Dance

I admit it: I'm guilty of taking my wife for granted. I'm not exactly sure when I began neglecting Lily. Perhaps it was when I accepted the promotion to district manager from account manager. Long hours came with the responsibility of moving up and the challenge of doing something different. Those hours and the money accompanying them sustained the lifestyle Lily and I wanted: the house in Sunset Hills; the cars, her SUV and my Beemer; the electronics; the clothes; everything else that we had and were acquiring. I told myself it was important because it seemed to be important. I thought Lily understood.

Work kept me away from home most of the day and behind my computer at home much of the evening, however. After awhile, I noticed that we were living together separately.

Living together separately.

It sounds funny. We shared a house, but we weren't sharing lives. We slept in the same bed, but not often together, rarely as lovers. Our time together consisted of dinner once or twice a week and an hour or two in front of the television.

Then came that moment.

I was walking from my home office in the den to the kitchen for coffee. Lily was finishing the dinner dishes at the sink. The under-counter stereo played a smooth jazz CD. Lily moved slowly, her hips swaying to the music beneath her skirt. Something in the simplicity of it stopped me. I stood there watching her dance under the amber cone of the sink light. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she dancing in a memory, a fantasy? Was I there with her? Had I gone away?

These last two questions concerned more than I expected. I loved Lily. I had known that I wanted a more permanent relationship with her after a month of dating; we married a year later. But we hadn't been together for awhile. Though I found purpose in my work and my work gave us this world around us, it wasn't everything.

I stepped toward her. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I looked at the screen and saw it was Mathias calling. No doubt he wanted to talk about the Benning proposal. I turned toward my den; he would want to go over the figures we put together on Tuesday. I heard plates clank as Lily put them in the dish drainer.

Lily.

I looked over my shoulder. Lily swayed in the soft light.

Alone.

The phone whirred in my hand. I thumbed the button which stilled it. I put the phone on the hall cupboard and walked toward the kitchen.

"Hello," I said, putting my arms around her loosely.

She froze in my embrace.

"Don't stop," I said.

"What?" she said.

"Don't stop dancing."

I felt her smile through the warmth and ease of her body. I felt her hips move slowly to the music once again. I felt the rustle of her skirt against my pants. I tightened my embrace, drawing her closer. Her dark hair brushed my lips and nose. I breathed deeply of her.

"Do you remember New Orleans?" she said.

"Yes." I nuzzled the top of her head.

There had been a small restaurant just outside the Quarter. We had danced to live jazz there like this. It was the first year we were married and we had nothing but each other and possibility. I could not have promised the couple there in my mind's eye that they would grow into us, but I remember that didn't matter then. Closeness like this mattered.

I turned Lily to face me, held her closer, felt the press of her breasts against my chest. I moved with her. She kissed my cheek. I returned it and sought her lips with mine. She tasted sweet, her breath warm within my mouth. Our tongues teased each other's tongues.

We danced and kissed and stroked each other until long after the CD stopped. Then I took her hand and led her upstairs to our bedroom.

I helped her remove her blouse. She took off my shirt and pushed me back so that I was sitting on our bed. She stepped back one step, then two, then closed her eyes. Her hips moved slowly again. Music played in her head. Her warm smooth movement played in my eyes.

Lily had filled out since we met, but she had done so in the most wonderful way. Curves became her. They framed her in softness and subtlety like the muted colors of twilight. They gave her flow.

Her fingers undid her skirt. The material slid over her hips and piled at her feet with a whisper. She stepped out of it and closer to me, still dancing.

I let my hands rest lightly on her hips, feeling the movement, feeling the warmth. She swayed in my arms, head slowly rolling from side to side, her eyes meeting mine hungrily each time through the arc.

She reached behind her to undo the fastener of her pink bra. She leaned forward and let the straps slide over shoulders and down her arms. I reached up to help her remove it and expose her full breasts.

