The Marriage Bed

So, bear with me. Something new. This story was inspired by a lifestyle depicted in a TV show, though the characters and events written about here are entirely of my own imagination. If you are a member of this community and feel the accuracy is lacking, please feel free to illuminate us in the comments.

Moshe watched with a learned wariness as the Rabbi took the cloth in question out of the envelope and then the underwear.

Despite himself, his breathing grew slightly labored. Just knowing that the cloth had been inside her filled him with desperate heat and a bottomless shame. What kind of man was aroused by such things?

But the threshold for his arousal was low these days. Two weeks without his wife. Without seeing the soft skin of her inner thighs, without running his hands through her hair. And all of her efforts to lessen his discomfort - - her frumpy dresses, her careful refrain from dancing while she did the dishes (her usual habit), their painstaking avoidance of passing anything, even a slice of bread, directly to one another-only served to deepen his want for her.

It had been that way since the moment he'd laid eyes on her, from the moment she'd walked into the hotel lobby and changed his life. Sitting there, drinking diet Coke for two hours, thinking of nothing but how soon he could convince her to marry him so that he could close his arms around her and make her his. He had begun, even that night, to pity the man he'd been only hours before. The man who hadn't seen her face and hadn't heard her laugh, her humming approval, hadn't felt her gaze hot on his cheeks.

Now the Rabbi was peering at the cloth with an almost bored disinterest, as Rabbis were wont to do. Moshe wondered, for perhaps the thousandth time, if the careful sense of carelessness was practiced or honest. He certainly could never look at such intimate details of a woman's life, day in and day out, and not feel even the faintest stirrings of curiosity.

Perhaps that was why he was a teacher, and not a Rabbi.

"It's fine," the older man said at long last. With a rush of relief, Moshe glanced at the ceiling as the Rabbi swept the evidence into the trash.

"Thank you," he said, already moving for the door. "Thank you."

The Rabbi laughed a little at his haste, but called "Gesunderheit!" after him into the hall.

Thursday. Thank God it was Thursday. He hated when their first night together was on Friday, when she was already so tired from the cooking and they were both heavy from the meal. So often on Fridays he felt badly to press her to open herself to him, so he just let her drift off into sleep beneath his arms, his arousal pounding a ceaseless need into his body. But tonight it was Thursday. She had had time to rest that morning because the office hadn't needed her, and so she would be well-rested and wanting him, too.

He drove a little faster than was smart, dreading each stoplight, even though he knew it wouldn't make nightfall come on quicker if he hurried. When he ducked into the apartment and carefully placed his hat on the shelf, he found her clearing up the last of the children's dinner and shooing them towards their rooms.

Lovely, so lovely he had to stop and take a breath. Just twenty-six, still with an almost virginal complexion, almost like the day they'd been married. A wisp of hair peeking from the scarf and down around the nape of her neck, biting her lush bottom lip as she plucked the baby from his highchair. She looked up and smiled sweetly, expectantly at her husband, and he felt almost dizzy.

"Well?" she prompted.

Oh. Right, of course.

"It's fine," he said quickly.

"Good." She smiled and took the baby to his room. Moshe followed the other children to the second bedroom, gathering up the pajamas she'd laid out on the couch.

While he read them stories and sung them songs, he heard the rush of the tub filling. As soon as he was out of their room he leaned back against the door, overcome with visions of her in the bath, soapy water spilling over her skin...

He set himself to reading in the living room, but the words slid in and out of his head like sand. Vivid memories of her beneath him flashed behind his eyelids, and no book in their library could hold his attention for very long while she was lurking in the shadows of his imagination.

Sometime later she, the corporeal she, bustled through the room. She paused to sneak him a shy smile as she picked up the car keys and headed out into the night.

He let his head fall back. Almost time. He let his resolve slip just an inch, feeling the outlines of a need that would drown him in a tidal wave of wretched desire if he let it, so he didn't.

But he was tempted.

He prowled the apartment feeling uneasy, used to her quiet presence around every corner. He scraped the plates left on the table and washed them. He put away the toys scattered around the living room. He stripped the beds, pushed them back together, and stretched a new King-size sheet over them. He left the bedspread crumpled on the chair, knowing it would probably have to be dry cleaned if he took her atop its quilted surface. Finally, he ventured into the bathroom to find the tidy heap of clothes she'd left by the door.

Moving them to the hamper wasn't wrong to do.

