"Like an examination or an x-ray." Diane nodded, her understanding of Michael's thought process finally coming into focus. "We need to look for the problem and see what can be done about it."
"Exactly." Michael agreed. "And the problem, as far as I can see, is that your physical needs are not being met."
"Most of them are."
"Which needs are not being met by me?" Michael asked, his tone and manner clinical. Diane knew it was safe to talk at this point. Michael was treating this portion of their conversation like a consultation with a patient.
"The only need that comes to mind is sex." Diane confessed openly. "You are definitely attentive in every other way. You hold my hand, hold me when I need it, listen, talk, walk with me … if there is anything I need that you don't attend to, I can't think of what it might be."
Michael nodded. "How do we attend to that need?"
Diane inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. "Well, so far I've been finding others to attend to that need." Again Michael nodded. "But I'd rather not have any other. I want
you
. I've wanted you for so long that the ache for you finds its way into my dreams at night." His mouth twitched in the hint of a smile as Michael nodded yet again. "Unless you intend to end your celibacy or I decide to find alternate means of satisfying my need, there really isn't another course of action."
The silence stretched out until Diane could barely stand it. She sat in the silence, secure as she waited for Michael's deliberation to end and his words to be forthcoming. Still the silence lingered as her endurance faltered and she glanced down, drowning her comments in tea. Self-control near breaking point, she finished the last of her tea and rose to refill her cup with heated water.
She moved automatically, fear making silence almost preferable to the possibilities. Somewhere in her mind, she distantly noted Michael's rise from the table and movement behind her, presumably to rinse his cup or place it in the sink. Water poured, she turned to find Michael standing immediately behind her. Startled by his proximity, she raised her hands and began a backward movement, but was prodded forward once again by the counter and ended her movement pressed against Michael, her hands resting on his chest. She swallowed hard, trying to get her bearings, but found that their earlier conversation had her mind turning circles and her body responding to the last topic of conversation. Heat suffused her frame and she was both eager to push away from Michael and longing to press into him. She stared at her hands for what felt like an eternity before forcing her gaze up.
What she saw in Michael's eyes startled her. In those depths she found a holocaust of passions and a war older than civilization; she saw the man she loved and the man she desired side-by-side in those eyes and the new parity shocked her, made her pause as Michael leaned down and brushed her lips with his own. The contact, like a plucked string, set both nervous systems to shuddering in harmony. Words became useless and Michael leaned down at the same moment Diane reached up to begin a more passionate kiss.
Silence reigned, the shallow sounds of muffled breathing and the whimpers and muted groans of lust unleashed thrummed through the apartment.
Diane slipped out of her shoes, sliding them off to a corner of the kitchen with a swift motion of her foot. Michael's hands explored, reading the gooseflesh Braille of her desires and responding accordingly. Her shirt unbuttoned and slid to the floor, followed swiftly by her skirt, her body taking little notice of the loss except to redouble its efforts to let Michael know that warmth was needed. Her skin prickled with electric light as she unbuttoned Michael's shirt and pushed it from him and began to fumble with his belt buckle and pants fastenings while he alternately tickled with warm breath, nibbled, and softly kissed her neck. The nibbling was playful and erotic, everything she had come to expect from previous sessions of passion that ended too soon for her. His soft kisses were so soft as to be kindred to running feathers along her skin and they teased at her body's growing awareness of Michael's proximity and heat. His warm breaths on her neck set her nerves afire, sending ripples through her frame and shuddering her, disturbing the coordination of her hands. When Michael's pants finally came free, Diane pulled them and his undergarments off in one swift motion and kissed her way down his torso.
Michael watched Diane with a muted fascination buried beneath a desire without description. Words failed, senses were his only truth. As Diane's eyes broke contact with his, he watched as she knelt and looked on him in wonder. He stood awestruck, no matter how many times he witnessed this, it always caught him by surprise. He watched a familiar dance, fire ripping through him, a blaze unchecked and wild in the dry brush of his desire. Sensation snaked upward through his body on the heels of fire and chilled him, an icy pleasure that made him shiver. Urgency charged the air like lightning before a strike and Michael pitched forward to brace himself against the counter as the strike arrived and the urgency in the air coalesced into a focused point. In the aftermath, he sank slowly to his knees and kissed Diane, tongue probing tentatively and being answered. Passion rekindled flames that had burned down to glowing embers and set the room alight with energy.
