Connection

Sometimes it's just a disconnection. As a couple your timing is out. You orbit each other constantly but you stop noticing how she looks in the soft blue moonlight.

It happens to everyone. It happened to us.

It had been getting steadily worse for weeks and for no reason. Things were fine and then they weren't. Nothing was spoken because it seemed so artificial. There was nothing to talk about because nothing was wrong.

But things were very wrong that day. I can't even remember what set us off but by the time we arrived home from a very uncomfortable Sunday brunch together all the anger and passive aggression of the last month had burst out into the world of real things.

Little digs were met with snapping which rapidly grew into real anger. And then as we closed the front door behind us, she said it.

"I only have sex with you out of a sense of obligation."

Silence.

The statement hung in the air. Threatening and bitter.

I might have physically slumped because I could see the regret in her eyes immediately.

Now was the moment for resolution and forgiveness. For realignment.

But men can be stupid, and me most of all.

So instead I looked at the vulnerability written over her face and all I saw was weakness and a wounded enemy.

In cold, clear and deliberate tones I told her, "If I treated you the way you treat me we would already be divorced."

I hated myself immediately but I held my gaze and watched her soul fracture. She turned her head away so I wouldn't enjoy the satisfaction of my cruelty and she slipped into our room and closed the door behind her.

I hadn't cried for 30 years but I broke at that moment and tears welled up in my eyes. I stormed off to the living room, turned the television on by instinct and then didn't notice it again while I sat on the sofa brooding and gorging on self pity.

"I only have sex with you out of a sense of obligation."

This from the woman I adored and loved beyond all measure and I constantly desired. Despite the last few weeks of discomfort I still woke every morning and looked at her sleeping beside me and fell in love with her all over again. I wanted to wake her and have her while she was still coated in soft velvety sleep. During the day she might be reading a book, or typing out her thesis or just standing in the kitchen drying a cup and I'd feel that powerful urge to consume her sexually and to reaffirm the .. connection.

Some little thing about the room changed and it took me a moment to realise the television had gone silent. I looked up and Alana was standing in front of me, freshly showered, wearing her pyjama t-shirt and pink cotton panties. With the palm of her hand she wiped tears from her cheeks.

It was clear from the expression on her face she was as compromised by melancholy and self loathing as me.

She coughed a little to clear her throat. "Did you mean it? What you said about divorce?"

Regret and all my emotional pain wrote the story all over my face. "Of course not. I was angry about what you said."

She nodded just a little and the words caught in her mouth before she could finally speak them. "I only said it because I knew how much it would hurt you. I didn't mean it."

But neither of us had sad sorry.

I said, "Sometimes I am too quick to say sorry to you when you have actually hurt me, I do it to get to a resolution because I hate it when you are angry at me." It was probably the most honest thing I had ever told her and I expected it to set her off again.

But I was wrong - which just shows you how little I have learnt about women in all my years. Even this one woman above all else.

"I know," she said. "I can be a bitch sometimes."

"No!" I said, angry again but for all the right reasons.

Alana was always harder on herself than I ever was.

Another tear ran down across her cheek and this time she made no attempt to stop it. Instead she just smiled a little sadly, walked over to the sofa and sat on my lap.

We didn't speak for a while, just nuzzled our faces and remembered. All the intimacy and affection we had been missing was flooding back.

I put my hand to her cheek and it felt cool and moist from the tears. I looked deeply into those beautiful big brown eyes and remembered that when I lost myself in them it could feel like I might never find my way back again, and that I might never want to.

When we kissed our lips tasted of the salt from our sadness. It was a powerful sensation and I knew she felt the same. Yet our lips never felt so soft before as they did while they danced and gently caressed together just then.

It was the most beautiful and extraordinary renewal. As we looked into each others eyes it was with a shared sense of amazement.

She shifted atop me and I became aware of my arousal as her thigh pressed against me. It actually surprised me. She said nothing, but merely closed her eyes, broke from the kiss and tilted her head a little. With my the back of my hand I brushed aside her dark lion's mane and put my lips against her throat. Her body tensed a little then relaxed, and a small sigh escaped her mouth.

I kissed her for ages, across her throat, and back to her lips, her chin, her cheeks, the back of her neck and when she closed her eyes, the gentlest little touch upon her eyelashes.

