The prickling feeling was getting more painful especially right above my pubic bone, a sign of the sun doing its damaging, yet tan-inducing, thing. I could also feel little beads of perspiration appearing on my abdomen, another indicator that this 85° day in May was a good choice for lying out in my backyard--naked. A large beach towel kept the annoying little critters from scaling the grass blades to climb onto me, guaranteeing that I could have a peaceful thirty minutes in the sun.
I was nearing that time limit, based upon what I was feeling, but the warmth and the slight breeze had lulled me into a tranquility that I wanted to indulge in for just a little while longer.
These sensual adventures, though simple, were all I was left with over the past many weeks. After a marriage of 20 years, I was blindsided by my husband, Ken, who informed me that he had been hearing a call to his gay side, and needed to find his "true self." That made it difficult for me to feel an attraction to him, when I knew his ultimate desires were now for a man. In fact, he had met a man recently, a potential lover, which made me even less inclined to want a sexual intimacy with him.
Being only forty and still in my womanly prime, though, I wasn't ready to surrender my sexuality, nor was I ready to give up on my marriage. Being an unfaithful wife was not in the cards for me, either, I told myself. So Ken and I had begun talking about how to somehow make this marital relationship work within our present constraints.
All of which made me wonder why I was still beautifying my body with slow tanning and shaving my various body hair, because he had practically told me that his interests were no longer for women. Yet I felt compelled to do so nonetheless, as I guess I couldn't turn off a lifetime of perfecting my appearance.
"A few more minutes," I told myself, as the seductive sensations of warmth and tingling were difficult to resist, as was the lure of how my skin would look, evenly bronzed without those distracting tan lines.
I was startled into alertness when I heard a truck pull into our driveway, then quickly accelerate and brake, making a three point turn to maneuver the vehicle with the rear door facing our porch deck. Having my escape into the back door blocked, I hastily wrapped the beach towel around me just as this tall, hunk of a man stepped out the side door of his UPS truck.
He looked in his early forties, judging from the faint streaks of gray in his wavy black hair, which appeared a little unruly, like he had repeatedly run his fingers through a perspiring scalp to keep it from perpetually falling onto his forehead.
"Ken Dyer residence?" He called out quizzically, eying me in a way that could only be interpreted as pleasantly stunned.
After an awkward pause, I affirmed that he was at the right house.
"Your husband?" He asked.
I nodded.
"Guess you all are getting a big order of track lighting?"
Overcoming my surprising shyness, I managed to say only, "Yes."
He moved swiftly to the rear door, flung it up, gave me a quick glance back, and hopped up inside. Within a couple seconds, he stuck his head out and inquired,
"Don't suppose you could give me a hand in here? It's kind of a mess after driving up your bumpy road, which caused a package avalanche of sorts."
I froze. "Uh, sure," I eventually offered, though I was not quite sure how I had to be tapped for undoing the consequences of his probably too assertive driving. I slipped into my sandals, strode across the little lawn to stand at the back of the truck, and awaited his instructions.
"Come on up," he invited me, extending his right hand in a polite gesture of assistance.
I took his hand, and, holding my other one around the top of my towel to keep it tightened, I hoisted myself up into the truck.
"Thanks a lot," he said sincerely.
I watched him as he deftly maneuvered some boxes off of a number of long rectangular ones, which likely contained our track lighting. He worked quickly and methodically, then turned to me, bent down, hoisted one end of the track lighting bundle, and gently steered it toward me, asking,
"Can you hold this?"
Impulsively, I reached out with both hands and took hold of it. The shift of my arms and twist of my torso ironically caused an avalanche of another sort. My beach towel loosened and fell to my ankles. Unable to catch it in its freefall with both hands occupied, I could only stand there supporting the large package, bare naked before him.
The excruciating silence, that seemed to last an embarrassing eternity, was broken by his audible exhalation and the words,
"Oh my god. You're beautiful."
Which was hurriedly followed by,
"Here, let me take that from you," and he stepped carefully over some toppled boxes to relieve me of the burden, which allowed me to pull my towel back up around myself.
"I'm ashamed to admit it," he added, "but since my wife left me for another woman two years ago, I haven't had an interest in going out with anyone, let alone to even look at another woman. So maybe it's that lengthy deprivation that made me blurt that out. But I honestly do not ever recall seeing a woman as beautiful as you."
Initially, I couldn't tell if this was the most preposterous come-on line that I'd ever been presented with, or whether this handsome man standing before me in his uniform of brown short sleeve shirt, shorts, socks and work shoes was one of the most honestly vulnerable men on the planet. But curiously, that prickling of the sun earlier in the day with those beads of perspiration were now being replaced with a tingling liquifaction deep within my nether lips. And even more startling, my previous resolution to be faithful to my searching-for-himself husband seemed to lose more than a little of its resolve.
I stared at him momentarily with empathic brown eyes, then stepping my lithe frame around the fallen packages scattered on the truck's floor, I maneuvered myself so as to gracefully wrap my arms around his solid chest in a hug of both understanding, which I could deeply feel, and of desire for something more.
I felt his body, initially surprised, respond with a tight embrace back, embellished with a little rocking sway, like we were mutually soothing the other as we were, at the same time, being soothed.
His sweaty aroma blended with that of his freshly laundered shirt, slightly damp from his half- day's work. And I'm sure he inhaled my fresh scent of arousal as we each uttered those little pleasure moans that our full-bodied hug elicited.
Tilting back my head to look up into his face, his gaze found mine, and we moved magnetically into a kiss, adjusting our mouths to find the perfect union for our moistened lips.