B Is For Byron

V let herself in her apartment. She sighed and rolled the kinks out of her shoulders and wished for some man to rub her feet and feed her chocolate when work tired her out.

Well, work and imaginary hot sex. She smirked at her teakettle, then tried a leer on her feline wall clock but it just rolled its eyes at her. She laughed at herself and dug out her peppermint tea, reflecting on her day.

A is for Adam, she mused. A is for Adam and Adam is for a good hard fuck. She stood very still, feeling as if her empty apartment were staring at her. The kettle whistled and she went to assuage it, breathing peppermint steam and picturing an assortment of possible Adams and feeling an intense awareness of the back of her knees and the curve of her ears. V sat demurely at the kitchen table watching the steam rise from her 'thats [sic]' mug, waiting for the tea to steep. A is for Adam, who wasted no time but got busy sinning. She smiled. A is for Adam, she sang under her breath to nonsense music. She played with the string of her teabag, and played hard to get by not playing with herself.

A is for Adam and B is for what? Or whom, she corrected herself, sipping tea and watching the sunset fade. Brad sounded like Pitt, who yes was hot, but she wanted her own man. Bob rhymed with blob, unappealing. She made childish letter-b noises in the gloaming. B names. Be names. Her well-read mind thought of Hamlet's soliloquy and 'Wherefore art thou Romeo', and shifted to the Brownings and 'How I do love thee and am busily counting the ways', and inspiration struck. B could be the perfect Byronic hero: Byron himself. Sucking her teaspoon absentmindedly, V realized that a good old fashioned romantic hero might be just the thing for a tired evening after work. As the day's heat leached away, V drew a bath and thought very warm thoughts. Byron would be dark and tragic, she decided, neither laborer nor stranger to hard work, idealistic and fiery, and perhaps rather tanned. She added some bath oil and settled in. Gently perfumed water rocked her breasts. She thought of a picnic in the middle of nowhere, under a shady oak tree with perhaps a few picturesque songbirds. She rested her head on the rim of the tub and closed her eyes.

Something cool and slightly rough brushed her bottom lip. She moved her head slowly, her lips caressing the sweet-smelling shape.

"Open."

His voice made her shiver. She smiled and parted her lips, deliberately not far enough, and lightly sucked the fresh bumpy shape. He hummed appreciation, traced her bottom lip, then stilled.

"Bite," he murmured.

Again a slight shiver, and she coyly bit the tip of his strawberry. She thought she heard a faint groan as he took it away from her, then jumped a little when she felt the moist edge of the fruit sliding down her neck. She felt him warm and near, crowding her. She sat completely still, waiting. The berry lingered at her collar bone, rubbing back and forth, then it softly pressed into the hollow at her of her throat and down her sternum, stopping at the low neckline of her dress.

She thought she felt his chest brush her arm. She thought she felt his breath on the back of her neck. Her body began to vibrate, a string sustaining the tone of the encounter, trembling slightly. She couldn't steady her breath.

His open mouth pressed just below her left ear. She gasped and arched into his lips. His hand cradled the base of her skull, fingers threading stealthily into her hair, holding her as his tongue searched her neck for strawberry juice. Her body felt like ripe fruit, full and heavy and slightly foreign, quaking in a light wind, ready to fall into his waiting hands.

He laid her flat on the picnic blanket and leaned over her, pressing a kiss to her temple through the blindfold, nipping the corner of her mouth, pausing briefly to suck the point of her chin, and finally returning to an exploration of her neck.

She writhed against him when he bit her collar bone, and moaned when he sucked open-mouthed kisses down her chest. The air was cool and ticklish in his wake.

He moved away for a moment and she tried to keep still on the blanket, flushed and tense and completely his. Goosebumps pebbled her skin.

"Byron?" she whispered, listening intently for any sign of him. All she could hear was her own shaky breath. The earth smelled like rain. A sudden chill tightened already taut skin. She felt like a bomb about to blow or a tidal wave gathering far at sea.

Suddenly he washed over her, weighing her down. His hands encircled her, lifting her to him, and his face came down, cheeks rubbing her breasts with frantic feline motions. She lurched, enflamed, and heard the wave break.

Her imagination had dumped half a gallon of cooling bathwater out onto the floor.

The water drained while she borrowed and then returned a neighbor's mop, shamefaced and bedraggled. The lovely scented bath oil had made her hair feel greasy, so she bundled herself into the shower. She mused over her abandoned Byron as she quickly lathered and rinsed in the frigid water left to her after her extravagant bath. She was done and dry in record time, then slipped her clean pink self between luxurious cotton sheets.

Poor Byron. She smiled ruefully, burrowing her head against the pillow. She stretched languorously, the high thread count skimming her skin in the most delightful manner, and settled back, reimagining Byron.

Basking on the blanket, she snuggled more closely back into her man. They were stretched out, naked and supine. Her back rode the gentle evening waves of his sleepy breathing. His strong, long fingered hands smoothed their way down her body, gently pressed her a little closer, then rested on her belly. She felt a wash of calm desire, rolled over, and tenderly embraced her pillow as the last of the day's tension dissolved in sleep.