**FOREWORD**
I took the day for myself today. I've been working hard all year. Brutally so. Head down. Fuel spent. Energy low. I needed to unplug and give myself some space.
I walked a short way north to where a disused elevated railway line has been romantically renovated, reimagined and landscaped, for neighborhood people to stroll, a pedestrian promenade, sans the sea.
On my way I passed Journelle, an upmarket foo-foo boutique lux-lingerie store. A place where once upon a time I would happen, on occasion, to stop in and pick out something exquisite, something I knew would turn me on and spoil you rotten.
In the window they had a sheer bodysuit made from the most marvelous ink-black mesh. More chic than fetish, immediately provocative yet oh-so subtle, intimately sensual, and undeniably sexy.
It was impossible not to smile. To think of you and how you'd smoke and smolder stretching yourself underneath me, slinky-as-fuck, in such a tight-fitting fabric.
Just writing to you now gets me hard. And I wonder, is it really so very wrong of me to say so? Maybe, yes. Or no? After all, you're a married woman and focusing on facing forward. You likely don't really need (or much want) some bastard from the past wrecking your weekend with reminiscent writing about how good we felt whenever we found a way to hold space for each other.
Truth is, like you, I'm trying to move on too. Trying to get my life together. I've made some progress, coming up on 1,300 days sober and actively working the twelve steps of ACOA with a sponsor.
Still, I never saw this coming. Me in recovery. And dear lord, addiction is rough. Healing is slow. I'm doing the work mind, sitting with the grief and the shame, creating a fearless and moral inventory, and methodically cleaning out the past.
But damn it, I know my writing to you in this way would qualify as a relapse. To squander time writing indulgent fiction and living in a fantasy at the expense of working on my recovery.
My hope is I'll forgive myself. It's my birthday after all, and selfishly this is my present. A simple and solemn, though somewhat selfish sojourn. An escape from the slow grinding burden of the mundane truth that has become the train wreck of my home life, in exchange for a sweet vibrant moment of excitement and hedonistic pleasure.
Ah, to revisit the rush of unbridled, unrivalled emotions that come with giving in to the needs of my flesh and bone and letting my mind run riot with the heroin-high feel of you and me fucking.
And forgive me, for in all truth, the moments I treasure most are in the setting of the scene, where serpentine coils of amber scented smoke rise from the red ember glow of an Indian spiced incense stick. And where we would lay together and slowly kiss, with no rush in the movement of our mouths, just the aching realization that nothing else feels as good as this...
SHE WALKS ALONE
Her mind wandering and never standing still. The sodden footpath and the fallow fields feel only vaguely familiar. She'll swear she's never walked this way before, and yet there's something reassuring in these surroundings, a certain déjà vu.
The muted colors might offer a clue. How the light lays against the canvas of the land. An undulating emerald green, rolling beneath the turquoise aquamarine hue of a subtle Sussex sky. The unblemished brushstrokes of our fabled England, a wash, both delicate and distinct, and unlike any other.
The decaying scent of a summer spent, seasons changing, the soft soil and rough stubble of a well worked arable land, spent with the harvest, giving way to the petrichor of autumn. Beyond the equinox, the solstice approaching. Our hemisphere tilting between the longest and the shortest of days.
She thinks about her own seasons. The turning of another page. Three score approaching, to mark the end of her third chapter. And where did all the sand go? Slipping through the glass bowl. Time slowing down as we shift our appreciation, with measured apprehension, knowing there's less now. Cursing all our hurrying to grow up.
She pauses for a moment, listening to the peace that comes from stepping away. Remembering it's always here, the quiet, hidden among the open fields and the huddle of the trees. It's us that make the noise. With our machinery and incessant chatter.
She feels the stillness and knows she's alone. There's comfort in this space and she feels the fiber of her soul finding ground, connecting her with the land on which we all live and depend.
We take it all for granted she muses philosophically. The news nowadays, a bleak cacophony of crisis. Forest fires, heavy rains, and hurricanes. We've broken her. Well, the men have. The one's who crave power and make our lives a misery. We might dare to speak truth to them, but they do not stop. And so it goes.
She despairs, looking away, looking for distraction, her eyes searching the wooded tree line for the possibility of a path. She settles on a narrow break in the boundary and walks briskly on toward the opening.
