm
sure
you are." She said it in a tone that made it clear she knew why he'd be extra hungry, "But the kitchen isn't open yet."
"You're not going to let me take a pot of coffee to my room?"
"How many cups...?" Aada was all smiles and