Michael lifted Diane to the countertop, shoving bric-a-brac aside and settling her on the counter's edge. Diane gazed at him as he trailed down her stomach with soft kisses and hot breath. Nerves shimmered like a lake set to rippling by a gust of wind. An exploration began, something that had not happened in previous encounters, neither with Michael nor any other partners. The exploration was gossamer, almost surreal to Diane and she found herself switching between moderate disbelief and outright doubt that this was happening. Her nerves shouted their protest at her lack of belief in them, a tsunami washing away doubt in its path. Sensation rose and fell; waves on the open sea of her awareness that threatened lost control and promised far more than mere words could explain.
She heard her breath coming in shorter gasps and catching in her throat. A disconnect occurred between body and mind. Her body activated a sort of autopilot: stimulus led to response; action to reaction; Michael's explorations of her depths to a surge of heat that rose as inexorably as the tide and with as much purpose and languor. Her mind observed the proceedings with detachment, rendering a value judgment of each stimulus and evaluating the appropriateness of her biological response. Michael was inexperienced at this, his ascent from ignorance to a fair command of knowledge notwithstanding. Michael had always been a quick learner and that he should learn swiftly what things pleased her was no new revelation. She basked in this dichotomy for a time, exhilarated by the novelty of what transpired and the possible fruition of a dream. Reality seemed, so far, to be all that her dreams had hoped. A twinge of pleasure-pain snapped her back into the moment and plunged her headlong into sensation. She was heat and light, electricity and kinesis; she rushed madly toward the central focus of sensory input, lightning drawn to the rod, and yet ruminated within the light and heat of her self. The focal point compressed, the singularity at the core of some private anomaly, and suddenly radiated outward throughout the fibers of her body as though every neuron, every synapse had suddenly sprung to new and glorious life and was relaying to her one sensation: pleasure; the honey-sweet nectar of release.
Diane was only vaguely aware that Michael had moved, his eyes now on a level with her own. There was a question in those eyes that she could not – or would not – read. She smiled blissfully, her body still enlivened and felt the focal point reassert itself. Her still-echoing being registered a new sound, a new pleasure sweeping through her. Her mind, still reeling from trying to assert itself over the chaos of her unbridled release, now dimly informed her that something different was happening.
Those recesses of Diane that Michael had been exploring so gently before were now fathomed, the sounding rod plunged to their very deepest point. Diane registered the withdrawal and resounding of her self with moderate interest – only the center remained; only that oh-so-focused point of eager bliss that promised to wash over her at the next high tide of her own warmth. Each time the measurement was retaken, her depths fathomed and known, the instrument was removed and she, a deep longing for this sounding, followed up … forward … direction was meaningless. She moved toward that instrument which sounded her, fathomed her, knew some hidden part of her being that none other ever could or would.
Her tidal heat rose once more, the waves breaking over her and within her and through her. She was the wave; the trough; the crest; the undulating sea that caressed the land so aloof in its rigidity. She yearned toward her moon, an ocean longing for that distant lover whose empty seas beckoned her waters. And Diane, the wave, crested and came crashing down upon the shore in a cacophony of sensation; begging the stoic land for some reminder of her love. Michael, the distant moon, the stolid shoreline, responded to Diane's earnest entreaty and his warmth reached out to embrace her; an embrace that began in her core and spread outward. His warmth was cold, a soothing tingle throughout her tortured being that brought one final turgid wash of languorous warmth.
Diane settled into the warmth, reeling and drunk on the sensation. Her body still sparked, still danced with lightning jumping between the clouds of arms and legs and mouth. Leaning forward, her body pressed into another whose heartbeat matched her own; a duet of rhythmic pulses keeping time to the tune of sated desire and descent into aftermath. She leaned gently into the warmth, the contentment that radiated from her and returned.
"That was incredible." she breathed, her voice wispy in the electric silence. Michael's continued silence caused her to look up and see a look half of rapture and half of self-inflicted torment in his eyes. "Oh, no. Michael, don't tear yourself up over this. It's been a long time coming."
Michael nodded, the movement all but imperceptible. "I know." came the whispered reply. "You know why I don'… didn't."
