He represented an unusual challenge for her. Someone exciting, if different from the norm. She knew, this was her last chance to help him, satisfy him, for him to satisfy her, their last chance to make love. It was time for her to take the risk, to test herself, to rise to the challenge of him.
He lived in a shady tree house in a small copse by the footpath to the river in the hottest months, and this was the hottest sweltering day of the heatwave so far. Few women saw him concealed within the shady leaves, but she did. He exposed himself for her, sharing his intimate secret with her, inviting her up, to rise to his strangest challenge, in his abode, by text:
I need you to love me today, Maria. Here inside the tree house. I don't have much time left.
Tree houses were all the rage, particularly with sad, dejected, introverted, lonely men like him, searching for self-worth, trying to recover their self-esteem, restore their lost pride, before their inevitable fate. Searching for an escape from the intolerable pressure, the media of modern life.
Tree houses were environmentally friendly, cheap to maintain. Best of all, they stopped humans felling trees. Naturally, they had their downside. Bits of house tended to fall off in the wind, and when the leaves fell he could easily be seen. Maria saw him beckoning her from the inside.
He saw patients in his tree house being a psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysts liked to live concealed. He considered himself above the rest of us and didn't usually like to be disturbed unless he was conducting an analysis on his own mind and opted, as he had, to undergo the ultimate treatment.
Maria stood beneath the tree house calling up to him. He drew back his big branch. She was a phenomenal looking woman, gorgeous, with straggly, flouncy blonde hair and a shapely figure. She'd worn her floppiest white t-shirt, shorts and running shoes, and ran, raising her body heat high, steam high, sweat high, until she was ready for her intimacy, ready to test herself, on him.
'Come up,' he mouthed, waving his bare arms wildly at her through the empty wood framed window.
Despite the treatment, his face was beaming with ruddy good health, radiant red. He spoke with a plum in his mouth - Cambridge mixed with Oxford tinctured with a sublime hint of Suffolk.
Maria loved his voice. How quaint, she reflected, I've never loved a man in a tree house before.
'Use the ladder, behind my oak. It's perfectly safe. Easy to climb. Think you can manage it?'
She vanished behind the tree calling to him as she made her stiff climb, 'Might just be able to.'
He stared down and reached for her hand from the very top of the ladder, 'Give me your hand.'
He was peculiar looking, a beautiful psychoanalyst with an incredibly muscular physique. His roughly cut hair and lean torso were dripping, pouring with sweat. She imagined him stretching, performing planks, press ups on his rug, the sanded timber floor, in the stultifying heat, for her. Other than his gold linked necklace, the flat metal crucifix adhering to his hairy sweating chest, and his filthy jockstrap, he wasn't wearing any clothes. Maria was pleased. Clothes could be very restrictive during foreplay in the clammy heat of the searing summer heatwave, she found.
She had managed to climb halfway up the gnarled wooden ladder when she teased him a little.
'Not sure I should. I can't be sure you're safe. I don't know if I trust you. Tell me you're safe.'
'I'm no danger to women,' he said, blushing sheepishly.
Inches off, straining for the highest rung, her voice became laced with sympathy, compassion. Maria told him she understood about his treatment, his depression, his reason for choosing her. She apologised for teasing him. She hadn't meant to hurt his feelings. By now he was sweating profusely, his well-honed muscular upper torso running thick sweat, gluing his fine body hairs to his cusps of chest, abs and pecs. The chain around his neck, his crucifix, burnt into his skin, seared in blazing sun. Maria gazed up at his sunburnt face, flushed with the effort of telling her the earnest truth.
'I'm clean. I test myself every day before I start work and as soon as I finish. I take precautions. I promise not to put you at any risk if you make love to me.' He reached for her, grasping her hand.
Seconds later, Maria was safely inside his lair, concealed by summer leaves, lying in his shade. She stretched out next to him on the hessian woven rug. Their bare legs touched. She took off her spotless white running shoes, her pink braided anklets. Her perfectly manicured feet, her blunt filed toenails. Her complexion was unblemished. Maria had immaculate tanned skin, a pronounced widow's peak, a shock of wet straw blonde hair, a delightful turned up nose, lips that whispered, 'kiss me'. The arrogant attitude of a woman who knew she was exquisite, beautiful, yet sweaty, sticky. She needed to feel clean before she could make love to him.
'I'm hot, sweaty and sticky from running hard,' she said, 'Do you have a shower I can use?'
'My tree doesn't have electricity. There's no heat, light or gas, only natural energy. I thrive on earth power, spiritual power. I live by the sun, moon, stars: sleep when its dark, live when its light. He waffled on and on about internal power resources, as shy, ill, psychoanalysts are prone to do.
'I get all that. Do you have a shower that I can take or not?'
She sat up on the woven hessian rug, resting her soft hand on his thigh to steady herself, and crossed her slender legs. Slender in an attractive way, but her thighs bore the classic hallmarks of mild lipoedema. Her slimmish thighs were mildly inflamed, enlarged by the fats that accumulated there which explains why Maria took up running.
He put his patient's age as early thirties. Did the accumulation of fat in her thighs hurt her? he asked himself. Could she bear a child? There were so many questions he wanted to ask her. If only she would bear her soul to him.
She squatted on her haunches, hands-on-knees, head craned, enjoying the hot sunshine filtering through the carved hole in his slatted timber roof onto her face, relaxing as if she hadn't a care in the world. He gently squeezed her forearm. Her flesh felt puffy and soft, warm to the touch. Maria wasn't wearing a bra under her saturated t-shirt so it was clinging to her stunning natural breasts. She made him feel weak, weaker than he'd felt since the treatment.
His mouth was dry when he told her, 'I only have natural spring water, I'm afraid. Will that do for you, Maria?'
She acted mildly irritated with him, 'I suppose it'll have to do.'
He gave her a wry smile, 'I have solar panels fitted to the roof of this shed. They'll soak up the hot sun and heat the water for your shower. You'll find there's plenty of hot water for you to achieve the body heat you need for when you make love. The cubicle acts as a steam room. That's if you fancy a steamy sauna?'