She searches her thoughts looking for something tender to soothe her hurts, and she finds a fond memory, like a familiar photograph, one she keeps tucked away and refuses to throw out. She wonders if he holds on to a picture of her. Does he ever think of her, she's not so sure?
She blushes for a moment, remembering the youthful craving she'd see in the burnt umber of his hazel eyes. The feel of his hands when they grip, deliberate and certain. His palms, smoothing over her skin, pressing, and pushing against the underneath of her thighs, prizing her.
Her eyes brighten with the thought of his mouth sinking over her sex and sucking, his lunging tongue, rude with passion and lust, impatient for the source of her succulence, his fingertips digging bluntly, rubbing up against the edges of her cunt and determined to claim her.
Such a naughty thought, recalling now how she might arch her agile spine, her hips rising, hoisted by his hands, raising her sex, her soft shaven cunt aching and blushing, her insides melting, his lips swelling with greed and need as they lustily suck from the bowl of her body.
She'd hear the greedy slurping sound of his lips smacking, feisty with fellating, starving and ravenous. She remembers his roughness when aroused. How he might playfully push her away, then pull her close, his hands working her over, wasting no time, rolling her like a rag doll, gathering her by her wrists, her arms hoisting high above her head, her full length stretching as he drags her to the edge of her bed, her head tipping back over the side.
He'd measure his pace with hers. His knuckles curling, stroking the thick, hard heft of his cock, gently offering the smooth swollen tip of his glistening glans to her lips. She'd feel her mouth giving way, the engorged weight and width of him easing her open, her lips stretching, tight and tingling.
Her breathing would shudder with submission, giving in, weakening with little mewling moans and muffled groans, feeling the slow, devastating nudge of his eager pleasure. The firm hot throb of him, held within the veined ribs of his rigid cock, his slow stroke, riding and rubbing, and pressing over the wet and welcome wedge of her tongue.
She'd feel his hands run over her taught body. His fingers fanning out as they spread over her firming breasts, his knuckles gripping against her nipples, dragging against their full and firm resistance, feeling them harden as his hips gently rock to nudge his cock a little deeper inside her groaning mouth.
He'd reach between her thighs, his fingers firm, feeling for the wet of her sex. Her confidence flooding with every slow stroke, his cock flexing rigid, her lips stretching, while the blunt nibs of his fingertips curl inside and slide, up against the concave curve of her craving, aching cunt.
She remembers how he'd sometimes tie her wrists with a silk rope or thick ribbon and bind her legs with bandages of black gauze. One hand gripping a full fist of her hair, the other squeezing against her breast, and all the while gently, confidently, he'd work his cock into a good slow fuck inside her mouth.
And his eyes would lock with hers, she remembers; how they'd roll to a close, overwhelmed with the sensations of her sucking him, his cock flexing, stiffening with every spasm, he'd feel as hard as iron.
He'd pull himself free, quickly climbing around her, pulling her to him, drawing her back onto the bed, rolling her over and gathering her up on all fours. She'd see their lean reflections framed together in her wardrobe mirror. And now she'd beg, aching for him to come scribe his name deep inside her.
He'd punish her with waiting, nudging the thick blunt nib of his sex against the slender split of her aching cunt. She'd groan, wet with surrender and he'd give no quarter, gripping her hair with a twist, pulling her to him, bending her body like a bow.
She'd hear his voice and feel the raw reality of how he hurt with wanting her. The tip of his cock throbbing and pulsing with the threat of rough fucking. He'd press his palm against the smooth round rump of her firm behind and push her away while gripping her hair and holding her to stay.
She'd groan with frustration, infuriated with his control and contradiction. How he'd deny her, making her suffer and moan. His cock flexing against the tender slip of her sex, edging against her, her patience stretched to breaking, desperate to fuck and to feel him rob her of everything worth having.
With the crack of a dry branch, she's suddenly self-aware, her mischievous mind scrambling back into the here and now. She feels the ground give under the weight of her boots, the soft leafy soil, shaded by the trees. She senses how they surround her, standing tall, her protective sentinels. These friendly and familiar guardians, they ground her to the safety of her own beliefs.
Confident in the privacy of her thoughts, she allows herself to wander off again, remembering a letter he'd once written. She recalls the weight in his words, how he was hurting, not with childish weakness, but with confession, hurting like an addict. He needed to feel wanted and he was daring to admit to himself, and to share with her.