By now her breathing was heavy and I felt that familiar urgency return. My hand moved to her breasts and I felt the hardness of her nipples erect beneath her shirt. As I squeezed them and pinched her nipples softly between my thumb and fingers she shook her throat away from me and instead stared into my eyes.

She shifted atop me and now pressed herself against me, the front of her panties slowly soaking into the bulge in my trousers. We pushed a little harder against each other, breathing instead of talking since words had lost all meaning.

In a single movement she cast her shirt off revealing herself to me. I leant forward instinctively to kiss her there but she drew back and a little laugh escaped her lips. She leant in again, and again more hungrily now I moved into claim her.

She drew back again.

Her eyes were grinning at me, enjoying the desperation and confusion on my face. I had had enough. and with both my arms wrapped around her I pulled her in close and buried my face in that delicious temple, ravaging her with a savage hunger.

She laughed a little, groaned a lot.

I slipped my hands into the bands of her panties and drew them down across her hips until they were stretched across her thighs. My hands moved down between her legs and I felt her wetness. I opened her lips at little with two fingers and let the juice soak them for a moment, then I traced an arc up the inside of one of her delicate folds and then back down the inside of the other.

She was staring at me now, mouth open and her eyes rolled back as my two fingers slipped inside and started massaging the soft spongy padding of her g-spot.

"Fuck" she groaned.

But I said nothing. Instead after a few moments I slid my fingers out and in a single movement raised myself from the sofa, lifted her and flipped her onto her back. We kissed again, our tongues entwined.

I broke from her, stood up and she moved to help me undress.

"No." I told her and there was no negotiation. Alana understood.

She lay back and watching as I unbuttoned by shirt and set it aside. Slowly and deliberately she lifted one leg and spread it over the back off the sofa, opening herself to me. Her other foot slipped onto the floor.

"Put your hand between your legs and fuck yourself for me."

She needed little encouragement. As her eyes closed and her fingers danced I slipped from my pants and stood naked before her.

When she opened her eyes again she was already half lost to desire.

Seeing me standing above her, my cock thick and hard and my balls swollen, she let out a gasp.

She wanted to be fucked. Now. Hard.

But no. Not yet.

I lowered myself, balanced on my arms above her and traced little kisses and nibbles down across her chest and tummy and finally to her thighs. My fingers opened her now swollen, dripping sex, pulling back the hood and leaving her clitoris exposed to me.

The effect on her was remarkable, as always. Like releasing a demon.

"That's so dirty" she whispered. She wasn't complaining. "You make me filthy... you can do anything to me"

I licked her along one side and then the other, kissed her open spaces but this was no time for precision. Instead I buried my face between her legs and devoured her sex like a delicious ripe fruit, savoring the juices and the taste of her.

I took my time, enjoying the beautiful intimacy that is so unique to such bonding. She pressed herself against my face, grabbed my hair, but she was now reduced to a seething mess of sounds and desperation. As I felt her building I would ease back, kiss her belly, bite her thigh, squeeze her firm ass..

I knew when the moment arrived. I raised myself again so I was right above her held up on one arm, my other hand holding firm to the base of my cock to make my thick round knob swell.

She couldn't talk now, even to beg. I started to stroke her precious moist pussy with that hard engorged rod, rubbing it against her, masturbating her clitoris with regular strokes.

Her head rolled back, her legs opened a little wider in a final moment of submission and I penetrated deeply into her core until I was fully consumed.

With long deliberate strokes I started slowing fucking my precious and beautiful lover. It took all my discipline and self restraint to maintain that slow careful rhythm. I waited until she had sufficient control to mirror my thrusts and then gradually increased their strength until the fucking became urgent and angry and intense.

All over her face I could see her climax rising, I could feel it in the tremors that shook her whole body. I had to clamp my legs together to hold myself back but when she finally came I relaxed for just that one moment and let myself unleash a powerful, furious orgasm.

Spent, I fell upon her, our arms and legs all entangled.

For the longest time no words were spoken, we simply and gentled pressed our faces together, our lips barely touching.

At last she spoke the only words that ever mattered. I spoke them to. And then we lay there for the longest time.