Venice

We crashed through the door, I peeled my backpack clear of my sweaty back and slid it on the floor, then pulled my shirt off and threw it towards the bay window. It hit the curtain and tumbled to the floor. In doing this I loped forward and fell over, causing Alice to trip over my foot and do likewise. Thus we entered the room in a pile, legs entwined and laughing like maniacs.

"Are we, are we back yet Sam?" Alice squeaked through laughter. "I hope so, I do fucking hope so."

We lay on the cold, bronze wood floor, we lay apart but with our legs touching, Alice smiled at me with love and a hint of something else, and a measure of mania not brought on by the wine. Her leg began to run up and down mine.

"Sam, how long, how long has it been?"

"How long since what? since we saw each other last? Three months."

"No no, how long has it been since you last came?"

"Oh, four days, four and half now, how about you?"

Alice laughed salaciously, riotously, "About, six hours." She pursed her lips.

"Holy shit, you came on the bus?!" I shouted in a whisper.

"I came on the bus."

"You've got a vibrator with you?" I said.

Alice, more coyly than ever, replied "no, I didn't need one."

Alice knew I was aching for detail, she knew it, and she wanted to make me work for those details, she was becoming flush with life from the tease.

"So? You couldn't possibly have done it with your hands, everyone would have seen." I said, enquiringly.

Alice undid her jeans, pulling them down to her mid-thigh, she bent the waist of the jeans over double, and ran her hand along a prominent seam on the crotch.

"I crossed my legs, I crossed my legs and slowly flexed, grinding myself up against this seam. It took me an hour to come. It nearly showed, it took so long, it was so good."

"Alice" I said, "You're always full of surprises, you bring more to my life than anyone, more love, more fun, more pain, but now, more sensuality too?"

"Ha, what can I say? I am what I am." A smirk played across Alice's face.

Alice rolled away, stood up, and rolled her jeans down the rest of the way to the floor, slowly stepping out of them. Her underwear was black and practical, she sat on the end of the bed facing me where I lay.

"Do you want to hear something scandalous about me, in return?" I said as I watched Alice slide out of her socks.

"Always." Alice replied.

I lay on the floor and spoke slowly, "I can make myself hard by playing with, caressing, not pinching, my nipples. I have to be gentle with them, sometimes I think I could make myself cum by playing with them like that. Sometimes through certain shirts, certain fabrics. I can make myself hard all of the time doing it."

Alice looked up and met my eyes, thoughtfully, and said, "That's good, that's really good, I can't really."

"You mean those beautiful pink little things aren't bursting with sensation the second they're touched?" I replied, mock shock in my voice.

"No, no not really."

"I bet they could be, I think I had to train, I saw an interview with Anthony Kiedis from the early nineties where he said it could be done, you can open up an avenue to pleasure. You have to deny all other avenues and focus on the one you wish to open I think. Then go from there." I explained.

"For how long?" Alice replied.

"Not sure, for as long as it takes, until the sensation bursts forth like a dam shattering."

"Like a dam, shattering." Alice said, quietly, to herself.

"I bet I could open up the avenue, not saying I could, but I bet I could." I smiled.

"Oh yeah? Oh, kill two birds with one stone. I said I'd show you, a before and after. Before the work and after. I'll show you the before, maybe you can open those passages." Alice had been talking about possibly getting some work done on her breasts, they were perfect as they were and had always been, but she was about to turn thirty and this sort of anxious talk was unavoidable.

Alice smiled a wide open smile, her eyes glued to mine, and threw herself back on the bed. We were overtaken by the moment, by the big bay windows open, by the warm wind of the night. I rose from the bed and and slid up beside her, me above, we locked eyes for what may have been ten seconds, or ten minutes, time wasn't moving as it usually did, it was moving like it in Amsterdam. I placed my palm on the very bottom of her stomach, that beautiful little pouch, took in a deep breath and moved my hand upwards, pushing her t-shirt up with the motion. I pushed up between her breasts, she pulled her hands up above her head, manipulating her beautiful red hair and facilitating my actions.

I grabbed the cups of her bra and pulled them down, her breasts spilled out, I pushed the bra up under the breasts, the small pink nipples were exposed. I'd always thought they were perfectly sized for her breasts, they always were. I wrapped my mouth around her nipple and circled her small, impossibly pink areole with my tongue. With the thumb and forefinger of my right hand I played, gently, with her left nipple. They both responded and became hard, when they were hard I played with them more slowly, stopping to blow upon her right nipple, moving between the two. I could hear her breathing, more ragged, less assured than it had been.

"I feel it." She said, breathlessly.

"Could you?"

"No, not quite."

"May I?"

"Yes." Alice was breathing heavily now, so was I.

I nuzzled her beautiful stomach, smelling, kissing, I pulled her black underwear down, she lifted her legs, I pulled them all the way off and threw them away. She lay there with her shirt pulled up, bra pulled down, and naked from the waist down. She enjoyed being exposed like this, I could tell. We had been friends since we were children, we were now just thirty, we had heard everything about our love lives. Tonight, though, tonight she was mine and I was hers.

We needed sound, we needed sound. I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and pressed play on what I was last listening to. "nothing is holy." The song said, "Nothing is sacred." I plied my palm on mons pubis, her venus mound, exposing her clitoris.

She writhed, she writhed and moaned then her legs became rigid and she became still apart from the rhythmic, almost imperceptible movements of her hips against my tongue. Alice shuddered, finally, as the song finished.

"Do it!" A forceful whisper burst forth from her lips. "Please, please."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, will you? Please?"

The first chords struck up, as I felt her rough, then slick, then silk, then enveloping. "Ave Maria, Gratia plena." I did not last long, we gripped each other close, breathing deeply into each other's faces, I could feel her breath on my eyes and cheeks, and in my mouth.

"Again?" I said, breathless. "Again" was the reply. I kissed her, for the first time, our tongues touched and it was fire again, an apocalypse in fire, my masculinity raged. Alice finally pulled her t-shirt and bra off, I shook out of my jeans, we made love, we moved positions and writhed around each other, like mating snakes.

Before I knew it I lay there, the world now in slow motion. One eternal moment stretched out ahead of me as far as I could possibly see. The whole of creation kept time with Franz Schubert. The exquisite peach, the bisecting teardrops of her divine arse faced me, beaded with sweat even on this cool February night with the windows thrown open in Venice. Alice bathed me in her love as the song reached it's climax, I came again.

No food could taste so sweet, no wine could intoxicate as potently, no touch of any goddess could possible be more sublime.

We lay next to each other for a long time, locking eyes for a long time. We both wondered what we had just done, Alice was less confused than I, but still confused. I smiled and chuckled, it was funny that we were both going through the motions, we both knew our friendship was not done, we would never be free of each other. I laughed, she laughed, her breasts bobbed as she laughed and she cupped them, arresting their movement. I sat up, grabbing her t-shirt, I handed it to her, I looked away, knowing we were friends again. We fell asleep facing away from each other, we needed the sleep.

We knew there was no need, no chance, no one had taken advantage of anyone else, Life is sacred and connections, friendship, true friendship is so rare that it is the only thing I know that is sacred. No, that's not right, it isn't sacred, nothing is. It is the only thing that can be sacred, the only thing that orbits the lonely star of "sacred." What we didn't appreciate is that life is water, not stone, and things can change, so many things can change.