But clutching her white underwear in his fist, that was questionable. He felt suddenly hot. Damp. The walls were closing in. The air conditioning must not be keeping up with the mid-August heat, or else he was spiraling, losing himself already... But in either case.

He stripped off his clothes, his white shirt and black slacks, his undergarments, putting them in the hamper with hers. He switched off the light, and felt the night air cooling his skin.

But the panties, those he brought with him into the bed. He didn't dare do what he wanted with them, it would be too much, even for him. But just knowing they were there, curled in his fist...

When he heard her key in the lock he allowed his free hand, finally, to wrap around himself. Already slick, already ready, he slid lazily into a rhythm that defied the instincts of his baser, more animal nature, which always screamed for more.

She hovered in the doorway. He couldn't see her face in the dark, with the hall light behind her, but she made an amused sound. Finding him this way was not so uncommon for these special occasions, these first moments together after a long hiatus. Patience was a virtue, but unfortunately not one he possessed when it came to intimacy. He liked to think she might find it flattering, though in truth he'd never asked.

She stripped off her clothes without any ceremony, and in the light from the hall he could see her thick, alabaster thighs, her pillowy breasts and slightly rounded stomach moving as she sighed and peeled off her stockings. Her body bore the marks of her pregnancies but he found it achingly tender to see them, even more so than he had when she had actually been expecting. In those months she had drifted through her days enveloped in a rosey glow, her swollen middle broadcasting to the world their affections. And now she would wear the purple-silver tracks on her skin forever, indelible reminders of his once-and-future presence inside of her.

The scars she'd engraved in him might be invisible, but they were no less real.

She closed the door, shutting out the hall light, losing them both to darkness.

Lying beside her, he could smell the faint touch of chlorine on her skin. He had been conditioned by their years together to find this scent more than alluring, because of what it represented. Purity, perhaps. Togetherness. Release.

Her hand crept across the bed and found his, which was still clutching her underwear. He let go of them at once, but the damage was done. She picked them up and examined them. Meanwhile, he closed his eyes against the feeling of hot shame creeping across his face.

"Why?" she asked. There was only curiosity in her voice, but he couldn't bear to look at her and see what other questions surely lurked beneath the surface.

"I wanted to be close to you," he admitted.

To his great surprise, she sighed and snuggled tight against him and tucked his hand between her thighs. He gave a startled moan when the warm, tender softness enveloped him, and she pulled him only closer. She was never callous or uncaring, and yet he always feared she would be. Always feared that any loosening of the leash on which he kept his desire, closely controlled, would send her reeling from him in disgust. Oddly enough, it most often seemed to drive her only further into his arms.

"So you love me?" she asked him now.

Six years of marriage and three children later, she hardly needed to ask. And he certainly declared himself often enough. But if he must tell her again, debase himself at her feet...

"I love you so much," he whispered, "I worry." He looked at her, found her smiling up at him, the moonlight through the window glinting off of her still-damp hair. "I worry that maybe I love you

too

much. That I might begin to worship you next."

She hummed with pleasure. "You always know the right things to say." She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and laid her cheek on his chest, watching as he caressed himself. The feel of her gaze on him was almost too much and he rolled on top of her in a swift motion, pinning her to the mattress.

"Now," he said, his voice rough with wanting her, "Can it be now?"

She spread her legs to make room for him, and he slipped inside her with little resistance. His show had made her ready, or maybe his confession had. Either way she was rocking with him, wrapping a sweet, coaxing hand around his backside. She must know he was close.

Her head tilted back, her mouth opened in a silent cry as he thrust deep within her, and he felt almost sorry for how much he'd already wasted his endurance. But she was used to things being quick the first night-they almost always were. He usually rallied and found his way back to her sometime before morning, waking her up with sweet kisses fluttering between her legs. She had never voiced any complaint, anyway.

And now he was aching, the waves crashing over him and threatening to bring him under with every stroke.

It was her moan that did it, a low and desperate thing. He lost himself inside of her, burying himself within her warm, loving embrace.

He fell asleep clutching her to him, the world spinning around them. He had often wondered, as a young man, how something so depraved could be made holy, how such an act could ever reach the lofty status of a a command from God.

Now that he had her, though, he knew. Not ever-not when he prayed, not when he sang, not when he emerged dripping from the waters of the mikveh himself but once a year, did he ever feel quite so close to God as when he was with his wife.