Author's Foreword: This series has themes of romance, sex, friendship, humor, safe and consensual BDSM, and above all, intimacy and the concept of memory. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental. I want you, reader, to come away with more empathy, appreciation, and joy for yourself and others than you began. As I did when writing this.
Note: People are complicated. Thank goodness. Whether the next installment continues from where this one leaves off or doesn't (you may have noticed I like to play with linear chronology), I'm sure we'll see more from this particular extended scene.
As always, your helpful feedback, follows, comments, favorites, and ratings are greatly appreciated. Also, I've been amazed at the positive reception and ratings for this rather long story so far! Thank you, readers!
***Mid-Summer***
Pages flipped delicately under Erin's small, dextrous hands as she turned sheet after sheet, eyes skimming quickly over words, leaping from corner to corner, mouth twitching and eyes widening now and then as her expressions changed with each paragraph and page. Here and there, she burst into laughter without noticing or breaking concentration.
Strange, I thought, getting turned on by how quickly and intently she reads.
A creaking fan droned back and forth in the corner. Hardly anyone had air conditioning, either back home or at that time in the '00s. By Mid-Summer, it was a heat wave in many respects.
She was sitting on a loveseat, head against one corner of the chair, bare legs and feet propped on the opposite arm. She had her curly blonde hair - frizzy thanks to the weather that day - held back with a pale blue handkerchief to match her short skirt. Her shirt clung sweatily to her small, pert breasts, and I could see hints of her neatly shaved self when she occasionally shifted one leg over the other. She owned fantastic underwear that normally I'd love to admire and take off with my teeth, but at that point I'd taken to giving her little assignments, little conditions, little demands each day. It excited both of us, and made the bigger demands feel more natural and less jarring or out of place. It made her want them more, and made her engine thrum with anticipation between one day and the next. That afternoon, when she had showed up at my house unannounced, I made her take her bra and panties off in the entryway and put them in my hand. If she was good, she'd get them back before going home. If not, she'd have to earn them.
She'd brought a large, black, three-ring binder with her; the kind that got used for a school project or an official report. I resolved to get her something nicer. It was full of punched paper, neatly organized (of course) by yellow divider pages with labeled tabs. At one point she paused to proudly show me the poem I'd signed, preserved in a clear plastic sheet divider. Like she was showing off a hunting trophy. Then, she stopped and went backwards through the pages, reading slower, a grin creeping across her face.
"That's the one," she said triumphantly, "Found it. I keep changing how I organize these, so it takes forever sometimes." She got up, came over to where I was leaning in the doorway watching her, and turned it around for me to see.
"Remember it?" she asked. I read the title and lifted the binder from her hands.
"I'm not sure..."
"Oh bullshit, Luke," she said, using the distraction of the binder to reach forward and grope me through my shorts, "Yeah you do."
"Okay, maybe I - Jesus!" I admitted with a sudden squawk, "Warn a guy."
"Request denied. Remember the story yet?"
"I recognize it and I know the main parts, but I forget some of the details. It's been a while since I wrote it. Woah, hey! Easy, lady. You like those, remember?"
"Love 'em, actually. Storytime!" Erin exclaimed. She steered me into the loveseat by means unbecoming of a lady before letting go of my nuts and settling herself in my lap. As we flipped through the story together, she occasionally petted me and gave petite murmurs of approval when I stroked her soft skin beneath the light clothes she wore. She ground into my lap and nipped at my ear as she felt me get hard against her.
Her various scents - lilac perfume, sun-soaked skin, the verdancy of tomato plants in her mother's garden, clean sweat, eager sex, gentle soap and moisturizer, and the lilting, unique, pheromonal melody that her body played for me from between her legs - all grabbed me by my most human instincts and made me want to do nothing but breathe her in as deeply as I could.
When I tried to do just that, her hair momentarily tangled in my new short beard, and she giggled as I tossed my head to get free. I had grown my facial hair out thanks to her request some weeks before. While she'd reassured me that my face was handsome and my occasional scruff was sexy, she was also of the opinion that I would look even better with a short, neatly trimmed beard. I was surprised when it came in as quickly and fully as it did, and it was especially strange to look in the mirror and see a bit more of my father looking back than before.
After I grew it out, Erin would stroke my face as we lay in each other's arms, laugh when it tickled her, and smile when she could smell herself on it afterwards. Pleased, she'd bought me a special oil to make it less coarse.
Across years and lovers, I've worn essentially the same beard since then. Thanks to Erin. A thing I hadn't realized until I wrote this.
"What do you think?" Erin asked when we'd finished reading the story together, "Could we do all that?"
"Some of it," I said, feeling my stomach roil nervously, "Realistically, we'll have to pick and choose. But why this one in particular? It's kind of heavy compared to the other ones, after all. Definitely a lot rougher on you. I wasn't all that sure about it when I wrote it." She set the binder aside and turned deftly around to straddle me, running her hands along my arms, shoulders, and chest.
"It grabbed me when I read it," she said, eyes flicking to mine and away again, "I want to know what it actually feels like, but only from you. I want to be able to imagine myself in it that much better. And I want *you* to think it's *me* in your stories. All of them."
"I... uh... wow," I said, forgetting what I'd planned on saying.
"Damn right," she said, leaning in to me, "And I want you to surprise me with that big, throbbing, rock-hard, swollen... nerd-ass brain of yours."
She tried not to, but once she snorted at her own joke it was all over for her. She dissolved completely into endless giggles while trying to kiss me.
"Ah yes," I sighed, rolling my eyes and fending off her advances, "Every writer's fantasy. A swollen brain."
"Sorry, sorry," she said, trying not to laugh, "Come on, I'm sorry. And I actually was serious about the stories. And this one particularly."
"Sure you were."
"Oh, don't be like that, you grump. I want us to be able to imagine each other in these stories of yours. Summer's not getting longer. Come on, you know you wanna."
"Well... okay, but like you saw, it's a bit rougher. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that, either. Like, in the real world. With you. It would definitely be an experiment for us both. Is that really okay with you?" She smoothed my hair back along my head and stroked my beard, searching my eyes.