She stepped back again, one step, two steps, just out of my reach. She danced again: hips and breasts moving slowly in the soft light, her long dark hair brushing her bare shoulders. She weighed the soft weight of her left breast in her hand, her thumb brushing across the hard pink nipple.

I felt a hungry growl rumble within me. Her eyes met mine with a smile and equal hunger. Slowly, almost as a tease, she danced toward me.

I grabbed her when she moved close and rolled her under me onto the bed. My mouth met hers hungrily, my hands in her hair and on her breast. She groaned in my mouth as I kneaded her breast gently and then a little less gently. My thigh slid between hers and I found my knee pressing against the heat of her sex. She ground against me.

I kissed my way down her throat to the sensitive spot between her clavicles. My fingers toyed with her nipples, drawing circles, pinching, twisting.

My mouth found her nipple. I drew it in against my tongue, flicked, sucked.

My hand ran over her belly, down her outer thigh, up her inner thigh. She was silky smooth and warm to the touch. I continued to circle from belly to thigh to belly, very consciously avoiding her pussy.

I could not consciously ignore my own sex, however. I felt the pressure of my hard cock against my leg. Lily's hands moved to my belt, to the button of my pants. We broke embrace long enough for me to stand and shimmy out of my pants. I dropped to my knees on the bed, my cock stabbing through my gray boxer briefs. I lay beside her, kissing her again, one hand on her breast, the other reaching behind her to twine in her long hair. She reached down and palmed my cock through the soft cotton of my briefs. Growling in her ear, I ground my cock against her hand.

She pushed me onto my back and trailed kisses down the thin line of graying hair from my chest to my belly. I felt my cock growing harder and thicker as she moved toward it. She pulled the elastic over my hips and I felt the cool brush of air breeze across the sensitive tip of my cock.

She kissed the side of the shaft. She kissed along its length. She took the tip in her mouth. My hips flexed toward her.

I lost time as she sucked my cock, dissolved in the sensation of her tongue winding around and around the sensitive tip. My hands tied knots in her hair. My hips moved of their own. I felt the tension growing within me.

Hands guiding her, I encouraged her to move up to meet me face to face. I rolled onto her. Little control now, little finesse, my hand slid down her belly and opened her thighs. My fingers found the elastic of her pink panties and crept inside. Her mound was trim and hot. My fingers found moisture on her pussy lips. She groaned as I touched the tender folds.

She wriggled out of the pink panties and spread her legs wide for me. I touched her. She moaned, breasts arching toward me, head arching back. I kissed her throat as I positioned myself between her legs. I could feel the tip of my hard cock dancing against her belly and mound.

Then I was inside her.

I was inside my woman.

And she enveloped me. And we were together, grinding against each other.

Fucking.

I felt her swelling around my cock. I felt my cock thickening within her. Our movement was like a dance itself: steady and deliberate. We groaned passion into each other's mouths. Her thighs tightened around my waist. She rocked to meet each thrust. I ground into her, twisting just a little at the end of each thrust. Her breathing came in short gasps, mine in grunts.

Tension.

Tightening.

The delectable balance between grinding like an animal and dissolving into the universe tipped ever so slightly to the right.

Lily came. Her pussy clenched and clenched my thick cock. That maddening squeeze and her groan of complete pleasure threw me to my orgasm. I came with hard, tight spasms, pumping come into my woman. I thrust deeper in her, my hips a manic machine. She came again, her pussy milking my cock, mixing my come with her own hot juices.

Then we collapsed into each other, breathing hard.

Being still.

Being still.

Letting the world redevelop around us.

Feeling our breathing and hearts slow and match.

I rolled onto my side and held her tight to me, her head between my head and my shoulder, my thigh between hers, knotted together comfortably.

I felt the warm stain of tears on my chest.

"Are you okay?" I whispered, stroking her long dark hair.

"Very," she said. Her fingers tickled my graying chest hair.

Within minutes she fell asleep against me. I could not help but think of the office as I lay there with my wife's warm body against me. I could not help but wonder how they would do without me for a week. Maybe two.